Happy belated Thanksgiving to any US readers! We have had a pretty wonderful break getting to hang out with family, eat a whole lotta great food AND we got out for morning hikes ALL FOUR DAYS!!! I may be a little low on sleep, but I'm really happy with how this break has treated us.
Naturally, Dom and I have kept up with our training schedule. And in keeping with my monthly goal of talking about a couple of podcasts that I'm listening to, let's get after it! In the dog training realm, I am a HUGE fan of Hannah Branigan's Drinking From The Toilet! I love how minutely she breaks a behavior down. Right down to which muscle contractions and body movements will indicate a desired tuck sit. To her sense of humor, which is so up my alley. I think I've even heard her say a "that's what she said" joke! I enjoy the way she delivers information and her self deprecating manner. Her podcasts have plenty of useful training information in them, but they're also just enjoyable to listen to. If you haven't already, I highly encourage you to go check it out.
The non-dog related podcast that I'd like draw your attention to this month is Threshold. This podcast takes one topic and explores it from multiple angles. Digging into areas that may not seem directly related to the topic. Season 1 focused on the bison and Season 2 is about the negative environmental effects that are impacting the arctic. Amy Martin has an easy voice to listen to and I enjoy hearing the many sides of one topic. If you're looking for something a little different to listen to, I encourage you to check it out.
And now on to the #100DaysofDogTraining!
Day 9
Day 9 of the #100DaysofDogTraining: We've been working on crawl using a food lure, which you can see in the video. And that works totally fine when I'm just wanting him to do the exercise. But I wanted to spice things up a little and also get him thinking about the movement a little differently. I decided that I wanted to try and sort of shape him crawling towards me. This is the second time that we've done it.
I like how he's coming along overall. It's a movement that takes more control from him and has helped to get him to pay a little more attention to how he lays down. He used to lay down in a nice sphynx position, but then he got into the habit of rolling onto one hip. Which is totally fine if I have him in a down where he's going to be waiting for a bit. I prefer the sphynx down position while we're working.
I also should have ended sooner than I did. That last jackpot that came after the movement I was looking for should have been the end, but I pushed it further. I'll work on that.
Day 10
Day 10 of the #100DaysofDogTraining: Today we spiced up the platform pivot. I still warmed him up with pivots in both directions at all three levels (not included in the video). Since I'm increasing the difficulty of the pivot, I took it back down to the lowest level to start with. Though I don't think that I will increase the height.
My aim for this exercise is to continue encouraging Dom to pay attention to his back legs and increase the strength. He is quite proficient at the regular pivots, so I added a FitBone on one side of the platform. Initially I put the FitBone perpendicular to the platform. I changed the position to be parallel to the platform as I started thinking that maybe the perpendicular position was too difficult for him, but the parallel position is definitely more work for him. In subsequent training sessions I plan on going back to having the FitBone perpendicular to the platform until he's more confident in his movments. Then I'll work more on the parallel position.
This exercise definitely was working those muscles.
Day 11
Day 11 of the #100DaysofDogTraining: I gotta say, today I am feeling like a badass! I was able to leave work early and I feel like I've gotten a ridiculous amount accomplished. For crying out loud, I've gotten a full training session in with Dom and am able to post the video before 9:30pm! Excuse my while I pat my productive self on the back. ;)
I'm continuing with the spicing up our standard exercises theme and today we added a FitBone in to the mix with the paw pods. I warmed Dom up on the two sets of paw pods first, which I didn't include in this video as it's already part of another. Then I swapped out one set of paw pods for the FitBone. Adding the FitBone actually decreased the difficulty for Dom while moving in one direction. But I decided ot take it a step further and have him come forward and then back up to the FitBone. This is something I haven't had him do before. He already knows how to rear foot target and back up, but I haven't had him do something like this. You can see that initially he's not sure. Occasionally I'll use a little physical pressure by leaning towards him to get him to adjust where he's distributing his weight, but he's not used to me asking him to actually move backwards for these exercises.
After the first time, he totally got it. When I reset him and had him do it again, he totally knew what to do. And props to me for quitting while I was ahead instead of continuing for more gratification with more reps. ;)
Day 12
Day 12 of the #100DaysofDogTraining: Today we spiced up our core disc work. I did warm Dom up with some front and rear foot targeting on the disc and we attempted a sit, but that wasn't happening today.
I have one end of the platform propped on the core disc so that it now has a little bit of instability to it. Now simple movements have increased difficulty. Dom has done the first part of the exercise before and is very comfortable walking forward onto the platform. I had forgotten which type of a dismount I've had him do, but I figured it out after the first one was definitely ideal.
After working on forward movement on the platform, I introduced rear foot targetting and moving backwards on it. This is something that IS new to Dom. He obviously understands that if front foot targetting isn't getting reinforced then I'm likely looking for rear foot targeting and he offers that. As he's never moved backwards up the platform, I used physical pressure along with his cue to move backwards. He got the idea and showed improvements after the first time.
Day 13
Day 13 of the #100DaysofDogTraining: Today we did our simple rear foot targetting using the platform. Dom has been doing this since he was little, so he's got this down pat. We start out at the lowest height and work our way up to the highest height. He's done this enough that I realized we haven't worked on stimulus control at all. Towards the end I started having him do his watch cue so that he would wait until I gave him his rear foot targetting cue. This is the base behavior that we use to transfer to other objects.
Day 14
Day 14 of the #100DaysofDogTraining: Today I picked to reintroduce Dom to the donut. It's been well over a year since he last saw this and I don't think that I really did all that much with him other than having him place his front paws on it.
As you can see, he's initially not entirely sure about it, but his confidence increases. I move the donut a little and have him approach it from different directions so that he doesn't become comfortable interacting with it from only one position.
I then propped it between the crate and the wall and had him start rear foot targetting it. He's pretty unsure about this, so I reward for just putting one rear foot on it and we leave it there for this session.
Day 15
Day 15 of the #100DaysofDogTraining: Today I decided to start tackling my plan to use the platform as a station. Or what ended up translating into "hey, you don't have stimulus control or correct cuing for this!"
Going into today's training session I had already realized that I don't have going onto the platform under stimulus control. Most of the equipment that I use for conditioning with Dom, I don't have stimulus control over. I also realized that I don't really have a clear cue for how I want him to get on the euipment. Or at least sort of.
Dom does understand that "touch" means to put his front feet on something (which has meant that I needed to redo my cue for a nose touch, as I also had the same cue for that). And he knows that "back feet" means to put his back feet on something (I try to stick with cues that obvious to ME so that I don't bugger them while training them). What I don't have is a cue that means to put all four feet on something. I decided to go with "up" as the cue for all four feet.
And as I mentioned, I also don't have stimulus control over this behavior. Dom has the general understanding that when a piece of equipment is on the ground, that means to put at least one paw on it. What he doens't understand is that I need him to wait until he's cued to do so.
So today we worked on developing a cue, "up," to mean get all four feet on the object, the beginnings of waiting until cued to get on the equipment and starting to develop an understanding that he shouldn't always just position himself based off of my body positioning.
I guess that's an additional realization that I had, is just how much cuing he takes from my body position. It's understandable as that has really been the largest cue he's had for how to interact with the equipment. And from a conditioning stand point, that's totally fine. Our end goal for this behavior is that I want to be able to send him to the platform from a distance and have him station there until released. We've got a little work to do. ;)
These beginning stages aren't always the most entertaining, but I have a picture in my head of how I want the final behavior to look and it'll be nice to have this beginning stage to compare to.
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