When Pigs Fly_ Training Success With Impossible Dogs - Jane Killion [29]
Light a Fire With ICE
Capturing Your Dog’s Interest
Let’s call the things that have natural, pleasurable, meaning for your dog (like sniffing or chasing things) “hot” activities, and let’s call the things that have no meaning for your dog (like heeling or coming when called) “cold” activities. By using the hot activities as reinforcers for the cold activities, the enthusiasm your dog feels for the original hot activity will, over time, transfer to the cold activity. The previously meaningless activity will take on the aura and excitement of the hot activity.
Look at the focus and drive these Norwich Terriers have for digging.
In order to get your Pigs Fly dog as on fire to lie down on cue as he is to chase squirrels, give him some ICE!
1. Identify what your dog finds naturally motivating—his “hot” activities.
2. Control the hot activities so that your dog can only get them from you, and
3. Exchange the chance for your dog to do a hot activity in return for your dog performing a cold activity
Live Wires
Identify Your Dog’s Hot Reinforcers
The first step in making your dog excited to work with you is the “I” in ICE. Identify what your dog finds naturally motivating. Everything in dog training comes down to motivation, and motivation comes down to finding the reinforcer that your dog wants. The difficulty is, not all dogs want the same thing, and much of the things that a dog wants are distinctly incompatible with what you would like him to do. Isn’t running away to play with other dogs, sniffing, or scurrying off to perform surgery on a stuffed toy incompatible with heeling with rapt attention? It may seem like the fact that your dog wants to chase squirrels is at odds with your desire to teach your dog to walk on a loose leash, but I am going to show you how they can really be one and the same desire.
When someone says that their dog lacks motivation or drive, what they are really saying is that their dog lacks motivation or drive to do the things that she, the handler, wants them to do. All dogs have motivation and drive, you just have to identify it. The first thing you need to do, therefore, is make a list of the things that your dog loves and has drive to do. Include everything, even destructive or “bad” things and we will sort them out later. I am going to talk about breed tendencies that I have observed that may give you some hints on where to look for reinforcers for your dog, but every dog is different and you should make no assumptions about what any individual dog loves to do. I recommend making a list of ten things and then prioritizing them.
Here are sample lists of hot reinforcers for three breeds of dog. Observe the differences and similarities. What it is most important to keep in mind is that these are hot reinforcers, meaning that they are things that the dogs loved to do before they were trained or conditioned to do so. Lots of dogs love things like doing agility, playing retrieve games, or getting praise from their handlers, but very few were born loving those things. We need to know what our dogs’ hot reinforcers are because those are the things that we can use motivate them to do the things that we want them to do.
Cherry - Bull Terrier (A particularly un-biddable breed in the Terrier Group)
1. Ball (playing with it on her own)
2. Playing with other dogs
3. Attacking sprayed water
4. Chasing cats/deer/anything that moves
5. Food
6. Chasing handler
7. Being shoved and “roughed up” by handler
8. Swimming
9. Sniffing around
10. Affection/patting/praise from handler
Here is the anatomy of an un-biddable dog: predictably for a Terrier, much of what she finds extremely