Finally a quiet moment..

Well, a mostly quiet moment. The puppy is not happy I'm asking him to be in his pen alone and nap. I really need to get him a bed for the pen, I wasn't sure exactly how big he'd be so I put off ordering one. Now all the beds we have are too big!

The first picture, he was so excited this was the best I could do till he crashed!

Da baby is very good. I took him to the hotel on Thursday morning and we played all day with lots of potty breaks. He slept on the bed and if I didn't have to worry about Mochi I might have just skipped sleeping in the crate, lol. He's really good and loves to cuddle.

Sleeping in his breeder's arms

Friday morning we were up early to get to the airport. He screamed the whole way in the car because he had to be in the sherpa. By the time we'd gotten there he'd peed (again) and then he puked a little. Poor kid! We got through security fine and I went to the bathroom to clean him up and give him some cuddles. The first flight was largely uneventful, he was a little whiny but settled down during the flight.

At the hotel, despite all the toys I brought the plastic cup was the favorite!

Unfortunately, we were a long ways from our next gate when we landed in Detroit. Our connection was only 30 minutes, but we were early! I thought we'd have time to run there and take a break... but I was one of the last passengers to board. From all the running (with him in the bag), he puked as we boarded. Poor baby!

As we got to our seat, the lady in front started complaining, "what is that awful smell?" I apologized and said he'd just puked but I would clean him up once we got in the air. No, I had to clean it up NOW and she whisked off to try to get me thrown off the flight.

Ok, a few things - he's in a bag and there's no air flow.. and he was right next to your head when you smelled him. Ya, it smells but it's mostly in the bag and he'll be under the seat. Also, no air flow in the plane. She mentioned something about paper towels before she took off, so I said fine and pulled the bag open, asked someone to ask a stewardess for a trash bag and did my best to get it and him cleaned up. It smelled worse, of course it did because I opened the bag!


There is unfortunately one more embarrassing aspect to this story. I wasn't sure if I should share it, but I figure someone should get a giggle out of my misery! I happened to grab my jeans that do not have a top button because it was sewn in incorrectly and I just haven't fixed it. I had to wear these because my other pants were stinky. In the panicked rush of cleaning him out, I had managed to unzip my jeans.

I had to put my stuff 6 seats ahead and when I hopped up I realized I was flapping in the breeze. I said aloud, "well, this is embarrassing" because hey, everyone was already staring I might as well give them a show and zipped them back up.


We finally got going and he was quiet. After we'd gotten in the air, could move around and they had served drinks (I got him some water), we ran into the bathroom. Thank goodness they make provisions for babies in there. I was able to pull the baby table down, Helo stood on the stainless steel ledge like a pro while I cleaned up. I picked up the remaining nasty bits and soaped what I could and went about getting him cleaned up.

Feeling better, we went back to our seat. He was not happy I'd done this but eventually went back to sleep. The flight was turbulent and I have motion sickness. Let's just say, when we landed I was probably more relieved than everyone around me.

The last flight was fine, a short hour and change. No one complained about the smell and the guy next to me was nice. Luckily to turbulence so I felt ok when we landed.

Hello Tri Cities, I have never been so glad to see you!

In the car

We got home and he played in the backyard a little bit then we let Arya out to say hi. Mochi came out and was mostly good. They have been separated and we've been playing lots of look at the puppy/give calming signals and get a cookie. That first night he was great, went to sleep in his crate after about 15 minutes and woke me up at 3am to pee, then back to sleep in under 15 minutes and up at 7! We had crashed at 10, not bad considering we're 3 hours behind his normal schedule.

Saturday we played most of the morning. By the time it was time to go to the vet at 1pm, he was ready to crash but unfortunately for him, he had a vet appointment. After that, we met Grandma and Grandpa. He wanted to sleep in the grass so badly by this point!

We also ran over to Petco for a new collar, tag and an airline crate for car travel.  Came home and I did my first day of couch to 5k. My goal isn't a 5k, but I would like to be able to run Helo when he's older and be in better shape for agility (and frankly, life). I have local friends who are helping me stay accountable which is very helpful!

Some cute pictures from last night!

Water bottles make great toys!

I know, this won't be possible for much longer. I wish he could stay tiny because he's so cuddly!

He was starting to crash for the night

Just kidding, ZOOM TUG!

