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Physical Training for Puppies

What and how much physical activity should you do with your puppy? This is a common source of discussion and disagreement in the dog training world. I don’t know a definite answer, but I do have thoughts and opinions. As I’m preparing for a puppy agility seminar tomorrow, I thought I’d write down some of my experiences with puppy training. In general, I think that I wait longer with some things than others, but I’m definitely not afraid to let my puppies use their bodies a lot. I don’t think that there is much evidence to back up any standpoint on this issue. If you know of relevant studies or other evidence – please let me know. One study that I do know about is a Norwegian study looking at the incidence of hip dysplasia in four large breeds. This study indicates that puppies under three months benefit from outdoor exercise on soft ground in moderately rough terrain. The study also indicates that young puppies might develop more hip dysplasia if allowed to walk on stairs. Since one is always more inclined to believe evidence that supports your previous beliefs, I’m not sure if the stair thing is real or if stair walking is something that simply correlates with living in a city and not being allowed exercise in moderately rough terrain… Anyway – these are the things that I consider when raising a puppy:

  • Surface. From the moment puppies are born, I think it’s important that they are raised on a good surface. I think it’s really sad to see puppies raised on slippery floors, and I really do think it affects their development. A good surface provides good traction so that the puppy can move about, play and run without slipping. It’s really difficult to find a perfect indoors surface for young puppies – especially if you also want to be able to keep it clean. We try our best with indoors footing for the puppies that we breed, but I still think it’s best if they run and play outdoors on grass as much as possible when growing up. Spring and summer puppies have an obvious advantage here, being able to spend more time outdoors. Fortunately, I’ve rarely had trouble with border collie litters in the winter. They’re definitely okay with playing outdoors in the snow as long as they have a warm place to sleep in when they get tired.If you have slippery floors in your house, I’d definitely suggest that you put some good carpets in before you get a puppy. Place carpets where the puppy moves the most and especially where he’s likely to be in a hurry. And most importantly – make sure that you have a good surface for training. Having reviewed a lot of training videos in our online classes, it’s unfortunately very common for people to train on slippery floors. Please, make sure that you’re always on good footing when playing or training with your dog. I don’t think it’s fair to play or train anything that requires fast movements if the floor is slippery and the dog has to struggle to keep his balance.
  • Free exercise in moderately rough terrain. The best way for a puppy to find strength, balance, and proprioception is by free movement in terrain. When puppies are really small, they have a lot of fun just exploring our garden. I let the puppies we breed spend as much time outdoors as possible from 3-4 weeks of age. With an older puppy, I take them to the forest for exploring and moving about. At 2-4 months of age I usually just stay in roughly the same area and let the puppy just explore, do some recalls and slow walking by my side for short periods of time. When they’re older I let them join the grown-up dogs for walks, but keep an eye on them to make sure they don’t get too tired. I also want to avoid too much running with older dogs, herding other dogs and especially getting tackled by larger dogs. Fortunately, my older dogs are good at keeping a relaxed attitude on our forest walks, so the puppy quickly learns that drill. Here’s a really nice video showing some exercises and play done with a puppy in our woods. I think Wilco was about 4 months old when we made this.
  • Learning balanced positions. Puppies often lack the muscle that allows for a proper sit, stand or down. They often sit and lie down on one hip because it’s tiring to sit or lie straight for more than a few seconds at a time. In a stand, the puppy will often move feet often and might stick them out to the side as “training wheels” to keep their balance. In addition to slow walking in moderately rough terrain, I think working positions with the puppy is the most efficient way to give them the core strength needed for future exercise. I help the puppy into a good stand, sit or down and just feed them there for a few seconds before releasing. I gradually add duration to the position as well as shaping for the puppy to find the correct position on his own. I don’t see any point in putting the puppy on unstable surfaces like balance discs before he can show me a nice, balanced, and strong position on even ground. When the puppy has developed muscles and technique to hold positions nicely, I’ll introduce some light pressure from my hands pushing to the side at his hips or shoulders so that he needs to push back a little bit to keep the position. I’ll also introduce shifting from one position to another, for example sit to stand so sit with his front feet still.
  • Shaping some tricks for body awareness. I also like to teach the puppy some tricks for body awareness. I don’t think this is as important as the three points mentioned above, but it definitely helps the puppy be more aware of his body and how he can use it to get rewarded when we start some more agility related exercises like contacts and jumping. It also gets him using muscles that might not be used much when he’s moving freely. I prioritize quality over quantity here. I’d rather have four really nice steps backing up with good hind leg movements and a straight back than have a puppy throw himself backward for many meters. Things that I teach include:
    • Backing up.
    • Lifting hind legs to a target (backing up onto something).
    • Rear end awareness with front feet on a platform and hind feet circling around the front.
    • Walking around an object with a bent spine and deliberate paw placements. Not fast, slow and controlled.
    • Stretching out hind legs from a down.
    • Lifting front feet from a sit and a stand.
    • Crawling with hind feet under the body alternating left and right feet going forward.
    • Stepping into and out of a box or over cavalettis. Slow and deliberate once again.

I am not afraid to let my puppies use their bodies, join on walks and build muscle. I think it’s probably worse to do too little with a puppy that is going to be an active adult than to do too much. I just try to do more of what I think builds the right muscle and strength for the future, and I don’t like to see any dog work in bad form or do things that they’re not strong enough to handle.

What are your thoughts on puppy training? 

