Fun with Dogs!

My twitter friend, Nancy, started a trick training challenge that has overtaken Twitter and been just a LOT of fun!

I started the challenge with Brit

But then I switched to Jellybean after my amazing two days with Susan Garrett at Advances In Dog Training

Honestly it was one of the top ten most incredible experiences of my life thus far!  I am not kidding.  Susan Garrett is truly that awesome and if you pass up the chance to see the Advances In Dog Training presentation, you will kick yourself.

I was incredibly gung ho to start shaping a behavior with Jellybean using the keys to shaping I learned on Tuesday and Wednesday.  My big plan was to create enough value in touching the lid of a big RubberMaid storage box with her hind paws that when I put the lid back on the box, Jellybean would be motivated enough to pick up the hind paw enough to still touch it.

I did my 30 second evaluation of that plan.  Obviously was not going to work.  Okay, I will shape Jellybean to touch a rear paw to the leather upper on a hiking boot so that when I set the boot upright she will attempt to kick it with a rear paw.  Thirty second evaluation.  Nope, not going to work.  I did another session with the Rubbermaid lid and then switched to a chair on its side.

The above video is clips from various sessions from yesterday with all those objects.  What you may or may not notice is some very serendipitous clicks where Jellybean happens to have a hind paw in the air as I click presumably - if *I* don’t even know what I was clicking for how could Jellybean know??? - for something else…it is always better to be lucky than good!!

What I am saying is that Jellybean figured out what I wanted completely in spite of me!

This video is from last week when I was working on shaping (and luring…sigh) Jellybean to put her front paws on a bucket and walk around the bucket on her hind paws.  Notice that I am getting some superstitious lifting of her right hind leg since I was heavily reinforcing ANY hind paw movement the day before.  I did not go back and work on the bucket thing before starting the Whiz challenge with Jellybean so I think that accidentally worked in our favor :-)