Love Those Training Epiphanies

[corvus]

I've been trying to teach Erik to weave backwards through my legs. He does forwards well, and he can do forwards while I walk backwards, but backwards while I walk backwards has eluded us. I started following a method someone on YouTube used that started with teaching the dog to walk backwards in a semi-circle around you. Erik nailed that, but then I had a dog who would scoot back through my legs and right around until he was almost in front of me again. I was slowly pegging it back by with rewards and interrupting his circle, but was still having trouble setting him up so I could send him backwards through my legs the other way. Then a couple of days ago I saw another video of training the backwards weave that made a lot more intuitive sense to me. This afternoon I was jamming with E on the beach and it dawned on me as a result of the video that I could improve our success rate by moving my legs while I'm rewarding Erik for the first step to set myself up rather than him so he could go back through them again. Seems obvious, but I hadn't thought of it. In just a few reps Erik was 'seeking' the gap between my legs with his rear end in both directions and changing directions much more quickly and tightening up his movements to stay closer to my legs all on his own. Which just goes to show, I think, that when you get it right it all kind of falls into place. I had several different criteria go forwards in a big leap at once. That's not meant to happen in Behaviorism. I love that moment when there's a connection and we seem to understand each other much better all of a sudden. I love that it's just good communication, yet not always obvious. I love trick training because I have to figure out how to get behaviours that aren't particularly natural.

I love training epiphanies. What training epiphanies have you had?

[Mrs Rusty Bucket]

I think managing doggy frustration is helping my training technique and my dog's ability to learn.

So using ideas passed on by Susan Garrett, teaching my dog to be persistant when she's frustrated, and managing her frustration so she doesn't give up and shut down or bark her head off, is giving us incremental training improvements where before we were just stuck.

General co-ordination and improved precision of reward delivery is helping too. Remembering to say "yes", having the treat or tug ready helps too.

[megan_]

Sorry to go OT , but what's the trick to persistance Mrs RB? My boy throws a tanty if he doesn't get things quickly.

Not really an epiphany - more a slow transition - but when my little ex-puppy farm breeding girl finally learnt how to learn I was one proud muma.

[Mrs Rusty Bucket]

Might start a new thread for that one... when I find the right bit of SG presentation.

PS here it tis - eventually.

http://www.dolforums.com.au/topic/228391-frustration-theory/

Edited October 18, 2011 by Mrs Rusty Bucket