Michele Pouliot seminar: Achieving Maximum Performance with your Dog

Last weekend we had a working spot in another seminar. Michele Pouliot is a successful freestyle competitor and instructor, and her specialty is using platforms to jump-start behaviors. In fact, something she emphasized over and over during the seminar was setting up the environment/training session so that the dog could quickly figure out the correct behavior and get lots of successful reps in right away. She also emphasized what she calls "clean training" -- having your treats already broken up into small pieces, having them hidden in your pocket and not in an obvious bait bag, having a plan of action before you start, and getting everything else that's needed (ie platforms, targets, music) set up before you start. Have a clear cue that tells the dog when he's working and when he's not. Afterwards do a self-assessment and figure out if you need to improve your handling, mechanical skills, or plan of action. And, of course, have fun!

The working dogs got to spend plenty of time on the floor. I found that initially Dragon would turn to me and happily do a few behaviors, but after a few minutes he started getting more distracted. That tells me that when we're out and about, we need to keep our sessions short, but as time goes on I need to start pushing his limits a bit. Right now, if we're in a highly distracting environment such as the dog park or the woods, I only ask for 1-5 behaviors at a time. Each training moment only lasts up to 20 seconds. Asking him to work for 5-10 minutes among a number of other dogs and handlers was too much of a challenge, even when it was interspersed with breaks to let him look around. That said, he didn't shut down or blow me off, he was just not 100% focused and frequently looked away and had to be called back. Overall it was a good experience for him, but in the future I'll be more careful to not push him that much so we can really build on success.

We spent most of Saturday talking about the basics of good training, which I found very helpful to review. For example, I may have taught Dragon a number of tricks, but most of them have clear contextual clues, and very few (possibly even none) are truly on a verbal cue. It's something that I've neglected to work on, and I hadn't even realized it. Oops!

We talked about using the leash as a positive training tool -- teaching the dog to move away from the pressure when he feels a light tension from the leash or light pressure from a hand. These can be used to guide a dog into position. She has a cool way to use light lines draped across a dog's sides to cue side passes and other complex movements.

At the beginning of the day Dragon whined in his crate for a minute or so when he was put away, but by the end he was tired and would just go to sleep. The same thing happened on the second day. I didn't cover his crate this time since my chair was close to it.

We discussed teaching attention as a behavior in itself, and not a criteria of something else such as heeling. There are two schools of thought on this. Denise Fenzi doesn't teach a "watch" cue because dogs naturally tend to watch their handlers if the training is fun and engaging for the dog. Michele teaches it and practices just getting attention in many environments, believing that a behavior that is fluent at home will be just as fluent in a distracting environment if the dog is able to focus and watch his handler. Personally I have decided to teach Dragon to watch me. Today we were practicing heeling after my rally class was over. At the end I had him sit at heel for a while, and I realized that he rarely looked up at me to check in. If I had moved forward he would have started heeling with me, but with a delayed response. Does this mean that the training session was simply not fun enough for him, or the distraction level was too high? Perhaps, but I feel that spending some time reinforcing attention will help him be more successful, and it certainly can't hurt. I will split teaching attention with the "give me a break" and "look at that" games from Control Unleashed so that he has a chance to check out his environment without conflict.

We moved on to Michele's signature platform training. For Tiny Dog, my platform size has very little wiggle room -- it needs to be just wide enough for him to comfortably stand on it with all four feet, but only when he's aligned straight on it. Today I made one by cutting up an old phone book and wrapping it in duct tape. His default behavior is to stand on it and look at me. Later I will make a separate, more square platform of a different color for which the default behavior will be sitting in a tuck sit.

I was impressed by all the behaviors that can be jump-started with a platform. The dog can line up in heel or side position with the handler already standing straight, with their arm along their stomach -- no need to twist around to lure the dog into position, which turns the shoulders the wrong way. The dog can also line up in front and get reinforcement with the correct head-on alignment. Along the same line as that, you can have the dog wait across the room or at a funny angle and then call them into heel or side or front, and they'll figure out how to twist their bodies to line up properly on the platform and along your side. They can be used to teach very tight spins, and paw waves without moving forward. (We worked on paw waves at the seminar, and Dragon made very quick progress!) They allow rapid distance training, such as for a go out in obedience, or doing freestyle tricks across the ring. Two platforms on either side can be used to teach the dog to pass in front or behind you or between your legs to switch sides. Another neat freestyle move is teaching the dog to line up in front, but facing away from you. Okay, okay, this list is long enough. I'm sold on the idea; platforms can be extremely useful!

At the end of the day we had some extra time for Michele to talk about anything the audience wanted, and someone asked about a clicker-trained retrieve. She said that in her experience many dogs do not like retrieving a dumbbell even if it was positively trained, and some stress when they are asked to take something into their mouth. Ding-ding-ding, bells went off in my head. So I'm not crazy or doing anything horribly wrong when I'm seeing Dragon shut down when trying to teach him to take and hold! That took such a weight off my shoulders. That doesn't meant that we can't work through the issue, but I'm relieved that even someone as successful as Michele has seen this happen with dogs she's trained. (By the way, so far my tactic of delaying the lowering of my hand is helping.)

We moved on to the topic of getting ring-ready, and Michele stressed the importance of practicing your ring entry routine. Jackpot your dog right at the start of your routine, to classically condition the ring entry as an exciting moment. Routines that start poorly rarely get better as the performance continues. Also make sure to prepare your dog for the audience bursting into applause at the end or even during your routine.

