Being able to send your dog around a pole (or chair/cone/person/bag/whatever) is a great way to make your obedience training more fun and efficient. With the pole, you can get your dog on a distance and in full speed without having to work on stays. You can get new repetitions without having to move yourself. I use if for all kinds of things (finishes, holding dumbbell in motion, stand/sit/down on a distance and while running towards me, directed retrieve, the recall to heel in the square exercie etc.) You can also use it for agility handling. I’ve shown many of these things in the blog this winter and I will try to make an inspirational video with even more when I get the time (it would be much easier if the snow would melt from my training field so that I didn’t have to go to the riding facility to train).
Yesterday I made a short video of Bet, 9 weeks, who just started to learn this skill. This is her 4th and 5th short session:
Thomas did an interview for a Swedish blog last week, and this is a quick translation of it for our foreign readers:
Name: Thomas Stokke Lives: Fjugesta outside of Örebro, Sweden Experience with dogs: Trained dogs for almost 20 years and competed in obedience, search and rescue, agility, field trials for pointing dogs and spaniels, and herding. Does: Own the company Klickerklok with his wife Fanny Gott. They teach classes IRL as well as online. Thomas and Fanny recently published a book about shaping in Swedish. Dogs: Working cocker Pogue (highest class in search and rescue and obedience, first price in novice field trial for spaniels), GWP Pax (First price in open field trial for pointing dogs in Norway), English setter Pi (Third price in open field trial for pointing dogs in Norway), GWP Paxa (puppy), working cocker Kat (puppy), Border collie Win (3rd in Swedish Nursery Final for herding dogs 2012), Border collie Sarek (Passed herding test), Border collie Jen (First price in novice herding trials).
Why do you field train your dogs?
I have been hunting birds for 10 years, but it’s not the same without a dog. Hunting with a gundog gives a new dimension to the experience of hunting. I started with pointing dogs in Norway and I now I also have cockers.
What’s your philosophy in field training?
All distractions are potential rewards. Use that to your advantage. Teach your dog that it always pays off to engage in the activity that you invite to – always!
Why do you train the way you do?
I have previously trained dogs with both corrections and luring, but I did find clicker training before I got my first gundog. It was then given that I would keep working with the principles for clicker training in field training too.
When I watch gundogs who doesn’t listen (regardless of what method they are trained with), I always see that the cause of all problems are positive reinforcement. Hunting is such a strong reinforcer that it maintains a lot of unwanted behaviors – it’s so strong that dogs will take incredibly hard corrections without changing for the better. So why not turn it around and use all distractions as rewards. We want our dogs to hunt, flush game and retrieve. They just have to do it when we tell them to.
Another important factor is that I want dog training to be enjoyable for myself. If I don’t like what I’m doing to my dog, then I won’t train much, and the dog won’t be very obedient.
Any downside with your method?
One disadvantage with reward based training is that it’s not very common in many places. You can then feel alone and have problems with other people not understanding you. It might also be harder to find someone who can help you and share ideas with you.
My best advice is to keep far away from theoretical discussions. Use your time to train your dog with people who respect your methods during foundation training. When your foundation is solid and your dog is under control, it probably won’t be a problem to train with people who use other methods. You can then learn a lot from experienced hunters.
Who are your sources of inspiration?
I like to learn new things about dog training all the time, and there are many people that have inspired my training. I’ve found a lot of inspiration in Susan Garrett’s take on reward based training that covers a lot of areas.
I’m also very inspired by my students, and I have to mention Astrid Ellefsen who made a Norwegian Field Trial Champion out of her Münsterlender (By the way – in Norway the Münsterlenders compete against all pointing breeds like english setters and german pointers. I champion in Norway has to be a great hunting dog!).
How do you regulate your dogs level of arousal in your training?
By having calmness as a criteria for work, and by variation in the training.
What’s the most important thing to consider when training a dog from puppyhood to excellence in hunting?
