Behavior consultations and training, specializing in fear, aggression, reactivity, and puppy socialization
"I never thought I’d be writing a blog post about dogs hu***ng, yet here we are.
To clarify, this is not a blog about sexual reproduction or attempts to sexually reproduce.
This blog is about that mystifying behavior we’ve all seen – a dog (often a puppy or a young dog) hu***ng another dog, a person, or an inanimate object."
https://sarahowendogtraining.com/blog/the-humpies/
Life has been super busy!
But, I finally had a chance to pick back up the research I've been doing on transferring stimulus control. And, I had time to write a blog update on it as well!
How do we "transfer a cue"? In other words, how do we transfer control of a behavior from one stimulus to another?
It's wild to think how much has changed in animal training in such a relatively short period of time!
It makes me excited to think about how much more room for growth we surely must have, and how fast it can happen 🥹
This 1992 clicker is a blast from the past!
It seems strange to think about a time before the term “clicker training” existed.
However, this “before time” wasn’t really that long ago.
For example, in Karen Pryor’s original edition of “Don’t Shoot the Dog,” published in 1984, she does not use the word “clicker” or “clicker training.”
When talking about selecting conditioned reinforcers, Karen describes “a cricket, the dime-store party toy that goes ‘click-click’ when you press it.”
Animal training was evolving rapidly in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
One momentous event for both animal trainers and behavior analysts was
the 1992 Association for Behavior Analysis annual convention in San Francisco.
ABA president, Dr. Edward K. Morris, invited Karen Pryor to give the President's Invited Scholar's Address.
In addition, the convention included two symposia by prominent animal trainers, which featured Karen Pryor, Gary Priest, Gary Wilkes, and Ingrid Shallenberger.
These presentations featured demos of the shaping game, videos showing how positive reinforcement training could be used to teach foot care to elephants, and discussions about how to best apply the science of behavior to animal training.
The 1992 convention led to new collaborations between behavior analysts and animal trainers and may have even contributed to the birth of the term “clicker training.”
This year, at the end of May, ABAI will hold their 50th annual convention.
As part of the program, Dr. Jesús Rosales-Ruiz will be giving a short talk about the 1992 convention and its impact on both behavior analysts and animal trainers.
If you’ll be at the convention, you can find it as part of Symposium #485.
Hope to see you there!
Recently, I competed with one of my dogs in a local agility trial. I had taken him to agility trials and fun runs in the past, and had tested to see if he was ready to compete in that environment. How had I tested it? I offered him his regular reinforcers – kibble and his Frisbee. When he wasn't interested in those things, I knew it meant I had more training to do.
So, we worked more on training and, when we went back to the agility trial ... he was fine. He ran exactly the way he runs in our backyard. He was more than happy to eat kibble at the trial, and to play with toys.
The problem was never that my treats weren't high-value enough or that he was "distracted." The problem was that he didn't have the skills to be successful in that environment. Using high-value treats to try to bribe him to work likely would have set us farther back.
How can we train our dogs to navigate challenging environments, without relying on increasingly higher-value treats to bribe them?
I recently presented a webinar on errorless learning for the folks at Braver Dogs Sweden. I had a lot of fun chatting with them about how we can design our training sessions to promote rapid skill acquisition, and how we can then transfer those behaviors to other environments.
I've made the webinar available for purchase on my website, if you'd like to see it yourself. You can find it here: https://sarahowendogtraining.com/workshopsandwebinars/
And, I've also put together a little preview of the webinar, which you can watch below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qntA71rQFfM&t=3s
You can purchase the webinar here: https://sarahowendogtraining.com/workshopsandwebinars/?et_fb=1&PageSpeed=off
Have you ever suspected an animal of learning something just by watching another animal do it? I think this happens all the time!
We call this "observational learning." The term refers to a process in which one animal detects another animal’s behavior – as well as the consequences for that behavior – and uses that information to determine whether or not to imitate the behavior.
Learning through observation can be a fast way to add fairly complex or unlikely behaviors to an animal’s repertoire!
Take a look at a few examples from my own dogs :)
Animals can acquire new skills quickly, if they're able to observe another animal perform the behavior and see how it pays off!
