More Clicker Training with Pepper
Second target training session with Pepper! Once again, watch the video, then look below for more on what I did (and why) in this session!
I started this session with the same criteria as we ended last session: I wanted a nose push. She offered to dig at it with her paw pretty quickly, so I started rewarding for any kind of paw touch. I also flipped the frisbee back over at this point since I was no longer trying to catch my cookies in the middle of it. I pretty quickly got her to dig at the frisbee reliably. At this point I started holding out for a sustained touch rather than just digging. This is the first point where she starts to check out a little bit because she’s not sure what I’m wanting… I went a little too quickly for her. So I went back to rewarding for persistent pawing, and started rewarding low to the ground and in front of the frisbee, hoping that would result in her accidentally stepping onto the frisbee and getting the paw touch I was really looking for. It didn’t totally work, but I was also almost out of cookies in my hand so we just ended there with some pawing at the frisbee so we could end on a good note with success!
Clicker Training Pepper
Miss Pepper has never really been trained with the clicker before, at least not that I remember. I have started shaping behaviours a lot more often since getting Payton, so I don’t think I really did a lot with her previously. So now that she’s here, it’s time for the clicker training. Previous to this video, I did one quick session where I asked her for sits and downs and C&T for each. With Payton I really didn’t do any “charging” of the clicker and it has obviously not been a problem for him, but Pepper has four years of learning WITHOUT the clicker so I thought I would put a small deposit into her clicker training bank account before starting. But that is all I did.
I tried to figure out which behaviour I thought would be best to start with and decided one of the easiest things to do – and the easiest to “show” for video purposes – was to teach her how to target an object. Both of my boys are very good at this and even Georgie is pretty quick to try targetting stuff if she thinks it will get her a cookie… so easy enough, right? Right.
Watch the video, then read below for how I approached this training session!
At first I wasn’t sure what she would do when I put the frisbee (my favourite starting target) down on the floor. Would she go sniff it, mouth it, maybe even paw at it right off the bat? So I put the frisbee down and just watched to see what she would do before I decided what to click. Well, I should have predicted she wouldn’t do ANYTHING, but as usual I forgot that she is completely unlike my other dogs. So after a few seconds I knew my first move was to just click for looking at the frisbee. I quickly realized I also needed to use my treat placement to help out and started throwing the cookies towards the frisbee. I flipped it upside down, which is usually how I use it when it’s a food target, because the cookies would then get trapped in the frisbee. This let me reward for sniffing the frisbee, then I started waiting for an actual nose touch rather than just a sniff.
I started waiting for forward paw movement, but before she really started doing that, she actually pushed the frisbee with her nose. This was exciting to me, so I clicked it and decided to reward that for a while. We ended the session there!
Agility Update
The weather has gotten a little better, and last week we managed to get out to J’s house twice and work outside – practice we desperately needed since our first trial is coming up in a few weeks here.
First, the jumping is going pretty well. His confidence is pretty good and he was taking the 12 inch jumps outside nicely, better judging his take off points. This week in our jumping program we are entering the Problem Solving phase, which may prove pretty challenging. I’m nervous about it, because I don’t want to really shake Auggie’s confidence right before a trial, but I feel like we need to just keep pushing forward and hope for the best. What else can we do?
There will be a VMO present at our trial at the end of this month, and I’m desperately hoping Auggie is thinking short that day… nothing to do but hope for the best.
Second, we got to put the target on the full height a-frame for the first time and it went SPLENDID. He really gets the idea of driving to the bottom now rather than hopping off halfway down. I’m hoping we continue to have success with that in the weeks that come and his bad habits don’t return.
J informed me that this spring we’ll be focusing on obstacle discrimination when it comes to things like a tunnel under an a-frame or dogwalk. “You’ll see that in open,” she tells me, as though she thinks we’ll soon be competing in open standard…
Let’s just get a SINGLE NA leg first, and then I can start worrying about open standard!
