Cleaning House

Billie is helping me clean...




One of the things I have been working on with both dogs is retrieving - not just chasing a thrown object, but picking up many and varied things. Billie has found the concept of bringing things and placing them in my offered hand somewhat difficult. She likes to bounce around and play with them and 'kill' them then thrust them randomly at me.

She does like to pick things up though, anything lying randomly on the ground, so I started playing little games with her when I was hanging out washing - I have done it with both pegs and socks/small items of clothing, dropping them next to me when she is close by and rewarding her for picking them up. I then made it a little more tricky by not accepting the item if she was shaking it or jumping up at me - as soon as she does that now I take my hand away, therefore removing her chance to put the item there and earn her treat. Whilst I initially just rewarded picking up the item, I am now requiring her to put it in whichever hand I have held out. If she drops it I remove the hand, if she picks it up again the hand returns. Lots of little informal training sessions like this have helped her start to figure it out. Next thing we'll move up to is bringing the item back without dropping it - currently as she has only just started to bring it reliably to hand we are going to cement that in the brain for a bit longer before making it harder.

The little game I videoed above was really done more because I thought it was cute rather than a real training session :) But it does show basically what we've been doing. If I were really training properly I would be trying to use less vocal encouragement and let her figure it out, and I would also have done some tugging or fun running games to raise her arousal level before starting.

What's Shaping You?

You might be surprised...

After spending five wonderful days with Susan Garrett (a blog entry I still plan to do one day!) one of the things I am more aware of now is the many things that shape US in our everyday lives. Throughout her days of lecturing Susan wore a microphone headset with a portable speaker. If she crossed in front of the speaker or went too close it made a loud unpleasant buzzing noise, which led her to mention on several occasions about how the speaker had shaped her not to walk in front of it!!

I have since smiled to myself on numerous occasions about how I'M being shaped by apparently inanimate objects. My iPhone is a prime example.

When I first got my iPhone, I was a little worried that it didn't come with an extensive booklet of how to operate it. I guess I could have looked it all up on the Net, but that seemed altogether too much effort so I opted instead for the trial and error method. Being as it is a touch screen, I just touched various things to see what they did and learnt through this (i.e. the phone SHAPED me to offer various behaviours that would reward me with the successful operation of its features, in exactly the same way I would shape a dog to perform whatever behaviour I wanted him to learn).

A great example of machine shaping human occurred just last night - incidentally, this involved me trying to view Susan's blog!

Previous history of reinforcement has led to me to believe that when I see the link to Susan's blog posted in my news feed on Facebook (on my phone in this case), tapping it with my finger will reward me with being able to view the blog. Not this time. After making me wait a long time, up came the error message. Hmph. Tapping the link on FB usually works. Well, what shall I try next? Go out of FB and open my Safari app and try typing the blog address directly in there. Also has a strong history of reinforcement. Hmph. Same error message. (Getting more frustrated now because I want that high value reward of reading Susan's blog and have not been successful in receiving it). Must keep trying... what if I hit the refresh button? What if I hit it again? And again????!!!! HMPH!!! What if I hit it again whilst this time glaring angrily at the screen and pressing exceptionally hard?

So far, the phone has now shaped me to offer repeated taps at the refresh button. If I'd been rewarded at the end of this by the blog appearing, possibly in the future I would then have been more likely to hit refresh even MORE times and even MORE forcefully in an attempt to get that reward. Thinking doggy nose taps anyone???

However, because there was no reward at the end, this behaviour eventually extinguished itself - at least for the time being. Now, I tried a different behaviour which had also been successful in the past (but which I had not tried initially because of the higher response cost) - getting up, walking through the house to the study, turning on the computer and viewing the blog there - SUCCESS! High value reward! Read the latest blog entry and have a party!!!! :) :) :)

Planning to Fail

The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry...

One of the most important factors in dog training is failure. We use failure as a way for our dogs to learn, not only the behaviours themselves but how to RECOVER from failure - that failure itself is not a downer, it's just a chance to try again until you get it right.

However, putting it into practice in your training can be tricky. When deciding to work on a particular behaviour, I often think through the steps I will take to train it and what I expect the finished product to look like. However, I spend considerably less time thinking 'But what if THIS happens?' or 'What if THAT doesn't work?' So sometimes when a training session doesn't go as planned I don't have an immediate response to something the dog has thrown at me.