One of the projects I've been working on with my own dogs is about what trainers call "cue transfer" and what behavior analysts call a "delayed-cue" procedure – getting them to perform a known behavior with a brand new cue. The lore goes: if you present a new cue, followed by the old/existing cue for the behavior, your dog will start to anticipate the old cue and will perform the behavior when you give the new cue.
But ... it doesn't always work. Or sometimes, it works, but it takes a really long time to get the new cue reliable.
So, I've been trying to tease it apart, and see what's actually going on there. Here's a little clip of Cheaters and Rosie working on it with me.
Rosie's new cue is a hand signal for down ("stop" hand, raised above my shoulder). This was her second session with the new cue.
And, Cheaters' new cue is the word "go," which means he should run straight ahead of me. Again, this was his second session with the new cue.
I think there's probably a lot going on here – and not just one "rule" about how to transfer a cue. I'm excited to keep playing with it and see where this goes!
This is a tough one to talk about. The truth is, neither of my dogs currently enjoys having their nails trimmed – but they tolerate it calmly and we're able to get it over with quickly.
We got here by using negative reinforcement and a little bit of escape extinction, which sometimes feel like "bad words" in animal training.
But, given my dogs' starting points, and given the fact that occasional nail trims are necessary to their well-being, this was the kindest training plan for them.
And also, it's a work in progress.
Shaping with negative reinforcement is hard, & means we are training with some kind of aversive. When might we choose to train with R-?
Cues are reinforcers! Reinforcers are cues!
Wait, what?
What do clickers and the cue "drop it" have in common? They both tell the dog what to do next, and they both reinforce the dog's behavior.
Two of the groups I have the most sympathy for are teenage dogs, and those who share their lives with teenage dogs :) It is HARD to be a teenager, and it is HARD to live with a teenager.
I think a big part of the reason for this is because the goals of teenagers are often in direct opposition to the goals of their caretakers. It is normal for teenagers to want to "spread their wings," to explore all that life has to offer, and to maybe sometimes sort of make perhaps somewhat questionable decisions. As their caretakers, our priorities are usually on keeping them (and everyone else) safe, and on helping prepare them for "real life."
One of my favorite articles from the field of behavior analysis addresses a similar dichotomy between the choices adults with developmental disabilities might make and the choices their caretakers might make on their behalf. The article is titled "Balancing the right to habilitation with the right to personal liberties: the rights of people with developmental disabilities to eat too many doughnuts and take a nap." I think many of the ideas discussed in it apply as well to teenage dogs as they do to people.
Here's a quote that I think nicely sums up the questions raised in the article:
"At issue is whether it is in the client's best interest to be allowed to exercise choice. ... The strongest argument against the right to choice is that many people with developmental disabilities may make bad choices."
Sound familiar?
However, the authors argue that "everyone has the right and ability to make choices on some level" and *should* be allowed to exercise as much choice as possible – not only because it's ethical, but also because it may be the most effective way to successfully cohabitate with someone whose goals are very different from your own :) The authors point out that problem behaviors appear to decrease in frequency when an individual has opportunities for choice.
They conclude, "While learning, clients should be encouraged to make as many choices as their abilities allow, as long as these choices are not detrimental to the client or to others."
In other words, don't sweat the small stuff. It's OK – and actually probably really good! – to let your teenager decide whether they would rather share your doughnut with you and then take a nap (or a hike), or whether they might like to do some training with you instead.
There are a lot of gems in the article. If you'd like to read it for yourself, you can access it here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1286212/pdf/jaba00087-0081.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2VHDopUHf_eLs_YUIOR1oF7BbsMZ8uNdax6frcNm5vKG8yk4XyF-s9Fdg
Trigger warning: this is an old article, and it uses terminology of its time, including some instances of the R-word.
One of the things we're talking about in the graduate PORTL class I TA for at UNT is back chaining. Specifically, we're talking about how we can use back chaining to build a reinforcement system. The reinforcement system teaches our learners:
* where and how we will deliver the reinforcer
* when we will deliver it
* which behaviors they need to do to get and consume the reinforcer
Once the learner understands this chain, we can extend the duration of behaviors within the chain, without frustrating our learner. They know what is coming next! In other words, there is no guessing or worrying about whether the behavior they are performing will lead to reinforcement. Our learner knows the next step in the chain, and the step after that, and the step after that ... all the way up to delivery of the reinforcer.
