Millie -- Obstacles Practice AM, Article Game PM
Two different sessions with Millie today, since the weather was beautiful.
Morning--5-turn (4 open, 1 90°), 275 yard track with changes of cover and two road crossings. Sunny, 56°, calm. Low humidity. Food drops every 30 yards or so, and high-value food drops after negotiating challenges.
The start and most of the first leg were mediocre--I thought that distractibility was going to be a problem all along today--she was sniffing hard at everything but the track, and she seemed to lose it for a bit after the transition from medium to short grass. But she made the first turn ok, and about a quarter of the way down the second leg she started working the track nicely. She had to work a bit on the first road crossing, but made got to the far side about 2 feet wide left. She made a nice transition from medium grass to the rough stuff with no hesitation, and negotiated the second turn and the long third leg through the brush with little difficulty. She indicated the marker for the third turn, and was rewarded accordingly, and went straight into that open left turn. The fourth leg approached the road again diagonally, but did not cross: Millie checked out the road briefly, came back, and got right on the fifth leg running parallel to the road. At the final corner she show loss-of-scent at the right place, and went straight across (she might have been air-scenting on the crossing, but in any event she made it. She stopped and immediately indicated the last article, but didn't quite get it when I subtly encouraged her to down. But it's early.
We need to go back to starts at least once every week. I really would like a confident start with a good pull telling me she's got the track. If she shows confidence, then I can more comfortably believe her and follow.
Afternoon: Article practice on the lawn. Once again she seems to think it's a gas, and although I spent a lot of time fumbling around, I god some really nice down with little or no eye-contact.
Question: food was every 30. Where were the scuffs? Did you augment the tire tracks? That was a hard first leg. I actually thought she started well—not fast, but she never tried to take you the wrong way. Her actual start was pretty clear—and then she hit the tire tracks from hell.
ReplyDeleteNice track design, I’d like to see you more aware of where the track is hard, and make a bit more effort to make those sections easy for her. Your awareness of challenges will allow you to plot so she’s successful—again, training not testing. I scuff every single start my dogs do. Every single one. I’d scuff across the short grass, and put food every step across the road…and then scuff the crossing and put a scent pad 2-3 steps past it (with food). Same when you parallel the road—scuff the turn, go 5 paces, scent pad with food (3-5 pieces). You added valuable skills to her Rolodex, I’m not sure you made her say “whoopee, a problem to solve!!! Problems are Good For Millie!!!!”
Article—“we will work on that” is a no no. She just practiced not indicating. First—you know where the article is, have the food in your hand AS she approaches—way too much delay between her finding it and you reinforcing (think bout how quick you are in article practice). Assume she’s not going to down yet—get up there, hand on article. Timing hurt you here. And, feel free to quietly, pleasantly, remind her of the target behavior. She did NOT know what to do—help her! But once you’ve committed to the down…it must happen. She has hundreds of reps of not indicating, you can’t allow any more!!
Article game. Let’s take a tiny side journey. Put food in the articles. Close them with a rubber band. Click when she downs, walk up. She gets up…freeze. Let’s see if she can figure out that being down on the article makes you approach and feed. Just take a couple of pieces of food out, feed her (while she is down—she MUST be down to earn food), re-rubber band the article and repeat.
March 3 -- Tried the modified Article Game, and I think it will be a very good training tool. But a few problems. 1. GoPro unexpectedly ran out of juice just as we started, so no video, and I decided to post this as a response rather than as a separate post. 2. She found the article quickly, went down (I clicked), and proceeded to try to break into the tied up article, whether I was approaching or not--decided that that was the quickest way to the high-value treats (small pieces of kielbasi). 3. I tied the articles up more effectively, and then she did get the idea that she had to stay down until I came all the way up. We'll try again, but I think this will work.
DeleteI love that she broke into the article to get the food! Seriously, the challenge will be for her to transfer this to articles without food, so as soon as she’s offering the down with some reliability, we need to plan our food exit strategy. NOT YET!!! But once we start down that path the one thing you can NOT do is add food to the article if she fails. We can’t let her train us to put food in articles!
DeleteI’m pretty happy this worked. I think she’s food motivated enough that this step will go quickly and she’ll be offering the down and holding it.