We didn't train yesterday because Gimme up-chucked in the car on the way home. Obviously I didn't want to fill her up with treats. She seemed a bit "off" for a couple hours, but then got back to normal.
Tonight we did another session on scent discrimination. It went fairly well. She brought me an unscented tin a couple times, but mostly got it right. At one point when she brought me an unscented tin and got nothing for her efforts, the next time she went back to the pile she spent a little time sniffing the correct tin and one next to it. As it turned out she brought me the wrong one, but at least she is using her nose to try to sort out the difference. I realize she was likely just trying to smell a hint of food, but all the same I figure a breakthrough is imminent. Its only a matter of time until she realizes what the difference is.
We also did some heeling and front stuff, mostly the same things we did the other day. She didn't do nearly as well as she had then. That's not unusual for her. She often follows a really good session with one that is several steps backward. I'm not sure why that is, but I don't worry about it anymore.
Her learning pattern usually contains fairly steady progress followed by a leap forward and then her version of a plateau, which is several steps backward. I've never had a dog that does it that way - most seem to have a plain plateau, whereas Gimme backs up a few steps. Then again, I've never had a dog that takes such large leaps in performance. If I factored those out, perhaps her progression is more "usual".
Unless I miss my guess, she will have another session much like today's and then the next session after that will either resume steady progress or take another leap forward in understanding. It is what it is.
Happily using the little gates really helped her "around" behavior (clockwise circle around me ending up in heel position) - its been nice and tight ever since we did that. Now its time to work on "behind" (counter-clockwise circle around me ending up in "side" position).
Showing posts with label Guides. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Guides. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Friday, November 11, 2011
Today's Training
Since our schedule has been off for the last couple of days, I decided to do a couple short sessions today, even though Friday is normally our day off.
I started with "around" using the guides. As soon as I set them up Gimme jumped in (edited out). I was sure she'd be eager to get in there when she figured out that was where the rewards happened. I opened the guides and had her go out and re-enter, wanting to reinforce how she should enter. This session was really short - only 7 click/treats. Do note two things... first, she never left until I indicated the session was over (unlike prior sessions) and as soon as we were both in the circle she started moving around me. I think the idea of the guides is becoming clear to her.
This next session is a bit of target stick training related to waiting for the cue. The idea is to present the target stick and give her the cue. Then toss the treat and wait before giving the cue. If she comes back and touches right away, I do nothing and just wait her out. The moment she pulls away, I give the cue and reward her for doing the behavior with a click/treat. This is something I think I am slow to do and the video confirms my impression. If I give the cue and she doesn't do the behavior in a reasonable time (for now I count five) then I am lift the stick out of range to indicate a loss of opportunity. I also lift the stick out of range when she bites on it, which still seems to happen a lot, though it is diminishing. At some point I can also start clicking her for not touching the stick when she begins hesitating more often. I think her touch-touch-touch and then sitting is an indication that she is starting to figure out the game. There are clearly some missed opportunities during this session; Gimme will just have to figure it out in spite of me.
Then we did a bit of noodling about stays and heeling around food on the floor. I haven't done it for quite awhile and obviously we need to go back to it. It wasn't training so much as testing.
Because life isn't exciting enough around here... now that Gimme is coming out of season, Meaggi has decided to give it a go, for the first time in several years.
I started with "around" using the guides. As soon as I set them up Gimme jumped in (edited out). I was sure she'd be eager to get in there when she figured out that was where the rewards happened. I opened the guides and had her go out and re-enter, wanting to reinforce how she should enter. This session was really short - only 7 click/treats. Do note two things... first, she never left until I indicated the session was over (unlike prior sessions) and as soon as we were both in the circle she started moving around me. I think the idea of the guides is becoming clear to her.
