Drive Questions

[aussielover]

I totally get what you are saying Huski

Corvus:

If your dog already loves the chase and tug game but would prefer to work for food, I am pretty confident this would get her working for tug at least as happily. Although, she is a lab...

:laugh:

DO you honestly think anything other than food is more important to a lab? LOL

Seroiusly though, she works for a ball as well as she works for food to the point where she will sometimes reject food for the ball.

I should really utilise it more in training but I find it difficult especially in groups training situations (my aim is not good and the other dogs get excited by it as well).

I have another question-

Why do some dogs enjoy being chased?

[Vickie]

Ahhh, but remember, the obstacles are only half the equation. The ability to get your dog around the course is the other (and probably more important once your obstacles are trained) half.

Obviously the dog has to have a reward history associated with correct obstacke performance, but Personally I want more value for my dog responding to my handling cues than any piece of equipment.

I totally agree with what you are saying - BUT the handling cues should be that ingrained in the dog before it gets on equipment that it is a moot point.

Not moot for me 90% of the training, & therefore rewarding, that I do right now relates to handling, ie the dog responding to my cues. I still reward obstacle performance occasionally, but I see (in an ideal world) obstacles as finite training exercises. Handling, including my dogs response to it, is something I will always strive to improve.

[Agility Dogs]

Ahhh, but remember, the obstacles are only half the equation. The ability to get your dog around the course is the other (and probably more important once your obstacles are trained) half.

Obviously the dog has to have a reward history associated with correct obstacke performance, but Personally I want more value for my dog responding to my handling cues than any piece of equipment.

I totally agree with what you are saying - BUT the handling cues should be that ingrained in the dog before it gets on equipment that it is a moot point.

Not moot for me 90% of the training, & therefore rewarding, that I do right now relates to handling, ie the dog responding to my cues. I still reward obstacle performance occasionally, but I see (in an ideal world) obstacles as finite training exercises. Handling, including my dogs response to it, is something I will always strive to improve.

Fair call. This is why I prefer to talk about this stuff - so hard to tell the whole story in bite size pieces between work. My dogs see obstacles rarely, but we are the same - EVERY morning we train handling on the flat. I guess I didn't really think about that. That is where the time is!

[bedazzledx2]

If you intend on trialling you must build some sort of rewarding behaviour chain if you want to get duration and enthusiasm in the trial ring week in and week out. If you don't care about trialling and just want to train and not put the trained behaviours under testing situations then its fine to always reward with food or tug.

I'm talking primarily about Obedience here. The tests get harder as you go on and there are only so many 'legal' rewards you can give your dog....getting to do the next bit is a big one. As I said, its powerful if you understand how to use it.

[wuffles]

If you intend on trialling you must build some sort of rewarding behaviour chain if you want to get duration and enthusiasm in the trial ring week in and week out. If you don't care about trialling and just want to train and not put the trained behaviours under testing situations then its fine to always reward with food or tug.

I'm talking primarily about Obedience here. The tests get harder as you go on and there are only so many 'legal' rewards you can give your dog....getting to do the next bit is a big one. As I said, its powerful if you understand how to use it.

I think we are on the right direction towards this, but need some help getting there. Any tips? :D

[huski]

Bedazzled I am not a very experienced trialler but, of course, I agree building duration is important. However, I think (well I know because I know many people who do it and do it very successfully) this can be done while still keeping your dog in drive for a primary reinforcer like food or a tug.

of course there are many different ways to do things Bedazzled do you reward your dog with a food/toy at the end of every trial or does he get enough value just from working and doing the exercises?

[corvus]

What foundation work would you do with a dog to intentionally create a higher value for a dumbell retrieve (for eg) than anything you can offer? And to avoid the dog self rewarding with it? And why is this more effective or reliable than teaching the dog - do x and you'll get an awesome reward with me?

I'm confused. Are we trying to create a higher value for dumbell retrieve for the sake of argument, or do we have a dog that inherently has a higher value for dumbell retrieve than anything I can offer? What exactly have I said about effectiveness or reliability?

Backchaining?

The question wasn't whether or not you can fix the behaviour but why train it in the first place when teaching your dog to value an item like a dumbell more than anything you have to offer is something that can present a lot of issues. Why not train it in a way that means those issues won't become issues in the first place?

That's more or less what I meant. If you train it by backchaining, are you going to have any issues? You trained the end first and built on that. One would hope the base of the behaviour is nice and strong. I'm just throwing it out there, though. I have no idea.

Am I the only one who sees a problem with releasing a dog to it's ultimate reward at the start of an exercise when you still need the dog to complete numerous other steps?

I think maybe you're just looking at it from a different perspective. Why does it have to be a release and disengagement from you? Why can't it be you're the gatekeeper and you've taught the dog that this is not a disengagement, but allowed access? If you set it up right, I don't think it need be a release per se.

