We've hit a plateau. Actually, sliding downhill might be more honest... Brew worked out very quickly that lying down on the mat was the only behaviour that got her a C&T. Brilliant. I then wanted to extend the amount of time she'd stay there, so she'd lie down, and get the C&T after a few seconds. Fine, no problems. We were extending that gap between lying down and the C&T very nicely, BUT... I want her to stay in the down position on her mat until she's released - something she does just fine in a sit elsewhere - but for some reason if she gets a C&T on the mat she is now treating it as a release cue. Her release cue is a verbal 'Go on' and I use it for when she's allowed to leave her sit and go to her food bowl, go out the door, get out of the car etc. We were using it on the mat too - I was tossing a treat away from the mat and releasing her with a 'Go on'. Thinking about it, she doesn't see the C&T as a release in the same way as she does her verbal command, because she doesn't leave the mat - just sits up rapidly. Part of me suspected that it was due to her desire to get her nose closer to the treat pouch, so I tried kneeling in an attempt to keep her lower. This resulted in me having to position the treat pouch in the small of my back or her nose would have been right in there! I have tried to repeat rapidly the C&T for staying down , but got a very rapid sit on her part between the C & the T... If I repeat the 'Mat' command, she will lie back down - she doesn't get a C&T for that - but the second she hears that clicker again which I intend as her reward marker for staying down on her mat, she shoots back up to a sitting position. Any ideas?? What confused signals am I giving her? Sometimes I think she is overly focussed on food rewards. She has some toys which we use only for retrieving play in the house. However, I don't ever have treats out at the same time. If I were to attempt to reward her with food in that context, she wouldn't leave my side in the first place. If there's not a crumb of kibble in the offing, she'll happily play a little retrieve game for a cuddle and some fuss. I'm wondering if the Click is soooo strongly associated in her mind with 'Feed Me Now!' that in fact she's losing focus on anything else and I might just be better trying with a verbal marker and a reduced treat schedule??! And if you've managed to follow my ramblings this far... thank you! Clare
Re: Mat training Can't offer any advice, but just wanted to say what a fab job you are doing. I struggle to get Harley to sit for long. She will wait to be released for her food, but nothing else!
Re: Mat training Thanks, Naya. Brew is brighter than Theakston (I'm sorry, Theaks - I do love you, but it is true...), but having an older dog does help with things at times! He sits and waits for his lead to go on, for the door to be opened etc, so I do think it made it easier to slot her into those existing routines. However, don't be too impressed - neither of them sit and wait when OH comes home... I'm trying to get them to sit, he's busy rewarding the leaping with ear rubs! Clare
Re: Mat training He he, sounds like Harley when my hubby comes home ;D Harley is good at waiting for me to go through doors first, putting her collar on and walks calmly to the door, but I can't crack the sit and stay when I walk away further than 3 steps away!!
Re: Mat training Hmm. I do see your problem as it is one that I wonder about and struggle with sometimes too, ie is the click too associated with "food now" and not on the behaviour the dog is doing at the time of the click. I also struggle with this "release from mat", well, not really "struggle" as I haven't actually STARTED training it, other than a "go to your bed", which Simba does "pretty" good, but then, how to make him "stay"? Which is where I get stuck, in terms of what should the release look like, what command to use, how to train a longer "stay" without running into the problems you describe? And what if he falls asleep there? ie if he is lying on his mat when we are eating supper, which is perfectly fine, how do you do a release from that? I know there is a thread on this somewhere, I think Julie had some posts about it, so I keep meaning to go have a look. But anyway will be watching replies with interest.
Re: Mat training What's your ultimate aim for this, Clare? If you actually want her to stay 'down' on the mat until released, that's quite complex, and definitely more than one step in the mind of a pup! In her mind the exercise is finished when she lies down, in your mind she's not done until you release her. So maybe if she goes to the mat on cue and stays there a second or two, give your release cue and then C&T. She would then hopefully start seeing your original 'mat' command and the 'go on' as the bookends to the task. I'm pretty new to clickers myself, so I'll be watching this thread carefully for other, more expert, suggestions. Looks like you're on the right lines though- well done
Re: Mat training I think you might need to think about being consistent with how you use the clicker - I say this because it is very normal for the click to be used as the release (although you are asking for down on the mat, not just sit on the mat - as previous comments) - this is the case for most clicker exercises, and it took me and Charlie a long time to master the click as a "continue what you are doing" command. Pippa wrote about it a while ago, I'll try dig it out. Charlie generally knows that if I click and throw the treat, the click is the end and once he has got the treat, he can repeat the thing that got him the reward. If I give him the treat we are in "keeping doing that" mode. Apart from where he is going nuts, and I mark relaxation - then I always give him the treat but try to get two clicks and two treats in so he knows it's "keep doing that" and not "go back to going nuts now you've got your treat". This is probably muddled and wrong, but there is method in it for us!