This next session is a bit of target stick training related to waiting for the cue. The idea is to present the target stick and give her the cue. Then toss the treat and wait before giving the cue. If she comes back and touches right away, I do nothing and just wait her out. The moment she pulls away, I give the cue and reward her for doing the behavior with a click/treat. This is something I think I am slow to do and the video confirms my impression. If I give the cue and she doesn't do the behavior in a reasonable time (for now I count five) then I am lift the stick out of range to indicate a loss of opportunity. I also lift the stick out of range when she bites on it, which still seems to happen a lot, though it is diminishing. At some point I can also start clicking her for not touching the stick when she begins hesitating more often. I think her touch-touch-touch and then sitting is an indication that she is starting to figure out the game. There are clearly some missed opportunities during this session; Gimme will just have to figure it out in spite of me.
Then we did a bit of noodling about stays and heeling around food on the floor. I haven't done it for quite awhile and obviously we need to go back to it. It wasn't training so much as testing.
Because life isn't exciting enough around here... now that Gimme is coming out of season, Meaggi has decided to give it a go, for the first time in several years.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
More Guides
Its been a busy couple of days. I was invited to a Veteran's Day celebration in Auburn that was set for early today, so we went up last night. We were supposed to resume nosework classes last night, but our instructor had to make the decision to euthanize one of her old dogs and obviously wasn't up for class.
Today after the celebration, I went back to my parents' and performed some minor repairs. If only I could get them to stop trying to fix things themselves, it would be so much easier not having to fix a twice-broken. After that Mom and I spent a lot of time burning brush, getting kindling made, yard winterizing and other outside tasks. I'm very tired.
Gimme was her usual angelic self... She had her first experience seeing fire and found it spooooooky. Naturally within minutes she was acting like an old hand and swore me to secrecy (I had my fingers crossed behind my back). Her help with the brush burning (stealing many of the things I was trying to get into the fire) was, shall we say, less than helpful.
Here I have two clips of training with the guides. The first one is practicing the "around" behavior (clockwise circle around me). Gimme still tries to jump out now and then (edited out of this clip), but I'm encouraging her to come back in and believe that will fade once she realizes that inside the circle is where the rewards happen. You'll notice the first click it looked like she was thinking of jumping out, but since she had moved in the right direction, I preempted her exit with the click/reward. I think I may have pushed her a bit too much for more and that caused the barking. You'll see I was able to demonstrate spinning the opposite direction and it didn't faze her at all. Note: This was only 8 repetitions, but when I watched the timing... it slowed down between reps after the fifth one. Again, I see evidence that 5 good repetitions does seem to be optimum for Gimme.
This second clip is a short sample of how you could teach the dog to go around the cane. I've edited this down to just the best repetitions. I realize it was far too soon to introduce Gimme to this idea (I just did it for demonstration purposes), since she'd only had two sessions with the simple "around" using the guides. The first thing she did was get "stuck" sitting and I used a click of her stretching her neck out to get her moving. Once we got past that, she seemed to think I was shaping her for position relative to the cane. I can see in the video that I missed a few good click opportunities. I used treat delivery to get her past the hump to move between me and the cane. Clearly Gimme hasn't made the connection to moving in a circle inside circular guides. Still once she figured out what I wanted, it seemed to go well, which I think bodes well. Do note that her tail never stopped wagging, no matter how confusing she thought I was being.
We have a lot on our plate for the weekend. I plan to drive to Elma and let Gimme watch some agility from the stands after class on Saturday. Then on Sunday we are going to an obedience/rally training session where you can buy personal ring time (PRT). I'm buying 15 minutes and have asked them to break them down into three 5 minute sessions. After that I plan to come home and do some winterizing of my own yard.
Monday is the one year anniversary of my nephew Josh's death. Its going to be a hard day.
Today after the celebration, I went back to my parents' and performed some minor repairs. If only I could get them to stop trying to fix things themselves, it would be so much easier not having to fix a twice-broken. After that Mom and I spent a lot of time burning brush, getting kindling made, yard winterizing and other outside tasks. I'm very tired.
Gimme was her usual angelic self... She had her first experience seeing fire and found it spooooooky. Naturally within minutes she was acting like an old hand and swore me to secrecy (I had my fingers crossed behind my back). Her help with the brush burning (stealing many of the things I was trying to get into the fire) was, shall we say, less than helpful.
