[Dustin]

That video is amazing, Every time I watch Allies videos I wish I could be as good as her. Even more impressive that this isn’t in person but over video call. The handler/dog team is impressive. I’m excited to see their future progress. BZ Allie

[Dustin]

The other good option if you didn’t want to do a retrieve to hand is just build a strong “out” and have the dog drop the retrieved object at your feet.

[Dustin]

Good Job Taylor! I like that video. Nugget really seems to enjoy that game and you’re doing a great job of working with your dog’s natural tendencies. Are you planning on taking him for some LARPing battles? It would be awesome to see Nugget in full battle armor running you a pile of arrows. Check out this YouTube video if you haven’t already. It’s one of my favorite breakdowns on how to teach the retrieve to hand. Usually its easier to back chain a complex behavior together but because you’ve already got the first 80% of the behavior down I think you could pretty easily just teach him to hand the arrow to you and chain that to the rest of the retrieve. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oFO9Z0oHBA&t=159s

Here is another good video showing some chaining action that may help if you haven’t seen it before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vPqMk5Z6J8

[Dustin]

OK, I just finished reading this study and I have some thoughts…

I agree with Mike on the subjectivity issue, my main problem with this study is that the data collected was done by self reported survey of dog owners. The average dog owner is not able to properly identify or quantify cannine behaviors. That makes the data they are basing their conclusions off of questionable at best.

Another issue I have is that they used the AKC breed descriptions as one of their baselines for how a purebred dog is supposed to behave. “affectionate, smart, energetic, friendly, curious, merry”. Terms like this are also subjective and don’t provide insight into actual dog behavior. As an aside, AKC breed descriptions always remind me of horoscopes. Vague enough that they could apply to almost any dog.

The study does not take into account the difference proper husbandry and training of an animal can have on behavior. Basically the Nature vs Nurture question. The authors lump all behavior into “nature” and ignore the effects nurture could be having on these dog’s. In the study they label the Belgian Malinois as the most biddable breed according to their survey. Malinois are and can be quite biddable but that is only when they are properly raised and cared for. I would suggest that if a person has a well behaved Mal they are likely either a dog trainer or involved in dog training. That person with the well behaved Mal is more likely to respond to this survey than someone with a Mal that has a lot of behavioral problems(data bias). There is a massive difference in biddability between a properly provided for Mal and an entitled or not provided for Mal. Another example that jumped out at me was when they stated that “Ancestry from Chesapeake Bay retrievers increases with propensity to damage doors (Q40; LMER <i style=”background-color: var(–bb-content-background-color); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; color: var(–bb-body-text-color);”>t = 4.2; <i style=”background-color: var(–bb-content-background-color); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; color: var(–bb-body-text-color);”>p = 0.001) and escape from enclosures (Q35; LMER <i style=”background-color: var(–bb-content-background-color); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; color: var(–bb-body-text-color);”>t = 3.5; <i style=”background-color: var(–bb-content-background-color); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; color: var(–bb-body-text-color);”>p<sub style=”background-color: var(–bb-content-background-color); font-family: inherit; color: var(–bb-body-text-color);”>FDR</sub><font face=”inherit”> = 0.02).” I have a couple problems with statements like this. As always, correlation is not causation. From a trainer perspective the propensity to </font>damage<font face=”inherit”> door’s </font>has more to do with the dog’s level of drive balance than it does with breed. We could change this statement to read “Level of drive increases with ancestry from Chesapeake Bay retrievers”. That statement would be more technically accurate from an animal behavior perspective but it’s still based on the fact that the dog’s that are chewing on the doors are not being raised in an environment where they are provided for and have their drives balanced. I don’t think those dog’s should be baseline for behavior of that breed.

Having said all that, I don’t disagree with their conclusions. It basically confirms 200 years of dog breeding experience even if the authors don’t say as much. They DO NOT differentiate purebred dog’s and mutts when they draw the conclusion that “breed is not a reliable predictor of behavior” even though in the article they admit several times that purebred dog’s are much more likely to conform to breed traits and stereotypes than dog’s of mixed ancestry. Thats exactly what dog breeders have been saying forever. Dog’s that have been carefully bread for certain behavioral traits are more likely to deliver those traits and dog’s that are randomly bread (or bread for morphology rather than behavior) will produce offspring of random and unpredictable behavior.

db

[Dustin]

I agree, she was so cute when she tried to wave the first time. You can see her almost do it a rep or two before so I can only imagine what she was thinking in there. Maybe I take dog’s intelligence for granted or just forget how smart they are. It blew my mind to see that she recognized the behavior Senna was being rewarded for and made the leap to try it for herself and see if she would also be rewarded. It’s almost like she was asking “can I has treato too?”. You can’t see my face in the video but I was shocked when I saw her paw go up and wave. The rest of the training session went downhill for Senna because I instantly wanted to test if Ziva’s wave was a fluke or repeatable behaivor. From an experimental design perspective I don’t know if it was a good thing that I rewarded the behavior or not because as soon as I did, the behavior was marked and henceforth she was rewarded for performing the behavior and not mimicking what Senna was doing. If I didn’t reinforce the behavior it likely would have become extinct quickly. If I was going to design an experiment to document observational learning I think I would have to start training Senna on a multitude of simple, easy to mimic behaviors so that as soon as she mimics a behavior she is rewarded and we immediately move to a different behavior. Another thought I had that raised more questions…Roughly 2 years ago when we first fostered Ziva I clicker trained her on the basic house manners and obedience we needed from her. She hasn’t been reinforced with a clicker since then but does she retain the memory that a click indicates the proper behavior(I think yes)? If a neutral stimulus is turned into a conditioned stimulus, can it ever fully be returned to neutral? Did the memory of a previously conditioned marker help her to recognize what behavior I was looking for in the other dog? This would have to be a fully different experiment.

