Monthly Archives: May 2012

05/5/12

The Week in Tweets (5th May)

As many of my regular readers know, I weekly (ish) present my Twitter links for your appreciation. This week, I’d like to introduce something new with a “Tweet of the Week” – that is, the favourite link I tweeted which I highly recommend that you have a read of. I hope this helps those of you who are time poor to have one good read a week. Of course, I recommend all my links! But I will try to pick out a favourite each week now.

Tweet of the Week

The Kick-Me Sign, a post by Nicole Wilde on her blog Wilde About Dogs.
It was actually very difficult to choose a favourite tweet, but I selected Nicole’s because its actually changed the way I talk about dogs.  Working in boarding kennels, I often saw dogs that were, as Nicole puts it, sporting a ‘Kick Me Sign’ – that is, regardless of circumstances, these dogs got picked on!  I’m glad to see that someone else has noticed this phenomena.  I have started calling these dogs ‘Kick-Me Dogs’ and, when I’ve used this term, other people have instantly got what I’ve been talking about!  Though this article is interesting in itself, it actually got awarded the ‘Tweet of the Week’ for its long reaching consequences on my vocabulary.

Now onto the other tweets! Continue reading →

05/2/12

Lure Reward Training

This post is part of the series in response to Dunbar’s 2012 Australian seminars. See index.

Dunbar promotes lure-reward training.  This training uses a lure in order to accomplish a behaviour, and a reward to communicate the desirability of the behaviour lured.

 

 

Young red dobermann puppy sucking on a finger.

Even young puppies can be lured by food on fingers, or even the sucking reflex itself. Photo © Ruthless Photos.

The Steps of Lure Reward Training

Any behaviour we can teach on cue by a 1234 process in lure/reward training. The 1234 steps are:

1: Request (i.e. use the cue – e.g. say “sit”)

2: Lure (i.e. get the behaviour – e.g. use food to get the dog’s nose up and bum down)

3: Response (the dog performs the behaviour)

4: Reward the dog

 

1,3,4 is always clear, but the lure to get a behaviour (2) may need some creativity.

 

There may also be several lures for one behaviour.  If this is the case, they should be ranked from most desirable to least.  For example, if you were training a dog to eliminate on cue, you could ‘lure’ the behaviour by confinement (i.e. putting the dog in a crate for a period of time) or by an olfactory lure (pee smell).  It’s probably easier to crate your dog than to carry pee in a bottle, but it’s up to you to determine the best lure for you and your dog.

 

Once you’ve got the behaviour, you can start to progress through the stages of luring.  Lures should be phased within a few repetitions, and rewards should become ‘life rewards’ instead of extrinsic rewards in a brief period of time.

 

The stages of reward training is phasing out, first, the lure and, second, the reward, and then enforcing compliance (without pain).

 

 

Stage One – Phase Out the Lure Continue reading →