Day 2 was even better than yesterday. Dragon did not cry in his crate other than some very minimal, quiet whining immediately after I crated him. All the dogs got to work more. And of course Denise gave us more fabulous info. The day felt much longer because we covered a greater variety of topics.
We started off talking about ways to make treats more interesting and being more engaging when you're using them, rather than the dreaded "pez dispenser" training. One way is to wiggle the treat right in front of the dog's nose and make him chase it around to earn it. This combines both food and prey drives, so it's building up both of them, and transferring value from the stronger one to the other. Dragon loved this game and we used it to snap him smartly into heel position.
Next we were introduced to one of Denise's signature training tricks, which is aligning the fingers of your left hand along your dog's muzzle as you feed him, creating a tactile cue to move him around in heel position. She used Dragon as a demo dog for this. They'd already done this once before when I had a private lesson with Denise. The first time he'd been shy about getting under her hand or too close to her body. This time he was still a bit nervous but allowed her to position him. Then I asked him to do the same and was even able to get him to side-step as I moved to the right. Proud mama.
Another favorite trick is what Denise calls "squish" -- teaching the dog to relax yet remain ready for work/play while lightly pressed against the human's legs, then focus on the handler when they let go and move away. Dragon likes to rub against my legs on his own terms but was unsure about my hands actually restraining him. I think that if I practice it some more, keeping the squish time very short at first, he will learn to enjoy it. Squishing avoids the grey area where the dog is unsure whether he's working or not, and keeps him ready to engage without over-working him with a long warm-up. (With a tiny dog one can also practice picking the dog up to "pause" the training session, and then put him down and get right to work.)
Denise discussed how utilizing the hunt drive and having a dog search for an object builds his interest in it. For under-confident dogs, teach them to be more pushy by hiding treats on your body or in your hand and rewarding them for moving into your space. There was a long discussion about "dominance" and how in the ideal training relationship the dominance/power levels are almost equal between dog and human, with just slightly more power to the human.
We discussed reasons that a dog may be unable to perform in a particular environment: fear, proximity of dogs/people, novelty of the environment, distractions, and the dog being overworked and tired or bored. We discussed ways to work through those issues. (After I got home I finally, for the first time, properly taught Dragon the Give Me A Break game from Control Unleashed. Took me long enough.)
We played a great game to teach our dogs to ignore distracting people, with a systematic way of increasing the criteria. I won't go into all the details of the system but I started off with calling Dragon away from his friend Cate while she held food, then calling him away while she moved the food around, then calling him away while she did that and cooed at him. Other people are a huge distraction for him since we almost always train alone, so I will definately need to remember to recruit helpers to practice this. The best part of this game is that it eventually reframes the judge in the ring as just a proofing exercise to be ignored.
Finally we discussed playing without toys, using the dog's sense of hearing (what noises and conditioned phrases get your dog's attention?), vision (dogs respond to stalking motions and to running away), and touch (tapping or pushing your dog away to take advantage of the opposition reflex). We played with our dogs one-on-one in front of everyone. Unfortunately by this time Dragon was tired and only interested in sitting on my lap and looking around. He humored me by following me as I danced around, and let me give him little pushes, but he didn't care to wrestle. It was the end of a long weekend for him.
We have plenty to work on now -- or should I say, a lot to play around with? And I'll be scheduling our next obedience lesson with Denise soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment