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Brain Exercises



Doing some more weird stuff in my spare time. I'm trying to teach Pierre fun things and to challenge both of our minds to figure out how to communicate better. This ding-a-ling is a smart guy and he's very food-motivated. Excuse the terrible video - I'm trying to take more videos of our training practice so I can see the awkward gestures I'm doing and figure out what's working and what isn't.

Things he's working on (though not necessarily in this video):

- Solidifying his "sit pretty"; we're practicing it regularly so he eventually can start balancing on his own.

- knowing what it means when I ask for a "stand". He had it for a little bit but we let it slide by accident, so we're trying to get to the point where I can give him a random order of, "stand" "sit" and "down" without his brain exploding.

- "Down" and "sit" from farther away. Right now, if he's in a sit or if he's walking around and I ask for a "down", he'll come closer to me and flail into a lie down. Which is nice, but not the finished product I want.

- Duration on his stay. We use the command, "don't move" instead, because his release cue is, "okay" and I didn't want it to be easily confused.

- "On your spot" from a farther distance from his dog bed. It's coming along. 

Things I'm working on:

- not relying on food rewards. I'm doing my best to only give him food rewards for sequences of already known behaviours and then only for new(er) tricks. I also trying to regularly get him to do tricks for toy-play rewards, but I've noticed that I can't switch from food to the rope while we're training, has to be only one or the other or he's disappointed by his toys, which makes sense.

- Practicing in distracting environments. We haven't been dedicating specific times to practicing outside but I'll ask him to do a couple of things here and there. It's something I need to make more of a conscious effort to do.

- Being mindful of what I reinforce. I let him get away with giving me all of the front paws for "high five" for a little bit and it's made him confused about the whole concept of a high five. Nobody wants a high ten, Pierre. Nobody is that stoked about life. Anyway, now I'm stuck re-solidifying his high fives because of that mistake.






Comments

  1. Anonymous13 December 2016 at 14:03

    Omg his lil tail <3 he is so excited to be doing these!!

    ReplyDelete

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