Changing the Approach

I have been struggling on and off for a few months in my attempts to teach Cadence a formal retrieve – the type where he waits to retrieve the object, then brings it back and sits in front position holding the object until I ask him to release to my hand.  He does play fetch with enthusiasm, and happily brings his frisbee right to my hand so we can tug a bit before I ask him to drop it, but it lacks finesse and is anything but “formal.” I taught Django a formal retrieve years ago when I had a broken arm and could do little else with the dogs.  Though I haven’t done obedience, it is one of the coolest things he knows, and lends itself very well to a lot of useful behaviors and fun tricks, so I think it is a great skill for them to have.

Cadence and I have been working with a dumbbell, which he will bring back to me, but then chucks it at me as he approaches.  I have been attempting to fix this by back-chaining the behavior, so I am first trying to teach him to hold the dumbbell for a second and release it on cue.  He quickly will grab hold of the dumbbell if presented to him, but spits it back at me immediately.  I have been unable to raise my criteria to much more than a nanosecond of tooth gripping.

When I start shaping behaviors, I often am sitting on the living room floor with Cadence as we work.  This was the case again the other night as we struggled with another session of “Please just hold this for half a second before chucking it at my lap.”  After a couple minutes, I stood up for some reason, maybe just to stretch, and presented the dumbbell from a standing position.  Now, seated to look up at me and with his head tilted upwards, Cadence gripped the dumbbell in the back of his mouth, and legitimately held it for a second before I gave him the release cue and took it.  All he needed to help him out was a little change of position that made the desired behavior feel either more natural or more comfortable, or just more obvious.  In a few more repetitions, I was able to have him get a good hold on it, still only for a second or two, but we now have a behavior to build on.

It reminded me that in training when we are hitting our heads against a wall, we need sometimes change our context a bit and start again from a new perspective or a new approach.  If something isn’t working, even if it is the “right” way to do something, we need to be willing to be creative and figure out what the dog needs from us to understand.

The next night, I experienced this myself.  I have been taking swim classes and lessons for the last year trying to fine tune my freestyle technique, and improve my form in the other strokes as well.  This week, we worked on breaststroke.  I have been told that the front half of my breaststroke is actually pretty good, but my kick is . . . well, it wouldn’t be considered legal in competition.  It resembles something more like an inverted scissor kick.  And unfortunately, breaststroke is mostly about the kick.  My former instructor even got in the water one day and tried to guide my legs through the correct motions, but it was as if I had some neurologic deficit that I simply could not reproduce the correct motion on my own.  I started to kind of hate breaststroke. 

Last night, a different instructor gave a new tip - “Start by focusing on bending your knees together straight toward the bottom of the pool.”  That mental image helped me suddenly start to put together something more closely resembling an actual breaststroke kick.  I mean, swimming being what it is, I still need to do it about 8,000 more times before it is going to look at all respectable, but I stopped feeling like I had no connection to what my knees, ankles and feet were doing.  I also finally had a behavior that I can build on.

All of my instructors are good, and all have helped me tremendously.  I don’t think that the new instructor was necessarily better than the previous one, but she happened to have the lesson for that particular skill that helped me have an “aha!'” moment in the pool.

So, this week, as I start to make a very small step towards progress in these two previous sources of frustration, I am reminded of the importance of creativity, and the need to respect the individual learner and figure out what is going to work best for them.  It is easy in both swimming and dog training to get so concerned with the ideal method for learning a flip turn, or learning weave poles, that we can become unwilling to step back if that isn’t working, and try a new approach.  But sometimes that slight flexibility is all that is needed to make something fall into place.

Who’s Shaping Who?

When he was just a young Noodle, Cadence, like all puppies, could get a little “busy” and needed close supervision to keep him from finding his own entertainment around the house.  Often, if we were unable to watch him closely, or if we just needed a few quiet moments to read, we would crate him in our extra crate in the living room with a chew treat to keep him happy.  We keep a constant supply of frozen stuffed Kong toys in the freezer for just these occasions.

