quality not quantity

I’ve kept my twenty ten resolution to train Scoop daily on 2o2o & nose targeting. Just when I thought we were really making progress, Scoop has decided he wants to be an anorexic. Hormones up=appetite down. I assumed this is the case with my 11 month old boy, but to be safe his vet give him a thorough exam which he passed. I was hoping for some small little disease that a round of antibiotics would cure. I do know the cure for hormones, but it requires a sharp surgical knife!

A week ago Scoop started eating his meals slowly but still trained with great enthusiasm for food. Over the week’s time he decided that he could easily skip a meal or two. His weight was perfect and I don’t want him to lose even a pound. The dilemma is not just getting him to eat enough to stay strong and not lose weight, but to be able to use food for training.

Over the last two days he is just as likely now to eat his treats slowly as well as his meals, and  at times even spitting them back out after he accepts the goodie. He is most likely to swallow a treat after he gets a click. He is programmed to do so after so many thousands of c/t’s in his life.

My normal training procedure is to use high quality meat or dog food as a reinforcement for nose touches. We do touches and clicks and vary the number of nose touches, and while we play a lot, I really depend on being able to do many touches for a food reward. It is quick. Nose touch/click/treat and repeat. After a few we break for play, or intersperse a tug game instead of/or directly following, a treat for the touch.

He is also more likely to take the treat if it is thrown to him. But if the food doesn’t have “click value“, or is moving like a toy, he just might not bother to eat it. So, the training process is changing. I need more behavior for less food reward, and I need higher quality responses for one great game of tug or a retrieve. That means I really need to be careful that I get a great touch before the release and instead of doing 100 nose touches, I might do 10. After a great strong touch, I say break-get-it, and I toy toss or tug with him.  Sometimes I ask for multiple nose touches, and then use the toy. This takes a lot longer than just handing a tidbit, and he is getting more rewards off of the target than on it.  If I throw the toy, he needs to return to me and either tug or go out for another retrieve reward. If we tug, even a very short session is at least 5 seconds long before I feel that it is fair to ask him to release the toy and do another behavior.

The moral is that I am being VERY careful to mark only the hardest nose touches, as the cost of the behavior for me is time and both Scoop’s and my energy.  Whether we are training nose touches or tricks, the reinforcement procedure is similar. He is having lots of fun though at my expense, and maybe the results of more toy training will be stronger and better behavior.

If so, then why not do more of this training whether he is eating voraciously or not.  He is training excitedly as the percentage of play greatly exceeds the length of time doing actual behaviors. I am also going to experiment with different foods, and larger quantities of food for each click. I am pretty sure Scoop is in hormone city right now, and I sure hope he get’s out of there soon. I’m an inpatient sort of person, the testicles will be gone soon if I decide the source of the anorexia is indeed from between his legs:)

I hope your puppy is still happily training for treats, and I hope mine is back on the chow wagon soon.

NJG

groundWORK

Why is it that training with tables and crates are  games and running with my dog on the flat without obstacles  is called ground WORK? Why is all the fun stuff called tricks, and the running training called work? Why do I postpone  putting on my running shoes and getting out there doing groundWORK  when I could play more games and tricks. It’s cuz it makes me sweat and run harder and faster than I want to. And not nearly as fun and easy as standing around shaping stuff.  Maybe I am feeling my age and level of current fitness, ahem. The catch 22 of course is if I keep doing it I will be in shape and then it won’t BE work, it will just be called that.

Don’t get me totally wrong, we do have fun running lines and circles once we get out and do it. Possibly Scoop is having more fun than his handler though.  The sun is still shining, guess I have time for more WORK today. I know the value of this training, without it Scoop and I won’t be as good a team as we could be. That threat along with the knowledge that I won’t let myself do lots of really fun jump training before it is perfected, keeps me on track.

So, after our groundWORK session today Scoop and I were rewarded with getting to do some tunnel and table games. I decided to teach Scoop a tunnel this week. Some years ago I decided that I would delay teaching that obstacle until my dogs were older so I didn’t create a tunnel maniac. But it hasn’t exactly worked out the way I planned. 

