Bill is learning to stand on his back paws on cue

Goal: To do it both on a hand signal and on a verbal cue. Idea is that he should remain there until new cue or finishing cue.


General steps for shaping the behaviour:
1. Capture the behaviour with nose target
2. Work away the target little by little
3. When anticipating clearly add visual cue -hand signal
4. Add in default behaviour (standing in front of me), click and treat for that


Phase 2:
1. Reward for staying up, add time slowly.


Phase 3:

1. Proof in different situations


Phase 4:
1. Add verbal cue where distractions are low
2. Mix with default
3. Mix with default and visual cue
4. Proof the new cue in different situations


29-11-09
First training session- P1
I thought he might do it as a behaviour he would offer naturally. Why I thought that is because he is often doing it in various situations. He has got an amazing balance and is so agile. He is contact seeking, he is alert and he is so keen to learn things. He has got a lovely balanced temperament with a good ability to concentrate in my opinion.


So I thought I would like to develop some of his ability and see what we can do. I was very pleased with the first training session.


Training

• He did not offer the behaviour.
• I instead introduced a nose target to him which he more or less got straight away.
• We did 3 X 10 of the nose target and the last session we started to move it to different places and heights.
• All went very well and he worked really concentrated. Very quickly you could see him deliberately choosing the target rather than sniffing it out of curiosity.

Plan for next training

• To start move it around to teach him to follow it.

Conclusion:
What a lovely dog he is. Of course I already knew this but you know how it is when the feelings just overwhelmes you and you feel like you have the most clever, fantastic dog in the world. I am sure you all know what I am talking about. He is so lovable and we always have so much fun together :-). Looking forward to next training session. Will be my rewards for writing concentrated on my Assignment in Animal Behaviour for a while :-).