K9 Scent work varies in complexity from the mundane to the inordinately complex. From the type or types of scents you would like to imprint your dog on, to the environmental variables you would like to proof him against, it could take days to years to have a fully functional dog.
For the average hobbyist however, in a few weeks you can have your dog up and pointing the way to anything from bee hives to truffles if you carefully follow a few easy steps.
1. Obedience train your dog. This makes everything easier and you will see why later. The dog should be able to sit, down and recall on command as a bare minimum.
2. Select a reward. As I have discussed before this can make or break your training. You may find chicken/liver/cheese irresistible, but some dogs will just die for a tennis ball. Also some rewards are simply too cumbersome for the speed and spontaneity that is required for concise training.
3. Load the marker. Whatever your positive marker, be it a clicker, or verbalization, you need to associate it with the reward. Before you even begin your scent training, load your marker for at least a few days, if not a couple of weeks.
4. Scent imprinting. Assuming you have selected and collected your target scent, you can now begin imprinting your canine on it. Start out working in a very small and bare environment. Using a dog proof scent container with ample scent in it, allow your dog supervised freedom in the room. Begin by marking and rewarding your dog showing even remote interest in the scent container (a glance, a sniff, any movement towards it). Continue shaping the behavior all the way up to the alert you require. Initially reward any interest, enthusiasm or effort, and start withholding the lesser 20% or 30% of the behaviors that are not as vigorous.
5. Select the Alert. Like the reward this should be well thought out. The alert should be a behavior that will be acceptable in the environment you will be eventually working in, and also a behavior you will be able to associate and request upon command. Typically a bark, sit, down or scratch is used, with some favoring mouthing a brindle or other more complex requirement.
6. Proofing. The final step in your scent training involves proofing your dog to distractions, environmental variables, as well as similar but wrong scents. Your dog may need to eventually be comfortable working in rain or snow, with heavy equipment operating nearby and may need to detect ants versus termites. Proofing a dog to the gold standard can take years, but will certainly take months at the very least. A dog that is proofed to a large number of variables and distractions is worth his weight in gold.
With that, I will let you on your way to try your hand at this immensely rewarding canine training discipline. Relax, have fun and watch your relationship grow.
www.nwtruffledogs.com
Friday, March 26, 2010
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Improving Confidence - The Dog's and Yours
I have worked with a number of submissive, timid and insecure dogs over the years and to me they are the most difficult problem to solve. To me it is much easier to tamp down drive, check energy or coral enthusiasm than it is to build confidence, yet that is a problem presented to many pet owners who want to take their canine to the next level or even into Home Depot.
My experience with this has often been in female dogs, though I have seen a different presentation in males in the form of fear biting and barrier aggression.
At any rate, I have tried different things at different times, with different dogs, and have had different results. Dogs are not computers they are individuals, so while having a basic understanding of motivators is great, experience does not always replace trial and error.
Take Lika for example. Lika was slated to be a working dog because that is what her owner wanted to do. Unfortunately Lika was not sure that that is what she wanted to do, desperate as she was to spend time with her master. When I first met Lika I didn't find her to be overly shy, but she certainly was laid back and very soft. When working with strangers she was reluctant and hesitant which was a problem for a SAR dog who needs to be eager to rush up to perfect strangers with enthusiasm and abandon.
Lika's master also had a problem in that he was unenthusiastic. It was a terrible combination. Though they were no doubt wonderful room mates, it was almost a lose/lose combination. We tried a variety of games and activities, but nothing seemed to make a big difference. Oh, there were gradual improvements, just from repetition and habituation, but it was very slow progress.
I tried to convince Lika's master that he needed to put aside all male pride, and become shrill, animated and ecstatic when Lika showed interest, pleasure or comfort in contact with strangers, but this was just not in his bag of tricks. I asked the volunteers working with Lika to make like squirrels and run from her on her approach. I watched her timidly wag her tail when she saw this game but she would look back at her master for approval only to get a gruff nod.
Perhaps part of Lika's problem was not getting the level of approval and enthusiasm from her handler that she needed. Maybe she just was not wired to be a confident outgoing dog and trying to make her was spitting in the wind. Sometimes you have to be ok with not getting what you wanted and loving the dog you've got.
Other examples of confidence are clearly fear based. But not in the dog.
I was complaining to my animal behaviorist and training mentor that I hated nothing more than a dog that rocked the whole vehicle charging and barking as you walked by and my dog had begun to do just that. She explained to me that I had taken on a guarding breed and he was doing what guarding breeds do. Guard. She told me I got the wrong breed if I didn't want my guarding breed to guard my car. Love the dog you got. But she further advised me it was not unreasonable for me to expect the dog to not do that when I was in the car. When I am in the car, guarding the car is my job. It is a matter of confidence.