The Path to Perfect Sit Stays

A good, steady sit is a wonderful thing to have when you’re training or competing with a dog. It’s one of the first things I teach my puppies and something I keep working on for my dog’s entire career. It makes so many things clearer and easier in training and gives you an advantage in competition when you know that your dog will sit perfectly still until you give a verbal release. It is actually a quite simple behavior to teach. Problems that arise are usually because of either lack of clear criteria or lack of a clear verbal release.

I think the clearest criteria for a sit is that not feet move. The dog is allowed to move his head, but not lift any feet off the ground or shuffle them around. This criterion applies all the time, even when I’m close by and about to reward. Many dogs will start to lift their feet as we get close in anticipation of the reward. When we then reward, we reward the foot movement and muddy criteria. To make sure this doesn’t happen, I do all of my initial training at an arm-lengths distance to make sure that the dog will keep still when I reward. I use a very high rate of reinforcement, which gives the dog very clear information on what you like – and what you don’t like. Since I reward so often, it’s obvious to the dog when reinforcement stops and he will quickly realize what doesn’t work even if I don’t comment on it.

It’s easy to progress once the dog is perfect at a close distance. I’d like to say that 90% of the work is done there, so don’t try to get distance or duration at this stage. You should be able to reward from any angle and at any speed, without the dog moving his feet, before you move on. I don’t use any cues at this stage. The dog will make mistakes, so I don’t think it’s useful to use a “sit” cue, and I don’t think it’s necessary to use any verbal feedback on right or wrong since the rewards to the talking for you. You can add some praise in later to make increase difficulty in staying when the reward is presented, and you should definitely praise when the dog releases on cue.

Add a verbal release cue from the very beginning. A verbal release means that the dog moves out of the sit on a word from you. The word should not be depending on any motion from you to work. It’s so much easier to add with a puppy or dog that has no concept of a wait, because you know that the dog will move before long if the reinforcement stops. If your dog is already dependent on your motion to get out of the sit, you need to stop that immediately and find a way to get the behavior without any movement from you. Usually, it works to just give the verbal release and wait for the dog to get up – even if it takes a few seconds. As soon as the dog moves, you can move and reward. For the more extreme cases, I’ve sometimes just worked on getting an offered release – without rewarding the sit at all – and rewarded that until the dog offers the behavior from a sit repeatedly. Then I’ve added the cue just like I would to any new behavior I’ve captured or shaped.

The most difficult part of this is usually handler mechanics. A lot of trainers are not aware that they move every time they give a verbal release. Since dogs are so much better at reading our bodies than they are listening to what we say, they usually just respond to the motion and never really learn to release on a verbal cue. This does not only lead to a lack of response to the cue but also leads to the dog guessing when to get up based on movements from you, which leads to broken startlines in agility and other problems with stays. Using a video camera to check your own mechanics is a great tool. Are you moving when you give the release word or do you wait until the dog moves before you initiate the reward?

Here’s a video where I work with a bouncy, enthusiastic miniature pinscher that doesn’t know a stay or a release. I do some talking in Swedish, but there are English subtitles – click the CC button at the bottom of the video if they don’t launch automatically.

Let me know if you have any questions on this topic!

 

Better Online Discussions

This is a blog post that I wrote for my Swedish blog last January. It’s now translated because I think it’s so important. Please add your own advice in the comments below, or let me know if you disagree on something. We might have a good online discussion about it!

I’ve been active on dog forums of different kinds for 15 years. Through them, I’ve made friends, learned new things and most of all – discussed most subjects on dog ownership and dog training with all kinds of people. Today, we have these discussions in Facebook groups. They have taken over the role of the forums I used to visit in the past, and the discussions are more intense than ever. We used to think that anonymity – lots of people were anonymous on the old types of forums – made people say things they wouldn’t if people knew who they were. I think we were wrong. Very few are anonymous on Facebook, but the tone is more aggressive than ever. Some subjects are more infected than others, like training methods and the type of relationship we have with our dogs in everyday life. Dog breeding is also a subject that seem to engage and divide.

I think we all win if we can be better att discussing. Regardless of if we want to convince others of our training methods or if we’re trying to cooperate in a breed club. Here’s my best advice for better discussions online:

  • Assume that everyone that you’re discussing with loves their dog (or the sport, or the breed) and are trying to do the best they can. It’s very likely that others care about their dog as much as you care about yours, and that their opinions also are based on wanting to make the best choice for their dog (or sport, or breed). Even if you’re convinced that your way is the best way.
  • Assume that others also are knowledgeable – even if they don’t share your opinions. Be humble and realise that there are people that know less than you (and need someone to teach them in a nice way – harassment won’t help) AND that there are people with more experience and more knowledge, that know things that you don’t.
  • Try to inform yourself about other points of views and interpret them as generously as you can. Do a thought experiment where you try to make a case for the other view as well as you can. Don’t argue agains a vulgar version of what the person you’re discussing with is promoting. Always give the benefit of the doubt and ask “do you mean *generous interpretation of the opposite view*” before assuming the worst.
  • Be ready to back upp your claims with relevant references if you’re claiming to present facts. It’s not enough to say “google it yourself” is someone is asking. Separate facts and opinions and don’t present your personal opinions as facts if they are opinions.
  • Remember that there are a lot of people that don’t engage in discussions. They still read them. You might not convince the person your discussing with, but if you’re nice, factual and present good arguments, you have a much better chance of changing the minds of people that are just reading and not commenting.
  • Be open minded about learning new things. You will benefit from understanding other ways of doing things and understanding other points of view, even if you’re not using everything you learn. It’s also very boring to discuss with someone who isn’t able to ever change their mind or learn from someone else. This might be even more important in real life than in online discussions. If someone does something that I don’t see the point in, I like to understand why they do it (especially if they are successful). I will be able to use that knowledge later on, even if I’m not incorporating it into my own training.