14 year old Riot learned tunnels at 8 weeks, and I let her do lots and lots of them before she was a year old. She liked them just fine but her favorite off course draw was the weaves. Panic was taught at maybe a year old, didn’t do them to abandon, but is a non-recovering tunnel addict. Ace learned at Scoop’s current age, and I had to work really hard to get him to drive with speed to and from the tunnels.  I now think it is more about the dog’s mentality and what he finds fun, as well as making sure that I train the tunnel properly once I start.

I started by holding Scoop by the collar and throwing a toy through the open barrel of a chute without the fabric. Then I just stood around by the barrel saying yes when he entered and then toy tossing.  (tunnel GAMES) I named it tunnel and went to the next step. Sometimes I held his collar and then released him with tunnel. We also trained sit stays right at the entrance and I released him from the stay and then gave the tunnel cue.   

From there we went to a slightly longer straight tunnel, then one with a curve, and then the dreaded rear cross behind him going into the tunnel. For the rear cross I went back to the open barrel. There are two parts of the rear cross I was training.

1. I want him to go forward to the tunnel even though he saw me cross behind

2. I want him to turn the correct direction out of the tunnel.

I sent him into the barrel, then quickly stepped behind him, and tossed the toy to him if he picked up the side change cue. I had to be quick, and he needed to see my rear cross if he was to turn the correct direction.  I did just as many tunnels with a reward for him coming out and looking for me on the same side as I did rear crosses. I don’t want him to ask questions about his direction every time he goes into a tunnel.

If he sees me on his left side going in, he should expect to still be on my left side as he exits. He should not turn the new direction unless he sees me cross behind him.

Right now Scoop is reinforced at the end of every tunnel with a toy toss close to the end of the tunnel, or for returning to me. I won’t add any obstacles or forward momentum out of the tunnel for a while. That’s my new rule. I am hoping he will learn to find me and turn my direction fast and tight out of the tunnel with this kind of training. Sounds real good on paper. We will see if it works.

Scoop is almost 11 months old and real agility is just around the corner!  I hope you are having as much fun training the work as well as the games with your puppy as I am with mine.

NJG

one thing leads to another

It started with 5 border collies and a potential short walk round the field. How it ended was not how it was planned. It took lots longer than planned to get to the field because everyone has to wait for a release through all the gates, and we had a couple anxious dogs who did not want to wait for releases, so we trained gate behavior for a while. Finally into the field, and as long as we were there anyway, why not  head down to the pond.

An hour later, 5 tired wet and muddy dogs needed to get dried off. Why not put them in the dog tub first, and get the mud off their legs, and as long as they were there, might as well, give em a full bath, and while they were getting dried on the grooming table why not do their nails. It is now time to feed dinner, so we might as well stay in the dog room and feed, then clean all the bowls, and fill up the weeks’ pill container for Panic and Riot’s pills and of course noticing we were low on a prescription it was into the office and call for a script refill.

This mornings training with Scoop felt the same way. How about a few minutes of target training in 2o2o on the little contact training box thingy in the living room. We started with nose touches to a target while he was in 2o2o on the box. Lots of cookie rewards and then a game of tug in between nose touches. Then on to nose touches with a release and toy throw, then a little bit of sloppiness on the target before  the release to the toy and we are back to multiple nose touching for cookies in place on the box. I tried some tugging in 2o2o position as a reward for the touch and his back feet came off the box. A short session of reinforcing keep your back feet on the board while we tug, and then we went back to try to put it together.

All systems go til Scoop wouldn’t drop the tug  toy on cue when I asked, so we had a session of tug/leave/click/treat/tug/leave/click/tug etc. If Scoop doesn’t relinquish the toy happily and quickly, using it as a reinforcer for the targeting isn’t going to be fun for either of us. Invariably training sessions go where they need to go. I have a starting plan, know what I am going to reinforce and how, but where the training leads me at times is not necessarily where I saw it going when we started. That’s ok. I don’t mind filling in the blanks, and taking a detour when something needs to be reinforced. At the end of  training this morning my disc targeting behaviors were improved. So was Scoop’s understanding that he can keep his back feet on the board and still be able to tug, and the toy release got some needed reinforcement. I usually do that a few times a week anyway, I just didn’t plan on doing it this morning.

Now we had a fun training session that ended with Scoop asking for more and we can head to the field for a walk, and some gate training, or maybe to the swimming pool and maybe a quick brushing….

