Jess has started ignoring my recall whistle - not every time, but enough that I'm concerned. It's only really been noticeable for the past couple of days so it might just be a little blip but I'd like to correct it as soon as possible. Does anyone have suggestions for games or exercises to try? I don't think it's necessary to abandon our recall cue and start again with another one (at least, not yet!) but I want to make sure that she comes every time I whistle and not when she feels like it. Should I start again from the beginning with total recall and avoid using the whistle outside for a while until we've reinforced the cue again? Or can I just try some games that will build her enthusiasm again?
Is she still getting rewards for coming to the whistle? I would either up the value of reward (or frequency) or alternatively make the recall more robust in less distracting areas again.
@blackandwhitedog , have you done the ping pong recall? @snowbunny suggested it when I asked similar question.
There are some exercises towards the end of the Total Recall book to keep your recall strong. These are important to keep using. Don't forget to limit her self reward and up your own value. Mine is starting to pull on the lead again, because I started to get lazy about 5 min. lead walk, 5 mins. play, 5 mins self reward.
Thanks for all the replies and helpful suggestions! She is still getting rewards, but I had a bulk buy of salmon fillet treats and even though it started off as a super high value reward it's probably become much less exciting (spoiled pup!). I'll vary it tomorrow. Reinforcing it in less distracting areas was what I'd thought of doing - going back to whistling as she is already heading towards me rather than as a cue. this is also a good idea. I'll give that a shot tomorrow too. I'd not heard of this 5-5-5 walk ratio before - is it in total recall? It's a good idea - I do much less lead walking with Jess these days and I thought that this might be one of the reasons that her focus on me is reducing, because we're not doing the same kind of intensive clicker training that I was doing on-lead. I'd actually thought of posting a thread asking "how do you walk your dog?", and this makes me think that I definitely should! Thanks all - that's a great set of ideas to start with. Would still welcome any others!
Yes the 5 min. exercise is in the book. My girl would part the red sea and go through it for a tin of cat food. Try this. I open it and dump it on the ground when she comes back and now many of the dogs in our park come as well when I whistle.
It's great, I love doing it because she loves doing it! Also, I've been able to do it in my garden while she's been in season.
Charlie was a very big challenge. He wasn't all that motivated by food and boy was he one distracted young dog. Sure, food is very nice, he would always eat it - still does - and roast beef, king prawns etc. are the icing on the cake of his walk. But he won't change his behaviour to earn food. (Well, he will in the kitchen when they is nothing else to do of course) but food will not change his behaviour outside. I can feed him the best treats that money will buy, by the bucket load, but they won't change what he does. This is because food is not sufficiently reinforcing for him. There are all sorts of trainers who will say all sorts of things about this, but whatever, it's the way he is. What he finds reinforcing is games. All sorts of games that over time I've built up and up in value. Some of my games are now such a powerful reinforcer that I can get amazing results with him. (It has its downsides too, because he is obsessive - but that's another story, and a little bit unique to him, so no need to worry about it). So, I'd say: play with your dog. Play with your dog because it makes you more interesting and worth coming back to, and also because play might be worth more than food to your dog.
Agree with all the above. One thing that works for us is a good mixture between food and play. All depends on the area we are and distractions that she has. We are building the games up as what JulieT said. The same with food, when it comes to food when I prepare it to take out, I always make sure she sees it and gets a tiny lick of my finger. She knows and I have no idea how but she will come everytime I do a recall. If I don't do this she won't.
Shadow's recall has gone a bit downhill over the last few weeks; I've been concentrating more on training my puppy and worrying about an anxious Willow than working on him, and it shows. You need to keep on paying into that bank account all the time so you can make withdrawals when you need to. So, yesterday we went back to reinforcing with the one thing he loves above all else - chasing a ball. So, absolutely agree with the above - use what floats your dog's boat. For Shadow, food is OK, but it's nowhere near as reinforcing as a chase. As Julie says, you can strengthen the power of games so they become hugely reinforcing. Playing with a tug toy as a prerequisite to having dinner, for example, will build up the power of tug. Do this sort of thing enough and tug becomes hugely reinforcing in its own right. And, because a game can last far longer than any single treat can, that reinforcement also lasts longer.
