Honey and some other DWB have gotten us excited about training again so this is our first Tricky T-Day post! I ordered a new treat bag and it happened to arrive today. I have others that clip on and close with a drawstring but this one is more convenient because it has a strap and can be opened with one hand and stays open when you want it to and snaps shut and stays closed with one hand. So far we like it! Although he was generally well behaved when I adopted him at age 5 (and he has a Petsmart training class diploma from his puppyhood) he only knew 'sit' as far as I could tell. So the first thing (after teaching him his new name) was 'watch me' and then 'down'. He now also knows 'speak', 'quiet', 'go to your bed', 'go get your collar' and a few silly things like 'put your beak down' and 'who do you love' (he comes up and gives kisses when you say that). I have taught all of this in a somewhat sloppy clicker training method so some of them are sort of sloppy but we are bringing the clicker out of storage to try to work on that.The video shows a lot of what he knows so far so I thought I would post that for our intro!
Note that I can not take credit for training 'shake paws' I tried to start to teach him that by tickling his paw to make him lift it but he kept lying down so I gave up. Then the other day a friend asked Moose to shake paws and he just did it... on command! I guess I had never tried just asking him BOL! I wonder what else he secretly knows from his past life?!
He is also trained to ring a bell when he wants to go outside which I believe I have posted about before but maybe for next week's post I will show how we did it. It is one of my favorites!
This week Honey showed how her mom uses free shaping and posted some entertaining and informative videos on the topic. I have used some shaping type methods (i.e. for 'put your beak down') and they are slow at first but Moose will make dramatic leaps with some patience so it is very rewarding. I wanted him to carry a trick or treat basket one year and started that behavior with shaping though the videos in the post show the later part of the process where I had already added the command, but I started by clicking him for showing any interest in the basket and ended up with him picking it up and carrying it (sort of!). Pretty amazing that it works!
P.S. I just learned today that Tricky T-Day is a meme that Ludo van Doggie is hosting. If you want to play, stop over there and leave a note for Ludo's mom!
Moose!!! We are so impressed with your tricks.
ReplyDelete"Put your beak down" is great.
Keep up the good work,
Zack, Sassy and Buddy
Jack has the 'Ignore me and anything I'm saying' command down really well!
ReplyDeleteIt's very impressive! :)
Brilliant intro!! So glad that you have decided to join the Tricky T-Gang - you are certainly more than qualified!!!
ReplyDeleteI think your clicker training is not sloppy at all and you must be a good trainer to have taught him such a wide range of tricks & commands! Love the "put your beak down" command - and also very impressed with the bed command, coz not many people seem to teach that one successfully - and yet it's such a useful practical command to have! :-)
If he is part-Dane, he probably didn't need to have been taught 'shake paws' in a past life - all Danes seem to come out of the womb knowing how to give their paws!! :-)
really looking forward to next week's post about ringing the bell - we've taught Honey that too and I always like to see how other people teach things!
Hsin-Yi
Oh - forgot to answer your question about shaping: I think it's really up to you what you want to achieve in any one session - you can have the aim of finding one new trick to shape...or you can just keep clicking for different things, thus keeping the range of behaviours wider. I do both with Honey at different sessions - sometimes, I keep changing what I click for - I might click a certain action twice or even 3 times but then after that, I withhold the click until she offers something new, and keep trying to get new things from her. Then at other sessions, I actually focus on trying to pull one new trick out of all the behaviours. Sometimes, with a new object (like the small metal bucket in our video), I have no idea what she might do with it so I sort of have to just start and see where it leads me - in that case, she only offered me the one behaviour (sticking her nose into it) and didn't seem to try other stuff so I just kept clicking for that, to get her to stick her head deeper and deeper in it...whereas with the laundry basket, she was offering me different behaviours so I would click one action a couple of times, and then move onto a new action.
ReplyDeleteIf you're worried about losing desirable behaviours along the way, then maybe start by clicking several different things - so that at least she's got rewarded for them once - with Honey, this seems to be enough for her to "remember" that action as a desirable one to offer again in future - and then maybe go back to one action that she is repeating.
I'm probably not much help with barking coz Honey is such a quiet dog and almost never barks, even when she is really excited! But it sounds like you're doing all the right things - maybe just be very careful that you're not inadvertently rewarding the barking?
Also, maybe he actually really enjoys barking and so is offering that "trick" in the hopes that it will earn the treat, especially when you're doing shaping and he's not sure what you want. Honey does this too - not with barking but with whatever newest trick she has just learnt that she really likes - for a while, it was her "look up" command (and you can see in the videos, she tries it a lot - keeps looking up at the ceiling and then at me!) - and now, it's her "shimmy" command (where she shakes her head on command) - she just keeps offering me this behaviour all the time, even when I'm trying to get something else...it can get very frustrating! :-)
So I have been doing what you're doing with barking - not rewarding her when she shakes her head by herself - only rewarding her when she does it after a command is given from me.
Oh dear, this was a very rambly answer - I hope some of it was helpful! :-)
Hsin-Yi
Moose, that is quite a variety of tricks, I must say. Did your mom say "put your beak down?" What's up with that?
ReplyDeleteI like the way your collar coordinates with the couch.
Slobbers,
Mango
love your collar moose - i have the same one and harness to match they are my work collars - i wear my mackenzie belt martingdale one at play. cool sticks - we love the put yout beak down one - silly mommas - and your energy is great love how excited you are when you are doing your tricks.
ReplyDeleteWoodrow, Sweetie & MJ
hi i´m back!!!
ReplyDeleteI´m all better now :)
Mosses you look so cool :D
Dont give up ok?
miss you a lot!
hugs and kisses from kikos world :)
Hurro Moose and Moose's person. I thought I would come by after seeing you post a comment on Honey's blog. Would you like to be added to the tricky T-day list on my blog so the others can come view your posts?
ReplyDeleteOh, as for the free shaping, for the first couple of sessions we usually just reward for everything, this gets you in a good habit of offering lots of different behaviours. After that you can start to choose the ones you want and it lead to just clicking for an action.
~lickies, Ludo
Wow Moose you are a smartie! Parker is good at ignoring me!!
ReplyDeleteHi! Well, to answer some of your questions. :p You can post on any day beginning with a T, to give more flexibility. Tibby had a tricky T-day, which I found out about just after I did Ludo's first Tricky T-day. At first it was just that I would post about his tricks or training on those specific days. Tibby used to post a trick tutorial, but sadly hasn't done so for a long time. So they were both seperate things, with the same name.
ReplyDeleteI noticed that there were some other tricksters out there and a few started coining the phrase, so I thought it would be a good idea to give us all a place to get connected so started the tricky T-day meme and made the badge. I try to keep a list of the players on my blog so we can all inspire each other. I also give a prompt (such as the free shaping for this month) and at the end of them month I choose my favourite video and they'll get a prize sent to them in the mail. :)
Here's the link to the tricky T-day posts so you can get a bit more up to date. :)
http://www.ludwigvanpup.blogspot.com/search/label/Tricky%20t%20days
~Dee, Ludo's Mum
p.s. Feel free to use the button, or make your own, if you look on the second post down on the link I gave you there's one of Honey you can use too.