I should point out here that the dogs are much better at working through failure than I - I myself am much more likely to be disappointed and/or frustrated at things not going as I thought they would. I think this is even MORE so because I know it is pretty much always my own fault. Then I get cross at myself and the whole thing basically falls apart as I put the dog away and then put myself away until I am in a calmer and more objective state of mind.

Case in point is the session I had the other night with Billie - having decided to start her 2x2 training in earnest I pulled the good ol' weave poles out, set up two in the backyard, chose a high value toy and off we went. We had already had a good session earlier in the day so I went in feeling pretty confident all would go well.

However, in hindsight (isn't that a wonderful thing?) there were quite a few factors I hadn't taken into account. Firstly, I was doing this late in the evening, and was a little tired and looking forward to snuggling into my warm bed and relaxing, so planned this as just a quick session. Secondly, this was dinner time for the dogs, and they knew it - I just figured this would be another good incentive. Thirdly, I hadn't planned what I would do if things DIDN'T go to plan.

So, the 'training' session went like this. Start with crate games, release from the crate to me. Offer the tuggy (Billie is usually quite enthusiastic at tug games). Nope, she didn't want that. She was hyperactively jumping around, moving away from me presumably to check where her dinner bowl was (I hadn't even brought it outside) and generally totally distracted. So, the ONE smart thing I did was realise that trying to do any 2x2 work was useless, and we decided to focus just on getting some tugging. Nope, she wasn't having much of that - Trying to get her excited about the tug by dragging it around and jazzing her up only led to an even more hyperactive dog jumping and pawing at me (but not tugging). The closest we would get is a quick mouth on the tug and then back to jumping at me or looking back at the verandah in the hopes of getting her dinner. By this point, having already spent longer than I planned to, and already feeling tired to begin with, I began to get frustrated. The ability to make good decisions went downhill from here. Perhaps I could use IYC to get some better tugging. So I went and retrieved two bowls, split the dinner between them and place them at opposite ends of the yard. Billie is quite good at IYC, but bear in mind by now she too was very frustrated, hungry and somewhat frenzied. So I went back to trying to get some tugging. However what I hadn't done is specified my exact criteria - which, given the high distraction and previous failures, should have been considerably less than it usually is. So it was hardly surprising that, after a few tries at tugging and not getting anywhere, the lure of the food bowl was too much and she decided to help herself, at which point I corrected her and took the food away. So now I have a cross and frustrated trainer, a stressed and confused dog, and a 'training' session that has gone on way too long, not to mention the use of a correction which I do not want to use in my training. Finally recognising that there was little to be salvaged, I moved a good distance away from the food, offered the tug again and then released her to the first bowl after a very quick tug; same again with the other food bowl.

Having spent quite a bit of time thinking about this in the last couple of days, it reminded me of a story Lynda Orton-Hill told during one of her workshops, about some of their students trialling their young dogs for the first time. She mentioned the importance of them knowing what to do when the dog DIDN'T do what they wanted - i.e. what if the dog came off a contact or popped the weavers in the ring? How would they handle that?

The same is true in training. There should always be a plan of what you set out to do - but there ALSO be a plan of what to do if things go wrong.

Looking back now, before I started that training session I should have had two plans.

When working out an initial training plan, I should ask myself things such as:
Am I using a high value reward? (Or is it just the reward *I* prefer to use?)
What are my criteria for a correct response? (i.e. dog enters between the two poles from the correct side)
Where will I be positioned?
Where will the dog be positioned?
Where will the treats/toy be positioned?
How will I start the session? (i.e. will I release the dog from the crate, play tug to the training area, do a recall to the training areas etc)
How will I end the session? (i.e. how long will it run/how many repetitions will we do?)
What equipment do I need? (Toy/treats, weave pole spikes, poles, collar, leash, crate etc)
What distractions are in the areas an how will I use/manage them?
Am *I* in the right frame of mind do do a training session? (Am I tired/sick/in a bad mood?)

However after taking into account all of the above, I should also have planned for potential failure in any of these areas, i.e.
What if she doesn't go between the poles?
What if she goes the wrong way through the poles?
What is she repeatedly offers the wrong behaviour?
What if she stops offering behaviours?
What if she gets distracted by something else in the training area?
What if she chooses to leave the training area?
What if she doesn't want the reward?
What if *I* get frustrated?

Hopefully, many of these will have been avoided by careful planning in the first place, however even if I'd considered them only in passing, I believe I could have had a much better training session. As part of my FUTURE training plans I will make these lists required reading before I do anything!

