I could not be more excited to share the most recent episode of the Animal Training Academy (ATA) Making Ripples podcast. In this show, I have the honor and privilege of interviewing the amazing trainers who make up the ATA. In this episode, I had the absolute pleasure of talking with with ATA member Sarah Hedderly.
Sarah Hedderly - Ding Bat Dog Training specializes in working with Border Collies, and in this episode she shares about her journey with her own Border Collies, her work with others including the benefits that come along with specializing, and her transition to an online business model. Sarah has a wealth of knowledge and experience and it was a pleasure to talk with her and learn more about her work.
Thank you for joining me on the show Sarah and, as always, thank you Ryan Cartlidge for making this show, and the ATA community, possible! 🙏
https://open.spotify.com/episode/7yVTKFQMTQpDJH2RVwxDs1?si=yIB8aut_Ry6ULC4ma1DC-Q
Castor Gator is having fun helping me create content for my Sniff it Out nose work class. Today we will be working on a couple of new skills in class including beginning to approximate our way toward mini Kong searches. Kong is a new search scent for Castor, but he already has the foundation skills he needs to make learning this task pretty simple.
Nose work can be so fun for humans ant the dogs we live with! Do you participate in some sort of nose work with your dogs? If so, what type and what does your dog search for? If not, are you interested in learning more about the benefits of nosework, how to provide more opportunities for your dog to use their nose, and maybe even how to teach your dog to search for a specific odor and “tell you” once they have found it? Join me in June for my next Sniff it Out nose work class! This class is perfect for anyone curious to learn more about nose work regardless of your training level. This class is also great for some dogs who have behavior challenges that might prevent them from attending other group classes. Message me or email me at [email protected] for more information!
It can be easy to let training sessions go on for a long time for many reasons (at least for me it can!), but having shorter sessions with high value reinforcers can be one way to ensure we are practicing successful repetitions, and it can help keep sessions fun and exciting for some dogs. My goal in this session was to practice one repetition of Castor laying down at the sight of the Kong, reinforce with food near the kong, and then end the session with tug/play which is one of Castor’s favorite activities. This entire session was less than a minute. Training sessions need not be long to be successful and build strong behaviors!
I am having so much fun with my first ever Sniff it Out class! It is incredibly rewarding for me to watch the people and dogs exploring scent work together. Also, creating content/tutorials for that class is a great excuse for me to teach my dogs to indicate on a new odor, and we are having a blast with that. Here is a shortened version of a video I made for class yesterday of a fun little game Castor and I were playing with Kong (a new odor for him).
I will be offering a Sniff it Out Class again in June. I have information about that class up here, on FB and on my website soon. In the meantime, if you think you are interested, feel free to shoot me a message with any questions and/or to find out more. The class is set up in such a way that regardless of your level of training skill, you and your dog should learn something and have fun. So don’t worry if you don’t think you and your dog aren’t prepared for class, there are multiple avenues for fun scent work with our dogs and there is room for all to learn and have fun in this class!
Coco is just the best girl. I can’t believe she hasn’t been adopted yet. I have been borrowing her to create some video tutorials on how to create an indication behavior for my Sniff it Out group class. She has been an absolute star for those! 🤩
Before we played our scent games today, I took her on a little walk. Look how amazing she is on a leash! I would be happy to offer a free training session or free registration in one of my group classes for anyone who adopts Coco. For anyone who adopts her and wants to take advantage of that, I’d recommend my next Sniff it Out class as she would love it, she’d be ahead of the curve, and why not take a just for fun class with Coco as she seems pretty perfect in every way! ❤️🐾
Coco is available for adoption at @semopets
Please enjoy this video of Riggs 😍🐾 learning to “drop” on cue for some tips about how you might teach this to your own dog.
I use video a ton in training for a variety of reasons including as a tool to help clients. I almost always record myself and/or my clients during private sessions to share with clients as a way to assess sessions and also as something to refer back to between sessions. I always encourage clients to video their training and share with me for feedback between sessions too. Video is such a helpful tool!
I need to clean up some of my mechanics here for sure, but Castor Gator is moving right along in spite of that. Zen Bowl is becoming a favorite of both of ours. We are having so much fun with this #zerotocd
Mija and I were doing some fun chin rest training while sitting in the sun yesterday afternoon, and Castor Gator 🐊 said he was getting in on the action too. How could I not reinforce that? 😍
Neko wants to play PORTL games too! 😻
Dipping our toes back into the #zerotocd waters means we get to play lots of fun reinforcement based games like “chase” and bonus, we get more exercise on our walks! I’m a runner now - who knew? 🏃🏻♀️😂
In today’s episode of “whose mistake is this anyway?” 😂
Castor and I were working on some “zen bowl” exercises this morning. I made plenty of mistakes in this session, but I am especially interested in the errors/mistakes around Castor taking the Zen Bowl treat when not cued to do so (Or rather, when I did not intentionally cue him to take the treat as he clearly was cued to take it!) and what happened related to his behavior around the zen bowl after that repetition.
On the very first repetition he goes for the treat instead of coming to target my hand which I am asking him to do. I could have tried to beat him to the bowl and removed the bowl or covered the treat, and that would have been a valid choice on my part. Instead , I decided to resist the urge to do that and let him eat the treat. Importantly, I also decided to do something different in the next repetition and block the visual of the bowl when I asked for the target. We achieved success and we achieved success with every repetition thereafter related to not eating the zen bowl treat until cued even though he had already been reinforced for doing so. How is this possible? Doesn’t he need to know he is “wrong”? Nope…
When mistakes happen in training, we do not have to “correct” the mistake in order to avoid it in the future. We do however have to adjust our plans if we want to avoid the mistake in the future.
Does anyone know who said “the worst time to correct a mistake is when it happens”? I love that quote, but don’t know who to attribute it to!
Have you ever asked your dog to do something, like sit or stay, and they didn’t respond? Maybe they seemed to ignore you entirely, or perhaps they did something else instead. When that happens, have you ever felt frustrated with your dog? Maybe you thought they were being stubborn, disobedient, or just not very smart? I think we’ve all been there, right?
But what if they weren’t exhibiting any of those traits? What if they were simply behaving in the way they had learned to behave in a specific situation?
This video provides a clear example of this. When working with both of my dogs simultaneously, I noticed Mija wasn’t staying on her station. So, I decided to work on this with her individually. When it was just the two of us, I immediately identified the problem, and I bet you’ll see it too. She is behaving exactly as I would expect based on her recent learning history with that board!
How do I address this? I have a couple of options. I can change the environment and use a different station when working with both dogs at once, and when I want Mija to sit or lie down on her station for an extended period of time. Alternatively, I can go back and retrain her to the Cato Board from an earlier starting point. Since Mija has a strong stationing behavior on multiple other objects, and since I have many other things I would like to train, for now, I will probably opt for the easier route and reserve her Cato board for movement work only.
If you’re asking your dog to do something and they aren’t responding, trust that they are doing exactly what they have learned to do in that situation. Take a step back and see if you can identify any cues or signals in the environment that might be prompting your dog to do something else!
