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l it just improves his hearing and teaches him to test his collar before bolting i need to go back to foundations bor ing but we re not going to get through this otherwise well unless i resort to using aversive and punishment but the goal here is to not go there learning patience but despite all of the above i still ignored tonight s flapping red flag warning me that it was mr missile instead of mr dream at the end of my leash and when i unclipped his leash of he bolted up the field and through the sheep and i was left with two options ignore the behavior or run up the field hollering like a cave woman i ll leave it up to you to guess which option i chose that i keep repeating this scenario is an excellent example of how punishment is ineffective despite the frustration punishment 20 seconds after this event everything is under control and we re back to being a team and so my behavior does not decrease and neither does clayton s the good news is that it really shouldn t take us very long and hopefully it won t preclude working stock or at least not for more than a few days so starting tomorrow i m going to set up some strategic games and a training plan to get him to keep himself in check he doesn t have the agility foundation that des does or much value for toys or other things i can use to reward him he wont even look at food when excited so i will have to put some thought into how i am going to do this i may have to start with going way back to square one re building value for tugging this will teach me not to skip foundation work i have a three year old power house of a dog who is half way trained to pro novice who has to go back to puppy kindergarten never again posted by shapingchaos filed under life in general leave a comment applying it s yer choice in herding step 1 07 thursday jul 2016 posted by shapingchaos in life in general leave a comment as i continue down along this path of trying to used reinforcement based methods for training a dog to work stock i have been experiencing some amazing ah ha moments right now i am focused on training my three green dogs and putting a foundation in the two puppies i have from my latest litter building the foundations with the blank slates that are my puppies is providing me with wonderful opportunities to explore and experiment and also to learn the first big ah ha moment i had was around the concept of it s yer choice iyc a game developed by dog trainer extraordinaire susan garrett that involves showing the puppy or dog a treat and having her choose to do something other than dive in and grab it now i have played this game with all my dogs and used it to teach them to not bite my hand or lunge at their food dishes but the light suddenly went on the other day around just how much more this game offers let me explain first i am becoming increasingly aware of just how much i alter my behaviour to keep my dogs from doing things i don t want i keep my counters clear of food so they don t counter surf i put food up high while training so they don t get fixated on it i don t let my livestock out in the morning until the dogs have had a leg stretch so they the dogs don t get in with the sheep and give chase and on and on and on then i noticed while watching susan garrett train her dogs that she has food and toys all over the floor and they keep working with her so i tried leaving the food dish in the middle of our training area while shaping one of the puppies after two or three tries to dive into the bowl with my response being to quietly put my hand over said bowl the puppy stopped paying any attention to the food and just carried on wow but it gets a whole lot better a few days later i took the same puppy out to do chores including tending my ducklings in their pen i filled their food dish and didn t the puppy immediately dive in and start wolfing down the feed i was just about to put the bowl up when i decided to try simply putting my hand over it it was a big bowl and i couldn t cover the whole thing so i just made the same shape with my hand that i do in training and placed it above the bowl the puppy backed off i pulled my hand away and he dove back in mr naughty pants so i simply put my hand back over the bowl he backed off again and i similarly pulled back he then took one step towards the bowl stopped himself then turned and went about his business and ignore the food for the rest of the time we were in there o m g how simple is that so how does this translate to herding good question here s my thinking when working stock our dogs are constantly having to make choices one of our biggest challenges as handlers is to convince our dogs to choose to listen to us rather than their own instincts this can be done through domination and intimidation in effect forcing them to do our bidding and thus not giving them a choice or it can be achieved through having a dog choose to listen because doing so is reinforcing the difference is subtle but critical on paper getting our dogs to choose to listen to us rather than follow their own impulses is no different from the iyc game i was playing with my puppy and a bowl of food however the stimulation levels are a whole lot higher and so we need to find exercises that can build up to this challenge before i share what i have been experimenting with i need to raise an important aspect of this training iyc is not about having the dog be stationary it is not about having the dog go into a sit and stop moving it can be if that is what you are looking for but that is not the goal of the exercise the purpose is to get the dog to exert self control in face of stimulation to be effective in a herding environment which is highly dynamic the dog needs to be able to make her choices while being dynamic in motion i know many dogs mine included who can hold a sit or a down around stock but lose their minds as soon as they get into motion so we need to be training our dogs in motion to do so i have been playing around with a few options so far i have come up with two approaches first if you have a dog who is trained to do other things agility tricks disk etc you start working the dog in that sport within sight of the stock you start as far away as you need to be to have the dog still focus on the task assigned i like to push it just inside that threshold so the dog struggles a little but is capable of success with a little effort i think experiencing the frustration and pushing through is part of what builds the ability to think and make good choices in face of high distraction this is what i did with desirée who is also my agility dog here is a video of our second attempt at this method amazingly i saw a big difference in her ability to stay level headed on stock after doing this only once when the dog chooses to focus on a job we ask her to do rather than simply acting on impulse the act starts to reprogram their brains to do more of the same every choice a dog makes leading to something it enjoys results in an endorphin release that serves to build neuropathways that in turn increase the probability of that same choice being made again this is why it is so critical to avoid letting them make bad choices from our perspective even once that result in them experiencing something pleasurable chasing a squirrel or a car etc once i understood how powerful making a choice is i have worked very hard to try and set things up so my dogs make the choices i want them to