[skip]

Creating drive is a hurdle for me so can I just go back to the tugging idea for a sec? I am not familiar with SG'S " don't wanna don't hafta" but I think my dog is.

I trained with food rewards and my dog was too timid and worried to tug with me. He did improve and he is 8 yrs now. In my efforts lately to see what ticks his boxes I revisited the whole tug thing. My agility club is very keen that ALL dogs tug to the extent that now dogs must tug before going up classes.

He likes toys but he happily unstuffs them or fleas them at home. So I used food to shape the tug. Rewarded just a touch to the toy and then asked for more. I think the light bulb went on and he started tugging. As always a legend in the living room but not outside. He is also vocal while tugging.

If I gave him the choice like some others have mentioned I really don't think he would have ever tugged. I continued to encourage tugging with food. Our club instructor tells us never to give the dog a choice. If I offer the tug, the dog MUST interact with the tug. And this is where it got hard. It took a lot for me to offer the tug in a NFC run in a trial. I nearly fell over when he tugged before, during and after.

I built up the tugging gradually but eventually I had to offer tugging in more situations. Starting with outside, on walks , training and at trials. At the first trials he did refuse and I had to take him away and annoy him until he did tug but I was really uncomfortable getting him to tug. I really didn't get it.

Recently at training he also had a NO moment. To get him to tug I have to persist with annoying him with the tug until he gets shitty and then attacks the tug. He latches on and also gets really growly and vocal. This particular time I had an audience and it took a lot of annoying him till he tugged. Enough annoying that his growling and snapping was maybe not so pretend. But he did tug and was eventually rewarded. I was stuffed! A few minutes later I picked up another toy and he flew at it and happily went mental. ? A better toy? more open to tugging? Or simply still pissed off?

The tugging is happening more and more often. At trials at least he wakes up before his run. I was told to try tugging after his run before the food reward ( does this now! ), to use a tug toy and then change to another and to tug near open treats etc. So this is going OK. I also use a longer rope tug so that I can annoy him around his back end cause it gets him going and he doesn't accidently get my hand.

Has anyone else had to resort to this sort of "annoying" to get tugs?

If your dog is not a natural tugger how else could you get it happening? Is it as worthwhile for dogs? I do think it is worthwhile for him and me to some extent.

I think I need to find out about the TID as well!

[corvus]

I have another question-

Why do some dogs enjoy being chased?

Good question! I don't know. I have wondered, though. I have a few embryonic ideas, but nothing ready for public consumption. :p

[bedazzledx2]

He always gets rewarded with food at the end but nowadays thats for my benefit ;) What happens is the behaviour of racing to the car is rewarding and therefore so is the last exercise (and backchaining) so on and so on. I am deliberately transferring value to secondary re-enforcers. Thats a whole nuther discussion I think. :D

edit for spelling

Bedazzled I am not a very experienced trialler but, of course, I agree building duration is important. However, I think (well I know because I know many people who do it and do it very successfully) this can be done while still keeping your dog in drive for a primary reinforcer like food or a tug.

of course there are many different ways to do things Bedazzled do you reward your dog with a food/toy at the end of every trial or does he get enough value just from working and doing the exercises?

Edited September 8, 2011 by bedazzledx2

[corvus]

Has anyone else had to resort to this sort of "annoying" to get tugs?

Yes, and that's about where it all fell apart. Before then he'd pick and choose about tug, but he would do it with a lot of gusto when he did. After the pestering he started actively avoiding me whenever I whipped one out. It worked briefly, but everything came tumbling down not long after I started (under the instruction of the same club?). I spent months slowly building it up again, then tried shaping tug with food and he went forward in leaps and bounds. I couldn't believe I'd been messing around trying to coax it out of him all that time when the solution was so quick and easy and obvious.

[huski]

Skip it's hard to give you pointers without seeing you. I watched literally dozens of dogs learning to tug this weekend and it was amazing how many weren't interested at all, or would only tug on certain toys/material, or avoided the handler offering the tug who came alive and got really into it once the owner had their handling right. Tugging properly is very technical IMO!

[Kavik]

I have been told the same thing skip - if you offer the tug they MUST tug. Including annoying them until they do. And it is when he doesn't want to that I also feel uncomfortable trying to get him to tug. You are doing a great job - I saw that tugging at the other trial!

I think though that I was (as usual ) going too fast and skipping steps. Trying to get him to tug out of the yard and in the presence of other things he preferred at the same time all at once. So now I am going to break it down and work on getting him to tug in the presence of the other distracting motivators while still in the familiarity of the yard. That familiar location will also allow me to play more comfortably with him (I get self conscious about it if unsure whether he will do it) and build my confidence that he will tug. Only then will I take it on the road.

I think I will be able to do it without teaching tug for food - he does like tugging, I was just putting too much pressure on it. I think using a toy he is more likely to like outside the yard as well as in should help too.

