huski

Yep come on Laeral, you've been outed now! ETA: If I can share my terrible videos so can you

Here is Daisy with a big distraction (for her)... food; LOL

I think it's about how you use the reward (treat, praise, toy) to utilise your dogs drive to your advantage. Pop into the thread on K9 Force's training in drive course and you will see a number of people in there who have extremely reliable dogs and got them reliable without using much compulsion in their training (generally speaking).

Daisy has a few intentional and unintentional triggers - vocal cue (ready to work) - the sight/smell/suggestion of food - the fridge door opening - me opening the 'dog box' especially when I pull out the treat bag/ leash The biggest one is probably the sight of her food bowl being picked up!

Ok I think more DOLers who have done/are doing the course with Steve need to post their videos! Kayla1, Rivsky, Dyzney, laeral - would love to see some other dogs getting stuck into drive work Steve: Couldn't do it without the great program you designed And all the assistance you provide!

Dova, I'm far from having a proper formal retrieve but I used the basic idea from Shirley Chong's article on how to teach dumbell retrieval - I marked/rewarded for any action towards the dumbell and went from there. http://www.shirleychong.com/keepers/retrieve.html

Great focus on both of them Dyzney Do you train them both in food drive? You're right about the no regrets thing, Daisy has only just turned three, so she's not that old yet

I agree dyzney. Huski and Daisy certainly are a good recommendation to start the TID course ASAP If I can achieve half of what they've achieved I'll be very happy. Aww thanks guys :rolleyes: Daisy's not there yet but I know she will get there eventually. You can see the difference in her if she's not working in drive, she lags or has her nose to the ground and is very easily distracted. When she's working in drive it's so easy to do distraction training, she doesn't look twice at other dogs and forgets about the smells on the ground. And as you can see she does like the sound of her own voice too :) The only regret I have is not starting her on it sooner!

Dyzney she sounds amazing! What a clever girl she is :D I have some videos up on my youtube channel, nothing very good up there yet though I have a LOT of work to do on my handling skills as I've never trialled before :D You are welcome to have a look though. I am mainly just pleased with Daisy's ability to focus and work so happily, it used to be a serious struggle to get any focus (that nose goes into over drive!) and now it's so much easier. http://www.youtube.com/user/becandmicha We haven't started teaching attention yet, so we still have a fair bit to go through.

I also don't agree with playing/interaction with other dogs at training, but I have owned dogs that I've had to watch all the time because they would be "watching" the other dogs. After being on constant alert with them (they were males) my female is totally relaxed with other dogs and after my two males I really don't want her to lose that confidence. When I say "mixing" I mean in a class situation with different breeds, sexes and temperament of dogs where she doesn't show any stress or concern at all - not "playing" :D Ah I get you now! If she's a happy well socialised dog I don't think taking her out of obedience classes for a few months will change that, it certainly didn't with Daisy. She also had other time to socialise around dogs if she wanted to, at DOL meets etc. I will go back to obed club this year but only for the distraction factor that other dogs present. Neats, Daisy has a reasonable prey drive too, but her food drive is much stronger. I think Shoemonster found that after doing TID with food with Ed, he is now more eager to tug because he's a lot more confident. And Daisy says thanks for the compliment :) Definitely nothing harsh about TID :D Ness, I did it with my undriven 6 year old rotti, brilliant result. She was so soft I would not correct her and she would go to pieces, heeling was like, well, she looked like I had been beating her up, she hated it, obviously my doing, but I didn't know how to fix it. Head was low, she lagged and was extremely disinterested. Everything was fine, but had not entered an obedience trial her whole life because of the heeling alone. Training in drive has sorted it all out for us. As she only responds and responds well to food, we have used food drive to train. I can now show her the chicken wing outside the ring, take her in her class and complete it, then let her have the win afterwards (remote reward) and she is fired the entire time. focused on my like never before, happy, fast working and responsive. Would love to see a video of Dyzney if you have one! She sounds amazing!

LOL - well we'll see how she goes! Neither of us have ever trialled before, so we'll try and get through CCD first :D I train Daisy in food drive so her ultimate reward will always be food. However, that doesn't mean that I don't also use praise or play drive to get her excited and reward her as well. Just that I wouldn't get the same result using purely praise, that I do when I use praise + food.

Personally I never let Daisy play with other dogs when we are training. She's a friendly easy going dog, although she's not overly fussed with other dogs, I don't like to encourage her to see other dogs as a distraction she can engage with when we're training.

With the training we do it's about making sure she can maintain drive for the amount of time necessary. In between exercises, I'll use play/praise I like your insinuation that we'll actually get to UD in the first place ;)

I wouldn't go to classes in the beginning when you are building drive - you need to get her to a certain point before gradually introducing distractions again. Even now, when I am planning to go back to my obedience club this year for some distraction training and ring run outs, I won't ever do a full one hour class again as it's just too long for Daisy and not structured in the way I would train anyway.

