Fire Catches!

Fire is a curious dog. By Curious, I mean thinks "differently". He can learn one thing quickly and take over a year to learn another. Heeling with attention perplexed us for a long time. I tried the lure method, the choose to heel method, and shaping the position and attention. For most of these methods he was simply too strong, too interested, and too much to control! He mauled for the food or looked away from it. He jumped on me. He walked slowly with ears down and tail down. He did everything but respond in the way 98 % of my previous dogs and students dogs respond to these methods! And his responses were unique. They were at a very different level than similar responses from other dogs. Finally in a moment of frustration, I went back to a method I can only describe as restraint. I showed him where to walk using binding (short leash consistent position) and by holding his head up gently. One step at a time he learned he could walk with his head up. And he caught on, FAST! (considering how long we had spent with other methods) Talk to most positive based trainers out there today and they are probably not even familiar with this technique. The idea of forcing a dog into a position is not among their preferences to say the least. However it worked for Fire. It eliminated his frustrations and mine. This isn't a plug for this method of heeling. In fact it's my method of last resort. But it is something to think about. If at first you don't succeed...try try again. This seems to be Fire's favorite theme.

Fire has learned a lot of things fast and some things slow. The slow behaviors include heel, finish, sit up ( a good old fashioned "beg"), and Catch. Recently we had a breakthrough with catching. I was building up his energy with a tennis ball and I decided to bounce it past him. To my amazement he caught it after the bounce. I tried it again, and again he caught it. 8 times out of 10 he caught the ball. We stopped on a good note, with my mind on the fact that he Could learn to catch something. A few weeks went by and every now and then we played bounce/catch with the tennis ball. Then came the snowstorm of 2009...how to entertain a young active dog who had No desire to run outside in two feet of snow! Fire is now a bit large to train around the kitchen table. And so after working the few exercises we could in our living room, I moved to the hall way for fronts/recalls. A few repetions and I was left with a dog who wanted to do more and a handler (Me) who was stumped by what else to work. Then it hit me, teach him to catch food! Back to the living room we went and I futilely threw multiple charlee bear treats at him. They bounced off his nose and he scarfed them up off the floor. Lighting in the living room is poor, so I moved to the hall way. Sit, stand, toss, drop...nothing was clicking. Did I say Click? An idea formed in my head...would clicking "attempts" help to shape the desired behavior? Clicker in hand, I started to shape a catch by clicking (C/T) every time he moved his nose even if it was after the treat fell to the floor. Pretty soon he was moving his muzzle and not just watching the food fall. I upped the ante by clicking only when he moved his nose upwards rather than down). The behavior grew. But he wasn't getting the idea to focus on where the treat was coming (my mouth). And so I took a few minutes to click when he looked up at my face. I then resumed the C/T process for upward nose moves and the focus attached itself to the movement. Now I had a dog looking at me and moving his nose upwards when I spit the treat! Success!

My next goal was an "air snap". He had made a few of them during the course of shaping the upward nose movement. Sure enough in no time he was "air snapping" at every tossed treat. Toss 20 treats, 20 airsnaps occured (and 20 treats were scarfed off the floor)! I had time on my hands and no desire to switch to my default behavior of controlling his range of motion. (Ie: putting the leash on and preventing him from cleaning up the treats...which is proven to help speed up the rate of learning to catch) And so I allowed him to eat the fallen treats and I continued simply to shape the desired response with the clicker. Accidentally one treat was timed that it fell into his mouth as he air snapped. Success (and a jackpot) I gave him a handful of treats. Ten tossses, 1 catch. Ten tosses 2 catches. In aproximate 4 mini "sessions" consisting of tossing about 8 treats each time, the ratio of catches grew to 40 percent. While we are still building/shaping the Catch behavior, in just one session of shaping we moved farther than I had in all of my other "catch" training sessions combined.

What is the purpose of this post? Certainly it's not a plug for compulsion training even though I mention using a form of compulsion successfully. It could be a plug for behavior shaping, my most enjoyable form of teaching my dogs today. In fact though, it's neither of these. It's simply a lesson in listening to your dog, never being afraid to take a different route (method), and teaching is not always a cookie cutter process.