What a clever girl, and what a lovely boing! Just like a gazelle (don't tell her I said that, don't want it to go to her head).
I don't have any pics or videos - sorry. Training logs are a bit boring without them! But...but...today Betsy's whiplash turn away from birds worked. Yay! Dratted bird chasing habit. It was obvious she was a chaser from the get go, but feeling I've got on top of it! For today, anyway! She was on her line, but nevertheless, a text book slam the brakes on and turned back in mid chase. Very pleased. So was Betsy at the amount of squid and sausage she got as a reward! (Now to lose the line, verrrry slowly....).
Sounds brilliant! What are your criteria for the whiplash? Does she have to return to you? Do you use your recall cue or a different one? I've been doing quite a bit of work on recall recently and Shadow's response is really sharpening up. It's so pleasing when they do it
It has to be a proper whiplash - it has to be an instant slam on the brakes and change direction 180 degrees. I've trained it with ping pong, so in training she runs to me and continues. When used 'for real' I hold out my hand as a target to get her to stop. I don't use my recall cue. I keep my recall and my change direction separate, because I find that way my change direction stays stronger. This is because I 'walk' my dogs in highly distracting places, so with the best will in the world their recalls are over used. If it weren't for that, I'd have the same cue.
Well....Betsy is a teenager now. So her lead walking has deteriorated badly as she finds the environment much more interesting and rewarding. I'm a bit fed up with the normal approaches to lead walking - I think the whole stopping/turning thing when the puppy pulls is very frustrating for the dog. So I'm trying a few new things and have decided to lure more when she is struggling. She is a very easy puppy to lure, being very interested in food. So I'm doing that for now rather than the whole stopping thing. It's not very satisfactory though. I can't make up my mind whether to allow her to sniff along on a longish lead (she can do this much more easily without pulling than walk along at the side of me with her head up and I reward attention when I get it, and doubly so if she decides to walk by my side) or shorten her lead such that she has much less choice to enjoy the environment. I think there are definitely pros and cons of both. Arguably, preventing the puppy from sniffing at all would shorten the process, but is a pretty harsh way of going about it I feel. It asks for an awful lot in one big lump.
Ah heelwork .....!! well at the moment I'm using join the dots(Karen Pryor) , so we walk from one cone to the next cone click as we get to the cone (assuming we get there) and then walk to next cone. At the cone - we can either do some tricks or I can let her have a sniff break and then - we walk to next cone. In 'easy' areas I put the cones further apart - in hard areas they are closer together (hopefully in time the cone separation will increase !!). You can put the cones out in a small circular path. Then have a break - some bumbling and then come back and heel walk round the cone path again. Stopping and turning didn't really work with Jaffa since her main distraction was wanting to sniff (everything!!) so turning/stopping didn't remove her opportunity to sniff things. When you don't want to practise your 'heel' then a free-er walk using her harness? or perhaps walk on your RHS - different cue? and also managing behaviour with lure is good (frequently use this to get through crowded areas or where I know Jaffa is not going to manage)
I agree - as you know, since we've discussed this before It really does depend on your situation. For me, I'm more than happy to be strict and not give the opportunity to sniff, but I'm more in a position to do that because have less need of being on lead for any real distance. Where you have to spend more time with your puppy on a lead, I think that approach would be incredibly frustrating for the dog. I suppose just asking for short sections at first, broken up with a "go sniff" cue would give a bit of a halfway house. I'm liking Grisha Stewart's approach where she slows her pace as the dog moves ahead, speeding up as they fall into heel; if they reach the end of the leash, she'll walk backwards. Of course, your dog must already follow the slight pressure on the lead, because otherwise you'd end up dragging them. I'm finding it helps to keep attention on me better, too.
Yes, I have to have Betsy on lead in a lot of places where I would not chose to train lead walking - actually, that's everywhere in my average week apart from when I'm in training classes and the other dogs are under control (well, mostly, some other dogs still run over). I have to have her on lead at the start of walks, because I have to walk through busy places to get to quieter places where I can try to train - and there are off lead dogs around. Anywhere on the Common is so smelly because of the enormous volume of dog and animal traffic. And so on. The only starting place I have is a suburban street and even then their are other dogs and people quite close. And next up is a really busy street, with popular shops. The middle of the golf course is good, but I looked up today to see a bunch of golfers glaring down the fairway at me - they had been waiting for me to get out of the way for 10 minutes! As I walked round in big circles with my puppy.
I train my dogs to heel for short distances and then tell them 'have a sniff', so they are able to enjoy heelwork, knowing that they will then be able to have a good sniff. If they are doing heelwork then they are not allowed to sniff, they don't seem bothered by that.
The other thing that's going on with Betsy right now, and I'm finding interesting is the way a hand delivery appears to slow her return. If she chases a ball, she'll gallop back with it at a full gallop, completely fail to slow down, and whizz by as she tries to remember where the brakes are, and circles behind me. She is not playing keep away or possessive about the ball at all, she just doesn't slow down as she gets to me and decides not to smash into me. As soon as she manages to come to a stop, she'll either drop the ball or bring it to me. With a dummy though, if I give her my hand target to give me the dummy (I haven't trained this with a ball yet) she comes back enthusiastically enough, but not at that determined full out gallop. I'd love to get the joy and purpose of the return with the ball on the dummy! So thinking about that. Perhaps the clicker return with the dummy has sort of 'squished' things for her. Dunno....
yes I can see it is hard in middle of London - I started in empty carparks but I guess there aren't too many of those around in mid London either even on a Sunday! - any church graveyard options?
Nope. The ball return or a recall without a hand touch (when she'll jump up at me - it hurts!) are much faster.
Maybe it's all the 'arriving nicely' stuff. If she is allowed to do her jump at the end of her recall (that is, I don't ask her to target my hand) she is a lot more enthusiastic. Which makes me think I have 'squished' some enthusiasm. Inadvertently, of course!
My hand touch is completely different to yours - whereas I know you ask for a closed mouth and some decorum, I've trained mine as a super fun game where the only rule is the nose touches my palm. This means, if I ask for a touch from a distance, I get sprinting at me at mach 10 and then a leap to boink my hand as hard as possible. Now, I'm definitely not suggesting you change your hand target to that - it's fun, certainly, but not necessarily as practical as a more refined touch - but maybe have a different cue which is a similar game? Or, another thought as I've been writing this, do you use a moving hand target at all? If not, that might help - move the hand target away from her as she's getting close to you, by running backwards or turning and running away from her? That way, she might not be anticipating stopping so much. Even moving the target by turning in a circle might work, and, as a bonus, keep her away from your body - having a dog myself who will do a flyball turn on my stomach if I ask for a heel from a distance, I know how it can hurt! You'd have to be careful she doesn't start anticipating a turn or similar, though. I had similar with Shadow, where his return was slow with a dummy. I'm wracking my brain as to what I did to fix it. I know I had to keep the pressure off and not do too many formal retrieves. I did a lot of ping-pong recall and puppy switch retrieves, too, which got him accelerating towards me.
I don't think I need something that speeds up her return - because it's not slow if I don't do anything - I need to find a different way to train 'arriving nicely' and not arriving in a crazy flurry of excitement forgetting where the brakes are and hurling herself at me as hard as she can, which is what she does as a default. In trying to calm that default down, I've gone too far or done it wrong most probably. But it's still there, I don't need to work to get it back, if I want it, I just don't ask her to arrive nicely.
OK, so can you delay your cue for the nice delivery until later? Call her and put your hand out at the last second?