Here's an example of Rosie and me practicing a reinforcement system with her ball. After back chaining the reinforcement system, I add duration to Rosie's down. Then, I add another task to our chain: touching the target stick.
Notice how Rosie doesn't ever "throw" behaviors at me or guess about what she should do, even when there is a pretty lengthy pause between my reinforcement signal ("catch!") and delivery of the reinforcer. She knows exactly what to do and when to do it, and she is confident reinforcement is on its way!
What makes for a great social interaction?
Take a look at this play session between my teenage border collie, Rosie, and her new friend, Cappy.
In this video, Rosie is pretty pushy! She keeps pestering Cappy to do what she wants to do — play! Little baby puppy Cappy responds by asking for lots of breaks. He turns his head away from Rosie, flicks his tongue at her, and shakes off. But Rosie was still able to talk him into a pretty long play session!
How?
By acknowledging and reciprocating Cappy's signals. Every time Cappy asks for a little break, Rosie mirrors him.
Social interactions – whether they are puppy play sessions or training sessions with our dogs – are a back-and-forth conversation, an interconnected chain of behaviors between two individuals. They can be a series of breaks away or a series of follows. The more one team member tries to push their agenda, the more the other team member is going to withdraw or avoid the other team member – they will break from the session.
Conversely, the more a team member acknowledges, reciprocates, or "follows" the other team member, the more likely the other team member is to rejoin them — and the more likely everyone is to have a fun, mutually enjoyable interaction!
Trainers (and by "trainers," I mean me 😉) love to talk about stimulus control! So what is stimulus control? And how do we get it?
I had fun playing around with my pup the past couple of days, figuring out whether her behavior of coming out of the crate was under stimulus control (spoiler alert: it was), which stimulus was controlling/cuing the behavior, and then transferring to a few different stimuli.
Take a look at the video: https://youtu.be/F6-NXyyNOaI
Or, read the full blog post! https://sarahowendogtraining.com/blog/what-is-stimulus-control/
There are some really interesting conversations happening in the dog world right now about what "consent" means (or "assent," as we would refer to it in behavior analysis).
First, what qualifies as assent/consent? Does the dog need to be happy about it? Or does the dog just need to tolerate it? Aren't there some things a dog needs to have done to it that it will never be happy about?
And, second, is it even OK for us to ask dogs to do things that are 1) not critical to the dog's well-being and 2) not ethologically "natural" for the dog? In other words, even if we *could* train a dog to consent/assent to these things, should we?
These are really big questions, and there's a whole lot to unpack. I don't have answers, but I do have some thoughts, which could probably best be summed up by this video of my dog running and jumping into my arms.
Some background on the video: When I got Cheaters as a puppy, being picked up and held was very, very aversive for him. He growled, snapped and bit when he was picked up, and he avoided or moved away from anyone who reached toward him.
We could say, it's not natural for dogs to be picked up or carried, and it's not usually necessary for their well-being. For times when it is necessary, we could say that tolerating being picked up and held is "good enough" – that the dog doesn't need to be happy about it.
But. That's not the approach I took.
And, Cheaters now actively seeks out being picked up and acts downright joyous when I hold him. I believe his quality of life is greatly improved from when he was a puppy.
Again – a lot to unpack.
I goof up my dogs' reinforcement systems pretty regularly, and then have to rebuild them. Here's a story about how I goofed up our fetch game, and have been working to rebuild it!
A really good game of fetch, that can actually be used to reinforce my dog's behavior, is one of the hardest things to teach.
What does your animal want, what do you want, and is there a way you can arrange for both of these things?
I posted a blog earlier this week about transferring some cues in Rosie's agility training. If you saw the blog, you might have noticed that Rosie was carrying her toy throughout most of the session.
https://youtu.be/wCIO26aFVeg
In that training session, I wanted to practice blind crosses. Rosie wanted to hold onto her ball. There's no reason we both can't have what we want.