What Seita said Although what my utube channel has in quantity hers makes up for in quality! ;) I agree it's hard work and it does take time, but the result is definitely worth it - if you stick to the program and follow Steve's advice, it's a course you really need to dedicate yourself to otherwise you will not get the results you want. Each module is done at your (and your dog's) pace. You can either do it with prey drive (i.e. a toy) or food drive, depending on your dog's strongest natural drive. dyzney she has heaps of drive at the moment, and that's my concern, how am I going to handle it? The training in drive course is not only for developing drive as in my situation, but to harness and control it. You speak to Steve about your concerns and he will design the programme specifically to suit your needs. My boy has plenty of drive also, and he is responding well to the training. I think you would be thrilled you did it. What Dyzney said - you learn to harness and control drive, and it gives your dog a positive outlet for it's drive. You don't give corrections when building drive or really when you're training in drive because you don't want to do anything to decrease drive, although I do use a no reward marker.

hehe, how cute is Ness doing the COP too! Like "see mum, I'm doing it right!" snap tiggy

I will get her into food drive before I go in the ring and will release her to the food after, getting her to maintain that drive when we are in the ring (in theory, lol).

I've never taught it before, I read Shirley Chong's method and based what we did off that, and just marked and rewarded for any behaviour towards the dumbell to start with. So it was all free shaping. If there's a better way to do it I'd love to know for next time! I wouldn't know how to train it so she would be busting to pick it up when she still wasn't 100% sure if that's what she was supposed to do. Certainly, she is very excited about getting it now she knows what to do with it. Being such an inexperienced handler I was just totally excited when she picked it up, and I saw the light bulb go off in her head like "Oh, so THAT'S what I need to do to get the food?" I tried to share my excitement with everyone else in the house by showing them what she'd learnt to do in such a short time, but they didn't quite get it

Huski, you have a hard breed to train and I give you heaps of credit for acheiving what you have with Daisy. I'm sure the NRM works for you, I bet Daisy is indifferent, but whatever, you are both happy training and that's what counts. I sometimes use a NRM for a known exercise, I say 'what happened?' or 'oops' but the only difference to my dogs is they don't get the reward. I think the NRM is for my benefit and not theirs. Often (when I can keep my mouth shut) I don't use it and the training results are the same if not better. Maybe you could give it a go and let Daisy be the judge. She's not too bad, she's (surprisingly) easy to train with the right motivation Although I guess I don't know any different It probably is largely for my benefit, as I like to try and be as clear and consistent as possible and I guess it's also a force of habit. I've also found it useful to use a NRM when she's a distance from me and I want to mark that she made a mistake as quickly as possible i.e. (random example, not something we have a problem with) she drops in a sit/stay. I guess I could rely on my body language to indicate she got it wrong, but it's kind of the same thing in my mind. The other day when I was training her to pick up the dumbell, I put it down and she walked up to it and touched it but didn't pick it up. At this point, she'd picked it up and bought it to me quite a few times but not totally reliably. I gave a NRM and she picked it up and gave it to me (which I marked with a yes). Before that, if I didn't give a NRM, she touched it and looked back to me to see if she'd got it right. Now I'm a very inexperienced trainer and make a lot of mistakes, but I know that the times I gave her a NRM made it that much clearer to her about what I wanted.

I still have trouble viewing witholding the reward as a punishment without some mental gymnastics. When my dogs know the training game, if they don't get rewarded they try harder or try something else, trying to work out what the criteria is. I don't see behaviour diminish, unless perhaps I have the reinforcement schedule wrong for that dog or they are satiated/tired- but that's not punishment to me. I guess that depends on your definition of punishment. What does withholding the reward tell the dog? Does the dog find it unpleasant? Does it make them a bit frustrated? Does the behaviour they "got wrong" diminish?

Pax - I've trained things using a NRM and not using them at all. The NRM tends to work well for us. Daisy knows that it means 'oops, try again'. It's just another way of marking behaviour IMO. I use it for the same reason I use 'yes' to mark behaviour that I want to see, instead of just giving her the reward. At the end of the day it works for my dog and I can't see what is wrong with using it Corvus I disagree that it's possible to only use positive reinforcement. Is pausing instead of giving a reward not withholding it? Do the trainers give the animal the reward even when they get it wrong, just with a pause in between? I also disagree that anyone who uses anything other than P+ just "isn't clever enough" to do otherwise. Why the implication that if you use anything other than P+ you are somehow lacking as a trainer?

Yep and I also find it easier to have a 'nope you got it wrong' word, I find it faster than just removing the reward, like I find it faster to mark 'yes' when I get a behaviour I want to see instead of just giving her the reward. As soon as I give Daisy a NRM, she tries something else straight away.

I think it's also important to note that what constitutes a correction for one dog may not constitute a correction for another. I know a dog who cannot handle verbal correction, just a slight 'ah' will make him slink back with his ears down. I can use the same 'ah', with the same tone, with Daisy as a NRM as a way of telling her nope, you got it wrong, try again, obviously with totally different results. I think it's impossible to completely train a dog with only positive reinforcement, as at some point, you will do something to the dog that they find unpleasant - for example, Daisy finds the removal of a reward as unpleasant, and it's obvioulsy not PR.

So when you work up to two or three bowls, you teach the dog to go to a particular bowl on command? Or am I really daft

I'm a bit slow what is the food pot technique?