Bright and early on Monday morning, the lovely Morag of Well Connected Canine buzzes me on Facebook and asks if I'm free for a chat as she wants to talk to me about Bran and clicker training. So of course I say yes.
We had a really lovely long chat about Bran and his personality, how he responds to "normal" training, how he responds to clicker training, how he responds in different situations, etc and we eventually concluded that Bran is probably not a very confident dog and has never had to think for himself, hence why he finds clicker training so painful. Well, that and I've managed to teach him that when the clicker comes out if he sits still for long enough I'll tell him what to do, give him a treat and leave him alone!
As a puppy, Bran always had Flora taking care of everything for him and he followed her lead in everything - hence why he learned so many things as a pup. As he grew, I would tell him what to do because I knew that he knew how to do them. As he was such a lovely, laidback companion who knew his obedience basics there was no real need to teach him anything else. It was only when we started at training classes for a bit of fun that it started to come to light that Bran was having problems with learning new things.
Morag suggested having the clicker and treat bag always to hand for a while and just click and treating Bran for looking for attention or laying quietly or anything really so that he could see that there was no pressure even though the clicker was being used. She also suggested teaching him something such as going to a mat but doing it in a stealthy, ninja manner so that Bran wasn't the centre of attention and didn't feel any pressure to perform.
By some coincidence, I'd bought a cheap bathroom mat just the day before for this very purpose!
A short while after speaking to Morag I took the clicker, the treat bag, the mat, a cup of tea and a magazine out into the garden and left the back door open so that the dogs could join me if they wanted to.
I popped the mat on the floor right beside me and got on with reading my magazine, as far as Bran was concerned. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched him and if he looked at the mat I clicked and treated. As he progressed to sniffing the mat, I clicked and treated again. Then he got clicked and treated if he had any combination of paws on the mat, but now the treat was tossed far enough away from the mat that he had to remove his paws from it and consciously go back to it.
Still I was busy drinking my cup of tea and reading my magazine and giving Bran no eye contact or indication that I was in the slightest bit bothered about what he was doing.
Then he sat on the mat so I clicked and treated 3 times and fed him the treats from my hand, still not looking at him, then tossed the 4th treat off to the side. He came straight back and sat on the mat! After 3 more repetitions of tossing the treat away from the mat and Bran offering a sit straight away, I told him what a very good boy he was, packed up and came back into the house.
A little later, the puppies were still in their crates having just had tea so I grabbed a few more minutes with Bran and put the mat beside my desk. After a couple of stands on the mat, he was offering sits again.
Not only that but he was manoeuvering his body whilst sitting on the mat to try and force me into making eye contact with him! This was a massive breakthrough and I really felt like having a good cry!
Once again I was raving on Facebook, but this time it was about how proud and excited I was that Bran finally seemed to be getting it :o)
Tuesday 26th July
Morning session of mat training progressed quickly to offering the sit again, whilst being able to give him my full attention, so I just did a few of those with him so that everything was very positive and exciting!
For the afternoon session, I decided to try and have a few more distractions in place so I allowed the children to remain in the garden whilst working with Bran, although they were doing other things and not just focussing on me and Bran. Amazingly, he still did everything quickly and beautifully! I tried moving the mat to the opposite side of me and it didn't phase him at all! He just headed straight to the mat and sat with his face looking alert and his ears up.
What an incredible difference!
The other big thing that happened on Tuesday was that Bran pushed in. We'd picked up a pop up tunnel for the puppies to play with. It is far too small for Bran to comfortably fit through and usually when this sort of thing is going on, he'll hang back and watch from a distance. The puppies had a few runs through the tunnel, then Bran barged me out of the way and went through himself!! Ok, so the tunnel is rather mis-shapen now but it was SO lovely to see him demanding his go at the fun. When I fetched the camera to take him out later on his own to get some photos of him with the tunnel, I also grabbed my treat bag and no more was it miserable dog, because his ears went up, his tail was wagging and he was clearly saying "ooh what are we going to do now??" and it was lovely to have him interacting so keenly :o)
No comments:
Post a Comment