And, the less often I take reinforcers away from Rosie, the more likely she'll be to let me keep my own reinforcers :)
I visited one of my clients last Friday to do some lessons at her barn. When I arrived, her three baby goats were enjoying some fresh air outside the barn. However, for their safety, we needed to get the goats back in the barn, before we started our lessons with the horses. But, the goats ha
I've been thinking a lot lately about how using treats – or Frisbees, or tug – with my dogs can actually sometimes be coercive. And how to know whether I might have accidentally taught my dogs The Wrong Thing about training or – in this case – about competing in trials. Is the fact that my dogs can eat treats or play Frisbee or offer work enough? Are they actually ready to trial? How do I know?
I used to ask whether my dog could eat treats and offer to work in trial environments. Those aren't the questions I ask anymore.
We can apply a component skill-building approach to all of our training sessions, including to games like fetch.
When we start to think of all the component pieces of a behavior, and not in terms of some inherent quality you or your dogs do or do not possess (you are a "natural" Frisbee player, all Labs love to retrieve ...), we can find a clear path to teaching complex and diverse behaviors!
My border collie loves to play Frisbee. We compete in several different disc games, which all have slightly different rules.
I wrote in September about how I was teaching one of my dogs about the concept of scent work. I have an update on our progress!
Nosework is a concept game, in which the dog has to learn the relevant properties of a target scent.
One of the ways my friend and mentor, Mary Hunter, taught me to think about building duration is with a chain, rather than with extinction (just waiting longer and longer or for more and more, before reinforcing).
The other thing I think about is that our learners are never doing *nothing,* which is sometimes the way we tend to think about duration behaviors – "just stay there and do nothing while I count to five."
I've been playing around with extending the distance and duration of a Frisbee game with Cheaters and Rosie. I'd like to be able to send them over a jump, then through a tunnel, and then over another jump. But if I tried to extend the duration/distance between the obstacles by moving them incrementally farther and farther apart, I'd probably end up with a whole lot of frustration and confusion and errors.
Instead, I'm extending duration by giving them something *to do* at each step, and chaining those small steps together.
So I can start out with two jumps, close together, on each side of the tunnel. Send them over one jump and there's the next jump and there's the tunnel and there's the next jump and there's the next jump and there's your Frisbee.
Then, I can either backchain further by adding another jump before the tunnel, or I can take out some of those in-between steps. In other words, I can remove the jumps closest to the tunnel. Either way, I'm increasing the distance/duration between the obstacles, and my dog is not engaging in any "junk" behaviors between them.
I end up with nice clean behaviors and happy dogs.
I *loved* this free webinar Behavior Explorer ran with Dr. Jesús Rosales-Ruiz. It gave me some really cool ways to think about things, particularly the words we use to describe reinforcement and why it doesn't make sense to critique other trainers' work.
If you didn't have a chance to catch it live, a link to the recording (with a table of contents!) is below.
In December, Behavior Explorer hosted a webinar with Dr. Jesús Rosales-Ruiz about his experiences working with Dr. Ogden Lindsley. The webinar recording is available for free on our website.
This week, we added a TABLE OF CONTENTS for the recording. You can find the table of contents and the recording for the webinar on our Behavior Explorer website.
https://behaviorexplorer.com/explorations/ogden-lindsley-webinar/
If you’ve never heard of Dr. Ogden Lindsley, I think you’re in for a treat as you watch the webinar. Ogden was a pioneering behavior scientist who helped bring reinforcement and shaping out of the laboratory and into applied settings.
One of my favorite parts of the webinar is that Jesús shared several audio clips of Ogden discussing a variety of topics, including how to approach research, conditioned reinforcers and shaping, movement cycles, and the dead man’s (dead person’s) test.
The webinar lasted about an hour and a half. So, it’s quite long! We hope the table of contents will help you navigate the recording and find particular sections to watch.
