152 days to go... I didn't end up having time to make an entry last night, but I DID take some little videos. Last night I thought I might try to add a jump into our work with crate games and targeting the mat. I dragged the crate to the edge of the verandah, lined up a low bar jump in a straight line a short distance away, and then laid the mat out from that. Fyre got to be first up and this is how his session went:
Let's look at what I learned from this. First of all, though you may not be able to hear it on the video, I gave Fyre his release word shortly after opening the crate. When he didn't respond I waited a period of time before giving it again, as I did not want him to learn that he needs TWO cues before acting. But it did bring home to me again that we need to work on breaks. What was also lacking on my part was the timing of the food reward - though I wanted to reward the break, in between releasing him and rewarding him he had time to come back to me and sit, so what was I actually rewarding? The sit. In future I will have my reward ready before cueing his release, perhaps by throwing food or a toy as soon as he moves.
Next, although my plan was to set him up for the jump, we were still close to the open crate door and he jumped right back in. Although it wasn't what I wanted, he had done the right thing because there is no cue for either dog to enter the crate just yet, other than them seeing the open door. So I rewarded that behaviour because I WANT them to have high drive to get in the crate.
Now, ironically, I probably would have been better to leave him in the crate and do a lead out so I could stand next to or ahead of the target, but since he has occasionally gone around jumps in the past I thought I'd start off by just sending him over the jump and letting him see where the target was, before starting him from the crate (backchaining). As you can see, he practically did it on his own anyway and because he did go for the mat I should have marked that and rewarded instead of waiting for him to come back so I could set him up again.
We have done quite a bit of work on building value for bar jumps, hence his enthusiasm to go over it. The other thing the video shows is that we clearly need to work on his waits - with one foot moved and then breaking before his release cue, and then moving TWO feet the next time I set him up and left him, the criteria of moving NO feet is obviously not clear to him. Bad trainer! Hence why I then chose to reinforce the wait before breaking him again, firstly by returning to him and rewarding, and then by doing a lead out but throwing the reward back behind him and releasing him with a 'Get it!' What I also notice is that when I lead out again, he is simply watching me and not where he has to go... so we need to do more work on him focussing in the obstacle rather than me. Because I wanted him to target the mat, even though he went over the jump nicely I waited for him to leave me and go back to the mat, but this was not ideal as I want him to drive straight to the mat when he sees it anywhere.
So based on all this, it was quite clear to me that I had gone way too far too fast by throwing together a pile of different behaviours despite the fact that they certainly weren't anywhere near proofed even individually (let alone chained together). So I decided to forget about the jump, the crate and the waits, and just work on the targeting. At this point, the critera was simply two front feet touch the mat. I then moved to the other side of the mat so we weren't just going from the same spot all the time. Having considered it further, I may also do some work on him focussing on the mat (as with the jump) rather than me, by having him in a wait and rewarding him for looking at the mat. Hopefully this may help him learn to drive straight to it.
Having realised I was asking too much of Fyre, I resolved to simply work on targeting with Josh. So out to the mat we went.
I started off using food rewards and requiring the same criteria as for Fyre - hit the mat with two front feet. You can see Josh is used to these shaping sessions - hence why he returns to me after the first target, offers his default behaviour (sit) and then one of his other favourites, one paw up. Then realising this hasn't worked, but touching the mat worked just a moment ago, he returned to that. I also decided at this point that perhaps just touching the mat with feet was too ambiguous, so I decided to shape a drop on the mat. I figure this will also be useful when he come to training and automatic drop on the table for agility. So this time, instead of rewarding Josh as soon as he put his front feet on the mat, I waited for him to offer the drop (which is another behaviour he readily offers so it was no problem). I made another decision not long after this too - the food rewards were creating too much sniffing and no as much excitement as I would have liked - so I switched to the toy. I'm sure you'll see the difference in the level of drive and speed/regularity at which behaviours are offered with a fun toy on offer :)
You will see at one point Josh offers a drop NEXT to the mat but with only the tips of his toes actually on it. This wasn't good enough for me, I want at least his front half dropped on the mat so I simply waited and he very quickly offered the behaviour that earnt him a reward the last time. I also picked up the mat and moved it so he would learn that the behaviour was linked with the mat, not that particular spot of ground the mat was on. Josh also needs work on his stays/waits, which is why when he popped out of a drop when I was replacing the mat, I signalled him to drop once more and then walked around squeaking the ball before rewarding him in the drop position for staying, then giving my release cue. In future I will probably do the same with him as I will with Fyre, marking him for looking at the mat and then releasing him to it to get his reward. Generally Josh is more focussed on what is ahead of him than Fyre is, so it is always interesting having two dogs with different strengths and weaknesses to work with.