make one single unfortunate choice can require dozens of repetitions of doing something else to counter condition fortunately the reverse seems to also be true and it appears to generalize as well so des learning to enact self control by her own choice by doing agility in sight of sheep has translated to her being much more mindful relaxed and able to enact self control while on sheep i am thrilled with the result and looking forward to where this will take us the other approach if your dog is not trained to any degree of intensity in another sport is to use the premack principle specifically you reinforce a lower probability behaviour with a higher probability behaviour this is what i did with clayton who does not have the agility training that desie does i will talk more about this approach in a future post living in a world of no 30 wednesday dec 2015 posted by shapingchaos in learning theory leave a comment i have lately been reading a lot of very passionate arguments against the use of strictly reinforcement based training i take this to mean that people who are using r methods are doing so in large enough numbers to start to cause the dominant paradigm to shift in a rant against purely positive methods as applied to herding one of the discussants argued that punishment is not only ok but necessary because our dogs live in a world of no i thought this was quite poignant and true we are constantly telling our dogs what they cannot do what we don t want them to do what they re not allowed to do when they are bad when they are wrong the more i move away from this model of training the more i notice it in other people punitive language and interaction with our canine companions is so normalized that most of us don t even realize we re doing it people come to my house for example and immediately start correcting my dogs they almost always say no or express some other form of negative telling the dog what they don t want it to do usually don t jump up it almost never occurs to people to tell my dogs what to do down you get it s quite fascinating it s also sad the more i study learning behavior and dog training the more parallels i find myself drawing with our human education system and our social systems in general we live in an incredibly punitive world we are constantly punished for trying anything new anything out of the norm if not socially reprimanded then typically economically so more often than not both i m not sure where i m going with this my brain just keeps ruminating on the subject and noting more and more examples to support this overarching observation reading that angry rant against r training on a site i regularly interact with left me needing to find an outlet for my thinking and that forum was not the outlet i m left wondering what kind of world we d have if we could make the shift to a more positive rewards based way of interacting with one another not just in dog training but in our schools our work environments and every day life i wonder shaping a mindful dog teaching impulse control around stock 01 tuesday dec 2015 posted by shapingchaos in life in general 1 comment you know that moment we all dread while working stock the one when our dog shuts us out of his mind along with everything else in the world except for those sheep he s laser locked onto and goes ballistic if you ve taken a dog to stock you know what i m talking about it s one of every handler s worst fears especially if their dog is a serious gripper a common approach to keeping our excitable dogs under control is to apply sufficient external pressure from the handler from a long line from a variety of aids including noise makers rakes and lunge whips that they stay under threshold while these methods can be quite effective they don t necessarily work on all dogs the application of an adversive can have unintended consequences ranging from making the dog more excited to shutting him down or even turning him off stock work altogether what if we could teach our dogs to control themselves to stay under threshold without force or threat to keep themselves in check mindful and clear headed fully present for learning i have a young kelpie holly who is particularly prone to reproducing the scenario described earlier she s actually not that young anymore having turned five in september holly is a rescue who had been bounced around a few times before coming to live with me at around a year of age she is one of those dogs who becomes easily overstimulated and gets worse with the use of adversives i started holly on stock almost immediately and saw both wonderful talent and an absolute devil in the making along with the many challenges she brought with her holly had nearly zero impulse control coupled with jaw dropping jumping ability and a strong and resourceful inner houdini more than once or twice or holly managed to get herself in with the sheep without supervision i d be alerted to the trouble by her high pitched excited barking that lets me know that while holly s body may be chasing sheep her brain is somewhere in outer space when in this state there s no getting her to listen world champion dog agility trainer susan garrett one of my key mentors calls this phenomenon being too aroused to respond or tar i believe susan coined this term to describe border collies frozen in a herding crouch starting at well whatever they re starting at but tar also describes the other end of the spectrum the one holly has so clearly demonstrated each and every time i have taken her to stock for the past four years i tried everything in my standard bag of herding tricks to get her under control i chased i blocked i hollered i made myself big i flapped things and cracked a lunge whips i put her on a line i cursed and threatened to never take her to sheep again i promised myself i d never take her to sheep again the only reason i kept trying over and over was that once holly got all that running and barking out of her system once she was tired and panting then she would show me brilliance her eyes and face would soften as she d slide out of tar and into something more comfortable for both of us and then she would be amazing talk about positive reinforcement for the trainer 20 minutes of frustration followed by 5 minutes of joy and i would be willing to do it all over again convinced that eventually the ratio would reverse itself except it never did until now so what changed i have or rather i ve changed my mindset now instead of me trying to control my dog i m helping holly learn to control herself while i could sometimes pull her out of tar through the use of aversives most of the time their application made her worse getting her to control herself however keeps her out of tar without me having to do anything we started away from stock with crate games and foundation agility training everything is taught as a game using shaping techniques and rewarding with toys or treats i wasn t even thinking about herding to be honest i had largely given up on it with holly and had turned to agility to see if i could find another outlet for her energy but she would need impulse control if i was ever going to trial her especially given her track record of trying to nip pant legs of fast passers by we worked on sits before going over a jump and stands before diving for a toy we did shadow handling with holly prancing in reinforcement zone or rz i e at my side and weaved figure eights around barrels and trees we played it s yer choice and le...