Here are some of the topics Jesús covered in the webinar:
— How he met Ogden
— Why he wanted to meet Ogden in the first place
— Reading the Behavior of Organisms with Ogden
— Why you shouldn’t try to milk a chicken
— Ogden’s reputation as a great shaper
— Why Ogden preferred “response definer” instead of “conditioned reinforcer”
— How movement cycles can help you understand behavior
— The acronym MUSIC
Have you heard of “constructional” approaches to training? What do we mean by that? It might not be what you think!
A constructional approach means starting where you learner is at and building (constructing!) the desired behavior one piece at a time.
People sometimes ask whether I am a “positive-reinforcement trainer,” or a “balanced trainer,” or some other kind of trainer. I try to avoid using labels like that because they are just that – labels. They don’t tell you much of anything about how I actually train. Everyone’s definition probably varies a little bit and there’s a very good chance we’re all talking about something different, when we use those labels.
However, I understand that people want to know what to expect when they work with me.
There are essentially two things we can do with behavior. We can either build behavior or we can suppress behavior by punishing it.
I mentioned a couple of months ago that, when I moved into my new house, I was using environmental management to prevent my dogs from fence fighting with the neighbor's dogs (original blog post below). I blocked my dogs' access to the fence line for about a month, and have since removed the blockade.
So how's it going? Rosie never approaches the fence at all. Cheaters will approach it and easily move away from it, including when one of the neighbor's dogs is at the fence.
This morning, I had to block a hole the neighbor's dog had dug, and Cheaters accompanied me on my task. What did he do when he came nose to nose with the neighbor's dog? Check out the video. https://youtu.be/_lxgkxQPHFY
Original blog: https://sarahowendogtraining.com/blog/environmental-management/
How did I teach my dogs not to fence fight with the neighbor's dogs? https://sarahowendogtraining.com/blog/environmental-management/
Good training sessions often are about as exciting as watching paint dry; they look like a whole lot of nothing at all.
Sometimes this can feel like we aren't *working on the problem.*
But the best way to work on the problem is almost never by continuing to expose the dog its triggers. Instead, we can identify how a *perfect* dog would behave in any given situation, and train those skills independently of the triggers.
This is true for all types of problem behaviors, including "obsessive" or "neurotic" behaviors.
https://sarahowendogtraining.com/blog/ocd-and-neurotic-behaviors/
Grad school has been keeping me busy! I haven't been posting as much as I'd like, but I've been thinking a lot lately about those of us with very fast dogs. Those of us with dogs who bark at us, mouth our hands, jump up, or otherwise show signs of frustration when we aren't "fast enough" for them.
It can be incredibly discouraging to think, in order to train our dogs, we *just have to be faster* – at providing the next cue, at delivering the reinforcer, at clicking ... I don't know about you, but there's no way I could ever be that fast!
The other thing we tend to think is that our dogs *are* something. They *are* anxious, they *are* fidgety, they *are* easily frustrated, they *are* high drive, they *are* impulsive ...
There's another way to think about this.
https://sarahowendogtraining.com/blog/the-fable-of-fast-enough/
Are you fast enough for your dog? What if I told you that's not the question you need to ask?
So you're telling me that the way to prevent my dogs from snatching my burrito off the table is by giving them pieces of my burrito?
:)
https://sarahowendogtraining.com/blog/reinforcement-systems-to-prevent-countersurfing/
We can use reinforcement systems to prevent problem behaviors with our dogs.
Another really cool study, just published, on using negative reinforcement and a constructional approach with fearful shelter dogs.
The dogs, who shelter staff initially considered very shy and not suitable for adoption, were successfully adopted after a single training session with the experimenter. They learned, in about half an hour, to make eye contact, approach the front of their kennels, wag their tails, and be petted, leashed and walked by a stranger.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/jeab.784
Of the millions of dogs that enter animal shelters in the United States each year, many exhibit behaviors labeled as fear, which can decrease their likelihood of adoption. Current dog training proced...
Rosie has been teaching me some important lessons about how much my own subtle behavior matters in our training sessions!
https://sarahowendogtraining.com/blog/our-behavior-as-part-of-our-dogs-behavior-chain/
Good training sessions are a back-and-forth conversation with our dogs, where our behavior cues our dog's behavior and vice versa.
