When Pigs Fly_ Training Success With Impossible Dogs - Jane Killion [20]
Since you have been playing the free shaping game with the box already, you have a pretty good idea of what behaviors your dog is likely to offer, and I recommend you start with one of those behaviors. Don’t, for instance, try to shape your tightly-wrapped terrier to lie down in the box at first. Most terriers prefer to be on their feet, especially during the excitement of a training session. Similarly, don’t think you are going open up with shaping your shy little Italian Greyhound to pick up the box in his mouth. On the other hand, if you happen to have a dog of the retriever family, picking the box up in his mouth would be a comfortable behavior to start with. Dogs in general seem to believe that their body ends at their shoulders, so any behavior that involves a hind leg will be a hard trick to start with. Think about your dog’s nature and what you have observed in your free shaping sessions, and then try to make your first attempt at shaping a behavior a positive and successful one for you and your dog.
Have a seat in a nice armchair with your clicker in your hand and a bowl of treats next to you. Pour yourself a glass of wine for your other hand. Put your feet up, say the magic words, “What can you do?” and get ready to click. You are going to build the behavior you have selected by approximations. As we discussed earlier, rather than waiting to see the entire behavior and then clicking, you are going to break down the behavior into the tiniest steps possible and reward each of those. Slice up the behavior as if you were viewing a frame-by-frame motion picture of the behavior. For instance, let’s say that you chose to shape your dog to put his front feet in the box and your set up looks like this:
What is the tiniest approximation of the behavior of the dog putting his front feet in the box? The dog is probably standing there staring at you. The behavior of “put your front feet in the box” is really “turn away from me, take two steps away from me in the direction of the box, lift your foot near the box, lower your foot into the box.” So, the very first thing that the dog needs to do is to turn his head away from you—not necessarily a big turn, just an ear flick and eye roll in that direction is enough. Click and treat the eye roll and ear flick. Do that a few times until your dog is quite obviously offering it several times in a row. Now, hold out and do not click when he offers the eye roll and ear flick. Wait for a tiny bit more. Now you want some actual turning of the head. You are not looking for a big swivel of the head, but some slight movement.
Piggy Pointer
When you throw the treat in the box after the click, you are using an important training tool—click for the behavior and treat for position. For instance, if you want your dog to sit, you should click as his butt is hitting the ground, and then feed him at nose level so he remains seated. If you always feed him in such a way that he pops up to get the treat, he will begin to anticipate the treat and pop up right after his rear hits the ground. You will have trained a bouncing dog instead of a sit. By feeding in a sit position, we are reaffirming to the dog that the “sit” is the behavior that pays.
This game works because dogs learn very quickly what gets them treats. If a head turn gets them treats, they remember that and offer it. If the head turn has been reinforced enough times they will keep offering that head turn, even if you stop reinforcing it. Dogs are hopeful creatures, and, when they figure out that the head turn does not get them treats anymore, they will start offering “improvements” on the head turn, like a head turn with foot movements. Your job is to catch those improvements and click them. The term we use for what you are doing is raising the criteria.
Pig-tionary
Raising Criteria: When we ask for “something more” in a behavior, we say we are “raising the criteria.” So, as we approximate the head turn, the eyeball roll might be the first approximation that we reward, and then we raise the criteria to a slight head turn.