This weekend was another great seminar. Shade Whitesel from WA. She successfully does Schutzhund and very much likes well done obedience. I appreciate that! She was exceptional with the very different types of people and dogs and while not all teams could work on precise what they wanted to do, they all worked on the foundation needed to be working towards that goal behavior. The style of training fit in very well with what I’ve done with Griffin and I felt comfortable working him on one of the days.
A very condensed version of my notes:
Have a lot of cues: Make things as easy as possible for your dog. If you have different behaviors… use different cues. Have cues to let your dog know what is coming next so he is as prepared as possible to act on your cues. For Griffin, this means we’ll be adding a new type of stay. We have a settle-informal-stay, a long duration stay (“I’ll come back to you eventually”), and a stay-but-be-ready-to-act. That last one is getting scrapped and replaced with a be-ready-to-act-with-me and a watch-for-what’s-next (retrieves, agility start line, go out). There was a really great discussion of when/why/how to use cues to let the dog know when the game/training will be ending so that you can minimize the poor associations with that last repetition/behavior, I’ll have to think more on that and share more in the future.
Be precise: I was talking to Shade at a seminar we were at last year and this point really stood out to me then. You don’t have to accept poor performances and it’s not bad to be picky about your behaviors. Your concern over details will help the behavior and help your dog know what to expect with one thing being correct rather than the many potential variations. Poor foundation and sloppy behaviors will only haunt you forever, so take the time to train it correctly from the beginning and you won’t have to be fixing it forever.
Train your play: And this is where I’ve been stuck with Griffin! You have to have good play before you can use it to reinforce behavior. This doesn’t just mean your dog has to like play. Your dog needs to like playing with you. Your dog has to be able to get the toy and let go efficiently. Your dog should bring back thrown toys before you can use that as a reinforcer. The dog shouldn’t be engaging in play by himself or dissecting the toys on his own. We did a lot of this in the Fanny Gott online class (Lesson 1 there!) and it was the hardest part of class and is still the weakest area for Griffin and I.
Use play! Anticipation for play is different than anticipation for food. It can be easier to get duration using play than with food. For dogs that like play, play should be utilized as a reinforcer, not just as an activity to do with your dog.
Don’t be afraid of your highest value reinforcers: Sometimes it can be scary to use those things because the dogs are so wild. But dogs like that specifically do need to learn to control themselves around those items and you can end up with stronger behaviors as a result. I wish Griffin had more of these things!
Get help: Poor play skills on the part of the handler may decrease a dog’s interest in play or create bad habits. Imitating what you see other people do is very different from knowing what they’re doing, why they make the choices they do, and getting instruction on exactly what to be doing.
1 Comment
hundeschulen · August 10, 2012 at 12:25 pm
Hey there! I know this is kinda off topic however I’d figured I’d ask. Would you be interested in trading links or maybe guest writing a blog post or vice-versa? My blog discusses a lot of the same topics as yours and I think we could greatly benefit from each other. If you are interested feel free to shoot me an email. I look forward to hearing from you! Terrific blog by the way!
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