I decided to put some of Dr. Dunbars advicde to work - lure-rewarding Indie to bark on cue.
Step 1: Say your verbal cue... "Speak!"
Step 2: Lure your dog to perform the cue...I growled at him.
Step 3: Dog responds...he barks.
Step 4: Get ear plugs....and reward.
Indie is crazy barker. No, thats not true. He is an emotionally reactive barker. It's driviing us a little nuts. So the thought is putting the bark on cue means you can also put the "shhh" on cue. But, you have to bark before you can shhh.
Yesterday was session 1 in which we lure and reward. Today was session 2 and in which I removed the lure. We were about 50% successful without the lure so I expected we will be without it by tomorrow.
Fun stuff.
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Monday, October 1, 2012
This weekend (Friday and Sunday) I went to the Ian Dunbar seminar hosted by The Summit. The event was held at the Emerald Links Golf Course, in Manotick, ON. Saturday we went to a trial at
Absolute Agility in Harrowsmith, ON. It was quite a jam packed weekend.
I’ll
start with Dr. Dunbar’s seminar. I always try to find the good in
everything – we’ll, no I don’t, but I am trying to. I went to this
seminar with the understanding that I would learn something about this
gentleman’s “world renowned” training techniques. I’ll admit I left
disappointed.
Why was I disappointed? A few reasons…
2) No demonstrations. I’m a visual learner and in order to learn I need to SEE what you do and how you do it. I don’t think it would have been hard to wrangle up a few dogs to demonstrate his techniques on. While seeing Dr. Dunbar imitate a dog and their behaviour I think seeing a dog would have been more relevant.
3) No handouts. It’s hard to tell the relevant from the irrelevant. Handouts would have at least helped me know when to really pay attention and given a quality document to refer back to - as opposed to my chicken scratch.
4) No visual aids. If there aren’t handouts then there should have been a power point presentation of the material. Videos?
5) The training techniques covered are common place for those who use positive rewards training. What he talked about was the same thing he’s been talking about for decades. Nothing new, nothing revolutionary.
6) He refers the audience to his books and videos for demonstrations and more information. Convenient that they were all made available at the seminar.
When
I leave a training seminar, especially one that I have put a fair
amount of money in to, I want to feel as though I have walked away with
something. I really left with nothing.
I
am in no way “dissing” Dr. Dunbar. I think what he, Bob Bailey, Karen Pryor (many others too!) have
done for the dog training world have revolutionized the way we train
dogs today. I respect the man, will continue to look to his websites for
new material – Siriuspup.com and Dogstardaily.com – but I will not go
to one of his seminars again – which I couldn’t anyway, as the man is
retiring “soon”.
Saturday
was a little less disappointing. I ran the dogs in a few events each,
but unfortunately my atrocious handling caused multiple errors on course
– resulting in NQ’s.
The
good news is that Indie pulled off a beautiful Advanced Gamble, being
the only dog to Q in the event. I didn’t get to watch any other dogs run
so I am unsure what the problem was. The end gamble seemed easy enough
(I figured that was why we pulled it off) but I suppose it wasn’t.
The gooder news (yes, gooder) is that Travis earned his 3rd
Master Standard Q, earning his MADC!! Woot-woot!! He was a glorious 12
seconds under time too! To me, he seemed slow, but I think where he
makes up all that time was on his contacts. He is so much more confident
on all the contact obstacles that he makes up seconds. I always thought
his ground speed was slow but I suppose it isn’t really all that bad.
The
bestest (yes, bestest) news is that, with the exception of a fly-off by
Travis on the teeter in his first event, the dogs were 100% on their
contacts! Solid. Confident. Sure.
Travis’
fly-off was a little unexpected. He rode the teeter down like I
expected him too, until about a foot off the ground – then he bailed. I
am not 100% sure why, but he did. I put him back on because I wanted to
make sure he wasn’t traumatized. He wasn’t .
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