101 Things to do With a Box

The purpose of this game is to get your dog thinking and trying new things. Use free-shaping to reward any interaction with the box and build from there.  There are no wrong answers.  The goal is for your dog to have the experience of being creative, and getting rewarded for it.  "101 Things to do With a Box" is a great confidence building opportunity.

Start off clicking looking at the box, then move on to touching the box, etc. Click the same behavior a few times till your dog understands what he's getting clicked for. You know your dog understands when he immediately does the same thing he did before and expects that click afterwards.

Once your dog understands that, for instance, touching the box with his paw is earning the click, then delay the click for a stronger behavior, such as pawing two times or knocking the box over. Get as creative as you want with this, with a large enough box you could teach your dog to sit, stand or lay down inside of it.

You can also use other objects, as long as they are safe for the dog.  This exercise might lead to some cute trick idea.  I played this game with Lucy, my nearly blind dog.  We used an empty shampoo bottle (plastic) instead of the box.  Lucy learned to knock over the bottles and I put it on the cue "bang bang". 

Then after making a cardboard "fence" for the front of a box, we had our Annie Oakley trick.  I dressed in a cowgirl outfit, complete with holster and pistol.  I set up our fence and put several small plastic bottles along the top.  We had a skit where I'd pretend to shoot the bottle targets and each time I said "bang bang", Lucy ran out and knocked one of them off.  Sometimes she'd miss or not hit hard enough, so I'd missed the target.  Mostly she hit them.  Sometimes it took awhile for her to decide which one to knock off - that bullet took the scenic route.  And then there were the times it ricocheted off the wall and knocked a second bottle off the fence.  No matter how it went, it was always funny and generated a lot of laughter. 

Gimme here:  I've told you before how much I love free shaping.  I'm very clever so I come up with lots of very creative ideas.  My person made a cardboard cube with spotted paper and she wanted me to roll it across the floor with my nose.  We eventually got there, but not before I showed her my own clever ideas.  I showed her I could:

• ski across the carpet with both front feet on it
• pounce on it with both front feet
• stand on it with both front feet
• bat it across the room with my foot
• put both feet on it and do a forehand pivot
• step on with one back foot
• try to step on it with both back feet
• kick it with a back foot
• dig at it with my front feet
• roll on my back and flip it into the air like a ball of yarn (like a kitty, only much cuter)
• stand over it and spin around it with no feet on it
• roll on my back and hug it with both front feet

Targeting to Get Behaviors

Targeting works well to get your dog to move somewhere away from you or when a behavior involves a specific place. Your dog can be taught to target a margarine lid, target stick, your hand, his leash or his bed (or anything for that matter).

Targeting is often a component of other methods to get the behavior (and vice versa) and in a sense is what is happening (hand targeting) when you move away from food luring. Keep in mind that transitioning the human to a standing/upright position can be difficult with some lured behaviors, so using a target stick can be helpful. Almost any trick taught by luring can be taught by targeting – once you create a target fiend in your dog.

Gimme here:  My person and I invented something special using targeting and then free shaping.  I have a piece of wood that I learned to target with my front feet.  Then my person used my favorite free shaping to teach me to spin in a circle while keeping my feet on the wood target.  She calls it a forehand pivot.  I'm very good at it and people say I have a sophisticated awareness of my back feet.  That may be true, but I just like doing it because its fun.

Anti-target is teaching the dog to move away (or move a body part away) from the anti-target end of the target stick and gives you a whole range of movements you can teach your dog.  Its especially useful for freestyle and many tricks.  The anti-target end is usually painted a different color (white) than the target end (blue or yellow).  [note: these colors are easiest for dogs of all breeds to see.]

I start by teaching each of the targeting base behaviors so I have them in place when I need one.  You will notice right away that some dogs are nose dogs and some are paw dogs.  That means they prefer to touch with either their nose or foot.  It is a useful exercise to make sure your dog has both nose touch and foot touch behaviors among his targeting basics.  For instance: foot touch a margarine lid, nose touch a target stick, nose touch your hand, nose touch his leash, foot and then bumm touch to his bed.

