After slacking off for two weeks while on holidays (When Hounds Fly was closed, and I also slacked off on Petey’s training) I’m back at it and yesterday I taught Petey a new behavior – “Around” – which is just to go out and go around an object, either left or right, based on how I send him out. The whole exercise took approximately 20 minutes (of course, broken up into many short, high intensity sessions).
Here are some comments about the training plan:
1) Initially Petey has no idea what to do. We’ve been doing a lot of “go in/on” so he was just jumping on top of the bucket. That’s why I put my leg there – I was hoping he wouldn’t jump up.
2) I moved onto using “Aim for It” (described in Agility Right From the Start) – which is basically just click for action, treat for position.
Click 1 – for heading towards the object
Click 2 – for looking at the intended path
Click 3 – for moving along intended path
Click 4 – for turning head towards intended path, and then cue to mat
Subsequently, less intermediate c/t are required and very quickly, the dog understands the whole path to take as one behavior.
3) Good Agility Practices / Loopy Training
There’s no time for dead time in training! Like I mentioned in my previous post about training with high intensity, the dog is either working, or on their mat.
I use the tug toy frequently as a way to deliver the reinforcer, and transport the dog back to their mat – at which point, another loop in the training starts again.
When using food, it’s important to deliver the food in a way that the dog does not have to get frustrated to find it. Usually, my aim is pretty good, but you’ll see on the video there’s a bad bounce (2:11) and Petey has trouble finding it. Having to sniff/scan/search for food breaks the loop. This is inefficient training and can also cause superstitious behaviors to creep into your training.
When it’s time for a break, I send the dog to their mat.
4) The opposite direction: I didn’t include any video, but I started with Aim for It to teach the other direction.
5) Object Generalization: My goal for our first session was for Petey to go around a pylon. So I started with the Pylon on top of the bucket, then moved to a small paint can with the pylon, and then just the pylon. It was nice and easy.
What do you think of the training plan I used? Comment below if you have feedback!
I’m now a month into the Silvia Trkman course and beginning to crack open the 3rd set of bi-weekly lesson plans.
One of the new exercises I’ve been working on is the 2-on 2-off, which is where a dog learns to go onto a platform, and only have the front two paws come off. This is, as I understand it, used for coming off of obstacles like the A-Frame or Teeter so that the dog doesn’t jump off prematurely, but completely walks off the obstacle.
I started working on the 2-on 2-off, and my first session looked like this (go to the 1:08 mark)
Silvia said it was going fine but I should vary my position, so I kept on working on it, and started working on building distance and some duration. By the third session a few days later I had something like this (starts at the 1:08 mark):
Class was on hiatus for about a week so no comments or questions. So I did a couple more sessions like that. Something dawned on me after the fact though. I was creating a superstitious behavior chain of overshoot the platform and then back up on it! Woops, duh, that should be obvious right? The dog would come off the A-Frame and then back up onto it again.
So today, humbly, I went back and started working on it again. The next clip is a bit on the long side (6 minutes) so you can jump around, but now I’m only c/t if Petey finds the 2on2off position on the first attempt (jump ahead to the 2:35 minute mark):
Fortunately I didn’t get too far along the path before getting back on track.
The other thing I have been working on in this program is perchwork and hind end rotation. If you’ve seen my YouTube channel, you might know that I first taught Petey to perch and rotate for Finish a year ago. But, there’s a problem! I only taught counter clockwise, so he could not go clockwise! This course is forcing me to deal with that, so I am working on a clockwise rotation.
His clockwise rotation is still weaker than counter clockwise, but, it’s coming along nicely. I don’t have much footage of when I first started working on clockwise, but let me tell you, it was like trying to get the toilet bowl to flush the opposite direction. Counter clockwise was so heavily reinforced it was incredibly difficult to get the first movement towards the other way.
Last year I was just greedy and wanted the perfect finish fast, and I got it. But, I should have been thinking about developing Petey symmetrically, because equal awareness for left and right would be important for exercises like cik and cap for faster jumps in agility.
Cik and Cap
All these considerations – should be obvious with experience. Having no experience in serious competitive agility, they weren’t obvious to me!
I’ve always felt this way, but these little roadbumps in my training really confirmed that what I already knew. There is a reason why Mirkka teaches our Rally-O class – she has trained dogs to Competition Obedience standards (which are much higher), and why Julie teaches our Tricks class – she has choreographed, trained, and performed full Canine Freestyle routines, and why Emily teaches our Canine Good Neighbour class – two of her dogs are CGN titled dogs.
There’s no such thing as overqualified when it comes to selecting your instructors because only with experience do good training decisions become obvious.
Today during new student orientations, When Hounds Fly welcomed a new student with a 16 month old English Bulldog. Their owner had completed three levels of classes at another dog training school (a typical Toronto dog training school – mostly positive, old-fashioned lure-reward type school). She had watched a lot of our videos and was excited to come to our school and do our Foundations Skills program, even though her dog probably knows many of the behaviors taught. I was really happy to hear that, as it was clear she knew that she was coming to learn how to be a clicker trainer!
“We’re really anal here about good training. You came to the right place.” I said.
“Great, because I don’t want my dog to be confused, wondering what he’s supposed to do, yawning and stressing out anymore.” she replied.
What a brilliant observation. Being a sloppy trainer is not just detrimental to you, in terms of lack of progress. It is highly unfair to the dog. They feel stress and anxiety with poorly timed clicks, low rates of reinforcement, or confusing criteria. Being a great clicker trainer means the dog should seldom, if ever, feel stressed during training.
When you train your dog, what kinds of signs of stress do you observe? For Petey, the first sign is stress lines around his eyes and mouth. If it continues to worsen, he whines quietly while moving frantically. At its worst, he stops moving and lays down, panting and whining. Other dogs bark at their handler in frustration. Some lay down and look depressed. I knew of one that would start growling. None of these feelings are helpful as we are trying to condition good feelings about training.
In my previous post I mentioned I had just enrolled in an online distance course. The first exercise I’ve been working on is to train Petey to put four paws inside a food bowl. The instructor does not give very explicit training plans – figuring it out yourself is part of the learning process. In the below video, I have taken snapshots of the four sessions I did over three days:
In the series of four training sessions on video, I started with a US postal service box, then a black ikea box, then a cardboard box that housed my kettle, and finally the water bowl dish. In each session, Petey never showed signs of anxiety or stress. While he sometimes struggled to get his paws in the container, he knew what he was doing.
Good training means the dog is never stressed or confused. A good training plan is needed first. This four paws in a food dish exercise is a great exercise in thinking about how to shape properly by splitting criteria. It’s so easy! Start with a giant box and work your way down to progressively smaller boxes until you get to the final size you wish. Move down a size/raise criteria whenever the dog hits a certain success rate (80% typically). Box dimensions (length/width/height) are easily quantifiable, so criteria is black and white. Instead of starting with a tiny box, or a food bowl, and getting frustrated, I just spent a lot of time finding perfect size boxes. Then the training went quick!
Unfortunately, not all behaviors have criteria so easy to split and identify as the dimensions of a box. That’s the skill of a great clicker trainer – determining how to split criteria to the smallest increment, devising ingenious ways to setup the training environment so criteria is easy to identify, and ensuring the rate of reinforcement is high enough that the exercises are easy for the dog.
In my earlier videos and training sessions a year or more ago, Petey often got confused and would lay down and get stressed out. I kept on training and pushed through. From now on, if any dog I train shuts down that way, it’s time to stop training and go back to the drawing board.
Always be asking yourself – how can I make this easier for the dog?
Answer: Split Criteria Like Nesting Dolls
*Update: A mere hour after I posted this on our Facebook Page, Casey Lomonaco posted a really great comment: “I partially agree. Learning is stressful, but there is a big difference between eustress and distress.” Thank you – yes – learning is stressful, and I think during a great training session, especially when you are raising criteria, our dogs are buzzing and feeling eustress. And that is a good thing. Thank you Casey!
Exciting news! I just enrolled in a three month distance education course run by Silvia Trkman. Petey and I are in “Puppy/Tricks Class” and every two weeks we will be given assignments of tasks/tricks to complete. I’m excited to have access to the tutelage of such a world famous trick and agility instructor, and also as it’s been a while since I graduated from the Karen Pryor Academy, I kind of miss the pressure of deadlines and tasks to train. Instead of having to drive 7 hours to a workshop though, participants post videos to document their progress.
I decided to give it a try since a month ago, Julie enrolled in a class with Kay Laurence of Learning About Dogs – another world famous dog trainer. She said she was enjoying it so here goes nothing I thought!
I signed up last night at 1AM in the morning, and the class started ten days ago so I’m already late. The next set of homework comes out in four days and I’m hastily working through the first set. My first challenge is to get Petey to place all four paws inside progressively smaller containers – the final goal would be something as small as a bowl or food dish. We can do it in three days! Wish us luck!
In the previous post in my series on being a dog training school student, I covered everything I do leading up to actually attending class. So now this post will cover how I make the most out of an hour long dog training class.
The biggest change and improvement in how I train has to do with how I view the structure of a class.
An hour long class = Thirty 1-minute training sessions with thirty 1-minute breaks
An hour long class is a VERY long time – not only for the dog, but for the handler as well. It’s impossible for both you and your dog to maintain maximum focus and intensity for 60 minutes non-stop. If you try, your dog will slow down, and you’ll slow down – you’ll get winded, your mind will wander, you’ll get sloppy with your criteria and mechanical skills, and your dog will get frustrated and confused. As your dog gets confused, he’ll start checking out and you’ll lose his focus.
A dog training class is very much like a workout routine. Some of you might know that I am a huge fan of interval training and also a huge Jillian Michaels fan. Her 20 minute workouts are intense, well structured, and never let you zone out. You do a set of cardio moves, then a set of strength moves, then core, then repeat, until after 20 minutes you are done. Each set is only 1-2 minutes in duration so that during each set you maintain focus, intensity, and good form.
