I have taken a focus on Divine's heeling. Getting her ready for competition obedience. I realized on her turns her rump would swing out a bit wide. Many people had advise to do platform training. It is the popular technique now for everyone in obedience and for rear awareness training in obedience. I've tried to wrap my brain around it. Dabbled a bit with Mickey and Divine using the platform. Call me dense all you want, I don't get it. Meaning, it just seemed very cumbersome to me. I think it is great to use for teaching a dog to move on its hinds, and I see the concept of it teaching placement for heel work, but I actually like what I have done with Mickey. His heels are with precision and impressive. I used pure shaping with a mixture of food and his favorite toy, the Kong to achieve this precision. So, a platform for placement, just seemed like another prop. I'm not big on props unless there is really no way around it. But in this case, I'm not big on platform training. So I'm dense to the rest of the dog training world.
So how did I get Mickey to pivot so nicely without using a platform? I actually did it by mistake. It was doing my canine freestyle training first. I was watching some cool videos, one on how to train your dog to back-up around you. They are in heel position on your left, back up around pivoting around you until they are in place. I saw this in a video on line in YouTube and modified it to suit me. After that when I would do heeling, Mickey's pivoting was really nice and moved so well with me. His dance moves looked impressive.
So 2-3 years later, its time to teach Divine to not have her rump sway out. She needs to be in-lined with me and when I turn, her body moves with mine, not have her rump stay outward. Again, I got the advise of platform training. I thought yeah, I really need to try it. You can't say you dislike something or have an opinion if you have never tried it. I tried doing the platform and just felt it was like training 3 extra steps you don't need to get where you wanted. My brain kept saying, NO!!! Train how you trained Mickey! So enough of dabbling with a platform, trying to find the right size and getting her use to standing on one. I ditched it, now to how I really want to train!
I found a free corner in my house. I use the two walls as barriers and then put either a file compartment, boxes or Rubbermaid container to make a barrier of a perfect square. I stand in the middle. Divine on my left side. The purpose of this is all she can do is either move forward, or backwards. A different kind of prop from a platform. When she steps back, click and treat. If she doesn't step back after a certain amount of waiting, I will rotate to my left to see if my body movement will move her. It does, click and treat. I realize this is a form of cuing, but Divine, being trained a a guide dog, doesn't tend to move a lot or experiment a lot. So I need to guide her just a tad more. I turn in a circle and every step she takes back, I click and treat.
With a five minute break in-between, I did some heeling with her and left and right turns. WOW, impressive, rump tucked in better and only after ONE session of doing this way of training. I'm thrilled! What affirmation on my own way of teaching pivoting. I don't have to follow the crowd and do the platform training. Don't get me wrong, I might need it to teach something else, but for this, I like my method or technique. It has proven to work well for both my dogs. I'm sticking to it.
Second session. Did a little more of the same trying to fade the movement of my body. Sometimes I would try to lure with my hands, but that didnt' do very well since Divine isn't a strong luring dog. Again, waited out a little bit with moving backwards, click and treat. Some slight rotating of me, she would back up, I click and treated.
Third session. Ahhh yes, now her wheels are turning. She is realized she is in a shaping game. more behavior. So much so her nose was bopping my blinds, one of the boxes, she tried pawing....now to some people, they would think that is terrible. I actually was delighted she was offering MORE behavior! she eventually started to back up on her own. Click and treat. She offered this more that she backed up around me in segments without me cuing her with my body. WHOO HOOOO Success!! We did a few more of these sessions. It won't be long she will back up around me all the way with one cue.
What I have learned in this exercise is to trust myself and have more confidence in myself. I really do know how to see the problem and the picture. I know my dogs and I don't have to keep running to other trainers for help. I can't wait to get into that ring and start showing. That's the biggest hurdle, to get over my ring nerves.
No comments:
Post a Comment