Now that Cadence is two and much more reliable around the house, he doesn’t require as constant supervision and is allowed a lot more freedom.   Lately, however, we have noticed an interesting chain of behavior.  Frequently when Lowell is working from home, or at the end of an evening when we sit down to read for a little while before bed, Cadence will start with a series of activities. 

First, he will start “poking” the other dogs and the cats, trying to get some attention.  We call it poking – he basically makes the rounds barking at everyone a couple times as they lie there annoyed, trying to ignore his pleas for attention.  He will then run to the crate, and stand there looking expectantly at us.

If this doesn’t elicit a response, he will then go to the mat by the front door, grab it, shake it a few times, then run to the crate again and wait. 

As we are just hoping for a few minutes of rest, after a few rounds, this is the typical result:

Hmm, what have we been reinforcing all this time?

Always humbling when the ones at the other end of the leash demonstrate how much more skilled they are at the art of shaping behavior than we are.  He has not yet reached the skill level of my first cat though, who had Lowell and I both trained to give him his water in one specific coffee mug, which needed to be dumped and refreshed with clean water every couple hours, under his close supervision.  If he didn’t come with you to the sink and watch it happen, it didn’t count.

I notice two things about Cadence’s behavior chain that interest me though.  One, we clearly were not just rewarding resting quietly in his crate, but actually reinforcing the “naughty” behavior that would precede being given some quiet crate time.  Also, it is interesting what the greater reinforcer is here.  I had assumed that the value would lie in being allowed to hang out with the whole family, but clearly if we are going to all sit around and be boring, then sometimes a crate+Kong is preferable to our company.  Of course, Border Collies like their structure – all of ours do welcome crate time as an opportunity to slow down their too-active brains.

At least they are content with payment of Kongs and fresh water.  Here’s hoping they don’t start wanting the keys to our cars, or a beach house in Maui.  We’d be doomed.

Cues

Over the past year or so, I have clicker trained Cadence to do a few cute tricks, just for fun and for us both to get better at shaping behaviors.  Unfortunately, one of the things I am worst at as a trainer is getting behaviors on verbal cue.  In fact, all of my dogs seem to learn and perform best when I just shut up.  Trying to turn over a new leaf though, I made a list of the behaviors I have trained and what the intended verbal cue is for all of them, and have been working at testing his understanding of these verbals.

Ugh.  I discovered quickly that the verbal for one of his first tricks, walking backwards, (“back”) was not understood at all.  I was stumped about why this was, when we have repeated it so many times.  It finally occurred to me that every time I worked on “back,” I knelt down on the ground so that I could easily deliver the reinforcement in position by tossing it between his paws after he backed up.  I was basically “blocking” the new, verbal cue – my kneeling down was his signal to back up, therefore any new cue I gave him (giving a verbal command) was meaningless as it didn’t give him any new information.  Ah, finally some of the learning from my many books, seminars, and classes was starting to sink in!

So I started carefully separating the two cues – I would give the verbal first, then kneel down.  After a few reps and a couple more practice sessions, I think he was picking it up. 

Today, I decided to give his whole repertoire of tricks a little workout.  We started with “back” and he was trotting backwards nicely.  So far so good, until I tried to switch to other commands.  But once we’re in reverse mode, “Sit” apparently means “sit for a half second, then back up” and “Down” means “lie down for a second, then back up.”  Fun.  He was wearing a path in the living room floor going forward, backing up, repeating.  It was cute though.

Finally stopped that behavior, and discovered that his new, cute paw wave has suddenly become the default whenever he is asked to sit.  Sit and wave.  Sit and wave.  Butt hits the ground and the right paw goes straight up, never mind if I asked for it or not.

At least his newest two tricks seem to be going well, but they both have very obvious physical cues – weaving between my legs and putting his paws up on my outstretched arm to stretch. 

Sigh.  Got to keep working on this.  Poor Noodle.  It is a wonder dogs ever figure out what on earth we want with all our yammering.

