Little Green Buckets Are So Exciting

This weekend it was vividly demonstrated to me how different things are really exciting to different people. I was glad to attend the wedding we were a part of on Saturday, but not "Sooooo excited I could hardly stand it!" as one of the other guests expressed herself.

However on Friday night when I had to drop into the store I was, "Sooooo excited I could hardly stand it!" What would illicit such a response from me-a confirmed non-shopper?

Maizey will show you:

"See my new food bucket?!? Now I can learn to be a big girl like Meeka and carry my own bucket!"

Hmmm. . . this bucket carrying thing is harder than it looks!"

"Awwe forget it i'll just eat out of the bucket!"

I'm absolutely positive the excited wedding girl thought I was from an alternate universe when I was jumping up and down and clapping when I found this treasure of a little green bucket, but you should have seen Maizey when I gave it to her, she jumped up and down too! Okay admittedly it was probably more because I was jumping up and down than because she truly cares about little green buckets but my girls and I have a deal, if their happy I'm happy. If I'm happy their happy. It's a good deal. 

Meeka illustrates:

"This is the most awesome bucket ever! Every time I find it my crazymomlady feeds me!"

"Plus when I hold the handle she jumps around, clap sand cheers. She looks like a total dork so I laugh at her and run around and be wild. It's the best game ever!"

"I mean its no pink bear, but common this is pretty fun!"

Today's 4 legged lesson: take joy wherever you find it, even if its a wedding for some crazy people or in a little green bucket for the rest of us sane ones!LOL

Small Victories Are Still Victories

Perhaps I've mentioned before how Meeka gets her little metal bucket and carries it to the dog food to get her breakfast and dinner. This is an enormously cute trick that I have been trying to get on video fairly unsuccessfully. Also completely unsuccessfully I have been trying to teach Maizey to do the same thing. Tonight we had a breakthrough.

Ahh you should have seen me. . . such a proud momma when I told them "Are you Hungry? Go get the bucket!" Lo and behold! Who gets it? Maizey! And by the handle too! So as I squealed "good girl! Maymay got the bucket! commere! Bring it! Bring the bucket!" in rapturous tones and Meeka ran around trampling everything in sight and Maizey pranced around carrying the bucket and. . . ran in the opposite direction and dropped it. Looking back at me with the look like, "Aren't I amazing?!?"

Insert my sighs here.

But it was progress so we set it up again. Cue: "get your bucket" and again Maizey gets the bucket and again. . . runs in the opposite direction and drops it with the look like, "I am the most awesome talented princessface in the world! Now where's my dinner crazyfoodlady?"

At least she's learning and every time one of them learns something new it reminds me of a 4 legged lesson: I get more excited than they do to see them so proud of whatever new thing they learn and in the way of dogs they get just as excited as I am for no other reason than that i am happy.

Chalk that one up on the list of what motivates me to train.

Lumpers V. Splitters

In clicker training, particularly in shaping there is a concept called "lumping" and "splitting". I think most humans by habit are lumpers. I know I am.

Lumping is a term in clicker training that refers too asking for a complete finished behavior before your dog knows how to do that behavior.

So it goes like this: we want to teach a dog to lay down. We tell the dog, very earnestly and lovingly, "Down!" Pup looks at us and is thinking, "I know you want me to do something Mom, but what is it?" While they are thinking they stand there patiently waiting for more information, for a better explanation. Which to us looks "stubborn" when really we just haven't given enough explanation.

Meanwhile as they stand there thinking, we as humans stand there thinking impatiently, "Why won't this dog lay down? I have told her 25 times and she won't lay down!" Come on admit it, we've all been there.lol

Enter the beauty of splitting. Splitting is exactly what it sounds like. You picture the finished behavior and split it into many smaller behaviors. And with the right timing of the clicker you are able to reward any behavior in the right direction to the finished behavior you want. This is a wonderfully fun way to teach something because, really, who doesn't like to get paid for being successful? We all do, and so do our dogs.

As an example in L2 Tricks it states: Dog performs a trick of the partners choice. It may be very simple. L3 Tricks is much the same, but it has to be a shaped trick. So I chose to start shaping Maizey to ring a bell that sits on the floor.

Now think of this in lumping. I imagine it would go something like this, "Maizey here's a bell ring it!" At which point she looks at me as if I'm nuts and offers me 5 things she already knows all of which have nothing to do with ringing the bell.

But picture this w/ splitting, there are plethora of behaviors she can offer me that are in the right direction of actually ringing the bell. She looks at this strange shiny thing, click/treat!(c/t) she walks closer to it one step c/t! Two steps c/t! Sniffs it c/t! nudges it w/ her nose (can you hear me cheering?) c/t! and so on until she accidentally hits the little button and "DING!" c/t! and a huge cheer from me! She is excited and I am excited, I mean just look at all the things she did right! Do I care that the actual ringing of the bell was an accident? NOT AT ALL! It gave me the chance to reinforce the final behavior I want and then in the next session I can just go back to splitting. Gradually you can ask for more behaviors in the right direction before you c/t. But in the beginning if is important to have a high rate of reinforcement to encourage the dog to keep offering behaviors.

Here are two video's that show her third session.


You can notice in this clip we end on a successful "ding" of the bell.


Obviously I'm not a pro at this (yet;)) but hopefully this shows the basic concept. And please forgive the goofy 'dog talk' and probably just get used to it. The more enthusiastic I sound the more enthusiastic she is.