Thinking of swimming…. 55 degree water???

just a quick dip……

NJG  

poisoned cues

It’s been raining for the past 6 days  and I am tired of training in the house and sitting at my desk. Thank goodness we have a rain break today and we can get outside.  I couldn’t think of any excuses for not getting all my office work done that I have been putting off, so that is what I have been doing all week. Scoop has had to make do with one wet walk in the rain each day, and playing at games here in the house. Jim and I have also watched a few movies; District 9 (interesting) and something else that must not have been too relevant as I can’t for the life of me remember what it was.

I also re-read Steven Pressman’s The War of Art, and I watched Dr. Jose Rosales-Ruiz’s dvd The Poisoned Cue.  As yet the after effects from “war..” haven’t much been felt, since I still have unfinished writing projects this week, but I have a start since I am sitting here updating Scooby’s blog. If you have not read The War of Art, you should. My friend Sandy Rogers gave it to me, and I find if I read it once a year (should be two or three times) then my resistance to finishing projects diminishes greatly! It is such an easy read, and a joy to find the inspiration in his pages.  Resistance to writing, or painting or saving the universe is futile for weeks after you finish this easy read.  

Another inspiration this week was in watching Dr. Jesus Rosales-Ruiz Poisoned Cue video. Apparently Karen Pryor first coined the term, and I located her technical description of the poisoned cue on her website, but Jesus’s video was a lot more explanatory. Of course it is 2 hours and 44 minutes long, hers is just one page:) The poisoned cue is pretty much a description of what the term means. You take a perfectly well trained cue, and poison it using not very nice training methods like coercion or intentional or unintentional punishment, instead of positive reinforcement.  You can poison a cue, like your dog’s name, or your recall command using punishment, and voila, your cue creates stress and displacement behaviors  instead of a  joyful responses to your cue. One newish negative buzz word Jesus discusses is command. I think that Karen and henceforth others, are saying that a command now has the connotation of a behavior which was taught not using positive reinforcement. I might argue that I can teach a command using  positive  reinforcement without poisoning the word command but anyway, we all know that cue is the new command, just like brown became the new black in clothing choice a few years ago. Whatever the terminology, mixing up the use of positive  reinforcement  with corrections in training can get you into big trouble.  

It is possible to poison your cue, poison your training aids like leashes, or poison an environment. In our sport it is probably possibly to poison the entire competition agility ring. I know I have seen the start line, the bottom of the contact obstacles or weave poles poisoned many times. All you have to do is punish the dog for not staying in a 2o2o position at the same time you are trying to clicker train him to nose touch in the same spot, and voila! you can unknowingly poison the cue touch. Just saying the word touch could make  your dog slow down, leap off the end, lick his lips, or head out to sniff the nearest bush. Correct your dog for coming out at the 10th pole, and in short order you can have a big weave problem getting your dog to go beyond pole 10. Punish the entry and your dog will stay as far away from weave entries as he possibly can. You have all seen the ‘exhaust circle” that some dogs do to avoid making an entry error. Poisoning can happen after just one correction, and poisoning can happen by accident. The dog who injures himself or gets frightened on a piece of equipement, can effectively poison the obstacle, and subsequently the training or show environment. You don’t need to beat your dog while training to get stuck in a poisoned quagmire, but the effects are the same.  

Jesus’ video had some great demonstration of how cues are poisoned, and good ideas for getting out of some of the situations, like reshaping the behavior and totally changing your cue . What I really liked in the video is the method they used to train some simple behaviors using cues which were taught using positive reinforcement, to reinforce and teach other behaviors. The example was done to show the difference between a positively reinforced and a poisoned cue. One of his students demonstrated using a recall command cue to teach a new behavior. The principle being that any cue you have taught using r+ you could use entirely to teach another behavior.   So I did my own little experiment with Scoop.

I decided to use his “break” (release from position) behavior to teach him to walk over to a chair and lie his head on the chair.  The behavior  and cue of Break would be used instead of a click.  Scoop is normally rewarded for almost every  response to break, so that fits the criteria that you can use a positively trained behavior, and henceforth the cue for that behavior, to reinforce another behavior. Scoop’s criteria for break is that when he hears the word he stops any behavior he is doing (like sitting) and comes to me and is rewarded with a game of tug or a treat. 