Well, I tried these suggestions on our early morning walk today, with some success. I took amazing treats (duck breast and skin) and a bag full of tuggy toys etc. The food got her moving a bit more quickly, though still much slower than her 'normal' recall. But I think the reinforcement was valuable, as towards the end of our walk two rabbits ran across the path just a few metres away from her - she ran towards them but recalled when I whistled. So that was a success. We also played a short game of ping-pong recall midway through the walk. My timing was rubbish so I need to be a lot sharper with throwing the treats and getting the whistle peeps in just as she turns, but she was excited and I think it will really help as a fun, upbeat game. We also alternated on-lead and off-lead time, and did some click for focus work which I've not done for a while. Finally, I tried playing games with tuggy toys - this didn't work at all. It's not something that I normally do with her so she was a bit baffled to see her house toys out and about, and I don't think she views it as sufficiently high value to distract her from the environment around her. This is possibly something we can try to build, but I am a bit wary of tuggy games in terms of her future (someday, maybe) gundog work. Other games with toys are difficult because of her desire to bury (discussed on other threads) which is getting stronger and more all-encompassing by the day. I think the only training option left is a long line. I really didn't want to go down that route because I tried it briefly a while ago and found the line really difficult to manage and worried about getting it caught in her legs etc. But I think we probably need to start that, and to start really training a retrieve in earnest as it's going to become a real problem for her off-lead walks. The question of rewards/reinforcement is quite a tricky one with Jess. She likes treats, and certainly likes some much more than others, but she's not a massively food motivated dog. I definitely can't use her meals as a training tool, as she doesn't get particularly enthusiastic about her meals to begin with - she takes her time about eating and doesn't rush to the food bowl as soon as it's put down. Similarly, she likes being petted when she chooses but human contact doesn't really motivate her. Basically it's really hard to figure out what she considers to be a "reward". She adores other dogs, but they can't really be used as a reward. And I think she would really really love retrieving if only I could get her to bring things back - she gets very excited by dummies and very excited by the outrun, so I think if I can just get her to bring things back that is something we can really use as a reward. Sigh. Lots to do. Thanks again for all the suggestions.
Yes they can - Premack at its best. If she wants to say hi to the dog, she has to do something else first. Luna has learnt that (in very basic situations for now), in order to say hi to a dog, she has to ignore it. So, ignoring it gets her the opportunity to play with it, and makes ignoring it something she really wants to do. You could also use dogs as a way to build up the reward value of a tug toy. Jess only gets to greet a dog once she's played with the tuggy. This will condition her that the tuggy is a brilliant thing. There is no reason to restrict tug games just because you have ideas of her being a gun dog. It's a bit of an old wives' tale that playing tug leads to a hard mouth. Shadow loves a game of tug (after I built up its value, it didn't come naturally to him) but, if anything, has too soft a mouth when carrying things. Tug is also a great way of training a give and a "hold till I say drop". With the retrieve with dogs that don't retrieve the object to you naturally, you need to work on back-chaining - that is, start from the end and progressively work towards the beginning. Make putting something in your hand the most rewarding thing in the world and gradually increase the distance she has to travel to do so.
Yes, this makes sense, I'll try that. Beginning at the end of the clicker retrieve process basically? I think that makes more sense for our problems. It wasn't a hard mouth that I was worried about actually - she has a nice soft mouth when she carries - but generally encouraging her to mouth and play with objects that she retrieves. Which she does want to do and which would be a problem in the field, if she ever makes it that far. But she does want to tug and I can see it has potential to be a game that she enjoys. Generally I keep veering between "gundog/not a gundog" and it's not that helpful. She's never likely to be a picking up dog - she's a tiny little cocker and she's not going to be a great asset to a picking-up team, when there are usually too many pickers-up anyway. So most likely she would come out beating, which I do during the pheasant season. But that's just on Saturdays for a very short period of the year so it hardly seems worth shaping her training around. Gundog training for training alone is fine too, if she enjoys it, but it's not the same as a day out on a shoot and the scent of game and the excitement of a full day working together. That was one of my big motivations in getting Jess, and I don't want to give up on it just yet. But we do have several training hurdles to overcome. As well as her retrieve problem, she is quite noise sensitive and very nervous of shot so we have a lot of noise desensitisation to do around that. And she is a delicate little dog who doesn't like brambles or thorns underfoot (can't really say I blame her). So all in all maybe agility would be a better idea! Sorry, that was a bit rambling and off-topic. It's just something I keep going round with in my head. I suppose I would feel like I'd failed her and myself if I gave up on the gundog work just because I found the training too difficult. I don't mind abandoning it if she doesn't enjoy it, but I want to get to the point where she's had a few days out on a shoot, and where at least she is able to work, and I can gauge whether she wants to or not.
