Doggy Discrimination - a tale by Tanner and Tamara

Tanner knows how to do a nose touch to my hand (cue=touch) as well as a paw whack (cue=five). However, when I hold my hand out for either of these cues, it looks relatively the same. How does Tanner know what I want? He learned to wait for the cue!



I wanted Tanner to have excellent stimulus control (I only want him to offer the behavior in the presence of the cue) on these two behaviors for a couple reasons:

1. It can be annoying for him to constantly paw at me or try to put his nose in my hand every time I hold it out.
2. Teaching him to wait for the cue also teaches him self control.
3. It was challenging for me to teach.
4. It makes him use his brain. (watch for the steam towards the end of the video)
   

I started putting in sub headings in the pertinent points but then faded them out. A few things to point out; I often click Tanner for not responding to the hand alone, I want him to wait for the cue! When he makes a mistake, I take my hand back, pause a beat, then try again. If he does not respond at all, I take my hand back thus ending the possibility of getting a reward, pause a beat, then try again.

I do not tell him "No" when he does the wrong thing. I don't want to punish him for trying. Why? Because a dog that is not afraid to try things is easier to train. Besides, he "gets it" without the aversives!

Another thing to note is that both of these behaviors were trained pretty fluently at home. We have taken them "on the road" and used them in other situations as well. However, this is the first time I have asked him to discriminate outside the house. We are at our local dog training gym, a place very familiar to him. Although he does not hesitate or make mistakes at home, you can see that this environment is a bit distracting and he has to work a bit harder to concentrate.

Hey, I created a thinking dog! How about that?!

Darby Learns to Track

Darby on one of his first tracks. He is still learning what scent means. Typically at this stage of learning three short tracks are laid. The tracks are double laid and with lots of food drops. In the beginning the dog is of course following the food drops. At first they are wandering along the track looking for food drops and wondering what is going on. The handler is keeping them on the track on a short leash. Somewhere along the line the dog recognizes scent and their behavior changes. As the transistion is made they are following the footsteps and often time skipping some of the food drops. It helps dogs to learn tracking by starting in tall vegetation. The tracking conditions/learning conditions are quite poor this year. This year the rains have been late and sparse so the vegetation is quite low.

Agility Marathon

Every weekend the month of February had agility trials. After a month I am glad to take a break. Our last weekend was a good one, we earned another QQ. She is running fast and happy. Our trainer, Nancy Gyes, suggestion to play play play outside the ring with her, run into the ring at the last minute, then quickly get into position and release her has made Whisper run better. She is more focused and faster. The Jumpers run had a tricky weavepole entry. When the dog comes blasting out of the tunnel they are faced with the second weavepole and many dogs were NQ by entering incorrectly. Although our handling of the weaves was not graceful, we managed it and Qed.



The Standard run was fairly straight forward but I often can't get ahead in time to front cross and end up rear crossing. The tunnel to the jump is an excellent example, I meant to front cross before the jump but couldn't get there in time. One of the fun things about agility is thinking on your feet. No matter how many times you walk the course to plan your strategy, you have to be prepared to change tactics in a millisecond.



MACH Goal
Points-800
QQs-16

The Weekend Part 2

In addition to tracking last weekend we had 2 days of agility. At least agility went better-2 more QQs and 79 MACH points. We are now maxed out for points and are just looking for QQs.

The first day was cold and Whisper ran well. Notice her collar in the first two runs-it has been been my obedience/performance collar since the early 1990s-Merlin's and Jesse's era. Stolen along with its mate that night at the hotel with all my dog stuff. The jumpers run had her fastest course time to date. She earned 17 MACH points and a 4th place. Her speed was 5.78 yards/sec. Love her weavepole entrances!!!



The standard course was fun and fast. Interesting opening sequence-the decision whether to do a lead out pivot or serpentine the two jumps. Since I wanted to do left handed weavepoles to nail the tunnel entrance I chose to serpentine the two jumps. Funny to watch her rear end in the weavepoles. We are still struggling on the A frame contact though.



The day after the tracking trial another QQ but she is not wearing the collar. Her Jumpers run was very good with a 3rd place but no video available. The standard run she earned a 2nd place and 33 MACH points. We don't have a table lead out and it is obvious we need to work on it. It almost caused us to NQ. Love her weavepoles.



Except for the tracking theft a fun weekend.

Tracking

This past weekend was one day of agility followed the next day by a TDX test and the last day back to agility again. Agility will be posted in a later blog.
The night before the TDX test my van was broken into and all my dog equipment was stolen, obedience training bag, cool coats, hiking boots, tracking harness,line and fanny pack etc. Everything needed for the test that day as well as all my obedience training gear. I was shocked then furious that someone would take things that have no value except to a dog person. My tracking harness I had had since the late 1980s and had 5 TDXs and 8 TDs on it. My dumbbell had earned 5 CDXs on my dogs. I found out all the hotels in the area were hit that night.

The tracking people were great, everyone came to the rescue and I can't thank the tracking community enough. Whisper wore a German Shepherd's tracking harness, a sheltie's tracking line, a Corgi's fanny pack and boots. People even offered gloves and socks although I had those items. Needless to say I wasn't in a great mood to start the track and I think it carried down the line to Whisper. She didn't want to track that day either. We went to the start line and barely got off the line. She picked up interest as the track went on although kept coming back to me. We found 3 out of the 4 articles, crossed the road twice and paralleled the road once before we ran into trouble we couldn't overcome. She was tracking along side the road in a direction I was worried was wrong and put tension on the line to ask if she was sure. She came off, came back to me and never found the track again. I found out later we were on the track but Whisper must have read my insecurity and tension and stopped. We had completed all but the last 1 1/2 legs of the track-hard to come so close but to fail.


As upset as I was when I discovered everything was stolen I didn't get any photos of the test so the hotel photos will have to add insight into the dogs evening.




I hope whoever stole my stuff appreciates what they got but I am sure they just trashed it once they found out there was nothing resalable.


Where is Echo?



There she is!!