Blessed Solstice! And puppy training

[summer_jackel]

Joyful Solstice, everyone. I just rode 4 hours on my trainer; now I'm making a delicious rare hamburger and a fruit smoothie, which I will enjoy out on the deck with a book in this lovely evening. It's been a hard several seasons, but things have been really nice for me lately.

***

re dog training; I'm asking for command suggetions. The parfait pretty much has all the commands I've taught him down and would like to learn some more, so I'm thinking of introducing the sendout, i.e, you ask the dog to go away from you, sit and await command. It doesn't seem hard to train, but I need a command for it, ideally one that is cute, catchy, easy to say and understand for Coba and kinda geeky. Does anyone have ideas? To clarify, it will be "Coba, [command]," and he will go away a few feet, sit and look at me.

I'm also going to try target-training him, iow to touch his nose and/or paw to my hand or another target. That will probably a stick or toy, but I'm thinking of training him to touch my hand first, as I can get him the treat faster and therefore help him make the association sooner. The hardest part of training a dog something is making sure he understands what it is you want, and colliethings tend to be both fast learners and highly training-motivated. For Coba in particular, doing something I ask is in and of itself a reward on top of the treats, so he's very fun to train. But anyway, I think I'm going to use 'touch' for using his nose, but I also need another command for 'touch it with your paw.' I would use 'paw,' but 'paws' is already the cue for 'your leash is under your leg; untangle yourself.' Any ideas for that one?

And for fun, other things Coba knows:

Sit, down, come, stand
stay (he has sit and down for about 5 min with a reasonably decent rate of not laying down on the sit stays. This matters because I want to compete in obedience with him). Stand-stays are a little harder.
rollover, sit up (although Rogue is much better at these than he is. Bliss doesn't know them at all yet).
focus give me your attention
heel , casual heel, means they can sniff around but not pull the leash. I've only trained Coba for this so far, but I think Bliss is getting ready for it. He's starting to show interest in what Coba's doing for the first time, so I'll begin his training soon. Rogue isn't a show dog and Jez doesn't have interest in this kind of training.
velcro , the show heel, sit whenever I stop and keep focus on me.
come round , what I use for the 'finish' command, where dog circles from in front of you to heel position. Coba doesn't seem to have a problem differentiating between 'come' and 'come round'---I tried to train a different finish, but that's just what I seem to want to say, and training the dogs is easier than training me. I've introduced this to Bliss but not really worked with him enough to have it solid yet.

oh, and load (the truck), off (your paws off me, or infrequently get off the couch), get (leave), banish (leave the room) and of course silence (you want to teach that one young if your dog is a sheltie).

Comments

[lyosha.livejournal.com]

... I gotta be honest, I read that as "delicious rare-hamburger-and-fruit smoothie" and just... augh...

[lyosha.livejournal.com]

Also, perhaps 'Coba, scout!'?

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

ahahahaha, even I would find them gross _mixed together_. That'll teach me to post when I'm freshly off the bike.

I like Scout! Will put it on the list of possibilities.

[tenaya-owlcat.livejournal.com]

Or, you could take an idea from Roo and add the command "Coba, snout!" :P

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

Oh. 'snout that' for touch would be HILARIOUS. I might use that.

[ladyringo.livejournal.com]

Hmm... other cool tricks...
1. Spin - pretty self explanatory. My friend's mini aussies do it and it's adorable.
2. Sit Pretty - sit up straight with cute paws


<33

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

Hm, they would probably pick up 'spin' quickly. Rogue sits pretty very well, and I'm in process of teaching the boys, but I use 'up' as the command.

[a-rowan-dryad.livejournal.com]

What about...

"shoo"

"Wait or "Await" (snagged from you saying that you would want him to await your command)

"moment"

"patience" <--- this is my personal fav. :) I use it on my nearly 6 year old often. :P

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

I like 'wait' or 'patience', but I'd probably use it in a less formal context than a send-out. Will keep those in mind!