It's really not a problem; you have a cue for "this is something you can play with". And you have specific tuggy toys that are separate from retrieving objects. She retrieves a dummy, she gets to play with her tuggy.
I can quite relate to that whole post. I don't have any experience of shoots myself but on deciding to have her I wanted some thing to aim with for her. My friends that bred her have a small shoot on their farm and there was sort of an idea of going there, also the scurries at the local shows , the dogs always have such fun and I love to see fit, healthy dogs using body and mind. But I do wonder if I should find some other outlet for her, but I will persevere for the time being. Just going back to recall, Cassie's became a little wobbly just before she came on heat, in fact had our first real failure the day I realised she was in season. I'm not saying it's connected necessarily, but might be something to bear in mind.
When I learnt tuggy in the class we had to get them to release it in return for high value treat, are there other ways of doing it? I must admit I struggle with getting her to pull and tug, it feels counterintuitive to me. Consequently she's very gentle with it and spends most of the time folding it up in a little ball she can pick up.
No, that's fine (although obviously you want to fade the bribe almost immediately). But the way my gundog trainer uses it, if the dog releases uncued, you whip the toy away, hide it, and the game ends. You can start it again after a few seconds, but the dog learns that letting go uncued makes the game stop, so they need to hold on until you tell them to let go. Letting go when you use the cue has great consequences - a tasty treat or simply just an immediate re-initiation of the game with them chasing the toy. Whipit is another brilliant game that you can play, which is hugely fun but teaches them great impulse control at the same time. Here's a video - skip the blurb and start at 8:10:
What cue do you use for toys? How do you use it? Jess's toys are sort of scattered around the house and she plays with them as she pleases. Her dummies are kept apart and she never ever gets to play with them. So to that extent the two are kept very separate. Are you suggesting that I build up the value of a particular tuggy toy and then use that as the reward for her bringing a retrieve back to me? I had considered that but was worried it might link retrieving/tug in her mind and I don't want her trying to play tug with a partridge! Ooohh, I had wondered about this. A couple of dogs have been very interested in her in the past couple of days. But those dogs are neutered. A couple of entire dogs that we know haven't shown interest at all so it's inconclusive. And I can't see any other signs yet. But I've been very proud of Jess's recall - she would turn on a dime and hurtle back towards me at full pelt, so it has been odd to see her just kind of ambling towards me. Given that her recall has been pretty much our single training success to date, I'd be quite glad if her recall failures are because she's coming into season!
Exactly that. Have specific toys for tugging - or generalise it by putting it on cue with a range of toys. My cue is "get it!!!" and then I go "grrrrarrrr, graarrrrrrr" all the time I'm happy for the dog to tug She won't, because you also cue "give" as part of the tug game. So a "give" is a "give" whether it's a tug toy or a dummy or a pheasant. "Graaaarrrrrr" (or your own, less ridiculous cue ) means TUG!!!! Tug is BRILLIANT for teaching impulse control. Tug like a maniac until I say "give", at which point I expect you to give it immediately.
This is like a game that I played with Jess when she was a tiny pup and discovered my dressing gown cord as The Best Toy Ever! Ah, takes me back to last summer, standing in my garden trying to tire out a loony dog by trailing a dressing gown cord round in circles!! She did love it though, so maybe will try that again....
