Teaching A Dog Left And Right

[koalathebear]

I've been reading this method of teaching a dog left and right.

Before I embark on it - does anyone have an easier method?

As to why we want to do it, we read somewhere before that you should teach hand signals as well as voice commands in case the dog goes deaf one day. Thus, Elbie's been taught hand signals as well as voice cues for all of his tricks/commands.

Then yesterday I read that it's good to teach your dog left and right in case it goes blind. So we're preparing for all contingencies! Thanks very much in advance.

[Staranais]

That's Aidan who posts here I think, maybe he will comment on that method for you.

I've been starting to teach L & R by teaching my girl to spin left (anticlockwise) & spin right (clockwise) around things. This is how many stock dogs learn left & right, according to a couple of farmers I talked to once. Will let you know how it goes, so far she can only do left, right has her completely befuddled.

[beagie]

I've been reading this method of teaching a dog left and right.

Before I embark on it - does anyone have an easier method?

As to why we want to do it, we read somewhere before that you should teach hand signals as well as voice commands in case the dog goes deaf one day. Thus, Elbie's been taught hand signals as well as voice cues for all of his tricks/commands.

Then yesterday I read that it's good to teach your dog left and right in case it goes blind. So we're preparing for all contingencies! Thanks very much in advance.

I am sort of guessing here, however when teaching left and right for Agility, I loaded both hands with treats, walking forward you keep turning into the dog

so it ends up on your right then on your left, the distance is increased as the dog gets used to being on your right, that explanation is probably as

clear as mud. You will as it gets used to being on the right of course name it. Beagie

[koalathebear]

I've been starting to teach L & R by teaching my girl to spin left (anticlockwise) & spin right (clockwise) around things. This is how many stock dogs learn left & right, according to a couple of farmers I talked to once. Will let you know how it goes, so far she can only do left, right has her completely befuddled.

Thanks. I'm open to trying the clicker method but wanted to consider other options, too. Sometimes with Elbie, a combination of methods works - he's also good at learning by imitation so I would prefer the simplest method

Now that you mention it, when we took Elbie to herding the trainer used the phrases: "come by" and "away" to give 'clockwise' and 'counter clockwise' directions to his dogs and they were amazingly responsive. Also, Elbie only spins and rolls one way so I should probably teach him both ways

ETA: I am so sorry, I meant to post this in dog tricks but it ended up in general training/obedience.

Edited September 7, 2010 by koalathebear

[corvus]

Sounds like fun.

Incidentally, my old girl had severely compromised hearing and eyesight. They went at about the same time, although her eyesight started deteriorating much earlier. Sometimes there's not much you can do, sadly. I decided to teach my older dog to respond to touches. I think this will prove to be more handy in his old age, but I guess we'll see. One of the things I regretted with my old girl was that she had not been taught to respond to touch. Often it was the only way to get her attention and she would startle and cower and when she recovered had no idea what I wanted her to do. Then again, she was quite sore as well, so maybe she would have been like that anyway.

[koalathebear]

Sounds like fun.

Incidentally, my old girl had severely compromised hearing and eyesight. They went at about the same time, although her eyesight started deteriorating much earlier. Sometimes there's not much you can do, sadly. I decided to teach my older dog to respond to touches. I think this will prove to be more handy in his old age, but I guess we'll see. One of the things I regretted with my old girl was that she had not been taught to respond to touch. Often it was the only way to get her attention and she would startle and cower and when she recovered had no idea what I wanted her to do. Then again, she was quite sore as well, so maybe she would have been like that anyway.

Heh heh. Training with Elbie is always fun. He's just learned how to

and he gets very excited about it - staring at us expectantly after he dunks the object. Problem is we haven't been able to teach him to distinguish between 'ball' and 'rope' yet and the ball always holds him mesmerised.

