Ginger and I recently began working on a shoulder target. This means she targets her shoulder onto an object. For now I’m using my hand, later we’ll expand to a target stick or some other objects. It’s been a fun learning experience so far. I’ve kind of been making up what to do as I go along, as I’ve never done this before.

Here’s a video clip of where we were yesterday, Day 3. We have a pretty nice loop going, she moves so her shoulder touches my hand, I click and throw the food, she finds the food and then moves back into position. (This is loopy training for dogs!) Several times in the video I move my hand out a bit farther once she gets into position, asking her to move into my hand a bit more. Sometimes she is almost forceful about pushing into my hand. Today was the first day when she really seemed to “get” that it was about touching my hand, rather than just standing in a particular spot.

Training Log So Far

Day 1

I originally started with a target stick. However, the target stick I chose is a tennis ball on a stick and she only wanted to bite and play with the tennis ball! Bad choice on my part. I decided starting with a hand would be easier than an object, especially since with my hand I can feel how hard she is pressing against me.

After we ditched the tennis ball, I started with her letting me touch her shoulder while she was in a down. This was actually hard at first. Ginger gets very energetic during training and was not keen about me touching or petting her. She also assumed my hand heading towards her was some sort of cue and kept throwing behavior at me, sits, downs, bows, you name it! So, having her in a down helped her settle a bit and figure out that all I wanted to do was to touch her shoulder. Then we repeated this with her standing.

Day 2

Started where we left off, with her standing in front of me, letting me touch her shoulder. I decided I wanted a movement cycle. I though this would help her get the concept faster than if I tried to teach it with her standing still. I originally began by throwing the treats behind her. She started staying farther away from me, as this was closer to where the food was being delivered. So, I switched to throwing the treats to my right side. Wrong side! Since I wanted her moving into my hand, I realized throwing the treats off to my left was the most logical. This did take a bit of coordination to master at first!

By the end, she would collect the treat and then return in front of me. She wasn’t particularly paying attention to my hand. However, she’d shift over a step or two more if I withheld the click.

Day 3

Yesterday she really started putting pressure on my hand when she returned. In addition, if I moved my hand away a bit more, she’d continue moving over until she found my hand. The food delivery part of our loop is still a little messy at times–she’ll sniff around looking for the treat if she doesn’t see it immediately.

Has anyone else worked on body targeting with their dog (or horse or other animal)? Any suggestions or tips? Or, any ideas for interesting or fun tricks to teach? I’d love to hear your feedback or experiences if you’ve tried something like this.

Related posts:

1. Introducing Clicker Training through Targeting
2. Teaching new skills using targeting
3. Dog Training Update

Can You Find Me?

The first game, Find the Two-Legger, is a canine version of the classic hide and seek. Basically, you tell your dog to wait, then go and hide somewhere in your house. You then give the dog a release command and she has to come find you! If your dog doesn’t know how to stay for long periods of time, start out small, maybe just moving a few feet away and then gradually building up. This is a fun way to work on recalls and wait/stay, as well as a good way to give your dog a bit of exercise if it’s too cold to play ball outside.

Ginger Plays Find the Two-Legger

Ginger and I played this a few times today. (Check out the video clip below!) We’ve played hide and seek in the past, but I tried to mix it up a bit today. I tried making her wait in all sorts of different places, where as in the past I’ve usually only made her wait in the kitchen. This was hard for her! From this, I know our wait could use a bit of work on generalization to new locations.

I also tried hiding in a few weird spots, such as on beds or chairs. A few times it took her a little while to find me. It’s great mental exercise for her, trying to see how fast she can find me so she can earn a treat.

Did you like this post?

You can follow along with the discussion of the rest of the seven seeking games this week on the Rewarding Behaviors Forum by clicking here.

Related posts:

1. Clicker Training Doggie Zen (videos)
2. A Ginger Adventure
3. Ginger gets a gold star!

For now, here’s a quote that I really liked that is from the first disc.

“Now I see so often on the internet that you want to create the thinking animal. What have I already said? The animal is already thinking! The animal is not thinking about what you want it to think about–that’s the only problem. It’s up to you to communicate clearly to the animal what you want.”

I think there’s a lot of truth to this. I hear lots of clicker trainers (and I know I’ve been guilty of it before as well) talking about teaching animals to think. It’s common for clicker trainers and positive trainers to promote their methods by saying that they teach the animal to think. Instead, I think what we often mean is that good training is about teamwork and clarity of communication between animal and trainer. It’s also about giving the animal the opportunities to make choices and figure out solutions on her own.

What are your thoughts on teaching an animal to think?

