The different elements of a behavior

It's helpful to think of any behavior as having the following elements:

Distraction in the environment (birds chirping, traffic noise) or in the dog (stress)
Distance (how far away from you can he be and still obey the command? How far can he carry the tennis ball?)
Duration (how many seconds or minutes can he do it?)
Intensity (how hard does he have to push the jingle bells to get them to ring?)
Speed (how quickly does he perform the behavior?)

When we talk about "raising the bar" on a behavior, the truth is that we've got 5 bars, each with their own range of difficulty. So we have to be careful to only raise the criterion of one bar at a time, and when we do, we temporarily relax our requirements for the other ones. Once the new criterion is solidly established, we then work on getting those other elements back where they were. Generally, we want to shape the element of speed last. We want to get the other stuff right before we ask the dog to speed things up.

These concepts apply to all learning situations, by the way, this is not just about dog training. So if you want to improve your golf swing, work on one aspect of it and give yourself a break on the other elements of it while you're learning the new part.

Studying this stuff is fun, it's fascinating, and its immensely applicable in life.

Day 6: evening- Progress!!!

Wow, what a day. I went outside and created an enclosed training space with 2 ex-pens. We worked on "sit" which took him awhile to get (it's a behavior he usually only offers when he's not sure what you want and he's sort of sitting in submission). I saw the lightbulb go on! Soon we were doing it again and again and again. Hooray! So I moved to a new location, which distracted him a bit but he caught back up again. So we moved to another location, and did it some more. Each time you move to a new location you raise the bar a bit. All locations were in the back yard, all only slightly distracting (distractions included a breeze causing the sun umbrellas to rustle and move, background noises, etc).

So I sensed we were on a roll. At the same time, I didn't want to overwhelm him! It's a big training mistake to go too fast. I wanted to try him on my bike with the K9 Cruiser. I clipped him to the short light tether, and slowly walked the bike around the back yard, encouraging him. He was fine! We went out front, and I tried riding slowly. He was fine! We went around a bit in front of the house, and he was doing great (he goes fast!). On my bike I have a rear-mirror positioned to let me know if the dog is happily going as fast as the bike, or if he's falling back in position a bit. This alerts me before he falls into a position where he'd be pulled at all by the bike. He loved it. We went all the way around the block, with cars passing us and everything. The only hiccup came when a neighbor wanted to say hi to him and even though the man was 12 feet away, he started to pull back and panic. He asked to be held, and I held him and he was fine (but we did not move any closer to the man, I didn't want to undo all our progress to date by overwhelming him). We said goodbye and I clipped him back up and we went on our way. He really impressed me with his progress, and frankly he showed a lot resilience in the presence of huge SUVs passing us. Good boy!

Day 2

Dennis fed E a bit of kibble in his crate for breakfast, and took him out with our other dogs to eliminate. Back in the crate for a bit.

I got up and took him out again, to the fenced-off dog yard so I could let him offleash there. I walked around a bit to encourage him to go. He didn't need to go again. I went over the clean "safe to sit down" area, and sat on the ground. He hopped around like a colt, clearly wanting to initiate play. He gave a little bark, the first sound we've heard out of him at all. He trotted around the perimeter of the dog-yard, just burning off some steam (not trying to escape). He was clearly happy.

I encouraged him (very softly) to come to me, and slowly reached out and scratched his chest and then took his collar and clipped the leash to it. Again, I took him into my lap for a moment, and he loved it. I stroked him and praised him, and gently put him out of my lap so I could get up. He stopped for a long drink of water, and then back into the house and into the crate.

I confined my dogs so I could train E without the others clammoring for their turn. (Everyone loves a training session in this house). I took E outside to the back yard, where the distraction level is higher than where we've trained so far (2 different rooms in the house). We worked on eye contact again. He is very food motivated, so he loves this game. I was sitting on the ground, holding the plastic bin of treats. He pawed at it and tried to push my hand off the top with his nose. He gently took the rim with his teeth and tried to pull. He finally figured out that he could only get the treats if he earned them. But boy does he want them! There were lots of sounds (people walking by, a squirrel racing across the roof) so it was a big deal for him to keep the game up with all the distraction.

In clicker training, when we "raise the bar" of distraction, we lower the bar of the other criteria (length of time eye contact must be sustained). So in other words, because it was a more distracting spot, he only had to glance at me to earn a treat. Later, we'll make him sustain it for longer.

Back into his crate, and off to work for me. My husband is working from home today so we can ease E into having longer periods of time in the yard.