Archive for month: January, 2010

groundWORK

this entry has 5 Comments/ in Uncategorized / by Nancy Gyes

January 30, 2010

Why is it that training with tables and crates are games and running with my dog on the flat without obstacles is called ground WORK? Why is all the fun stuff called tricks, and the running training called work? Why do I postpone putting on my running shoes and getting out there doing groundWORK when I could play more games and tricks. It’s cuz it makes me sweat and run harder and faster than I want to. And not nearly as fun and easy as standing around shaping stuff. Maybe I am feeling my age and level of current fitness, ahem. The catch 22 of course is if I keep doing it I will be in shape and then it won’t BE work, it will just be called that.

Don’t get me totally wrong, we do have fun running lines and circles once we get out and do it. Possibly Scoop is having more fun than his handler though. The sun is still shining, guess I have time for more WORK today. I know the value of this training, without it Scoop and I won’t be as good a team as we could be. That threat along with the knowledge that I won’t let myself do lots of really fun jump training before it is perfected, keeps me on track.

So, after our groundWORK session today Scoop and I were rewarded with getting to do some tunnel and table games. I decided to teach Scoop a tunnel this week. Some years ago I decided that I would delay teaching that obstacle until my dogs were older so I didn’t create a tunnel maniac. But it hasn’t exactly worked out the way I planned.

14 year old Riot learned tunnels at 8 weeks, and I let her do lots and lots of them before she was a year old. She liked them just fine but her favorite off course draw was the weaves. Panic was taught at maybe a year old, didn’t do them to abandon, but is a non-recovering tunnel addict. Ace learned at Scoop’s current age, and I had to work really hard to get him to drive with speed to and from the tunnels. I now think it is more about the dog’s mentality and what he finds fun, as well as making sure that I train the tunnel properly once I start.

I started by holding Scoop by the collar and throwing a toy through the open barrel of a chute without the fabric. Then I just stood around by the barrel saying yes when he entered and then toy tossing. (tunnel GAMES) I named it tunnel and went to the next step. Sometimes I held his collar and then released him with tunnel. We also trained sit stays right at the entrance and I released him from the stay and then gave the tunnel cue.

From there we went to a slightly longer straight tunnel, then one with a curve, and then the dreaded rear cross behind him going into the tunnel. For the rear cross I went back to the open barrel. There are two parts of the rear cross I was training.

1. I want him to go forward to the tunnel even though he saw me cross behind

2. I want him to turn the correct direction out of the tunnel.

I sent him into the barrel, then quickly stepped behind him, and tossed the toy to him if he picked up the side change cue. I had to be quick, and he needed to see my rear cross if he was to turn the correct direction. I did just as many tunnels with a reward for him coming out and looking for me on the same side as I did rear crosses. I don’t want him to ask questions about his direction every time he goes into a tunnel.

If he sees me on his left side going in, he should expect to still be on my left side as he exits. He should not turn the new direction unless he sees me cross behind him.

Right now Scoop is reinforced at the end of every tunnel with a toy toss close to the end of the tunnel, or for returning to me. I won’t add any obstacles or forward momentum out of the tunnel for a while. That’s my new rule. I am hoping he will learn to find me and turn my direction fast and tight out of the tunnel with this kind of training. Sounds real good on paper. We will see if it works.

Scoop is almost 11 months old and real agility is just around the corner! I hope you are having as much fun training the work as well as the games with your puppy as I am with mine.

NJG

one thing leads to another

this entry has 1 Comment/ in contacts, Training, Uncategorized, When to train / by Nancy Gyes

January 25, 2010

It started with 5 border collies and a potential short walk round the field. How it ended was not how it was planned. It took lots longer than planned to get to the field because everyone has to wait for a release through all the gates, and we had a couple anxious dogs who did not want to wait for releases, so we trained gate behavior for a while. Finally into the field, and as long as we were there anyway, why not head down to the pond.

An hour later, 5 tired wet and muddy dogs needed to get dried off. Why not put them in the dog tub first, and get the mud off their legs, and as long as they were there, might as well, give em a full bath, and while they were getting dried on the grooming table why not do their nails. It is now time to feed dinner, so we might as well stay in the dog room and feed, then clean all the bowls, and fill up the weeks’ pill container for Panic and Riot’s pills and of course noticing we were low on a prescription it was into the office and call for a script refill.