Sorry to hear about your previous dog ... what a shame she lost both facilities at the same time :'( Elbie's being taught 'touch' (nose) and 'paw' (uses his paw). The problem is sometimes he cheats and pounces and puts both paw and nose on the object at the same time

ETA: Problem with 'paw' is that I'm Australian and my husband is Canadian. I say 'paw' to rhyme with 'pore' and he says 'paw' the American way ... rhymes a bit with aaaaaaw or 'pa' - definitely doesn't rhyme with 'ore'. Thus, he objects to my use of the word 'paw'

Edited September 7, 2010 by koalathebear

[Aidan]

Hi ktb, there are a lot of different ways to teach this but the method in the article is a method I used with a class once, not so much to teach left and right but to teach a bunch of other foundation skills. It worked well and we knocked it over in very few sessions.

The 300 Peck method for increasing distance or duration appears a little daunting at first, but once you learn it you will find yourself using it to add distance or duration to all sorts of things. So it's a very handy method, and actually very simple. Same with targeting, very simple, but very useful.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

[paddles]

I don't think this will help you much, but I'll post it anyway. I do sled dog racing, and to teach the dogs to turn, I am walking them at heal, with lots of sharp rightangle turns, calling the turn each time (we use Haw and Gee) haw is left) eventually the dog begins to anticipate the turn when you call it, you praise and treat like mad when they do.

[Erny]

I taught my previous girl (Kal - bhcs) left and right ("labor" and "liberal" respectively) by simply building word association as we turned ordinary street (or other) corners along our on-lead walks. This assisted for when we ventured into bike riding and I did find that it was very helpful. But she was such a compliant-ready-happy girl and not the least bit head-strong by comparison to what I have now, so it was easy.

Edited September 7, 2010 by Erny

[koalathebear]

I taught my previous girl (Kal - bhcs) left and right ("labor" and "liberal" respectively) by simply building word association as we turned ordinary street (or other) corners along our on-lead walks. This assisted for when we ventured into bike riding and I did find that it was very helpful. But she was such a compliant-ready-happy girl and not the least bit head-strong by comparison to what I have now, so it was easy.

That's so cool!!

I've set up two items (err paper towel rolls that sometimes double as obstacle course on the left and the right and Elbie is running and touching his nose to one or the other depending on whether I say left or right. The problem is that he cheats and follows my eye movement sometimes rather than listening to me...

[Aidan3]

I've set up two items (err paper towel rolls that sometimes double as obstacle course on the left and the right and Elbie is running and touching his nose to one or the other depending on whether I say left or right. The problem is that he cheats and follows my eye movement sometimes rather than listening to me...

See? It's not so hard. There will be lots of contextual cues, hence the suggestion to start with really obvious hand signal (which you can keep using for other things) and add the verbal cue until the verbal cue predicts the response on it's own.

[corvus]

I have an unrelated question, ktb. When he gets them mixed up, does he always go to the same side? I've been teaching my boys a similar discrimination task where position is not supposed to be a cue. Both dogs prefer one side over the other. Kivi is left-pawed and tends to pick the object on the left and Erik is right-pawed and tends to gravitate to the object on the right.

[koalathebear]

See? It's not so hard. There will be lots of contextual cues, hence the suggestion to start with really obvious hand signal (which you can keep using for other things) and add the verbal cue until the verbal cue predicts the response on it's own.

Heh, we'll see how we go! When I was looking for something 'easier', it was no offence to your method - it's just that I'm a novice dog owner so need easy peasy guides to training. The dog is smart. Me? Not so much. He is 100% spot on with pointing and even jerking my head - but 'right' and 'left' aren't quite there yet. I do like the idea of 'labor' and 'liberal' though.

I have an unrelated question, ktb. When he gets them mixed up, does he always go to the same side? I've been teaching my boys a similar discrimination task where position is not supposed to be a cue. Both dogs prefer one side over the other. Kivi is left-pawed and tends to pick the object on the left and Erik is right-pawed and tends to gravitate to the object on the right.

Interesting question. I'm going to have to observe more closely - I had assumed that he was just gravitating towards whatever the last direction was but I hadn't really focussed on that because the main problem I am having right now is that he keeps trying to pre-empt me so he'll dash left or right before I even give the cue. ;) Worse - he dashes to both left and right and nudges them with his nose in the vain hope that that will be acceptable. :p

[Aidan3]

He is 100% spot on with pointing and even jerking my head - but 'right' and 'left' aren't quite there yet. <snip> ...the main problem I am having right now is that he keeps trying to pre-empt me so he'll dash left or right before I even give the cue.

