Sunday 15 March 2009

Default, Present and Articles

Pure clicker training theories applied
1. Refine the Present position (sitting in front of me)
Elsas default position is standing in front of me. From there I can ask her to do the things she has on cue.

I am trying to refine the present position since I have noticed a little bit of a confusion there for both her and me, to tell the truth.

So a lot of training on the default position. Click, throwing treat, click feeding in front.

I make it fairly easy for her to never throw the treat behind me so she has to round me when coming back into the default position again.

Default is something we worked on before but not so much lately.

Such a good training in order to refine the cues for different behaviours.

Plan:
  • Strengthen default
  • Add "Come" which always will mean coming into present position.

Training:
  • Three sets of 10 repetitions.
  • About 7 default and 3 "come" out of the 10 repetitions.

Analysing:
  • My god, why do I not do this kind of training more! It has such and effect and it makes it so, so clear to Elsa and actually myself as well.
  • She got it quicker than I thought.
  • Will continue to strengthen default for many reasons: one for the training goals for competition level and one for having her 100% ready for the CAP3- week for Kay Laurence in July.
  • I am going to change "come" to "hit" because I use come in so many other situations.

2. Laying down for tracking articles
Plan:
  • Make the trackin articles a cue for laying down. I start with the leather and I assume that she quick will generalize to the other since they are always the same shape.
  • Show her the article - say lay down "Ligg" - click and throw reward (chicken) behind her to get her moving up and down for many opportunities to train.
  • 3 sets of 10 repetitions.

Training:
  • First she had a willingness of sniffing and possibly biting the article. I held it away from her so she could not reach it. I have the feeling that sniffing or biting in it would be very rewarding in itself therefore I avoid that totally.
  • I show her the article and then say Lay down "Ligg", click and throw a piece of food behind her.
  • Just after a few times she lays down directly when she sees the article.
  • I put it on the floor and she lays down immediately when she comes close to it.
  • A few times she was a bit too close and I moved it away from her and rewarded her for laying down.

Analysing
  • I will not move away the article and reward if she is too close. I still think it was good to do at first since she needed strenghening in that she was doing the right behaviour. I did not want any confusion there.
  • I will instead take it away from her sight and start again. Idea is that she will understand that if she is too close there is no reward, same with if she is too far away of course.

Another thought is that I should really use the labels on this blogg to organise the training to be able to follow up what I did last time within a certain behaviour. No shit Sherlock.

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