by Grayson Schaffer | on September 3rd, 2009 | in Training
The chair creates at least five more ways for Danger to get himself into trouble
Last week, Sue had me and Danger meet her at a local shopping mall to have a go a working from a wheelchair. Needless to say, this makes everything more difficult and meant Danger had to stay close and avoid pulling, lest we end up on a Nantucket sleigh ride through the mall. Going through doorways, up and down ramps, and through peopled areas were all twice as complicated as they normally are. The takeaway: A good service dog has to be calm, precise, and utterly unflappable. Danger was quick to learn how to press the handicapped access button on the door and equally quick to hump the leg of the indiscriminant petter who smothered him just afterward. I’ve since recovered.
by Grayson Schaffer | on June 22nd, 2009 | in Features, Training
All right, wise guy, you gonna let me eat this sausage, or what?
I’d always had this impression that Labs naturally held things—birds—softly in their mouths. To some extent it’s true that a dog can be predisposed toward having a so-called soft mouth or a low-pressure bite. Mostly, though, it’s a skill that must be trained like any other. “Hold” means you’ve got to keep this object, whatever it may be, balanced between your teeth and not chomp or chew on it. I don’t care how soft a dog’s mouth is, if he doesn’t know a hold command and you put a pork sausage in his mouth, it’s gone. Sue and the ADW trainers taught me this sausage trick as a way of illustrating what’s called stimulus control. That is: Because I’ve given the “hold” cue, Danger should view the sausage not as a treat for completing a task, as he would ordinarily, but as an object to hold as he’s been taught. The treat, his normal dog food, comes after he’s held the sausage for what must be an unbearable length of time.
How to work up to this one slowly: Teach your dog the hold command with a wooden dowel. Click just for light but steady pressure on the dowel being sure to maintain control of it until your dog will hold it—even for a fraction of a second—without rolling it in his molars. Add the cue once you’re getting a consistent hold of a few seconds. Then, once he knows the command, very slowly raise the criteria with objects that he’s more likely to chomp down on or treat like a chew toy. Finally, when your dog can hold actual chew or squeeky toys calmly, introduce a frozen sausage. Then slowly let it thaw as you train. Mike and the Wildrose gang use a similar progresion for hunting retrievers, starting with a frozen game bird and then then gradually letting it thaw as several young dogs make retrieves with it.
by Chance Googling | on June 22nd, 2009 | in Time Wasters
by Sue Barns | on May 18th, 2009 | in Your Questions
Cute, but Brutus is a toy-hoarding monster
Q. My dog, Brutus, loves his toys to the point where he attacks other dogs that try to play with them. And it’s not just his toys. Say we’re at the dog park and there is a dog that is playing with a tennis ball: He will steal the tennis ball from the other dog and get very mean if that dog tries to take it back or even share it. At home, I have to take his toys away and put him in “time out” which is him being sent to his crate. I don’t think it’s a matter of lack of exercise; I let him run next to my scooter until he’s tuckered out, which he absolutely loves. Any suggestions on how to stop this possessiveness/obsession?
A. Possessiveness is an entirely natural behavior for dogs and, in the case of dog-dog interactions, a difficult one to modify. From Brutus’s perspective, his behavior works—and every time he successfully steals a toy or defends one from another dog, his obnoxious behavior is rewarded. I know of no way to decrease his interest in toys—I expect that “time outs” will have the opposite effect—and I don’t want to deprive him of what are obviously a great source of joy in his life! But here are some thoughts on improving his etiquette around other dogs:
- I suspect you’ve figured this out by now, but… Don’t give your dog toys when he’s around other dogs.
- Train your dog to drop toys (or anything else that’s in his mouth) on cue. When your dog has a toy, offer him another, better toy or treat. As he opens his mouth to take the new thing, say “drop” and praise him enthusiastically when he does. If he likes to retrieve, you can throw the toy for him as a reward. This is going to take a lot of training with every toy he has before it becomes automatic. Make your dog think that whenever you say “drop,” an even cooler toy or fabulous treat will appear. You will get lots of use out of this command, and you can use it when Brutus steals another dog’s toy. We’re working on this one with Danger at ADW, now.