This mornings training with Scoop felt the same way. How about a few minutes of target training in 2o2o on the little contact training box thingy in the living room. We started with nose touches to a target while he was in 2o2o on the box. Lots of cookie rewards and then a game of tug in between nose touches. Then on to nose touches with a release and toy throw, then a little bit of sloppiness on the target before the release to the toy and we are back to multiple nose touching for cookies in place on the box. I tried some tugging in 2o2o position as a reward for the touch and his back feet came off the box. A short session of reinforcing keep your back feet on the board while we tug, and then we went back to try to put it together.

All systems go til Scoop wouldn’t drop the tug toy on cue when I asked, so we had a session of tug/leave/click/treat/tug/leave/click/tug etc. If Scoop doesn’t relinquish the toy happily and quickly, using it as a reinforcer for the targeting isn’t going to be fun for either of us. Invariably training sessions go where they need to go. I have a starting plan, know what I am going to reinforce and how, but where the training leads me at times is not necessarily where I saw it going when we started. That’s ok. I don’t mind filling in the blanks, and taking a detour when something needs to be reinforced. At the end of training this morning my disc targeting behaviors were improved. So was Scoop’s understanding that he can keep his back feet on the board and still be able to tug, and the toy release got some needed reinforcement. I usually do that a few times a week anyway, I just didn’t plan on doing it this morning.

Now we had a fun training session that ended with Scoop asking for more and we can head to the field for a walk, and some gate training, or maybe to the swimming pool and maybe a quick brushing….

Thinking of swimming…. 55 degree water???

just a quick dip……

NJG

poisoned cues

this entry has 11 Comments/ in Fixing bad behavior, Recall, Release cue, Training, Uncategorized / by Nancy Gyes

January 23, 2010

It’s been raining for the past 6 days and I am tired of training in the house and sitting at my desk. Thank goodness we have a rain break today and we can get outside. I couldn’t think of any excuses for not getting all my office work done that I have been putting off, so that is what I have been doing all week. Scoop has had to make do with one wet walk in the rain each day, and playing at games here in the house. Jim and I have also watched a few movies; District 9 (interesting) and something else that must not have been too relevant as I can’t for the life of me remember what it was.

I also re-read Steven Pressman’s The War of Art, and I watched Dr. Jose Rosales-Ruiz’s dvd The Poisoned Cue. As yet the after effects from “war..” haven’t much been felt, since I still have unfinished writing projects this week, but I have a start since I am sitting here updating Scooby’s blog. If you have not read The War of Art, you should. My friend Sandy Rogers gave it to me, and I find if I read it once a year (should be two or three times) then my resistance to finishing projects diminishes greatly! It is such an easy read, and a joy to find the inspiration in his pages. Resistance to writing, or painting or saving the universe is futile for weeks after you finish this easy read.

Another inspiration this week was in watching Dr. Jesus Rosales-Ruiz Poisoned Cue video. Apparently Karen Pryor first coined the term, and I located her technical description of the poisoned cue on her website, but Jesus’s video was a lot more explanatory. Of course it is 2 hours and 44 minutes long, hers is just one page:) The poisoned cue is pretty much a description of what the term means. You take a perfectly well trained cue, and poison it using not very nice training methods like coercion or intentional or unintentional punishment, instead of positive reinforcement. You can poison a cue, like your dog’s name, or your recall command using punishment, and voila, your cue creates stress and displacement behaviors instead of a joyful responses to your cue. One newish negative buzz word Jesus discusses is command. I think that Karen and henceforth others, are saying that a command now has the connotation of a behavior which was taught not using positive reinforcement. I might argue that I can teach a command using positive reinforcement without poisoning the word command🙂 but anyway, we all know that cue is the new command, just like brown became the new black in clothing choice a few years ago. Whatever the terminology, mixing up the use of positive reinforcement with corrections in training can get you into big trouble.

It is possible to poison your cue, poison your training aids like leashes, or poison an environment. In our sport it is probably possibly to poison the entire competition agility ring. I know I have seen the start line, the bottom of the contact obstacles or weave poles poisoned many times. All you have to do is punish the dog for not staying in a 2o2o position at the same time you are trying to clicker train him to nose touch in the same spot, and voila! you can unknowingly poison the cue touch. Just saying the word touch could make your dog slow down, leap off the end, lick his lips, or head out to sniff the nearest bush. Correct your dog for coming out at the 10th pole, and in short order you can have a big weave problem getting your dog to go beyond pole 10. Punish the entry and your dog will stay as far away from weave entries as he possibly can. You have all seen the ‘exhaust circle” that some dogs do to avoid making an entry error. Poisoning can happen after just one correction, and poisoning can happen by accident. The dog who injures himself or gets frightened on a piece of equipement, can effectively poison the obstacle, and subsequently the training or show environment. You don’t need to beat your dog while training to get stuck in a poisoned quagmire, but the effects are the same.

