Training The "out" - Advice Appreciated.

[megan_]

I haz acrush on Michael Ellis :/.

He has a heeling DVD too wobbly.

[Wobbly]

He is absolutely brilliant hey megan. A really amazing guy, and such a great communicator. If I ever get to California again (who knows what the future holds), I am absolutley going to one of his workshops.

I ordered his food and tug dvds already, I will definitely be getting the heeling one too, once I have had a chance to absorb the first 2. I can't wait for them to arrive, the Leerburg violin on the youtube vids is driving me nuts.

[Wobbly]

Poor Jarrah has to get a tooth removed tommorrow. It's the big one in the back and it's cracked right down the middle and the pulp is exposed. Poor girl, we played a lot of fetch yesterday it probably hurt her, but it wasn't swollen and she gave no indication of discomfort so I had no idea.

It's really swollen now, I am just back from the vets with pain killers and antibiotics, it's been a rough trot for her with various health problems the last few months, I am hoping this spells the end of our run of bad luck, and she has a trouble free 2013.

Anyway, once this tooth is out and all healed up she'll be well again, I will have to find out from the vet her full recovery time, in the interim I've hidden all her chewy/bitey/tuggy toys. We can get back to practicing when she's fully recovered. We had been making progress with fetch "out", but no progress with tug "out" as yet - I am still needing a LOT of education and help on the tug "out" front.

Losing the tooth will obviously affect her grip, but I assume won't affect her love for playing tug & fetch.

Edited January 3, 2013 by Wobbly

[Wobbly]

We see K9 Force tomorrow, very exciting, a much shorter wait than I had anticipated too, which is great. I have a notion that it's highly likely that the program we get from Steve will work well.

I'm really keen on seeing different methodologies and philosophies in action though, so I would still like to see Glenn. I think I will go to him for the cat issue, still working in prey on that, which is what I'm most interested in learning with Jarrah. Cats, I think is the one remaining behavioural issue Jarrah has that I could truly call a problem behaviour. I'd like to fix it but I'm really not sure how to go about it. Right now I redirect to the frisbee (or favourite tug toy), frisbees being much more desireable than cats, it works, but keeps her viewing cats as prey items, which I really don't love. I'm thinking there's got to be a better way than redirect to another prey item, but I've failed to figure it out. What happens if I don't have a prey item on me one day? I need more options. It was easy to convince Jarrah horses and cows are boring because they stand still, but cats run away, so enticingly fast, like they're just begging to be chased. Tough for a terrier to live in a world where cat chasing is not acceptable, but it is what it is, and so I need more options than I have currently to make it easier for her to not be dying to chase them. XD

[huski]

Looking forward to meeting you both tomorrow Wobbly! :)

Bec

[Wobbly]

Hi Bec,

Today was great, I was sorry I didn't get a chance to have a chat with you, but it was great to put a face to the name anyhow! It was odd Jarrah decided today that she didn't want chicken, I've never seen her turn her nose up at chicken when there's no tug toys around before, normally she's a complete pig. That was a bit of a shame because I wanted to show you guys how well she could heel now, but if she doesn't want the treats, I get no heeling because we're still pretty n00b at it. Having a proper game of tug I can actually use as a consistent reward will be great for any other days she decides she couldn't care less about food. We will get there. :)

Steve's advice was amazing. The last time I saw him was many years ago and my lack of knowledge and experience with dogs then prevented me from really appreciating his remarkable depth of understanding about dog psychology. But now, I have a bit more experience and a bit more knowledge I know enough to really appreciate that I can have access to an expert of that calibre. We're very lucky, those of us who live within striking distance of the Blue Mountains and have an interest in learning how to make our communication with our dogs better.

I understand now where I was going wrong, although it will take me some days to really collate all the new info (so much new info) into my world view. It took Steve about, oh maybe half a minute to get a good start on an "out" with her, it will of course take me a lot longer because I do need to change my way of playing. Through all my changing techniques in trying to get an "out" - dead tug, food swap, 2 toy swap, trying to wait her out - whatever techniques I found that sounded like they had promise, I've never stepped outside of playing that same old game of "Dog has frisbee, human wants frisbee". No wonder I never got anywhere with an "out". It's funny how simple a lot of my mistakes are, my husband and I have been wondering how the hell we never realised this stuff, it seems so obvious now it's been explained to us, but by ourselves we never would have figured any of it out in a million years. Anyway we have a whole new game to play now, which will be really fun, and Jarrah and me are all about fun so that's good. "D

The cat issue is a serious one, I have been guilty of putting it on the back burner because I'm so good at spotting cats before Jarrah does and thus avoiding her noticing them, or getting a frisbee in her gob quick smart if she does see one. But it's a serious issue, a management fail on my part could result in an attack on a cat, and while I've managed it well to date, I most certainly need more tools in my box than I have. I will see Glenn for that one, because I want to get a broad spectrum of advice from different methodologies, I'm not sure if rehabilitation is possible in respect to the cat issue, he will have to assess her, whatever the case may be there, I have to seek help, it's well beyond my skill set to help her with this one. I will get the "out" sorted first though, the better our game of tug is, the more helpful it may prove to be on the cat issue.

