What To Call It? Pocket Training?

[paddles]

following another post in a different thread, I have opened this thread for us all who are going to give this a go, to share our attempts????

[Wobbly]

O dear I am afraid I don't look like Denise at all, I'm sort of hunched over trying to make it easy for Jarrah since she's not quite tall enough, almost tall enough, but not quite. I probably look like Quasimodo if Quasimodo had a dog. :laugh:

At this point I'm happy with 3 good steps.

[Zug Zug]

How do you start it? Reward for check to hand touch? From a stationary heel position?

[ness]

I will have to look up the instructions - I have done some of this ages ago on advice from Denise to help with crabbing. I remember having a treat in between my thumb and finger to get the dogs head into the right position.

Edited June 16, 2013 by ness

[Wobbly]

Here we go, denise with the nice tall Juno

And another lady with her tall dog

[Mrs Rusty Bucket]

so how do you get from "holding your dog's cheek" to something that looks legit in competition obedience?

my dog will follow my hand around - so long as I'm keeping the reinforcement rate up, but that's not the same as an off lead heel with no treats and no hand (or normal hand swinging walk).

[tlc]

How could you use this method on smaller dogs? You would need to be constantly hunched over. Her dog looks extremely well trained, she makes it looks soooo easy! :laugh:

[paddles]

I was told to start with long soft treats (like strips of frankfurter) and you slowly feed it to the dog with your right hand, teaching them that having the left hand cupping the cheek is good. she then switches to having a ball in her armpit, which she drops to reward. (I'll worry about what I'll do there later.) (this is the girl who showed me, not Denise)

with a smaller dog? start on knees?? teach to target a fly swatter? and use the swatter as the "hand" ? the hand is eventually ment to be a guide? not a "grab"???? I tried last night.... hmm, not brilliant, but we got a dozen steps, and a sit? I'll get video today, and post it. (hopefully)

[Sue & Waldo]

I was told to start with long soft treats (like strips of frankfurter) and you slowly feed it to the dog with your right hand, teaching them that having the left hand cupping the cheek is good. she then switches to having a ball in her armpit, which she drops to reward. (I'll worry about what I'll do there later.) (this is the girl who showed me, not Denise)

with a smaller dog? start on knees?? teach to target a fly swatter? and use the swatter as the "hand" ? the hand is eventually ment to be a guide? not a "grab"???? I tried last night.... hmm, not brilliant, but we got a dozen steps, and a sit? I'll get video today, and post it. (hopefully)

Sorry but I can't imagine heeling and SLOWLY feeding strips of franfurt. i have a mini schnauzer vacuum cleaner. But I do like the idea of a target stick or similar. I will give it a go me thinks

[sheena]

How could you use this method on smaller dogs? You would need to be constantly hunched over. Her dog looks extremely well trained, she makes it looks soooo easy! :laugh:

Clean Run have collapsible target sticks on their free shipping at the moment for $8.95...would that help ??

[Mrs Rusty Bucket]

for the short dogs or short armed...

a wooden spoon with long handle and peanut butter stuck to the end or mash of sardines or whatever your dog likes...

The first vid showed using thumb and forefinger to dispense treat, and the other three fingers to catch the dog's cheek. Which was developed into using the whole hand and separately delivering treats in position (ie so the dog does not have to move out of the correct position to get one).

[Wobbly]

Ok here is me & Jarrah. I am very new at training (only ever really concentrated on basic life and community skills before) so all comments and criticisms, advice and suggestions are welcome! I do it in motion with tug rather than still with food because its more fun for her that way and we're still really concentrating on focus as our main thing atm. No sound, because this is the first time I ever uploaded to ewechewbs. XD

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHrAy0qfGNc&feature=youtu.be

[paddles]

Wobbly, you did much better than my first attempt... lol

[Nekhbet]

You don't have to cup the dogs head, that is something that comes from when heeling was more compulsion - high correction chain, leash across your body long enough to hold the dog in position and you cup/stroke the dogs head to keep it up and verbally reinforce the right behavior.