While it’s possible for you to do 7 minutes of skip rope, 7 minutes of weights, then 7 minutes of crunches, your skipping would end up being sloppy, you’d end up with poor form on the weights, and you would probably start trying to get away with sloppy crunches. Short duration bursts allow you to perform with intensity and also recover for another set. One of my favorite quotes from her 30 Day Shred DVD is:
“If you want results from a 20 minute workout, you can’t rest. This will save you hours of phoning it in at the gym.”
So that’s what a 30 Day Shred workout looks like. Here’s what the equivalent can look like in dog training.
Your Dog’s Station – Off Duty and On Break
As soon as you arrive in class, prior to actually beginning work, put your dog at their station. This can be their crate, or their mat (hence the need for a fluent Go to Mat behavior with a stay). When the dog is stationed, this is when you can think, plan, refill on treats, take notes, or listen to or talk to the instructor. You can borrow a mat from the school, or bring your own (this is best, since it’ll be a constant no matter what training environment you go to). Reinforce your dog randomly for holding a down-stay at their station.
Ready to Train? Wait Just a Minute!
Before you release your dog… make sure you can answer these questions:
What is the behavior I am training?
What is the criteria for which the dog will earn a click/treat?
What is the shaping plan? (What are the additional steps of criteria beyond the first level of criteria?)
Where will I keep the reinforcers (treats, toys, etc.)?
Where will I place the reinforcement?
What could do wrong?
What will I do if everything goes horribly wrong?
What will I do if the dog advances their behavior to higher levels of criteria quickly?
What will I do if I forget what I am doing?
There are a lot of different answers to all these questions (and there are probably more questions!). The point of this exercise is to at least have a training plan ready in your head, even if the whole exercise goes horribly wrong (#6). The possible answers to #7 and #9 are a) Keep working anyways or b) Send the dog back to their station.
Hit It!
Pre-count the # of treats you will use in a session so that you don’t run the risk of training for too long. In general, I try to make each session last about one minute in length. This is because a training session should be short enough that the handler can remember the entire training session.
Three more, two more, last one… When you’re down to your last treat, send the dog back to their station. You can use the last treat as a reinforcer for going to station.
Dog at Station – Time to Think and Plan
Now that your dog is back at station, you can take a moment to review the training session you just completed. What went well? Was the rate of reinforcement high enough? Is it time to increase criteria for the next training session? Or, if it went poorly, what went wrong, and how can you lower criteria to increase the rate of reinforcement?
This is a great time to take notes, record data in a notebook, get more treats ready, and reset the training environment if required (obstacles, props, etc.)
Some Other Notes:
Putting the dog at a station builds anticipation, which can increase the motivation and enthusiasm of the dog once they are released. This can build some speed in your behaviors.
Staying at station is training in itself. If the dog breaks station, send them back and make them hold it until released. This is a stay exercise and letting the dog break station and then proceeding to train them will cause your stay behavior to deteriorate.
If the instructor comes to talk to you and you are in the middle of a training session, send the dog to their station before engaging with them. It’s OK to be rude to the instructor and ignore them for a few seconds while you wrap up.
If the instructor starts lecturing, also send the dog to their station so you can give your undivided attention to the instructor while giving your dog a break.
You can also station your dog while waiting for class to begin – if you’re early for class, put down your mat and have them stay on it while waiting for class to begin.
Hope you enjoyed the post! On a side note, making this video was helpful for me as well. I spotted a bunch of sloppy training errors I made and I’ve broken them down and will be working on improving my own training skills as a result. If you watch my video and can see errors I’ve made, comment below!
This post is all about preparing for class to maximize the efficiency, effectiveness, and intensity of your training. As an instructor, it is clear to see which students come fully prepared for class, and in general, those that are well prepared do better both in class, and overall.
Since I am a dog trainer by profession, I may take preparation to a level that is beyond that of an average family dog owner, and I know there are people who are more disciplined than I am, but certainly everyone could make minor improvements in their preparation.
Prepare The Day Before Class
Exercise, exercise, exercise the dog – not to the point of exhaustion, but so they can sleep well that night.
Ensure the dog has a lot of uninterrupted sleep – having a house party that goes on till late at night will keep your dog from resting well.
Avoid stressful events (i.e. grooming, vet exam, being taken to somewhere new).
Avoid excessive feeding the day before so they are hungry on the day of training class.
Make sure you have high value treats ready for class. I keep ample tubes of Rollover and Natural Balance around the house.
Prepare The Day of Class
Prepare multiple types of treats, freshly cut, and separated into zip loc bags. All of them should be of fairly high value, but of course, some more than others. Currently I am bringing one bag of Turkey Rollover, and one bag of Salmon Rollover.
Prepare all equipment needed for class. Clicker, target stick, mat, tug toy, treat pouch loaded with some treats, extra treats in ziploc bags, etc. The mat is very important (to be covered in the next blog post in this series)
Avoid excessive exercise for the dog that day. Too much, and the dog will be too tired to work.
I do not feed my dogs any food until class starts. That may mean the first food of the day is in the evening. They’ll live.
I block off the two hours preceding a class, so that I can relax and not feel rushed.
300 Reinforcers
Bagged and Ready
If we are to demand 100% of our dog’s attention during class, they deserve 100% of ours.
