When Pigs Fly_ Training Success With Impossible Dogs - Jane Killion [45]
SAFETY:
Shape it
Add a cue
Frequent but short sessions
Energize your dog’s behaviors with hot reinforcers
Take it on the road very gradually
Yield on your requirements when you change something
Let’s review the steps we will take to teach each behavior.
Shape it. Shape the behavior as you learned in Chapter Four. Begin in a neutral environment, like your kitchen or living room, whenever possible without resorting to luring or prompting. Use small approximations as you learned to do in your free shaping sessions. To review:
1. Break the behavior down into small approximations.
2. Reinforce the first approximation until your dog is offering it again and again.
3. Once your dog clearly offers the first approximation and you have reinforced it several times, stop clicking it.
4. Watch carefully for the “improvement” that your dog will offer on that behavior, and click that. Many dogs will get a little frenzied at this stage and start throwing out all kinds of behaviors. Stay alert and be ready to click the behavior you are looking for when it comes along!
If your dog does not offer improvements, or walks away and stops working, you probably tried to raise the bar too quickly. For shaping to work, each approximation needs to be solid in your dog’s mind before you move on to the next step. Sometimes you may only need to reinforce an approximation two times for your dog to “have it,” and sometimes you may need to reinforce it dozens of times. It depends on the dog and the behavior your are trying to teach.
Add a cue. When you would bet $100 that your dog is about to do the behavior you have just shaped, add a cue. At first you add the cue as the dog is doing the behavior, not before. Why is that? It seems more efficient to add the cue before you get the behavior, but it is not. Let’s say you are trying to teach your dog to sit by luring your hand over their head with food. It is natural and realistic to expect that your dog will not get it “right” the first few times. You raise your hand over your dogs head and say “sit” and your dog does nothing. The next time you raise your hand and say “sit” he takes a step sideways. You raise your hand over your dog’s head again, you say “sit” again and he jumps up at your hand. What does “sit” mean to your dog, now? Let’s see. Your dog has paired the word “sit” with: 1) no response; 2) stepping sideways; and 3) jumping up at your hand. If he ascribes any meaning to the word “sit” at all, it will be one of those three behaviors. Even if you succeed on the fourth try and actually get him to sit, the command “sit” is a now a multiple choice question. It will take many, many correct repetitions to counteract the “incorrect” responses. On the other hand, if you waited until you were sure that your dog was already in the process of sitting, and then added the cue, “sit” would only ever mean “sit,” and it would take far fewer repetitions to get the behavior on cue. That is much easier for everyone involved. Gradually, you can start saying “sit” before your dog sits, and a cue is born.
It usually does not make any difference what word you use to cue any particular behavior. What is important is that you say whatever cue you use in the same exact way each time. Dogs do not speak English. Even when we manage to form an association in their minds between a spoken word and a behavior or consequence, they still don’t speak English. They are responding to a particular sound, not a particular word. When you are coming up with your cues for behaviors, think of them as a musical notes that you will want to consistently sing the same way each time.
Frequent but short sessions. Your sessions should always be very short—no more than a few minutes at a time, and as frequent as is practical. Contrary to what you might think, lengthy formal training sessions are not generally advisable for a Pigs Fly dog. Studies have been done that show that more learning takes place in several short sessions than one long session, even where the long session is considerably longer