Captain's First Down

A few years ago I took a dog in for training. This is something I rarely do anymore due to my hectic schedule. Captain was an 11 month old Whippet and a cousin to my Whippet, Jazzy. When they started to run around the house, all you could do was flatten yourself against the wall or jump for a piece of furniture so you wouldn’t get run over.

I feel it is always a good idea for the owners to train their own dogs. It strengthens the bond and should be a lot of fun. In this case, he was a young teenage dog with a busy owner who I knew quite well. So, in he came for his sixty days of training. Of course, operant conditioning behaviour analysis (clicker training) was the only method of choice. That should be of no surprise to anyone who knows me even a little bit.

I started with conditioning the clicker (pairing the sound with something he loved – his kibble). The next step was to teach him to offer behaviour on his own. I almost always go with a head turn because you can never just tell them what to do, you have to be patient and wait for them to turn their head. As that happens, you click and treat. We got that in one short session. Target training went off without a hitch as well.

I was thrilled to have such a motivated dog to work with. My only concern was his down. I tried a variety of ways to get him to offer the down but the light bulb just never went off in his brain. By day five, I still didn’t have him offering a down. That may not sound like a big deal unless you only have sixty days to get all the desired behaviours fluent, on cue and can occur in any situation regardless of the distractions. Remember this is also a sight hound. They can get distracted by a piece of fluff flying in air and if they see a small, fur bearing animal in the shape of a rabbit…well…good luck!

I took him to the basement so I could video myself. I wanted to see if and what I was doing wrong as the trainer that he was not picking up this behaviour. As I was setting up the camera, I decided to try pure shaping. I was just going to stand there and wait for him to start offering anything that even remotely could be tied to the down.

As you will see, it only took four minutes to get the desired behaviour, there was a minute and a half of celebration then he had the down behaviour on lock down! When he comes to visit, that is always one of the first behaviours he offers just in case he can get me to click and treat him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_3bh0NgPBs&feature=player_profilepage