Prepare for Leaving Home for Class:
At home – walk the dog to allow them to fully eliminate and burn off a little energy before leaving. My dogs are older, so they don’t need to burn off steam prior to class.
Arrival time: I aim to arrive at the front door of the school 10 minutes before class. Too early, and the dog can get impatient waiting for class to start. Too late, and you won’t have enough time to walk the grounds to let the dog eliminate one more time. I would err on the side of arriving early vs. late.
Training starts as soon as I get to the car. Going into the car is a HUGE reinforcer, so the dog must hold a sit before being cued to hop in the car. My clicker is on me, my pouch is on me, and I am ready to click/treat from this point moving forward.
During the drive there, I reinforce calm behaviors. Every time the dog lays down and relaxes, I click, then treat.
When we arrive at the school, training continues. The dog must offer a sit and hold sit as I open the door – and release the dog. At this point, the dog gets 100% of my focus. Phone is off, no idle conversations with anyone – I am here to pay attention to my dog.
This is what I do to prepare so that both Petey and I arrive to school focused, energized, and ready to work. The opposite looks like:
Coming to school late – the dog is anxious because the handler is anxious about being late, and often is rushed from the car to the school without having a chance to eliminate. Dogs have had accidents minutes after arriving to school because of this, which further stresses both the dog and handler. The handler also misses out on instruction so the next 10 minutes of class is also a writeoff.
Not having treats cut and prepared – the dog is left in limbo while the handler has to spend 5 minutes cutting treats – that is 10% of the class wasted, and the dog’s mind is allowed to wander.
Not having enough treats – the dog is left in limbo as the handler has to somehow get some treats (take from the school, or buy from the retail store in front). The dog gets to practice disconnecting from the handler, again.
Equipment buried deep in a bag, not readily available. The dog’s good behavior during the leadup to class (sitting, eye contact, waiting at a boundary, etc.) go unreinforced, so the dog just pulls around and sniffs aimlessly entering class. Training MUST begin the minute the dog is released from the car and the dog should not be allowed to do his own thing until after class ends.
Not exercising the dog enough (in particular, the day before) – the dog is hyperactive and can’t focus in class.
What’s the Point of All This?
The point of all this is to make all the details and particulars around getting to and functioning in class easy, so that 100% of your attention is available for the dog. Clicker training is hard enough as it is! I often tell students in my classes – If we are to demand 100% of our dog’s attention during class, they deserve 100% of ours. With that foundation in place, we can eliminate opportunities for a dog to be left in limbo, drift off, get distracted, and lose focus. In the next post in this series, I’ll talk about how I work inside the classroom to maintain a very high level of intensity and focus from the dog.
After nearly a year hiatus, I’m taking dog training classes again as a student with Petey. Renee at All About Dogs is offering daytime agility classes, so finally, I was able to sign up and enroll in classes that didn’t conflict with when I teach in the evenings. Because of this, I’m inspired to start a short blog series on my experience as a dog training student in a mainstream dog training class, and share my approach to maximizing my dog’s ability to learn and perform.
The Story Begins a Year Ago:
Petey’s story with agility class actually starts a year ago, when I originally enrolled him for classes. After his rescue and transfer to our home (as a foster dog), he had completed a basic obedience class at Who’s Walking Who (where he was awarded the “Top Dog” award; I didn’t mention that I was a professional dog trainer – I just needed a place to train him around other dogs), and he was my Karen Pryor Academy dog. I imagined him taking agility classes, being focused and motivated (as he had been up till this point), and having him flying through weaves and tunnels in no time.
On the night of his first original class a year ago, we were early and settled into class. Renee had the dogs in class lay down on mats and work on stay exercises. Everything was going grand until after ten minutes into class, a late arrival entered through the doors. The late arrival was an adolescent male (intact I think) Portuguese Water Dog. For some reason, Petey was fixated on him and extremely frustrated by his arrival. He was desperate to go check out the dog, but of course, as class had started, dogs could not meet (like they originally had in the waiting area).
Quickly, Petey’s arousal levels increased to the point where he would no longer take food. He was visibly stressed and began howling and lunging, and if I recall correctly, he began air biting in frustration. In despair, I ran out of the classroom to give Petey some fresh air (not even having time to put my shoes on) and was outside in the rain in my socks. Coincidentally, I ran into Julie who had arrived early for the next class with her dog, Delilah. When she asked how I was doing, embarrassingly, I replied,
“Umm… I’ve been better. Petey is having a meltdown!”
After class one ended, I pulled Petey out of class immediately, and I’ve been at work ever since.
Lesson Learned: Wax On, Wax Off – Foundation Skills Are Everything. Without Them, You Have Nothing
At this time last year, Petey knew a ton of cool behaviors, like his jump in a box trick, lots of targeting behaviors, and we had even begun working on object discrimination exercises. He knew how to target post-it notes, sit pretty, jump over, through my arms and legs, and much more. Big deal! He was unable to focus in class as soon as a curly, black colored dog with testicles came into the room. Prior to this, in his limited experiences in different classroom settings, perhaps I had just been lucky that none of the dogs were black with curly hair, and were all neutered.
