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PUPPY FUN AND FOCUS - WEEK 6
Enjoy the videos and explanations of week 6 and continue increasing the distraction levels slowly.
Poisoning the Cue
If we have poisoned a cue we have basically destroyed the strong reinforcement history that we originally created with our continuous reinforcement schedule and therefore our pups are less likely to perform the behaviour to the given cue. This can happen in different ways, one is certainly by punishing the dog for not performing the behaviour. The cue now no longer seems safe and therefore the pup doesn't have the automatic response to follow it anymore. The way of 'correcting' the fact that the pup didn't perform the behaviour should therefore be to take a step back and work with less expectations, less distractions or higher valued rewards in order to build up to this specific situation. Remember what you learned about dogs and their ability to generalise! Another way of poisoning the cue is by stopping the continuous reinforcement schedule too early or by not maintaining a high enough rate of reinforcement for the majority of the time. One way of doing this is by overusing cues. "Fluffy, Sit, Sit, Sit, Sit", "Fluffy, Come, Come, Here, Come".
Now, get ready to have your mind blown. ;) Once a cue has a strong reinforcement history you can use the cue to reinforce a previous behaviour in a chain. What does that mean? If I ask my dog to 'Sit' and once she has done well, I now ask her to 'Shake' I am using the 'Shake' cue to reinforce the 'Sit' cue. The more you work with chains the less you have to reward every single behaviour because the next cue is reinforcing enough. So long the cue is well-established positive.
DROP
Remember that we don’t want to ask our dogs twice to ‘Drop’ an item, but instead we want to make sure that we only name it if the behaviour is solid.
Over time, once your dog is reliably letting go of their toy as soon as they spot the second toy, we can move on to the following steps:
Say ‘Drop’,
bring the 2nd toy out in front of you, hold it there without waving it around,
as soon as dog lets go say ‘Yes’,
then offer the second toy and say ‘Get it’ and
play with the dog for a good 5-10 seconds as a reward.
If your dog did not let go as soon as they saw the second toy, you moved too quickly to this step. Go back to basics from Level 1 Class of just swapping the 2 toys.
If the above steps are going well, replace Step 2 with the following:
bring the 2nd toy out in front of you but not as far in front as previously), hold it there without waving it around,
If your dog is still reliably dropping and you have practised this a bunch of times, replace Step 2 with the following:
bring the 2nd toy out and hold it visibly by your side without waving it around,
If your dog is still reliably dropping and you have practised this a bunch of times, replace Step 2 with the following:
hold the 2nd toy behind your back,
If your dog is still reliably dropping and you have practised this a bunch of times, replace Step 1 and 2 with the following:
Place the 2nd toy on a furniture piece or wall behind your back, make sure your dog sees both your empty hands,
say ‘Drop’,
If your dog is still reliably dropping and you have practised this a bunch of times, you should now be able to replace Steps 1-4:
Place the 2nd toy on a furniture piece or wall behind your back, make sure your dog sees both your empty hands,
say ‘Drop’,
as soon as dog lets go say ‘Yes’,
then pick up the first toy from the ground and say ‘Get it’
If your dog is not respecting the toy as yours and tries to grab it before you say ‘Get it’, go back to the ‘Get it’ exercise of Week 4 and practise that part more thoroughly.
If all these steps are going well, you can now play with just 1 toy. Well done! :)
Looking forward to session 7! :)