[nagdu] Find the stairs

[Tami Jarvis]

Minh,

Hm... With Mitzi, I used the clicker method pretty much as you describe. 
We had done that on stairs we used regularly all during leash work, but 
I remember it seemed awfully tricky when we started going exploring in 
harness, especially when we needed to go down the stairs.

If I know there are stairs on the way to the door I'm looking for, it 
helped at first to say, "Find the stairs." As she got more experience, I 
could use "Find the door," and she would deal with the stairs without 
getting confused. She still seems to prefer I mention the stairs if we 
have to use them to get to the door. If we need to use stairs in another 
context, then it's best to ask her to find them, not whatever is on the 
other side... She loves find, though, so that's convenient when I don't 
have a clue. /lol/

I'm betting that Viva will figure out with experience how to let you 
know when there are stairs you may want without pointing out every 
staircase you ever walk by. She may start out by showing you every 
single one whether you ask or not, but as you travel around the campus 
more, she will probably surprise you how much she figures out.

I'm working up our walking route to get as far as the local campus just 
to have a nice place to work on some stuff, including the stairs. Only 
I've been scared bleepless of those stairs since I first started using a 
cane around them. /lol/

Good luck!

Tami

On 08/23/2013 01:24 PM, minh ha wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I'm moving back to campus in a week and my school has a million and a
> half flights of stairs all over campus. Viva does amazingly on stairs,
> but the only problem is her understanding of the word "stairs" isn't
> as strong as I like it to be. She was exposed to it at GDB and she was
> able to find a couple of flights of stairs during my training, but now
> that we're home, she doesn't seem to understand what I want. I was
> wondering what suggestions you guys have for teaching this to her? I
> was thinking of finding a bunch of stairs and clicker her while saying
> the word stairs, but the only issue I can see with that is she'll
> bring me to every single flight of stairs that we pass, which would
> get annoying pretty quick. Thanks in advance.
>
> Cheers,
> Minh
>