CLICKER TRAINING THE STACK
Clicker training is a wonderful thing,
it's precision and positive reinforcement principles
means you can teach dogs the most amazing things.
However, if you, like me are a little inexperienced with this training form
- you may experience some unintentional effects.
Clicker training has helped us teach Nemi to
come like a rocket when called,
to stand still while being groomed (even while we shave her face!) - and actually think being shaved is quite nice,
to walk nicely on a lead,
to sit (though not on wet grass or any other cold or wet surfaces!),
to wave (still needs a bit of work though)
Lately we have been working on "stand", or rather a "self stack" as they call it in show terms. This means that I want her to stand nicely on her own in the show ring. The key word here being nicely. This complicated matters a bit. Teaching her just to stand was done in a jiffy. However, for Nemi standing seemed to mean placing hind legs as close to each other as possible. Ditto with the front legs. This had a very interesting effect - she would sway. In fact, she would look rather ill, as she coupled the feet positioning with an arched back and ears flattened to the head. And a breath of wind on a couple of occasions caused her to topple over. One would be forgiven for thinking she had fainted. I can just imagine the look on the judges face if one of the puppies in the ring swayed, then fell over! The challege was not to teach her to stand - but to stand with her hind feet well apart, front legs parallell, and ears erect. The fantastic thing about the clicker is that you can shape a behaviour, gradually building up to the intended, final result. In this case, we've been focusing on one aspect at at time, and then combine them (also called chaining). Now, after a few weeks of training, she stand (at least 90%) of the time with her hind legs well apart, ears erect, and back straight. I haven't seen her sway in a couple of weeks. We are having some difficulty with the next stage though. I want her to move her front feet, while her back feet stay put. This to make her strech her hind legs a bit, as well as positioning her front feet properly. I also want her to shift her balance forward to her front feet, streching her neck. If we achieved this, we would have a perfect stack - which she could do all on her own, on command. Seeing that she often stood perfectly when she came to a halt after running like a madman, I tried taking a shortcut. I clicked when she stopped. She quickly caught on, racing as fast as she could, then screeching to a halt, turning towards me to see if there would be a click. However, what I failed to consider, is a dog's knack for taking things very literaly. It seems Nemi now thinks that running is part of the behaviour that's required - so she insists on sprinting a hundred meters or so before she does the standing. Needless to say, this would not be very practical in a show ring! At least I can comfort myself with the knowledge that this is a relatively easy thing to rectify. I heard of someone who taught his dog to eat cat poop from the litter box - actually trying to teach the dog not to! Apparently he promptly gave up clicker training after this initail failure. I on the other hand - am going back a few steps in our training. It seems cheating is never a good thing.
to stand still while being groomed (even while we shave her face!) - and actually think being shaved is quite nice,
to walk nicely on a lead,
to sit (though not on wet grass or any other cold or wet surfaces!),
to wave (still needs a bit of work though)
Lately we have been working on "stand", or rather a "self stack" as they call it in show terms. This means that I want her to stand nicely on her own in the show ring. The key word here being nicely. This complicated matters a bit. Teaching her just to stand was done in a jiffy. However, for Nemi standing seemed to mean placing hind legs as close to each other as possible. Ditto with the front legs. This had a very interesting effect - she would sway. In fact, she would look rather ill, as she coupled the feet positioning with an arched back and ears flattened to the head. And a breath of wind on a couple of occasions caused her to topple over. One would be forgiven for thinking she had fainted. I can just imagine the look on the judges face if one of the puppies in the ring swayed, then fell over! The challege was not to teach her to stand - but to stand with her hind feet well apart, front legs parallell, and ears erect. The fantastic thing about the clicker is that you can shape a behaviour, gradually building up to the intended, final result. In this case, we've been focusing on one aspect at at time, and then combine them (also called chaining). Now, after a few weeks of training, she stand (at least 90%) of the time with her hind legs well apart, ears erect, and back straight. I haven't seen her sway in a couple of weeks. We are having some difficulty with the next stage though. I want her to move her front feet, while her back feet stay put. This to make her strech her hind legs a bit, as well as positioning her front feet properly. I also want her to shift her balance forward to her front feet, streching her neck. If we achieved this, we would have a perfect stack - which she could do all on her own, on command. Seeing that she often stood perfectly when she came to a halt after running like a madman, I tried taking a shortcut. I clicked when she stopped. She quickly caught on, racing as fast as she could, then screeching to a halt, turning towards me to see if there would be a click. However, what I failed to consider, is a dog's knack for taking things very literaly. It seems Nemi now thinks that running is part of the behaviour that's required - so she insists on sprinting a hundred meters or so before she does the standing. Needless to say, this would not be very practical in a show ring! At least I can comfort myself with the knowledge that this is a relatively easy thing to rectify. I heard of someone who taught his dog to eat cat poop from the litter box - actually trying to teach the dog not to! Apparently he promptly gave up clicker training after this initail failure. I on the other hand - am going back a few steps in our training. It seems cheating is never a good thing.