That's actually not so hard to fix, you just extinguish the pre-emptive responses by not reinforcing them. It might take a few sessions but you'll get there. If he is 100% spot-on with pointing, jerking your head etc just make sure you give the verbal cue before you do any of that. Pretty soon he will start to anticipate based on the verbal cue, problem solved.

[koalathebear]

That's actually not so hard to fix, you just extinguish the pre-emptive responses by not reinforcing them. It might take a few sessions but you'll get there. If he is 100% spot-on with pointing, jerking your head etc just make sure you give the verbal cue before you do any of that. Pretty soon he will start to anticipate based on the verbal cue, problem solved.

Thanks, that's very helpful.

is where he's at right now. I need to find targets that don't fall over so easily. I clicked too late because I find it hard to hold the camera and click at the same time. I'll keep working with him tomorrow - for a bit there, he was doing it right on purely voice cues but then he relapsed. Oh well, it's his first time trying it.

[Aidan]

Oh wow, that's incredible progress in one day! Well done :-) Plus he is backing up to do it, which is another layer of difficulty.

Obviously you're doing something right and he's picking it up without any trouble, but if I had to be picky I would tell you to click much sooner, as soon as he touches the target. It doesn't seem to have impeded his learning, but there will come a time when you will be glad you practised clicking at the right moment for the right criterion.

The next step would be to have him go out away from you to the target which is quite a different behaviour. Then you will be able to start adding distance to your targets. Given that you will only be able to go so far with paper towel rolls now is probably a good time to change the target items too.

One suggestion is to use a towel and have him go to the towel and down or sit on top of it. There are two reasons I suggest a towel. The first is that by teaching him to down or sit on the towel, you have the beginnings of a "drop on recall", an emergency "down", or even a "stop" for herding or retrieving. Also, a towel is easy to fade out. You begin by folding it in half, then thirds etc until you're just using a scrap of fabric from the rag bag. Then it disappears, so the dog is no longer looking for the target but listening to your cues instead.

Cute dog!

[Staranais]

I have an unrelated question, ktb. When he gets them mixed up, does he always go to the same side? I've been teaching my boys a similar discrimination task where position is not supposed to be a cue. Both dogs prefer one side over the other. Kivi is left-pawed and tends to pick the object on the left and Erik is right-pawed and tends to gravitate to the object on the right.

Is it partly just which side you taught first, though?

I taught left spin first to my girl, she can do that on voice command alone. But the first few times I lured her for a right spin, she was so awkward she nearly fell over backwards. She was so used to doing it the one way that she couldn't get her head (or body) around the idea of spinning the other way round.

[JulesP]

Both my border girls prefer to go one way when herding. It is fairly common I think.

Good job koalathebear

[corvus]

Is it partly just which side you taught first, though?

Well, it's interesting, because that's what I thought. And so I didn't pay much attention to which side I put the "correct" choice on when I started with Kivi, instead alternating them. But a few trials into the session noticed that he was going left every time and I put the correct choice on the right several times in a row and he still tended to go left. When he went right he would tend to go back to left the next one, like a rubber band.

So when I taught Erik I knew he was right-pawed so I deliberately put the correct choice on his left several times in a row. He still went right, and as the session progressed he continued to go right probably about 80% of the time. When he went left it was only after he'd stopped to think about it.

[Staranais]

Is it partly just which side you taught first, though?

Well, it's interesting, because that's what I thought. And so I didn't pay much attention to which side I put the "correct" choice on when I started with Kivi, instead alternating them. But a few trials into the session noticed that he was going left every time and I put the correct choice on the right several times in a row and he still tended to go left. When he went right he would tend to go back to left the next one, like a rubber band.

So when I taught Erik I knew he was right-pawed so I deliberately put the correct choice on his left several times in a row. He still went right, and as the session progressed he continued to go right probably about 80% of the time. When he went left it was only after he'd stopped to think about it.

Interesting! So do you think he has a "preferred" side that he defaults to when he's not sure which way to go?

If I'd thought it through, I would have tried to work out my girl's least preferred side & taught that first so it had the stronger reinforcement history, as I think it would be easier to teach the naturally preferred side second.