[nagdu] Clicker for scavenging

Tami Jarvis tami at poodlemutt.com
Thu Jul 2 17:30:03 UTC 2015


Tracy,

The hand touch is the key to power! Using the clicker or a verbal marker 
along with something rewarding enough to compete with what is on the 
ground will also take you a long way. You may also want to teach Krokus 
zen along with touch.

Zen is where you hold a treat in your closed hand and ignore the dog 
while he pokes and paws at it. As soon as the dog looks away, open your 
hand to release the treat. Repeat until the dog starts to understand 
that ignoring the hand will result in reward. Then you can start waiting 
longer to release the treat. You can also extend the exercise by putting 
the treat under your flattened palm on the floor or the coffee table or 
whatever and take it as far as leaving a treat uncovered in plain view 
while the dog waits for permission to take it. Using a clicker or verbal 
marker also helps.

For touch, I fold two fingers and my thumb over the treat and hold out 
the other two for the touch. Then the treat is right there. Once the dog 
gets it, I use the hand signal but leave the treat in my pocket to give 
in a more leisurely manner. Sometimes I'll return to holding the treat 
under my closed fingers to play touch games with the dogs for lack of 
better entertainment, or we'll play touch games with the treats in the 
pockets or whatever.

The handy thing about using treats to deal with scavenging is that the 
dog needs to drop the contraband to take the treat, or at least most 
dogs do. Even if the dog is coordinated enough to keep the stolen 
treasure, its mouth is where you can reach it and calmly remove the 
treasure then reward for letting you remove the treasure and so on. At 
that point, someone will pop out of nowhere to ask why you just rewarded 
the dog for scavenging. Ignore them. You're rewarding the dog for giving 
you its prize. You're also keeping the dog's attention on you while you 
toss the prize away like it's icky trash. /lol/ A click at the right 
time also helps reinforce the specific behavior, or you can use a verbal 
marker. When I'm using verbal markers, I add the name of the behavior to 
the praise, especially at first. Good give it! Good drop it! Then I have 
a command to use as the dog begins to leave the stuff on the ground to 
do touch and treat.

Another technique that works realy well for difficult things is 
rapid-fire treating. Since Krokus has learned the joy of scavenging, 
that might help overcome the self-reinforcement of the behavior more 
quickly. I thought it sounded kinda nutty, but better trainers than me 
were enthused about the site where I learned it, so I tried it. Hey, 
presto! That site is http://sue-eh.ca/. She explains a number of 
techniques really well. I like her training levels, especially because 
she makes them flexible instead of trying to insist on a 
one-size-fits-all miracle method and she offers avenues for further 
reading and understanding. Essentially, you give one treat after 
another, starting with five treats, then you gradually decrease the 
number as the dog gets it. If the dog has difficulty, you can up the 
number of treats for a time, then reduce back down. That's especially 
useful for puppies who just forget things as their brains grow and 
neural pathways get rearranged or who just have spacey times and need a 
little help to get back on track. It's also good for changing a set 
self-rewarding behavior in an adult dog, I think.

Would it be possible for you to have Krokus wait while you check out his 
relieving area with your foot or a cane (if you carry one) before giving 
him permission to sniff for the perfect place? It could be a sort of zen 
practice and give you a chance to move at least some temptation out of 
the way while doing the touch game... Or it may be totally unfeasible.

I guess that's the long way of saying that yes, you are on the right 
track with the touch command to redirect. /smile/

Tami

On 07/02/2015 07:08 AM, Tracy Carcione via nagdu wrote:
> Julie J, or anyone else who knows, how can I use clicker training to work on
> scavenging?
>
> I think I understand the basic concepts.
>
> In the winter, I started teaching Krokus to touch my hand as a way to
> re-focus him, but I let it slide come Springtime, and just restarted
> recently.  Is something like hand-touch useful to stop scavenging, or is
> there something else I should be doing instead?
>
>
>
> My goal is to stop Krokus scavenging as much as I can.  I'm willing to try
> any method that will achieve that goal, but I'd prefer a gentle method, if
> it works. If I can get him to decide for himself that it's not very
> rewarding, that would be great.  Otherwise, I forsee it being a continuing
> problem.
>
> Tracy
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> nagdu mailing list
> nagdu at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nagdu_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for nagdu:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nagdu_nfbnet.org/tami%40poodlemutt.com
>




More information about the NAGDU mailing list