Then it was Fyre's turn again, this time to do some targeting using the toy reward and having added the drop criteria.
Fyre has a shorter 'high intensity' training timeframe than Josh, so his sessions are usually shorter as I want him to always maintain that high level of enthusiasm. As you can see, he also figured out the drop very quickly, I initially marked and rewarded him for just his front end going down rather than requiring a straight drop right off.
It was a good session for both dogs, and pointed out a lot of BASIC things that I need to work on them with, so we will go back to lots of little wait games, perhaps do some '1-2-3-break' games breaking them to the mat. No doubt I will be adjusting these again and again as I go on :)
Tonight's training I decided would be ad break training. The idea was that we got multiple very quick, high intensity sessions so the dogs would do everything in a state of high arousal and be more likelt to offer behaviours and keep working through any mistakes. (It also meant I could watch Two and a Half Men). So duly I set up my 2x2 entry in line with the back door, brought all three dogs inside and left them in the dining room whilst I went in the lounge. I wanted them separate from me so when I came barrelling out in the ad break it was even more exciting.
So each ad break I raced out to the dining room, snatched up a toy and bounded out the back door calling one dog with me. Hyping him up with excited voice we did 2 or 3 entries mixing up distances/angles, me moving or still and from both left and right, throwing the toy each time he drove through a correct entry. As soon as he was after the toy I ran away, encouraging him to race back to me and then turning straight for the poles again. Then I would quickly switch dogs at the back door and repeat. I managed to do this several times with each time slightly raising the difficult of the entries and getting consistent excellent results. Then I decided to have some fun with jumps as well, setting up two low bar jumps in a slight curve again leading out from the back door. Doing two obstacles in a row separated by distance other than the short distances in jump drills has been a weak point thus far, because I really haven't done much work on sequencing as we want to get the basics right first! But I was thrilled tonight when Josh with no hesitation raced over the first bar and then drove on over the second one also to receive the reward of the toy thrown ahead, followed by an exciting tug game. I also threw in a few front cross turns, sending him over the jump then turning into him and getting him to come to my hand with the tug.
Fyre, since he still needs to work on looking for obstacles and not me, had a bit more trouble with this, inclined as he was to simply go over the first bar then follow close to me past the second. However, I made myself very aware of where my shoulders were pointing and with a little adjustment he did do a good job going over both bars. (Incidentally, when he did follow me around the bar I rewarded him with a tug game because as far as I knew my shoulders indicated I was turning that way and he was following my body position correctly. At least I know he is paying attention to what I was doing!!) Josh finds the value of bar jumps to be extremely high now after many weeks of rewarding him every time he goes over them, so our next task will be working on waits. Quite likely I will do this with no jumps in sight to start with, so he never learns to break over a jump without my cue. Playing the '1-2-3-mat' game I am hopeful will help this since it will not only teach him to break quickly and race to the mat, it will also teach him self control in holding his wait. I am not yet sure whether I want to leave him in a sit or stand (obviously we will work on waits in all positions). In his sits he still liks to sit his weight back, and occasionally flop his back feet out. I would prefer him to have his weight forward allowing him to break and hit stride right away than have to first heave his centre of gravity forward. So I will likely either start him standing, or I might try to shape him to sit with his weight forward.
So many little things to work on!! I think the next week or so at oleast will be a lot of these mini games to teach the foundations, though I would also like to start setting up the jump drills again so they can work on learning to jump properly (these are drills from the DVD set 'Susan Salo's Foundation Jumping' - another excellent buy!)
Oh, and as a last little note - our dining room window, which has a narrow windowsill about waist height, faces onto the backyard. The cats often get up and sit there to watch me if I am outside. However, tonight it was an enterprising blue merle Aussie girl who must have climbed first onto the dining room table before slipping behind the vertical blinds and poising herself on the window sill broadside to the window so she could see out at the fun stuff I was doing with Fyre!!!! I have no doubt that she'll take to agility like a duck to water when she is old enough :)
154 days to go... Tonight I am feeling a bit tired, due largely to the fact that I haven't gone to sleep til after midnight the last two nights - Sunday because I started watching Congo at 11.30PM and remembered I quite enjoyed that movie so KEPT watching it, and Monday because, well, I was finishing off last night's long blog entry :)
Anyway, with low enthusiasm for doing anything requiring much (translate to ANY) running, I decided we'd work on some more basic skills (that didn't require me to run, as per above ). The most active I got was when we worked the 2x2 weave entries, because that involved me throwing the toy and then playing with the dog with the toy after, where I always try to maintain a high level of enthusiasm throughout to make it highly rewarding and exciting for the dogs. They are getting better, and my throwing is getting better too (well, at least a little). Josh did a fantastic entry from the right at a difficult angle and a long distance away and Fyre's entries on the right, which have been his weak point thus far, are improving also. I would love to be able to do ten quick sessions per day as I think they'd improve much more quickly, but time just does not allow me that luxury!
