Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Oregon, post 2

The next three days were spent at Daisy Peels camp.  The weather had turned cold and cloudy, so good days to go to camp. (it was in her barn )The morning was the elective you picked. You had two choices. One was clicker training chickens, the other was Functional fitness.  I picked clicker training the chickens. 


I was kind of scared to pick the chickens up. I mean look at those feet. That is scary.  She told us how to pick them up and put them back in the cages. We had to practice that several times. I got more comfortable with it but I do know I never want any chickens. LOL  Then we practice holding the measuring cup(which holds the chicken food) with a clicker attached to the handle. You had to learn to keep the cup next to your chest or behind you back and play a game. She had different color circles on the table. She would call out different colors. You had to click and touch the color target with the cup and then bring it back to your chest. Also , not spill the food. It sounds easy but it was difficult not to get behind when trying to touch the colors, bring it back to you chest and back down to touch the next color.   Then it was time for the chickens.  First you had to clicker train the chicken to peck the big round target. That was pretty easy.  Some chickens worked better than others.  And it depended on if they had already laid their egg that morning.  Once you got them targeting the target, you had to be specific and get them to hit the center dot.  Again, that was pretty easy.  Now the next game.  You could pick to either get you chicken to target a specific color square or target a specific shape.  The shape specific was harder, so I decided to try that. Everyone else did the color.  ( the color was easier and all the chickens learned it).  So you put the 4 different shapes out on the table. The first one the chicken hit, you picked up. This was the one most likely the chicken liked best.   Then you picked up all the other shapes.  First you just put  the square, that's the one my chicken like, down and rewarded the chicken pecking that one. Then you added another shape. If the chicken pecked the circle (because she was suppose to peck the square), you were to pick up the square. This was negative punishment (removing the one she was suppose to peck).  This was very hard for me to do. I figured, why not just ignore the behavior I didn't want, and reward the one I wanted. Right???  Wrong. This made the chicken think, peck the circle and then the square. Or peck anything and then the square. ugh!!!  Every time I thought my chicken  understood to only peck the square, she would make a mistake and hit the circle. Then I wouldn't pick it up, because it was only once right?  Ugh. Nope, now I confused the chicken. Ack!!!  Over the three days, we also taught the chickens to walk around a cone. Much easier, at least to me. And my partner taught her chicken to tug a rope. Very cool.  Don't worry the chickens got lots of breaks.

Then from 11:30 to 6:30 we worked our dogs.  Everyone there was really good. I think I was the worse one. LOL  There were 14 working teams.  Lots of border collies, a couple of Tervs, a Dobie, a Kelpie, a duck toller, and three 16 inch dog (one was Java), anther was a mix and I cant remember the other. There were no dogs smaller than 16 inches.   I learned a lot.  I don't watch my dog. You don't have to be fast to run your dog but you do have to cue them  in time. You have to be able to watch your dog but also see where you are going at the same time.  I need to learn to run in a straight line.  And after all the things I learn, I ran my dog the worse I ever run her at a trial this weekend. Ugh!!  0  Q's out of 9 runs.

The next day was Friday. The sun had come out again and it was a beautiful day. The people at the camp gave us a suggestion of things to go see. It was great.

Every thing there is so green.

This waterfall was stunning.





The wind coming off the falls was so powerful.


More to come later.

4 comments:

Sara said...

Who knew you could clicker train a chicken? That sounds like a blast!

That waterfall is stunning

Cowspotdog said...

what a wonderful place to visit - hope you got to relax some too :)

Helen said...

Never trained a chicken but I did train a lab rat in university. Oregon is just beautiful.

Dawn said...

What a great trip! Huh. Clicker train a chicken. That just seems so weird...in a cool way.