Cloudscout
06-30-2007, 05:44 PM
I haven't really done much work for training with Dustin, but today I started working on it and I'm amazed at how quickly he caught on.
I started with "sit". His reward for getting it right was a few moments of tug-of-war with the rope. It didn't take very many tries for him to get it... but that was partly because he figured if he just sat down, he'd automatically get the rope so I needed to make it harder for him so he knew that it was the voice command he was supposed to follow.
To do this, I figured I should add a second command. I went with "lay down". This one took a little while for him to understand. I "helped" him lay down a couple of times and he did it on his own a couple of times and each time I would praise him with "Good boy!" and then give him the rope and play tug-of-war for a little bit again.
Then I started mixing it up. I would say "sit" or "lay down" at random and if he got it right, I would give him the rope. I wanted to make sure he wasn't being lazy since he would sometimes just sit or lay down before I gave a command so I added one more command.
"Stand up" took more work than "sit" and "lay down" combined, but he finally started to get it.
I'm so proud of this boy. Unfortunately, he hasn't figured out how to go from laying down to sitting up. If he lays down and I say "sit" he doesn't sit back up again. I can get him to go from standing up to sitting down or laying down. I can get him to go from sitting down to laying down or standing up and I can get him to go from laying down to standing up. That one last transition is going to take some more work.
I started with "sit". His reward for getting it right was a few moments of tug-of-war with the rope. It didn't take very many tries for him to get it... but that was partly because he figured if he just sat down, he'd automatically get the rope so I needed to make it harder for him so he knew that it was the voice command he was supposed to follow.
To do this, I figured I should add a second command. I went with "lay down". This one took a little while for him to understand. I "helped" him lay down a couple of times and he did it on his own a couple of times and each time I would praise him with "Good boy!" and then give him the rope and play tug-of-war for a little bit again.
Then I started mixing it up. I would say "sit" or "lay down" at random and if he got it right, I would give him the rope. I wanted to make sure he wasn't being lazy since he would sometimes just sit or lay down before I gave a command so I added one more command.
"Stand up" took more work than "sit" and "lay down" combined, but he finally started to get it.
I'm so proud of this boy. Unfortunately, he hasn't figured out how to go from laying down to sitting up. If he lays down and I say "sit" he doesn't sit back up again. I can get him to go from standing up to sitting down or laying down. I can get him to go from sitting down to laying down or standing up and I can get him to go from laying down to standing up. That one last transition is going to take some more work.