[NAGDU] Belto's Problems mostly resolved.

Tracy Carcione carcione at access.net
Sat Jul 15 17:09:13 UTC 2017


My trainer too told me not to praise Krokus much, which was totally wrong.
He thrives on praise, and does very well when I say something every minute
or so, and maybe less than a whole minute.  Even "doing good, good boy" in a
relaxed but cheerful way keeps him on track.  
I've been doing that for decades and know it works for most dogs, so why did
I listen to bad advice about it?  Silly me.  My only excuse is my last dog
didn't need quite so much (but still generally got it anyway.)
Tracy


-----Original Message-----
From: NAGDU [mailto:nagdu-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Jordan Gallacher
via NAGDU
Sent: Friday, July 14, 2017 11:36 AM
To: 'NAGDU Mailing List, the National Association of Guide Dog Users'
Cc: Jordan Gallacher
Subject: Re: [NAGDU] Belto's Problems mostly resolved.

John just plain told me to stop doing it like I was doing, which was quite a
bit of praise.  Well, as the instructors and I have discovered over the past
couple of days, Belto works much better with a lot of praise, and I am now
doing so.  My attitude if you have not figured that out already, is to do
whatever needs to be done to keep Belto working properly which means take
the advice I am given from this list and reps from Leader and figure out
what will work best.  Hopefully, I now have more tools to use and will be
abel to use the pinch collar less than I was having to do, but it definitely
will still be a tool I will use when needed if nothing else works.
Jordan and Belto

-----Original Message-----
From: NAGDU [mailto:nagdu-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Tami Jarvis via
NAGDU
Sent: Friday, July 14, 2017 10:20 AM
To: Jordan Gallacher via NAGDU
Cc: Tami Jarvis
Subject: Re: [NAGDU] Belto's Problems mostly resolved.

Jordan,

I'm glad you were able to get things sorted there. Yay! The On the Go
harness is nice, isn't it? I was so happy Julie started making those again.
I now have a leather harness for more formal occasions, and we used that for
several months to get it broken in. But it was so nice when the weather
heated up to just bring out the cool, light sports harness. It will be our
everyday harness from now on.

Just out of curiosity... Did they tell you not to praise Belto the way you
did in class, or were you not praising him and need to do more?

I know some dogs find a lot of chatter from their handler distracting, so
constant praise isn't helpful. Mine are on the opposite end of the scale,
which is a good thing because I am an incorrigible dog talker. 
/lol/ Most of my training method involves gushing with praise over every
little thing my dog does, which means I'm conditioning myself to gush with
praise over everything my dog does. Eventually, I get a grip on myself,
usually long after the dog has stopped needing any of it. I also get
addicted to the clicker, but I'm using it more for me than for the dog. My
dogs must go around rolling their eyes a lot at what a goofy handler they
have to deal with. /lol/ Weirdly, my misuse of both praise and clicker
doesn't seem to affect their guide work. I do do things properly during
training, so I guess by the time I get sloppy, they just know what to do and
do it. Yet if I want to do some clicker training for a new activity, they
respond to that, too. So I guess they've figured things out better than I
have.

Anyway, that's why I was curious about the role of praise in your dog's
work, if you don't mind explaining a bit.

Tami



On 07/13/2017 02:46 PM, Jordan Gallacher via NAGDU wrote:
> Well, good news is most of Belto's issues I have previously reported 
> have been solved.  It is appearing like some of the problems came 
> about because of what my instructor/field rep was telling me not to do 
> including telling me not to praise Belto like I was trying to do in 
> class.  Thanks to the two reps that are here from Leader, problems 
> such as going down stairs and other working issues have mostly been 
> resolved.  Not totally sure what is up with the harness still, but 
> since I purchased a harness from On the Go the other day, the Leader 
> Dog harness is no longer the primary harness I use.  So things are 
> going well, and as long as I do what the reps here have told me, 
> things
will continue to go well.
> 
> Jordan and Belto
> 
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