And finally crash, I finished up what I was working on and we went to bed. He slept midnight - 5:30, out for pee and then 5:45-8:30. Not bad! We spent the morning playing, cleaning up the house and now he's crashed out in his pen. We head over to my inlaw's for Easter dinner, over to Petsmart for something I forgot and then tonight we're having people over to watch Once Upon a Time and Game of Thrones!

Arya is doing well, she went on my couch to 5k first run with me yesterday. She is a bit weirded out by the puppy because her attempts to play (stalk/chase/dramatic playbow) are met with a scared yelp. Poor baby! He is very interested in both dogs, though he's totally separated from Mochi he gives Arya lots of little kisses and they're starting to get to know each other.

Mochi will get an update in his journal since we've got behavioral stuff to log as soon as I get more time to write more. I started his entry and then got distracted. This afternoon is the longest I've had to sit at my computer yet!

New collar!

I'll get a photo of it on him later, I didn't have time before I had to dash off for class. SO CUTE! And it looks really good on him!

Get, dinosaurs monsters for the Mochi monster? Hehehehe....

Bridging from walking away to staying in work

One of my huge goals when I decided to put Mochi on prozac was to finally counter condition and desensitize nail trims. I'm even super nice about it and use a dremel, not the traditional cleaver. It doesn't matter, Mochi would head for under the desk whenever the dremel came out. Clearly copious cookies during nail trims was not working.

I think it also became a trust issue. Any time I sat on the floor, I could be doing his nails. Mochi's nails grow ridiculously fast. While Arya could get away with a month of no trims, Mochi really shouldn't. However, when I made that decision I also... stopped trimming his nails. Dun dun dun. Frankly, they're embarrassing to the point I want to get a sedative, knock his butt out and do them really quickly. At least then he wouldn't get a negative experience.. but not exactly realistic.

He's doing great with approaching the dremel and nose touching it, whether it's on or off. Today we started tackling phase 2, getting into position.

I prefer to do their nails with the dog on it's back. It's easier for me to see the nail and do it quickly. So today the plan was to have the dremel with me and get Mochi to get on his back in front of me. Except that he quickly put 2 and 2 together and said "I don't THINK so!". Thankfully I called him back when he walked away and he turned around, gave me a look and walked back. We did some nose touches, getting really close to my body. Then I started asking for down in front of me.

We progressed this so that I was going to start doing his lured rollover (how he was originally taught). No go. So we worked on not trying to sit up when Mom's hand comes near your head. He very quickly caught on to the game and by the end of the session (10 minutes and 3 cheese sticks!) he was starting to shift his weight to the other side to prepare for a belly/rollover.

3 cheese sticks is probably more than I should have given him, in truth he was supposed to get half but things were going so well I didn't want to stop him! Arya had to suffer through yet another training session with boring Charlee Bears. Good thing she's food motivated!

Dog Intro

Arya, "Stark's Needle in a Haystack RN" (AKC #MA01094401) is a whosawhatsit, possibly border collie/lab mix. She was born sometime in the Winter/Spring 2004/5. I adopted her in December 2005 from the Tacoma Humane Society in Tacoma, Washington. James and I had just gotten an apartment that allowed pets and the dog I had previously adopted a year before, Kaimery, had bonded with my parents. I decided to go down to their kennels and take a look.

Kaimery and Arya sharing a stick at the dog park in 2006.

A shy girl in a cage up front caught my eye. There's a look, a feeling, something I can't describe to someone who hasn't experienced it. I knew in that second she was my dog. I quickly filled out the application and handed it to the volunteer. She tried to push me off saying I was too young and didn't have enough stability.

Luckily, 2 summers before I had spent the entire summer volunteering for them and knew the volunteer coordinator very well! I marched right up and told her the situation, she came back down and talked to the volunteer. Begrudgingly she did the apartment check to confirm we could have pets and we were off to meet her.

As the volunteer pulled her from the kennel and we walked to the meet and greet room, she let a gem slip. "I don't know why you're interested in this dog, plenty of people have been interested but she's too shy... no one wants her." I bit my tongue, it was a fight just to get to that point!

In the meet and greet room she was shy, quietly said hi but was fairly detached. Here's the thing - border collies are extremely sensitive dogs. Many dogs, not just bc's, are not themselves in a kennel situation. The noise, distraction and general situation shuts down them down. I just knew in my heart I wasn't taking no for an answer. My Dad came down to meet her and said, "well your Mother is going to need to come down".

Taken in 2008, shortly after we bought our first house.

