Our friend Hilary, who was Lilly’s first trainer at the shelter, emailed me a link to these videos from someone she knows through a group of “Truly Dog Friendly” trainers. The 2 videos (about 9 minutes each) show a Boston Terrier named Humbug learning to put his toys away. It begins with a regular game of fetch, then Suezanne M. Law from Sympawtico shapes the behavior into something new. Rather than a clicker and treats, she uses a marker word and the toy, but you get the idea.
Here’s a link to Suezanne’s blog entry, which includes the embedded videos. Since they are on YouTube, I could also embed them here, but out of fairness to her, I won’t. I’m sure she’d appreciate the blog traffic.
What’s interesting to me is the waiting and waiting for Humbug to figure it out. Watching this made me realize how much additional patience I need when shaping a behavior. I tend to jump to fast into asking Lilly to “Try again” when she makes a mistake.
I still think “Try Again” works, if it’s a behavior she already knows, but I should probably remove it from my early training vocabulary.
Come back here and tell me what you notice.
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