The way I think about shaping sessions – what makes a shaping session "good" or "bad" – is evolving, and so is the way I conduct my sessions.
Not very long ago, I would have thought I was "cheating" or "not a very good shaper" if I used a treat lure to get the dog to do the thing.
Now, I think the best way to get the dog to do the thing is with as few errors as possible, by arranging the environment, by capturing (and luring!) behavior.
https://sarahowendogtraining.com/blog/teaching-a-sit-pretty/
Steps to teaching a dog a new skill without errors or frustration.
Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Sarah Owen Dog Training and Behavior Consultations posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.
Send a message to Sarah Owen Dog Training and Behavior Consultations:
One of the projects I've been working on with my own dogs is about what trainers call "cue transfer" and what behavior analysts call a "delayed-cue" procedure – getting them to perform a known behavior with a brand new cue. The lore goes: if you present a new cue, followed by the old/existing cue for the behavior, your dog will start to anticipate the old cue and will perform the behavior when you give the new cue. But ... it doesn't always work. Or sometimes, it works, but it takes a really long time to get the new cue reliable. So, I've been trying to tease it apart, and see what's actually going on there. Here's a little clip of Cheaters and Rosie working on it with me. Rosie's new cue is a hand signal for down ("stop" hand, raised above my shoulder). This was her second session with the new cue. And, Cheaters' new cue is the word "go," which means he should run straight ahead of me. Again, this was his second session with the new cue. I think there's probably a lot going on here – and not just one "rule" about how to transfer a cue. I'm excited to keep playing with it and see where this goes!
One of the things we're talking about in the graduate PORTL class I TA for at UNT is back chaining. Specifically, we're talking about how we can use back chaining to build a reinforcement system. The reinforcement system teaches our learners: * where and how we will deliver the reinforcer * when we will deliver it * which behaviors they need to do to get and consume the reinforcer Once the learner understands this chain, we can extend the duration of behaviors within the chain, without frustrating our learner. They know what is coming next! In other words, there is no guessing or worrying about whether the behavior they are performing will lead to reinforcement. Our learner knows the next step in the chain, and the step after that, and the step after that ... all the way up to delivery of the reinforcer. Here's an example of Rosie and me practicing a reinforcement system with her ball. After back chaining the reinforcement system, I add duration to Rosie's down. Then, I add another task to our chain: touching the target stick. Notice how Rosie doesn't ever "throw" behaviors at me or guess about what she should do, even when there is a pretty lengthy pause between my reinforcement signal ("catch!") and delivery of the reinforcer. She knows exactly what to do and when to do it, and she is confident reinforcement is on its way!
What makes for a great social interaction? Take a look at this play session between my teenage border collie, Rosie, and her new friend, Cappy. In this video, Rosie is pretty pushy! She keeps pestering Cappy to do what she wants to do — play! Little baby puppy Cappy responds by asking for lots of breaks. He turns his head away from Rosie, flicks his tongue at her, and shakes off. But Rosie was still able to talk him into a pretty long play session! How? By acknowledging and reciprocating Cappy's signals. Every time Cappy asks for a little break, Rosie mirrors him. Social interactions – whether they are puppy play sessions or training sessions with our dogs – are a back-and-forth conversation, an interconnected chain of behaviors between two individuals. They can be a series of breaks away or a series of follows. The more one team member tries to push their agenda, the more the other team member is going to withdraw or avoid the other team member – they will break from the session. Conversely, the more a team member acknowledges, reciprocates, or "follows" the other team member, the more likely the other team member is to rejoin them — and the more likely everyone is to have a fun, mutually enjoyable interaction!
