Yesterday, I went back to working "overs," but this time I isolated them and only worked "overs." I set two piles on either side of a tree, with both piles being 30 yards from the tree. I brought Devon out and sat her in front of the tree, and I walked back 15 yards. I identified the left pile, then sent her to it. She did great. I did the same with the right pile and we had another success.
I sent her to each a couple of more times, then started to add a little distance away from her. She broke down and came right into me instead of going to her right over pile. I still don't understand after going to that pile three times how she could suddenly get confused. However, since she cannot verbalize her thought process, I decided not to even dwell on it and just fix the problem. I re-identified the pile and she was successful.
For the next 20 minutes I worked on getting farther back from her and still having her be successful on the over piles. It was nice she figured out her tree spot, because I was able to send her to the tree on a back and then sit her in front of the tree.
The right over is clearly harder for her. She wanted to bow into me a lot, and one time I had to call her back in three times in a row because she continued to bow into me. However, we were able to work through it without her shutting down or me getting frustrated (I'm fully aware one leads to another). We ended with her being successful on both over piles with me 30 yards back from the over line. I was very pleased!
This morning, I got up early to race the rainy, stormy weather coming in to put in a track and do a field drill. This time I repeated the Three in a Row drill, but I used stakes with streamers on them instead of white buckets. I was curious if the moving ribbons on the stakes would bother Devon. I also did the drill in a different location than the last time.
Devon did fantastic when I sent her to each pile the first time. The streamers never bothered her; in fact I think she liked the new posts. She struggled only a little when she was working on the left side of the line and only got sucked into the middle bucket twice. However, when we were working the right side of the line, she really struggled with the middle pile sucking her in.
Once again I kept my frustration in check and we just worked through the drill. Devon showed some avoidance behavior by wanting to mark my discard pile and then got distracted by ducks quacking in the area when she failed three times in a row. After a couple of incidents of this, I took the tab on her collar and heeled her forward a few steps. She hates me grabbing her collar like this, and it was enough of a figurative "kick in the pants" to get her attention. She focused in and worked the drill, finally working to success!
Devon only really struggles with the suction of the middle pile when she's running this drill from the right. I finally found if I over compensate slightly to the left of the blind line, she was successful and didn't bend in to the middle pile. At first I thought I wasn't lining her up correctly, but I could clearly see she was bending the line to cut into the middle pile.
I think these observations I'm learning are the teamwork we'll need when running tests. If I know there will be suction in a certain direction, I might want to line her up to the left of the line knowing she'll curve in slightly. The same is true of the over drill I did on Saturday. I learned to read her head to tell me when she was only bowing in slightly but would commit to the over and when she was coming into me too much and won't go to the pile.
Going forward I'm going to focus on learning to read her versus trying to make her perfect to the drill. In clicker training, you move forward with an 80% correct behavior rate. It's interesting how we tend to want the dog to be perfect. However, most of the times the best lessons are learned when we aren't perfect. And my goal is for Devon and I to learn lessons that lead to more success in practical application!
No comments:
Post a Comment