Jesus’ video had some great demonstration of how cues are poisoned, and good ideas for getting out of some of the situations, like reshaping the behavior and totally changing your cue . What I really liked in the video is the method they used to train some simple behaviors using cues which were taught using positive reinforcement, to reinforce and teach other behaviors. The example was done to show the difference between a positively reinforced and a poisoned cue. One of his students demonstrated using a recall command cue to teach a new behavior. The principle being that any cue you have taught using r+ you could use entirely to teach another behavior. So I did my own little experiment with Scoop.

I decided to use his “break” (release from position) behavior to teach him to walk over to a chair and lie his head on the chair. The behavior and cue of Break would be used instead of a click. Scoop is normally rewarded for almost every response to break, so that fits the criteria that you can use a positively trained behavior, and henceforth the cue for that behavior, to reinforce another behavior. Scoop’s criteria for break is that when he hears the word he stops any behavior he is doing (like sitting) and comes to me and is rewarded with a game of tug or a treat.

This is how my Scoop experiment went. I have cookies and a clicker in my hand and am standing a few feet from a chair. Cookies and clicker in hand and me standing still are Scoop’s prompt for “game on let’s shape something”. He immediately offered to step towards the chair, I said break and when he turned to me I clicked and he got his cookie when he got to me. I was able to shape him going all the way to the chair one step at a time, and lying his head on the seat, in one short session. The skill of going to the chair was not difficult, but I really was surprised that rewarding him for break given at the same time that I would have clicked while shaping the behavior, would work that easy. Yeah, I saw it on the video, but till you do it yourself, it does not count:) The next day I tried using his name, another behavior which was taught with reward in a positive fashion, and I was able to quickly shape him to go to a wooden tub and put his head inside it. Again, it took just one session of a few minutes. I used his name at the same point that I would have clicked and it worked the same way. After I said his name as the replacement click, he came to me and I said yes and gave him a treat.

In the video they show a dog’s reponse to shaping behaviors using approximately the same methods as I described in my extremely shortened version, but at the same time they also showed how the dog responded to shaping behaviors with a recall cue which was taught with some coercion. The dog was recalled to the handler and if the response was not perfect, it was gently forced to come to the handler by pulling on it’s harness until the dog reached the handlers front, then the dog still received a click and treat after the punishment. This essentially “poisoned” that recall cue (turning it into a command). A totally different word was used for the cue for this forced recall to make it different from the positively trained recall cue, and make it obvious during the test when the command was used for shaping as opposed to the positively trained recall. Using the same methods described above using the cue to reinforce another behavior, they tried the same shaping experiment using the “poisoned cue behavior”. (no coercion was used while they shaped the new behavior) The results were obvious. Stress, some displacement behaviors while working, slow performance and an unhappy attitude were all easy to see in the dogs performance in the video. The dog did learn the skill through shaping using the negatively reinforced cue, but the difference in the performance of the behaviors was very evident.

I will definitely watch this video again, and I suspect I have not condensed and described it well enough to have you think you now know all there is to know about poisoned cues. The hostess on the video is Alexandra Kurland, and her commentary about horses while unnecessary for us dog trainers, does not interfere in any way with the interesting lecture and information that Dr. Rosales-Ruiz is sharing. You can find the video for sale on Kurland’s website, theclickercenter.com.

So you know this is not all I thought about or did today, here are some of the photos from our adventures on the ranch today. Every winter if we get enough rain (we did!) we get a big pond at the bottom of our property. The dogs love to play in the water. It is great exercise when they run through the 18 inch deep pond, I wish it would stay all year long. My photos aren’t as great at Marcy Mantell’s that I usually share with you, but they are the best I could do.

I hope it isn’t raining or snowing where you live but if it is, do some reading or watch the great Ruiz dvd to learn more about animal training.

Nancy

let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!

the pond

cute Scoop!

