training problem

[rthonor]

This is specific to my dog, though you have touched on it before in previous threads.

The little blue, ACD has trouble targeting and she likes to false when she thinks it will make me happy. I also cue her alot, though its unintentional. She knows me better than I know myself.

So, I thought I would set up a variation of the card board box drill. I had things out under 3 of the boxes, and 4 with nothing in them. I did this 3 days in the row, with worse results each day.

She went into obedience mode, staring at my eyes, and then alerted on all of them . Then I ignored her, kept walking around the boxes. She finally sat in the middle of the area.

So, how to back up? I thought this would be a basic exercise to retrain my issues . Obviously, the way I am doing it not going to work.

When I sent her out in an open area, she goes ahead of me and does fine. Our problem is in rooms or on vehicle- she behaves like she did in the exercise. I am just too close to her physically ...and she gets excited and goes into obedience mode- which is to stare at me and figure out what we are supposed to do next.

She really is a good obedience dog and loves to do obedience.

rt

[oksaradt]

The tic-tac-toe box game is meant to be a fun game that teaches the dog to shove their nose into something to explore it's scent. There should be minimal scent coming out of the boxes to prevent overlap over the other boxes. As with any exercise you start out easy, so that would mean for your ACD two boxes, one with HRs and one totally blank. The empty boxes must be clean and sterile. If you lose track and use a box as an empty that HRs were in yesterday than the dog would be right to say it smells of HRs.
To prevent overlap, start with the two boxes a good distance apart, but visually still in the dog's attention span....so around 15 feet apart. You'll know the dog "gets it" when you say find more and it instantly goes back to the right box.

I worked a blind with Murphy this week where nature ended up stealing one of the sources. I was told there were two sources in the area to find and the problem setter thought there was. We didn't know that one of nature's creatures got an easy meal.. Murphy found the one source in the area 12 times because I kept asking him to "find more" in the area. He was trying to tell me, "Jim, this is the only scent here."

I found myself making the common mistake of telling him to come back to me, but he stayed committed to the scent source till I rewarded him as that's his trained release. I was happy that he stayed committed to the source no matter what I siad till I recognized the find.

If the dog indicates on the blank box because it's guessing then you have to communicate to the dog that this is no good. With my ADTs that means a Jeopardy Buzzer noise and I exclaim, "Thank you for playing, but please try again" in my best game show host voice. ADTs like to be challenged.

The key is to first teach your cattle dog what the game is. If that means you leave two boxes staked down and open at first such that the dog can shove its nose in there easily then you do that. Then you migrate in difficulty with two boxes closed up with the lids folded in such that there's a little hole there the dog can shove their nose in. If that's too much difficulty, poke some holes in the sides at first OR leave the boxes open and toss more clean boxes out in the area. The dog doesn't know they are clean till it checks them and moves on.

With your dog guessing, it implies the dog does not know what you want of it. That can happen a lot with a dog that's used to being cued and the handler suddenly cuts them off. There's no answers in the back of the book. But, guessing is how they learn what you want.
I've watched some handlers train with this where they totally blew the dog off if it was guessing, but would quietly coo if the dog investigated the good box. You have to tailor your response to your dog's best way to learn. I think you said you worked with learning difficulty kids, it's no different with dogs. Each one has triggers and turn-offs. They key is to figure out what flips your dogs switch. The more breeds and personalities you work with, the bigger your tool kit of things to try that will excite the dog.

The cattle dogs I've worked with tended to be very handler focused to the point that I had to train them by telling the handler what to do. The downside of a breed being tightly handler focused is it notices your every move, your change in voice, your looks. And, yes, such dogs tend to be awesome at obedience because they read their handler before the handler's command ever comes. They can be a challenge teaching them to be independent thinkers.
If you've done obedience with this dog, have you done the scented dumbell exercise. If so, the dog might be alerting on your scent the way it was taught in a similar game.



Start out with two open boxes staked to the ground with one having something easy in it. Dog makes the easy find and you treat it like it just hit a home run at a pro baseball park. The dog goes over to the empty box, ignore it.

Also, a lot of dogs start guessing if their handler begins getting frustrated or piling on the stress.

If you get frustrated with your dog then it's time to take a break. Dogs figure out when we are not happy with their performance and many will do literally anything to change that usually to negative results.

Just some ideas to toss out without watching the dog work.

Jim

[rthonor]

that makes sense. I will back up .

She is trained to find scented dumbbells, and to track and alert on the track layers dropped item.

Today, I did not bring food out to the field. She actually was much better. Her usual reward is food. I just petted her. tomorrow, I will start with only 2 boxes. She is very food driven....and hopefully she will calm herself when I dont have the food.

I think you are right. I have become aware of my unintentional cueing and now she has to learn how to do it the right way.

thanks,rt