Camp Part 2

Following up on my first post about DSA Camp a couple weeks ago . . .

As I mentioned, one of the special features of camp is the opportunity to train the dogs to do new things, and to earn cute little merit badges in the process.  As this was Cadence’s first year, he first had to pass the Scout test.  He waited until about the last possible minute to decide to demonstrate his knowledge of “heel”, so he was making me really sweat it out all week, but ultimately the hamster stayed on the wheel long enough for him to walk a simple heeling sequence in front of an evaluator.  Clearly he needs work on this though.  At least he is pretty decent at loose-leash walking.

He also earned the first agility badge, the backpacking badge, and the “Art of Shaping” badge.  For the shaping badge, we shape the dogs to wear a painting “mitt” on their paw and to “paint” by making repeated paw swipes on a canvas.  I love operant conditioning, so this badge is always fun right up until the time that you get the actual paint out.  After that, everything inevitably goes to hell and you end up with a dog that wants to eat the paint, watch everyone else, and swipe at everything BUT the canvas with their paint-soaked paw.  I  made it out without too many colors on my clothes this year at least.

 

Having a first-year dog at camp is quite time consuming, so we were proud that we were still able to earn badges with all four of the other dogs.  Maebe got her Agility II badge, and smoked the tunnelers fun course with a winning time of 13 seconds.  (Jade was in second place behind her with a time of 20 seconds – not bad for an almost 11-year old!)  Lowell and Jade earned the Rally Obedience badge together, which was very cool.  Jade is pure prey drive, and he usually excels at badges involving water (dock diving, water racing, etc.) or some variation on chasing a bag on a string (lure coursing, steeplechase).  But he is a good heeler, and I was pleased that he learned some new things this year.

Tristan and Django earned their IMPROV Obedience badges.  IMPROV is a new variation on obedience (DSA will soon be holding sanctioned events – stay tuned), that involves creativity, distance work, and lateral thinking.  You need to perform a series of exercises that, while they follow some general formats (fetching odd objects, working away from the handler, coming into contact with new things, etc.), are always different depending on what the judge decides to come up with that day.  Having general obedience skills (and ideally a few tricks) is very helpful, but often you need to think creatively to figure out how to use your dog’s known behaviors to accomplish a task together.

Lowell and Tristan and Django and I had a blast with it.  It really was an exercise where you got to see the dogs think and problem-solve, and you got to see what you can do as a team together.  It was also amusing to watch dog trainers who know better resort to typical verbal primate behavior and, when all else failed, try to explain to the dog in common English what was required of them.  I’m sure none of us have actually trained the cue “Pick up the hairbrush and go set it in that mail box 10 feet away” but it didn’t stop us from trying when nothing else was working. 

Oh, and not only did he earn the badge, but Django won third place in the mini IMPROV match!

At the end of the week, it was fun to reflect on our relationships and journeys with the five dogs.  I enjoyed the opportunity to work so intensely with Cadence for a full week, and he did great.  At the same time, while I love starting out with a new dog and the fun learning process that it is, there is always the challenge of working through adolescent distractibility.  There were times that I felt impatient to get to the place where Noodle didn’t need reminders every ten seconds that, hey, we are doing something TOGETHER here.  What helped me through that though was the time spent with Django, especially at IMPROV.  Django and I have a relationship now where I believe he would try to do anything I ever asked of him.  One night while working IMPROV, we had been going a long time and were about to do the final exercise of the night.  It was the evening of an activity-filled day, and Django had to be roused from a power nap at my feet when it was our turn.  He walked to the start line with me still a bit groggy, and I know he probably would have been happy to head back to the trailer for the night.  But, as soon as I asked him to begin, he went right to work for me, gave it his all, and his tail wagged faster and faster as we completed the exercise.  All he asked in return for giving 100% was a chest scratch.  And that is how he always is.  He is so easy, never causes trouble, and watches me all day just in case I might ask him to do something. 