- Train your dog to have solid leave it and come (recall) commands, and use them to prevent stealing other dogs’ toys. This is especially important if your dog is inclined to get ugly with other dogs. As your letter indicates, you recognize that he lacks self-control around toys, so it’s your responsibility to provide that control. Just like you wouldn’t let a son (or daughter) bully other kids at the local playground, you can’t let your pup bully other dogs at the park for their toys!
by Sue Barns | on May 12th, 2009 | in Features, Training
Danger with the object of his torment
In operant conditioning, you often hear about positive reinforcement: the dog earns some reward for performing a desired behavior. But there are three other ways to influence behavior that fall under the same training theory. The four ways, broken down simply are:
- Give your dog something good–a treat for a sit
- Take away something good–a timeout for bad behavior
- Give your dog something bad–the shock of an e-collar
- Take away something bad–releasing the pressure on a choke collar for a sit
In general, we try to keep our training to the first two items both because they’re more effective and because they produce fewer unwanted side effects like bolting and loss of the dog’s confidence in the handler. But certain dogs just won’t avoid temptation by positive reinforcement alone.
Enter punishment. Specifically, we’re going to talk about positive punishment–the sort that’s generally associated with rolled up newspapers, e-collars, and the likes. When it comes to greeting other dogs, Danger has a long history of lunging out to “say Hi!”, which he evidently finds enjoyable. Further, Grayson’s yanking on his lead isn’t changing his behavior. He just ignores the nagging. So we’ve got to find some way to get him to stop. In Danger’s case, we discovered that his aversion to water could be an advantage. I had Grayson and Danger walk across the room past another dog. When Danger pulled out to greet, Grayson gave him a quick squirt of water in the face and that ended that.
But positive punishment (the proverbial stick) is dangerous territory for both dog and handler. The punishment has to be severe enough to actually stop the behavior and not so much as to actually injure the dog physically or mentally. Steve White, a well-known police dog clicker trainer, has come up with eight rules for punishing your dog. They underscore just how hard it is to get punishment to work properly without undue fallout. The best reason to avoid punishment is that it tends to be reinforcing to the punisher–the owner feels some satisfaction in “getting even” with the dog, and turns to punishment more and more often to change behavior . Not good.
The Eight Rules
1. The punishment must be something the animal dislikes and something the animal does not expect;
2. The punishment must suppress the unwanted behavior, otherwise it’s just plain abuse;
3. The punishment must be of the perfect intensity. Too much and the dog will shut down. Too little and the dog develops resistance to punishment;
4. The punishment must happen immediately after the behavior;
5. The punishment must be associated with the behavior, not you! Otherwise your presence is a signal that punishment may occur, and your absence is one that it will not. The result? A “sneaky” dog;
6. The punishment must happen every time the behavior occurs. Otherwise, you may put the undesirable behavior on a variable schedule and make it even tougher to break;
7. There must be an alternative for the dog. Give him an opportunity to perform an acceptable behavior in order to escape or avoid the punishment;
8. Punishment must never be used to the extent that punishment outweighs reinforcement … from the dog’s perspective.
If you can’t follow all eight of these rules, you’re probably better off avoiding the use of punishment. Heck, even if you can follow all eight rules, it’s better to try positive reinforcement before resorting to punishment.
by Grayson Schaffer | on May 7th, 2009 | in Features, Training
Danger's ready for a loose-leash walk
Every dog must learn to walk on a leash. Mike covered informal heeling off-lead, using a slip collar. Here’s how the ADW trainers do it with their service dogs.
