We want to do things with her that are going to kind of bring her positive
emotions up during that, right, so do you ever do anything, like do you ever teach
her cute tricks or anything like high five? "Nothing crazy, she just sits." Okay so like what we might do, and
we start a little bit today, is teach her a couple of little fun things. And the
reason I like to do this, is in my experience, activities that the dog
associates with rewards as a whole become more rewarding than just a reward in and of
itself, okay. So as an example, like you saw two sessions ago or three sessions ago when we tried the jumping, right and you actually saw
how as she was jumping her energy came up; we're gonna do some more of that
today. Remember tail came out and she started
to feel really good about herself when she did that. Every time she did it
she was getting a reward. The think about training a trick is it's all fun and
games, like we don't put any pressure on the dog, it's like we're just having fun
here if you don't want to do it, fine, we can do it some other time,
and we're almost always rewarding the dog with the treats so there's a really
strong correlation. So what starts to happen is the behavior itself creates
the emotions. And because the dogs putting energy into the behavior it just
tends to be a more potent form of creating those emotions. So now I'm going
through my drill, I get her ready and Ieash her up, I've got my coat on, I go out, I'm in the
hallway, maybe I've taught her to do a spin on command.
Maybe just with a little food lure, spin her around. And so we go in the
hallway, we do three spins, and she's like "Yay!" and then we go back inside. And you might find that
going out there and doing that fun little trick that she's already - we've
already pumped that up separately. So they'll teach the tricks separately from
the drill and then add it to the drill. You might find that that actually
gets her in a better place emotionally than if we were to just bring her in the
hallway and hand her a cookie. Does that make sense? "Yeah, cause she's so focused on the stress of going outside." And we do this in so
many different contexts. And even if like maybe you get to a point where it's like
all right, still really good, I'm leashing her and everything's going great and then
I only see your start to stress like once we get out the front door because
she's anticipating having to go for the walk and maybe there's construction down
the street or whatever so maybe we do that, we do the whole thing, we get on the
front porch, we're on the front walkway and then we do a little high five and a
spin and off we go back inside, okay and so we just do these things to pump her
up. And eventually it's like, okay she hates when a garbage truck goes by so
we're walking along, here comes a garbage truck, it goes by,
hey you survived - spin spin spin - high five - weave between my legs, yay! It
just can help to bring her back emotionally from where she was, and
I find that those types of things, those kinds of games, are way more potent than
again like, garbage truck. Treat. No, garbage truck, do something energetic. Do
something fun. Bring your energy up. "Kind of take her attention away from it, too."
Yeah but it's like our bodies and our minds are connected, right. Like people
who are top performers in various fields know this, you know people that are stage
performers, they pump themselves up before they go onstage. They jump up and
down, they shake their hands, they get their blood flowing in their body
because the moving, the activity feeds our emotions and our state of mind.
And so it can be a very powerful thing. So we can definitely, like I
always start with spin because it's like, it's just stupidly easy and the dogs
when they learn it, they tend to like it, it gets their energy moving and
it's like, it's motion based, like I'm looking for getting their body moving as
opposed to like a high five, which is like they just sit there and do this. I want them to move.
That's why the jumping, like going over a jump is so potent because they have to
express their energy in order to do it. So it brings everything up, you know what
I mean? But you can't almost go out in your walk carrying a jump, so
we need something that's doable out on the walk.
So teaching the spin is super easy, it's really just a matter of luring the
dog in a circle, right, so luring is just basically using the dog's nose. Hold food
in your hand. I just want them to bend their head and
then start to turn their body. Now. Some dogs just do funky stuff in the
beginning, right, like you're trying to rotate them around and they start
walking backwards or jumping up on your hand or doing something else so
sometimes what we have to do is just reward pieces of it, okay. Right so instead of
expecting the dog to turn all the way, sometimes I might just get her to bend
her head like this and just reward that a bunch of times and then eventually she
should go, you know that's kind of uncomfortable, and she'll move the rest of
her body around. So some dogs you can just move right around in a circle, no
problems at all. Sometimes we've got to break it up into parts.
So practice that a bunch of times on that side, and you want to get to a point where it becomes
really fluid. This should be a very easy thing to teach. And what will happen
eventually is like, you'll just kind of do a gesture with your hand and she'll just whip around.
So with this kind of thing too you can use what we call a verbal marker.
So we often use reward markers, it's just a sound that indicates to
the dog precisely what they're being rewarded for. If you've ever heard of people
training with clickers, it's the same idea.
The clicker's just a really precise sound that the dog knows means
that a reward on its way. So what happens is, whatever the dog is doing when they
hear that sound, they know is what they're being rewarded for. And it allows you to
pinpoint things. So in this context she's spinning around in a circle, she gets back
facing me and then I reward her, well was she rewarded for the fact that she spun
around or the fact that she's now facing me? Am I rewarding the action or the position?
It can be confusing for the dog, so what I'll do is I like the
dog to associate the word yes with the reward coming, and then I'll say yes
while they're rotating, right so I'll give them like right past that 50
percent mark and while their body's in motion, "yes."