Your dog can target and follow your hand (medium to large dogs) or a target stick (smaller dogs) to learn to walk alongside you. You can teach your dog to rest his head in your hand during a veterinary exam (starts as a luring exercise). Targeting, or going to lay on his bed, is a good behavior to teach in place of rude door behavior or begging during dinner.  You may want to keep the target as part of the behavior, so plan ahead.  You may need to take that bed with you when you travel (or you could teach the same behavior to different bedding that you indicate by a cue).  Usually you will need to fade the target during moving behaviors.

To teach your dog to nose target your hand or target stick, click/treat every time your dog turns to look at your outstretched hand or the target stick. Then gradually increase the behavior until he follows your hand or the target stick.

When you start working on the dog walking alongside you, first your hand will be at nose level, then you will fade your target hand to a position near your waist as if you were holding the leash.  In the case of a target stick you fade it by sliding it up your arm so that less and less of the stick is visible in your hand.  If you use a target stick a lot, it can be helpful to make several in different lengths (36", 24" and 12" are helpful sizes).  Make sure your target stick has a rounded end so your dog isn't put off by nose touching an abrupt edge.

For the bed example, you might click/treat every time your dog turns to look toward the bed. Then gradually increase the behavior until he goes to and lays down on the bed.  Did you notice the free-shaping element there?  Be sure to use small increments as you shape to the end behavior. In the end you must decide what cues to use. You can put it on that verbal cue "go to bed", as well as teaching that the sound of the doorbell is the cue to go to bed.

Plan ahead to decide what cue you want to end up with, so that you are taking a direct route fading-wise and don’t create more work for yourself and your dog.

Teaching Anti-target

Teach your dog the anti-target concept in advance as another targeting basic.  First teach your dog that touching the anti-target end does not "count" as a clickable behavior. Hold the stick parallel to the ground by the middle with both the target and anti-target ends available. The dog must target the correct end to get a click/treat.  Then holding the stick by the target end (blue or yellow bulb) gently touch your dog in the flank area and click for any movement away. This is a gentle tickle – not a poke in the side.

If your dog attempts to target the anti-target end, you have multiple options:

• lift the stick away and use a shorter leash to control the head while reaching around to tickle the side
• repeatedly allow the dog to touch the target end without reward and wait for the unrewarded behavior to extinguish
• go back and repeat the exercise that teaches the dog to target only the bulb end of the stick

Teach the dog with gentle touches to the front feet to move the feet away at the approach of the anti-target end. Add touches to other body parts, always click/treating when the dog moves away.  From time to time, go back to targeting the target end to make sure the dog doesn’t lose that behavior and to solidify the difference in the two ends.

Target a Trick
I recommend using targeting to teach your dog a trick.  That is a good way to practice a training method so you can relax and enjoy the process, before you use targeting for something important.  Remember, "important" is a human point of view; its all tricks to your dog.  Speaking of tricks, here's a list of possible tricks for targeting:

spin
around you
over or under an obstacle
onto an obstacle
weave under the legs - stationary
weave through legs walking
low crawl (butt stays down)
high crawl (butt up like bow)
ballerina (stand up)
sit up and beg
left and right
chin in your hands – a freestyle ending

Here's a list of possible tricks for anti-targeting:

side passes in front of you
side passes beside you and with you
side passes beside you and away
pivot on forehand
pivot on hindquarters
backing up
move straight toward you while you back up
backwards (pivoting) leg weaves
trot in place

Remember:  You are limited only by your own creativity.

Free Shaping to Get Behaviors

Free shaping is almost an advanced form of "capturing" and works well for behaviors the dog does not offer or do naturally as a complete behavior. It develops your dog's creativity and confidence and makes learning into a cool game for the dog.  It also develops very sophisticated body awareness. The drawback is that it requires more patience on the part of the trainer. Also, some crossover dogs (dogs that were initially trained by compulsion methods) may not offer behaviors or may be slow to learn to initiate during the training process.

Gimme here:  I especially love free shaping.  I'm very clever and its a fun game to figure out what my person wants.  She recently taught me 5 different tricks this way.  I can step backwards putting my back feet into a box, get up on a plastic tub and sit, lay on my back with my feet in the air, put my head under a chair, and push a cube across the floor with my nose.  My person says we are going to work these tricks through all six stages of learning and then I'll be even smarter than I am now.  I'm really smart already, so I'll be awesomely brilliant after we are done.  I'm just saying.