This is how my Scoop experiment went.  I have cookies and a clicker in my hand and am standing a few feet from a chair. Cookies and clicker  in hand and me standing still are Scoop’s prompt for “game on let’s shape something”. He immediately offered to step towards the chair, I said break and when he turned to me I clicked and he got his cookie when he got to me. I was able to shape him going all the way to the chair one step at a time, and lying his head on the seat, in one short session. The skill of going to the chair was not difficult, but I really was surprised that rewarding him for break given at the same time that I would have clicked while shaping the behavior, would work that easy. Yeah, I saw it on the video, but till you do it yourself, it does not count:) The next day I tried using his name, another behavior which was taught with reward in a positive fashion, and I was able to quickly shape him to go to a wooden tub and put his head inside it. Again, it took just one session of a few minutes. I used his name at the same point that I would have clicked and it worked the same way. After I said his name as the replacement click, he came to me and I said yes and gave him a treat.  

In the video they show a dog’s reponse to shaping behaviors using approximately the same methods as I described in my extremely shortened version, but at the same time they also showed how the dog  responded to shaping behaviors with a recall cue which was taught with some coercion.  The dog  was recalled to the handler and if the response was not perfect, it was gently forced to come to the handler by pulling on it’s harness until the dog reached the handlers front, then the dog still received a click and treat after the punishment. This essentially “poisoned” that recall cue (turning it into a command). A totally different word was used for the cue for this forced recall to make it different from the positively trained recall cue, and make it obvious during the test when the command was used for shaping as opposed to the positively trained recall.  Using the same methods described above using the cue to reinforce another behavior, they tried the same shaping experiment using the “poisoned cue behavior”. (no coercion was used while they shaped the new behavior) The results were obvious. Stress, some displacement behaviors while working, slow performance and an unhappy attitude were all easy to see in the dogs performance in the video.   The dog did learn the skill through shaping using the negatively reinforced cue, but the difference in the performance of the  behaviors was very evident.

I will definitely watch this video again, and I suspect I have not condensed and described it well enough to have you think you now know all there is to know about poisoned cues.  The hostess on the video is Alexandra Kurland, and her commentary about horses while unnecessary for us dog trainers, does not interfere in any way with the interesting lecture and information that Dr. Rosales-Ruiz is sharing.  You can find the video for sale on Kurland’s website, theclickercenter.com.

So you know this is not all I thought about or did today, here are some of the photos from our adventures on the ranch today. Every winter if we get enough rain (we did!) we get a big pond at the bottom of our property. The dogs love to play in the water. It is great exercise when they run through the 18 inch deep pond, I wish it would stay all year long.  My photos aren’t as great at Marcy Mantell’s that I usually share with you, but they are the best I could do.

I hope it isn’t raining or snowing  where you live but if it is, do some reading or watch the great Ruiz dvd to learn more about  animal training. 

Nancy

 let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!

 the pond

cute Scoop!

Panic in the front, then Ace and Scoop all stacked up

Having a run

  

  

Jim pruning

Rammy and the ewes watching it all

cuttin’ bait

After I wrote the title to this post I thought the word cuttin’ looked a bit funny, so I did what I do so many times a day when I am at my computer, I googled cuttin bait, not cutting bait. I got to read about a cool guy named Rodney who was a fisherman that died, and for some reason google led me to him. I may donate to his charity even though I haven’t a clue who he is.  He seemed like a really great guy, and he fished and lots of people loved him. The charity is Take A Kid Fishing Foundation and since I have so many great memories of fishing with my Dad, maybe that is what I am supposed to do today. Sometimes I hate the internet, today I like it, and I always love google.

I really just wanted to write about the time it takes to cut up training cookies for Scoop. I never cut up more than I need for a short session. I like to cut some treats from leftover meat, or  some chicken I cooked just for him , or I chop my little meatball bites in thirds. I use Deli Fresh Pet bites really often when I train. They are a healthy alternative to doggie junk food and if I don’t feed anything other than training treats all day, I know that my dog is getting a very healthy diet. http://www.delifreshpet.com/products/bites.htm

I like to train for a few minutes, maybe longer, then take a break, think about what we did, ask myself Bob Bailey’s famous post training question, Am I better off now than when I started? while I am cuttin’ bait. Then I go back to train again and hopefully the thought process was as productive as the treat cutting. Today I thought the answer was yes, so I proceeded to train some more. Somtimes I don’t feel like cuttin bait at all, and we just train with toys. After the treat session I played with Scoop till my back hurt tugging with him. Three steps heelwork, release to tug, 10 steps then tug, then down the hallway, with a left about turn at each doorway, and more tugging after we made it through to the living room in perfect heel position with eyes on me. Whew!

