School time for our puppies! Here is your first to-do list. The first task might sound a little silly for those with adult dogs, but in fact, it's never silly to make a recall even better!
Also, there are lots of tasks waiting for you in this class as I like to keep it interesting also for those dogs who already know some of the tricks. HOWEVER, make sure you're not focusing on teaching too much as fast as possible, to the degree of trying to help/lure - but instead take the time and focus on the fun part. In order not to make you feel under pressure, I will be underlining the tasks you should focus on in each lesson. The rest you can do if the underlined exercises are going well, but we don't need those for the next lesson, so it doesn't hurt if you address those later.
1. call your dog at least 10 times a day to do something fun together: to play, to go out, to get a treat, something to chew on or a new exciting toy
2. put a plate (or another object, but I like to start with a plate as puppies can't chew on those too easily) on a floor and shape a puppy to touch it with a front paw: you can first click for head movement in the right direction, then one/two/three steps, then stepping over it or close to it and finally for stepping on it
3. sit on a floor and put a fist full of treats or dog's favourite toy right in front of their nose, wait till they stop sniffing and click for anything they try other than getting directly to the food/toy or staring at it. It's very important the dog understands staring at food/toy doesn't get him anywhere as it will later on allow you to work with food/toys in your hand without distracting the dog's focus from the job at hand.
4. find a box or a drawer that is as long as your dog and not too high and shape a dog to put 1-2-3-4 legs into it. Then try with smaller&smaller objects, final goal is the dog can stand in a small bowl.
5. observe your puppy and see if he sometimes stretches his legs out when in down position, puppies often do that when relaxed or playing. Name it (I call it "frog":) and reward. It's a nice stretching exercise and very easy to get it on cue if the dog does it naturally (some dogs do it as adults too, but mine didn't and it was much harder to train it as with puppy Le who was doing that naturally). If not, put a dog in a down position and reward from the floor and so far ahead that the dog needs to stretch out to get it - but not so far that he would crawl ahead. Watch the hind legs and click for moving them back OR out, but NOT for crawling step forward. It usually helps if you try to get them stretch over a pillow as it reduces crawling.
Looking forward to see your videos! You can send them in one or more pieces, but keep the total length of the videos sent per lesson under 10min.
Here he is getting into a box. I only had two boxes so then I went to dishes but they worked pretty well. I was really happy with how quickly he picked this up and really seemed to like it!
Yeap, no problem with that bowl! Time for a smaller one! Great job! Looks like many of you need some more tricks assignments for next time! Don’t worry -- you’ll get it! 🙂
This is the last one of him backing away from my hand. He offered this behavior right away, it may be because he already knows how to back up?
Again, lots of parrot clicks and noises in the background. He is assuring him that he is ok. This comes from me saying that during nail trimmings to my dogs! Funny funny bird!
Very nice back up! And yes, your parrot is too funny!
Hi,
We are Sirje and BC Hacker (3,5m) from Estonia. Here is our lesson 1
Wow, what a big puppy in what a small bowl!!! And he is completely balanced! I don’t think I ever saw a 3.5 months old BC puppy in such a small bowl -- and I see MANY BC puppies in small bowls 🙂 -- I guess I have the strangest job ever to say something like that 🙂 That’s truly amazing! And what a great, completely stretched-out froggy legs too! Very very cool tricks! Very very cool puppy!
He (?) is too cute!! Looks like my Penny just without the spots 🙂
Wow. Nice 4inBowl!! How did you get him to hold still in the bowl so well? I’m having a difficult time with Echo — I’ve had to go to just rewarding for keeping her front feet in the box/bowl for a session because she was moving in and out of it so quickly and i had to be REALLY quick to catch her with 3 or 4 feet in. Video of my woes, coming soon!