Panic in the front, then Ace and Scoop all stacked up

Having a run

Jim pruning

Rammy and the ewes watching it all

cuttin’ bait

this entry has 0 Comments/ in Uncategorized / by Nancy Gyes

January 3, 2010

After I wrote the title to this post I thought the word cuttin’ looked a bit funny, so I did what I do so many times a day when I am at my computer, I googled cuttin bait, not cutting bait. I got to read about a cool guy named Rodney who was a fisherman that died, and for some reason google led me to him. I may donate to his charity even though I haven’t a clue who he is. He seemed like a really great guy, and he fished and lots of people loved him. The charity is Take A Kid Fishing Foundation and since I have so many great memories of fishing with my Dad, maybe that is what I am supposed to do today. Sometimes I hate the internet, today I like it, and I always love google.

I really just wanted to write about the time it takes to cut up training cookies for Scoop. I never cut up more than I need for a short session. I like to cut some treats from leftover meat, or some chicken I cooked just for him , or I chop my little meatball bites in thirds. I use Deli Fresh Pet bites really often when I train. They are a healthy alternative to doggie junk food and if I don’t feed anything other than training treats all day, I know that my dog is getting a very healthy diet. http://www.delifreshpet.com/products/bites.htm

I like to train for a few minutes, maybe longer, then take a break, think about what we did, ask myself Bob Bailey’s famous post training question, Am I better off now than when I started? while I am cuttin’ bait. Then I go back to train again and hopefully the thought process was as productive as the treat cutting. Today I thought the answer was yes, so I proceeded to train some more. Somtimes I don’t feel like cuttin bait at all, and we just train with toys. After the treat session I played with Scoop till my back hurt tugging with him. Three steps heelwork, release to tug, 10 steps then tug, then down the hallway, with a left about turn at each doorway, and more tugging after we made it through to the living room in perfect heel position with eyes on me. Whew!

Long live resolutions! I did eveything today that I wanted to with Scoop during training. We had a really nice groundwork session running circles and straight lines and he was right there with me till he wasn’t:) He went a bit wide on the right side, (I am a left side obedience girl and I know I favor the left) so I did little side passes that I learned when I used to ride dressage with my horses. He tightened right up when I reminded him where he was supposd to be by marking him almost crashing into my right leg with his enthusiasm.

Over the top

Scoop got a bit o.t.t. when we were doing groundwork today. The mouth was open, (his not mine) and I know if I hadn’t shoved something in it (toy) when he was screaming that the moment would have deteriorated as I cried uncle don’t you dare bite me in your enthusiasm to do this heelwork I am the boss of you mister came out of my mouth, then the brain (mine not his) took over and I switched to treats and calmed down myself a bit while playing and as the play level dropped down a notch we were back on track to having fun but not so much fun that Scoop ate my leg.

This is the last day of my Christmas holiday, then it is back to work and travel. I don’t want to leave my dogs but someone has to pay for that expensive bait, and the internet connection, and the donation to the fishing kids organization.

Hope you had a great holiday and lots of fun training sessions with your pup, I know I did with mine!

NJG

training resolutions

this entry has 1 Comment/ in Uncategorized / by Nancy Gyes

January 2, 2010

It’s the second day of the new year and the new decade. I like the sound of twenty ten. Other than some global worries in 2009 along with the rest of the human population on earth, it was a good year. Scoop is almost 10 months old, and I am starting to get itchy to train real agility with him. I am only a couple months away from starting to teach weaves and contacts and I can’t wait to see what he looks like jumping big jumps. I think I have heard that it is out of fashion to make new years resolutions, but IF I was going to, I would resolve the following:

Decide how I am going to teach Scoop’s aframe and then get busy finishing up the training of any aids I need so that in a couple months I can get down to really putting it all together.
Proof my handling and motion drills on the flat so I am ready to apply the skills to real jumps. Do my motion drills every day that I am home, and put all my energy into them.
Teach a nose touch in 2020 position. Scoop already has a 2o2o behavior and I taught him to nose touch a plexiglass target. Now I am ready to teach him to nose touch the target while he is on a short board. I am going to work on this skill every day I am home, so that by the time he is a year old I will be ready to backchain it at the bottom of the dogwalk and teeter.
Work Scoop on stays and positions and playing around dogs and handlers when classes are going on here at power paws every day that we have clients here on the property. He still really wants to visit with everyone, and I am happy he is friendly and outgoing, but when he is at the end of the leash working with me, I would like his undivided attention.

This is what Scoop and I worked on today…. prior to the non-new years resolutions:)

Distance stands and sits.