And just to finish on something fun, here is a little vid of Billie playing IYC with a bag of food treats, and some of Billie and Josh playing with balloons :)

Fun with Fyre

Some footage for you!








Thought it was time I added a few more vids and will try to do this more regularly (along with piccies) to break up all the text.

I would have had several up except SOMEONE was silly enough to spend most of the video outside of the frame of her iPhone propped on a chair so basically all you see is my rear end and hearing me make silly noises while playing with the dog. Not really worth the upload time I hope to re-do the ones of Billie and Josh tomorrow.

I did get a couple of good ones of Fyre however. There wasn’t any major plan around these – just to video a few things we have been doing. As always, looking at them does point out a few things I need to work on.

Fyre has huge value for his crate (I literally can’t go near a crate now without him hovering around the door desperate to get in) so it’s no problem for me to have a big game of tug once he comes out. With Billie however we are still building value for going in the crate, so I tend to focus on her driving INTO the crate more than playing when she gets out. Pity my backyard isn’t bigger because Fyre really does have awesome drive into the crate – he will race ahead of me and bound in. With this video I was trying to illustrate that.

You can also see here one of my rules of tug games, which is that the dog picks the toy up to play – my dogs all play tug regularly now so I expect them to fetch a toy to me. As Fyre still needs encouragement to do this sometimes, I probably need to go back and work on it some more, perhaps with a higher value toy than this. All he wants to do is get back in the crate 

Then we did some practice sending him in from different places around the crate as I have done very little of this – first off, I really should have moved the crate further out so I wasn’t obstructed either side (mechanics!!) which made manoeuvring the dog into the right spot difficult. You can see Fyre look at me the first time like ‘Hmm, what do I do now?’ but because he loves the crate so much by default that is the first thing he tries.

You can also see me working criteria for crate games - at one point he moves to sniff something on the floor of the crate, so the door shuts and we start again. No paw movement is the rule!


I am also trying to be aware of reward placement – I have done a LOT of rewarding from in front, tugging, treats etc so my circle work has been made somewhat harder because the dogs always want to come around in front – that is where the most value is. I am trying to be aware of this now and rewarding as much as possible at either side. Of course it is easier to tug from the front so I have to be careful not to forget myself and simply follow the easiest path!

The second video is Fyre playing It’s Your Choice with food – his criteria in crate games is to sit when my hand goes on the door and then hold that sit (no feet moving) til I release him. So here he holds his sit while I throw treats on the ground in front of him, then because he chooses to hold position he gets to have those treats as I retrieve them from the ground. If at any point he moved a foot or stood up or tried to come out I would have shut the door and started again, but he has played this a few times now so has pretty good self control. Next time we might up the ante and make it a bit more of a challenge.

The other thing I have been aware of with all the dogs is which way they turn when they go into the crate. The dog should always turn towards you, never ‘flick away’ – this is the basis for agility handling – and prevents the dog from taking off course obstacles. Unfortunately you can’t see me when I send Fyre in the crate the last time or you’d see that he started on my left side and therefore should circle right when going in the crate (towards me) which is why I took him out and sent him in again before rewarding. This isn’t a punishment – simply a ‘Let’s try that again’ and then he gets his food reward. He has improved at this a lot. However this really is a behaviour I’d prefer to work away from the crate because I don’t like re-dos when the dog has done a great job otherwise of driving in. So I am also working all three dogs around a cone, as well as shadow handling/circle work so they are always rewarded for turning TOWARD me and not away. (Must try and get some video of the cone work too as the visual illustrates it better than my trying to describe it).

Getting Sidetracked In A Good Way

One thing leads to another and I never know what I'll end up doing next...

We are currently working the exercises in Susan Garrett's 5 Minute Recall course and of course as one thing leads to another I find myself also incidentally working lots of little other things in association with the recall games, and coming up with lots of new ideas too. It is a lot of fun :)

This week I have started occasionally using the dogs' sack bed in place of a crate as a starting/ending point for exercises. They actually love it because they can take a flying leap to land on it, so it has become quite exciting. The only thing I have to watch is that the whole bed goes skidding across the floor with the force of their leaps both to and from! This is less of a problem when outside on the grass though. Whilst they are very excited to jump on and off I need to work on them staying there until I release them. Fair enough, as I have only just started doing this, so our focus the next few days will be building value for staying on the bed no matter what I do, and gradually introducing more distractions to the point where I can have one of them staying on the bed whilst I work another dog. Obviously our continuing training in crate games will help with this also. I see it being a very handy tool, being able to place the dog on a bed/table or such and know they will wait there until released. It will also transfer over to the 'official' table in agility, having a dog with great drive TO the table (or bed as it may be), with an excellent stay once there and also able to blast off at full speed once released.

