Category: Making mistakes in dog training
That One Leftover Negatively Reinforced Behavior
It took only four pieces of kibble to fix a problem I’ve had for about eight years.
Long ago, I sought to stop using body pressure to move my dogs around in space. This was a conscious and serious effort. For me, and for my dogs, using body pressure was not a benign endeavor. You can see two of my very early YouTube videos about it. Negative vs. Positive Reinforcement and Teaching a Dog to Back Up without Using Body Pressure.
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Clara’s Stand Disaster and Why She Still Hops
I considered titling this post “Eileen’s Stand Disaster,” but I thought that might be too confusing. Clara was the one standing, but the disaster part was definitely on me.
Thousands of people worldwide have used Susan’ Garrett’s fun method for teaching the stand and gotten fabulous results. I wasn’t one of them, but I blame myself, not the method.
The method is to have the dog in heel position in a sit, and to use a hand target above the dog’s head
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My Dogs Do Know Sit! A Hint for Training the Sit Stay
Turns out my dogs do know sit.
About two years ago, I wrote a post called, “My Dogs Don’t Know Sit!”. I described how my dogs couldn’t hold a sit stay when I stood still right in front of them. I analyzed the problem, and my conclusion was that part of the cue for them to stay was actually my walking away from them. This was probably because I added distance too soon when originally training the stay. I ended up with the perverse situation that my dogs would hold their stays if I walked around, jogged, dropped treats, or left the room, but not if I stood still. All three of them responded this way, so it was clear that I was the problem.
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Now Switch! Prompting the Dog to Change Feet When Scratching a Nail Board
I’ve been using a nail board (custom-made by Bob Rogers–thanks Bob and Marge!) with all three of my dogs for a few years now. I use it as an adjunct to trimming and Dremeling, and the dogs enjoy getting part of the kibble in exchange for scratching.
This isn’t a how-to post; it’s mostly another “Do as I say, not as I do,” post. In other words, I’m going to tell you about a mistake I made. Continue reading “Now Switch! Prompting the Dog to Change Feet When Scratching a Nail Board”