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1. Teaching new skills using targeting
2. Lessons from Teaching Your Dog To Skateboard DVD
3. Teaching the Parelli Friendly Game with Clicker Training (video)

With clicker training, many dog trainers advise to get the behavior occurring at a high rate BEFORE trying to add a cue to it. This actually makes a lot of sense–if you start adding cue before the animal is doing the behavior, the cue is not going to have a clear association with the behavior! Instead, get the behavior first. Then, start giving the cue while the animal performs the behavior. Gradually, move the cue back in time until you are giving the cue before the behavior. If done correctly, this is an easy way for the animal to learn that a particular cue is associated with a particular behavior.

Here’s a video of Ginger learning to bow. This is a couple of days into teaching her this trick. She is pretty eager to offer the behavior. After she eats the treat, it usually doesn’t take long until she bows again. However, I have not added a cue to signal the behavior yet. The next day, once the behavior got a bit more solid, I started adding in a hand signal as a cue.

Click here to watch the video on youtube.

Related posts:

1. Ginger gets a gold star!
2. Ginger Plays Doggie Hide and Seek (video)
3. Clicker Training Doggie Zen (videos)

Those last ones sound pretty hard to me! However, the key to Zen, as with anything else you want to teach your dog, is to shape the behavior gradually. You don’t start out by asking the dog to leave along a treat on the couch for 30 seconds! Instead, you adopt the splitter strategy and build the behavior gradually in a series of small steps.

(Side note: If you aren’t familiar with Sue Ailsby’s training levels program, you need to check them out now! Here’s the link to the levels. Sue Ailsby’s training levels program is one of the best, if not the best, step-by-step dog clicker training curriculum. Better yet, it’s free! The explanations and instructions are well written and easy to follow and the behaviors are built gradually. It’s great as a home study course and as well, many trainers use it for their obedience and dog manners classes.)

I’ve been teaching this in short sessions, each about 1-2 minutes (and about 10 treats). I’ve video taped quite a few of the early sessions and it’s interesting to watch the progression as she starts figuring out what I want. Our first goal was for Ginger to be able to resist eating a treat in an open hand.

Video 1
This is one of our first training sessions. I present a fist with a treat in it. As soon as she leaves the fist alone, I click my clicker and drop the treat on the floor. At this point, she’s still pretty interested in trying to get the treat out of my fist! Watch this session on youtube.

Video 2
This is after a handful of sessions. She is still usually approaching and sniffing the hand. However, she understands to back away and wait in order to get the treat. Watch this session on youtube.

Video 3
This is my favorite of the zen videos. This one was after a few more sessions. As you can see, she is really leaving my hand alone. Interestingly, she’s starting to offer other behaviors instead, such as backing up, sitting or eye contact. Around this point, I began trying to withhold my clicks until I got eye contact. I also was starting to work on adding a bit of duration. There’s a really great part about 35 seconds into the video–she goes forward to try and get the treat from my hand and then checks herself and moves back. Watch this session on youtube.

Video 4
After quite a bit more work! I have introduced a verbal cue, the word “Zen.” My fist also serves as a visual cue. At this point, I am presenting the fist, then opening it. I close it again if she tries to go for the treat, but she’s mostly staying away from the treat. We’re also working on increasing eye contact and duration. Watch this session on youtube.

Related posts:

1. Ginger Plays Doggie Hide and Seek (video)
2. Ginger Takes a Bow
3. Clicker Training Shoulder Targeting

1. Aggressive Training Methods and Aggressive Dogs
2. An Introduction to Reinforcement
3. Building Duration with 300 Peck Pigeons
4. Fish Training Progress
5. ORCA Great Minds Part 1: Steve Martin
6. In a Whisper or In a Shout? Training Under Time Constraints
7. Teaching the Parelli Friendly Game with Clicker Training
8. Waterhole Ritual 1: Sharing Territory
9. What is Stimulus Control?
10. What Makes Something Scary?

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1. Stale cheerios gets a little stale…
2. ORCA Great Minds Conference–my thoughts, notes and review
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Part of the discussion stemmed from the fact that eventually, we want to fade out those treats. Random treats are more interesting and besides, no one wants to be carrying around a bucket of grain or bag of dog treats forever. One of the arguments for clicking without treats was that variable treat delivery would be stronger for maintaining behavior than delivering a treat for every correct response.

What this is describing is called a variable reinforcement schedule. Once initial learning takes place, a variable reinforcement schedule is indeed much more powerful than a fixed schedule.

Here’s a nice analogy for others who might not be familiar with these terms:

A fixed reinforcement schedule is like a vending machine. Every time you put in a quarter, you get a pack of gum. Very reliable, but pretty darn boring after awhile.

