Petey learning to target with his paw

Right now I am working on having Petey learn to target with both his nose and his paw.
Here's video of my first session teaching Petey how to touch a post it note with his paw. He is getting very clicker saavy and new behaviors are only taking one or two sessions, a couple of minutes each to teach now.

"Alpha" and "Pack Leader" theory discarded by the man who invented the term "Alpha"

Thanks to TV (Cesar Millan of Dog Whisperer and Brad Pattison of End of My Leash fame) a lot of average people throw out the term "alpha" and "pack leader" and automatically assume a misbehaving dog is doing so because it thinks its dominant and the leader.

Both Cesar and Brad likely read Dr. L .David Mech's 1970 study about wolf packs where the term Alpha was first used.

Dr. Mech has gone on record numerous times to say his study was flawed and as he puts it - a lot of learning has happened since 1970 and the theories he put forth in 1970 don't actually hold true.

Of course, National Geographic and Slice would rather you not know that, since it discredits the misinformation that their two popular shows continue to propogate. For ratings its sometimes more convenient to continue telling people that the sun does revolve around the earth.

Bottom line is - dogs are not wolves. We don't learn to parent by watching chimps. And even if you want to believe a dog is like a wolf, wolves in the wild don't have alphas and don't fight for pack leadership and don't flip or pin their family down. Flipping and pinning, even if you're calm and assertive, has no place in dog obedience and training.

Karen Pryor Academy Workshop 1 with Steve Benjamin and Casey Lomonaco

Last weekend, Hyedie, Duke, Petey, and I drove down to Endicott, New York for Workshop 1 in the Karen Pryor Academy. What a great experience! The class is small (5 students in total) and it was basically 16 hours of non stop learning. The work we did leading up to the workshop put me on a great learning path of self discovery, and the workshop helped drive things home for me and answer questions there were lingering.

Petey performed "Yummo-o" (tongue lick on cue), "Go to Bed", "Get in a Box" and a new trick "Hup" (Jump over my bended knee) like a champ for the class!

Here's a video of my work on Get in a Box. I finished shaping the behavior with Petey actually downing in the box, so that all you can see is the tip of his tail sticking out (in the video I hadn't finished shaping that last step)



Lastly, Petey received some free training during breaks from Casey Lomonaco, a KPA certified training partner and also an avid blogger/writer on web sites I've noted such as Dog Star Daily or Clickertraining.com, and is also the winner of the 2009 Dogwise APDT John Fisher essay award. Her blog articles are extremely well written and introduce new ideas. Here's an example:

Shoddy Clicker Training and the Importance of Premack

(Worth another blog post on it's own, but she introduces the premack principal here - something I've done instinctively, thinking it was a way to celebrate and honor Duke's hunting history by allowing him to drag me through bushes to try to find rabbits).

Lure-Reward vs Shaping

I've been busy lately! In September I was accepted to the Karen Pryor Academy and I have been working very diligently on the program... I was going to work with Duke through the program, but I've decided to work with Petey instead, so that when we're finished, he'll have skills that will give him the biggest leg up he'll have in life.

Karen Pryor wrote the seminal "Don't Shoot the Dog!" back in the mid 80s and is basically the trainer who brought clicker training from the dolphin world to the dog world.

Prior to beginning the program I was strictly a lure-reward style positive reinforcement trainer. Karen Pryor's curriculum is all about Free Shaping or Capturing, which I've learned is very different than lure-reward, even though the tools are the same (reinforcers, event marker aka clicker, positive reinforcement etc.)

I'll blog more about my experience with Shaping and Capturing vs Lure-Reward, but for now... two videos of Petey!

Petey at class at Who's Walking Who - restrained recalls, musical mats, and leave it (food on the floor) game.



Free Shaping "Go to Bed"

Dr. Ian Dunbar and Dog Star Daily - Phasing out Food Rewards

Just another great site and Ph.D dog behaviorist extraodinaire to share with the readers: Dr. Ian Dunbar and his web site www.dogstardaily.com

http://www.dogstardaily.com/training/quantum-leaps

Chock full of great information - here is an article that talks about phasing out food rewards.

Excerpt: Quantum Leaps
You will make four quantum leaps in training as you phase out hand-held training lures, and eventually all training rewards. Phasing out food lures is a simple matter — just put them in your pocket to be used as rewards for above-average responses. Phasing out food rewards is similarly simple — just empty your pockets of food and use something else as a reward.

Some more Dr. Yin at AskDrYin.com

This video of Dr. Yin working with Podee, a fear aggressive dog is outstanding!!!!

Desensitizing your Dog to Paw and Tail Grabbing

I'm feeding Petey in the above video by hand. My goal is to accomplish the following:

1) Condition Petey to think of me more positively.
2) Condition Petey to think of my hands very positively (kibble's coming out of my hands)
3) Condition Petey to get used to his paws, legs, tail, and bum being touched and to make him feel better about it (as he gets to eat while I do it)

(Duke's in the background behind the babygate watching)