Anyway, I have many many many videos to edit and upload, and I will get on that soon, but finals are creeping up and I have been working on some large-ish projects that need to be completed… uh… well, Friday. So until I get a chance to really sit down and edit the videos, then post them all on YouTube, then write about it here… you’ll just have to believe me that Auggie did AMAZING on his last day of the series of five oxers!! Nice, even pacing, sailing over the jumps – just gorgeous!
Target Training Update
I’ve been pretty busy with the Naturally Jumping program, but we have been playing with target training still! Auggie got the concept very quickly, and I started playing around with throwing the frisbee (his target) across the room or down the stairs and making him “go touch” away from me. Last week, we were able to put the target on a piece of contact equipment for the first time… the teeter, which (luckily) is Auggie’s best piece of contact equipment anyway! As long as he can slow down (which usually requires me to be paying attention and tell him “EASY” if he gets to excited) he does just fine. It went really well, except for a lot of hilarity involving him looking across the room at the target and trying to go touch it before he was told. *facepalm* At one point he was in a sit, looked over at the teeter, licked his lips, and took off through the sequence – leaving me standing at the start, because if he breaks his stay and goes ahead of me I just stand there until he comes back to me – until he got to the teeter. Which resulted in me standing at the start, and him standing on the teeter doing his touch, looking rather expectantly at me.
It will probably be a little while until I’m able to put the target on the a-frame, which is fine by me. I want to have plenty of time to get the touch behaviour reinforced before I have to put it on the one piece of equipment that gives us trouble. If the weather does a solid warm-up and stays that way, I can get the mini a-frame out in the backyard and start with that before we go out to his breeder’s house for practice on the real a-frame out there. I’m anxious, and yet not… I don’t want to rush it, but I want to get on with solving this problem at the same time.
We’ll see. So far, so good – that’s all I can say!
Agility Goals
I’m revising our agility goals.
1) Work with Auggie so he becomes a smart jumper. Jane Simmons-Moake briefly talks about using a ground bar to help flat jumpers learn how to adjust their takeoff. Auggie stutter-steps up to the bar almost as much as he jumps flat, so I’m not positive if that method will work. Instead, I ordered myself a copy of Suzanne Clothier’s book “The Clothier Natural Jumping Method.” Once the snow melts (SIX MORE WEEKS OF WINTER) I’ll be outside with Auggie working my way through her book. I think I have enough room if I run the entire length of the back fence to set up a jump chute, and I think I have enough jumps. If not, well – I’ve got some more PVC layin’ around here, and it’s like $5 to make a brand new jump even if I had to go get all-new pipe and fittings.
2) Target training. I started this last week when I was home sick from work one day. Funny enough, I had basically lost my voice, so I trained the entire thing essentially mute. I took out one of those little plastic can covers, held it, and got Auggie to paw it. Moved it down to the floor – reward for paw touch. Moved it away from me, reward for a “go touch.” This weekend I purchased one of the big puppy Kong frisbees to use as a bigger target, because when he would get a distance away from me I had trouble seeing if he actually got his paw on the little can cover.
So far this is working out great. He’ll go touch with no problems. I’m starting to use it on other things, like putting it up on the steps and having him get up on something to touch it. I have a big flat plank that I bought to make into a teeter and am currently running him across that and having him 2o2o at the end. It’s got a coating on it that I need to sand down, then paint it with some of that gripping texture stuff I used on my mini a-frame before I can start doing any sort of lifting it to simulate a dogwalk. (Believe me, I tried. It was pretty funny because Auggie basically slid straight down it like a slide, with me holding him so he didn’t fall, to 2o2o at the bottom. Yet more proof that this dog trusts me absolutely – he lets me put him on, in effect, a slide.)
Anyway, if I can remember to do so I’ll update here as our training advances. I think I’ll definitely be doing updates when we start the jumping method training, because there are “lessons” to advance through so I should be able to remember to update along with each lesson.
On the plus side, our rear crossing seems to be going wonderfully.