Over the last year, Petey has actually learned very few new behaviors. Other than hind-end awareness exercises, which I just did over the winter recently, I have only been working on a single behavior: Eye contact. This is the first exercise we work on in puppy class at When Hounds Fly. I spent a year on this single exercise with Petey, the dog that learned all the behaviors taught in the Karen Pryor Academy curriculum.
In class at When Hounds Fly, I make my students do a ton of eye contact exercises. It is boring and repetitive, but it is important. Focus and attention work is the “Wax On, Wax Off” exercise of dog training. If you struggle to get your dog’s attention in class, or in other environments where your dog must perform reliably, it is absolutely critical to get that focus first before you even begin teaching any other behavior.
In Karate Kid, Daniel had to do four exercises before his karate training began. They were:
Wash a parking lot of cars and wax them.
Sand a huge wood deck.
Catch flies with chopsticks.
Paint a fence only using his wrists.
Over the last year, here are some of the eye contact exercises I have been working with Petey on:
Long duration eye contact (1 minute+ duration built up)
“Look at that” exercise with every single dog he has seen while on leash in a year (average of 6 dogs per day, which means over 2100+ repetitions in the last year)
Zen, with food thrown right next to him, while holding position and reinforced for eye contact.
Remedial socialization at the dog park, using protocols from Jean Donaldson’s FIGHT!
Generalization – training on our walks, at multiple dog parks, on the street car, bus, and subway, at Pawsway, at pet supply stores, at the vet’s office, at When Hounds Fly (hence the purpose of Petey Needs Training classes last year) – everywhere, and anywhere.
Eye Contact at Pawsway
In case you didn’t watch Karate Kid, here’s Daniel doing his foundation skills work:
This time around, we were ready for classes again. It was a year of prep work. In preparation for our first class, we moved onto the next foundation skill Petey would need to succeed in class – a fluent Go to Mat behavior – retrained at the dog park, with dogs, children, and adults milling about.
Lesson Learned: Get Real! (Expectations)
Last year in puppy class at When Hounds Fly, a student just finishing puppy class asked me whether it was necessary for his dog to take our basic foundation skills class, since he had already taught his dog a stay, and the dog knew how to sit and lay down. He emphasized how smart his puppy was and how his puppy should be doing agility.
Meanwhile, his dog was straining at the end of his leash, desperately trying to go visit the other puppies in class, and was completely unresponsive to his handler’s calls. Absolutely no sign of cognitive dissonance – just the blinders that go on when you’re a proud puppy parent, I guess.
Agility is new to me, but I get the feeling that agility instructors must get a lot of phone calls and emails from proud puppy parents asking to allow their dog to enter their agility programs, even though their dogs have had absolutely no foundation training. Or, they take agility classes, but disregard the foundation exercises (zen, mat, hind end awareness, etc.) and believe their puppy should be doing weaves and a-frames on first class.
Walking around a wet parking lot in my socks was the best thing that could happen to me. That experience gave me the motivation to spend a year on a single behavior. I estimate I have reinforced Petey over 10,000 times for eye contact in the last year, if not more. It forced me to get real with my own expectations on how much foundation work must be done before one even begins actually training a dog for a specific purpose. For example, in Bertilsson/Vegh’s Agility Right From The Start, the first time any specific agility equipment is introduced in their book is on page 263 (of a 440 page book). Everything prior to that is foundation skills.
For giggles, and to develop a little sympathy for agility/rally/obedience instructors, check out this video of a “proud puppy parent” and an agility instructor:
“My dog is far too brilliant to be in a beginner’s foundation class! Let’s just put him on the equipment and let him figure it out himself. All I have to do is point at the equipment and he will do it.”
Next Post: Preparing for Class
In my next post, I’ll talk about how I prepare for classes to make the most out of every second I’m there. And.. in case you’re wondering, Petey did great when he finally made his return to All About Dogs last week. And, very appropriately, the dog that was next to him in class was another black, curly furred Portuguese Water Dog, that Petey couldn’t care less about.
Session 1: Efficient Training in Action (Cecilie Køste)
This lab really focused on smart reinforcement placement. BUT, another key aspect of good training is everything that happens before you start training.
Her mantra is THINK – PLAN – DO. Thinking is “What is the behavior to be trained?” Plan is “What is the training plan, what is my criteria, where will reinforcement be delivered, what could go wrong, and what will I do?” When you are training… no thinking, no planning. That must occur before training begins. If the training session is falling apart, you must stop, put your dog at station, and go back to thinking and planning.
Cecilie coaching a student
The exercises in this lab were:
Cup Game (Clicker Mechanics)
She had all the students warm up with a basic clicker trainer exercise – the cup game. How many treats can you put into a styrofoam cup while maintaining perfect form (feeding hand is still till click, no extra movements of the body, no speaking). I haven’t done this myself since my first KPA workshop over a year and a half ago.
