OB580: Articles from the Ground Up

Training the Alert

Goal

Your dog is ready to work on doing their indication when you feel that:

• Your dog understands there is food out there to find and is continuing to search even if they don't find it on the first lid they see.  You can have 4 articles in the pile.  (Very few reps of frantically alerting or just staring at you)
• You're using just a tiny smear of food that the dog can lick off quickly
• Your dog is starting to offer a little bit of waiting at the correct article after you reward them.  Once they find the article, lick the food, you reach into reward.  Can you also take your reward hand away just for a second and then immediately reach back into reward without your dog trying to quickly leave to search for more food???

Here Splash does not quite meet the above criteria.  He's pretty good about searching for the correct lid, but as soon as my reward hand goes away he leaves to either search for more food or to run back to his platform. There are a few tiny signs he's starting to :

I show 4 reps in the above video with Splash. The first one was the best where he did show signs of waiting.  The 3rd and the 4th rep he starts out being able to wait but it isn't quite cemented in his brain yet that it pays!

For some dogs, you can be at step 2 on their second session.  For other dogs, they may not be ready until after a week of training.  If your dog isn't meeting the prerequisites for this stage after a week of training then we may need to look at some way to help their understanding of either continuing to search for food or waiting at the article.  We don't want to spend too long on just teaching your dog to find food and lick it!

Possible ways to help your dog will be getting rid of the platform/mat you have your dog wait on between reps if it's starting to suck your dog back to it too early.  Or do a lot of review of doggy zen type games/ slow cookie delivery where your dog practices freezing in place while a cookie is delivered to them.  Practice this away from the article pile so that it is hopefully strong in their mind before going back to the articles.  

Asking for an Indication or Getting an Offered Indication

As your dog is licking, keep praising your dog and deliver a single cookie.  Now pause.  Hopefully your dog will continue to wait at the article as they have been used to doing.  At this point you can verbally cue your dog to do their nose touch (or retrieve if that's the route you're going.)  You may need to reach your hand and point at the article so your dog doesn’t accidentally indicate an article nearby.   

With some dogs who have a very strong offered chin rest/nose touch/retrieve you can try just pausing briefly to see if they can offer the behavior. If your dog understands the zen keeper game you might even show your dog your closed fist of cookies as a hint to offer a behavior!

During the first few lessons, it’s ok to accept an abbreviated version of the indication you have taught.  For a retrieve, your hand can be right there to reward just a small hop of the item off the floor.  For a nose touch, a quick head dip is OK.  Baby steps!

Here is Splash's first lesson on learning an indication.  He does a pretty good job!  You can see that while he's offering a chin rest he's not really focusing on doing it to the correct lid. If he does it to a cold lid I just put the cookie back on the hot article.  Having the articles further apart than I had them could have possibly prevented this problem:

This is Zumi learning to do a nose touch after she licks food off lids.  She wasn't quite solid on staying at the lid waiting for cookies (instead of investigating the pile again) and it shows in the added difficulty I had in getting her to do an indication. You can see I am still picking the lid off the floor after she finds it in order to help Zumi do her nose touch.  I really have to work hard in this first rep to get her to focused on the correct lid and not reexplore! You will notice I also want Zumi to get in multiple rounds of nose touch=cookie before moving onto the next repetition.  And finally see how I immediately lure her out of the pile as soon as I'm done so that she doesn't have a chance to make a mistake while I'm setting up for the next rep:

This is Shock who is still in the process of learning a retrieve.  Nancy has been asking Shock to bite it after finding it and on this attempt Shock actually offers biting after first getting a reward for finding and licking off the food (ideally her reward should have been right at the article, not Shock turning her head up and away from the article to eat).  Nancy then forgets to lure Shock’s nose away from the pile and Shock gets the opportunity to retrieve the wrong article:

As you progress in your training you continue praising as the dog licks the food, but drop that initial reward at the lid before the dog does the indication.  Start to see if the dog can do that indication without help! 

To Recap:

•       Praise when the dog finds the hot article and begins licking the food.  Give your dog a free cookie at the article.
•       Ask for a retrieve/nose touch as soon as the dog finishes their free cookie.  Have your hand there to help If needed and prevent your dog from moving on to another article.
•       Cue (or let the dog offer) their alert and reward multiple times before cuing/luring them to go back to their platform to wait.
•       Start to gradually stop praising/cuing the dog and see if they will offer a smaller version of the indication without help (mouthing the article or stopping sniffing and beginning a bit of stillness at the lid)