Django is such a great partner, and I reminded myself over the week that this relationship didn’t happen overnight, but was a process itself.  I see in Cadence the same desire that Django has to be right (even though at times it is really, REALLY hard for a Noodle), and I know how rewarding it will be to do the work with him.  I also don’t expect him to be another Django, and I am appreciating the dog that he is, both in his brilliant moments and his squirrely ones.  For all their challenges, we are enjoying these teenage months.

ClickerExpo: Day 1

Friday morning we got up early so that we had plenty of time to get ready and to take the dogs for some exercise before a long morning for them of sitting through training lectures. Fortunately across the street there was a nice park with a couple miles of walking paths and two huge dog parks.

I am not a fan of dog parks, and generally will not take my dogs into one. I find that too many owners are not responsible, don't have their dogs under control, don't understand canine body language and communication, and I basically think they are often a disaster waiting to happen. Since we were there early though, no one else was around and we were able to let Maebe and Cade run off leash in the dog park area for a while. They had a blast - Maebe found some nasty chewed frisbee, and Cade just herded her and us as we stolled around. They burned off a lot of pent-up energy, which was a big relief to us.

We returned to the hotel and grabbed some seats in the ballroom for the opening presentation by Karen Pryor. We took seats near the back, at the end of an aisle close to a door, so if anyone got too impatient or fussy we could make a discrete exit. Fortunately, all my concerns were unwarranted, as both dogs settled down on their mats and behaved themselves wonderfully. I was so proud of my Noodle. He isn't a reactive dog in the least, but I figured he would just be SO interested in all the other dogs, other people, things going on. I expected he would be fussy, and might get frustrated. Instead, he mostly sat and looked at me, for which he received the occasional bit of kibble. He would watch passing dogs with moderate interest, but always kept his compusure.

The opening comments by Aaron Clayton and Karen Pryor got us excited for the great seminars to come, and it was a thrill seeing Karen Pryor talk after being such a fan of her work. I spotted other training gurus and authors in the audience as well, and felt kind of like a teenage fan-girl at a boy band concert. :-)

From there, we went to a seminar on agility foundation training, which was wonderful. I was pleased that the presenters also follow the handling systems, jump training methods, and agility practices that I am using with Cadence, and their presentation gave me lots of great ideas of more ways to build foundation skills with him. An intriguing concept they mentioned was using "tranports" in between exercises, and always paying attention to how your training interacts with your handling system. Rather than letting your dog bounce around you, spin circles, zoom around, etc. in between exercises, they suggested using "tranports" such as tugging, carrying, holidng the collar, etc. until you are ready to start working. These are all trained as specific behaviors, and don't allow the dog to develop sloppy habits that will interfere with the handling system. Lowell and I immediately recognized how Maebe will walk backwards in front of him and bark as he walks to a start line, and how then if she gets frustrated on course, she also resorts to that default behavior. It made perfect sense to not let these default behaviors get muddied up in the handling system.

We let the dogs take a break in their crates in the hotel room (still being good dogs, they remained quiet), while we ate lunch then attended a Shaping seminar by Joan Orr and Helix Fairweather. The content was very much Shaping 101, so a bit basic for us, but it is always good to review. Plus, both presenters gave shaping demos with audience dogs, and it is always impressive and informative to watch an expert at work. I find I can learn a lot about timing and breaking behaviors down into their core parts by watching someone who is very skilled at this.

Afterwards, we got the dogs again and went to the learning lab, where we got to practice some of these shaping exercises with Joan, Helix, and other Academy grads assisting. Most of the exercises were things I had already started to shape with Cade: eye contact, targeting, going to a mat, etc. But, this was a highly distracting environment, and I was pleased by his ability to focus and work for me even with all the commotion.

Our first day over, we went back to the park and took a lovely walk for about an hour. It was a gorgeous day, we were full of excitement about all we were learning and practicing, and delighted that the dogs were doing so well and having so much fun. When we returned to the hotel, we met up with some other dog trainer friends who were at the Expo and went out to a fun dinner together. We returned exhausted and excited for another day of learning on Saturday!