If a healthy ambitious dog trusts that you are going to handle a situation, and you give him every indication that you can, he will submit to your leadership. If a healthy ambitious dog senses some ambivalence or insecurity in you, then he may just step up to the plate and handle it for you. Even if your insecurity is that you fear the dog is going to have an outburst at some unsuspecting stranger. This presents as many different problems to include barrier aggression. A weak or insecure person and a strong dog can be a dangerous and unpredictable combination.
I asked my trainer to help me work on my dogs vehicle barrier aggression. We started with obedience and again a muzzle. I feared something bad was going to happen when my dog confronted an unsettling situation. My dog thought that my fear was something he should act on, even though the fear was exactly that he would act. Placing the muzzle on the dog allowed me to relax and develop confidence. If I was sure nothing bad was going to happen then the dog sensed my comfort and succumbed to my leadership. Next thing you know he was getting cookies from every gas attendant, banker and drive through and I didn't fear them reaching in the car. Problem solved. It was that easy.
Fear and barrier aggression is a common problem and I advocate muzzles all the time. Muzzles give these poor dogs and owners a real shot at addressing the issue with some measure of safety. Unfortunately there is a negative perception about a muzzled dog and that is very unfortunate. A muzzle can be a wonderful training tool and can deescalate an dog with an escalating behavioral problem, and give them the opportunity to become more socialized and well adjusted. This is an opportunity they may never get if their owner is too embarrassed or inhibited to be seen in public with a muzzled dog.
My experience with this has often been in female dogs, though I have seen a different presentation in males in the form of fear biting and barrier aggression.
At any rate, I have tried different things at different times, with different dogs, and have had different results. Dogs are not computers they are individuals, so while having a basic understanding of motivators is great, experience does not always replace trial and error.
Take Lika for example. Lika was slated to be a working dog because that is what her owner wanted to do. Unfortunately Lika was not sure that that is what she wanted to do, desperate as she was to spend time with her master. When I first met Lika I didn't find her to be overly shy, but she certainly was laid back and very soft. When working with strangers she was reluctant and hesitant which was a problem for a SAR dog who needs to be eager to rush up to perfect strangers with enthusiasm and abandon.
Lika's master also had a problem in that he was unenthusiastic. It was a terrible combination. Though they were no doubt wonderful room mates, it was almost a lose/lose combination. We tried a variety of games and activities, but nothing seemed to make a big difference. Oh, there were gradual improvements, just from repetition and habituation, but it was very slow progress.
I tried to convince Lika's master that he needed to put aside all male pride, and become shrill, animated and ecstatic when Lika showed interest, pleasure or comfort in contact with strangers, but this was just not in his bag of tricks. I asked the volunteers working with Lika to make like squirrels and run from her on her approach. I watched her timidly wag her tail when she saw this game but she would look back at her master for approval only to get a gruff nod.
Perhaps part of Lika's problem was not getting the level of approval and enthusiasm from her handler that she needed. Maybe she just was not wired to be a confident outgoing dog and trying to make her was spitting in the wind. Sometimes you have to be ok with not getting what you wanted and loving the dog you've got.
Other examples of confidence are clearly fear based. But not in the dog.
I was complaining to my animal behaviorist and training mentor that I hated nothing more than a dog that rocked the whole vehicle charging and barking as you walked by and my dog had begun to do just that. She explained to me that I had taken on a guarding breed and he was doing what guarding breeds do. Guard. She told me I got the wrong breed if I didn't want my guarding breed to guard my car. Love the dog you got. But she further advised me it was not unreasonable for me to expect the dog to not do that when I was in the car. When I am in the car, guarding the car is my job. It is a matter of confidence.
If a healthy ambitious dog trusts that you are going to handle a situation, and you give him every indication that you can, he will submit to your leadership. If a healthy ambitious dog senses some ambivalence or insecurity in you, then he may just step up to the plate and handle it for you. Even if your insecurity is that you fear the dog is going to have an outburst at some unsuspecting stranger. This presents as many different problems to include barrier aggression. A weak or insecure person and a strong dog can be a dangerous and unpredictable combination.
I asked my trainer to help me work on my dogs vehicle barrier aggression. We started with obedience and again a muzzle. I feared something bad was going to happen when my dog confronted an unsettling situation. My dog thought that my fear was something he should act on, even though the fear was exactly that he would act. Placing the muzzle on the dog allowed me to relax and develop confidence. If I was sure nothing bad was going to happen then the dog sensed my comfort and succumbed to my leadership. Next thing you know he was getting cookies from every gas attendant, banker and drive through and I didn't fear them reaching in the car. Problem solved. It was that easy.