[aussielover]

Skip and Kavik-

I don't understand how it is actually a "reward" if you have to pester the dog with a tug?

I was always told that you should give a high value reward immediately after a good performance. If you chase your dog with a tug (though my dog would prob find that hilarious ) instead of giving a piece of favourite food, then wouldn't you be diminishing their desire to work well the next time?

[aussielover]

Recently at training he also had a NO moment. To get him to tug I have to persist with annoying him with the tug until he gets shitty and then attacks the tug. He latches on and also gets really growly and vocal. This particular time I had an audience and it took a lot of annoying him till he tugged. Enough annoying that his growling and snapping was maybe not so pretend. But he did tug and was eventually rewarded. I was stuffed! A few minutes later I picked up another toy and he flew at it and happily went mental. ? A better toy? more open to tugging? Or simply still pissed off?

If your dog is not a natural tugger how else could you get it happening? Is it as worthwhile for dogs? I do think it is worthwhile for him and me to some extent.

I think I need to find out about the TID as well!

I have also experienced this. In my opinion, the residual excitement/adrenalin from the previous exterion causes them to be more keen on an item/action they aren't neccessarily normally keen on.

My dog is a keen ball chaser and if I play this with her before I tug, I usually get a much more enthusiastic tug game.

Maybe they also think along the lines "well that WAS fun after all!" I know if I am pestered to go out for a walk by my dog, I usually come back thinking that it was fun/enjoyable anyway even if I was reluctant to taker her ion the first place... clearly she has me well trained lol

I would recommend you check out TID, lots of people have achieved amazing results with it

[Kavik]

aussielover - this is what Susan Garrett calls don't wanna don't hafta. If the dog likes tug and will usually do it as a reward, but decides say this time that it would rather have the treats so won't tug but is waiting for you to give them the treat instead. What she suggests is to move the distraction further away/make it less exciting but it is important that you get them tugging in its presence, even if it is just a little tug, or they will continue to do this throughout working with you. She says best to sort these issues out early rather than have them creep up in training. She wants her dogs to take whatever reward they are offered - food or tug - and not refuse one for the other - and works on this from when they are puppies.

In my case, Kaos really likes a particular toy and will hang out for that rather than tug. So I am going to work up to getting him to tug in its presence, starting with an empty treat bag on the ground. Having talked to Vickie, it seems Steve has a similar way to work through this problem.

[Vickie]

I think I misunderstood when you explained the don't wanta don't haveta thing the other day Kavik.

Lol, I have a different thing going on

If you don't wanta, you don't haveta because I have a bunch of other dogs here who wanta!

Or the...oh you want the tennis ball more than the tug. Whoops I threw it over the fence, go stare at it all you want, I'm off to have fun with someone else.

[Kavik]

More the you want to play with the tennis ball more than the tug thing. Sounds like a similar way to deal with the same problem.

Going well here. Have decided not to play with his favourite toy since the trial and he is going well with the new one Still working on getting him to bring it back but this is improving (he is no longer trying to take off with it, and is bringing it back with some help - lead is useful lol). Have decided to get this solid before introducing distractions.

[The Spotted Devil]

I had a private agility lesson this morning and Zig pounced on an old manky tennis ball that was lying around. I was going to reward with food for the training session but switched to the tennis ball and got some amazing enthusiasm. No idea if it's right or wrong but it bloody worked

[Staranais]

If you intend on trialling you must build some sort of rewarding behaviour chain if you want to get duration and enthusiasm in the trial ring week in and week out. If you don't care about trialling and just want to train and not put the trained behaviours under testing situations then its fine to always reward with food or tug.

I'm talking primarily about Obedience here. The tests get harder as you go on and there are only so many 'legal' rewards you can give your dog....getting to do the next bit is a big one. As I said, its powerful if you understand how to use it.

I would be curious to hear how you train with this concept, Bedazzled.

Sounds like you are using in a sophisticated way what our dogs do automatically.

e.g. with my own dog (working not trialling), her ultimate drive reward is to play tug with a search subject, so everything she has learned that leads up to that event has become significantly valuable to her. I can therefore control her behaviour by not allowing her to progress to the next "step" on the chain if her behaviour is not satisfactory.

However, we do things in approximately the same order each time (off the top of my head, I would list the steps she recognises as = me getting my gear, us driving to search area, me preparing her to search, me releasing her to search, her following my directions while on a search, her finding & following scent cone or ground scent, her barking at subject. She knows that she must display appropriate behaviour at each stage in order to be permitted to go onto the next stage).

I would be interested to hear how you use this concept in trialling, as I understand obedience exercises and agility obstacles do not always occur in a predictable order and therefore cannot be purely backchained? (e.g., dog cannot think "oh good I am released from retrieve, that means I will get to do the jump and I am therefore one step closer to reward!")

Hope that question made sense, I'm a bit tired today!