There was another papillon at the workshop and Dragon was super distracted every time he caught sight of it. Otherwise he didn't try to greet the other dogs too much. He's not usually allowed to do so when he's on leash, and my consistency with this allowed us to move through tight hallways without him stopping to try to sniff butts. What a good boy.

If you enjoy teaching tricks and want to get a positive-training perspective on preparing for competition (in any sport), I highly recommend Michele Pouliot's seminars.

Denise Fenzi seminar: Drives and Motivation, day 2

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.

Denise Fenzi seminar: Drives and Motivation, day 1

Denise Fenzi is a top-notch, force-free, local competition obedience trainer. My friend Crystal had a working spot for this same seminar in Minnesota a few months back, and she was thrilled with the progress she's made with her dog Maisy since then, so I decided to also sign up for a working spot. The focus of the seminar is on building your dog's interest in playing with the handler, both with and without toys, and taking advantage of that in training and competition. This was Dragon's first seminar, and he's only been asked to work/play around other dogs in a handful of places, so I expected him to be nervous about it. Turned out that I needn't have worried!

Initially Denise asked us to potty the dogs, and then stand still and watch them. We were to read their body language and judge what kind of dog we had in that moment. Was the dog tense and nervous about his surroundings? Was he curious and eager to explore? Was he tuned into the handler, and wanting to engage in work or play?

Dragon was most interested in exploring the environment. He wanted to watch the other dogs and the people to gather information on them, and he sniffed the ground, though with perked-up ears and tail and a relaxed body, which was how I knew that it was curious-sniffing and not stress-sniffing. I let him potty and gather information for a minute. (And he had already walked around and sniffed for 15 minutes before the seminar started.) When it was time to play, he was willing to immediately engage and wrestle with my hands. Denise liked that I started off playing with Dragon without toys (she calls it "personal play") and then switched to his tennis ball-tug. Since the ball is his very favorite toy, we want to start with the lower-value play first, because it's much harder to switch from the #1 bestest play to the #2 than vice-versa. He was willing to drop the ball into my hand on cue. He brought it back to me when I threw it or let him "win" the game of tug, but the return was a bit slow. She advised me to do more throws of the toy in one direction and then running in the opposite direction as soon as he picks up the toy, to encourage speedy returns. We should also practice switching back and forth between the two play styles more often, to make it easier to substitute one for the other when needed.

Later in the day, after he'd been crated for a longer period of time and I asked him to play without letting him look around and gather information again, he was not able to focus on me. Good information for me, and tomorrow I'll make sure to always give him that opportunity.

Unfortunately he would cry in his crate every time I put him away. Poor guy. He would settle down after 5-10 minutes most of the time. He was better when I covered the door with my coat.

Denise gave us many wonderful tips to help us understand how dogs play, how it is based on the predatory sequence, and how to get our dogs to play with us. Here are some tidbits:
- The drives you use are the ones you build. If you've only ever rewarded your dog with treats, you'll have a hard time switching to using play as a reward.
- Different dogs will be most interested in different aspects of the "hunt" or prey sequence. Some dogs love to chase but don't care about catching and possessing the toy. Some like the "fight" of biting down and trying to pull the toy away when tugging. For others it's all about possession. Dragon used to be more into the possession part -- he would take his toys away and chew on them, or if he had a ball, he would roll it around and play with it all on his own. I've put plenty of effort into building his tug drive and teaching him to bring the toy back to me, so I've transferred more value to the "fight."

- 8 week old puppies have abnormally high food drive because they've been fighting with their littermates for their food. Often resource guarding seen at this age fades away once the puppy is given ample resources in his new home.
- Start playing tug when your dog is a puppy (if you have him at that age) and maintain that skill into adulthood. All puppies play, whereas it's harder to teach an adult to play.
- Use the correct tug toy -- an underconfident dog just learning how to play does better with long, floppy, soft toys with real fur, whereas Denise's dogs are used to tugging hard on short, rigid, tough tugs.
- Use the opposition reflex. Don't push the toy into the dog's mouth or slow down as the dog is getting close. Use constant tension and motion. The toy should act like a rabbit trying to escape a predator.
There was lots more info, of course!

I bought two toys from Denise. One was a real rabbit fur tug on a long rope, that I knew would be a sure-fire hit. The other was an eight-inch, thin, round tug made from a soft wool-like fabric and stuffed so that it held its shape but had some give when bitten onto. I wasn't sure that he would be interested in this one right away, but I had a hunch that I'd be able to build drive for it. We tried it out at home and played the longest game of tug ever. Initially he didn't know how to bite down on it the best way to keep hold, but every time he lost his grip I would whip the toy away and make him do a trick to get it back. But it wouldn't come straight back -- it would dance around on the floor and run away from him and he had to work to catch it. After about five reps he clamped down hard on it. He liked it when I would partially let go of the toy, as if he had ripped it from my hands, and when I moved toward him as if he were yanking me off my feet and winning the game. I also tried letting him win full possession of the toy, but that actually put a damper on the game. He would bring it back but very slowly. Usually he's faster; maybe he was unsure since it was a brand new toy? Also I didn't have room to run away from him and encourage chasing. We'll work on that. In the meantime I am thrilled with the toy! The game was so long because I was waiting for him to "mess up" and lose grip on the toy one last time before I ended the fun, and it's like he read my mind!

We're looking forward to Day 2, in which we'll discuss play without toys again, and getting ready for competition!