Lyra - Maintaining a Positive Attitude while "correcting" a Dog
Here's a very short video of Lyra making a mistake on her "stay".
I don't ignore the fact that she breaks, but I go to great lengths to keep her engaged, even though she's made a mistake. This is particularly important in this training session because Lyra's working for personal play only - no toys or food are available, and she knows that.
Just help the dog; it's no big deal. Really. She won't take over the world. She won't think she's "getting away" with ignoring me. She WILL stayed engaged in the game, and that's the hardest thing to get back if you manage to lose it.
I put her back with a cheerful attitude. I then reward a stay. Finally, I repeat the originally intended exercise (a recall).
If she had continued to fail, I would have accepted that I was asking too much. If that is the case, ask less and start over.
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actually, I have no idea:). Lyra is a soft dog who is just starting out, so I want all time spent with me to be fun and reinforcing; I can get the exercises trained as part of the overall process. As I said to another person on facebook, if I were training a human who did not speak english, and I cheerfully ran them back and returned them to the spot, would the person figure out what I wanted? Yep. Might take a couple of returns, but yes, they would figure it out. So do dogs.
Love this! I agree mistakes aren’t important. I think with a bright dog, even if you’re cheerful, going back to the starting line is sucky to them. So doesn’t take long to get it. I also worked very little on stays, and duration. Yet on one of our first trials, during the group stay, a fight broke out, and every single dog got up but mine. He didn’t even look! He just stared at me with his wonderful grin. Play and relationship makes engaging with you more important than pretty much anything.
Very refreshing! I love this!
So, technically, would this be an example of using a Least Reinforcing Stimulus (LRS)? I often see the term LRS interpreted as the trainer “ignoring” the animal for a few seconds (punishment) but I understand it to mean giving a small enough response to keep the dog engaged in the exercise without being rewarding. Which in Lyra’s case means a bit of interaction with you. Not that a descriptor term is necessary – if it works, it doesn’t matter what it is “called”! Just wondering…
These are the moments that I learn so much from. Thank you once again for sharing.
I am just starting to teach a young, enthusiastic dog to stay; and this was a great teachable moment for me.
I teach everything pretty much everything this way, so they figure it out. Mistakes aren’t important; being right is.
FWIW, I cannot think of one instance where one of my dogs broke a stay, nor one of my student’s dogs, because they went to a distraction in a show.
If a student comes to me and shows up with a stay problem, I might punish the dog for breaking by putting the dog away in a crate for a bit. And if one of my dog’s leaves training (whether on a stay or any other exercise) I end training. That is a punishment. But this video shows a young dog who was very enthusiastic and made a mistake. I put her back, which reminded her to stay put. That’s it. And it reminds me that I haven’t spent much time on stays recently.
I often praise dogs that make mistakes. I know that is not intuitive, but I praise to keep them engaging me if I believe they are a little clueless about what went wrong.