| Subject: competitve heeling part b |
Author:
dominicr
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Date Posted: 19:52:24 06/24/07 Sun
Section: B
In the drive phase, once we have taught attention and then established the mandatory nature of attention, we increase the power of our reward, moving from food to a jute roll as a reward. Since I began in Schutzhund I used a jute to reward my competition dogs. However, it was not until Imet my friend Rich Pastucka of Holzland Kennels (trainer of Uras vom Haus Anja SchH 3, worldteam member), that I learned how a jute can be used to achieve unbelievable results. I have never seen anyone work a dog in obedience with faster hands, better timing, or more remarkable technique than Rich. Why a jute roll? It complements our protection phase for obvious reasons, but also, it keeps the focus on the handler. The reward is not thrown away from the handler, like with a ball, and thedog is taught to focus and drive into the handler for his reward. It allows us to reward, and keep the continuity of the exercise. We can also build frustration by making the dog miss the bite on the reward, ultimately giving it when the dog is most highly driven and attentive. Once given, the reward and the dog stay in the vicinity of the handler. There will be more about the drive phase in the next installment.
The Attention Phase: Food training gets a bad rap sometimes, mostly because people who give it a bad rap don’t know how to do it properly. If food is used as bait, i.e. it is always visible in hand or in a pouch, the dog comes to associate the presence of the food with his work, and in the absence of the food, it may show less drive and enthusiasm, this is simple conditioning. Food must be switched from bait to a reward system as quickly as learning permits. Teaching the dog he must perform first, and trust us that he will be rewarded, regardless of whether he perceives an imminent piece of food. And further, rewards must be moved to a variable schedule as soon as learning permits. At this point I like to teach the dog to catch the food from my mouth, this is not necessary, but makes the dog focus up to your face and not look at your hands all the time, ultimately our goal isto have the dog looking up at us. Catching is facilitated if you toss it up in the air in front of him first a few times to teach him to time his eye-mouth coordination. Then put him in the front position, and drop pieces to him, right over his mouth. Do not let him go to the ground ever, ever,not once to get a dropped piece. Keep your leash short, and make him try harder to time the catch, not take the easy way out. I will assume he can catch food dropped from your mouth to his as we proceed from this point. This takes time to master, but keep at it. Now, let’s define our training procedures in terms of goals for this phase of the heeling training.
Goal #1: Attention while standing still: “watch means: look up at me.”If your dog cannot pay attention to you while standing perfectly still, he will not be able to do it when you are moving in a consistent way. Now, when I say attention, I mean looking up at you until you release him. Attention has a beginning and an end: command/release. I teach my dog an attention command, like “watch” or “look” separate from “Fuss” at this point. I want a command that means look at me, separate from the heel command. Why? Sometimes I want to be able to ask my dog to look at my face without him being in heel position to do it. I will later chain the “fuss-watch me” commands together so that “fuss” will mean he must be watching my face, but this will come later. We begin with the dog in heel position. Always start in perfect heel position, make the dog know from the beginning that we want it all a certain way. Straight in position. Command “watch” and take a piece of food from your mouth with your hand and take it down to his nose, let him nibble on it, and then draw it back on a line from his nose to your mouth. Then repeat again, back to his nose, very slowly, as he watches the food, and let him nibble on the piece, then draw it up to your mouth again. If at any time he loses focus, wave the food under his nose and draw his attention back to your face. As soon as he re-focuses on your face, take the food on a line from your face to his nose and let him nibble it and release him, with an “ok” or “free” release command. This is done in a non-distracting teaching environment so you set the dog up for success right from the start.If he tries to jump at the food, use the sit command to keep him in place or use your leash to keep him in the sit at your side. He should know what sit means before you attempt to heel with him. After a few sessions, try dropping the food reward from your mouth to him. Since you already taught him to catch this transition should be easy. Get away from using your hand to bait him asquickly as possible. This is the transition to reward from baiting I discussed earlier. Vary the frequency of the rewards, in other words don’t time the drops every 10 seconds, vary it to keep the dog’s interest high. Make multiple drops in a row sometimes. Critical: If at any time he lose seye lock with your face, draw his attention back to your lips, by making some lip smacking noises,or using your hand to pull out a piece and wave it in front of his nose and back to your face. Avoid using your hand if you can to keep the focus off your hands. As soon as he looks back to your face, drop the reward to him, and release him, move him out of heel position, as you pat and fuss over him. There are no corrections given yet. When, in this low distraction environment, he keeps focus on you consistently, and you only have to reorient his attention infrequently, you are ready to move on to the next step.
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