There are some really interesting conversations happening in the dog world right now about what "consent" means (or "assent," as we would refer to it in behavior analysis). First, what qualifies as assent/consent? Does the dog need to be happy about it? Or does the dog just need to tolerate it? Aren't there some things a dog needs to have done to it that it will never be happy about? And, second, is it even OK for us to ask dogs to do things that are 1) not critical to the dog's well-being and 2) not ethologically "natural" for the dog? In other words, even if we *could* train a dog to consent/assent to these things, should we? These are really big questions, and there's a whole lot to unpack. I don't have answers, but I do have some thoughts, which could probably best be summed up by this video of my dog running and jumping into my arms. Some background on the video: When I got Cheaters as a puppy, being picked up and held was very, very aversive for him. He growled, snapped and bit when he was picked up, and he avoided or moved away from anyone who reached toward him. We could say, it's not natural for dogs to be picked up or carried, and it's not usually necessary for their well-being. For times when it is necessary, we could say that tolerating being picked up and held is "good enough" – that the dog doesn't need to be happy about it. But. That's not the approach I took. And, Cheaters now actively seeks out being picked up and acts downright joyous when I hold him. I believe his quality of life is greatly improved from when he was a puppy. Again – a lot to unpack.
One of the ways my friend and mentor, Mary Hunter, taught me to think about building duration is with a chain, rather than with extinction (just waiting longer and longer or for more and more, before reinforcing). The other thing I think about is that our learners are never doing *nothing,* which is sometimes the way we tend to think about duration behaviors – "just stay there and do nothing while I count to five." I've been playing around with extending the distance and duration of a Frisbee game with Cheaters and Rosie. I'd like to be able to send them over a jump, then through a tunnel, and then over another jump. But if I tried to extend the duration/distance between the obstacles by moving them incrementally farther and farther apart, I'd probably end up with a whole lot of frustration and confusion and errors. Instead, I'm extending duration by giving them something *to do* at each step, and chaining those small steps together. So I can start out with two jumps, close together, on each side of the tunnel. Send them over one jump and there's the next jump and there's the tunnel and there's the next jump and there's the next jump and there's your Frisbee. Then, I can either backchain further by adding another jump before the tunnel, or I can take out some of those in-between steps. In other words, I can remove the jumps closest to the tunnel. Either way, I'm increasing the distance/duration between the obstacles, and my dog is not engaging in any "junk" behaviors between them. I end up with nice clean behaviors and happy dogs.
Good training sessions often are about as exciting as watching paint dry; they look like a whole lot of nothing at all. Sometimes this can feel like we aren't *working on the problem.* But the best way to work on the problem is almost never by continuing to expose the dog its triggers. Instead, we can identify how a *perfect* dog would behave in any given situation, and train those skills independently of the triggers. This is true for all types of problem behaviors, including "obsessive" or "neurotic" behaviors. https://sarahowendogtraining.com/blog/ocd-and-neurotic-behaviors/
Yesterday, Rosie and I started to work on a little baby right finish, where she approaches me from the front, wraps around my right side, and ends by my left side. Because cues get attached to the behavior from the start (whether we intentionally give cues or not – they are looking for predictive signals), we might as well train the cue at the same time as the behavior. As long as we're using an errorless approach and minimizing the chances that the cue will get associated with the wrong behavior, it will save us the step of transferring the cue later on. I'd like her right finish cue to be my sweeping right hand. Tonight, we worked on teaching her that all the other signals in the environment are irrelevant. So: standing with my right foot forward instead of my left foot (feet are not a good predictor of a right finish), using a different toy (the activity we're engaged in is not a good predictor of a right finish), playing at a different time of day ... even my other dogs are helping her pick out the relevant signals from background noise.
Putting it all together in a Frisbee sandwich. This is Rosie's first time working on a dumbbell retrieve. She has many of the component pieces for a formal retrieve at this point – run toward the thing I threw, pick up the thing I threw, return straight back to me with the thing in your mouth, and deliver it to my hand – so this went quickly and easily. Except for the look of utter disdain on her face when she realized it was a dumbbell I threw and not her Frisbee 😂 Don't worry, Rosie, we'll keep doing Frisbee sandwiches for a long, long time.
Rosie's loose-leash walking around distractions – auditory and visual stimuli, including a friend – is looking pretty good! She looks about the same with our helper in the ring as she looks without her there. The goal is that all the distractions become nothing more than low-key background noise, and that I don't have to feed her treats constantly or fight to be more interesting than all the exciting things in the world. That means we had to start in an easy environment and gradually introduce distractions as she was ready, without ever pushing her over her threshold. We're making good progress!
Want your business to be the top-listed Pet Store/pet Service?