Rachel
Placement of the reward helps A LOT to get duration. Stay close enough to the box that you can immediately reach in and reward when she is still in. And if she is eating it when still in a box, you can click and reward again. Should be easy with big enough box and by the time you get to a small box, they get it already. I always try to do that with behaviours that require duration and once they get that “if I hear a click without doing any action, I should just keep the position”, it’s very easy to get duration on anything.
Excellent. I’ll focus on that. Thank you for the advice.
Rachel
Our first movie and first trick training day!
It seems confusing to want him to ignore my hand of food for one trick and then want him to follow it for another (frog).. is it just me?
Also, how do I get him to stretch his legs without crawling forward? Should I use taller pillows? Thanks for any tips!
(I just noticed that in the video it looks like I started with a smaller box and then moved to the big box but it was just a movie making mistake.. still learning)
Great job with the plate! Getting there with the box, slowly make it smaller&smaller now. For a frog, taller pillows would make it easier yes. If it’s confusing for him, you can use a nose touch instead treats in the hand. It can be somewhat confusing yes, but what we would like to achieve with exercise 3 is not to make a dog un-lure-able, but to make sure they can think and offer things even with food right there in front of their nose -- exactly from the reason that if you do try to lure something, the dog will still be able to think. With other words: the goal of the exercise is not that the dog will not follow the hand when you are trying to guide (because you do want the dog to know to follow your hand too!), but that the presence of food won’t matter. My dogs behave exactly the same if I use a hand with treats in it or an empty hand: that way or another, they know they need to do something to get it. Makes some more sense now?
Yes, that helps, thank you!
I saw that I posted my first video in the wrong direktory. Sorry, now I got it!
We worked on the ‘frog’. Don’t wonder why we are going down from the pillow: Ayoka often is sliping with hind legs stretched on the pillow. So I thougt I can use this for the new trick. Without the pillow we still have some more work. But I think she already understands the comand. 🙂
We imrpoved working with a small Box for the 4in. Ayoka loves this trick!
I couldn’t get a good video from a recall because she was watching and following me all the time. But it works very well.
I had a lot of fun with my other dogs, wich also wanted to make some games with me…they made nonsens like standing in front of the camera, so you can see two big dogheads but nothing of Ayoka!
Yeap, looks like she got the frog trick, very cool! Nice 4in too, she looks ready for a smaller box now 🙂
Hi, here is our last video in this lesson. It is fun with the new tricks and new way of thinking and training. We are looking forward to the new tasks tomorrow ;o)
Mia turned 1 year yesterday, and we spent the day learning new tricks on a one day summer course (2 hours). We had the family over, who came with gifts. Mia had an ice made of liver and few vegetables, and played an hour with one of her best friends. A very good birthday :o)
I hope you all had a good weekend.
Happy birthday Mia! Great job with the tricks, you look all ready for next lesson! VERY cool froggy legs, time for a lower pillow now -- and ready to start naming it!
Hello Silvia and everybody,
as we already used 9 minutes ;), we still had just one minute left to show the end of our second week. Food has to be in the bowl, as we don’t use kibble, but frozen (so it is wet when not frozen any more) fresh food. So it is not possible to put it on the floor, but it is in the bowl right beside us without problems. The frog is not finished yet, I think, but Revi gets the idea well of pushing her hind legs out. But for her this is not natural, as she never takes this position from her own…so I am glad with this already, but it still can be much better of course.
we are looking forward to our next homework !!
bye,
Rebekka and Revi
GREAT progress with the frog!!! I love how fast she kicks those little legs back, it’s the funniest frog ever! And you got it just with the help of this little pillow? Great job with the other tricks too, I love how intense and happy she is! You sure look ready for the next lesson!
And don’t worry about those 10 minutes, nobody is counting that! 🙂 It’s just to give you an approximate idea, as in a first puppy class, I was getting 15min long videos of the first session on one trick… -- so I started to give those minutes as an orientation on how long videos it makes sense to sent -- not something that you need to stick to so strictly 🙂
Thanks Silvia ! We first tried the frog with a much higher pillow (as in your example video) but as she is not so tall, she stood up on her hind legs because the pillow was like 15 cm high. So I looked for something thinner and then I clicked every movement backwards from the hind legs as she doesn’t take this position natural like I see many other dogs doing in the videos. And then she found out she had to do this movement….and..she does everything pretty fast, she loves tempo !
