Training rewards v poo eating

I do that but with squeezy cheese (bit messy ) that's no problem. It's once he's released he just doesn't want to walk and certainly doesn't attempt to sniff. He will (reluctantly) walk if I call him, but at the moment he's a very unhappy boy with the muzzle on. I guess I just persevere.

 

I'm certainly no expert. Do you walk him on grass or paving with the muzzle on? Inky certainly better on the grass, don't know if more interesting smells to distract him or he bashes it harder on the concrete.
Sorry to interrupt your thread Selina but could I ask @jojo whether she walked her dog on the lead all the months she was training the leave? Sometimes I feel however vigilant I am, Inky still manages to eat poo before I get to say stop so he's being rewarded.

 

No worries, it's all relevant.

 

This is the ultimate goal and also gives me faith to knuckle down and be consistent. You've also given me faith, thank you.

 

Apologies for not answering sooner - bit of a hectic time with clients. One of our walks around a local lake was on lead to comply with local by-laws and the lead I use is 3m long, so a reasonable amount of meander available. Our morning local road walks would be on lead, again with the 3m lead but we would go off for a more exciting walk each day. All of our 'exciting' walks were off lead so lots of opportunity for illicit snacking. I've always worked to keep my dog within a certain distance when off lead so if she stopped for a sniff somewhere I would be extra vigilant as to what it was. I also scanned the ground as I walked along to be as prepared as possible. I used to practice recall on these walks together with stay and clipping lead on/off and some loose lead practice so lots of different cues going on with the opportunity to reward. While doing this on walks I was also working on 'leave' still at home, in the garden etc with different items both toys, dummies and food.

 

@Inky lab , I see on another thread that you have been making progress with Inky and the poo eating and would be interested in an update . I think I'm going to have to get her a muzzle, have you found that helpful?

 

My strategy has 3 parts.
I'm retraining the leave with a new cue right from the beginning. At home it works and I've started very occasionally using it out when he's on the lead so if it doesn't he can't self reward.
Second, if he's off lead he has the muzzle on. He is leaving most poo now but I had 3 days running where he found the orange poo and muzzle straight in. When this happens I try to stay calm and either take it off and put the lead on him, muzzle in poo bag to clean at home -yuk or clean it if I can and put it back on. But thinking after it happened the other day, next time it happens I'm going to put him on the lead and let him sniff it, wait for him to turn to me, then treat. I'm hoping for a fine day and I'll do it a few times. I was thinking I'm sure it's absolute dogs that say use difficulties as a training opportunity. Not sure they're talking about eating dog poo but we'll see.
Finally if muzzle not on, I walk him on the lead. I have about a 3 meter lead and let him wander and play games with him.
Is it working? Apart from the orange poo, he hadn't put the muzzle in any for ages and yesterday at a friend's house he actually sniffed and left some of their dogs poo when I asked him too. if I'm not vigilant with him on the lead he sometimes eats it and sometimes leaves it.
For me, having a plan has helped and his stomach and poos have settled. I'd say it's still a work in progress! If you have any other ideas I'd love a solution

 

I have been working on a little “go sniff” game. I put Luna in a sit and pretend to put something on the floor a couple of feet from her, then release with “go sniff”. I mark her as soon as the head goes down while she’s sniffing for the treat that’s not there. When she looks to me, she gets a reward. The mark is because I actually want her head to go down on the “go sniff” cue.
Within a few repetitions, she started to put her head down then immediately look up on the mark to get her treat.

This morning, there was sheep poo and I thought I’d try it out with this. Remember, the”go sniff” means to put the head down so it doesn’t matter if she is rewarded from the poo.
Well, she sniffed and immediately looked up for her treat. We repeated it four or five times and each time on “go sniff”, she put her head down and then looked up for her treat on my mark.

It was pretty interesting comparing how effective this was to when I’ve previously used the same treat to lure her away. With luring, I had to get it right under her nose and she’d want to go back to the poo. With this method, she seemed to have no significant interest in the poo at all.

Hey, maybe it wasn’t prepared to her liking and that was the reason. These are my observations on a single session. I’ll have to keep playing and see what other things I can practice on over the summer. There’s not much sheep activity where we are in Spain

 

The sheep are back in the local field so no more walks there for the summer. I know from experience that nothing will distract Finn from sheep poo and after 2 years I admit defeat!

 

The original premack experiment demonstrated that kids that like candy more than playing pinball will like playing pinball more if they get to eat candy as a result. And vice versa.

The vice versa was one of the interesting things in that it used to be believed that eating couldn't be reinforced (any mother that disallows a child out to play before s/he has finished a meal might be rolling their eyes at this point ).

The candy/pinball experiment showed that if a child started out more likely to play pinball than eat candy, and access to the pinball was made conditional on eating candy the probability the child would eat candy increased.

So a reward (a reinforcer) is not absolute. Eating might be rewarding in some circumstances, but not if the alternative is going out to play (for example, for some children, sometimes). Going out to play might reward eating.

Then there was another experiment involving monkeys that used the preference for a range of objects A, B, C to also demonstrate the relativity of reinforcement.

So, if you wanted to use the premack principle to get the dog to not eat poo, you would first measure a baseline for the relative preference of of the dog for eating poo or playing pinball....let's stop there.

