I meant to wait til the end of the day to post since I'll probably do at least one more session, but I suppose I'll just edit if I want to remark about later training. :) Today was my first day training for blog content (lol), and I'm pretty excited to post about it so I guess the blog thing is working so far!
I'm currently reading The Power of Positive Dog Training by Pat Miller. It has a sort of blueprint/game plan for 6 weeks of training, so I thought it would be a good way to give myself structure for at least that long without being in an obedience class. Week one is fairly simple for us, but since today was only Avery's 2nd experience using an actual clicker (rather than a "yes!"), I think simple activities that she knows the basics of will help us transition a little. Since they're basic commands that are necessary for many levels and types of canine competition, extra practice and finesse is only going to be a good thing. Week 1 consists of: charging the clicker, name = attention, sit, down, puppy push-ups, stand, and the bonus game: spin/twirl.
Charging the Clicker: Done. We did this a few days ago and it took very little time for Avery to "get it." Clicker = awesome to her.
Name = Attention: Done. She's known this since 11/12 weeks and also knows a formal "watch" command, so I skipped this. She needs work in distracting situations, however, as at the UKC show we went to, she ignored me almost completely, but as far as being indoors at home, we're done.
Sit: Mostly done. She knows sit based on voice alone with no lure or hand motions, but she doesn't understand sit from positions other than a stand (aka from the down). I need to get her to generalize the "sit" to mean a position and not a movement, so sit doesn't mean "I'm standing and then I move my butt to the ground" but rather "My butt needs to be on the ground when I hear this," haha.
Down: This was the weakest part of this week's training before starting. She knew down from a stand (fold) and from a sit with the lure, but before today I've failed at getting her to react to the voice cue at all, in any situation. It will still need a lot of work, but we made a major breakthrough! I decided she wasn't thinking independently enough and was just waiting for me to lure without trying to connect anything, so I had to make her figure it out on her own. I started over on the down and captured it rather than lured it, and within 5 minutes she was laying down from a stand or sit on voice command only. I will need to work on this a lot more, if only because I think part of her success was just that she figured out that down was the name of the game today and may not actually understand that the word I said means down even when we're not solely working on it. Very excited about this one!
Puppy Push-Ups: Will be done when I finish training the above 2. We worked on this some today, but when in the down, she needs a small lure to go back up into a sit. I may try capturing the sit rather than luring later, too, and just wait for her to come back up after the down.
Stand: She's also really good at this with the lure and knows to stay standing just on voice if she's already standing (otherwise she usually tries to sit when she sees treats), but I'm also going to try to capture this so that she'll get it on voice command from other positions without the lure.
Spin: We haven't worked on this at all yet, I think we'll wait til last to do this after I get the actual obedience commands more solid. Jade knew this one well and learned it in a day, so since Avery seems quicker about picking things up in general, I don't think it will be too difficult for her. I'm not going to shape this because I'm lazy and I think Avery will get discouraged, so as of now I'm just planning on luring it and then phasing out a lure, which has worked well for Jade (dobe) and Cleo (chow mix) in the past.
Overall impression for today: capturing/shaping is so much better than luring, lol. I definitely think luring has a place in training and will continue to use it, but for simple things that dogs do every day anyway, capturing is the way to go. :)
Part of the reason that shaping gets larger leaps of understanding is they're focused on the behavior they're offering vs. the treat in your hand. They're an active participant in the learning process instead of a passive one. Overall sounds like a great "first" session and good game plan. :)
ReplyDeleteSome dogs get concerned at the lack of feedback in shaping until they get the hang of it - you can help her out by breaking your criteria into tiny pieces (i.e. for spin you could reward an eye flick or ear twitch in the direction, then a slight head turn, etc., vs. just waiting for her to actually move in that direction.) It might be faster to train with luring, but it also may be a nice low-stress behavior (since it doesn't matter later on) for you both to get some more experience shaping. It's one of the great things about training tricks - you're not as worried about the outcome since the end result doesn't really matter, and you can focus on the process. :)