You start by clicking/treating the barest hint of the behavior you want to end up with, and then concentrate on taking small steps closer to your goal.  I find it helpful to imagine the whole form as a video tape and then watching the tape frame-by-frame. Each frame of the video tape represents one possible increment of the shaping process.

For example, you might free shape a left spin.  The process could be to click/treat when:

          ·  your dog just looks to the left
          ·  when he turns his head to the left
          ·  when he turns his head further left
          ·  when he turns it far enough to shift his weight leftward
          ·  when he turns enough to take a step to the left
          ·  a head turn and two steps
          ·  a head turn and three steps
          ·  gradually a turn in a complete circle
          ·  two circles
          ·  faster circles

Years ago I taught my nearly blind dog Lucy to ride her skateboard.  Because of her visual handicap, if she was going to be comfortable doing this trick, I had to be very careful.  It turned out to be a useful exercise to teach me to increment the process in fine detail.   Here is the process I used.

Because I wanted her to be very confident of the skateboard in preparation for its later movement, I first started with a board on the ground (without wheels). I clicked/treated for the following steps (for a dog less confident in offering, I would have used even smaller steps):

          ·  looking toward the board
          ·  stepping toward the board
          ·  nose touch or sniffing the board (since I eventually wanted her 
              feet on the board I didn’t accept too many of these nose bops,
              just enough to confirm for her that the board was in fact the deal)
          ·  stepping around and over the board
          ·  accidentally stepping on the board
          ·  pawing at the board
          ·  standing on the board with one foot
          ·  standing on the board with both feet (in hindsight, when the board
              was up on wheels it was wobbly when she stepped on either end,
              so I wished I’d shaped standing in a specific place on the board)

Once the wheels were added the free shaping continues to encourage standing on a board that is no longer flat on the ground and I’d be prepared to "start over" if need be. I set the board up on bricks so it wouldn’t move under her feet. I clicked and treated as follows:

          ·  looking toward the board
          ·  stepping over the board
          ·  pawing at the board
          ·  standing on the board with one foot
          ·  standing on the board with both feet – to encourage her to stay
              on, I stayed nearby & quickly delivered treats while her feet
              were still on it

To get started with the board moving, I wrapped lots of rags around the wheels (held in place with rubber bands) so that it would only move a tiny bit. I clicked and treated as needed to get her back to confidently standing on the board. Then the steps were:

          ·  standing on the board for longer periods of time
          ·  pushing the board with her feet and hopping off – initially I clicked
              even if she hopped off when it moved so she didn’t feel pressured
              to do something that was uncomfortable, then upped the ante
          ·  pushing on the board and staying with both feet on as it moves

The next step was to free shape her interaction until she put her two front feet on the board and pushed it across the room without getting off. To get her confidently to that sort of control, I set up the training to increment movement is small bites that weren’t scary. The plan was:

          ·  to do the skateboard on a lumpy comforter that didn’t let it move
              much or too quickly
          ·  skateboard on carpet between rolled towels that formed wheel
              chocks so it only moved six inches, then eight inches, then one
              foot, two feet, several feet, across the room
          ·  skateboard on towels over linoleum – again between rolled towels
              that formed wheel chocks to restrict forward movement
          ·  then skateboard on plain linoleum with rolled towel chocks

The critical part of this learning process is that the increments be so fine that the dog gets LOTS of reinforcement and has plenty of motivation to stay in the game. In the case of the skateboard, or anything that has the potential to be scary... it is crucial to set things up so that the steps are so small that you never risk frightening the dog.

Although this sounds like a really involved process, it goes much faster than you might think. Lucy, a very savvy free shaping dog, got through all the board flat on the floor part of the process in one 8 minute session. The next session the wheels were added and we had two 6 minute sessions with rags around the wheels – partly because of trying to get her to get to the center of the board for less wobbly riding. Then one session for each of the remaining four steps.  So just 7 short session and this with a visually handicapped dog.