Go to Target
This is the simple “Go to Cone” game we even do at Puppy Class at When Hounds Fly. The best way to use reinforcement here is to click, deliver the treat to the dog’s mouth, let them nibble it while you lure their body/head back towards the cone. When the dog has finished eating and is released, the cone is now right in their face for another repetition. Brilliant!
Beagle playing "Go to Dish"
Finish Position
All the dogs here had finish positions already trained, ranging from kind of wide and sloppy requiring a big hand cue, to verbal only finish cues, to really snazzy jump, rotate mid air, and land in finish Obedience finishes. Efficient training means when you click and treat, let the dog nibble on the treat while the handler moves around and faces the dog in Front position, tucked really, really close (like Front). When the dog is finished nibbling, the dog is now ready to offer Finish again. Round and around you go…
This dog had a great "flying" finish. The handler is about to treat and will allow the dog to nibble while she moves to Front position, setting up for another rep.
One tip that was mentioned about any of these obedience behaviors is the dog should get it right and perfect on the first repetition – otherwise you have a dog that learns to do a sloppy finish, then wiggle their butt in to get closer, c/t. Oops… Petey has that. Michele Pouliot calls this a “two part finish”.
Long Down - Feed in position (room service) – bring the treat to the dog to reinforce position.
Sit - Feed above head for a more tucked sit.
Stand - Feed towards chest
Reverse Lure – While a dog is in position, tease the dog with food in your hand, almost like you are trying to lure them into another position. If the dog maintains position, c/t.
“Many Downs” – How many downs can you get in a minute? C/T and toss the food to reset quickly, or after a down, handler moves away to get the dog up, so you can cue another down.
Rollover - Feed over the shoulder to encourage more rolling.
Hold Cloth – Shaping a hold of a hotel towel.
A common theme throughout the sessions I have taken – everything you do in training should be a conscious decision, and certainly I have learned to be very conscious about where I reinforce and why.
Session 2: Crosstrain! (Michele Pouliot)
This seminar should just have been renamed “Platform Training”. Platform training is relatively new. Michele had a DVD for sale at ClickerExpo that was flying off the shelves and kept on teasing me since it was played on a monitor in the hallway.
Platforms are so new in training that there are next to no videos on it on YouTube. I just found a handful… this one is the use of platforms to teach position/distance for Obedience:
The use of props in training is not new. We’ve used walls/edges to limit a dog’s option when trying to train a straight heel or a straight finish. We’ve used mats for position. Many are now teaching heel/finish using perches (or paint cans in my case for Petey). Platforms make it easy for dogs to delineate space. It makes it easy for us to understand criteria, since if the dog is on the platform, and it’s the right size, by definition, the dog is straight, and in the right position. Michele showed clips from her new video that shows platforms being used to train front, finish, weaves, go outs, tight spins, stay, and response from a distance work (like paw from a distance, while perched on a platform).
I intend to teach the 18 basic behaviors from Cecilie’s Top OTCh lecture on Day 1 to Petey again, but this time using platforms. I’m going to build my own platforms using leftover flooring from When Hounds Fly.
Lastly, she talked about other useful tools for training such as chutes, ledges, walls, x-pens, etc. to train behaviors. I was delighted to see all this, because Julie is doing the same stuff with our students in our tricks class right now. I love it whenever the methods we use at When Hounds Fly are validated by the world’s top clicker trainers.
Also, check out her “Step Up to Platform Training” DVD here. She starts training her litter of puppies at 4.5 weeks old. Wow!
Kay Laurence is “one of the world’s top clicker trainers” according to Karen Pryor. All weekend long, people were raving about her lectures so I decided to catch her on the very last track and session for the conference. I am glad I did! This topic was appropriately “light” in technicality but brilliant in terms of expanding my horizons of training. Specifically, Kay has very ingenious ways to incorporate playing with your dog as training.
Through play, we can teach dogs self control, body awareness, and movements such as backing up, side stepping, etc., all of which are needed for many different dog sports.
One important thing to think about (which I often don’t) is the safety of the game. She is adamant that dogs should never run around on laminate flooring, as it’s an easy way for them to pull a muscle, or worse. I guess it’s true -try running around laminate flooring in your socks and see how long it takes to pull a muscle. Her training facility is CARPETED and ripped up and replaced regularly.
She has a pretty large library of videos on YouTube so I’ll just share these videos for you to watch and enjoy. Have fun playing with your dogs!!!
Games with a Sausage (Catch the Mouse)
Egg Agility
Lastly, I thought I would share a few things from the Saturday (Day 2) evening dinner featuring Patricia McConnell. She lectured on the topic of animal cognition and how much animals think. I didn’t really take notes but she shared various research on different examples of studies done and also cited Ken Ramirez’s (Shedd Aquarium) work on teaching dogs to understand concepts like Big vs. Small, Mimicry, and of course dogs like Rico and Chaser (object recognition with both noun and verb). She showed some footage that I’ve found on YouTube for you to check out. They’re interesting and fun.
She also shared a few other recent studies about dogs understanding our pointing gestures better than chimpanzees, and also a study that showed domestication does not necessarily mean a dog’s problem solving ability is reduced (which is commonly believed to be true). Anyways I’m not really a scientist so I’ll just ask Krista (from UWO) next time I see her.