Long live resolutions! I did eveything today that I wanted to with Scoop during training. We had a really nice groundwork session running circles and straight lines and he was right there with me till he wasn’t:) He went a bit wide on the right side, (I am a left side obedience girl and I know I favor the left) so I did little side passes that I learned when I used to ride dressage with my horses. He tightened right up when I reminded him where he was supposd to be by marking him almost crashing into my right leg with his enthusiasm.

Over the top

Scoop got a bit o.t.t. when we were doing groundwork today. The mouth was open,  (his not mine) and I know if I hadn’t shoved something in it (toy) when he was screaming  that the moment would have deteriorated as I cried uncle don’t you dare bite me in your enthusiasm to do this heelwork I am the boss of you mister came out of my mouth, then the brain (mine not his) took over and I switched to treats and calmed down myself a bit while playing and as  the play level dropped down a notch we were back on track to having fun but not so much fun that Scoop ate my leg.

This is the last day of my Christmas holiday, then it is back to work and travel. I don’t want to leave my dogs but someone has to pay for that expensive bait, and the internet connection, and the donation to the fishing kids organization.

Hope you had a great holiday and lots of fun training sessions with your pup, I know I did with mine!

NJG

training resolutions

It’s the second day of the new year and the new decade. I like the sound of twenty ten. Other than some global worries in 2009 along with the rest of the human population on earth, it was a good year. Scoop is almost 10 months old, and I am starting to get itchy to train real agility with him. I am only a couple months away from starting to teach weaves and contacts and I can’t wait to see what he looks like jumping big jumps.  I think I have heard that it is out of fashion to make new years resolutions, but IF I was going to, I would resolve the following:

• Decide how I am going to teach Scoop’s aframe and then get busy finishing up the training of any aids I need so that in a couple months I can get down to really putting it all together.
• Proof my handling and motion drills on the flat so I am ready to apply the skills to real jumps. Do my motion drills every day that I am home, and put all my energy into them.
• Teach a nose touch in 2020 position. Scoop already has a 2o2o behavior and I taught him to nose touch a plexiglass target. Now I am ready to teach him to nose touch the target while he is on a short board. I am going to work on this skill every day I am home, so that by the time he is a year old I will be ready to backchain it at the bottom of the dogwalk and teeter.
• Work Scoop on stays and positions and playing around dogs and handlers when classes are going on here at power paws every day that we have clients here on the property. He still really wants to visit with everyone, and I am happy he is friendly and outgoing, but when he is at the end of the leash working with me, I would like his undivided attention.

This is what Scoop and I worked on today…. prior to the non-new years resolutions:)

Distance stands and sits.

I placed Scoop in a stand, moved away from him a variety of distances in the living room, then asked him to sit. I want him to sit (or down or stand) wherever he hears the command, and not move forward out of the position he is in. I got some really good fast sits and he did not step forward. I tossed the treat or toy to him as soon as he sat and said break at the same time so that he could jump out of position to get the reward. I also worked down to sit from a distance which I find much harder. I placed Scoop in a down, moved  3 to 10 feet away, a different distance each attempt, and then gave Scoop the cue to sit from the down position. It all worked well until I had a bit too much distance from him, then Scoop wanted to move towards me before he sat, and in a couple instances he did not take the sit cue at all. I will work on both of those this week with lots of reward. I think the ability to change positions, or take cues in place at a distance from me is important. It is the beginning of distance work, albeit stationary.

We did a refresher course this morning on sit, down, left,right, stand, close and side. All cues that  are verbal only, no body language information. I cue a position, then reward, then cue another randomly, and then move on. It might go like this sit-c/t, down-c/t, stand-no c/t, close-c/t, down-c/t, left-no c/t, right-c/t, down- no c/t, sit, c/t etc, etc. Sometimes I reward each position, sometimes I skip a reinforcement or skip a few reinforcements. I do a session maybe a minute long, then play and start over or pick a position to add duration (sit, down or stand stay) or go into a heelwork routine up and down the hallway and around the living room.