Heeling is easy, have food in your left hand and have your hand just low enough at your side in line with your body that the dogs head is facing up and licking your hand. Heeling is positioning, it means stick with my left leg at your shoulder not just a walking exercise. Stand still, have the dog lick your hand and say heel. Take a step forward leading with your left leg and keep your hand at your side, walk sloooowly enough the dog can keep up and reinforce heel. Dog gets reward when you stop. Do it slowly, reinforce heeling also means pay attention at a stationary heel position, you can slide your hand up to your face, when the dog looks at your eyes not the food mark and reward. We get lovely freaky deaky heels at dog school like this without food obsession.

I don't like constantly feeding dogs to extend the heel, thats a habit from those people who treat it as a walking exercise. If you need to keep feeding to extend a heel it means you've gone past the dogs concentration capability for that exercise.

Wobbly the reason I would say use food is so you can bring Jarrah's head up. Use something fresh and let Jarrah get the taste between your fingers licking but NOT getting a piece yet. Her head is forward and she's setting the pace, you've got Ninja skills I'll give you that lol. Just use the food to get her to understand what you want at a calm pace then reward with the toy at the end as a reward for a good job. Food is useful for positioning without wearing the dog out and fine tuning :)

[Weasels]

I was told to start with long soft treats (like strips of frankfurter) and you slowly feed it to the dog with your right hand, teaching them that having the left hand cupping the cheek is good. she then switches to having a ball in her armpit, which she drops to reward. (I'll worry about what I'll do there later.) (this is the girl who showed me, not Denise)

I tried this this morning and the dogs kept trying to nose poke my left hand, which is the opposite direction to where I want their attention! :p

I have been using a high (out-of-nose-poke-range) hand target in front of their face for them to focus on, to get a nice prancy looking-up heel. It has been really handy to direct forward, back, in and out in small adjustments, and easy to fade to a hand-on-hip. I can see the 'pocket' target works on a similar principle but is there an advantage I might be missing? It's not too late in training to change if there's a secret advantage :)

Edited June 17, 2013 by TheLBD

[Wobbly]

You don't have to cup the dogs head, that is something that comes from when heeling was more compulsion - high correction chain, leash across your body long enough to hold the dog in position and you cup/stroke the dogs head to keep it up and verbally reinforce the right behavior.

Heeling is easy, have food in your left hand and have your hand just low enough at your side in line with your body that the dogs head is facing up and licking your hand. Heeling is positioning, it means stick with my left leg at your shoulder not just a walking exercise. Stand still, have the dog lick your hand and say heel. Take a step forward leading with your left leg and keep your hand at your side, walk sloooowly enough the dog can keep up and reinforce heel. Dog gets reward when you stop. Do it slowly, reinforce heeling also means pay attention at a stationary heel position, you can slide your hand up to your face, when the dog looks at your eyes not the food mark and reward. We get lovely freaky deaky heels at dog school like this without food obsession.

I don't like constantly feeding dogs to extend the heel, thats a habit from those people who treat it as a walking exercise. If you need to keep feeding to extend a heel it means you've gone past the dogs concentration capability for that exercise.

Wobbly the reason I would say use food is so you can bring Jarrah's head up. Use something fresh and let Jarrah get the taste between your fingers licking but NOT getting a piece yet. Her head is forward and she's setting the pace, you've got Ninja skills I'll give you that lol. Just use the food to get her to understand what you want at a calm pace then reward with the toy at the end as a reward for a good job. Food is useful for positioning without wearing the dog out and fine tuning :)

I wish she wasn't sound asleep so I could try that now. XD

She normally does a really nice attention heel, except physical cues are so much more meaningful to her than verbal and normally my cue is left hand at my side, seemed appropriate when I taught it! I have made the mistake of getting her dependent on hand cues rather than verbal, which was fine for simple life stuff,but now I am teaching tonnes more stuff I am running out of hand cues fast. Definitely need to fade that old hand cue out. The new hand position doesn't mean anything to her as yet, she doesn't have a clue what I am asking for. I am moving way to fast here - I need to learn to gauge how fast to raise criteria - too slow she gets bored, too fast she doesn't have a clue what I am on about. The latter being on display here. But lucky for me she's happy to play along anyhow, knowing there's reward in it, good thing I have my awesome Ninja skills to keep up with her.