A Solid Foundation

Putting foundation training in perspective - turns out it really is worth the effort!

My dogs continually amaze me. Just the other night I took Billie out to do some training for only the second week in a row at club and was amazed and more than a little stoked at how well she did.

Now, Billie is a 20 month old Aussie who tears around the yard like a maniac at top speed chasing (or being chased by) my other two dogs much of the time, uses walls as a pushing off point by leaping against them, jumps over and onto everything she can reach with no thought for her own safety and generally does things at a million miles an hour.

This same dog was able to work off lead in a relatively strange area (she has only been on the club grounds a few times previously and not recently) with multiple other dogs running, barking, jumping very close by (there were three or four other classes going on around us at various distances). She never left me once. She focussed on me. She played tug with me. She offered behaviours on and around the equipment. She maintained a high level of enthusiasm and confidence throughout.

I was surprised (interpretation: drop dead amazed).

It pointed out to me yet again how often we underestimate our dogs, and how easy it is to focus on the things they CAN'T do over the things they CAN. It also confirmed to me that I have chosen the right path to do so much focus on foundation work, and that the positive style of training I am using now is the right one for me.

I am very grateful to have gained all the training knowledge I have, particularly from attending the seminars with Greg & Laura Derrett and Lynda Orton-Hill and of course everything Susan Garrett has published. (I am eagerly anticipating Susan's workshops here in November as well as her 5 Minute Formula Recall internet course that we have signed up for). I have learned so, so much in the last couple of years. I am beginning to feel now that I have the knowledge to not only give my dogs a good foundation, but also that I am explanding my ability to apply that knowledge to many different scenarios.

For example looking at Billie's training session on Fri night. We probably did about 20 mins of 'training' total. I'd say at least 15 mins of that involved playing with toys and/or crate games (so it was really broken up into multiple very short sessions). I don't know how I ever trained a dog without crate games. My often hyperative and easily distracted Billie was able to do multiple perfect sit stays in an environment with a huge number of distractions. How long would it have taken me to train that without crate games? Not only can she hold a sit stay she is focussed on me and poised for action so when I do release her she comes right away at full speed. She can also drive ahead of me in a straight line with confidence (in fact, she went so fast once when she leapt into the crate she practically bounced off the back wall before she could turn around!)

Because I have tried very hard not to use corrections when training, I have a dog who is confident to try things and therefore learns very quickly. After seeing a tyre for the first time, it took her a total of about 5 seconds to work out she needed to go through it. Head through hoop, stand on hoop rim, walk through hoop - oh, hey, that worked! Well, I can do that again easy! And now I can do it more quickly, and do it as a jump!

The ability to fail and recover - how much more quickly we can progress. Second night working on a table - we simply spent a lot of time building value for the table, tugging in the table, playing sit-tug on the table, rewarding her for offering different positions on the table. Very quickly I was able to progress that to me walking around the table in both directions, me starting to walk/jog away from the table, and so on. I never used a stay/wait command. She made the CHOICE to stay there. When she did jump off once she quickly worked out that she could start earning treats again by hopping back up again with no cue from me.

We also started 2x2 training, and she was able to quickly hit entries from both left and right with fantasyic speed/drive, and then displaying the same returning to me with the toy.

To say I was thrilled with this training session is an understatement! I have a dog who is fast, responsive, happy, confident and focussed, exhibits the ability to make intelligent choices, recover from failures and exhibits SELF-control. I'd say that's about everything you want for an excellent agility dog.

Can Billie sequence four obstacles in a row? Not yet. But she has the foundations of many behaviours associated with negotiating those four obstacles correctly - she will be able to hold a start line stay while I lead out, she will be able to break from that stay on command to take those obstacles at full speed, she will focus on my cues of where to go next or alternatively have the ability to drive ahead of me in a straight line. And if she does fail she will have the confidence to re-attempt until she gets it right.

Look! I actually wrote something!

Just so it looks like I'm actually posting something... here's another blog well worth a read until I get MY act together again!

Hyperbole and a Half

(Seriously, check out the spider post - that is a scarily acurate representation of my own dealings with spiders)