[nagdu] follow was Grave problems with Pilot Dogs program

[Tamara Smith-Kinney]

Awesome!  Having a willing teenager as a training assistant is the first
step in achieving success.  Adults in that role have more trouble than kids
for some reason.  Probably because they're too safety conscious.  Kids have
no clue about danger, so they can just have fun playing their part and let
us play ours without assessing all the many ways we shall surely die at
every step.  /lol/  Unfortunately, if the teenagers belong to your friends
and neighbors and are not your own, you lose their companionship along with
their enthusiastic assistance once they realize that they are now way too
cool for the likes of you.  /grin/  Still, one can watch them grow and
develop and become super annoying twits secure in the knowledge that they're
somebody else's problem.  So it works out.  /evil grin/

I look forward to hearing how future training goes.  Don't know if Monty
will have the same response as Mitzi, but learning the person's name and
using it in the follow command is a definite requirement for her.  If I
forget, she will follow, but she gives me sighs and attitude until I
remember my manners.  /smile/

Tami Smith-Kinney

-----Original Message-----
From: nagdu-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nagdu-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf
Of Julie J
Sent: Sunday, April 17, 2011 6:08 AM
To: NAGDU Mailing List,the National Association of Guide Dog Users
Subject: Re: [nagdu] follow was Grave problems with Pilot Dogs program

Update on teaching follow to a nonfollowing dog...

Yesterday did turn out to be a beautiful day!  No rain or snow and only a 
light breeze.  I enlisted the help of Kiddo, my teenage son, to help teach 
Monty follow.  He was wearing wind pants, you know the ones that make all 
sorts of noise when you walk?  We hadn't planned it, but it worked amazingly

well.

We started out in the front of the house with a planned route in advance. 
It was basically a square from sidewalk to driveway to porch and then back 
around to sidewalk.  I told Monty to follow and kept repeating follow, 
giving hand signals if he needed a little help.  He seemed like he was 
starting to get the concept.  He did remember to stop for elevation changes 
so that was really good.  that was something that Belle had difficulty with.

If she was following, she wasn't doing anything else.

Then we headed over to the college parking lot.   I wanted Monty to really 
get the idea of follow without the hint of a specific pathway.  We practiced

for 15-20 minutes.  I'd click and treat at varying intervals for following 
and tell Monty "no" if he went off in a different direction.  I also cut 
back on the number of times I told him to follow as well as the extra hand 
gestures to indicate the turns.  I may have gone a bit fast in the training 
pace, but Monty seems to have picked it up, so I think it was okay.

I'd say Monty was about 75% accurate with Kiddo in the parking lot,  which 
is good for a start.  So now I need to find other people to practice with 
and lots and lots of different places.  I need to get the accuracy up and 
get him to generalize that follow means follow for a waitress in a 
restaurant or the husband in a theater or the secretary in an office 
building.  It could be a while before we get this down pat. *smile*

I did notice a couple of interesting things though.  Monty prefers the 
person to be a bit to our left and ahead.  In the wide open area I let him 
follow wherever he wanted.  Most of the time Monty would place himself 
behind and to the right of Kiddo.

The other thing I noticed that Monty doesn't follow as much as he notices 
where the other person is going and plots a parallel course.  He truly does 
not like to follow, but that's okay as long as we stay with the other person

and get where we are going.

Julie



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