In keeping with my vow to not spend excessive amounts of time on this blog, I hereby limit myself to ten minutes to write and proof this post. So there.
Max is going to fast map! I can feel it. He's nowhere near that now, of course, but I have been able to do some fairly complex cue proofing with him today and yesterday. Yesterday he could differentiate between down, sit, and touch, even though I held the target out for every command. (Stationary. I think moving would be too tempting at this point.) Today he was able to differentiate between target and focus, which is especially good because the cues are "touch" and "watch", respectively. I don't think he's got focus down completely, but the proofing tonight makes me very hopeful. He seems to be learning that 'cue' is a category of thing, and that behaviors have cues.
Sardines are dog crack. I stirred a little sardine juice into his kibble at breakfast, and he went nuts. The bits of sardine meat were like goooold.
I really am torn about reinforcers for him... he's so small, and gains weight so easily, that I can't really do training sessions with treats alone. I seem to be having good success working with kibble/treat mixes, but I wonder what the difference would be if I was only using fabulous foods. Maybe tomorrow I should try a training session with just tiny licks of fish and see if I get as much accomplished. I could definitely use some extra good stuff for crate training, which seems to require higher pay. Especially since I had to lock him up while he had to pee today due to a small family emergency.
Worked on L2 Relax today as well. Shaping him to lie on his side. He's been offering a foldback down with head down for a few days, since I reward that when he's in his crate or on a mat while I'm working. I wanted more, though, so today in two sessions I shaped him to flip his hips to the side, and now I'm working on getting him to roll over his shoulder onto his side. It's not going well, mostly because I'm a dummy. I tried luring him over to his side and rapidfire clicking him while he remained there. He offered it a few times in the morning, but not in the evening. The worst part is, I realized belatedly that when I click him for lying down, flipping his hip, head down, tail relaxed, he's actually relaxing and calming down. When I lure him, he's all tense muscles, pinned ears, and laserbeam eyes. Not what we're going for! I realized that if I click him for moving his front elbows closer together, he'll naturally sag back onto his shoulder. That's the plan for tomorrow. I am proud of how well he's learning to be shaped, yowling aside.
Of course, this work is destroying his nice neat foldback down. Once Relax is on cue, I'll go to L1 Down for a couple of days and ignore Relax. Then I'll proof them against each other. Then, someday, I'll actually start working L2 Down, which is downstay. Boy needs some duration work so he'll stop yodeling at about second 8 of Focus.
As expected, he passed L2 Target, steps 1, 2, and 3 today. I'll work on Step 4 tomorrow (I think, can't remember what I wrote in my log.)
Sneaky edit: Dog blogs are no fun without pictures! My itty bitty camcorder will come soon, and then I can post a video of me being a sloppy trainer. For now, enjoy Maxwell attempting to look noble at 17 weeks.
Max is going to fast map! I can feel it. He's nowhere near that now, of course, but I have been able to do some fairly complex cue proofing with him today and yesterday. Yesterday he could differentiate between down, sit, and touch, even though I held the target out for every command. (Stationary. I think moving would be too tempting at this point.) Today he was able to differentiate between target and focus, which is especially good because the cues are "touch" and "watch", respectively. I don't think he's got focus down completely, but the proofing tonight makes me very hopeful. He seems to be learning that 'cue' is a category of thing, and that behaviors have cues.
Sardines are dog crack. I stirred a little sardine juice into his kibble at breakfast, and he went nuts. The bits of sardine meat were like goooold.
I really am torn about reinforcers for him... he's so small, and gains weight so easily, that I can't really do training sessions with treats alone. I seem to be having good success working with kibble/treat mixes, but I wonder what the difference would be if I was only using fabulous foods. Maybe tomorrow I should try a training session with just tiny licks of fish and see if I get as much accomplished. I could definitely use some extra good stuff for crate training, which seems to require higher pay. Especially since I had to lock him up while he had to pee today due to a small family emergency.
Worked on L2 Relax today as well. Shaping him to lie on his side. He's been offering a foldback down with head down for a few days, since I reward that when he's in his crate or on a mat while I'm working. I wanted more, though, so today in two sessions I shaped him to flip his hips to the side, and now I'm working on getting him to roll over his shoulder onto his side. It's not going well, mostly because I'm a dummy. I tried luring him over to his side and rapidfire clicking him while he remained there. He offered it a few times in the morning, but not in the evening. The worst part is, I realized belatedly that when I click him for lying down, flipping his hip, head down, tail relaxed, he's actually relaxing and calming down. When I lure him, he's all tense muscles, pinned ears, and laserbeam eyes. Not what we're going for! I realized that if I click him for moving his front elbows closer together, he'll naturally sag back onto his shoulder. That's the plan for tomorrow. I am proud of how well he's learning to be shaped, yowling aside.
Of course, this work is destroying his nice neat foldback down. Once Relax is on cue, I'll go to L1 Down for a couple of days and ignore Relax. Then I'll proof them against each other. Then, someday, I'll actually start working L2 Down, which is downstay. Boy needs some duration work so he'll stop yodeling at about second 8 of Focus.
As expected, he passed L2 Target, steps 1, 2, and 3 today. I'll work on Step 4 tomorrow (I think, can't remember what I wrote in my log.)
Sneaky edit: Dog blogs are no fun without pictures! My itty bitty camcorder will come soon, and then I can post a video of me being a sloppy trainer. For now, enjoy Maxwell attempting to look noble at 17 weeks.
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