Although I wrote this out for your benefit, I usually don’t do that much pre-planning for most of my free shaping sessions, although I have a mental picture of how I expect the process to go. As a training exercise for yourself, you could write out a plan for a trick and see how close reality follows your plan.

The other part of free shaping that is important is to consider those times when using bits and pieces of other ways to get the behavior might be useful. For instance, since I initially let Lucy step anywhere on the board, to help her get the idea of stepping on the middle of the board, I used a yellow post-it note to attract her attention.  In hindsight (or if I hit a snag in her skateboard training and decided to back up) it could have been a valuable approach to teach her to target a post-it note on the floor, then move it to the board. Never be afraid to experiment or combine methods.  In reality most training is some combination of the five methods anyway.

Remember, if marine mammal specialists can free shape a multi-ton walrus (with the capability of easily maiming or killing its handlers) to present its flipper through safety bars for a blood draws, then you can free shape just about anything your dog is physically capable of doing.

Because the trick possibilities with free shaping are practically limitless, I'm not giving you a list of trick ideas. Keep it fun, keep it safe...

Remember: You are limited only by your own creativity.

Luring to Get Behaviors

Luring is great for getting the dog to move or assume a position, such as luring into a sit or down, or luring them to walk alongside you.

The drawback to luring is that it is easy to get stuck with luring so that the dog only does the behavior when you have food held in front of their nose or in your hand. Sometimes dogs don't learn what we are trying to teach, for instance instead of learning to walk alongside you the dog learns to follow your fingers. You may not realize this until you test the learning when trying to walk your dog while carrying a bag of groceries.

Gimme here:  When I was a very young puppy, my person used food on the end of my nose to help me find my way over the dogwalk in our front yard.  She was careful to start out very low so I didn't get scared.  Before long I was running alongside my person over the dogwalk.  She's been making it taller and I still have a lot of fun with it.  She always gives me treats for running over it.  Sometimes when she is mowing the lawn I try to get her attention so she will see when I run over my dogwalk.  Sometimes I get treats and sometimes she tosses a stick for me.  I love my dogwalk.

Try to think of "Lure a little", so that you only lure with food in your hand a few times (five times maximum). To lure a behavior, hold a treat in front of your dog's nose and without letting him eat it, use it as a "nose magnet," since she'll probably follow it everywhere. After that lure with an empty hand (still smelly from holding the previous treat).  I deliver a treat to the luring hand from the other hand and then use the luring hand to deliver the treat to my dog (this way the luring hand stays in front of the dog the whole time).  After doing it that way about five times, then I start using the luring hand to get the treat out of my treat bag and deliver it to the dog.  Initially you might have to meet the luring hand halfway with the other hand until the dog understands that she still needs to stay there and wait for the treat to come to her.  Then you will need to "fade" your luring hand (make it less obvious until it isn't needed) in a gradual process, until it is simply a hand signal.

You can lure a sit by slowly moving the treat from the nose back towards the top of the head. Keep it low, so the dog doesn't jump up. As soon as he sits, click and treat. If the dog is trying everything but sitting, at first click/treat for lowering back legs and butt. Then see if you can gradually shape for a full sit.  Be sure not to lure too fast so that you lose the dog.  Be careful to fade the luring gradually so that it becomes the hand signal for your dog’s trick.

You can lure the dog to walk alongside you and gradually fade your hand up out of nose range and closer to your waist as if holding a leash.

Lure a Trick
I recommend luring a trick for your dog.  That is a good way to practice a training method so you can relax and enjoy the process, before you use luring for something important.  Remember, "important" is a human point of view; its all tricks to your dog.  Speaking of tricks, here's a list of possible tricks to lure:

spin
around you
over or under an obstacle
onto an obstacle
weave under the legs - stationary
weave through legs walking
zig-zag dance (turn away)
low crawl (butt stays down)
high crawl (butt up like bow)
ballerina (stand up)
sit up and beg
keep away... (a great heeling game, just try to get away from your dog once s/he knows the game)
dig on the floor (food under tape)
roll-over
dead bug (on back feet in air)
cha-cha (dog walks behind you with feet on your bum or back)
left and right
zoob-zoob-zoom

Remember: You are limited only by your own creativity.

