On Start Lines

I often give my co-workers dog training advice at the office.  One of the most perplexing questions is often “if I train with treats my dog knows when I have the cookie and always listens.  No cookie, no listening.”  This issue is often a combination of poor reinforcement mechanics (using food as lure for a recall) and a dismal rate of reinforcement.  Agility trainers know that random reinforcement on a regular basis builds a great recall, regardless of having treats on us at all times.

The piece that is relevant to us agility trainers is that rate of reinforcement for the start line.  I often found myself making a training goal to add more value into the stay, and with good intentions I’d be dolling out rewards for good behaviour before a sequence.  What this lead to for my dogs was an upward trend of good start lines followed by a downward trend of movement and full breaks.  What I was missing was the random piece of reinforcement rate.  The ideal scenario is being able to reward that behaviour just enough that it doesn’t lose value.

On to my “new and improved” formula

Earlier this week I mentioned that Arcade’s training goes on in the dark and cold of winter.  We leash walk with boots for conditioning at the beginning of the walk and finish off leash (no boots can stand his movement unfortunately) with a friz or hol-e-roller.

This park training is what I recently learned from Kathy Keat’s video series as “volume training”.  The other type of training, “intensity”, will come into play with equipment and an agility atmosphere.  I highly recommend watching the series: The Agility Coach

Part 1: The Reminder

I set up this phase in the training to be really straight forward for the dog.  Cue static position, leave the dog, verbal release, accelerate forward and throw the reward.  Both my dogs’ favourite reinforcement is chasing a toy, so after repeating this exercise a few times I’m going to see movement on the static position before the release cue.  I make a note of how many times I was able to repeat the sequence before the dog wasn’t successful.

Try it with your dog this weekend and let me know what number you got up to.

Up next: Part 2: Random Strategy

 

 

The Darkest Winter Hour

If the reduced sunlight isn’t getting you down, for sure the cold is.  Elsa is very done with winter already.  She’s still on rest & recovery from her foot injury so it’s also a good time to be bored with nothing to do.

Arcade, however, has come really embrace it.  A dog that only does things at 100 mph is happy with all this ice and snow?  What about agility training?

There really is no change for Arcade during this time of year except the amount of minutes spent outside at one time.

The winter gives us time to revamp our agility housekeeping.  Bad habits built through the competition season can be broken. The cold dark night gives us all the time (and motivation) to get it done.

On my list for the cold, dark off-season:

1. Start Lines
2. Threadles
3. Pass-by Challenges

Always on my list regardless of season:

1. Conditioning
2. Stopped contact behaviour

Keep checking back on the blog while it’s still cold and dark for my progression on my winter checklist.