The Ideal Scenario: ADW teaches loose-lead walking (and heeling, once you unsnap the lead) with a clicker and treats. It’s incredibly simple. Say your walk cue, Let’s go or heel, and set off. As long as the dog is in the heeling zone next to your knee, click and treat frequently. Then gradually lengthen the amount of time and distance required for a treat. Most dogs are pretty quick to figure out that their place in relation to the handler is what draws the treat. I also like to look for frequent eye contact. You can promote this by clicking when you’re getting a good heel position and the dog looks up at you. Eye contact means the dog’s focus is on you and not what’s going on in the world. The nice thing about this method is that it doesn’t require any force, a must for service dogs who will be handled by people with disabilities.
The Problem of the Outgoing Dog: With Danger, I’ve found that as soon as I give him his treat he suddenly speeds up and is out ahead foraging and looking for people and other dogs to greet. Like most training issues, the tasks are easy; the self-control is hard.
- Start with a preemptive leave it when obvious distractions are coming down the path toward you. Most problems of pulling can be fixed with a well-conditioned “leave it.”
- Some of the books I’ve been reading lately explain the dog’s urge to go ahead as an attempt to become a pack leader. Others explain it simply: Because it works. Whether it’s the former or the latter doesn’t matter; you can’t give in. When he goes ahead, stop, get him to come back whatever way works best. Then make him wait. Then set off again. Don’t let him pull you even a little. Just a few inches of give can reinforce the behavior.
- Like anything, loose-leash walking is much easier to teach if it’s started at a young age. Train it in as a good habit early, rather than trying to fix a bad habit late.
- If all else fails, use punishment. We’ll go over punishment in another installment.
A Good Exercise
- Walk Toward a Goal: In this one, Sue set out a bowl of food at the end of a hallway. Danger and I set off toward it and as long as he was walking at my knee, we could keep going. As soon as he moved ahead we had to go back to the starting line. This is a great one to teach a dog self control because calmness and patience are the only way to ge that big reward. And you don’t need to use food, either. We repeated the exercise with another dog that Danger really wanted to meet as the reward on the other side of the room. As long as he walked at heel he’d get to greet the other dog.
by Grayson Schaffer | on April 27th, 2009 | in Swag the Dog
Dog is my copilot
The folks at Dublin Dog have built a custom cruiser with doggy sidecar for a raffle. The money will be used to help a North Carolina woman (”Terry”), who has cereberal palsey, pay for a service dog from Canine Assistants. Raffle info at Dublin Dog Foundation.
by Grayson Schaffer | on April 25th, 2009 | in Features
Mike’s wife, Cathy, sent out a link to a Phoenix news story on a boy with type I diabetes, who’s school is raising money to train him a diabetic alert dog from a Wildrose pup. Oddly enough, some of the best service dogs are also the best hunting dogs and vice versa. When I went in for my first dog/handler interview with Jill from ADW, she asked what sort of line Danger was from. When I told her he was from a hunting line, she was quick to clarify: Hunting or field trialing?
The distinction is as important to service dog trainers as it is to hunting dog trainers. Labs have only been around as a breed–used primarily for waterfowl retrieving and hauling fishing nets–for about 130 years. Service dog programs weren’t formalized until the 1990 passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act (though they’d been used before that). Most service dogs are trained out of hunting litters for the simple reason that the desired characteristics are the same: Calmness, temperment, intelligence, a good nose, and loyalty to the handler.
But in the last 50 years or so, breeding goals have diverged. In the U.K, breeders prefer a slightly smaller (maybe 65 pounds) animal and value calmness and temperment above raw athletic power and retrieving drive. Maybe it’s the old British stereotype, but they just prefer a dog that’s more civil. These dogs, whether imported directly from the U.K. as Mike’s Wildrose stock is, or bred for those characteristics here, are known as British or U.K. Labs.
American field trialing dogs are selected more like thoroughbred race horses. Breeders look for strength, speed, retrieving drive, and huge water entries. These 90-plus-pound dogs are the ones you see at the Teva Mountain Games flying 25 feet off the end of the dock or lining 300 yards for a duck they can’t see. They’re something to watch, but they’re hardwired for that explosive energy. Don’t expect a field trial dog to sleep by your chair while you read a book.
