Coco has a quiet morning

How is this comfortable??

Not a whole lot happened after our big walk yesterday morning.  It was a quiet day.  We continue to solidify the connection between words+hand signals, behavior and treats.  She's now more interested in tracking the hand signals than in avoiding the hands.  I keep adding new names for observed behaviors ("down-settle", "sit", "bow", "shakey-shakey", "in", "out", "wait", "potty", "peepee", "poopie", "back") that I already use for my other dogs.  It's a lot of vocabulary, and she clearly doesn't relate to all of it yet, but repeating them, especially with hand-signals, at the right moments will eventually click.  It did for old gal Happy, a greyhound brood-mom, who came to us at almost 9 years old from the farm.  She was food motivated, but sublimely ignorant of how all that random noise coming out of us all the time might mean something in REAL (dog, that is) language.  It's a form of training referred to sometimes as "lazy", since it just captures and puts a cue on behavior that the animal does on his or her own, without having to make him or her do something.  It's very low-stress, on everyone.  With Coco's normal timidity, it's easy to blow her mental circuits with any stress, during which she will not be learning what you want her to learn, so this is a gentle way to introduce some training for her.

We did have an interesting moment last night.  We had retired to the couch after dinner, the boys were sacked out on the floor, and Coco had paced around shyly until taking herself to her crate.  I think she's still a little less likely to approach my husband, since she did spend time in the living room the night he was away, and not since.  Anyhow, I started fiddling with a hair barette, clicking it open and closed, and suddenly Coco comes rattling up and thumping* down the hall to see what's happening.  I showed her the barette, and she quickly lost interest and went back to her crate.  I wonder what that clicking meant to her.  Maybe she had actually been clicker trained at some point?  Or at least associated that type of sound with something worth checking out.  Another mystery of her past life!

Yes, my husband is standing on the counter.  Playing
with one of the cats.  I live with a giant 4 year old!

Even though she isn't ready to approach H on her own, she isn't particularly worried about him, either.  Look at this.  H is standing on the kitchen counter, yelling at one of the cats (seriously, this is how they play ... seriously).  Note how un-worried Coco is, lying there on "her" rug.  Pogo is watching, but also not too interested.  None of her body language speaks of fear here, and I was watching like a hawk, ready to call a swift end to the silliness if she seemed upset.  She's not looking away, sniffing the floor, creeping or dashing out of the room ... nothing.  Just watching.

By the way, you keep putting this thing in my way!

I apologize for my terrible photographs, but I still thought these were worth posting here.  When I'm in the kitchen, Coco is sure it's a good idea to get in there, too.  FOOD happens in there!  We have babygates at two entrances to the kitchen, and she goes from one to the other, sticking that needle-nose in and shoving the gate over to try to get in.  (My beloved Wabi used to do this, and it cracked me up.  Coco seems to have the same Princess You Don't Mean That "No" To Me attitude.)

How 'bout if I come in this way?

Coco getting relaxed in the studio.

She's decided my studio is the best room in the house.  The other dogs pretty much agree, if you don't count the kitchen.  It's carpeted, covered with dog beds, usually cozy with all the lights and computer warmth, often sunny, and we spend a lot of time in there.  It's our "den".  She was asking to go back in there while we were having our living room time last night.  I'm trying to keep her options to two: be with us and get companionship, or be in your crate and basically invisible.  No interaction with her while she's in her crate.  Hopefully, that will eventually make it much less rewarding than being out where we are.

We have some goals ahead of us we need to continue to work towards.  We've made quick work of walking on our property, walking on the neighborhood street, being out of sight of a human without panicking, both in the house and in the yard, being in the crate when humans leave or go to bed. Next up is a short car ride followed by a walk in a park.  We might even get to that today.

My work is backing up though, so I need to concentrate on that a bit, too!

Thanks for following along!  I welcome any feedback you might have for me, in the comments or elsewhere.


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*thumping.  Her feet are very flat and splayed out, hypothetically because of her general lack of muscle tone, and maybe because she was kept in a metal grate-floored kennel much of her life.  The result is that she hits the ground hard with the large pads between her toes, rather than taking the impact on her toes with some bounce.  She sounds like a little horse, in slippers, prompting me to call her "my little pony".