Time to head out in the snow for some sheepdog training with a friend!

Better Dog Training Sessions in 2018

We all have limited time and energy for training our dogs. Life gets in the way of training all the time. Make sure that the time you spend training your dogs is spent in the best way possible. Very small adjustments to what you’re already doing can make a huge difference in how successful your sessions are. Take your training seriously and consider these simple points that will improve your training if you’re not already doing it.  Yes – you have to spend a little more time and energy before you can start training, but you’ll get much better results and a more focused dog.

  • Prepare the area before you start your session. Set the stage for training by making sure that the environment you’re training in doesn’t have unnecessary distractions. Make sure that your rewards and props are in place.
  • CUT UP YOUR TREATS! It’s worth it, i promise. You don’t have time to pluck that hot dog apart with your fingers while you’re training. If you do, you’re not rewarding often enough. Pick treats that are easy to administer and that your dog likes. If you’re using a toy – make sure to pick one that works well with what you’re teaching. Rewards are not only about the dog liking them, but also about being able to place them where you want and to be able to move on to the next repetition quickly once the reward is done.
  • Make sure your dog is pottied and warmed up. Are you at your best when you really need to pee? Or when you’re just woken up from a nap? Probably not, and it applies to your dog as well. Make sure he’s well pottied and awake before attempting to train.
  • Know what your goal is and train one thing at a time. Training is always less efficient if you don’t have a goal and a plan. Your goal should be specific to that session and easily measured. Make sure to articulate it if you’re training with a friend or instructor. If you’re training by yourself it might be a good idea to write it down.
  • Always check to make sure your dog is engaged before starting your session, and before moving on to a new repetition. Is your dog excited by the reward? Does he focus on working as soon as the reward is finished? If not – you have to address that first. All other training has to stop while you figure out why the dog isn’t engaged. Is he scared? In pain or discomfort? Is something too distracting? Is the reward not reinforcing enough? Are you putting pressure on the dog without realising it? Fix the problem or change the environment before doing any other training.

These guidelines apply both to short sessions in your house and to when you’re in a class or seminar. People seem to be just as sloppy with their preparations when they pay money for training, which is partly why I’m writing this blog post. Make sure you get the most out of your time with an instructor. It’s so unnecessary to spend that time with a dog that gets distracted because of your poor preparation. 

I hope this doesn’t sound harsh. I just want people and dogs to have more fuvn and less frustration in training.

If you’re interested in more training tips, or need help with engagement, rewards and planing, check out our online classes that start on February 5th.

Relationship Buildning suits dog owners who wants to develop a great relationship with their dog. You can join with a puppy, a young or adult dog of any breed. A great relationship is the foundation that makes both everyday life and (training for) trials fun and easy. Dog training and ownership is so much more than just training behaviors. Training behaviors is part of it and is quite easy in an environment without distractions. A great relationship makes it so much easier to have success even in more challenging situations. Thomas will guide you in this class and use his experience in reward based training for field trials. 

Foundation Class is great for anyone that wants to become a better dog trainer. Learn how to develop great rewards, shaping skills, foundation behaviors, self control for your dog, and much more. This class is great for dogs at any level.

Dog Training and Understanding

“I can’t believe it! Another session where I wanted her to turn right, but I gave the cue for turning left over and over without realising”. One of my friends was very upset with herself after an agility session yesterday. I think many agility trainers and handlers have been in this situation. Always giving the right cue is hard! This is interesting to me, because we expect our dogs to respond correctly to our cues at all times, and to always perform according to criteria. If they don’t, we often conclude that they “don’t understand”.

Understanding is a vague concept, and also maybe not as important as we think. There are a lot of things that I as a human “understand”, but still manage to get wrong a lot of the time. Like giving the right cue while running agility, not pulling on a door when there’s a sign that says “push”, not eating that piece of chocolate cake that I understand is bad for me, and so on. On the other hand, there are things that I do that are driven by reinforcement or punishment that I don’t understand. I might not even be aware of them. Change in behavior often happens long before we consciously are aware of how we changed something, or even why. I suspect that many of the behaviors that I perform without understanding – or even awareness – are stronger than some that I understand I should perform…

Understanding and teaching new beahviors

When teaching new behaviors, some people are reluctant to reward behaviors that happen without apparent intent from the dog. When I ask why the (correct) behavior wasn’t rewarded, the answer often is “But he didn’t do it on purpose!”. My answer is always to not worry about what the dog is thinking, instead only focusing on what the dog is doing. Reinforcement builds behavior, whether the behavior is deliberate or not. Grab any chance to reinforce the behavior that you want! It’s really cool to capture behaviors with a puppy or a dog not used to training. First, you’ll see the behavior becoming more frequent without any apparent “understanding” from the pup. Second, you’ll see the lightbulb moment, where the dog goes: “Really?! If I do this, I get a treat?” and they do it again with more obvious intent. With more experienced dogs, the “understanding” part usually happens much faster, as they are used to the concept of training and are deliberately looking for understanding in a different way. That said – just because the dog seems to “understand” that a behavior leads to reinforcement does not mean that we’ll have a solid understanding every time.

Getting a solid performance – What’s understanding got to do with it?