Fear and barrier aggression is a common problem and I advocate muzzles all the time. Muzzles give these poor dogs and owners a real shot at addressing the issue with some measure of safety. Unfortunately there is a negative perception about a muzzled dog and that is very unfortunate. A muzzle can be a wonderful training tool and can deescalate an dog with an escalating behavioral problem, and give them the opportunity to become more socialized and well adjusted. This is an opportunity they may never get if their owner is too embarrassed or inhibited to be seen in public with a muzzled dog.
Tuning Drive
Building drive seems as first a simple problem to solve. Your dog is lackadaisical, aloof, unmotivated or easily distracted. All you have to do is find out what flips his trigger, right? Ah well, not so fast, Sparky! Drive is a wonderful and treacherous tool.
When I mail ordered my first working dog from France, I picked him up at the airport and looked at him cowering in the back of the crate. Great. This wasn't a good sign I thought. I took him right out and started flooding him with new and diverse experiences. No time to start like the present. He tolerated all of this with a tense aloofness. Partially the breed, partially mishandling. And then I began his search and rescue training.
The dog was a little aloof, so I decided to perform some drive building. Each time he located his subject (found a person), I had him grab a tarp that they were wrapped in and tug and play with it. This cause two problems. He didn't really make a good connection with the human...he was in it for the tarp. He began tugging at clothing or nipping people sleeveless arms who weren't wrapped in a tarp. Yikes!
It wasn't an aggression problem, it was an over driven dog who was taught a bad habit by an inexperienced trainer. I was pretty unconcerned about it at first, after all, a lost person isn't going to complain that the SAR dog tugged at his pant legs when they were found, but the first problem I ran into was people didn't want to hide for him any more. The second problem is that people wanted me to pay for the $250 North Face jacket he maimed. And I could see other potential problems in our future.
The nips were not aggressive but they were lighting fast and intense. He was performing a little herding dog action on his lost subjects. That will teach them to get lost! Of course I share all of this at grave risk of people labeling my dog a biter. True he bites, but he doesn't MEAN it. Uh huh. Tell that to the guy with the big purple pinch on the back of his arm.
Something had to be done so I removed the dog from SAR training and began working with an animal behaviorist. The first thing we did was muzzle him to remove my anxiety regarding errant nips. We taught him some solid obedience and a rock solid 'leave it' command. After he was more socialized and under control, we returned to SAR and armed our subjects with an e-collar. This could have been a great tool were it not for imperfect timing and hair trigger.
I further began ignoring the advise of my SAR mentors and trainers and I refused to amp my dog like a police K9. Yes, yes that works great for your labradoodle, but my dog has drive in spades and he doesn't get to take it out on a bite sleeve. Instead of blindly revving the dog up, I was much more careful and meticulous about how much energy to give him. Were we going out for a four hour training, or just a quick run-a-way. And as he approached his subject, I gave him cool down commands or negative markers and advised my training volunteers to do the same.
It wasn't a matter of weeks, but within six months, the dog understood that under no circumstances was he to make contact. And without sacrificing a cent of drive, this dog would go out for the pure joy of the hunt and work for hours.
The moral of this story is, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Build only as much drive as you need and can control.
When I mail ordered my first working dog from France, I picked him up at the airport and looked at him cowering in the back of the crate. Great. This wasn't a good sign I thought. I took him right out and started flooding him with new and diverse experiences. No time to start like the present. He tolerated all of this with a tense aloofness. Partially the breed, partially mishandling. And then I began his search and rescue training.
The dog was a little aloof, so I decided to perform some drive building. Each time he located his subject (found a person), I had him grab a tarp that they were wrapped in and tug and play with it. This cause two problems. He didn't really make a good connection with the human...he was in it for the tarp. He began tugging at clothing or nipping people sleeveless arms who weren't wrapped in a tarp. Yikes!
It wasn't an aggression problem, it was an over driven dog who was taught a bad habit by an inexperienced trainer. I was pretty unconcerned about it at first, after all, a lost person isn't going to complain that the SAR dog tugged at his pant legs when they were found, but the first problem I ran into was people didn't want to hide for him any more. The second problem is that people wanted me to pay for the $250 North Face jacket he maimed. And I could see other potential problems in our future.
The nips were not aggressive but they were lighting fast and intense. He was performing a little herding dog action on his lost subjects. That will teach them to get lost! Of course I share all of this at grave risk of people labeling my dog a biter. True he bites, but he doesn't MEAN it. Uh huh. Tell that to the guy with the big purple pinch on the back of his arm.
