Obedience Troubleshooting

[caffy]

Ok I found a way to upload videos on the computer I'm using, so here's a short one of Daisy from this afternoon:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nen2CNq4ZMw

You can see how she nudges the dumbell with her nose in one shot, once I have her really reliably picking it up I'll work on only rewarding the times she picks it up without nudging it. She's probably not holding it far enough back in her mouth either (???) - lots to work on but considering yesterday was her first ever exposure to doing anything with the dumbell, I'm really pleased with how she's going.

Very nice Huski.

How does she go if you don't physically point to the dumbell?

[ness]

Hmm caffy when I last tried food bowls - Kenz raced out to the bowl, got there, pounced on the bowl and tried returning with that . So your advice in response to this would be............

Interesting on the lumping bit - I should relay this and the consequence is I am going to go and do more shaping on DB pick ups. I had Kenz out in the yard tonight and thought we would do some training. I started off with having her find her wooden article in amongst the flower pots I had down. She was giving me a very lovely retrieve with a wonderful present.

I thought well its been a while since we have done much DB work so I raced inside grabbed the DB and took it back out. Set her up, threw the DB she did a lovely retrieve and presented fine. Second time produced a similar response however this time, not sure it it was anticipation of the reward or the fact I might have delayed the taking of it marginally more then I did the first time but the DB ended up on the ground. Suffice to say Kenzie had no idea about picking it up when it was at my feet.

So we then had a quick reminder session about picking the thing up and handing it to me and making sure it ends up in my safe (or not so safe ) hands.

Will definitely be putting a session of shaping her to pick it up into my training plan for the next little while. Nothing to fault with the rest of it but just feel that little bit of the puzzle is missing and I suspect it will come back to bite when I least want it to if I don't address it now.

[ness]

Hmmmm Ptolomy or caffy probably have better ideas then me - I would suggest maybe luring a few but only a small handful to show her what you want. Not that I can speak though as Ness's RAT are pretty average and not for want of trying to fix them.

[Ptolomy]

Are you working it through in slow pace. At what point does she start to lag. Maybe you need to break it down further so 1/4 turn at a time?

Have you done much right about turn work on the spot and if so does she still lag then?

Done heaps of part turns in the kitchen just as part of our learning to 1) truely understand finding heel position and 2) enjoy it given I nearly ruined her with boredom from doing 2 years of classes. So as part of that we've done left turns right turns backwards forwards etc etc and she does them fine.

We have done some on the spot work and yes she is lagging/not turning as tightly - most of it's been in the kitchen on board floors but I did some on grass this arvo and they were still ordinary. Maybe she's got used to turning badly on the boards due to footing and it's carrying to outside?

Try turning your head in the direction you are turning just prior to making the turn - it indicates to the dog that you are about to change direction.

I can hear you saying footwork, food, clicker, head turn ARGH - but it does work!

[Ptolomy]

Hmm caffy when I last tried food bowls - Kenz raced out to the bowl, got there, pounced on the bowl and tried returning with that . So your advice in response to this would be............

Interesting on the lumping bit - I should relay this and the consequence is I am going to go and do more shaping on DB pick ups. I had Kenz out in the yard tonight and thought we would do some training. I started off with having her find her wooden article in amongst the flower pots I had down. She was giving me a very lovely retrieve with a wonderful present.

I thought well its been a while since we have done much DB work so I raced inside grabbed the DB and took it back out. Set her up, threw the DB she did a lovely retrieve and presented fine. Second time produced a similar response however this time, not sure it it was anticipation of the reward or the fact I might have delayed the taking of it marginally more then I did the first time but the DB ended up on the ground. Suffice to say Kenzie had no idea about picking it up when it was at my feet.

So we then had a quick reminder session about picking the thing up and handing it to me and making sure it ends up in my safe (or not so safe ) hands.

Will definitely be putting a session of shaping her to pick it up into my training plan for the next little while. Nothing to fault with the rest of it but just feel that little bit of the puzzle is missing and I suspect it will come back to bite when I least want it to if I don't address it now.

Talking of lumping - can she sit in front - you hand her the dumbbell and her hold it until you give your release word????

Ducking for cover......

[ness]

She can actually . We didn't lump that bit hahahaha. I could even find video to prove it - although I think she was only 16 weeks at the time .

