Titles Achieved to date...

Monumental A to Z High On Liberty
NW1, RATI, RATN, RATO, NW2, L1I, RATS, L1E, L1C, L1V, L2C, L2I, L2E, RATM, R-FE/N, PKD-TL, PKD-N, ADPL1, ADPL2, TD, UWP, ADPL3, NTD, TKN, L2V, ADPL4, SDS-N, ADPL5, ADPCH, ADP1(2), ADPL1(GC), ADPL2(2), ADPL2(GC), VPN, AP, UWPCH, ADPL3(2), ADPL3(GC), NC, NI, NE, SCN, SIN, SEN, CZ8B, NV, NN, ADPL4(2), ADPL4(GC), ADPGCH, ADPL5(2), RATCH, CZ8S, AI, TKI, AV, AE, AC, AN, R-FE/X NW3-V, NW3-E, SI, RN, R-FE/NS, CZ8G, SC, SV, SE, SN, SEA, SBN, SWN, SIA, SCA, ADP-1(Th), ADP-2(Th), ADP-3(Th), ADP-4(Th), ADP-5(Th), and ADP-CH(Th)... 81 and counting...

Saturday, September 24, 2011

The Project - Day 15 and Horses...

Our day started with a short training session at the arena (after a completely quiet ride over).  Gimme took a little longer than last time to get focused, but I'm sure that was because the two barn dogs kept hanging out by the arena gate.  On a positive note, even though she was frustrated by the gate keeping her from them, she didn't act as frustrated, so that shows some improvement. 

When we did get to work, she did nicely.  I decided to get started teaching her to rear cross.  I've taught her to spin away from me on both sides before and she'd done well with it stationary.  When I tried to do it with some movement today, well lets just say my hands took quite a beating.  She's always loved to be mouthy with me and is so good and gentle about it, that I've let her continue (especially since she isn't mouthy with others).  Something about the movement and the hand signal (like the hitchhiker thumb) I was using, she took as an invitation to jump up and play with my hands.  It took awhile to sort it out.  Once she was doing better, we added in a jump (bar on the ground still), approached at a slice and she did well.  For some reason, when we added the jump she stopped trying to get my hands.  I have no explanation for that change. 

Toward the end of the session I lost her attention and focus altogether.  I was pretty certain we had simply used up her baby brain.  I waited for her to choose to re-engage.  She tried a couple times and just couldn't pull it together.  Since she wasn't stressed, I waited some more.  The next time she came, we got through the simple exercise one more time and I jackpotted her with every treat I had.  She thought that was waaaay cool.

My plan for the day had been to go to the Shelton Kennel Club show, which is only 25 miles from here, and do some training and counter-conditioning there.  But, as I was headed to find the barn manager, one of the ladies who has just started as an agility student (lovely GSD) told me she was about to work her young horse in the round pen and I was welcome to bring Gimme over to train her near the pen.  That was an offer I couldn't pass up.

Gimme has only seen horses that were standing or walking.  Seeing one trot and canter was LOT for her to take in.  We basically stood there and watched and she got lots of peanut butter.  Her eyes were HUGE for most of the time.  At times she would leap away during the cantering approaches or bark and lunge toward the horse.  This told me I needed to adjust how close we were and when we were a bit farther away she was able to watch and suck peanut butter.

Then Anine came over and just stood there and petted Gimme and gave her treats, while her horse was right there too (through the fence).  We've been unable to convince Gimme that a horse snorting isn't a death threat and she barked back her, "you and who's Army" response.  I may have to get the horse snort on tape so I can get her used to it.  They just don't do it often enough, so if I had it looped on tape I could work with the sound a bit better to get her used to it. 

When she was standing there with her horse, Gimme went into this cycle of barking at the horse and so Anine was cuing her to sit and then would reward her with the treats I'd given her.  Very quickly the barking got worse.  In the past I would have called this I'll Be Bad So I Can Be Good And Get Rewarded syndrome.  I'll probably still call it that, but I realized very quickly that this was a perfect example of the flip side of tertiary reinforcement.  We stopped cuing the sit when Gimme was barking and quickly the barking went away.

