Kaylee Training, 3 Months

Kaylee has been in our house for almost a month now, and I sure am learning a lot! Working with a deaf dog is just like working with a hearing dog - except when it isn't. One of the training pieces that has surprised me is how little I use our marker, the "thumbs up." The clicker is a much more efficient way to communicate with dogs, and the dog doesn't need to be looking at me to use it. The visual marker is about as efficient as a verbal. So useful, but slow, and I struggle with wasting time while training. More often than not, I've found that simply shoving food in Kaylee's mouth works well, and that's what I resort to, saving out marker for more distance work where it's easier for Kaylee to see all of me rather than just the hand with the cookie in it.

More important than technique, though, I'm learning a lot about who Kaylee is as a dog. For example, Kaylee requires a great deal of positive affirmation from me during training - the food isn't enough. Every once in a while, I have to stop for scritches and snuggles to keep her enthusiasm up. As oppose to the bulls and terriers who couldn't care what I do short of beating them so long as I keep the cookies coming (and even then - how hard a beating are we talking?).

A lot of our focus thus far has been building attention and working drive. I'm using my dismissal cue a great deal. This cue, clapping my hands together and then spreading them and shrugging my shoulders, indicates to Kaylee that I'm done working, and she should go do dog stuff. I try to dismiss Kaylee before she loses focus on whatever we're doing and wanders away. Using a dismissal, I make myself a finite resource - I'm not always going to be available to play, so she should take advantage of my engagement when I offer it. That's over simplifying a bit, but you get the idea. And it's working: yesterday, Kaylee pulled her mat off the table, checked to make sure I was watching, and pointedly laid down on it. And when that didn't work, she found her food bowl and stood in it.

Good little pupper!

Since drive building is going well, I've started shifting the goals of our training sessions with an eye to future competition. I've been using a lot of shaping to help build drive; all else being equal, dogs tend to find puzzle solving interesting (so do people). But there's a danger to having a dog that is too operant - that enjoys solving puzzles too much. These dogs get stuck on the idea that they have to do something to be rewarded. That may not sound terrible, but it's a problem Cannon has. He enjoys shaping so much, he doesn't quite understand that he can do "nothing" and still get cookies. In short, he can't sit still - his stays are rather painful. So Kaylee and I are starting to work more duration with our sit, down, chin rest, and stand positions.

That's the best part about having a fair amount of experience training different dogs. If you're good, you can avoid making the same mistakes over and over again. Instead, you can find new, creative ways to screw up your dogs.