So after my short-lived burst of energy with the 2x2, we went on to some targeting and crate games. Josh more so than Fyre needs work on targeting a mat (which I use when doing jump drills or wanting the dog to drive forward in a straight line without looking back at me or circling). Same as with the tug toy though, the training of both dogs will benefit by reinforcing and raising the value of hitting the mat. Yet it is another one of those things that gets put aside in favor of more 'exciting' stuff.
Both Fyre and Josh know the basics of crate games (for more info check Susan Garrett's Crate Games) and this session gave me a chance to polish some of that work also. To the dogs, it was all just a fun game. We started off easy - a couple of times reinforcing the dog for getting in the crate, for sitting before opening the door, breaking them (verbally releasing them from the crate) then letting them choose to go back and reinforce once again. I do not have a cue for either of them to get in the crate yet, as they still both occasionally try out other behaviours near the open crate door, and when I add a cue I want them to be driving straight into that crate. (Oh, for anyone interested, I was using food as reinforcement for this session, and a clicker as a marker for when they hit the mat or entered the crate).
Once we'd done that little warm up, I put the mat down (the mat is just a regular doggy bed mat that I picked up from Cheap as Chips or the like) but fairly close to the crate. This meant that once released as the dog bounded out he was pretty much going to hit it right away anyway and thus be reinforced. I did need to modify this slightly because being this close, and having done some targeting to the mat before, both dogs wanted to go straight back to the mat rather than back to the crate. So having moved the mat further away, and leaving the crate door open, I alternated sending the dog to the crate (in this case, I simply remained near the crate and called the dog to get his attention and then waited for him to enter the crate before rewarding with food. I never actually verbally or physically told either of them to get in the crate - as explained above, why I haven't put it on cue). I stood varying distances between the crate and the mat - sometimes I released the dog whilst I was moving away, sometimes whilst standing still. Sometimes I jumped up and down or pretended to sprint away without releasing them. In those cases I would return and reward the dog for staying in the crate. It worked well for me as the dogs raced back and forth but I needed to expel only minimal energy myself (as was the plan all along ). I did variations on their length of wait in the crate also - sometimes I would give the release as soon as all four paws hit the crate floor, so they were literally racing in and dashing back out.
Once I finished the session, it occurred to me that perhaps I should also be reinforcing my release word - after the practice at NOT breaking from the crate, Fyre paused once and didn't leave the crate when I gave my release word. I want them busting out of whatever position they are in when I give that release word, so next time I do this I will add in another little exercise where I remove the mat and just reward for the dog breaking position on cue.
Billie had just a little session tonight also, some games of 1-2-3 tug where I wait for her to sit, then count threeeeeeeeeee...Get it! Eventually this will become One...two....three.... get it! but she is still learning. It is s fantastic way to teach self control in sit stays - already I can see herself holding herself back, poised for that release. This game is one of many I learned from Susan Garrett's book Shaping Success - a MUST have book for anyone considering using shaping/positive reinforcement/clicker with their dog.
That's me for tonight! Now to sit back and relax and hopefully get to bed on time for once :)
155 days to go... (my partner Chris actually came up with the idea of counting down how many days there are to go with each post - I thought this was rather good!) How does the economic crisis relate to the training of my dogs I hear you ask - well, simply put, the value of my tug toys is just not what it used to be. As far as the dogs are concerned, they're pretty fun - most of the time. On the weekend, doing some weave entries, I had a squeaky toy out for Josh. I try to rotate through as many toys as I can, and usually pick ones that can provide some sort of tug game so they are interacting with me rather than playing on their own. Now, Josh loves squeaky toys but it was a bit warm during the day and he was somewhat halfhearted about this one - it was like 'Oh, yeah, I guess that toy's ok' rather than 'OH MY GOD I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT!'
Thus I decided this would be my 'skill of the week'. The aim here being that every week I will pick something that needs work, something that usually gets put aside in favor of the 'real' agility training. Increasing the value of tugging will be enormously helpful to the rest of my training, because as we know, transfer of value is everything. If I want my dogs to have the drive to work through their mistakes and maintain a high level of enthusiasm, the reinforcement on offer has to be of very high value. High value reinforcement transfers over to high value for that piece of equipment. Yet despite this, how many training sessions do we devote to maintaining/increasing the value of our toys (or whatever reinforcement we might be using)? It's MUCH more fun to do contacts, jumps, weaves, run courses...
