Testing some new things and working on old ones

Do as I do protocol

There has more and more studies coming out about social learning used in dog training. Recent topics has been mimicry where dog are teach to copy a behavior from another dog. Second hot topic has been copying a behavior from an example from human ( Topa et.al 2006). I was fascinated by both topics. I have shown my younger dog always performance of my older in obedience. I know she probably wouldn’t pick up the whole thing but I have always thought she might learn something. The most interesting was the copying protocol. Ken Ramirez had a nice lecture in the new training frontiers in Clicker Expo Europe and this inspired me try this with my own dogs. Plan was to use this method in dancing routine.

I have started to my work with the basic protocol where you use 3 familiar behavior that are under a cue. I chose sit pretty, lay down and volt (dog goes around counter clockwise). Behaviors needed to be easy demonstrate with my own movement. First step was introduce copying cue. I did my behavior first and then I gave “Do it!” cue followed by my cue to dogs wanted behavior. I repeated all 3 tasks in random order with this protocol in short session. It took Pixie about 4 repeat to start reacting to copying cue. In of my first session she was able to repeat all three behaviors from my example. Freya had problem of starting always the sit pretty behavior before I got time to give her behavior cue. She will need another session to figure it out. Although I did with her a copying test without any commands and she did three different touch behavior correctly. So I can’t wait use this to behavior they don’t know! So much fun!

Obedience training with Freya

Our open class test is getting nearer and nearer. I have worked on our tasks through and I’m trying make as full behavior chains. Box training has had its testing phase as it worst but I think / hope it’s starting to be over. Freya has worked really well under different distractions and has started ignore a ring guides commands to me. We have still work ahead but everything starts to look really good. Especially healing and sit-down-stand during healing. I have managed to build very high drive healing that is also really accurate in turns and position.

We had box problem a month ago that Freya went around of mark post on the front. After I fixed that we had a problem going around big mark object. She just stopped seeing it. I tried to show her where it was but still she could start running around the training area without any goal to do something. It took few session and we got the basic going around behavior back. Then I wanted make a sure she watched the mark cone on cue. I put few mark cones all over the training are and started walk around then took straight line randomly to each cone. On the second try Freya tried to go around the first mark cone which was behind me. But this was goal of the exercise to make her focus her look to mark cone that is straight front of us.