And before you ask yes she can do it with dumbbells, metal articles, leather articles, wood articles, seekback articles, gloves, pencils, pens, bits of paper, toys (well mostly) .

Although interesting tonight I was using my small wooden DB (Ness was never keen on it because the clearance off the ground is less), Kenz has never been great with the heavy plastic one I use for Ness although I admit I haven't done a DB session using it for a while. Would be interesting to see if her retrieve was as nice as todays was. About the only thing I could fault is I would like a faster turn but as an exercise and what would be deductable from a points perspective there was little if anything (well other than I really do need to get off my backside and teach her a finish as thats the only thing we are missing ).

Edited January 2, 2010 by ness

[J...]

Are you working it through in slow pace. At what point does she start to lag. Maybe you need to break it down further so 1/4 turn at a time?

Have you done much right about turn work on the spot and if so does she still lag then?

Done heaps of part turns in the kitchen just as part of our learning to 1) truely understand finding heel position and 2) enjoy it given I nearly ruined her with boredom from doing 2 years of classes. So as part of that we've done left turns right turns backwards forwards etc etc and she does them fine.

We have done some on the spot work and yes she is lagging/not turning as tightly - most of it's been in the kitchen on board floors but I did some on grass this arvo and they were still ordinary. Maybe she's got used to turning badly on the boards due to footing and it's carrying to outside?

Try turning your head in the direction you are turning just prior to making the turn - it indicates to the dog that you are about to change direction.

I can hear you saying footwork, food, clicker, head turn ARGH - but it does work!

Will add it to this week's training plan.... Thank you!

[bedazzledx2]

Another thing to try is double about turns and click and throw the treat/toy.

Are you working it through in slow pace. At what point does she start to lag. Maybe you need to break it down further so 1/4 turn at a time?

Have you done much right about turn work on the spot and if so does she still lag then?

Done heaps of part turns in the kitchen just as part of our learning to 1) truely understand finding heel position and 2) enjoy it given I nearly ruined her with boredom from doing 2 years of classes. So as part of that we've done left turns right turns backwards forwards etc etc and she does them fine.

We have done some on the spot work and yes she is lagging/not turning as tightly - most of it's been in the kitchen on board floors but I did some on grass this arvo and they were still ordinary. Maybe she's got used to turning badly on the boards due to footing and it's carrying to outside?

Try turning your head in the direction you are turning just prior to making the turn - it indicates to the dog that you are about to change direction.

I can hear you saying footwork, food, clicker, head turn ARGH - but it does work!

Will add it to this week's training plan.... Thank you!

[huski]

Ok I found a way to upload videos on the computer I'm using, so here's a short one of Daisy from this afternoon:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nen2CNq4ZMw

You can see how she nudges the dumbell with her nose in one shot, once I have her really reliably picking it up I'll work on only rewarding the times she picks it up without nudging it. She's probably not holding it far enough back in her mouth either (???) - lots to work on but considering yesterday was her first ever exposure to doing anything with the dumbell, I'm really pleased with how she's going.

Very nice Huski.

How does she go if you don't physically point to the dumbell?

Thanks I tried this tonight - if I show it to her and put it on the ground without pointing to it she'll pick it up. She was a bit slower to start with than if I pointed to it, but after a couple of gos she will pick it up as soon as I show it to her and put it on the ground. The pointing is my bad habit

[Seita]

Has any body got any thoughts in teaching gloves to retrieve driven dogs rather than food drive dogs. I just took 2 gloves out to try and the park with Kenzie and she is dead on with her marking and she picked it up like she had been doing it her entire life. I have done lots of marking with her ball and setting her up and having her take direction. She was even doing some very lovely presents. I haven't added the about turn into it as we need to work on that element separately. I was just having her take direction. I worry about skipping through the basics in case it comes back to bite me. I know what I did with Ness but she is purely food driven and couldn't care less about the actual retrieve. So if you didn't reward with food for an incorrect glove she realized she had made a mistake.

The one thing that has been drummed into me for so long is that you never ever make the retrieve the reward, the dogs love it and it's a self rewarding behaviour but you need something better to reward her with. I have never trained any retrieve with food bowls, and I've trained retrieves with both food and toy motivated dogs. It's probably best to reward her retrieve with a game of tug or a play with a favourite toy (or food) to reinforce what you want her to do.

