I realised today that despite living there the puppies have never actually been outside into Caroles garden! So I did the right thing and let them out for some playtime, they were totally exhausted as you can imagine. It was really lovely to see Kumi being able to play properly with the puppies, they played bitey face and Kumi also played Keep Away which was so funny. We had the tunnel out as well, not quite sure Purple has got the hang of it! I also bought a old carpet inner tube with me to use as a barrier, as you can see they had no issues with it! We had another clicker session today which went really well, all the puppies are clearly understanding it but Orange and Beige showed the most understanding. Both of them twigged that they controlled this food and mimicked the same movement 3 or 4 times in a row, for Orange this was moving his head down and slightly to his left and for Beige it was nose poking the box in exactly the same place. It sounds very simple but this is a great leap in their learning process. On Thursday we will probably start manding with them, watch this space!
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Today we moved on from just introducing the clicker and we have begun the "Box Game". The aim of this is to teach the puppies that they can do something to trigger the clicker, it makes them realise that they have an amount of control over a situation, some trainers use this in older dogs to allow them to "opt in/out" of a difficult or stressful situation but thats for a later post. With the puppies we want them to realise that their behaviour has a consequence, at this moment in time it's all positive. We place a box on the ground and click for any interaction the puppy makes, this can be looking towards the box, walking towards it, touching it, sitting in it etc etc. It is slightly different from the box game that we play with adults dogs, with them we aim to shape the behaviour and get the dog to step in side the box and stay there. Once they have fully understood this concept we will use it to teach something called "Manding". Manding is essentially giving the puppies a voice and allowing them to ask for something. Want a fuss? Sit nicely in front of me and I'll give you one. When your puppy comes home you can expand this to other things such as going outside (sit nicely at the door and you can go out) or meal times (sit while I get your food ready). Many people know this concept as Nothing In Life Is Free (NILIF) or Learn to Earn and it is something Carole and I both follow, to us it is good manners, impulse control and means we have control over situations that can be over exciting, if a dog is over excited before it even steps foot out of the door how can we expect them to be calm and listen when they get outside. It's also something you will hear us recommend once you reach that barky teenage stage, in this case the dog can't go out/get out of the car/have its dinner until it is quiet. I've included some links so you can have a read and learn a bit more. The only behaviour we do NOT recommend is tethering the dog to you at all times http://k9deb.com/nilif.htm http://drsophiayin.com/blog/entry/the-learn-to-earn-program http://drsophiayin.com/blog/entry/the-learn-to-earn-program-implementing-the-program http://www.brooklinelabrescue.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/LearnToEarn.pdf I think I have posted previously about giving the puppies challenges, today I decided to use cardboard boxes to sort of make a channel, put the puppy bump out (that white pvc tube) and another box for them to work out how to get around, safe to say they mastered it! You'll also hear me calling "Puppy puppy puppy" which is the start of their recall training. Every time we feed them we use this call and they have begun to associate it with something good. This is the basis for any recall and it will come in handy for you in the future! Enjoy the video, tomorrow I think I'll put a tunnel out for them to go through which I'll try to record again :) Part of Puppy Culture is getting the puppies to think and learn how to problem solve. Simple challenges such as putting a small hump or box between the puppies and their dinner and letting them work out how to get over it, or as I tried today placing a puppy pen between the puppy and their dinner and letting them work out that they have to go around it not through it to get to the food. Some of the pups found this challenging and some of them found it really simple however watching back the videos it seems that the ones that struggled were also having to deal with the other puppies being quite noisy, they have such limited attention spans at this point that they struggled with this distraction. It's hard to find a space in Caroles house that has a wipe clean floor but is out of ear shot from the other puppies so we will try this again at some point at my house and work on other things at Caroles house. Below are the videos from today, I've cut out most of the bits where they go wandering off otherwise the videos would be quite long! You'll notice that you don't actually see Beige finish this challenge, about a minute in to him working on this Orange decided to throw a strop about the fact that he couldn't get out of the outhouse and when Orange throws a strop he screams and screams. It freaked Beige out a bit so we stopped and had a break but my camera ran out of battery before Beige succeeded. Rest assured he did it, it just took a while :) Watch for Black pouncing at 1.50min, utterly adorable! |
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