But they are pricey items and I’m fundamentally pretty cheap. I couldn’t imagine spending $10 for a bag of training treats that might last one trial or one training session. I started looking around for a cheaper source. I noticed that Whole Foods occasionally sells chicken hearts (and will order them for you in bulk). Fresh, gooey, disgusting chicken hearts. But they’re cheap. They run around 50 to 60 hearts to a pound, and a pound sells for $2.79 (organic, at that) and if you buy twenty pounds at a time, you get 10% off. You can see where this is going, right?

Twenty pounds of chicken hearts is a lot of chicken hearts. Many many chicken hearts. And since cutting up a chicken heart is a tangible reminder that the chicken only had one heart, I have become aware of my existence as a mass murderer of chickens. I have had a nightmare about a circle of accusatory chickens surrounding me, each one of them demanding to know whether the sacrifice was worth it. (Lately I’ve been trying to persuade the dogs that apples and carrots are good, too.)

Anyway, should you care to make your own chicken heart training treats–the only training treat for which Dancer will cheerfully do the teeter–I recommend this method:

Bake the hearts on a raised rack at 350 F for about 30 minutes. This will render most of the fat. (Chicken hearts are very fatty; apparently, these chickens were going to have a heart attack any minute.)

Allow the baked hearts to cool a little bit, then slice them once lengthwise and then cut each slice in half, so that each heart makes four pieces.

Line a roasting pan with paper towels. Pile all the heart pieces onto the paper towels and return to the oven. Bake for another hour or two at 175 F, which will dry the hearts out and render out more of the fat, leaving behind a small, not-too-greasy treat that dogs adore.

Store in ziplock bags in the freezer.

The class was mostly pretty familiar: sit, down, touch, walk nicely on leash… and stand. I’ve never taught a dog to stand. The hardest part was figuring out how I wanted to signal it.

Today I took Rush down to the barn (and Elly and Dancer too) to train. Rush is beginning to get the concept of being sent into tunnels and being sent between jump standards. It’s fun! He is fast through the tunnels, too.

I also worked with Dancer on contacts. It occurred to me that I could test the contact position using ItsYourChoice the same way I test self-control in a sit. I showed Dancer a huge handful of hot dog bits; I ran her over the contact; once she stopped on the contact, I stood next to her with my hand open and fed her a few of them, one at a time. The second I managed to lure her off the contact, I closed my fist and stopped rewarding her.

I did that three or four times with both the a-frame and the dogwalk. After a while, she was racing into contact position and really sticking it. I need to test it on the contacts at the other barn, too.

Two poodles

I peeled the sweet potatoes and cut them into thick slices.

Sweet potato treats, step 1

Then I put the slices on a Silpat and baked them for an hour at 325 F. They were thick slices, so after an hour, I flipped them over and gave them another hour. Then I changed the temp to 175 F and left them for another couple of hours, to dry them out and make them nice and chewy. Elly likes them a lot–Dancer is less fond of them but that’s okay.

This is what they look like when they’re done:

Yesterday Debbie suggested I needed lighter-colored treats. So today I mixed ground turkey breast (white meat) with white rice that I whirled in the blender until it was rice dust. I made little bitty turkey meat balls from this mixture and baked them for 20 minutes. The rice dust soaked up all the juices and fat (which isn’t much in ground turkey breast) and I now have nice light-colored turkey meatballs. We’ll see if it makes a difference next week.

I bought twenty pounds of ground turkey hearts at Whole Foods. They divided them into nice two-pound tubs. I froze the tubs and use them one at a time.

Two pounds ground turkey hearts
Equal volume oatmeal (I fill the container with oatmeal after dumping the turkey hearts in a big bowl).

Stir them together, until thoroughly mixed, in a large bowl.
Spread the mixture on a Silpat on am 11×17 (or thereabouts) cookie sheet.
Bake at 350 degrees F for 25 minutes.
Allow to cool for a few minutes, until the slab is easy to handle.
Cut into bite-sized treats (which is about 1/2″ square for my dogs).

Pile the cut-up treats back onto the cookie sheet and put them back into the oven, but reduce the temperature to 175 degrees F or so. This will dry the treats out and make them easier to handle. Dry them out for at least an hour or so (stirring once or twice), then turn off the oven and leave them to cool for another hour. Store in the freezer.

(This recipe will fill a one-gallon zip-lock bag.)

They ate the carrots. They ate the probiotic pills and the flax seed oil capsules. They ate the spinach and the spinach stems. They ate the roast chicken. They ate the green part of the beet greens–but apparently they both spat out the stems. Okay. Good to know.

I’ll store them in the freezer though. I always do.

Anyway, Dancer now runs to the teeter board and runs across it, whirls around and runs back, banging it down with her right paw with a look of great glee on her face. She has actually started to slide into position, in a poodley version of the border collie slide. It makes me proud, I’ve been trying to focus on clicking just as the board hits the ground, and obviously I’ve gotten the timing right.

I also gave both dogs a thorough scrub this AM. We’d been to the puppy park, and Elly did some VERY serious digging. (If I ever need to bury anything, I’ll know who to bring along.)  Dancer helped some, but didn’t get anywhere near as filthy. Elly’s face was coffee-colored from dirt. I just wanted Dancer to be clean and fluffy, because she’s coming to the seminar with me, and I wanted her to look and smell her best. For some reason, people always put their hands in poodle topknots.

Yesterday I had a good-and-bad training session. Good weaves, good enthusiasm from both dogs… and disastrous results from working the teeter with Dancer. She does NOT like the teeter, and I pushed it too hard… and it ended with her walking in big circles around it. NOT good. I was STOOPID.

However, weaves are going well. Elly is nailing them every time. Dancer still requires a bit of “weave management”: it helps if I don’t rush her. If I rush her, I can make her fail. I’ve been using the “see weaves, do weaves” approach, trying not to indicate them or call them out, just expecting her to take them if they’re in her path. That part is working well.

So the plan now for Dancer’s teeter is kind of back to square one: no teeter for a while, just a plank. Then maybe a little movement. Etc. For the weaves, though, I’m going to work on adding pressure slowly and gradually.

Our next trial isn’t until November 11/12 (SnoKing, at Argus Ranch). I just scratched Dancer out of Standard, but I’ll keep JWW and FAST (and hope the teeter isn’t part of the FAST send).