Show Dogs: Would it be impolite to call them dumb, overbred, more prone to hereditary diseases, and otherwise a terrible waste of working dog genetics? I’ve never understood why working dog breeds end up in dog shows. It’s like having a beauty pageant for longshoremen. More astounding is that the Westminster Kennel Club was started by a pair of gun dog enthusiasts.
So the first question you have to ask yourself when you go to get a dog is, What do I want? In a lot of cases, you can find a dog that meets your needs at an animal shelter. In others, you’ll want to go to a breeder. But just know that there’s a lot of variation even within breeds.
by Grayson Schaffer | on April 23rd, 2009 | in Features, Training
Danger opens the fridge to get himself a snack
After learning push, tug came easy for Danger. Ever tried to wrench a favorite sock from your dog’s mouth? The instinct is to tug back. Dangle an enticing rag or rope in front of your dog and you’ll get the same response. But tug as a service dog skill is a bit more nuanced. You don’t want your dog to rip or yank as hard as possible, rather you want him to have a bit more tact. How you click and treat to end up with a crisp, gentle tug depends on your dog’s disposition.
- If your dog is the sort that really loves to play tug and hates to stop, click only for a gentle tug at the outset. If your dog is less forceful to begin with, just click when he grasps the rag in his mouth.
- Now shape the kind of tug you want. Danger has a soft mouth; in the first step all he’d do was hold the rag in his mouth. To get him to tug, I pulled sharply on the rag—just as hard as I wanted him to tug—while he held on. I clicked when he held on. This produced the right level of force. If your dog is more of the tugging type, be careful to avoid clicking for the sort of tug that involves head-shaking and growling.
- Now, if there’s a specific place on the rope or rag that you want him to tug—say, the tip for more leverage—click only for that. Make sure he’s successful 80 percent of the time before you move on to the next step.
- Once he’s consistently giving you the desired tug you want when presented with something to pull on, add the cue.
- After a few more training sessions, you’ll be ready to generalize the skill by tying the tug rope onto different objects like doors, drawers, and the fridge. A great exercise to work on is combining push with tug. The dog opens and closes a door, resetting his own training drill and receiving a treat each time.
by Grayson Schaffer | on April 3rd, 2009 | in Features
But Danger, I feed you
At times, it seems like Danger is trying to willfully unhinge me. Frantic outbursts, lunging for my arm and then dangling from it by his teeth, swiping sticks of butter off the counters and then swallowing them whole like horse pills–these are all par for the course. Getting a dog to not do something can often be harder than teaching complicated behaviors. Most guys I know resort to some combination of shouting, “Cut that $@&# out!!!” and the dog’s name over and over. I’m guilty of this, too, though less now than I used to be. Here’s a primer on what works and what doesn’t. (more…)
by Grayson Schaffer | on March 31st, 2009 | in Features
Danger Performs "Push"
So while Danger still likes to run away from me and sniff in the bushes when he’s supposed to be retrieving, he loves his service dog work. (I’m starting to think he’s a pacifist in addition to a vegetarian–but of course, I’m supportive of him regardless.) This week he learned his first real service dog skill: Push. To get there, as with all skills, we broke down the task into small parts or criteria, and built up slowly.
1. Targeting: Sue had Danger tap his nose to her fingertips. In general if you hold two fingers out, a Lab will nose them. Click–>treat at the moment of contact. Danger had a bit of trouble targeting the fingertips instead of the whole hand. To gain precision, you’ve got to be careful what you click for. Click for nose to fingertips, not nose to hand or for mouthing your hand. If you need to, you can put a piece of tape on your hand to serve as an actual target. Start it on your palm and then move it to your fingertips.
2. When Danger could do eight of ten targets without missing or giving some other response, we added the cue “target.”
3. Now add a piece of tape to your fingers and have him target the tape.
4. Move the tape to a wall or door and have him target the tape on remote objects. Each of these tasks will take just as many reps as the first nose-to-fingers target.
