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Things are moving along nicely. Once I made the pledge to work on Panda's sit/stays, I did and Panda's making great progress. In 3 days I had him up to a minute and a half sit/stay with me about 15 minutes away in sight. Of course, I had to build this little by little. First I would stand right in front of Panda and count to 5, as long as he didn't move, click/treat. Then I would count to 7, then 10, etc. Then, using some of the strategy from "Culture Clash" I started to walk around Panda. I took once step to the right, then 1.5 steps, then 2. Once again, as long as Panda didn't move, click/treat after each effort. If he did move, I would declare, "oh, you blew it!" and put him back in a sit and do it again. I discovered that Panda rarely moved. The strategy of using small steps and not allowing them to make mistakes really seems to work. I'm constantly amazed by this. In one session, I was able to walk all the way around Panda with him turning only his head, not shifting his body. At this point, I'm completely thrilled. This is a major milestone for Panda. When we've walked behind him in the past while he's in a sit/stay, Panda used to get up, turn around and sit back in his spot facing us.

Over the next 5 days, Panda had developed a fairly reliable 1.5 minute sit/stay. His best time yet is 2 minutes but that was only once. It's kind of boring to keep training the sit/stay because the time gets longer and longer and there's not much I can do. I have to be able to keep an eye on him so that if he moves I can catch him immediately. I know I have to build in more distractions too but I'm having difficulty with that. I'm alone in the house while I'm training him, so I can sing, dance, slap the floor, walk in circles, etc. but it's not the same as practicing his sit/stay with other people and dogs present. So I was psyched to take him to class and practice his sit/stays while the other dogs were working on sit and stand. This class was one loud class and Finnegan stole one of my treat bags again! (You think I'd learn.)

Panda did really well with sit/stay during that class. In his puppy kindergarten class, Panda used to work for 20 minutes and then nap for 40 minutes. In this class, however, I had Panda working for almost 50 minutes. Pretty impressive! By the end of class, he was staying for about 30 seconds. I thought this was pretty good given the immense number of distractions (me walking around him, a golden bouncing around only a foot behind him, my friend talking to me while I counted silently, the instructor circling the room, dogs running around, everyone's clickers and voices of praise sounding). I need to continue to work on this in other similar situations — perhaps take him to the park or at his playgroups.

It's funny. Over the course of this week, I've changed my goals. Now, instead of wanting Panda to be capable of completing a Novice A obedience trial, I actually want to compete! I want him to earn that CD! Maybe it's because I'm so enthused about how he's doing and how well he's responding to clicker training or maybe it's because I've taken to it so well, who can tell? But I'm completely confident I can work up to this goal. I realize it's going to take more than this one class and I'm really going to have to make a point of working him in "social" settings to get practice in under distracting situations. But we can do this! I'm going to observe an obedience trial later in March so I can watch the routine. I've printed out the AKC rules and I've watched my friends compete in the past, but I didn't really pay attention to the details and think this would help me a lot.

Something else incredible happened this week. I finally went with my friends on a therapy visit. This was a wonderful example of how clicker training can be used! The setting was heartbreaking. It was a pediatric care center with kids ranging from infants up until 21 years of age. All of them are in wheelchairs, few have control of their hands, some can sign but few, if any, can speak. The therapy dogs go from one kid to the next jumping up on the trays of their wheelchairs and kissing (licking) the kids' faces. It's really cute to see except it's very shocking for some of the kids.

The owners of the dogs stay positive and try to encourage the kids to respond to the dogs with a variety of techniques. Tucker, for instance, will retrieve a stuffed Elmo if a kid throws it and "bring it" back to the child. Sometimes when you hold the child's hand and help them pet the dog, they respond to the softness of the fur. And some of the kids can hold or throw treats to the dog. For bed visits, Kyra and Tucker both are trained to jump up on the rails along the side of the bed, lean over and kiss the kids' faces. They will also jump up on the foot of the bed and sometimes crawl up for kisses. It's absolutely wonderful to see the kids respond to the dogs.

Throughout the visit, the dogs got click/treats for performing any of these types of behavior. There were a lot of treats dished out that night! Tucker and Kyra were great at their work! This visit really helped me determine that therapy work is just absolutely wonderful yet it also made me question my dog's ability to do it. Panda is quite skittish. He doesn't like loud noises (especially metal ones) or things moving unexpectedly. He doesn't jump up on people or things and he's not a big kisser. I can't get him to kiss me oftentimes! While I don't think he's scared of wheelchairs (he once leapt into someone's lap who was in a wheelchair at a pet store), I don't think I could get him to jump up on these trays or shower affection on someone who's showing very little regard towards him. I think if he jumped up on a bed rail, he'd scare himself to death and I'd spend the next hour coaxing him out of the corner.

While I know I could develop some of these behaviors with clicker training (for instance, I could probably get him to kiss the kids hands over time by developing "touch"), I'm not sure that I want to. I've made a point of training my dog not to jump up on people and I don't want to encourage him to kiss people who are just sitting there minding their own business. This behavior is lovely for therapy work, but to imagine him behaving like this outside of that setting makes me cringe. And I know that these are behaviors that you put on cue and therefore shouldn't happen in other situations because dogs don't generalize. But I don't buy it. Dogs, at least I've seen my dog, generalize. Maybe not a lot, but enough. I've seen dogs who are clicker trained who want that food go through every trick they have in their arsenal trying to force the click and I don't want my dog to start jumping on people just because they're trying to get him to do a trick for his treat. Maybe I'm just not confident enough in my own abilities as a trainer yet. But this has me, wellŠ conflicted.

However, I'm still enthused about therapy work. I want to go observe a nursing home visit and see if there aren't situations with kids that could interact more with the dogs. I remember when I still lived in Maryland, there was a therapy group that took the dogs to NIH to work with kids who had cancer. The dogs could sit on their bed or next to them if they were in a chair while they were receiving their chemotherapy treatments. I think it would be a lot easier to get Panda to interact with kids who could respond more first and work him up from there. My friend in the clicker training class takes her dogs to a nursing home every two weeks, so I'll go with her on the next visit hopefully. And I'm going to move forward and get Panda certified for therapy visits so we can give it a try. This would be a real challenge but one with great gains.

So I've decided to work with Panda on behaviors other than those required for just obedience. This morning, I reintroduced Panda to "touch." I worked with him on this a little back in the fall (somewhere between roll over and heel) but that, like the others, fell apart quickly. I just didn't follow through. Using hot dog bits to get my finger nice and slimy, Panda was more than happy to touch and lick my extended index finger. We went through the whole treat bag — he just wanted to keep working! At first, I kept my finger close to his nose, over the many trials I moved my finger all around — it never required Panda to get up, just to crane his neck around, lift it up, down, to the side, reach forward. Any time he touched my finger, click/treat. Once the treat bag was empty, I stopped. Five minutes seemed like a good start.

Oh, and as for my other goal, I'm only about 30 pages into "Don't Shoot the Dog!" I just keep going to bed too late and I'm too tired to concentrate.

New goals: Read more of "Don't Shoot the Dog!" Keep working on "touch" — get Panda to travel a greater distance before the click/treat (and preferably without my finger being so slimy, ick!) Keep working on sit/stay, especially in distracting situations. Start working on down/stay (or flat/stay in Panda's case).

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