So why is it that we often experience that our dogs does not perform like we think we have taught them? There’s one type of dog trainer that will say: “I’m sure that he knows it, he just choses do to otherwise”. This is often associated with a more traditional training style, where the dog should perform because we say so, and failure to do so is a sign of the dog giving us the finger. At the other end of the spectrum, I find friends and clients who will say “He made a mistake, so I don’t think he understands at all”. The notion is that if the dog just understands, he’ll be perfect every time. And superficially, that makes sense. If the dog knows that x leads to reinforcement and y leads to nothing – why wouldn’t he chose x every time? There are many reasons why our training fails to produce perfect performance every time. I could probably write a book just listing things that we often do wrong, or fail to consider. And I still wouldn’t have all the answers.

I do think that it is possible – maybe even productive – to talk about the dog “understanding”. There is a difference between knowing what you’re doing and just doing it without ever thinking about it. I think that is true for dogs as well. The first layer of understanding might be that “lightbulb moment” where the dog seems to deliberately perform the behavior in order to get reinforcement. The next step could be when we see the dog fixing a mistake after a no reward event. Third layer could be when the dog is able to use the “understanding” to perform the behavior when we change the setting. I definitely feel more confident in my dogs understanding if I see that they have the ability to correct a mistake that they make and to figure out how to perform the behavior in a different setting.

Reinforcement still trumps understanding

It’s important to remember that “understanding” is a vague term and that it in no way is a guarantee – or even a requirement – of solid performance. It doesn’t matter if the dog understands the behavior if it isn’t important to him. Reinforcement makes the behavior important. The dog must want to do it for understanding to even be a factor to consider. Understanding without motivation is worthless. And there’s another thing: Even if the dog both wants and knows, it must be important to him to get it right on the first try. Let’s talk about human behavior again:

There are lots of things that I know how to do and am motivated to do. Like writing right now. I know that the letter “K” on my keyboard makes the letter k appear on the screen. And I want it too, because I want to write “keyboard” and I also like it to be easy to read. I still quite often hit the “L” when I try to write keyboard. It’s not a big deal, because just as quickly as I hit that wrong key, I can correct it with the back space key and keep on writing. I do that a lot. Not because I don’t know how to do it, but because it’s easier to make a few mistakes and correct them as I go, than to try to be perfect on the first try. Now if I had to find correction fluid to fix my error, or maybe start the whole blog post over again, I’d be much more careful with my fingers (and a lot slower).

I think the same often is true for dogs, especially dogs that are highly motivated and like to do things fast. It doesn’t matter if they miss that weave entry the first time, because we’ll call them back and send them back in in no time. It doesn’t matter to them if they sit when we ask them to “down”, because we’ll repeat that cue in a second and they can fix it really fast. If we want them to care about getting it right the first time, we have to make it important to be correct on the first try.

Also: Sometimes I just forget things. I know that I absolutely know the answer to a question, but I can’t seem to retrieve it from my mind at that moment. This happens most often when I’m really stressed and short on time. Sometimes I make a mistake with something I’ve done a thousand times without problems. Sometimes I forget things. It’s human. And dogs are human too in this regard.

Comment!

What is understanding to you? Which factors are most important in creating a reliable behavior? I hope to be able to get back to you with more ideas on what should be considered during the weekend. I sprained my ankle quite badly yesterday, and might have to spend more time in front of the computer than I’d like.

More on Engagement – Pi

Writing about my early training with Spy and teaching engagement made me think about Pi. She is an English Setter that moved in with us 10 years ago (she is now living a spoiled and active life with Thomas’ sister in Oslo). She came at a time where I was really excited about training a new puppy, so even though she was bought for hunting, I started training her with obedience in mind. She was such a fun puppy to train – very focused and deliberate in her actions. She learned lots of tricks and behaviors for obedience and we had a great time.

She was born in summer, so we spent most of our training time in the kitchen during the winter when she was half a year old. As spring came, we started to train more outdoors. She went from puppyhood into adolescence and hunting drive kicked in. This coincided with lots of spring birds competing for her attention. I fel like I didn’t have that focused dog from the kitchen anymore, and I decided that I probably needed to interrupt her looking at the birds, as it might be very reinforcing to a young setter. So whenever she was disengaged and looking for birds (and sometimes just staring at the horizon, as setter do) I’d call her back to me. I’d use her name or a cue like “heel” to bring her to me, and she always responded and started to work.

A few months after that decision, we held an obedience seminar away from home, and I used Pi as a demo dog for down from motion. She started out a bit disengaged and split her attention between me and the magpies on the ground. I then decided I wanted her to offer a down without a verbal cue and started waiting her out. She didn’t quite understand what I wanted, but tried lots of other things. As I remembered it, she worked for several minutes without a reward, and without ever looking away from me. She was the same dog that I usually had in the kitchen when we were working on tricks. And then it dawned on me. She wasn’t “distracted”, “hunting dog” or “teenager” – I had created a less engaged dog outdoors because I’d shown her that she never had to be attentive to me. I always told her when it was time to work.

When I realised this, we went to a dog training club to train. We were travelling, so it wasn’t where we usually trained and I didn’t know any people there. It was mostly older men with GSD:s and they looked at me very strangely as I started my session. I kept her on a leash and let her stare all she wanted at things. When she finally looked back at me (after what felt like minutes), I threw her a party with the best rewards I had and then waited again. She stared away from me again, but checked back sooner this time. She got the idea after a few rewards and turned back to me immediately once I stopped rewarding. I could increase my criteria to coming to heel position and then heeling for longer and longer stretches.