[Dustin]

Day 3.  As we entered the training room to begin the evening Senna walked to the cinder block I had prepared, sniffed deeply and sat down.  We were off to a good start, he offered up the behavior I wanted without any prompting but we didn’t count it as a rep for the same reason.  We started out with the same drill from last night and Senna nailed the sit alert 9 out of 10 times, reverting to passive stare on the 8th try.  On the 11th attempt he walked up to the cinder block and sat without ever smelling to make sure the odor was present.  At that point I knew this drill had run its course and he was ready for another step. (Exhibit 4- Video of 7th rep. https://youtu.be/cJho-udd45s

If Senna were a greener dog I would slowly odd more blocks and distractions odors but because he has run the block drill hundreds of times I was confident he could handle that as the next step.  Each block has two holes and I was using 9 blocks so I had 18 possible holes to work with.  I used one scent can of target odor, 1 scent can of treats, 1 scent can of clove spice, 1 scent can of thyme spice, 2 empty scent cans, 4 of the holes were filled with nitrile gloves that I have worn previously.  8 holes were empty.  Senna failed to sit alert on the first two attempts, defaulting to the passive stare.  He got it right on the 3rd attempt but once again just froze on the 4th.  Attempts 5,6,7 were all successful sits.  On the 8th attempt Senna passed over the hole that contained clove and started to sit but searched a couple more holes before going back to the clove and doing a passive stare alert.  The clove is a very strong odor compared to the target odor we were using today and I believe Senna just took a chance on alerting there because he was starting to get mentally fatigued and knew “something” different and strong was in that hole. His lack of confidence was evident in his body language. We documented it as a false alert and moved on to the 9th attempt where Senna located the target odor, sat half way down and moved back into a standing passive stare alert. The 10th attempt was a perfect sit alert but I could tell he was tired mentally.  Normally Senna is good to run the block drill at least 20 times in a session but I think because he is still learning and defining the parameters of this new alert behavior its more taxing on him cognitively.  I ended the session so we could have some fun with obedience but left the room set up and brought him back about 15 minutes later for one last rep hoping I could get it recorded.  Exhibit 5-https://youtu.be/FRHAjeR4NHo

Some keen eared listeners may notice that at the same time I changed his alert I also changed his search cue from “C4” to “seek” because it sounds a little more professional in case that ever were to become an issue.  The two words are close enough I thought Senna would be able to generalize and that has been the case.  Seek is just C4 with the second syllable dropped and a hard consonant end so he picked it up quickly.

 

[Dustin]

OK, day two update. I guess this might not take as long as I thought.  Tonight Senna did a non-prompted sit alert on the 12th attempt. The rest of the session was hit or miss with him also sit alerting on attempts 16,20,23,24,25,26 and finally again on the 33rd attempt.  At that point I stopped the session in favor of obedience so we could end it on a high note. Interesting to see that we seem to be in a transitory phase where he’s starting to understand what I’m asking him to do but he’s not confident about it yet so he’s cautious and defaults to his previous training when he’s unsure. I was unable to get any successful attempts on video yet.

[Dustin]

Thank you Allie, this odor detection game started as sort of a lark, just a fun game we were playing, so I wasn’t recording any videos in the beginning.  We’ve started getting more serious with it so I’m going to be making more videos and documenting more of the training.

[Dustin]

Hey Craig,  I’m going to preface this by saying I’m not an expert, I’m still learning like everyone here.   It does look like you are starting to understand the order of the command structure so your doing a good job there.  Have you started to fill out an obedience chart for Blitz?  https://dogtraining.world/knowledge-base/obedience-chart/  It looks like you are floating around phase 1 and some early phase 2 depending on the specific command you are using.  I would go through the chart with Blitz and mark down what you’ve done so far.  Some of the earlier stuff you can mark off quickly if Blitz already knows it.  For example he knows what a sit position is so you don’t need to lure and mark the sit anymore,  you can mark it as done but I like to at least go through the motions a couple times to make sure that you aren’t skipping steps.  Having the chart will help us to understand exactly what step in phase two you are working on for each command.   You should re-watch the leash ninja video with emphasis on the second half where Mike talks about leash pumps.    How far into the FST 4.0 video course have you made it so far?  It looks like you are off to a good start and Blitz seems like a good dog, I’m excited to see your progress in the future.

Obedience Chart

[Dustin]

Can you be any more specific, maybe give us some details of the problem?  Are you having trouble getting him to start moving backwards?  Is he going backwards but curling off to the side instead of going strait back? Does he heel forward?  It looks like you are fairly new here,  if so welcome, good to have you on the site.  The more details and information you can give us the better.

[Dustin]

Hey Dave,  Awesome your going to run some hogs.  If your cutting your dog’s loose in the woods you should look into the Garmin Alpha 100,  I use it when i’m tracking with my dog and have many friends who run yotes and bear that use them also.  Great piece of kit and worth every penny.  Good luck!

[Dustin]

It means Well Done.

[Dustin]

Sounds like you’ve got the right basic idea Art, If you haven’t seen this video I think you will enjoy it. Great breakdown of steps to build a template for backchaining a retrieve. I helped a friend clean up his pointers retrieve and we took a lot of inspiration from this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oFO9Z0oHBAhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oFO9Z0oHBA

[Dustin]

You have her full permission to place it into the knowledge base.