Here I have two clips of training with the guides. The first one is practicing the "around" behavior (clockwise circle around me). Gimme still tries to jump out now and then (edited out of this clip), but I'm encouraging her to come back in and believe that will fade once she realizes that inside the circle is where the rewards happen. You'll notice the first click it looked like she was thinking of jumping out, but since she had moved in the right direction, I preempted her exit with the click/reward. I think I may have pushed her a bit too much for more and that caused the barking. You'll see I was able to demonstrate spinning the opposite direction and it didn't faze her at all. Note: This was only 8 repetitions, but when I watched the timing... it slowed down between reps after the fifth one. Again, I see evidence that 5 good repetitions does seem to be optimum for Gimme.
This second clip is a short sample of how you could teach the dog to go around the cane. I've edited this down to just the best repetitions. I realize it was far too soon to introduce Gimme to this idea (I just did it for demonstration purposes), since she'd only had two sessions with the simple "around" using the guides. The first thing she did was get "stuck" sitting and I used a click of her stretching her neck out to get her moving. Once we got past that, she seemed to think I was shaping her for position relative to the cane. I can see in the video that I missed a few good click opportunities. I used treat delivery to get her past the hump to move between me and the cane. Clearly Gimme hasn't made the connection to moving in a circle inside circular guides. Still once she figured out what I wanted, it seemed to go well, which I think bodes well. Do note that her tail never stopped wagging, no matter how confusing she thought I was being.
We have a lot on our plate for the weekend. I plan to drive to Elma and let Gimme watch some agility from the stands after class on Saturday. Then on Sunday we are going to an obedience/rally training session where you can buy personal ring time (PRT). I'm buying 15 minutes and have asked them to break them down into three 5 minute sessions. After that I plan to come home and do some winterizing of my own yard.
Monday is the one year anniversary of my nephew Josh's death. Its going to be a hard day.
Monday, November 7, 2011
Freestyle Seminar
The weekend proved to be a real learning experience and not just about freestyle. I learned just how much seminar excitement Gimme can handle and what the best way is for her to experience it. After how well she did at the agility seminar this summer, I expected her to be able to handle this better. But in hindsight, there are several notable differences.
I was really disappointed in the people attending this seminar. Many years ago when I was taking Michael to freestyle seminars, people were much more respectful of others' space needs. Most people back then were fairly novice dog owners, whereas this group was more experienced owners. I asked the seminar host to make an announcement and remind people to be more respectful of other dog's space needs, but it didn't seem to make any impression. I repeatedly asked people to keep their distance and not crowd us. Only two people got the idea that I was asking for consideration for the weekend, not just a few minutes. Other people I had to remind over and over and over again. I asked one lady to move herself and her dog so we could get to our crate, explaining that we needed more space. She moved and then moments later walked her dog within inches of my crate with Gimme in it. Fortunately I happened to have Gimme distracted at that moment. I really had the best spot that was available - had anyone shown even a smidgen of common sense and courtesy.
Naturally I think the person who allowed their dog to pee on my cooler, which was sitting next to my car -- well that's just well beyond R-U-D-E...
I chose to work off to one side during the working sessions and gradually got further and further away until I could find a place where Gimme wasn't too distracted by the other dogs and yet not too close to the food tables, which she also had a huge interest in. Unfortunately this meant we got ZERO personal attention from the seminar presenter, Julie Flanery. Ordinarily I think Julie is very good, but a couple things conspired to make this one the least positive experiences of the several seminars I've taken with her. The fact that the seminar was being taped made it a logistical pain. Also almost all the exercises for the second day were geared toward people with much more experienced dogs. Since that wasn't made clear in the information about the seminar (and since I expected her to run the seminar as she had in prior ones), I don't think we got our money's worth as a working team.