This session was pivotal to us. From thereon, everything went smoothly. Pi did her first obedience trial at 11 months old (still the youngest dog I’ve ever trialled in obedience) and did great. She immediately qualified for the next level and we had a great time in the ring despite birds everywhere. My experience with Pi changed my outlook on engagement a lot and made me realise that most dogs that are distracted are so because we allow it. It doesn’t matter if we use lures, cues or corrections – the outcome is often the same. Only when we make it the dog’s responsibility to be engaged in order to get rewards will we have true and lasting engagement.

Teaching Engagement

In training my dogs for sports like agility or obedience, there is one thing that is my priority above and beyond everything else: My dog should always ask to work and always want the training more than I do. Let’s call it “engagement”. If I don’t have that, I’ll always have to make huge compromises in training, and it will probably not hold up for competition anyway. I will therefore always work on this first and put other things on hold.

There are two components to teaching engagement. First, you need to develop great rewards. If you don’t have a reward that your dog is really excited about, he’ll probably not get excited about training either. But remember: A reward is not a thing, a reward is an event that creates feelings of joy and excitement for your dog. If your dog is not excited about food or play in itself, you need to figure out what brings your dog joy and associate rewards with those feelings.

Second, your dog needs to learn that he is responsible for making rewards happen. He needs to do in order to get. There are a lot of dogs that aren’t engaged even though they actually really enjoy the rewards. We can easily create a disengaged dog by poor timing and bad training choices. So many dogs have learned that the best way to get engagement out of their humans is to disengage, run away or show signs of frustration. Timing is everything! There is truth in the saying that you need to be “more fun” in order to get your dog to engage, but it is crucial that the trainer brings the fun when the dog is bringing engagement, not the other way around.

I’ve probably written about this many times in the past, as it is such a key element in my training and teaching. The reason I wanted to bring it up again is that it’s what I’m working on with Spy. She is now 15 months old and she’s been with me almost half a year. Creating a driven agility dog out of an adolescent dog brought up in a shed on Ireland has been a longer process than I imagined. I still think we’ll get there, and I’m learning so much in the process, but I have to be very patient. To me, patience means that I think much more about creating that perfect training flow than I think about specific skills. She does know a few skills – she can sit, do a jumping stand, circle a cone, get in a bed, do a nose touch – if she is motivated and nothing distracts her.

Spy really likes to play with me, which is great! It took months for her to be confident enough to play, but now she’s just getting more and more excited about it. Treats are not important to her at all, she’ll only work for them if absolutely nothing distracts her (and it helps if she’s hungry). I try to use a lot of praise, social interaction and play to increase the value of food rewards, and we’re making progress, but it will get much easier once she understands to be really engaged in our play sessions.

Although she really likes to play, she isn’t really engaged. She is very easily distracted and will often disengage within seconds after I take the toy away. It’s much easier if I keep moving, and harder if I stand still. I try to mix it up in our sessions: Sometimes I’ll move away from her after taking the toy away and she has to do a little more to get the toy back. Sometimes I’ll stand still and wait for any kind of engagement – a glance at my face for example – before I initiate play again. Timing is of course really important: Me moving away makes it easier and more fun for her, so I do that while she is still engaged, not when she’s sniffing the grass or staring into space.

I videotaped a session today (I actually video most of my sessions, it helps me with structure and evaluation) for you to see. I should probably have kept the session a bit shorter. She starts to disengage at about 1:20 into the session, and she takes off from me at 3 minutes. I’m not sure if it’s best to keep her sessions really short so that she never disengages, or if it’s actually a good thing for her to check out and then come back to work. I lean towards now stressing about the checking out, because she got better after a few repetitions where I had to wait a little. I definitely should have ended before she took off, because 3 minutes is more than enough for any dog. Notice that I am calling her back once she’s left, but only as she has turned around and is headed back to me. I reinforce that decision with a game of chase and play, and also build value for her name/recall in a situation where I know she’ll be successful.

Questions? Leave a comment and I’ll answer as soon as possible!

If you want to learn more on developing rewards, building engagement and teaching skills, you should check out our Foundation Class starting on August 14

Let the dog tell you when he’s ready

Bud is now 19 months and we’re having a great summer where his agility skills are coming together. There are so many exciting first times. I think I start most things a bit later than other people. It’s easy to get stressed out by all the younger dogs running courses at full height when your young dog is still working on foundation skills.

Bud has been very keen to work and easily excited all his life. But he has also been immature and easily excited also means easily frustrated if he doesn’t understand. I’ve had to teach each skill to fluency before putting skills together in a sequence. Lumping doesn’t work well with Bud.

Bud and I

I’ve also been reminded of the importance of letting the dog direct the pace of training. If something is not working, it’s often a good idea to not push it, but rather work on other things for a while. There are so many things that just didn’t feel right – he didn’t like them, or he didn’t understand. So I waited for a while and when I came back to it a few weeks later he could just do it, and he wanted to do it.

Bud has been jumping 40-45 centimeters for quite a long time. He did not seem ready for higher jumps and I was getting a bit stressed by it, but didn’t push it at all. Then last week, he jumped 55 centimeters on his own a few times (when just running around on the field at home). I tried to ask him to do it, and he did! And then he was able to run a fairly complex sequence with jumps on 55 without hesitation. He is still figuring out his jumping, but I’m very pleased with that he is thinking and trying his very best.