Scoop occasionally has a glitch in remembering his left command and will offera totally different behavior or he slightly turns his head but does not move. I know I have pretty much ingnored the left and right cues the last couple months, use it or lose it is one answer for the issue. With a young dog that is learing lots of new skills, this is pretty normal, just a reminder to me to not forget to use all our skills at least once in a while.

My family

My dog and human family is mostly pretty healthy and I am happy that I have been home the last couple weeks of this holiday season to spend time with my husband and all our dogs. I thought I would share some updates and a photo of each of them at the begining of this new year.

Jim and I take a Christmas photo each year with our dogs. This year I decided that only our oldest dogs got to be in the photo. Riot and Swift, littermates, turned 14 in August and here we are with them in a photo taken in December 2009.

Marcy took this picture of Riot holding her namesake toy a couple years ago. It is my mostest favorite. My friend Nancy Louise Jones printed it for me in a 3 foot square image and it hangs centermost in my living room where I can stare at it daily. I had to have a small one too for my office so I can see her pretty much every minute I am in my house:) Riot is in her second year now of living with renal failure.  She is on a special home cooked diet and gets sub-Q fluids, and has no visible effects of the disease. She still hikes the fields with me daily and while seeming to be mostly deaf as a doorknob, every once in a while she surprises me and turns around and comes to her sign song nickname of riribabydog. I decided there is one good reason to teach your dog that your smiling face and clapping hands means you are very happy with something your dog did for you. You can use it when they are old and must rely on your body language, hand signals, and reading your lips for cues to what you are feeling. Ever tried seeing if your dog reads lip? Mine do. I can mouth their commands without any vocalization and if I have direct eye contact they usually take the cue.

My second oldest border collie Wicked, will be 13 in February. She is a bit gimpy now and then but still playful and active and would knock you over if she thought she could get to the gate first to get to the field for her hike. She and Riot retired just a couple years ago after they received the Platinum USDAA award for 500 lifetime legs. That is Wicky catching air over the A frame. 

Panic, my oldest boy dog, was 9 in November. He is sadly retired from agility because he started having epileptic seizures a few years ago. He has only had 8 seizures in his life because he is on some pretty potent medicine; but since he had 5 of those seizures while doing agility, I decided I could not risk his life and my sanity with the possibility of it ever happening again. He does a few tunnels here and there (his favorite obstacle) and demos a few low obstacles for a student once in a while, and he leads the pack on our walks.  I cry sometimes thinking of the fun we had over the years competing together, and really really miss that aspect of our life together. It is all about the memories now and he and I enjoying his health and freedom from seizures; he has not had one for over a year.

 Ace is 6 now and had a really nice competition year. We finished third at the European Open and third in  the usdaa steeplechase finals and 4th in the Grand Prix and took home a handful of ribbons trophies and plaques from the event. He is fun to run, easy to train, and my only competition partner at the moment. This is a photo of Ace and I at the EO just after the awards ceremony. The event was great fun and getting to be on the podium was even better. Ace is a great training and traveling partner and I appreciate him more every day!

Happy New Year one and all, I hope you have set some training goals with your puppy and that you are looking forward to starting your competition career with your youngster, as much as I am with mine.

NJG

Rainy weekends

Scoop and I spent much of this past weekend indoors. It was wet and cold, not your average California weather, but pretty typical Northern California winter weather. We don’t get real winters as those who live in the colder climes may claim, but since we don’t have indoor facilities in which to train , I think we have learned to rough it pretty well. Last week during some of our evening classes the thermometer did not reach 35 degrees! Throw in a light breeze and it feels like a real winter to ME!

So Scoop and I worked on  tricks. We trained standing on his hind legs, lying flat on his side, and putting toys into a container.The photos here were taken today, outside of course, by our marvelous photographer Marcy Mantell, it was cold but luckily no rain.