Next tricks are difficult, as it is very hard for her to stay down (for the crossing of the front paws). She’s a too busy puppy for staying in a lie down 🙂
thanks for your feedback about the minutage…but I can imagine if you put no (more or less) limite that indeed you get hours and hours of video…
we enjoy the next tricks !
bye,
Rebekka
Great, she sure learned the frog kick fast! 🙂 Don’t worry about crossing paws trick, you can focus on other tricks first and do that one later, when she knows keeping the down position better.
Here I present our first video.
We started with the “Standing on a plate” trick and she loves it!
Second is the “4 in a box”. This trick was much more harder for here as she always thinks I’m only klicking for the action of her front-feeds!? But now it’s working. But for her it was much more easier to make the objects smaller and show her without putting the smaller into the bigger. When I was putting the smaller in the bigger she was doing it in that combination but as I removed the bigger one I had always only the front feeds in it…
But now it’s working very nice.
The frog we started, but she hasn’t understood it yet… My camera had a fiew probems when we was trying the frog and the quality is so bad, that i won’t show this video.
But I have one big problem in all these tricks (maybe you can see it a few times in the video):
Sometimes Jeany does the shaping very well, but one second later she is sitting next to me, doing nothing an just waiting. If I wouldn’t animate her do do something she will sit there (and later lay down) for the next months I think… 😉
So what should I do in this moments???
Normally when I’m doing the shaping I’m trying to do nothing. Just waiting what she shows an clicking… !?
Oh… I’m not sure what happend, but the sound is 2 seconds behind the picture??? The same video without youtube on my laptop is normal… very confusing… 🙁
Looks ready for the next lesson! Nice plate trick with quite some hind feet movement already! Getting there with the box, but still lots of room to make it even smaller 🙂 Try to include the frog too in your next video, maybe we can help 🙂 It’s really strange when she sits down and just looks stressed… Actually the whole session, she looks really serious about those tricks… Maybe try to keep sessions shorter and play some more in between? If she still goes into the sitting mode, tell her to get up and then click as soon as she offers something on her own.
O.k. That’s the reason why the click ist coming after throwing the treats!
Yes, I’m sorry!!! But I have no idea what to do against it!?
I had tihs problem once by converting the video. Maybe you can try to convert it to an other format. I use mgp4. Good Luck
Here is the video of our second week of lesson one.
My biggest challenge is the 4-in-a-box. I find it fascinating (and a bit perplexing) that so many of my fellow classmates have this trick down and their dogs balancing in bitty bowls. I’d really appreciate some insight into what I could do better. (Perhaps I’m decreasing the size too quickly?)
My pride is with Echo’s tug-Zen (and her self-taught Frog-Zen) and Finn’s Frog. Who knew my zoi could be a frog??
Our paw targets and recalls are going very well, so I left those out of this video.
Wow, Zoi Frog sure looks great! And Echo is just too funny on that pillow! And yes, I would decrease the size slowly enough that you get enough of 4in that you can stop clicking for each foot going in. I have a feeling like they think it’s about stepping over the edges, not necessarily standing in with all 4. I click 1-2-3 feet in only until I get 4 and then only all 4 in. And, once the bowl gets so small that it’s physically hard for them to step in with all 4, then I will again click for any thoughts in the direction of putting hind feet in too. But at this stage, still only for 4 feet in and getting duration.
Great. That’s very helpful and not like I’ve been doing it.
Finn and Frog — I really didn’t think he’d ever do that one as he NEVER offers that behavior on his own. But he loves to play Zoi Frog!!
Thank you Silvia, for your time and help.
Rachel (and Echo, Finn, and Quill)