I started his weave training a couple of months ago. We’re mostly using a channel method, with some 2×2 thrown in. Things were going well until I started to close the channel. He seemed frustrated and couldn’t really do it. I tried to use guide wires because I know a lot of people are successful with the combination of channel and wires. This was very entertaining to watch, but gave me more problems than I already had. So we just stopped weave training for a while instead. This week, we’ve started our weave training again. I started with a fairly open channel, reminding him of all kinds of entries and staying in the weaves with different handling and distractions. I’ve now started to close the channel again, and everything is different. He is much more happy, much more confident and his body seems to flow in a much better way.

A third example is our running contacts training. We started about five weeks ago with a plank on the ground and he has been a joy to train. He really seems to get it and we’re having a lot of fun with proofing and teaching turns now. The only thing that has been difficult was to get rid of the thin and broad plank I used on the down ramp to smoothen the edge for him. My dogwalk has a pretty high edge at the end of the contact, and it gets more pronounced when the dogwalk is low. When I tried to take the plank away he’d have one nice hit and then it would fall apart and he’d avoid the low hits. So I didn’t take it away any more. I kept it there for a few more weeks, and then I tried to take it away again a few days ago. Now he didn’t have any problems and I think I can put the extra plank away and not take it out again until I’m training a new dog.

I’m very happy that I’ve had the patience to wait until Bud has told me that he is ready. It doesn’t mean that we haven’t been training – we’ve just trained other things (and you can never get too much foundation training). I think that a lot of problems can be avoided if we’re not pushing dogs beyond their comfort zone and if we allow them to mature. Every dog has their own timeline. I love training with Bud and I’m very excited to see him transform from my little puppy to a skilled agility dog. I’m not in a hurry to compete with him and he still has a lot to learn.

Here’s a video of to “firsts” from this weekend. His first sequence on large height jumps, and his first session on full height dogwalk with no plank.

 

How to get your dog to love training

Few things are more aversive to dog trainers than a dog that isn’t interested in the training. Sniffing, finding treats on the floor, running away to check something out, staring into space, or taking off to say hi to another person, are all dog behaviors that really stress people out in a training setting. Because they are so aversive, the trainer often finds strategies to stop them from happening. Often, the plan is something like this: Make sure that the dog is not able to find reinforcement anywhere else – pick upp all treats on the floor (and be very upset with other people that leave crumbs) and put a leash on the dog – and get the dogs attention back as soon as he looks away or stops working. Does it work? Well, it does work for the moment. The trainer might experience fewer aversive moments of a dog that leaves training to do other things. But it does not offer a long term solution. In my experience, it often makes the problem worse.

Desperately trying to keep the dog away from distractions often makes the dog want them more. This is something that we often take advantage of when we want to make the dog crazy about rewards. Restraining the dog and letting them “steal” rewards often makes the reward much more attractive than it would be if the dog easily could get the reward. This is what happens when we desperately try to make sure that the dog doesn’t find treats on the ground, or doesn’t run away to greet another person. The dog will also be successful in getting to the reward sometimes (but not every time), which also makes the behavior stronger.

Getting the dog’s attention back as soon as he looks away or looks like he might want to leave training to do something else is also a strategy that will backfire. It feels good in the moment to prevent the dog from doing something we don’t like, but what happens in reality is that we reinforce behaviors that we don’t like with attention and action. It is not uncommon for dogs to get much more attention when they do something we don’t like (sniffing, looking away) than they get when they do something we do like. In addition, the dog learns that he doesn’t have to take responsibility for keeping focused in training. The handler will always tell him when he should come back and work.

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What should you do instead? This is of course a huge question and depends on a lot of factors, so my answer will be very general. Here are a few things to consider if your dog isn’t totally focused in training. They really work!

Quality of reward. It’s so simple, but sometimes you just need better rewards. Not just tastier treats or fluffier toys – you might have to be more engaged in the reward procedure. Praise your dog, play with the food. Let him know that you’re happy with his work. Don’t just stuff rewards in the dogs face – drag toys away on the floor for a game of chase, and let the dog come to you to chase his food instead of walking to him to feed him. Your dog should look happy when you reward.

Reward behaviors that you like. Reward behaviors that you want to see more of, like attention to you. Don’t take it for granted. Even if you planned to train something more difficult, you can always reward for more simple behaviors like just staying with you or looking back quickly when there is a distraction. This also means: Don’t reward behaviors that you don’t like. If you give your dog more attention and try to be more fun when he is looking away, you are reinforcing the behaviors that you don’t want.

Try to be neutral between rewards. Make sure the dog does something you like before you burst out with praise and fun. Training is a bit like acting – you need to quickly be able to switch between roles. One second you’re neutral (even looking very strict if you’re training for competition) and the next second you’re the most happy person in the world. Then you go back to neutral and repeat.

Plan your sessions well. This is probably the most important point. Most dogs get distracted and engage in other things because we’re not well organised and focused. We often require much more from our dogs than from ourselves. Keep your sessions short (3 minutes is more than enough if you’re really focused) and make sure that you’re focused on training all the time. There should never be anything other than response or reward in the session. Either you’re focused on the dog, waiting for a response to reward, or you’re rewarding your dog. Nothing else. No just walking from one place to another, no talking to your friends, no trying to get more food from a plastic bag deep in your pocket.

Plan so that you can transport while rewarding, take a break when you need to talk to a friend, have your treats readily available and play with your dog when you need to get food from your pocket. Set a timer if you tend to train for too long. Work on your mechanical skills so that you get more efficient. Evaluate your sessions (video analysis is great!) to see if you can do things in a better way.