Julie, Mirkka, Emily and I had to leave at 4 to catch our flight home, so we missed the closing remarks by Karen and Patricia. Evidentally it was so moving there were 400 dog trainers in tears at the end. Oh well, next year I’ll plan to stick around! In the meantime, I have hundreds of slides and notes to review. Hope you enjoyed the blog series!
I’m exhausted! I feel like I’m back in school… also feeling a bit inadequate, but also really fired up about enhancing my own training skills as soon as I get back home. Cecilie said during her lecture today “You could shape that way forever and be perfectly fine, but doing it this way will make your training more efficient.” Who doesn’t want to be more efficient? So here’s a summary of what I did and what I learned.
Session 1: Shaping Procedures for the Agility Trainer (Eva Bertilsson and Emelie Johnson Vegh)
I’m not an agility trainer and I don’t know the first thing about agility. This is exactly why I took their track.
Eva Bertilsson and Emelie Johnson Vegh
The most important concept they shared today is the concept that shaping is not just Behavior, Click, Reward, repeat. There is a TON of behavior that occurs between the taking of the reward and the next cue. What happens here MATTERS. If you don’t pay attention to what occurs after the dog eats their treat and the next behavior, you end up building a lot of “garbage behaviors” in your training.
A perfect example I have from my own training is with Petey. He often throws in extra behaviors between reps – a common one I see is he spins clockwise between behaviors. Another common example I see with many dogs is during a Watch Me exercise – after the dog eats their treat, they often start scanning the room and looking at other dogs.
In both cases, the eating of the treat has become a cue to do an extra behavior. If we are trying to build focus in the Watch Me, and you continue to allow your dog to eat, then scan, then cue Watch me, then click, eat, and scan, you are actually reinforcing scanning/looking away.
Good training eliminates the garbage that happens between repetitions. You can manipulate the environment to prevent those extra behaviors, change criteria/increase rate of reinforcement, or work on reinforcement delivery (position) to prevent garbage behaviors from occuring.
Garbage behaviors are also contextual. In obedience, a great behavior to get after eating a treat is for the dog to look back at the handler, since we are trying to build extreme focus on the handler. But in agility, we are trying to have the dog continue along the intended path of the course (criteria would be nose ahead towards line).
Session 2: Shaping Procedures for the Agility Trainer in Action
This was my first Learning Lab for ClickerExpo. Since I am without a dog, I attended as an observer.
The primary exercises for the dogs in this lab was to implement the “Aim for It” procedure – which in a nutshell, is nose ahead towards intended path. These exercises were fantastic, however, what really blew my mind was the exercises that preceeded Aim for It.
Eva and Emelie actually spent a good thirty minutes simply working on the protocols that lead UP to beginning training. This is what happens before you start training with your dog. It is clear that what happens in between training sessions is key to making each training session impactful, an also getting maximum intensity and the right attitude out of the dog.
Training starts with a dog at their “Station”. The station can be a mat or a crate. When a dog is at their station, the dog is off-duty and the handler is free to think, plan, and prepare. Once the trainer is ready, the dog is moved from their station to their work area through a “Transport”.
Transport, as they define it, is not just walking the dog casually on leash (or off) to their working area. When transporting a dog, they assert that the handler must be fully engaged and contacting their dog at all times. That can mean dog is being lured/lead with food from your hand (and making full contact/munching away), lead with a collar grab, or lead via a tug toy.
As soon as the trainer disengages with your dog (food hand is taken away, hand goes off collar, or toy is taken away), training starts, and you c/t the first behavior that meets criteria (for Aim for It, it’s nose ahead). Once the trainer is done the session, he immediately go back to transporting (by using your last food reward as a lure back to the station, or tugging back, or collar grabbing and leading back).
This protocol takes “pay attention to your dog” to a whole new level for me and I feel quite guilty for leaving my dogs “dangling” after the end of a training session now.
Session 3: Efficient Training – Making Progress Quickly (Cecilie Køste)
This session had a lot of parallels to Eva and Emelie’s. A lot of it covered basic good training form (no talking while training, hands by the side (not in the bait bag), etc. She also spent a lot of time sharing videos of her colleagues training, and they do also have very regimented stations – the dog was sent to his crate whenever the trainer needed a break, or time to setup the training environment (moving props, reloading treats, packing tug toys, etc.)
The biggest takeaway I got from her presentation was placement of reward. As I mentioned earlier, up to this point I have been pretty relaxed about treat placement. Primarily, I used treat placement as a way to reset the dog to maximize the # of behavior repetitions in a training session (i.e. click for watch, toss treat for to floor to reset, or click for down, toss treat to side to reset, or click for mat, toss treat away so the dog has to travel back to the mat). She summarized the four different strategies for treat placement as follows:
Reinforce in position (treat in down for down stay – room service as she calls it)
Reinforce to reset position (to expedite the next repetition)
Reinforce for Direction Sliding (treat ahead of the dog away from you in heel to counter-act the tendency for a dog to become banana shaped in heeling)
Reinforce to next behavior in behavior chain (toss toy over jump, if final behavior in chain is a jump
Session 4: Click to Calm Unleashed with Emma Parsons
Last lab of the day – I was an observer in Emma Parsons’ Click to Calm Unleashed lab. She ran the lab walking through the different exercises she teaches in her Click to Calm class for reactive dogs. What’s amazing about them is they don’t actually require a ton of space, and one thing that was really surprising is how hard she pushes her students… making trainers with their space sensitive dogs work in extremely close proximity by being strategic and careful about entrances, exits, and maintaining high rate of reinforcements (or sometimes just shoveling food into the dog’s mouth). With more research and planning hopefully I can incorporate some of these exercises for classes at When Hounds Fly.