A variable reinforcement schedule is like a slot machine. It’s a little more stressful, but a lot more exciting! Often you get nothing when you put a quarter in, but sometimes you hit the jackpot. This kind of schedule, if built right, is very resistant to extinction. Meaning, it’s hard to quit.

This is why people have gambling addictions, but not vending machine addictions.

Now, when using a clicker, there are two (main) ways to transition to a variable reinforcement schedule.

Possibility One

Train the behavior with a high rate of reinforcement, that is, with a fixed schedule and a high rate of click/treat. This means every time the animal performs the behavior you want, you click. And every time you click, you deliver a treat. Once the animal understands what you want, add a cue so you can tell the animal when to perform the behavior.

Gradually stop clicking and treating every time the animal performs the behavior. So, sometimes you click, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes the animal has to do the behavior twice before you click. Basically, you’re putting the click AND the treat on a variable schedule. (However, you’re still giving a treat every time you click.)

When I teach the yearlings to lead, I’m practically clicking every two steps. Later, I don’t click or treat at all, unless they do something extra special, like walking through a nasty puddle.

This method is also a great way to start building duration and length of behaviors. Now that Sebastian knows how to back up, I sometimes click/treat him for taking 1 step back, sometimes I don’t click until he takes 20 back. Backing up is on a variable reinforcement schedule, and he’s learned to keep backing until he hears a click or until I ask him for a different behavior.

This method is based on the assumption that if the animal understands the behavior and understands what is being asked, the click signal is no longer constantly needed. But, it’s better in the beginning during the initial learning to always treat when you click.

Why is this? A one-to-one relationship between click and treat is best for learning because you want to tell the animal every time they do something right. If you start out with variable reinforcement from the beginning, some correct responses will not be rewarded. It will take the animal longer to figure out what you’re asking and what counts for correct.

Possibility Two

Train the behavior with a high rate of reinforcement, that is, with a fixed schedule and a high rate of click/treat.

Then, keep on clicking to tell the animal when he’s done something right, but don’t always treat or gradually fade out the treats.

This assumes that you are using the clicker as a secondary reinforcer and that the clicker in itself has some value to reinforce behavior. Big assumptions. If the click is actually strengthening the behavior, than go for using the clicker in this way. But I’d caution to first check that the clicker is actually serving this function for the animal.

If using the clicker without food, experiment around. Has the clicker taken on a similar meaning as click+treat? Can you build new behavior using just the click (no treat and also no pressure)?

The difference between these two possibilities of fading out the food really boil down to figuring out what the clicker actually means to your horse.

I’ll address that in a follow-up post, What’s the purpose of the click in clicker training?

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1. What’s the purpose of the click in clicker training?
2. Building Duration With 300 Peck Pigeons
3. Teaching Hoof Handling Using Shaping

It’s a short, but well done DVD that explains one method for teaching your dog to ride on a skateboard. The approach is well though out. Bill Ryan sets up the environment from the beginning so that the dogs have a very high chance of being successful. This is a defining characteristic of good training–the trainer has a well defined plan from the start and understands how to manipulate the environment to help the animal succeed.

The part of his training strategy that I liked the most was his emphasis on the dog standing with three legs on the board, which is the basic foundation for the behavior. Once the dog can stand confidently with three legs on the stationary board, teaching the rest of the behavior is downright easy.

So, foundations are important. Yet, how many times do we mess up our training or make it more difficult for the animal by asking for too much too soon, before we’ve built the basic foundation?

The horse who won’t trailer load–could she use some work on basic leading? The agility dog who’s going the wrong way–how closely is she paying attention to the handler? The horse who’s not taking the correct lead over a jump–might he need to go back to cantering figure-eights with drop to trot changes over a ground pole?

The problem is, when our animals have difficulties with complex tasks (jumping, agility, trailer loading, etc.) we tend to focus on the problem at the complex task level. Instead, these problems often indicated holes in the basics. This could be a variety of things, something we skipped over, something we went too fast on, something we though the animal understood when she didn’t.

Most complex behaviors might look like one fluid behavior, but they really consist of lots of already learned skills that have been pieced together. If we focus on the basics and get them good and solid, then it is much easier to get all the other pieces to fall into place.

What happened in the video? Bill Ryan spent almost all of the training teaching the dogs to be confident and comfortable with three legs on a stationary skateboard. Once they had this solid, they all progressed rapidly through the rest of the steps, until they were all skateboarding with ease.

So, the next time you’re training a complex skill, consider how you can break it down into fundamental component skills. Or, if a behavior falls apart, stop and think if there might have been holes or weak spots in previously trained behaviors. And, if you’re thinking about teaching your dog to skateboard, you might want to considering purchasing a copy of Bill Ryan’s Teaching Your Dog to Skateboard DVD!