Training should be fun – not you. A common advice given to owners with dogs that are not focused, is that the trainer needs to be more “fun”. I think this is the reason why many try to lure the dog back by being “fun”. You should not be “fun”. Rewards should be fun (and of course, you are a part of the reward), and training should be fun. Fun happens with good sessions and good rewards, not with an owner that tries to look like a clown all the time. I think a lot of dogs get nervous when the owner suddenly tries to be “fun”. They will try to calm their owner down by sniffing, looking away and moving slowly (and then the trainer tries to be even more fun…).

Be prepared to change your criteria. Sometimes I plan to train one thing, but when I get my dog out I realise that he is not at all ready to work on that. This especially happens in new and distracting environments. If that happens, I immediately change my plan and work on attention and engagement first. I might just play with the dog. If the dog isn’t ready to engage fully in play with me, I know that he isn’t ready for something more difficult. Or I might click for attention and reward by throwing a treat on the ground and then just wait for the dog to look back at me. When he does, I click and toss another treat. When he looks back at me within a couple of seconds after eating the treat, I know that he is ready for something slightly more challenging.

I always try to keep a very open mind in my first session in a new place. I try to plan only play and rewards for attention and engagement. A short and fun session to set the tone for the sessions to come. To make sure that my rewards are rewarding and that my dog is ready to work with me.

Don’t pressure the dog. As positive trainers, we’re often unaware of the pressure we can put on a dog when we expect them to do something. Our behavior can be put a lot of pressure on the dog even if there is no obvious aversive in play. When the dog feels pressured, he might not feel relaxed and happy in the training situation, and he will try to find other things to do to calm himself – or you – down. The pressure often comes from our expectations. I try to not expect anything when I train my dogs. I don’t expect them to want to train with me – I make sure I make it worthwhile for them to do so. I don’t expect them to offer behaviors – I observe them and reinforce behaviors that I like. I don’t take it personally if they leave me, get frustrated or just do nothing.

Don’t be afraid of distractions. Some distractions are really hard. You might need to work specifically on them and gradually decrease distance to the distractions. Most things that dogs get distracted by are not distractions any more if you change your training and make it more efficient and rewarding for the dog. During the ten years of professional dog training that I have done, I’ve met a handful of dogs that were so distracted by for example sniffing that it has been necessary to work specifically on that.

Many of the things that we consider “self rewarding” is rewarding to the dog because of our training. When I trained English Setter Pi, I was convinced that looking at small birds and checking out what was happening in a distance was reinforcing to her because of her breed and age. Therefore, I interrupted the behavior with her name, a command or just taking her the other way with the leash. She would come back to work, but she would not stop her checking out until I decided to just wait her out and reward coming back to me instead. I had taught her that she could look at other things and I would always tell her when she should come back to work. Once I stopped interrupting this “self reinforcing” behavior and gave her the responsibility to start me up instead, the behavior extinguished.

If your dog is so interested in small, dry crumbs of food on the ground that he choses that before your training, it might be necessary to look at why that is. Your training should definitely be more fun than sniffing for food (or other smells) on the floor. With good rewards, well planned training and a high rate of reinforcement, the choice should be easy! So ask yourself – why is this not the case? Look at all the points above and see where you can improve.

So… Have fun training. Make it fun and rewarding for your dog. Don’t expect anything from him. Plan your sessions well. Relax. Don’t take it personally. Laugh. Play. Think. Plan. Good luck!

Shaping, luring, prompting….

I read and enjoy Patricia B. McConnell’s blog about animal training and what goes on at her farm. This week, the topic of shaping came up for discussion. I have so much to say about this topic that I thought it best to write a blog post instead of a long comment. In this blog post, I’m discussing shaping from a dog trainer perspective, as I don’t train other species much. I realise that this post will discuss a lot of things not at all mentioned in the original post, so it’s not at all a criticism of the blog post, just my thoughts on the practical applications of different modes of instruction in teaching dogs new things.

Definitions are hard! I feel like I don’t even want to get into a lengthy discussion on the correct terminology. Some people will argue that it is only true shaping if you sit on a chair, or always reward away from the direction of the behavior, and if I understand this article by Karen Pryor correctly, it’s not shaping but successive approximation if you make the behavior easier to accomplish when you begin training. If that is the case, I very rarely use shaping. And I don’t think anyone does seriously. So it’s not very interesting to discuss then, is it?

This is a clip (in fast forward to fit on Instagram) from Bud’s first session of weaving. I would definitely call it shaping even though I move, reward in the direction of the behavior and make the behavior easier by using only two poles and opening them up to begin.

First weaving session ever! #ftwbud #bordercollie #forthewinbc #agility #weaving #slalombud

A video posted by Fanny Gott (@fannyftw) on

What do I mean by shaping

What is interesting to discuss is where there actually is a difference in training. I realise now that my definition of shaping is fairly broad, yet I find it more useful for discussion. This is how I would define the training that I use that I sloppily define as as shaping:

  • Reward based – no verbal or physical corrections. (Of course, I can see how you could shape a behavior using negative reinforcement as well, it’s just not what I mean when I say I use shaping).
  • Builds on the dog’s own initiative. The dog is actively offering behavior in order to get the reward. He is not waiting for a command, prompt or lure.
  • Behaviors are split into smaller building blocks to make it easy for the dog

There are a lot of things that could be added to that list, but I find that many of them are in the “often, but not always” category for me. That would for example include the use of a marker signal. I do use a marker signal most of the time – because it helps my timing. But sometimes I can deliver the reward with perfect timing – for example by throwing a treat over the dogs head as he is focused forward, which makes a marker signal unnecessary or even distracting (because the dog might orient towards the sound and look back to me instead of keeping his focus forward).

