Since I am not going to be able to follow my plan in class (and there's only one more class between now and the trial), I realize I will have to work my plan on my own. Since what I'll do in class doesn't even support my plan, I think I have to work my plan a LOT so what I want becomes the stronger behavior. My goal is to practice three times a day.
Right now I'm introducing the boxes and its a challenge to say the least. I have a very small box I put odor in and then hold it in my hand. Gimme gets really excited to simply see a box, so she's prone to reverting back to scratching. I've discovered a couple of things about this stage of training.
I have the box with odor in one hand and treats in the other. This harkens back to something we learned a long time ago. The treat hand hovers nearby and the dog figures out to repeatedly nose-bump odor. Initially its really close, mere inches. Over time it moves farther away - a foot. Quickly the dog learns when they see a treat hand near and odor is present, it means you can get more treats if you continue to nose-bump the odor. My shaping has an added twist because I want Gimme's paw-hold close to odor while she repeatedly nose-bumps odor.
She figured it out very quickly when I first tried it with just an odor tin in my hand; initially I got great results. What I've discovered with the little odor box and odor is... the inclination to go to pawing is much stronger than the paw-hold behavior we've been training. So, I've learned I need to make sure my odor-box hand, treat hand and Gimme's nose form a triangle, instead of a line. When they are in a line, she tends to use her paw/claws to try to pull the box toward her as she is trying to stretch toward the treats. When its in a triangle, there's no pulling as she turns her head to the treats. Its a subtle, but important, difference, so she's not practicing even a small part of the unwanted behavior.
The other thing I've learned is to keep the session very short. She gets pretty excited just seeing a box and if the session continues very long, then her arousal level climbs and she is less precise in her indicator behavior. Again, I don't want to set her up to practice even a small part of the unwanted version.
So I am experimenting with how many treats to work with. I just did a session with 20 treats and stopped when she had earned them. It was just a little bit too long and I could see her getting too insistent and less precise. So next session I'm going to count out 15 treats and see how it goes.
BTW tomorrow we get up and leave when dawn cracks for Damascus, Oregon. We'll be watching a practice for about two
hours, then eating lunch. After lunch we have a three hour workshop. Hopefully Gimme
is as much of a natural as I think she will be, since I signed her up for four
trials over two days at the end of the month... Her big goal in life is to catch a
nutria when we walk the lake or a mouse out on the fort... so I'm not really
worried. Still I recognize, both of those are significantly different from rats in a tube. I'm taking my camera and hope to have some video to put on the blog tomorrow.
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