Tertiary Reinforcement is when a cue for a known behavior acts as a reinforcement for whatever behavior came before it.  We are using this a lot in agility, where cuing the next jump reinforces completion of what came before.  It is the opportunity to continue on course and get closer to the reward at the end that makes the next cue reinforcing.  Likewise, what Ursula wanted me to get to is the point where I can have a series of multiple behaviors on cue and use them in much the same way where:
  • the reward for behavior one is the cue for behavior two
  • the reward for behavior two is the cue for behavior three
  • the reward for behavior three is the cue for behavior four
  • the reward for behavior four is the cue for behavior five
  • the reward for behavior five is click/treats
I did this a little in class and it was clear that Gimme thought it was a lot of fun; her eyes got very bright.

Anyway to continue, in the case of barking at the horse, cuing a sit was essentially rewarding the barking by giving her an opportunity to do something for which she would be rewarded.  Hence the name I'll Be Bad So I Can Be Good And Get Rewarded syndrome, and thus the barking behavior increased.  Once we waited out the barking and only cued the sit when she chose to be quiet, the barking rapidly went away.  That was such a cool example of tertiary reinforcement, as well as a perfect example of how people unintentionally reward undesirable behaviors.

After Gimme was completely calm with the horse just standing near by, Anine did some more trotting and cantering in the round pen and Gimme did a lot better.  We were able to be much closer and she didn't need the peanut butter, though she still got some.  So we made some good progress.  Which, by the way, Anine got training value with her young gelding who showed quite a bit of concern about the strange dog in the beginning.

Since that was a lot of mental/emotional work for Gimme, I decided not to go to Shelton.  We may go after church tomorrow.  After a few errands, we came home and goofed off for most of the day. 

In recent re-reading of some of my Project entries, I could see where I have sometimes repeated "learning something" related to one or another of the fruit behaviors.  So I copied the entries all into a word file and cleaned them up.  I'm reorganizing them under the individual behaviors, so I can quickly check the last couple of entries about training a particular behavior and know what I decided last time.  That's one of the things I have loved about blogging, is how it works for me as a training journal.  I am much more inclined to blather on endlessly about what we did to share Gimme with the world, than I ever would be to take notes in a private journal.

Melon - push cube with nose
We have not trained any of the fruits in 2.5 weeks, so I started today with Melon because its our weakest behavior of the five.  I sat on the floor and each time reset the cube on its smaller end.  I also was tossing the treats more, which gave me a moment to reset the cube and it also meant that Gimme did a bit less of the pushes while laying down.  We had at least 60 treats and one large chunk of freshly boiled chicken.  I've found Gimme finds it very, Very, VERY reinforcing to bite off a piece chicken.

She actually did very well.  I saw a lot less foot action and when we did see it, it always followed an accidental foot touch.  For instance, if she nose touched and I clicked and tossed the treat, if she happened to hit the cube with a foot when she dived after a treat most of the time she would come back and bat at it with her foot right away.  I figured out this pattern toward the end of our session, so didn't have time to deal with it, but next time I think when she accidentally hits it with her foot, I'll pick it up and pause so she sees me resetting it and see if that resets more than just the cube. 

When she did good nose pushes I gave her several treats tossed one at a time.  A few times I held out for multiple touches and when i got those, again she got several treats tossed one at a time.  Her best efforts were rewarded with nibbling the chicken.  At the very end, she did a very nice push tumbling the box more than a foot, so she got all the treats I had, one at a time, and then got to nibble the rest of the chicken out of my hand.  Hopefully that will be a big reinforcement that percolates in her little doggie mind. 

This has been our best session on Melon thus far.  And I have to add, the container I was fishing the treats out of was sitting next to me on the floor.  Gimme never tried to help herself... there's that great work ethic again.

Apple - back into a box, back feet only
Orange - get onto a small perch with all four feet
Grape - dead bug (on back, feet in the air)
Peach - head under a chair
Not trained today.

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