Be practical! Exercises are for the obedience field – gundogs are supposed to be functional hunting dogs. Repeating exercises is seldom worth it. Generalize a few simple behaviors and don’t put so much effort into details.
If you would chose only one thing to train – what would that be?
If I’m going to chose one thing that takes training, it would have to be a stop signal to be able to control the dog.
But without the drive to hunt (a really good search for game), you don’t have a hunting dog, only an obedient dog. Even if the dog is well bred it still needs experience with game in different settings to become good. I guess I’m less of a control freak now than I used to be.
Tried a new and fun way to proof stimulus control today. I love all the fun things you can do with sending the dog around a pole. The idea here is that the dog has to listen more carefully as she can’t read my body language when I’m walking away from her. If your dog isn’t used to running around the pole, you can throw a treat on the ground and walk away to create distance from the dog. A helper to tell you when the dog is correct is also a good idea.
Win’s puppies have started to move out, but beautiful Bet will stay with us for a few more weeks. And of course, I have to do some training with her. Puppy training is so much fun. This is our first session on switching toys on cue (first step to a great toy retrieve) while still encouraging good weight shift and tug.
I wanted to make a video of some foundation exercises for my online classes, and had so much fun with my dogs. I was surprised how much they know and remember, considering that I’m not very good at doing a lot of ground work with the dogs at the moment. Obviously, they don’t think doing real agility or doing ground work is a big difference. I had lots of fun and was inspired to do some more of it in the future.
Some more obedience training with Squid today, along with Thomas and Louise (with Squid’s little sister Kite). We worked some more on send to square, and I’m pleased with our progress. I’ve almost exclusively rewarded stop in the square for the past weeks, and that has led her to stop early (especially when the distance is long). This was something that I expected, and I decided to ler her work through it instead of going back to reward for running through the square. I’ve just waited her out when she stops early, and only rewarded when she’s gone all the way to the middle of the square. I was happy to see that she found her way to the middle nicely todat, even when I moved the square past the earlier point of reward and close to the wall. For the first repetitions, I hid Thomas behind the wall and had him throw the toy over the wall to reward her when I clicked. It’s fun to be able to reward with good precision and timing without the dog knowing that the reward is there before the click. When I look at the video, I think that Squid has better speed in the last meters than she had last week. The down is still not good, but at least she did it on the first try.
We also worked on the recall from the square – finding the left side even when she has to run around my body and I’m moving away. We didn’t use the square, or even a down, to train this. Instead I sent her around a pole to get a new repetition. Fast, fun training!
Tried some send to Square with Squid. She runs out well, and I have worked on the stop so that she doesn’t end up beyond the square any more. What we need to work on is the finish – recall to heel where she needs to run around my body and end up on my left side. I worked on that today using a send around a pole, which was a fun way of training it without having to ask her to stay. Here’s a video of send to square:
I’m working my way through the obedience exercises in Swedish class III. We tried recall with stand, and I’m very happy with Squid’s speed in both recall and stop. Unfortunately, I haven’t put enough work on the last part of the exercise – running to me after the stop. Squid expects her reward after the stop, since that’s what we’ve been doing mostly. Time to work on the whole exercise, without losing the perfect stop. It’s all about stimulus control really, Squid needs to get better at distinguishing between the recall cue and the reward marker. Fun training!
I found some obedience time and inspiration today and made some video of Squid’s heeling and sit/down/stand from heel. Her biggest problem with obedience is a too high level of arousal (no doubt because of a lot of agility training in general, and circle work in particular). It doesn’t really affect anything else but the heelwork, but that’s bad enough. I’ve found that just walking with her in heel for many minutes, until I have something to reward (rhythmic movements and not touching my leg) works well. At least she doesn’t have a problem with endurance… Stand, sit and down from heel look nice. Only problem is that the heeling get’s even more bouncy when we’re doing positions, and that makes her positions more bouncy in turn. Must work more on her heeling…