[caffy]

The one thing that has been drummed into me for so long is that you never ever make the retrieve the reward, the dogs love it and it's a self rewarding behaviour but you need something better to reward her with.

Whoops, I'm afraid I do

The food pot teaches the dog to mark and take a straight line and, in the early stages, I'll throw food or a toy for their correct choice of taking the correct line.

It's interesting how there are so many ways of teaching an exercise.

[huski]

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

[Rivsky]

Huski food bowls are when you set out a bowl (or bowls) and put some food in one bowl, line the dog up with that one and release it to the bowl once it's locked in on it.

Once you've built up to the three bowls it ends up looking like the UD gloves exercise with bowls instead of gloves.

Hope that makes sense!!

[huski]

Huski food bowls are when you set out a bowl (or bowls) and put some food in one bowl, line the dog up with that one and release it to the bowl once it's locked in on it.

Once you've built up to the three bowls it ends up looking like the UD gloves exercise with bowls instead of gloves.

Hope that makes sense!!

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

Edited January 3, 2010 by huski

[RubyStar]

Take it from me.....I can hear Caffy saying to me months ago ......I need to go back to using food bowls....I need to go back to using food bowls.

When did I remember this - when Beans was sitting on a pass as we got to gloves, I about turned, gave her direction to glove 1, sent her and she started off towards glove 1 and then deviated to glove 2 ....I need to go back to using food bowls and not lump! BUGGER!

Oh ye of little faith

I have taught directed retrieve to my non retriever using food bowls. He would prefer toys and tuggies but I found the use of food as a more easier way for learning to occur. You can throw toys for a faster, driven return and present.

Can anyone please elaborate on what you mean by training gloves with food bowls? Do you have food bowls instead of the gloves to direct them to? Are they open/closed? Am I WAY off the mark here?

Edit: I can now see Rivsky explained it

Edited January 3, 2010 by RubyStar

[Staff'n'Toller]

I have the exercise if it's allowable to crosspost it here. Ness?....Ptolomy?...

Edited January 3, 2010 by Staff'n'Toller

[Ptolomy]

I have the exercise if it's allowable to crosspost it here. Ness?....Ptolomy?...

Where did you get the cheat sheet from Staff n Toller?

[ZAUBISTAR]

Hi all,

Has anyone else had the problem of 'out of site stays' = 'mum's hidden something I need to find'?

I've been working our way up to open and all is going reasonably well except this:

He'll do the stay fine, any distance, any time, in sight, out of sight, but the other day when we tried it at the park I gave him the release command and he's started to 'track' out where I was standing and starts looking for an article. Now that I'm aware of the potential problem I've been very careful on my release command but I want to show him how good he is for doing the stay (just don't bugga off on me!).

Any thoughts on what NOT to do?

Things I think are the triggers:

We've always played 'hide and seek' in the house (for food and toys) lights on and off;

I've recently started tracking work (I have held this off for the last few weeks after he did this);

He LOVES the dumbbell, I'm been working him with the dumbbell in site (as it would be on a table in a trial situation)

We usually do dumbbell last, after reading previous posts I'm wondering if dumbbell = too much of a reward and not work

Any other ideas? Please

[bedazzledx2]

Easy....treat in position, click the lead on and then release. Now you are in control!

Hi all,

Has anyone else had the problem of 'out of site stays' = 'mum's hidden something I need to find'?

I've been working our way up to open and all is going reasonably well except this:

He'll do the stay fine, any distance, any time, in sight, out of sight, but the other day when we tried it at the park I gave him the release command and he's started to 'track' out where I was standing and starts looking for an article. Now that I'm aware of the potential problem I've been very careful on my release command but I want to show him how good he is for doing the stay (just don't bugga off on me!).

Any thoughts on what NOT to do?

Things I think are the triggers:

We've always played 'hide and seek' in the house (for food and toys) lights on and off;

I've recently started tracking work (I have held this off for the last few weeks after he did this);

He LOVES the dumbbell, I'm been working him with the dumbbell in site (as it would be on a table in a trial situation)

We usually do dumbbell last, after reading previous posts I'm wondering if dumbbell = too much of a reward and not work

Any other ideas? Please

[ZAUBISTAR]

Easy....treat in position, click the lead on and then release. Now you are in control!

Ah right, back to basics then....good point

I'll give it a go. A few solid repetitions should prevent it from occurring again, let alone in the ring

Thanks