To improve the value of tugging in the eyes of the dogs, I first selected a very high value reinforement - their dinner. NOTHING is more exciting than dinner time. (Incidentally, this is how I got Josh to tug in the first place - he initially had no interest in it whatsoever). Then I simply chose a toy at random and stood in the backyard with the dinner bowl close by. Because my Aussies are raw fed, this did necessitate some preparation in cutting the food up into smaller pieces rather than the usual one big lump, as I wanted to have several opportunities per session to reinforce them.
My criteria started off simple enough - pay attention to the tug toy. Reward with a piece of food (or a handful in the case of Fyre, who has dry food). After that came touch the tug toy. Mouth the tug toy. Grab and hold the tug toy. Grab and hold the tug toy and apply pressure against me. Hold pressure for a longer time. Hold on and start tugging back against me. I want the dog doing all the work here - I am not a cheer squad. I want the tug game to be innately exciting no matter what I am doing. There are other rules too - don't grab the end of the tug on the other side of my fist - your end is the long end. Don't make contact with my hand. All four feet on the ground (no jumping up at me or pawing at the tug - this one is mostly for Billie's sake!!!) There are no corrections during the tug game - I simply choose not to reinforce any of these unwanted behaviours. Eventually I will raise the criteria again so I become more involved, i.e. maintain backward pressure against me as I move forward/backward, sideways, stand up, reach down, touch you on the back etc
Because Josh has done this before, he picked it up again very quickly. Josh's criteria is currently to grab the end of the toy, apply strong pressure and tug backward against me until I decide the game can end (I use 'Yes' as a marker, and the release of pressure as a cue to let go). If he lets go before I choose to end the game, he gets no reinforcement. The rule is we continue to play until *I* decide it is enough. Alternatively, if he offers a behaviour I like he can earn reinforcement more quickly - so if he makes a noise, like a growl or squeal I will reinforce that, because Josh is innately a very quiet dog and any sound like that indicates a high level of excitement which is what I want. Fyre and Billie are not quite so advanced, Fyre gets EXTREMELY excited at the presence of his dinner dish and bounces around all over the place, but quickly worked out he could get the food by tugging the toy. Billie tried a few different things to start with - I could see the wheels in her head turning 'This sit worked for me before... hmm, nothing. Standing on my back legs - there's the food but I can't reach it. Leaping around like a maniac... hmph, no luck there either. Sniff the toy in the owner's hand - oooo look, food! Now what did I do to get that?' From there she very quickly caught on.
Well, after that being much longer than I intended, there is no time now to go into detail about what else we worked on tonight, but suffice to say it was all flat work - circle work with the boys on both left/right, inner/outer circles, U-turns, spirals and so on. Fyre needs much more work on the right, he still tends to automatically want to duck behind me to the left out of habit. Josh is better but working on the right is not quite as stable as working on the left. But we shall persist!
So, the story up to this point: I currently have three dogs, my own two Aussies Josh (2 and a bit years old), Billie (almost 1 year old) and a long-term visitor Golden Fyre (7 years old). Fyre arrived in December 08 and was hopefully to have been trialling for some time by now, however 'twas not to be this year. Josh commenced his agility training when he turned 2, but the training 'schedule' for both dogs has been somewhat patchy up to this point.
Having missed running a dog at the last two Nationals due to Porter being injured in 2007 and retired thereafter, and Josh not being old enough in 2008, I was loath to miss the upcoming Perth Nationals, especially as we had such a great time there in 2005. This was exactly the incentive I needed to really get into the dogs into some sort of regular training - now the accommodation deposit is paid, the flights are booked, and I have some 156 days from this point onwards to get Josh and Fyre to trialling standard. Phew!
So the purpose of this blog is to give me somewhere to record what we are achieving in our training sessions, what our goals are, what we need to work on... thus allowing me to track our progress and also make sure I actually do SOMETHING with them every day :)
To start with here are some little vids I took yesterday (by sitting the dodgy little camera on an upturned bucked) of the dogs practicing 2x2 entries. What did I learn from this? I need to be more co-ordinated with throwing the toy - especially with Fyre I am throwing it far too late (worried he's going to go around the entry) which is encouraging him to look back over his shoulder and/or spin when he should be driving forward. Same with Josh but to a lesser extent because I trust him a bit more. The positive to take out of this session was that neither had done a jump into the entry before so I was pretty stoked that they both managed to figure that one out very quickly!