Capturing to Get Behaviors

Use capturing for behaviors that your dog already does in a more or less complete form. Such as: sit, sit up and beg and down. Each dog has its own repertoire of things it does frequently. Capturing is not effective for teaching the dog to do something that he is unlikely to do naturally.

Capturing can be used in conjunction with classical conditioning to put some behaviors on cue that you might not normally think of - such as pottying.  Its very handy when traveling or during bad weather.  You can do it just like Pavlov did when he put the involuntary drooling response on cue by pairing drooling with the ringing of a bell.  Remember Pavlov presented meat powder to the dog to make it drool and then rang the bell.  You can do the same thing with pottying.  If you say your potty cue every time the dog is squatting to pee, over time the word will be come classically conditioned with the urge to go.  Then you start picking times when you can see the dog is about to go (so already feeling the urge), maybe because of a certain sniffing behavior that they do beforehand, and say the cue then.  Over time you can take your dog out on lead, say the cue word and if they have any need to go, they will feel the feeling and bim bada boom - peeing on cue.  Do not use the clicker when attaching a cue to this kind of behavior, since you don't want to end the behavior.

I do recommend that you use care when selecting the cue.  It should not be a word you would use in casual conversation.  Years ago a puppy buyer of mine taught her dog to perform to the word "potty".  Her son came home from school and mom said, "Get the leash and take Mindy out to potty" and the dog immediately squatted to pee, with great relief.  Fortunately the owner had the good sense to instantly realize the dog was not wrong for peeing - also fortunately it was in the kitchen on linoleum.  I use, "bizness", as in, "do your business". 

You must simply be prepared with clicker and treats to catch your dog doing the action you want to capture. Sometimes this is done while watching TV, but this will vary according to when your dog is most likely to do it. When you see it, click the clicker during the behavior and give the dog the treat. Timing is important. Think of the clicker as a camera marking the instant the dog is doing the right thing.

Your dog will probably leap up and come running to you for that treat and it may be awhile before he does it again. Be patient and wait.

If you are trying to capture something you want the dog to continue without stopping then you may not want to use the clicker, since click ends the behavior. An example might be capturing calm behavior. In that case just quietly reward the dog for the desired behavior without clicking and continue to reward it as the behavior is continued. For instance, you may reward calmly laying down when you first see it, then again in a minute and every minute for awhile, then gradually increase the time between rewards. You would also want to gradually change the type of reward, such as going from a treat to gentle stroking.

Gimme here:  My person gives me "pennies from heaven" for being a good quiet girl.  I'd much rather play 100% of the time, but she says I need my rest too.  So in the beginning I got treats for laying down and quietly chewing my bone.  Now I get petting for the same thing.  She often turns off the overhead light to encourage me to settle down and that helps.  As much as I like to play, which is a LOT, I also love our cuddles on the couch. 

To expand on this – keep in mind that you are capturing behaviors all the time, whether you intend to or not. All behavior is "under the control of its consequences". If a dog tries a behavior and something good happens for the dog, then it is likely to be repeated.  From a survival point of view this makes perfect sense; it wouldn’t promote survival for a dog to waste energy doing something that didn’t get it "good stuff".

Capture a Trick
I recommend capturing a trick for your dog.  That is a good way to practice a training method so you can relax and enjoy the process, before you use capturing for something important.  Remember, "important" is a human point of view; its all tricks to your dog.  Speaking of tricks, here's a list of possible tricks to capture:

spin or chase the tail
sneeze "do you like my perfume?"
yawn "are you tired"
scratching "do you have fleas?"
carry leash in mouth "go take yourself for a walk"
chin on your knee "do you love me"
pawing at ears "how was that joke?"
laying down with a specific paw pose to become "say your prayers"
rolling on the back "be a cockroach"

stretching "take a bow"

shaking (like when wet)

carrying anything that could be stylized as a trick, such as a light plastic lunchbox with dog treats in it for "lets go to work"

shaking head yes or no

barking "whadya think?"

quiet ruff for whispering "shssssh"

quiet growl "be a mean dog"

moaning

Remember:  You are limited only by your own creativity.