Lie flat on your side

Scoop already knows to drop his head to the ground and hold it there on a drop command, so I decided to take the skill and turn it into having him lie flat on his side, legs straight out, with his head on the ground. It went pretty quick. I gave him the cue for drop, then started to reinforce him turning his head  just slightly to the side. He figured out pretty quickly to offer to lie down and drop his head, so I stopped using the drop command to get it started. I don’t want to lose that separate skill.  I went on to shape his head turning to the side while he was lying down, and then waited for his hips to follow while he rolled to his side. The roll of the hips was the turning point in getting the full behavior to happen. I did make a mistake in starting to reward duration too quickly before I got him throwing himself on the ground to lie flat.  I stopped rewarding any duration in position flat on his side, and just clicked and reinforced him for getting into the position fast. As soon as he was fully on his side I used his release word of break, and then started over getting him to move from a standing position all the way into flat on his side. I didn’t want him to lie down…then drop his head…then roll to a side position. I wanted it all in one piece.

I muddied the waters a bit by being slow to click a couple times when he was fully flat, and he turned the behavior into a full roll over, which I haven’t taught yet. But now that I he will lie prone with his head down (drop), lie on his side  (flat), I can easily move to a full roll over, or just a half roll over (show me your belly) which is a great skill to have for body exams and grooming.

Put your toys away

In between sessions of flatwork, I trained Scoop to put a toy in a box. I sat on the ground with a box that was about a foot square, but only a few inches high. The box was on the floor, but right in my lap where Scoop would normally bring the retrieve toy. I threw Scoops’ toy a couple feet from me, and when he brought it back I held my hand out over the box and then clicked as he was getting ready to put it in my hand. He dropped the toy to get the cookie and the toy ended up in the box as I did not catch it but let it fall inside the box.

The only thing that slowed the progress of this training was that the little rubber retrieve toy kept getting juice from his treats on it, and Scoop would occasionally mouth the toy rather than picking it up quickly and returning it. As he dropped the toy in the box, I would click and treat, and the juicy treats from both his mouth and my hand got on the toy, and that was interfering with fast retrieves. I switched to hard treats which made his mouth drier, but took a second or two longer for him to swallow. Oh well, it can’t all be perfect.

 I was trying to get lots of short retrieves to the box very fast, basically just placing the toy on the ground within a couple feet of us and having him retrieve from there.  Then I started to move the box away from my lap. I placed myself to the right or left of the box so it was on my side, so Scoop started to understand it is all about putting the toy in the box, not just about bringing it to my front and dropping in a timely fashion. In one of the sessions Scoop really got that it was about placing the toy in a receptacle. He focused on looking for the box, and then looked at the toy after dropping it in. I think he said… wow, that was cool:) I have now traded out the low box for the one in the photo and was able to move to a standing position next to the box. Hopefully in a couple days we will be able to play put away your toys and move on to multiples.

Scoop and I are headed out to train some more before I teach a class. I hope you are having as much fun as I am teaching tricks to your puppy.

NJG

New post notification

Hi everyone,

Since I write so sporadically I added a widget so that you can sign up to get an email notification when I put up a new post and you won’t have to come back time and again to see if I have a new post. It is on the right side of the blog and is called EMAIL subscription.

Hope it helps, let me know if it works.

NJG

The exorcist

This past week I have helped a few students with recall problems with their puppies. The pups ranged in age from 4 to 8 months.  Without naming dogs and handlers I will describe the problems:)

pup 1- Won’t come to the owner when she wants it to come in the house, even if she is entering the house with the dog or she is calling the pup from outside to inside. The pups’ recall HAD been good until bad weather hit the area and she needed to clean the pups’ feet off when it came in the house. The pup quickly learned that any recall headed toward the house was negative. A simple solution was chosen, keep the pup on leash more, do lots of recalls outside so that she didn’t have to recall it in to her, and solve the wet feet issue by blocking off some portion of the area as the dog entered the house, so that she did not have to punish the dog with feet cleaning for a while. Dogs are so smart, a couple of negative consequences after a recall is enough to ruin your recall until you stop what happens after the pup comes to you.

pup 2- Comes slowly and not every time. Handler is using dog’s name and command come and the pup gets a reward given between the handlers’ legs with the handler reaching between her legs from behind. Long drawn out recall cue, no verbal praise after dog responds, paired with rewarding the pups’ slow responses and a reward that is slow to be delivered using a signal of hand between legs. Solution, hundreds of quick recalls on leash, dog’s name only, quick reward for fast responses given right at the handlers knee.