Car Crash
Parallel Racing
Off Switch Games
The evening ended off with dinner with a lecture by Patricia McConnell – I’ll write more about that tomorrow.
Just on break between my last session and dinner so I thought I’d blog a bit about Day 1 lectures and workshops!
Session 1: Ken Ramirez, Aggression: Treatment and Context
This presentation categorized and summarized many of the aggression treatment protocols commonly in use in science-based training. Classical Counter-Conditioning, Constructional Aggression Treatment, Incompatible Behaviors (Watch me), Look at That, Click to Calm, etc. were all covered quickly, and Ken presented his opinions, pros, and cons of each. Most of the content of this presentation was review for me (since dog aggression is an area I spend a lot of time studying and working on in the field), however, here are a few interesting points I picked up:
Ramirez asserts that training Incompatible Behaviors (Watch-Me) is an excellent tool to prevent the rehearsal of aggression and to keep animals safe. However, he clearly states that these approaches do not solve the aggression problem by itself. This is something I figured out by accident, which is why I incorporate Behavior Adjustment Training now in the treatment of dog reactivity.
Ramirez showed a video of Kellie Snider in a CAT exercise with a Doberman that is aggressive to strangers that visit their home and has a bite history. The video showed clips of a 38 minute protocol where initially, the dog would bark and lunge at the sight of Kellie (over threshold), but only at the precise moment the Doberman relaxed would she leave. If the dog barked as she was leaving, she would return. After 50 repetitions (roughly), she was able to greet the dog and feed the dog treats, and shortly thereafter she was able to pet the dog on the head. The video itself was quite amazing in that a) she is incredibly brave – the dog was unmuzzled, has a bite history, and was only restrained on leash and being held by a pre-teen boy and b) this dog had never allowed a stranger to come into their home in many years.
Ramirez did not discuss BAT (Behavior Adjustment Training) as he is not familiar enough with it at this time. A bit disappointing, since it is my favorite protocol for reactivity now.
Session 2: Michele Pouliot – Anticipation is Making Me Great!
Michele is a world champion canine freestyle competitor – which is exactly why I took this track (I know very little about Canine Freestyle). The topic of this presentation was how to use a dog’s anticipation to your advantage as a training tool.
If you have ever had a dog anticipate your cue and break a start line stay, or impatiently begin offering behaviors prior to the cue, here are some takeaways (Petey is a chronic jump-the-gun dog, and I’m delighted that she frames this “problem” into an advantage)
Anticipation when harnessed creates energetic and immediate (low latency) behavior
Most errors of dogs starting before cued are handler errors – extraneous cues the handler gives unconsciously – video taping yourself is the best way to troubleshoot this
Never correct (even mildly) a dog that anticipates and starts before the cue – you will kill their enthusiasm
Create a “Start-Ready” dog by creating a cue that tells the dog “the first cue is coming” so they know to get energized, focus, and wait for the first “real” cue
Use a “wait” cue and reinforce it either with a primary reinforcer (c/t) or cueing the actual behavior.
Session 3: Cecilie Køste – Top OTCh Skills for Top Obedience
Cecilie is world class competitive obedience trainer from Norway. This is another area I really don’t know much about, so I was thrilled to have a chance to hear her present in person (tomorrow I am attending a hands on workshop with her on the same topic).
A key concept in their training method is to teach a set of 18 “basic skills” that have no cues, then assemble them finished behaviors fluent with very high criteria, then backchain them into performance behaviors, and then assemble routines through backchaining. The analogy she used is “Letters to Words to Sentences”.
Since I’m working on getting Petey ready for Rally-O Trials, I’ll blog more about this separately but here are a few neat points I wanted to share tonight:
They are BIG on Doggy-Zen proofing. All behaviors in the basic set must be performed with food scattered on the floor or in bowls – once the dog has performed the behavior, a release cue is given to go to the food (or toy)
A new term… “reverse luring” – where lures are presented and the dog must ignore the lure and maintain position (a variation of doggy-zen)
No cues are given to basic behaviors – so each session is compartmentalized to focus on one of the 18 basic behaviors. How does the dog know which behavior is being worked on? The dog offers all 18 and you just c/t the one you are working on in a session.
Two videos that were quite impressive was a dumbell hold while hot dogs were placed on the dumbell, and a dumbell retrieve where the dumbell is thrown right next to a bowl of food (zen to the nth degree!)
Time for dinner! Stay tuned for Day Two tomorrow. Comment below if you have questions!