[eldareth.livejournal.com]

Maybe whatever the sheepherding command is for sending out? Also, I'm really interested in how you taught "silence" - we didn't manage it too well with Duncan, and as a herding breed (very possibly a sheltie) is likely in my future, I'd like to know what worked for you.

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

Sure, I'm happy to share what worked for me. Firstly, this is much more effective with a puppy, but you can still use it for remedial adult training; Rogue was far barkier 2 years ago when I took full custody than she is now. The basic technique is giving dog the silence command whenever she barks and immediately redirecting her to a focused obedience exercise. My most common examples are:

1. Dog is playing, gets excited and starts barking. I give the 'silence' command (with my tone of voice varying in intensity depending on the bark; a stern tone and angry eyes can be a harsh correction for a dog as sensitive as Coba). I then immediately recall him and do a couple of sits and stands (appropriately rewarded) and a short down stay. Then I release him. Repeat every time he barks; pretty soon he will stay quiet so that his play is not inturrupted. It's important that the obedience exercises are not a correction for the bark; instead, they are a routine part of his life, because you're already doing them all the time; he enjoys them, but they are less interesting than play. He learns through intermittent reenforcement that a bark will almost always cue you to begin one. Don't make them too fun, since a lot of the herding dogs really love the focused time from you; your post-bark training moments should be fairly but not effusively praised, and no food rewards used.

2. If she barks while playing in the house, I growl 'Silence,' drop the toy and stop whatever I was doing, sometimes literally turn my back on her. If you can make a sheltie think that she's hurt your feelings or offended you, you can totally use that as a correction.

3. If the dogs go mad with yapping because someone walked a dog past the house or something, I proceed as in 1. If dog ignores me and ignores the recall, I correct it strongly and then go into some very focused and stern recall training, as I would if he ignored the command in any other context. The more he wants to give his attention to whatever he is barking at, the more I demand he give it to me. This is the only time where I would use food rewards in a bark-provoked training session; reward the hell out of him for willingly giving you attention over something he really wants to do. However, any barking during this is met with an immediate 'Silence' and a stern physical (collar) correction back to the sit or down if necessary.

I try to correct every bark; it's basically never ok for my dogs to bark unless there's actually an uninvited stranger in the yard or house. The training will not completely extinguish barking with a dog who is naturally prone to it; like all the other commands, it's something that you will probably have to work on for their whole life. It still makes a huge difference. Bliss almost never barks, and my shelties do it a fraction of the time most are guilty of. I hope that helps!

[eldareth.livejournal.com]

That does help a lot! Thank you so much for being so detailed in your reply. I can definitely see how it would be a good method, especially when starting with a young dog of a herding breed that lives to please :)

I think the trouble with Duncan was that I was the person in the family that was interested in formalizing his training, and I left for college a couple months after we got him (*sob*). The obedience commands I taught him stuck pretty well, but only if there's food involved and no other distractions. I work with him when I'm home, but that's so infrequent now that it's hard to really get anywhere if my parents aren't going to continue in the same fashion. He's a fantastic dog, really...but his barking at the neighbors as they walk past our house drives me bonkers!

Your method makes a lot of intuitive sense - I'm filing it away for the future puppy :)

[cphoenix.livejournal.com]

How about Vamoose? and Pat or Pattycake?

I've read that if you teach your dog to bark on command, it's a lot easier to teach them to be silent on command.

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

I've never trained a speak command because dog barks irritate me too much and I never want to hear them unless the house is being burgled, but I could see how that might be the case with at least some dogs. It's possible that it could make certain dogs more likely to bark. through: for instance, Rogue sometimes gets over-excited when she's going through commands, especially if I'm using food rewards. She'll go through her whole repertoire of tricks, trying to second-guess what I want, getting more and more excited. If 'speak' was one of those, I'd have to correct a bark instead of how I prefer to handle this, which is do a long down-stay and get some distance from her until she's calm.