Trick Challenge #1-March to the Music

Lahree said:
I am SO excited! This is day three working on this trick and Ellie had a 98% success rate!! She went into the down position twice :confused2: otherwise she would have been 100%. She easily understands alternating hands/paws (although she is a "righty").

How should she be at 100% before I start adding knees with hands ?
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Congratulations!
General rule is to change 1 criteria when you have 80% success.
 
I will stick with non- clicker training for now. Sally loves training,but still wants to remain seated- I have never trained stand,humm...any way we are enjoying this a lot, great idea ! I have also been training my boss' dog, Emma,while at work. She is a golden, about 1 1/2 years old, and really a sweetie.She is doing very well,almost marching really but I can only work with her for a minute or so. Her paws are so big compared to Sally's little petite paws. And she is taller, so when I have my hands on my knees they are right at her eye level and she can do this fairly easy.
 
Thanks! I think maybe what you're seeing is me asking for the correct paw to correct hand. So because Bentley is slightly more advanced, I want him to lift his right paw when I extend my left hand, and vice versa. So if he did it wrong, he didn't get a click/treat. But, if he got too frustrated, then I would scale the criteria back and click/treat for just any paw to hand touch/lift. Does that make sense? Should I not do that?
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I thought there might be a hand signal I wasn't seeing. I was having the same thing with Merlin, which you will see in the vid I will post later. I would work on reinforcing the correct paw to hand and then move forward again. If he is getting over frustrated, he probably is still a little unsure of the paw movement and things any paw lift should count. This is exactly what happened with Merlin, so I went back to just asking for a single paw to the correct hand (well foot in my case) and building up the association.

Lahree, sounds like Ellie could be moving on. The simple rule my trainer told me (just like what sheltieche said) is to get 5 correct actions in a row without errors before moving on. Just remember old errors will return as the behaviour is progressed.
 
labgirl said:
If he is getting over frustrated, he probably is still a little unsure of the paw movement and things any paw lift should count. This is exactly what happened with Merlin, so I went back to just asking for a single paw to the correct hand (well foot in my case) and building up the association.
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possibility of big iceberg here. Think what are you teaching the dog- "if it gets tough, I will stop working and mommy will fix it and return to easy stuff".
Not that I do not do it- guilty too. But the thought always have to be present- did I screw up my planning and moved too soon too fast with my criteria and dog is really unable to understand or am I training "mommy will help her baby if baby does not get it".
 
Last night Day 3 with Birch- not sure what was in the water last night but had a hard time getting him to focus. He was even having a hard time sitting and just watching me. Finally got him interested,did a little tugging and playing and that seemed to take the edge off him.

I got a few paw touches to the correct hands and then a few alternating hands. I think I might need to tighten my rewardable responses before moving on, as I was getting alot of other behaviors paw lift , jump up from sit, paw lift turn to side, etc. It wasn't frantic but I am not sure he actually understands the paw lift is the only thing I am looking. Towards the end however he was focusing a bit better and I was getting thoughtful paw touches to my palm. OK night of training but not great.
 
mine already knew right-paw-to-right-hand, left-paw-to-left-hand, right, left, etc... so i moved pretty quickly to using my feet instead. he actaully made the transition, which makes me really happy :smile2:

(i never could get him to go from hand signal to foot signal for [different trick] "crawl" so this was exciting for me.)

the only thing is, he does his right to my right and his left to my left, so ours will look a little different than everyone else's! :lol:
 
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Poor Koji. I think I hurt his brain last night. We worked on 3 different things and I think I will have to work on FOUR soon. lol.

So, I started out with right hand to right paw. After awhile, he seemed extremely frustrated, so I moved rooms and tried something else. Moving rooms helps him disassociate from what we were doing. I am now doing, right hand to left paw. I got him to do right, left, right, left, jackpot and left it at that.

Granted, like Ashley, I am getting majorly scratched up. Tonight is going to be working on not pawing me. lol.
 
Justicemom said:
Last night Day 3 with Birch- not sure what was in the water last night but had a hard time getting him to focus. He was even having a hard time sitting and just watching me. Finally got him interested,did a little tugging and playing and that seemed to take the edge off him.

I got a few paw touches to the correct hands and then a few alternating hands. I think I might need to tighten my rewardable responses before moving on, as I was getting alot of other behaviors paw lift , jump up from sit, paw lift turn to side, etc. It wasn't frantic but I am not sure he actually understands the paw lift is the only thing I am looking. Towards the end however he was focusing a bit better and I was getting thoughtful paw touches to my palm. OK night of training but not great.
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if I still have too much other movement besides raised paw even if dog in sit I would start thinking how can I increase response cost of other behaviors/ response cost is an effort dog has to make to produce behavior/.
For example I might try putting Birch on a soft pillow or fitness disk and ask for same paw raising. Need to keep balance might get all other fidgeting behaviors down. For the sessions what I am learning to do and it is very important to start session with tug or running/ anything that increases heart rate/ , keep sessions very short and lots of breaks with running and tugging again like about every 30 seconds. I find I really need timer because I love training with monkeys so I need to stop myself. Either that or setting aside like 5 treats and once they done, time for run/ fun/ break/tug.
 
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