Guest Tess32 Posted April 18, 2005 Share Posted April 18, 2005 Anyone have any tips on how to get it? Reilly is not a dog that naturally offers eye contact so I'm really having to work on this. I can get up to 10 seconds sometimes but he won't seem to hold it. Nat Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grotty_rotty Posted April 18, 2005 Share Posted April 18, 2005 Reilly, I found in the beginning with my Rotty was to use food and draw it to my face whilst saying' watch', I 've since stopped with food and he is great at the eye contact now! Good luck... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anna H Posted April 18, 2005 Share Posted April 18, 2005 Depending on your coordination, you can use bits of cheese or hotdogs and issue rewards from your mouth. Train your dog that a missed catch is a missed treat, he wont take he's off you after a while of this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rachiie Posted April 18, 2005 Share Posted April 18, 2005 Tess32, I read on another thread a while ago that one person puts the treats in her mouth and gets the dog to take them from her mouth. I'm sorry, i don't remember what the thread was or who the person was, i just remember that she said it grossed her husband out! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kavik Posted April 18, 2005 Share Posted April 18, 2005 That was me!! Yep, treats in mouth work really well! You may want to start by kneeling, and allow the dog to take them from your mouth, then progress to standing but bend at the knees to give the reward. It takes a lot of practice to drop it into their mouth - I still find it easier to bend down and give the treat! You have to not mind lots of doggy kisses! And find a treat you like the taste of too. You can also use a clicker for this if you want. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sidoney Posted April 18, 2005 Share Posted April 18, 2005 I clicker train for eye contact initially. And work in eye contact to day to day life. But since I do agility and not obedience, I don't particularly want extended eye contact - one needs to have good "obstacle focus" as well as "handler focus". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Tess32 Posted April 18, 2005 Share Posted April 18, 2005 Thank you! Ok I tried the treat in the mouth thing and he looked at me like I was insane before he tried and failed to actually extract the food out of my mouth..hehe. And I used smackos...blurgh! However I went back to doing what I'd done months ago - (hold the treat away and ask for 'watch') and finally, we broke the 10 second barrier tonight. I think how I was doing it before was just confusing him - he wasn't sure what he was actually doing. Hopefully now we can keep moving forward. Nat Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sidoney Posted April 18, 2005 Share Posted April 18, 2005 Are you clicking for it? To get the behaviour stronger, I do things like move the hand with the treat around while expecting eye contact, and so on. Building it up to higher levels of distraction. That helps to keep the focus which also helps with duration (remembering of course to change one criterion at a time). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Tess32 Posted April 18, 2005 Share Posted April 18, 2005 Yep, I was clicking for gradual seconds....5, then 6 etc, but he would hit about 7/8 and then offer something else instead. I may have clicked for glances too long in the beginning so that could have been a problem. Nat Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sidoney Posted April 18, 2005 Share Posted April 18, 2005 (edited) Yes, you have to keep moving the criteria or you can get stuck, you are right. Have you been "bouncing" the times around, instead of simply raising the length of time? I assume you would have been, that's pretty standard. Edited April 18, 2005 by sidoney Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mel774 Posted April 18, 2005 Share Posted April 18, 2005 And I used smackos...blurgh! hehehehehe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Tess32 Posted April 18, 2005 Share Posted April 18, 2005 Yes, you have to keep moving the criteria or you can get stuck, you are right.Have you been "bouncing" the times around, instead of simply raising the length of time? I assume you would have been, that's pretty standard. Yep. I'll see tomorrow if I can get to the elusive 12 seconds. Nat Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Purple Julie Posted April 18, 2005 Share Posted April 18, 2005 What the others have suggested about having the food in your mouth, plus, then graduate to having it in your hand near your face. Someone told me that you could have a treat in each hand, holding them up near your head, and the dog will look from side to side and eventually settle in the middle. That may be only for training the command. Reilly knows the command and you just want to extend the time. Sounds like what you are doing is fine. I haven't actually timed Jyra's focus, so I don't know what it's like. But I think this is pretty good obedience - when I feed her, she goes into a drop, I put the food bowl down, and she stares straight at me, waiting for me to release her. Excellent focus there. How exciting are the Schmacko's for Reilly? When Jyra was a puppy she wasn't really interested in them. I found the dried liver bits were more effective, and then discovered she liked cheese better and then discovered that she likes Nature's Gift dog treats even better. I did this by putting Jyra in a sit-stay, letting her sniff two different food treats, putting them on the ground a few metres away, watching which one she looked at most, releasing her and seeing which one she went to first. I repeated that, changing the side that each treat was on, and she consistently went to the same one first. Thus I decided that was her favourite. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Tess32 Posted April 18, 2005 Share Posted April 18, 2005 I want to get up to 30 seconds of full eye contact so less than half way there right now. That's ok, I'm not in a hurry, I just wanted some progress! He is used to the "hold the treat away" trick and generalises it to other things (eg if I am holding a toy he will look at me, not the toy, in order to get me to throw it) but he would get to a certain time point and then stop looking and offer another behaviour. He does know "watch" means "make eye contact", I just don't think I've explained it to him well enough that he needs to hold it! Because he doesn't offer it naturally , I clicked initially for a lot of glances and so I probably took too long to raise the criteria. My fault. I've found eye contact is going better with lower value treats. When I have given him chicken (his fave) he gets too impatient and loses focus. I find chicken is better for behaviours where he needs to think and move around. He enjoys the shmackos, equal value to the natures gift liver/chicken/beef treats and cheese etc. Dried liver is about our least exciting treat....I think he only likes it cos it's crunchy *g*. This is an interesting behaviour to train really, because it's NOT coming naturally or easily. He will watch my face, but I want sustained eye contact, though I allow flickers away. But what you say about putting her in a drop stay hits on my key point in what I *think* i've discovered. He needs the tension. Eg if you just walk up to Jyra and say "watch", she may not keep the sustained eye contact because the tension of waiting for something isn't there. I was just sitting on the couch and saying "watch" (after he knew what it meant). Since last night I bought tension and a goal into it (watch ME until I give you the treat), I think he may start to understand the "sustained" contact more now. We'll see though Nat Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Purple Julie Posted April 19, 2005 Share Posted April 19, 2005 Liver bits are probably Jyra's least favourite treat, but still a treat. Just a couple of things, maybe by accepting a flickering, that is confusing Reilly, eg lack of consistency. I don't know. Another thing, one person at my obedience school once said that she taught her dog a different release command for looking away, as her dog didn't like looking at her. But a different release command than the general one. Say you tell your dog to 'sit' and your normal release command is 'free'. Okay, so the dog is in a sit, and you get his focus - 'watch'. You want to tell him that it's okay to look away, but you don't want him to break the sit, so you don't say 'free', you teach another word, such as 'away', to let him know that it is okay for him to break focus. I hope that made sense. I'm not sure about the practicalities of teaching the 'away' release, hopefully you can figure that out yourself! (I haven't taught it to Jyra myself, and I certainly don't have a 30 second focus either, although I haven't been timing it. I must start doing that and trying to increase it). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lablover Posted April 19, 2005 Share Posted April 19, 2005 Tess 32, Could I ask you why you want eye to eye contact for 30 seconds? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
m-j Posted April 19, 2005 Share Posted April 19, 2005 Hi All I'm curious, why does a dog need to maintain eye contact? I know why you should have a dogs attention but why should it look at the eyes or face? cheers M-J Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pgm Posted April 19, 2005 Share Posted April 19, 2005 I don't know in general, but I do know that in obedience trialling having the dog look up to the handler the whole time whilst heeling is supposed to be good thing. The requirement is not actually in the rules, but many trainers teach it because they think it looks better and will get you better scores. Don't know whether that's true - I have my doubts... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Tess32 Posted April 19, 2005 Share Posted April 19, 2005 I'm following Sue Ailsby's training levels. I want it as the basis for other things. Nat Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kavik Posted April 19, 2005 Share Posted April 19, 2005 I want it for competition obedience. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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