Two new article tracks, one from Thursday and one from today.
3/20. Slightly sketchy start, but stuck to the track nicely throughout the session. Did have to work a bit at the one corner, but found the correct direction.
As an article track, we have a long way to go--she did find each and every article, but only twice, later in the track, did she give me a good automatic down. Her mind was clearly on getting at the food in the article. My timing is still off as well--it's more like two or three seconds between her starting to nose the article an me saying "Down".
3/25 (starts around 10:13). ≅300 yards, 1 turn. Good start and work on the track all the way through, although once or twice she had some difficulty recognizing the article when it was among debris or in the only long grass on the track.
This time I had one piece of food in each article: if she gave me a down only after the command and gesture, she only got the one piece of food. If she gave me an automatic down, I gave her a jackpot out of my pocket.
Although she didn't down at the start article, she did give me an automatic down on about half the articles.
As an aside, my timing particularly stank on this track. I am still slow to give her the "Down" when she doesn't indicate immediately. At the same time, I was sometimes so surprised when she gave me an automatic down that my click-reward sequence was WAY off.
Altogether a mixed result. When she was good, she was very good. But she did miss two articles.
Celebrate the successes and not the failures….. First, let’s go ahead and do starts next. We don’t want starting to signal hard work and become aversive. So some nice, short starts, jackpot the article, get the down after the jackpot if you still need it.
ReplyDeleteNext, let’s try something to help her and improve your timing. When she is ~one body length from the article, happy voice, “what did you find? “ or “What’s that?” “Down!” So you are cuing the article behavior BEFORE she gets to the article.
Article 3–she pulled into the harness to get to it. YAY! OH, let’s make sure we clearly tell her when indication is over and tracking has begun. I love MAM’s “track it up” as it’s hard to say that in a harsh voice.
Love the automatic down!! Now, go listen to it. hear the difference between how happy you are on that one vs the others? Once she downs, with or without a cue, you have to be happy….and perhaps add a bit more food while she’s down—building duration of down by pairing it with a rapid dribble of food. Also, at each article, let’s ask for 3 indications (random number I just pulled out of my a….). So she’s eating, you quietly move the article (not too far—more like we did on the early days in the house), say nothing, and let her indicate again. Cue if you have to…keep track if the need diminishes. Move it one more time, or even 2 more times, and again, feed the down. Then “track it up” and let her go back to work.
Let’s continue the yard work as well. She is now mostly reliably stopping for articles, sniffing them, and thinking about the puzzle. That is HUGE progress.