The Discriminating Dog

Tanner knows how to do a paw touch to my hand (cue=touch) as well as a paw whack (cue=five). However, when I hold my hand out for either of these cues, it looks relatively the same. How does Tanner know what I want? He learned to wait for the cue!

After all, it can be annoying for him to constantly paw at me or try to put his nose in my hand every time I hold it out. Teaching him to wait for the cue also teaches him self control. He also has to really know the verbal cue.

This is also part of putting the cue on stimulus control. I only want him to offer the behavior in the presence of the cue.

I started putting in sub headings in the pertinent points but then faded them out. A few things to point out; I often click Tanner for not responding to the hand alone, I want him to wait for the cue! When he makes a mistake, I take my hand back, pause a beat, then try again. If he does not respond at all, I take my hand back thus ending the possibility of getting a reward.

I do not tell him "No" when he does the wrong thing. I don't want to punish him for trying. Why? Because a dog that is not afraid to try things is easier to train. Besides, he gets it without the aversives!

Another thing to note is that both of these behaviors were trained pretty fluently at home. We have taken them "on the road" and used them in other situations as well. However, this is the first time I have asked him to discriminate outside the house. We are at our local dog training gym, a place very familiar to him. Although he does not hesitate or make mistakes at home, you can see that this environment is a bit distracting and he has to work a bit harder to concentrate.

Hey, I created a thinking dog! How about that?!

This video was uploaded for use in the blog post: http://aragongreyhounds.blogspot.com/2011/03/doggy-discrimination-tale-by-tan...

Category:

Pets & Animals

Tags:

• Aragon
• greyhound
• dog
• Tanner
• training
• obedience
• learning
• discrimination
• nose
• touch
• paw
• whack
• five
• greyhound training
• clicker training
• greyhound obedience

[Tarmars1]

Thanks for the compliment! Tanner is an AKC greyhound, a show dog. You can learn more about his family at the Aragon Greyhounds blog: aragongreyhounds.blogspot.com.

[rogersmmr]

Great job!! I'm training this, too. :-) We're doing left paw, right paw and nose touch. I was getting what I interpretted as a lot of guessing with 2 behaviors so I added a third. When I do these games, both of my dogs when through a short stage where they'd do all three behaviors in rapid succession. I also got a lot of simultaneous nose and paw touches. Did you get that, too? Our training is very similar (as is our love of sighthounds). Happy training! Marge

[Tarmars1]

@rogersmmr Hey! I like the idea of teaching right and left paws! What do you use for a cue? I was able to stop the guessing by clicking for waiting for the cue and also removing the opportunity for reward for a beat. I think your idea is another clever way to handle it. I also got simultaneous nose and paw. That is another reason I click for waiting. I found he did that more when he was trying to get the behavior in really fast!

You need to post a video of this with your hounds!

[rogersmmr]

@Tarmars1 I'm not using left & right as modifier cues. I just named them different things (plant and blue - to illustrate the words don't really mean anything to the dog). I click for waiting, too & also remove my prop for wrong guesses. Once we did our first stimulus control exercise, he seemed to generalize pretty well to other behaviors. You wouldn't be a Kathy Sdao fan, by any chance? I learned a lot from her vids. Not ready to post a video yet, but I will eventually. Nice to meet you!

[Tarmars1]

@rogersmmr I've heard a lot about Kathy Sdao but haven't seen her or any of her videos. Perhaps I will have to see if anyone I know has one I can borrow. I think I will play a little with modifier cues next time I get the desire to do something "hard". That is something I have never done before. Although, if I want something hard, I can work on getting Shine to be patient and wait for a cue. She is really bad about throwing herself into whatever she thinks I want!

[davidmartinsvideos]

One of the most beautiful greyhounds I've seen. Is it from a rescue place?