Since I'd paid to be a working team, I made the best of it. I worked on as many of the exercises that we were supposed to be doing as I could. But once I hit a snag, without any help, I couldn't go any further. I learned between day one and two a bit better how to "read" Gimme and know when she is done. She is not obvious in the way she shows it (remember what we went through when we were taking classes with Ursula and she had the false pregnancy to go through). For much of the time we worked on other things, things I knew Gimme could do getting a high rate of reinforcement, so she was having a positive experience. On the second day I kept her out in the car when she wasn't working, except for one brief time in late in the afternoon. Often this meant by the time I went out to the car, got her "dressed" and got back inside, the working session was half over.
Still, for all that, I learned a lot. Julie has some interesting new ways to teach the freestyle staples in ways that the dog learns very quickly and so can get a higher rate of reinforcement while they are learning. She makes these "guides" out of ten 12" x 12" grids (the ones you normally snap together to make little shelving sets), put together with zip ties. Using those the dogs learn some really quick concepts, so you aren't teaching the same thing over and over, just using a different "prop".
For instance, if you set up the guides to form a circle and stand in the middle with the dog, you can just wait and the dog will move around you. Click and treat that and soon the dog will really be going around. Within two or three sessions you'll have a very solid behavior that you can put on cue. Then you can do it again, but position the dog facing the other way and since the dog already knows the concept of moving in that circle of guides, you can get the other direction on cue even faster. Then there is always backing up in each direction. You can stand outside the circle with just one leg in and the dog will quickly figure out to move around that one leg. Or stand outside the circle with a cane held in the middle of the guides and in no time you'll have the dog going around that too. As you can imagine, there are any number of things you could teach the dog to go around in very short order. Develop a routine that has a prop you need the dog to go out to and circle around - no problem, you can teach the concept to your now more experienced dog in a single session and that's likely including a cue.
The beauty of this is that there is no luring that has to be faded later and its faster than free-shaping, because the dog learns that the guides in a circle mean one thing. And in particular, for getting the dog to move around one leg, since you aren't luring or using your hand target, you aren't leaning over the dog, which means you aren't crowding them socially while trying to teach them something. The guides can also be used to form a channel, a u-shape or a v-shape and any number of other configurations (limited only by your own creativity).
We did our session at the seminar in a 36" expen, since I wanted to be able to have Gimme off leash and know she wouldn't jump out. Here I have a short video of a session that we just did with the set of guides I made. You'll see that Gimme jumped in and out a couple of times. I think she felt crowded because I hadn't made her circle big enough. You'll see that she stopped jumping out and was more conformable moving around after I make the circle a little bigger. She even tried backing up, she does love moving backwards. To stop her all I had to do was briefly step back so I was in her way. Sadly the camera battery died so you don't get to see the end of the session. Another thirty seconds and she was going around me in one direction while I was spinning the other way. It never occurred to her that there was anything for her to do other than continuing in a circle, something that often happens when you try to teach this part of the move without the guides.
Gimme already knows "around", but its not very tight. So I'll be interested to see if using the guides makes it a cleaner move.
- agility seminar was outside, this was inside
- at agility seminar I was able to position us further from the other people/dogs and still be able to see and hear everything that was going on
- about a dozen teams at agility vs 20 teams and 10 more auditors at the freestyle seminar
- at agility only one or two dogs were out of crates at a time; here there were often all 20 teams out at once
- agility seminar was quieter overall
- this weekend she was in season - obviously not by plan, having come in almost a month early
I was really disappointed in the people attending this seminar. Many years ago when I was taking Michael to freestyle seminars, people were much more respectful of others' space needs. Most people back then were fairly novice dog owners, whereas this group was more experienced owners. I asked the seminar host to make an announcement and remind people to be more respectful of other dog's space needs, but it didn't seem to make any impression. I repeatedly asked people to keep their distance and not crowd us. Only two people got the idea that I was asking for consideration for the weekend, not just a few minutes. Other people I had to remind over and over and over again. I asked one lady to move herself and her dog so we could get to our crate, explaining that we needed more space. She moved and then moments later walked her dog within inches of my crate with Gimme in it. Fortunately I happened to have Gimme distracted at that moment. I really had the best spot that was available - had anyone shown even a smidgen of common sense and courtesy.