Re: Mat training Hi Kath, My ultimate aim for this is for her mat to be a portable 'quiet' spot where she can settle out of the way in a variety of situations and locations... so that's a long, long way off!!! For now, I have used the mat in different spots within our lounge, and sent her to it from different sides. We have reached a twenty second down on her mat for now - that longest duration gets tucked into the middle of shorter down stays on her mat. My next step would be to try it in different rooms of our house before extending length, I think. In her mind, the exercise is finished when she hears a click, rather than when she lies down... I don't want to transfer that behaviour to all clicker training! I do see what you mean about 'bookending' the task - my concern is that if a C&T came at the very end, that reinforces the idea that the clicker means 'exercise over'?? I would like to be able to use it as a 'You're still doing great!'... Julie, this is where I am definitely struggling! The 'keep doing that' C&Ts didn't cause me a problem when we working on a sit stay, and I think that was partly because I was closer to her (& she was closer to the treats!) so I could get in some rapid fire. If I'm standing and she's lying down, I think I'm just too slow... I still get myself horribly confused when it comes to clickers. : I'll have a look through the cicker threads again too. Thank you both! Clare
Re: Mat training Mmmm, I see what you mean! I think I'll hang in there and see if Julie can find that article!!
Re: Mat training It makes sense that Brew does not get off her mat when you click but does when you release. She has learned that when you click the treat is hand delivered to the mat, so she should wait there for it to arrive. When you use the release word she knows that the treat will be thrown so she should run out to get it. For interest....I always use a clicker or marker word to end a behaviour. I never use it to mean 'good so far, but keep going, and here's a little reward - but keep doing what you're doing!'. If Brew was my dog and was doing what she is doing then I would think that she was doing exactly as I had asked I do sometimes use treats during a behaviour but I do not mark. So, say I was doing a down stay with my dog and another dog comes running past but my dog does not move. I might deliver a treat as the dog runs past to reward my dog for staying, but I do not mark because the behaviour is not over - I want the down stay to continue. I also want Obi to keep lying down while we eat dinner - so I will occasionally give him a treat with no marker, kind of an an encouragement award - I will not mark or release (I do have a separate release cue) until dinner is over. So, anyway, you could try that kind of method. Reward with a treat only during the exercise and only click/treat to end it. If you reward with a treat only when she is in the position you want you do not need a marker word. A marker word is used to pinpoint a moment, usually a fleeting one, that you can then reward after fishing out your treat. You need a marker in your repertoire because for most behaviours it is near impossible to deliver a treat at the exact moment that the dog does what you want - that's where the sound/click/marker comes in as a 'reward place holder'. But with long duration behaviours like stays it is easy to deliver treats as the behaviour is occuring - you don't need the place holder for those behaviours. Just deliver the treat as the behaviour happens, no click. When the stay is truly over, then click and treat. Remember that the click means food - the delivery of the food is the thing that does the work. Delivering food at a moment without a marker will still reinforce what is happening in that moment. You still want to mark the stay, but once, at the very end. But I am curious - why do you not want to use the 'click ends the behaviour' approach to all training? To me, that is one of the powerful things about a marker - until the dog hears the marker they know that they have to do more, whether that is more of the same (as in a stay or heeling) or the next step in a chain. Leaving your marker/reward till the end is the way to build up a long chain of exercises while holding your dog's attention all the way through. Of course, you do not always make them work through the whole chain to earn a click - sometimes you do one link of the chain only or just a third of the chain, so the dog never knows exactly when that click is going to come. My ultimate goal with long duration exercises (like stays or heeling) is to not have treats on me. I hang them on the fence. Sometime during the heel pattern, at an unpredictable point, I mark something the dog has done really well and then run with him to get the treat from the bag hanging on the fence. That is how to eventually (after months and months of training) get a dog to do a whole multi-exercise obedience test with no treats on you. During training the treats have to be really excellent, contingent on the 'right' behaviour, but totally unpredictable. But that is a bit of a digression as I know we are just talking about staying on a mat here
Re: Mat training [quote author=Oberon link=topic=4310.msg52141#msg52141 date=1391477935] But I am curious - why do you not want to use the 'click ends the behaviour' approach to all training? [/quote] I do both - so for things like clicker training the bring back the dummy, I can get Charlie into the game of the click is the end then add the need to do another behaviour by withholding the C&T. So this is in my tool box. I also want the "keep doing that" though because I find myself in situations where I haven't trained the duration, but need it (sometimes desperately) and because the duration I need most often is to do nothing. So that would be in the vet's waiting room for example (I do go when it's quiet to train, but not that much). The other week there was an aggressive dog lunging at Charlie and Charlie, daft dog, still wanted to go say hello. A string of C&T for him sitting and looking at me got us through. Treats on their own wouldn't have done it, picking up the clicker immediately gets his attention and he switches into "what do you want me to do?" mode. It's really handy to be able to have the answer "keep doing that".
Re: Mat training Sounds fair to me It sounds like Charlie has possibly learned that the clicker means fun (and treats), while no clicker means it's not worth his while - at least in really challenging situations. But if the clicker works as an attention-getting cue or as a 'we're in work mode' cue then there's nothing at all wrong with that if you're prepared to have the clicker on you. It is a very useful additional tool, as you say. If you do want to try something different, Julie, training sometimes using a verbal marker might reduce the need for the visibility of the clicker. No pressing need though. I just know that I'd forget my clicker just when I needed it....
Re: Mat training Yes, I was thinking along those lines as I typed! Hmm....will have a think.... I was training him to look at me when I put my hand on my whistle - my whistle has my clicker attached to it, the rattle of the whistle and the clicker is an immediate attention getter for him...it works a treat, even as a recall signal (I just have to touch my whistle/clicker), but I'm not sure it's the most convenient thing...
