09 February 2011

Seeing Eye day 4 - First trip into town!

Hello all,
Note: Even though this was posted on Wednesday morning, it corresponds
to the training day of Tuesday, February 8.
In the morning and afternoon, we went into town to work routes with the
dogs for the first times. Navajo did awesome. He ran a few curbs and was
a bit nosy but overall it was great. One might ask, why does he have
work errors? Well, the short answer is I'm a new person giving him
commands and that he is leading; he mmust gain respect and an
understanding for me through me giving him praise when he does things
right and through correction when he does something wrong. It is a team
relationship, at the same time it is a learning process on my part to
get acclimated to a new dog who walks, "talks",, and reacts differently
than the last one.
In the afternoon we did our first session of obedience
training--something that is done everyday to just "keep their mind in
the game" and keep their basic skills sharp.
After dinner those of us who chose to began work with clicker training.
A short explanation of this being that when we praise our dog we are
often times seconds late--a life time for a dog. We in fact are praising
their next action which might be eating that piece of trash on the
ground after they've stopped at a down curb or being distracted by that
squirrel across the street just after a traffic check. A clicker allows
for a precise click, a marker of sorts, to indicate that precise
millisecond in time that we are praising. These dogs have been
conditioned that a clicker is a marker of something good. They were
trained to target with a clicker; when they rang the bell they got a
click and then they new a piece of food was to follow. So, the use of
this? We will use it in conjunction with a small target to pattern and
target. For example, if i am in Chicago and need to find a certain door
to the hotel during my vacation along astreet, I will use this target
when I arrive for the first time and use clicker training to target him
to the target. Over a matter of about 15 minutes, I will take him from
the target to just targeting the door. Therefore, the next time we walk
down that street, he will target that door in anticipation of a click.
Maybe that makes sense!
After that was bedtime! More to come tomorrow!

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