I'll put your advice into practice in the morning. A new, better start for heeling. Thanks Nekhbet. :D

I am not feeding her here, but I probably do need to go back to feeding for position, I have always been a terrible overfeeder of treats, I am learning to scale that back, you'd be horrified at the amount of jackpotting I do, which makes the treats less meaningful for known stuff.

I should film her nice heeling with normal hand cue, that does look pretty, and she actually knows what it means. She doesn't have a clue what I am asking for here at all!

I was told to start with long soft treats (like strips of frankfurter) and you slowly feed it to the dog with your right hand, teaching them that having the left hand cupping the cheek is good. she then switches to having a ball in her armpit, which she drops to reward. (I'll worry about what I'll do there later.) (this is the girl who showed me, not Denise)

Ahh Ok I will try this too! When we do this without motion, so far she understands the hand on the outside means rest your cheek in my hand, but I haven't got any duration on that yet, it's a brief touch then she's expecting a reward. XD I need to take it back a step. That's a good one for me to try.

I tried this this morning and the dogs kept trying to nose poke my left hand, which is the opposite direction to where I want their attention! :p

I have been using a high (out-of-nose-poke-range) hand target in front of their face for them to focus on, to get a nice prancy looking-up heel. It has been really handy to direct forward, back, in and out in small adjustments, and easy to fade to a hand-on-hip. I can see the 'pocket' target works on a similar principle but is there an advantage I might be missing? It's not too late in training to change if there's a secret advantage :)

Oh that's a nice idea, my problem with that is that hand up high in front of her face is a jump cue (jump and nose poke my hand), which we rather enjoy. I do get a nice prancy eye contact heel, from practicing with the clicker, except it's dependant on that left hand cue, which that I can't do if I am cupping her cheek. So I will start again there with Nekhbet's advice.

Mrs Rusty Bucket - The pocket is for teaching pivots (alternative to teaching on a box/phonebook I guess), and also once they start following your hand properly you can move them in if they're going to wide or out if they're crowding, and helps with crabbing, forging etc all stuff that I have going on in a big way in a normal heel. I think Denise's obedience work is specifically for AKC obedience in the US, her dog Lyra does IPO, so I imagine her other dogs do too - perhaps this translates particularly well for those styles of obedience? I am not sure how any of that translates to other obedience trials, but I am looking more towards Rally-o at this point coz I an a n00b, so not overly worried about the finer points.

[ness]

AKC is very similar to ANKC Wobbly - Denise's methods work well for ANKC .

[huski]

I don't reward in position and I dont use food with my toy driven dog really aside from teaching some basic back end awareness in the beginning and sometimes for shaping new things, I think one of the best thing about dogs is there are so many different ways we can train them. I love training heelwork it's one of my favourite exercises and there are so many different styles and ways to train it.

Edited June 17, 2013 by huski

[ness]

The food in the hand initially is about getting the head position. Once the dog offers the head position with the food then you can quickly fade the food and reward the hand target with a toy if thats your dogs preference. Given Denise's suggestions were posted an an offer to fix crabbing/forging the toy rewards were mostly thrown behind the dog and away from the dog so they were having to turn away from the handler. At least this was the discussion that was posted on the list at the time the videos were posted.

[Weasels]

I have been using a high (out-of-nose-poke-range) hand target in front of their face for them to focus on, to get a nice prancy looking-up heel. It has been really handy to direct forward, back, in and out in small adjustments, and easy to fade to a hand-on-hip. I can see the 'pocket' target works on a similar principle but is there an advantage I might be missing? It's not too late in training to change if there's a secret advantage :)

Oh that's a nice idea, my problem with that is that hand up high in front of her face is a jump cue (jump and nose poke my hand), which we rather enjoy.

I found they could understand the context, when I first started Chess tried to jump up and touch the hand so I just ignored it until she fell into heel. She soon learned that when I put the hand out, standing at side = heel, standing at front = jump up. I also angle my palm down when doing the heel and hold it parallel to the ground for an "up". Not saying it's a better way, just that dogs are aces at working with details like that which does make it a different cue :)

Edited June 17, 2013 by TheLBD