{"id":2531,"date":"2013-03-11T12:03:58","date_gmt":"2013-03-11T01:33:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/?p=2531"},"modified":"2021-08-02T17:40:25","modified_gmt":"2021-08-02T07:10:25","slug":"teaching-distance-drop-with-the-food-placement-method","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/personal-posts\/teaching-distance-drop-with-the-food-placement-method\/","title":{"rendered":"Teaching Distance Drop (with the food placement method)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s a little-known fact that dogs will naturally migrate to where food or rewards occur. \u00a0Many trainers don&#8217;t take advantage of this\u00a0tendency, which is unusual, especially considering it&#8217;s so simple and easy to achieve quick results with appropriate food placement.<\/p>\n<p>Taking advantage of food placement is particularly relevant when teaching distance behaviours. If you want your dog to perform behaviours at a distance, then your rewards should also take place at a distance.<\/p>\n<p>While I plan to blog in more detail about food placement in training at a later date, I have created a video which illustrates the process in teaching a distance drop with the food placement method alone, using my girl <a href=\"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/tag\/myrtle\/\">Myrtle<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/F_oZrv6ierI\" height=\"315\" width=\"560\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This is a brief summary of the method:<!--more--><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Before you start, the dog should first have a pretty firm understanding of &#8216;drop&#8217;. In this example, Myrtle knew that &#8216;drop&#8217; meant elbows and hocks on the ground. (However, her understanding was a bit loose and we probably needed more practice before starting distance training!)<\/li>\n<li>Tell the dog &#8216;drop&#8217;. When the dog drops, regardless of where they are positioned, the behaviour is marked (click or yes) and then a reward is thrown a distance away for the dog to pursue.<\/li>\n<li>As the dog is returning from the reward, the dog is asked to drop again. The dog will naturally move towards you (as they have a strong reinforcement history with you), and will probably action the drop in close proximity to you. This proximity doesn&#8217;t matter &#8211; you mark the behaviour, and then again throw the reward away from you.<\/li>\n<li>This process of &#8216;drop&#8217;, mark, and distance reward is continued. Over time, the dog will begin to perform the behaviour further and further away from you (migrating towards the reward&#8217;s placement).<\/li>\n<li>As this process takes place, you may start to undertake <a href=\"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/dog-behaviour\/dog-training-dog-behaviour\/schedules-of-reinforcement\/\">differential reinforcement<\/a> &#8211; so only rewarding behaviours that are performed away from you, at gradually increasing distances.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And seriously, that&#8217;s it! Placing rewards is all you need to increase distance in your training.<\/p>\n<p>I am not\u00a0illusioned\u00a0that this video is the best that Myrtle or I could do, but I hope it is suffice to illustrate the method at hand. I look forward to your comments.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>Further Reading:<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Crystal at Reactive Champion described how putting thought into ball-throwing (reward placement) improved Maisy&#8217;s heeling, in her post: <a href=\"http:\/\/reactivechampion.blogspot.com.au\/2011\/08\/training-tuesday-more-heeling.html\">More Heeling<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Richard Curtis uses reward placement in one of his DVDs &#8211; but I don&#8217;t remember which one! He&#8217;s only got two, though, and I&#8217;m sure they&#8217;re both good if you wanted to buy both. Click through to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.herding-dog-training-border-collie-sheepdog-dvd.com\/dvd_rc_freestyle_training.htm\">Richard Curtis&#8217; DVDs<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/pvybe.com\/dog-training-blog\/reward-placement-2\/\">Reward Placement<\/a>\u00a0and <a href=\"http:\/\/pvybe.com\/dog-training-blog\/reward-placement-for-spot-training\/\">Reward Placement for Spot-Training<\/a>\u00a0and <a href=\"http:\/\/pvybe.com\/dog-training-blog\/dog-frisbee-reward-placement\/\">Reward Placement and Frisbee<\/a>\u00a0by Ron Watson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A simple and effective way to get your dog dropping at a distance by throwing rewards away from you. A video, with commentary, is provided, and a written summary of getting this method to work with your dog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[254,208],"tags":[670,672,12,164,11,667,669,668,665,671,666,677,675,673,273,678,676,674,53,110],"class_list":["post-2531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dog-training-dog-behaviour","category-personal-posts","tag-distance-down","tag-distance-drop","tag-dog","tag-dog-training","tag-dogs","tag-down","tag-down-at-a-distance","tag-down-on-recall","tag-drop","tag-drop-at-a-distance","tag-drop-on-recall","tag-food-placement","tag-food-placement-in-dog-training","tag-food-placement-method","tag-myrtle","tag-reward-placement","tag-reward-placement-in-dog-training","tag-reward-placement-method","tag-training","tag-video"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2531"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2531"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5016,"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2531\/revisions\/5016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}