We arranged to have my Mom come the next morning and I put a hold on her. We came back and my Mom, knowing how her kids when we get into these moods, said if I wanted her she didn't see a problem. We finished the paperwork and deliberated a name - we were recently obsessed with the Song of Ice and Fire series (now the TV show Game of Thrones on HBO) and decided on the small, shy female character who later becomes a total badass, Arya.

Right after she was adopted in December 2005.

She had been raised by a girl and when she went to college, handed over to her parent's. When they couldn't break her of chasing horses and killing chickens she was put in the shelter. Another person adopted her, but they kept her in a kennel at work and then returned her. I'm sure they had good intentions, but she just was not ready for that.

She was scared of people. Mostly men, she could recover more quickly with women but with men she would alert bark and do her best to seem mean. The truth of it was she was scared spitless. After about 2 years we got to the point where she could be comfortably out in public without needing to alert bark. Nowadays, you would not know Arya had a somewhat dubious past.

Stalking Kaimery 

She is Ms. Social Butterfly, she loves to greet people, especially kids! They're the right height for kissing. And if you lean in just right she will give you one too. I often get asked why she doesn't do therapy - I have to admit part of it is her past.

Taken back in college, she's always known how to relax!

Arya is also my working dog. So far she's earned her RN but I realized after our first attempt at an RA that we had some retraining/training to do. Not bad considering we started taking performance seriously in Fall 2010 and finished her RN in January 2011! We've spent just about a year retraining and I think it will be about 6 months until I'm ready to go back in the ring. If we can finish her RA and RE, I'd like to take a shot at the various obedience titles. We've also been working on agility, I hope to finish her agility titles before she's not able to compete!

For more infromation on Mochi, please visit his blog! http://mochithecorgimonster.blogspot.com/

Helo is the newest addition. So new he's not even here yet! Back in 2008 when we picked Mochi, I had been dead set on getting an Australian Shepherd. Some things got in our way - namely, the breeder I was obsessed with was in Indiana and we were kids not far out of college (a year for James, less for me). Obviously, we ended up with a corgi (James' choice!). I held fast that I still wanted an aussie in my life in the future.

7 weeks old

I watched, planned and pondered. I fell in love with Helo's Grandma, Nita. This led me to Dawn. I saw in 2011 Nita was having her last litter but the timing was all wrong. James was at a 1 year temporary job across the country, we still had debts to pay off. Later in the Fall, Dawn announced Nita's daughter, Ellie would be having her first litter. I thought about it and realized we were on track to settle debts before the puppy would be here and I jumped on board!

The litter was born on January 3rd/4th (they were born late at night so some on the 3rd, some on the 4th).  5 boys and 2 girls, they were the "smurf" litter. At 7 weeks and change, Dawn did their final evaluation and decided on placements. She kept back one of the girls and one of the boys, we took the first pick boy. I chose the puppy that tows the middle line in personality and drive but was Dawn's first pick for conformation. 

2 weeks old

I leave on April 4th and get in late, we'll meet on Thursday and decide if he's going to spend 1 more night with his breeder or at the hotel with me and then on Friday I fly home. The following weekend of April 14-15 I am going to a seminar with 2 days of working spots with Arya. I'm sure I'll be posting a lot more about Helo once he's home!

7 weeks old, showing off his show side

Human Intro

I have tried to start a general blog several times. Each time I'm never happy with some nitpicky detail of the blog. I think I finally have a name I like and lots of reasons to post, so here's to hoping this works out!

First and possibly most important an introduction. I always like a place to reference when I "meet" someone new on the internet. My name is Christina and I currently live in Tri Cities, Washington State. I like it here, though I was raised most of my life in the Tacoma area (there: green, wet, gorgeous; here: dry, brown, not so gorgeous). I've definitely adjusted to desert life. I am married to James, who works as an engineer for a big construction company. We will very likely be moving in the near future, so that the location is due to change!

This is a picture from 2008 of James, Mochi, Arya and my parent's dog Kaimery. Not that he's changed much in the years since but most of my pictures of him are just silly!



I volunteer as the training director for my local dog training club and spend 3-4 days/nights a week either teaching or taking dog training classes. I am aspiring to become a professional, I would like to attend Karen Pryor Academy and/or The Academy for Dog Trainers. There are a few other groups I'd love a chance to be a part of, but education is quite expensive when you're working as a volunteer!