Something had to be done so I removed the dog from SAR training and began working with an animal behaviorist. The first thing we did was muzzle him to remove my anxiety regarding errant nips. We taught him some solid obedience and a rock solid 'leave it' command. After he was more socialized and under control, we returned to SAR and armed our subjects with an e-collar. This could have been a great tool were it not for imperfect timing and hair trigger.
I further began ignoring the advise of my SAR mentors and trainers and I refused to amp my dog like a police K9. Yes, yes that works great for your labradoodle, but my dog has drive in spades and he doesn't get to take it out on a bite sleeve. Instead of blindly revving the dog up, I was much more careful and meticulous about how much energy to give him. Were we going out for a four hour training, or just a quick run-a-way. And as he approached his subject, I gave him cool down commands or negative markers and advised my training volunteers to do the same.
It wasn't a matter of weeks, but within six months, the dog understood that under no circumstances was he to make contact. And without sacrificing a cent of drive, this dog would go out for the pure joy of the hunt and work for hours.
The moral of this story is, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Build only as much drive as you need and can control.
Luring Behaviors
Now that you have the clicker loaded, and you have learned to cue and mark behaviors, we can talk about luring and shaping. In the old style of dog training when you wanted to teach your little Brutus to sit, you would look Brutus in the eye, and sternly command "SIT!" while simultaneously pressing down on Brutus' rear end. The inevitable result of this is that Brutus would rise to the pressure you have placed downward and the battle of the wills ensued until at last Brutus would give in and plop to the ground in resignation, certainly having forgotten the cue that instigated the whole affair. Whoever thought that physically manipulating the dog into the position you desired never read Newton's Law of Motion.
"So if I can't push my dogs butt down when I want his butt down, what CAN I do?!" Glad you asked. We are going to use a much more humane method of training....more humane on you that is. OK, so you say you want your dog to sit? Take the cheese square, not that dried up ol' dog biscuit you call a 'treat', a cheese square, and hold it between your dogs eyeballs, about 12" away, carefully caged in your fingers so your dog can't actually can't get it. You dogs nose will rise in eager anticipation and attempting to sniff the treat. As the nose rises, so rises the cheese in an arc right over the top of your pooches head directly between his ears. He may back up, and dance around a bit, but if you keep trying to place that cheese about five inches directly above you pups head, and between his ears, eventually something magic will happen. He will get tired of trying to crane his neck around and he will sit. Instantly pop that cheese into pooches mouth and praise profusely.
Yes, we did not give the command of sit. We will discuss that later. But look! We produced a sit without pushing, prodding and pain in the rear. You have learned to lure your dog. Where your dogs nose goes, his body must follow. Using a piece of cheese, or chicken or something equally tasty, you can lure your dog in all kinds of directions and positions. Move forward, back-up, sit, stand, stand on two legs, and on and on. Yes, luring is not perfect. Sometimes your dog will be quick and sneaky and get the treat. Sometimes your dog will get frustrated and lose interest before the desired behavior is performed, and we will work on all of that. But more often-than-not with practice and good timing, he will, without realizing it, be coaxed into the act you want performed, and each time you achieve it, it will become easier and easier, until it is time to name or cue the behavior.
"So if I can't push my dogs butt down when I want his butt down, what CAN I do?!" Glad you asked. We are going to use a much more humane method of training....more humane on you that is. OK, so you say you want your dog to sit? Take the cheese square, not that dried up ol' dog biscuit you call a 'treat', a cheese square, and hold it between your dogs eyeballs, about 12" away, carefully caged in your fingers so your dog can't actually can't get it. You dogs nose will rise in eager anticipation and attempting to sniff the treat. As the nose rises, so rises the cheese in an arc right over the top of your pooches head directly between his ears. He may back up, and dance around a bit, but if you keep trying to place that cheese about five inches directly above you pups head, and between his ears, eventually something magic will happen. He will get tired of trying to crane his neck around and he will sit. Instantly pop that cheese into pooches mouth and praise profusely.
Yes, we did not give the command of sit. We will discuss that later. But look! We produced a sit without pushing, prodding and pain in the rear. You have learned to lure your dog. Where your dogs nose goes, his body must follow. Using a piece of cheese, or chicken or something equally tasty, you can lure your dog in all kinds of directions and positions. Move forward, back-up, sit, stand, stand on two legs, and on and on. Yes, luring is not perfect. Sometimes your dog will be quick and sneaky and get the treat. Sometimes your dog will get frustrated and lose interest before the desired behavior is performed, and we will work on all of that. But more often-than-not with practice and good timing, he will, without realizing it, be coaxed into the act you want performed, and each time you achieve it, it will become easier and easier, until it is time to name or cue the behavior.
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