pup 3- Does not really respond to it’s name. Paired with a drawn out come command and then come on ,come on, come on, right over here in a not too exciting way and you have a pup that doesn’t care if you are on the same planet. Solution is getting help from a friend to hold the puppy away from the handler for a moment until the pup looks away, handler calls pups’ name sharply, and reward only the recalls where the pup turns his head so fast back to the handler that it looks like Linda Blair in the exorcist. Exciting praise like the priest has driven away the devil as soon as the pup turns it’s head, YAHOO!!!!, and quick delivery of really high value food at the knee. As soon as the pup is fed, the helper pulls the pup away and as soon as the pup is looking away from the handler, he calls again. If the pup does not respond like the scene from exorcist,  show the puppy the  cookie he missed (don’t give it to him) then have the helper pull the pup away a couple steps and try again. You should be able to get in hundreds of reps this way.

I want to teach my pup to twist his head to me IMMEDIATELY when I say his name. Then I start immediate praise and if the pup wants a treat he races in and is given one or two or three at my knee. I do lots of restrained recalls and try to make the food high value and the play and praise even more so. I use toys as well as food to reward my puppy. Scoop isn’t always perfect. Today he was BAD! He saw a students’ dog racing in the field and totally ignored me a few times when I called. Oh dear. Back on leash quick, lots of toy play, and work our way back to some level of success. Sometimes that means I need to leave the distracting environment with him, sometimes it just takes showing him the cookies he missed.

I hope your puppy’s recalls were good today and they are better tomorrow after you start playing the name game and getting your pup to respond like the devil is in em’

 NJG

That’ll do Scoop

Scoop is eight and a half months old now. I think his legs have finally stopped growing but I am afraid to measure him! Maybe next week:) Scoop and I have been busy with lots of little training things and no one skill in particular. He is just sort of growing up and we are doing lots of playtime and spending short sessions here and there in the training yard. We do a bit of flat board work and he is learning to straighten himself out to approach the board and then just run through on the flat to his toy. I used a hoop for him to run through to begin with, and now have cut off fence posts on either side of the board to help designate the straight board approach. I use a 12 foot board on the ground now, I started with just a 4 foot training plank. I stand still  in the middle, but turn towards the end he should approach and tell him to climb. He runs around the little posts, loads on tidy and fast and then runs straight through for his toy toss.

I am pretty happy with Scoops recalls and stays and tugging. What I think we most need to obsess on now is his circle work. As his enthusiasm has grown, he wants to arc a bit wide around me, and this morning I just about ended up on my head when he cut into me when I ran inside circles with him! It is great exercise for me too. Run a bit with him, then tug, then run a bit more and more play. I am exhausted after a short session of flat work. I will get some photos tomorrow of the work and you can see what we do.

That’ll do Scoop

We have 7 sheep and two llamas here on our property. Until earlier this year we had over 30 sheep, but decided we really did not need that many and we sold 25 of them to a couple local herding instructors. I kept the nicest ewes, and maybe next year we will build our herd back up a bit. I like to play with the sheep and I always get enthused about herding this time of year when the green grass starts to fill our beautiful California hills. I say play because I am not serious, and I don’t train, and I probably don’t really know what I am doing.  It is also not easy to separate the sheep from the llamas that guard them from the local mountain lions and coyotes. I can’t herd when the llamas are in the field, they don’t move like stock, and will chase dogs out of the field.  That is their job. So the effort becomes great, but this week I got the sheep on one side of the hill and the llamas on the other. Scoop met sheep face to face without a fence separating them for the first time.

He was pretty good, and I was happy and now I am excited to keep going with him. He was very interested, and it did not take any encouragement for him to get out around them and do an imitation of a beginning herding dog. I thought of the effort and the reward of herding as I started that day…..chasing sheep at just the right moment when the lllamas were on one side of a gate and the sheep on the other= time consuming and exhausting. Getting to say for the first time, that’ll do Scoop=priceless:)

I was going to write about some of my students dog’s recalls tonight, but hopefully I can do that before I leave town again. I am teaching a seminar at the Clean Run facility this weekend for Leap Agility which should be lots of fun! Maybe if I get my Clean Run magazine homework done before I go I can spend some time here again.

Scoop and I hope you are having as much fun as is possibly with your puppy, and if it’s a herding dog….let it meet some sheep so you can say that’ll do too!

NJG