I am a member of the the Association of Pet Dog Trainers (#78699) as well as the Australian Shepherd Club of America (#130968). I plan on joining my local ASCA club once I know where my husband's job is going to be and possibly the Pet Professional Guild. Community is very important to me, I can read books all day but having someone to guide you is important to the development of a career. I hope someday to be a mentor to up and comers, but that is a long way off as I need quite a bit of guiding myself now!

I have 3 dogs: Arya, Mochi and Helo. If you'd like to read about Mochi, he has his own blog here. This is his introduction post. He gets his own blog because he has a set of special behavioral issues and keeping a log on him is important. I will introduce the other two in a separate post!

Walking away as a functional reward follow up

I have to say, it's working brilliantly! Today also marks 7 weeks of prozac. Crazy how time flies! We had a huge wind storm last night and I didn't even notice until I went to bed (my desk sits on the quiet part of the house, my bedroom on the windiest).  He's gone back to hanging out at his chair, with sprinklings of Mommy snuggling. He also asks fairly a few nights a week for snuggles in my lap.. and not in a panicked "I need reassurance" way. He hangs out, I tell him out handsome he is and then I put him back down and he goes on his merry way.

As for the topic: the functional reward of walking away. He's also getting a primary reward (food) but I'd say in this getting to leave to social situation is probably the primary reward. He's done it with the dremel, with just me sitting on the floor (one of his signals it's training time and so one of the social situations that puts pressure on him) and with Arya present, either sitting next to me or actively working. For the working part, he hung back and didn't bother her and then I would ask for a hand touch (entering our space politely) and then throw the treat back. Repeat.

His relationship with Arya is changing dramatically too! One thing about Arya is she loves to kiss. People, dogs, she'd probably kiss a cat if one gave her a chance! I've noticed he's tolerating her kissing him a lot more and even seeking her out to "touch bases". I'd say for comfort but that doesn't quite describe it. He's also much more tolerant of her being in his body space. A huge issue since about 15 months of age.

I've caught them practically cuddling when I wake up and this morning he jumped up on to the bed on request right after her and laid right with her. He doesn't just tolerate her in his body space in an open area, he's letting her come up to him while he sits on his chair (see below) and kiss him.

So good news! In  a week the puppy will be home about this time.

Thank you, Leslie McDevitt

Every time I read a dog training book I have what's often described as a "light bulb moment". Probably self evident, but it's when you have an epiphany of sorts about something in your life. I've had them from other types of books, but due to the dog training books I choose to read from authors experienced in the challenges I face who train in a way similar to me, they happen most with them.

I picked up a copy of Leslie's Control Unleashed: The Puppy Program at Clicker Expo in January. I had store credit for volunteering and referring and needed to spend money. What a good choice this ended up being! Leslie deals a lot with performance dogs with various problems, not the least of which is anxiety. While the book is bent towards performance issues, I'm finding it has a lot of application for Mochi.

Last night I was reading a chapter where Leslie describes a dog who was scared to come out of it's crate. Leslie rewarded the dog for coming out by sending it back in with a treat thrown in the crate. The dog learned it could go back in it's safe space and *bad things would not happen*.

Premack: Premack's principle, or the relativity theory of reinforcement,^[1] states that more probable behaviors will reinforce less probable behaviors.


Leslie used what the dog wanted (being in it's safe spot) to reinforce working with a stranger and continued on, rewarding the dog after longer stints outside and eventually working with her. She talked a lot about social pressure and allowing dogs to escape it as a reward, which is the ah-ha moment: I can shape Mochi to do things by rewarding him away from me.


You see, I've always had this idea that I have to reward him closer to me to bring him in.. but Leslie is saying exactly the opposite. By allowing a dog to escape the pressure it feels, you encourage it to make the decision to turn on the pressure. Facing Mochi is pressure to him. When he was a puppy I had the "why doesn't he work with me even though I have treats?" complex and, though not using force, pressured him in situations that made him uncomfortable. 


That anxiety has bled into anxiety about training.


So we played a game today! I sat down and the instant he walked towards me I clicked threw a treat behind him. Repeat. At the end of the game he was turning and very quickly walking back to me, coming in close. We've been doing dremel desensitization and counter conditioning, so once he was coming into my personal bubble without hesitation, I put the dremel out. First I just clicked for walking towards it, still rewarding behind. 






By the end of 4 reps with the dremel, he was coming back to the dremel and nose touching it (one of the exercises we've been working on). Good boy!


I plan on later today repeating and then tomorrow I will ask him to come in while the dremel is turned on. I'm very happy with my revelation and thank you Leslie! I cannot say enough good things about her book, I highly recommend it.