A quick update I think I said to myself when I fired up DOL... XD

[Kavik]

That sounds like great progress with Steve Glad to hear it went well :)

Our retrieve has improved heaps now since I have taken the pressure off and can remember to have fun with it :)

[huski]

Hi Wobbly

It was lovely to meet you all today! Jarrah is a beautiful girl and you are doing a great job with her. I smiled so much reading your post as you can tell you are so excited about the progress you made today. I can't wait to hear how you both go, you are a great team!

BTW Jarrah must have known you were there to play tug today not eat chicken :laugh: with a good out you'll be able to use toys to train heelwork now too :)

[Wobbly]

I haven't logged in for ages but I wanted to share our success!

Jarrah "outs" now!

There was so much advice Steve gave us, and it did take me a few days of thinking to get it all straight in my head - it was such a big perceptual change in HOW to think about training this for me. I fear if I tried to explain all the hows and whys in detail I might fall into the Chinese Whispers trap on the finer nuances, and I don't want to be misinforming people on the technique. So I will just outline it very broadly here, and hopefully I explain it right, but remember there's a lot of fine nuances I'm not covering here.

The broad overall concept I think is covered really well in one of the analogies Steve gave us - Think of those dogs (often Collies) who are dying for a game of fetch, and their owners aren't really that interested, so the dog will experiment to figure out the best ways to get a game going. Some dogs with really recalcitrant owners will even go so far as to put the ball in that owners hand because in the course of trying different approaches they found that has the best chance of getting the owner to toss that ball. And as Steve said, Jarrah's a smart girl, and I haven't been giving her proper credit for being smart, she can work it out by experimentation too. And sure enough, when I set the scene for her to experiment, just like those those collies do, she did it!

So I kept withdrawing my attention from the game to encourage her to experiment with how to get a game going. And experiment she did. It was really Jarrah that got it first, she was trying different stuff, nudging me with the tug and all the things that used to work for her, and then Holy Carp! she dropped it to see what effect that might have! I gave her the best game when she did that! She isn't a collie and I'm not a collie owner, so I didn't make her go as far as putting the toy in my hand - just dropping it was enough for a party. It took us about 3 days (as I said to Huski it would have been a lot faster for her or Steve or an experienced dog trainer, but I had to learn how to do my part too, so I was a bit slow on it). Letting her experiment and figure it out for herself rather than trying to force the issue like I was doing before was a MAJOR perceptual shift for me.

Simply amazing.

So far we are only doing it in the house and yard. We have it paired with a verbal cue now too. It's early days yet, at this point I'm not using tug as a reward for anything except "out" - I'm still solidifying that "out" = immediate awesome tug reward, making that an automatic cause and effect (in both our minds!).

So now I am looking forward and I can see that using tug for a reward for other behaviours (like say heeling when she decides food isn't interesting!!!!) is on the horizon now that she has a functional "out". To me that is just the most awesome thing, it's the main thing I've wanted with her for a long time now, I just needed that help to learn how to go about getting it.

I have to say I LOVE this new school approach to dog training where it's about paying the dog to work rather than intimidating the dog to work, when Jarrah "outs" she doesn't show any sign of stress, I've seen some other dogs putting their ears back or lowering their head or showing other stress signals when they "out" and I know there was some conflict for them in the learning process with it. Jarrah doesn't show any stress signs - she might hesitate a few seconds while she makes her decision to let go (it's not automatic yet, but it'll get there), then she looks up at me like "OK, I let go, so pay me with a game!". There's no stress or conflict for her in this because it wasn't forced on her, she does it because she knows it works to get what she wants. I am really, really glad I never took the easy brute force route and instead I went to Steve to learn how to get this without any conflict, it really is amazing how well this has worked out for us. :D :D :D

[Steve K9Pro]

K9: Thanks Wobbly, glad Jarrah is going so well.

It is true that when a dog wants to do something, they do it well, so if we can make our goals align with theirs it all goes well!