Naturally I think the person who allowed their dog to pee on my cooler, which was sitting next to my car -- well that's just well beyond R-U-D-E...
I chose to work off to one side during the working sessions and gradually got further and further away until I could find a place where Gimme wasn't too distracted by the other dogs and yet not too close to the food tables, which she also had a huge interest in. Unfortunately this meant we got ZERO personal attention from the seminar presenter, Julie Flanery. Ordinarily I think Julie is very good, but a couple things conspired to make this one the least positive experiences of the several seminars I've taken with her. The fact that the seminar was being taped made it a logistical pain. Also almost all the exercises for the second day were geared toward people with much more experienced dogs. Since that wasn't made clear in the information about the seminar (and since I expected her to run the seminar as she had in prior ones), I don't think we got our money's worth as a working team.
Since I'd paid to be a working team, I made the best of it. I worked on as many of the exercises that we were supposed to be doing as I could. But once I hit a snag, without any help, I couldn't go any further. I learned between day one and two a bit better how to "read" Gimme and know when she is done. She is not obvious in the way she shows it (remember what we went through when we were taking classes with Ursula and she had the false pregnancy to go through). For much of the time we worked on other things, things I knew Gimme could do getting a high rate of reinforcement, so she was having a positive experience. On the second day I kept her out in the car when she wasn't working, except for one brief time in late in the afternoon. Often this meant by the time I went out to the car, got her "dressed" and got back inside, the working session was half over.
Still, for all that, I learned a lot. Julie has some interesting new ways to teach the freestyle staples in ways that the dog learns very quickly and so can get a higher rate of reinforcement while they are learning. She makes these "guides" out of ten 12" x 12" grids (the ones you normally snap together to make little shelving sets), put together with zip ties. Using those the dogs learn some really quick concepts, so you aren't teaching the same thing over and over, just using a different "prop".
For instance, if you set up the guides to form a circle and stand in the middle with the dog, you can just wait and the dog will move around you. Click and treat that and soon the dog will really be going around. Within two or three sessions you'll have a very solid behavior that you can put on cue. Then you can do it again, but position the dog facing the other way and since the dog already knows the concept of moving in that circle of guides, you can get the other direction on cue even faster. Then there is always backing up in each direction. You can stand outside the circle with just one leg in and the dog will quickly figure out to move around that one leg. Or stand outside the circle with a cane held in the middle of the guides and in no time you'll have the dog going around that too. As you can imagine, there are any number of things you could teach the dog to go around in very short order. Develop a routine that has a prop you need the dog to go out to and circle around - no problem, you can teach the concept to your now more experienced dog in a single session and that's likely including a cue.
The beauty of this is that there is no luring that has to be faded later and its faster than free-shaping, because the dog learns that the guides in a circle mean one thing. And in particular, for getting the dog to move around one leg, since you aren't luring or using your hand target, you aren't leaning over the dog, which means you aren't crowding them socially while trying to teach them something. The guides can also be used to form a channel, a u-shape or a v-shape and any number of other configurations (limited only by your own creativity).
We did our session at the seminar in a 36" expen, since I wanted to be able to have Gimme off leash and know she wouldn't jump out. Here I have a short video of a session that we just did with the set of guides I made. You'll see that Gimme jumped in and out a couple of times. I think she felt crowded because I hadn't made her circle big enough. You'll see that she stopped jumping out and was more conformable moving around after I make the circle a little bigger. She even tried backing up, she does love moving backwards. To stop her all I had to do was briefly step back so I was in her way. Sadly the camera battery died so you don't get to see the end of the session. Another thirty seconds and she was going around me in one direction while I was spinning the other way. It never occurred to her that there was anything for her to do other than continuing in a circle, something that often happens when you try to teach this part of the move without the guides.
Gimme already knows "around", but its not very tight. So I'll be interested to see if using the guides makes it a cleaner move.
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