5. Now get him to push. Sue likes to use a push-on light like the one in the picture. Place the tape on the light and hold it down to the dog same as the initial targeting exercise. Your dog should nose it. Click only when you get a nice firm push (Danger pushed as soon as there was no click–>treat just for nosing it softly). Repeat until you’re getting 80 percent proficiency before adding the command “push.”
6. Now it’s time to generalize. I first placed the target tape on a cabinet that’s easy to close and give the “push” cue. I click–treat as the door swings all the way shut. For more difficult pushes like sticky drawers or heavy doors, you may need to work up to getting them all the way closed. Once Danger figured out what he was supposed to do, he started whipping doors and drawers shut with authority.
Now whenever I open a cabinet door around the house, Danger runs over, slams it shut, and looks up to see if he gets a treat.
by Grayson Schaffer | on February 23rd, 2009 | in Swag the Dog
Ever wondered what it takes to make a service dog? Me, too, so last week Danger and I enrolled with Santa Fe’s Assistance Dogs of the West to find out. Over the next nine months, Danger will learn the 90 or so commands that service dogs need to know,* and I’ll learn how to train them. There are many types of assistance dogs–guide dogs for the blind, service dogs for people with disabilities, seizure alert dogs, diabetic-shock-detection dogs, and probably a few others I haven’t heard of. With Danger, we’ll be working on service dog skills like turning on lights and hitting the crosswalk button with his nose. Until now, Danger’s training has been geared toward field handling, bringing out his natural canine abilities like retrieving and game-finding and taking directional hand signals from a distance. This new training will be all about teaching him to perform precise problem-solving tasks and reinforcing manners and a calm temperament.
That brings me to the overarching point of this exercise: Every kept dog is a service animal in some capacity, even if that service is just providing a furry armrest while you sit on the couch and watch The Wire. OK, that’s a pretty weak example, but the point is that learning to live and interact with your dog is good for both of you. Dogs love structure and are generally happiest when they’re working. And the resulting well-trained dogs are more fun to be around and less likely to cause their owners headaches, especially in public. Follow along with us and do try this at home. Most of all, don’t let your dog become unemployed.
Now, onto the training: We’ll be working with ADW trainer Sue Barns, who’s variously trained field dogs, search-and-rescue dogs, and assistance dogs. We’ll also be using the popular clicker method; it works like this: You’ve got a little clicker box–all it does is make a clicking sound when you push the button–which is used at the precise moment the dog completes a task and is then followed by a treat. Click–>treat, click–>treat, click–>treat, and soon enough the dog knows that the clicking sound means he’s done good and a treat is coming. Yeah, it’s that simple. But it’s not necessarily easy. The click has to come at the exact moment of the desired behavior occurs and only when he’s doing exactly what he’s supposed to be doing. Click for a half sit and that’s what you’re teaching, even if you mean for his butt to hit the floor.
The Exercise: Eye Contact
The Workout: 10 reps, three times per day
To get started, Sue had us work on eye contact. I’d always thought a dog’s willingness to make eye contact was genetic, but it turns out you can train it. Assuming your dog can sit, have him sit. Now, say his name and wait for him to look you in the eye. Most likely he’ll look at your hand if there’s a treat in it, or maybe at your treat bag. Just be patient. Put your treat hand behind your back if it’s too big a distraction. At the moment he locks eyes with you, click–> treat. As he gets more fluent with the behavior, stop saying his name and just click every time he makes eye contact.
This is one of those things that’s making me slap my forehead now for not training it earlier. If you can train your dog to focus on you, training every other behavior gets easier. If his attention is wandering, everything else will be a struggle.
*To answer three common questions of late: No, I won’t be giving him up afterwards. No, he won’t become a certified service dog with a vest and an ID. Which means that, No, I won’t be donning Blue Blockers and trying to get him on planes or added to my dinner reservations.
