It's Your Choice

The game of a thousand faces...

OK, so yesterday I wrote about 'Invisible Training'. Incorporated into that are a lot of 'It's Your Choice Moments' as Lynda referred to them during her workshops. (For a description of 'It's Your Choice' game see Susan Garrett's book 'Shaping Success').

Basically, the premise is that the dog always has the CHOICE of what he does when you are working with him, though you manipulate the situation so that the RIGHT choice is the easier one. Then you can gradually increase the difficulty level. For example, I am doing a lot of exercises at the moment which involve the dogs working around their treats. Currently the treats are still in a little zip loc bag, which sits open on the ground. Eventually I will work them up to having treats free on the ground. The scenario is often this: I place the treat bag just a little off to the side of the crate door (dog starting in crate). We play crate games: as I put my hand on the crate door, the dog sits and provided he stays in a sit and doesn't move any feet, I will retrieve one of the treats from the bag and reward. (Initially I started with the bag a good distance away - now it is quite close).

Then I lead out and release the dog to me. If he chooses to come to me, and on the side I have indicated with my body language, I produce a tugy toy and we have a fun game of tug, then I race the dog back to the crate and reward with treats from the bag. Billie had an excellent 'It's Your Choice' moment tonight when we first played this game - she came out of the crate and paused to sniff at the treat bag. She could easily have chosen to go ahead and delve into them, and since we have dine some work on this I gave her the chance to make that decision for herself rather than race over and try to stop her. I was utterly thrilled then when after a sniff she continued to me and had a great game of tug. Next time she burst straight out of the crate to me and ignored the treats totally. She has improved sensationally since we first started playing IYC - I used not to be able to get her to tug if I also had treats - she simply wanted the treats. So to get her to follow me on a lead out and then play tug enthusiastically is just excellent.

The brilliant thing about this game is that it teaches the dog to put in an excellent performance in the face of distractions. The distractions themselves can actually become cues to pay MORE attention to the handler! And of course you can do it with more than just treats - you can use anything the dog wants (has value for). It's an IYC moment when I take the dogs from their room to the back door in the morning - if you CHOOSE to stay in a sit whilst I open the door and step out myself, I will then release you outside. If you CHOOSE not to stay in that sit, I will close the door and your chance to go run outside is removed.

The other great thing about IYC is that it creates a dog with a lot more drive to work - the arousal level is up because they know that making the right choice earns rewards, and are therefore more likely to keep trying to find out WHICH is the right choice and work through any failures.

It also just makes life easier - tonight doing nose touches for example I had treats sitting on the ground next to me within easy reach where I was kneeling. I could grab more and keep working with the dog rather than fumble about in my pockets, and I knew I could do this without the dog being distracted by the treats and spending the whole time trying to get them.

The applications are endless. You can play IYC in virtually any situation. If the dog fails too many times, you can re-start and make the correct choice more easy (perhaps add some distance) and then work back up to the more difficult one. I enjoy it because the dogs learn very quickly and I can therefore keep challenging them (like Billie tonight) to see how well they have really learnt!