[nagdu] perhaps it's all in the word

Craig Heaps craig.heaps at comcast.net
Fri Feb 27 21:40:26 UTC 2015


When they trained us at GDB how to clicker train the dogs, the first thing 
we taught our dogs was "Find the chair." They said it worked better than 
find the seat because seat sounds too much like sit and it's confusing for 
the dogs.

However, I never taught Chase to find the empty chair.  So when we would get 
on the BART trian to go to and from work, I would say find the chair. More 
than once, he put his nose on the leg of someone sitting in the side facing 
seats set aside for the disabled and for seniors.  I always meant to work on 
find the empty chair, but kind of liked that he busted the people who didn't 
get up to give seats to disabled people.  So I never got abournd to it.

Craig and Chase
craig.heaps at comcast.net

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Daryl Marie via nagdu" <nagdu at nfbnet.org>
To: "the National Association of Guide Dog Users" <nagdu at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Friday, February 27, 2015 12:50 PM
Subject: [nagdu] perhaps it's all in the word


> Hi!
> This discovery is by no means scientific, even proven, but I have a sneaky 
> suspicion that I might just be on to something!
>
> Jenny girl and I have had a bit of a hard time finding empty seats.  It is 
> not so good that she finds one every time, nor so bad that I have felt the 
> overwhelming need to do multiple training sessions on it.
>
> Traditionally, I have used "Find a seat," and it's been hit or miss.  A 
> coworker mentioned yesterday that I might want to try "Find a chair."  At 
> first I thought it was a silly distinction, but decided to try it out 
> today at lunch.  Lo and behold... she found me an empty CHAIR at the 
> table!
>
> I decided to keep going with this.  She needed to relieve after I ate 
> lunch, so we went back to my desk so I could get my key card.  I told her 
> to find the chair, and she put her nose right on my desk chair, and then 
> found the post where I hang my coat.  We went outside, she did her 
> business, and then came back in
>
> I tried again with "Find the chair" when we walked back into the office; 
> tried again when we walked into my boss' (empty) office, and even went 
> into another empty office to work on it.  Then we went back to my desk, 
> where I told her to find the chair.  Nose went on desk chair, tail wagged 
> happily...
>
> Methinks I will need to try this on the bus today!
>
> Daryl
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