I placed Scoop in a stand, moved away from him a variety of distances in the living room, then asked him to sit. I want him to sit (or down or stand) wherever he hears the command, and not move forward out of the position he is in. I got some really good fast sits and he did not step forward. I tossed the treat or toy to him as soon as he sat and said break at the same time so that he could jump out of position to get the reward. I also worked down to sit from a distance which I find much harder. I placed Scoop in a down, moved 3 to 10 feet away, a different distance each attempt, and then gave Scoop the cue to sit from the down position. It all worked well until I had a bit too much distance from him, then Scoop wanted to move towards me before he sat, and in a couple instances he did not take the sit cue at all. I will work on both of those this week with lots of reward. I think the ability to change positions, or take cues in place at a distance from me is important. It is the beginning of distance work, albeit stationary.

We did a refresher course this morning on sit, down, left,right, stand, close and side. All cues that are verbal only, no body language information. I cue a position, then reward, then cue another randomly, and then move on. It might go like this sit-c/t, down-c/t, stand-no c/t, close-c/t, down-c/t, left-no c/t, right-c/t, down- no c/t, sit, c/t etc, etc. Sometimes I reward each position, sometimes I skip a reinforcement or skip a few reinforcements. I do a session maybe a minute long, then play and start over or pick a position to add duration (sit, down or stand stay) or go into a heelwork routine up and down the hallway and around the living room.

Scoop occasionally has a glitch in remembering his left command and will offera totally different behavior or he slightly turns his head but does not move. I know I have pretty much ingnored the left and right cues the last couple months, use it or lose it is one answer for the issue. With a young dog that is learing lots of new skills, this is pretty normal, just a reminder to me to not forget to use all our skills at least once in a while.

My family

My dog and human family is mostly pretty healthy and I am happy that I have been home the last couple weeks of this holiday season to spend time with my husband and all our dogs. I thought I would share some updates and a photo of each of them at the begining of this new year.

Jim and I take a Christmas photo each year with our dogs. This year I decided that only our oldest dogs got to be in the photo. Riot and Swift, littermates, turned 14 in August and here we are with them in a photo taken in December 2009.

Marcy took this picture of Riot holding her namesake toy a couple years ago. It is my mostest favorite. My friend Nancy Louise Jones printed it for me in a 3 foot square image and it hangs centermost in my living room where I can stare at it daily. I had to have a small one too for my office so I can see her pretty much every minute I am in my house:) Riot is in her second year now of living with renal failure. She is on a special home cooked diet and gets sub-Q fluids, and has no visible effects of the disease. She still hikes the fields with me daily and while seeming to be mostly deaf as a doorknob, every once in a while she surprises me and turns around and comes to her sign song nickname of riribabydog. I decided there is one good reason to teach your dog that your smiling face and clapping hands means you are very happy with something your dog did for you. You can use it when they are old and must rely on your body language, hand signals, and reading your lips for cues to what you are feeling. Ever tried seeing if your dog reads lip? Mine do. I can mouth their commands without any vocalization and if I have direct eye contact they usually take the cue.

My second oldest border collie Wicked, will be 13 in February. She is a bit gimpy now and then but still playful and active and would knock you over if she thought she could get to the gate first to get to the field for her hike. She and Riot retired just a couple years ago after they received the Platinum USDAA award for 500 lifetime legs. That is Wicky catching air over the A frame.

Panic, my oldest boy dog, was 9 in November. He is sadly retired from agility because he started having epileptic seizures a few years ago. He has only had 8 seizures in his life because he is on some pretty potent medicine; but since he had 5 of those seizures while doing agility, I decided I could not risk his life and my sanity with the possibility of it ever happening again. He does a few tunnels here and there (his favorite obstacle) and demos a few low obstacles for a student once in a while, and he leads the pack on our walks. I cry sometimes thinking of the fun we had over the years competing together, and really really miss that aspect of our life together. It is all about the memories now and he and I enjoying his health and freedom from seizures; he has not had one for over a year.

Ace is 6 now and had a really nice competition year. We finished third at the European Open and third in the usdaa steeplechase finals and 4th in the Grand Prix and took home a handful of ribbons trophies and plaques from the event. He is fun to run, easy to train, and my only competition partner at the moment. This is a photo of Ace and I at the EO just after the awards ceremony. The event was great fun and getting to be on the podium was even better. Ace is a great training and traveling partner and I appreciate him more every day!

Happy New Year one and all, I hope you have set some training goals with your puppy and that you are looking forward to starting your competition career with your youngster, as much as I am with mine.

NJG

Archive for month: January, 2010

groundWORK

one thing leads to another

poisoned cues

cuttin’ bait

training resolutions

Fresh Posts

Posts by Month/Year

Categories

Latest tweets

Contact

Email

Newsletter