And then I reward that final position so they know it's the action of spinning that
is what's being rewarded, it is not just being in front of me facing me however
they get there, it's the actual act.
"Yes! Yes!"
"Yes, good girl yes." I try to say yes one time per reward so get her doing what
you want and when she's doing it the way you like it, "yes," and then she comes all
the way around and reward her.
"Yes!" Perfect, that was great. So otherwise what happens sometimes is because they get
the reward when they're facing you, so like they're already facing you and you're
trying to go over there and they're like "What, I'm right here, this is what you want right? Like you keep
rewarding me when I'm right here, so I am right here." You see what I mean? And for
some dogs it's no problem at all but we do want to just make sure we are being clear
to the dog as far as specifically what we're rewarding.
"Yes! Yes."
"Yes, yes."
"Oh wait I did the wrong side."
"Yes!"
Yeah and what you were doing was you were saying
yes and then feeding and then saying yes again. It would be like, so like you know
if you order something on Amazon you get a little email that says
"Your package is on the way, here's the tracking number." It would be like if
they sent you that and then they sent it again after you already got your package.
Right it's like yeah I don't need the tracking number anymore I already
have it, I already know when it's gonna be here, it was yesterday.
See what I mean, so you telling her yes is basically getting that little
like "Hey we received your order your package is on the way." Right like
that's what it is. "Yes!" Perfect and that was great timing because you
actually marked the moment her butt came up off the ground
and was standing, which is really the way we want her to do it. We don't
want her spinning on her little butt, we want her to stand up and put some
energy into it. "Yes." Beautiful. All right give her a little break and
then we're gonna just go the other way because we need to unwind her, you know.
No, it's just nice to have dogs be able to be flexible. A lot of dogs have a dominant side
just like we do so you may find that one way or the other is actually easier for her.
Like my dog spins this way really easily but has a hard time with this way and that's kind of good to know. So
we don't have to be super particular about this, this is really just something
we're doing for fun and to be able to create some energy. So the
most important thing is I just want you to practice it a lot and get reps in.
When I say practice it a lot I don't want you to do really long
sessions of it, okay, because that makes it boring. Think of anything fun
that you like doing and then imagine being forced do it for 36 hours
straight and you would hate it. So you want little short and sweet
sessions but do it frequently. You could just have like, I like to keep
little jars of treats around my house to make an easy, just randomly throughout the day
like grab a treat, make her spin. So do it frequently like that but you want
to stop practicing, let's just say if you do repetitions like we are right now, you
want to end the session while she's still really into it. You want to
leave her a little bit dissatisfied, you know what I mean, that's what will make her
more excited to do it next time. Yes she'll be like "Oh, I was waiting for this!" Yes so short and sweet but frequent.
Okay now if you want to get to the point where like you don't have to bend
and spin her all the way around and you want to eventually add a word to this
etc. So the first step would be, you want to add a word. Pick what you want to call it, right,
spin, twist, boogie, whatever I don't care just pick a word and
you would give the cue right before you do the lure. Very important that it's before
not at the same time because the cue helps the dog to predict what's going
to happen next. I think I would say like if I was gonna swing a broomstick
at your head would you prefer me to tell you duck before or after? Before, right,
because that gives you the advantage. Likewise, do you have a favorite
candy or like a favorite food, something that you love eating? "French fries." Okay so let's say you were
starving and you haven't had french fries in forever. I've got some and I'm
gonna like, I've got pinpoint accuracy. I'm gonna throw one directly in your mouth.
Okay would you prefer me to tell you I'm going to do that before I throw it or
after I throw it? Probably before so you can open your mouth and have a
better chance of catching the food. Let's say you didn't even speak English,
you didn't know any English at all but I went "Open." And then threw. "Open." And then
threw. Pretty soon when I say "open", you're just gonna open your mouth. Now if I already
have bounced the French fry off your forehead and then I tell you "open," you're
not going to learn that cue. That doesn't give you any advantage, it's like well what good does that do me?
So that's just the way our brains are programmed to learn. So she
wants the food. You give her the sound that helps her predict what to do to
get it and then she'll start doing that. The other thing as you start doing that is
you want to start kind of fading away that physical prompt.
The actual circular motion with your hand. So what I do is, right now you're
spinning her 100% of the way around and then rewarding. So what I would start
doing is I'd spin her almost all the way and then remove my hand and see if she
finishes on her own, okay. And then I go yes and reward and I just start
pulling that hand away earlier and earlier and earlier so eventually I kind of
go like halfway and pull my hand then she spins the rest of the way on her
own and gets the reward. And eventually it's just like, I'm just up here and I go
like I just kind of start the gesture and she goes "Oh I know what that is." And she
spins around and now you don't have to bend all the way down and do the whole big
circle anymore. That stuff is details, okay. Personally I don't care if she does
this perfectly on verbal cue. I don't care whether you have to bend down and
do the whole thing around or not because for our function I'm just using it as a
way to pump her up and make her feel great. It doesn't matter, but if
you wanted to take the training to that level those will be the next steps, okay?
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