On the other hand....if you don't want to train with poo at all, then just train 'leave it'. I found with my poo inclined girl that since my trained leave it would get her to turn away from poo, and I reinforced that, repeatedly, she would start to turn away from poo without a cue in the expectation of a reinforcer.

 

Yes, eating poo when on lead isn't the problem, she will turn to me after looking at it now. The issue I have is her actively hunting out poo from one particular dog when she is off lead, she will go quite some distance to find it. She doesn't do this with other poo.

I've always worked hard with her keeping her close, about turns, hand touch and find it games, all with good effect. I don't worry about her absconding or not recalling from wildlife. But when she suddenly started these poo hunts I didn't immediately realise what was happening. While I know roughly the areas this is likely to happen I can't see the stuff because it is 50-100yds off the beaten track. But perhaps I should use her longline and then when I can see what she's doing use "leave it" with a high reinforce. I want to try and stop her searching it out when off lead.

This stuff stinks, I can smell it on her afterwards

 

Well I didn't train Betsy on lead, I trained her off lead, but only after I had a 'leave it' that I thought would work. It was sort of like 'new cue, old cue'. Betsy saw poo, I saw it at the same time, I cued 'leave it' Betsy did, got rewarded. New cue = poo. See cue, leave it. I walk in a massively busy dog walking area, with a lot of horse poo too - I had a lot of opportunities.

I was there with her and the poo though. It's true there isn't anything you can do if Cassie is 50 - 100 yards away from you unless you can see her and your recall will work. Even then, you'd have to keep using your recall. So yep, I'd say a long line is a good bet. And not that long...

 

@selina27 I trained Hattie off lead around tons of poo, living in the country there is a lot I trained 'leave it' at every pile and now if Hattie sees a pile of Horse poo she looks at me for a treat leaving the poo, I don't even have to say 'leave it' for horse poo it's automatic. Sheep poo is a tad more tempting for her but we are doing well with that also and are able to walk across a large paddock with her looking at me for treats with the occasional 'snack' Rabbit poo, deer poo, dog poo she is not interested in. Charlie doesn't eat poo at all, thank goodness Vigilance is the key xx

 

Interesting - I'll give this a try along with or as an alternative to 'don't touch'. The goat poo around here is ubiquitous and apparently incredibly delicious.

 

Well we are just back from a lovely Sunday morning walk. I have decided that I will have to manage what I can't ignore, regarding the searching poo scenario. So, I kept her on her harness through the worst danger zone, and when I released her we did ping pong recall, always so good to do as she loves it, of course she knew warm sausages were in my pocket so wasn't going to go far. I'm hoping that I can build up the association with that spot, so that in time, she will stay with me when off lead. So off we went and not a bit of dog poo found or eaten. Obviously he hadn't been in the part of the wood we went round, we might not always be so lucky It is 90 acres though , so there should be room for all of us.
And when we got to the camp used by the charity I practiced loose lead walking on the path, before releasing her to investigate their organic vegetable compost site ! Her face was a picture, I don't think she could quite believe I was encouraging her to go there!
As we left the wood, I could see her scenting the air and I know she would have gone looking if she could.
I need to work on leave it, I will confess to have not done this, she's really could around food in the house but I need to transfer it to outside.

 

@charlie, thanks for your reply. Cass doesn't really bother with horse/sheep/deer/rabbit poo, they don't really bother me anyway, little more than recycled grass she likes a little snack of duck/goose/ otter poo that she finds by the lake, which is ok.
What has been upsetting me is that she will actively hunt out this dog's poo and has ignored recall to do so. I know this dog is fed on cheap rubbish, and the smell on her afterwards is horrendous. I was discussing it with @Beanwood last week on the SW walk, it's like the additives/flavourings added are coming through and she finds it irresistible, a sort of junk food fix I guess. Doubly irritating, when I buy a good quality food which really suits her.

 

I trained Charlie's leave it the traditional (R+) way - you know, associating 'leave it' with backing off from things he wants, and preventing access to those things.

I accidentally trained a fabulous leave it with Betsy - luckily I recognised it quickly and built on what I had and now she will abandon just about anything apart from food she already has in her mouth (and even then if it's ambiguous as to whether it's food she will abandon it).

I did it by playing wippit - as the toy goes dead (so is less exciting) I waited for her to look up 'why has the toy become less exciting, mum?' said 'thank you' and tossed a treat. Then the game restarts. That action of leaving the toy very quickly to get the game to restart became my 'leave it'. It's super strong.

 

Yes, that's what I've done.

Interesting, I have whippit in mind, I think you mentioned it in a previous post. It would be useful I think in the "danger zone". I will have to go there specifically to play the game -- this morning I just wanted a walk. I should say she was off lead after ping pong recall.

 

Can I ask JulieT when you play whippet, I thought the reward was restarting but it seemed from your post that you marked and treated the leave before restarting? Did you actually say leave as she left it. I'd like to do whippet with Inky but I can't decide, I worry about his joints as he still gambles like a younger pup!
Don't know if I was right today but I left the muzzle off. He left lots of the poo and the 3 bits he did start eating he left when I got to him, I then did leave it a few times with each which he managed very well and when we walked on, he didn't go back. Can't decide if that amount of self reward is going to make us go backwards. As usual decisions decisions!

 

Sounds like he did well @Inky lab , it's interesting to read especially if he didn't go back to it, which I find really irksome. I wonder if by using the muzzle he is gradually losing the taste/losing interest? I get what you mean about self rewards --