In that category, I would also place that wrong responses are just ignored and the dog tries again. This is what I most often do, but sometimes I need to call the dog back to me for a new repetition if he makes the wrong choice. Most of the time though, wrong responses are met with no reaction and the dog just tries again. It is not followed by a verbal correction or by the immediate help from a cue, prompt or lure.

Here is an example of a puppy learning to sit up from down in about 3 minutes:

 

What’s the big difference?

The big difference from other methods of training is the emphasis on the dog offering behavior. This is what, in my mind, separates shaping from a method based on luring or prompting. This is what I find makes a huge difference in the way the dog learns and performs. If the dog and trainer team are skilled with the offering of behavior, it doesn’t matter at all if you sometimes use help (lure, prompt, target) to get a behavior started. As soon as the dog gets the idea, he will offer the behavior if you just wait, and there will be no need to gradually fade the help. At least, that is my experience. On the other hand – when dog and trainer are skilled with shaping, there is rarely need to use that kind of help.

Why is it important that the dog offers behavior? To me – it’s about the long term effects and the influence it has on the teamwork with my dogs. If someone handed me a puppy and asked that it would spin clockwise on cue tomorrow, I’d most certainly use a lure to get the behavior. Luring is probably a faster way to teach that kind of moderately-difficult-but-easy-to-lure behavior (if they asked for a sit or down I wouldn’t lure because that just seems like more work) with a dog that has no prior experience with training.

With my own puppies, there are lessons much more important than getting them to spin. My focus is on what makes them great training companions in the future and for the rest of their lives, not what gets me behavior fastest right now. I know that if I teach them to offer behavior, actively work to get rewards and try again if they fail, they will learn behaviors in no time in the future. They will also learn other very important skills, like:

  • I will not ask you to work, you have to engage me to get rewards – leads to a dog that will be focused and driven.
  • There is nothing bad about not getting a reward you were hoping for, just try again and try harder – leads to a dog that doesn’t find it strange to work for longer periods of time without being rewarded, and that doesn’t get frustrated or worried when rewards are not coming.
  • If you want something in life, try to impress me – leads to a dog that will look to work with me in the face of distractions

What do I mean by offering?

A dog trained by me will definitely offer behavior if we’re in a training situation and I don’t say anything to them. Some situations have default behaviors – like coming to heel if I stand or walk straight and competition like. In other situations, they might just offer something we recently trained or something they enjoy a lot. I don’t really expect them to be super creative. I will not just sit and stare at them and hope that they will offer something new out of the blue. Splitting behavior into small pieces and planning my sessions well means that I very quickly will get them on the right track. I will reward very simple behaviors to get the session started (for example just standing in front of me, or looking at an object, or lying down). The dog is not really offering much, I’m capturing a starting point. I will not raise the criteria and expect the dog to do something more until he is repeating the first behavior. Once he is on the right track, I can usually raise criteria quite quickly in small but frequent steps.

A puppy, or dog new to training is never expected to offer anything at all. I capture behaviors – small, small pieces of what I want, until I see the dog repeating them in order to get a reward. Dogs do a lot of things all the time – we just need to be good observers and have good timing. I think that one reason why my dogs rarely show any frustration is that I really don’t expect anything from them. If they need time to think, I’m fine with that. It doesn’t stress me out, so my dogs aren’t stressed about it either.

Offering never stops

I add a cue to behaviors that I shape when the dog repeats the behavior happily and isn’t dependent on my position, reward placement or the environment. I like my dogs to be good at responding to cues, to wait for cues and to differentiate between cues, so I work on it a lot. But I never take away the offered behavior. Any behavior that my dog has learned can easily be offered if I need it. This is for a number of reasons, for example:

  • If I want to work on some technical aspect of the behavior (not related to stimulus control), I want to be able to do it without using the cue. It gives me a better flow, and if there’s something I don’t like about the way my dog performs the behavior at the moment, I don’t have to pair my cue with that behavior until it’s perfect again.
  • If I want to add an element of difficulty, like distance, from movement or duration. My dog might be great at “sit” when he’s in front of me. That does not mean that he will do it on a distance. Taking the cue away and working on offered behavior makes sure that I don’t associate the cue with frustration when I ask for it in a new situation. The dog gets to offer the behavior until it’s fluent in the new situation, and then I add the cue back in as a “green light”.
  • If I want the behavior as a starting point for shaping another behavior. I might for example want my dog to learn to crawl. If I have to ask my dog to lie down to get started, I have a problem. My “down” cue means lie down and don’t move until I release you, so I don’t want to use that when shaping a crawl. An offered down (and no release) is a much better starting point!
  • If I want the behavior as a starting point for a chain or sequence. I like my dogs to “ask to work”, so I like any chain to start with an offered behavior of some sort. It might be that the dog offers heel position for me to start an obedience chain, or maybe that the dog offers a sit in order to get to work on holding a dumbbell. This also makes sure that I know that my dog is motivated and ready to work before I ask something of him.

Conclusion

It is difficult to write about this, because the subject is huge. My point is that I think the big difference is not in what techniques you use to get behavior started (even though it makes a difference if you’re always luring and never capturing), but in how much the dog offers behavior that is not cued or prompted in training.

If you are interested in my way of training, or in improving your shaping skills, I will be at PosiDog in Columbus, Ohio on March 5-6 to teach on the subject of shaping. I will bring my dog Epic with me, and we’ll show you how efficient and fun this type of training can be. I really look forward to it!