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1. How long does it take to train a horse?
2. Lessons from Pat Parelli and Catwalk
3. Teaching new skills using targeting

Many people have trouble with building behavior because they try to build in too big of chunks, frustrating both them and the animal. One easy way to start building behavior is using a simple exercise called the 300 peck pigeon. (Often also called 1000 pigeon pecks, 300 pecking pigeon, or some other variation.) The name refers to a procedure early behavior analysts used for teaching a pigeon to peck a target hundreds of times.

How does this work in practice? For instance, it can be very hard to teach some dogs to heel.
So, you would walk one step with the dog in the heel position, then click and treat. When the dog can reliably go one step around 80% of the time, you start going two steps. Once the dog gets two most of the time, increase the task to three, then four, then five. Anytime the dog “messes up,” start back at the beginning and do one repetition of one step, then one rep of 2 steps, then one rep of three, until you get back to where you were before. The advantage of this system is that you keep a very high rate of reinforcement on a pretty hard task and set the dog up for success.

I’ve started building some of this into my riding with Shiloh, who was having a lot of trouble moving lightly off my leg cues and maintaining a good pace for an extended period of time. He is still very green under saddle, and I don’t want to get into the habit of having to squeeze every ten steps to keep him going! This would wear me out eventually and make him less sensitive to my aids.

He was having trouble moving off my leg aids. So, I started by asking for a walk with a squeeze and a kiss. I set my criteria low, and clicked and gave him a treat if he at least moved forward a few steps. Then, I toughened my criteria, and began clicking only when he moved forward with at least some energy. Then I started only clicking for 3 or more steps, then 5 or more. When he had that down, then 7, then 10. Steps are small units and he caught on quickly so I was increasing in larger increments than one. (If you’re working on a very difficult task or your animal has very little experience with the task, increments of one can be very helpful.) After 3 sessions of 10-20 minutes, he was walking with enthusiasm 2-3 times around our small round pen before I clicked and treated him.

300 peck pigeons is an easy and stress free way to start building duration for some pretty difficult problems. Also, since it’s clicker training, it ends up being a fun and enjoyable experience for both you and the animal.

Related posts:

1. Do I have to treat every time I click?
2. Teaching Hoof Handling Using Shaping
3. Stale Cheerios: The Best of 2009

Karen Pryor gives some interesting insight on how trainers shape behavior in Lads Before the Wind:

The path to the desired end point can take any direction, there are probably as many ways to shape a given behavior as there are trainers to train it. One trainer’s recipe for a behavior might be quite different from another’s….

Traditional animal trainers rarely are aware of this: they think of their own series of steps as the only possible ones–this is the way you train a horse to bow, this is the way you train a bear to ride a unicycle–and they often guard their shaping recipes jealously and hand them down as family secrets. There are, indeed, knacks and shortcuts in some shaping recipes. The standard way to get a dog to do a back somersault in the air is to teach it to jump straight up, and then swat it across the rump in midair so you turn it upside down before it lands on its feed again. With praise, and food reward, the surprise to the dog is mitigated, and shortly it learns to jump up and fling itself backward to avoid the swat (you need a small, lively dog for this, of course; a fox terrier, not a Labrador retriever.)

A dog back flip is almost always shaped the same way. Watch a dog act with this trick in it, and you can often see the swatting gesture of the trainer’s arm reduced to a cue for the dog’s behavior. That’s the traditional shaping recipe; yet a trainer who didn’t have that recipe could probably train a dog to do a back somersault in a number of other ways.

For many behaviors, there are standard ways to teach that behavior, often because of tradition or simplicity. However, just because there’s one way to teach something, doesn’t mean that’s the right way or the only way. We could teach a horse to walk on a tarp by reinforcing steps towards the tarp. Or, we could give little tugs on the lead rope, encouraging the horse to walk across. Or, we could teach it to follow a target stick across the tarp. Or, we could pressure it from behind with a whip or training stick. Or, we could let the horse alone with the tarp until it investigated the tarp on its own. Or, we could combine two or more of those ways. There are lots of ways to accomplish this goal.

People often approach training looking for specific shaping recipes. They want to know the exact “how-to steps” to do something, which is the information you can find in many training books, DVDs and even clinics. However, more than following a step program of steps, a great trainer understands the laws of shaping. They are able to see the final behavior while considering the place the animal is at now. Then, they can imagine multiple ways to begin to work towards shaping the final goal.

Here’s a great video of someone shaping their dog to blow bubbles in it’s water dish.

Related posts:

1. B.F. Skinner and Shaping Behaviors.
2. Shaping a Horse to Stand on a Pedestal
3. Using Shaping to Teach New Behaviors