Are you a crossover?

Jennie and Mudpuppy--
 
Me too! About the not sassing and becoming more reliable thing! Me too. I had a hound that took me forever to train and I never thought she was dumb. Never that. She was incredibly smart--but she really didn't respond to the choke training that I did--very much like Mudpuppy's dog.
 
It's been very nice and I feel soo much better about being a "good" dog owner/handler now.

I wanted to bump this back up not because I want the bickering to continue but because I witnessed something tonight that illustrates perfectly why I changed methods.
 
I decided while dinner was on the stove to play "101 Things To Do With a Box" with the dogs. I put Marlowe outside and did it with Conrad first. I trained Conrad using more "traditional" methods (the choke chain still hangs shamefully on the door knob with the leashes) but I know from observing him in many venues that he's not a dumb dog at all. So, I set up the game, and I was struggling to find things to click Conrad for. He knows from his training what the proper mealtime behavior is (lay down, wait for the release word), but this was a different situation. I didn't have his kibble in his bowl on the floor but in a people-bowl on the counter. There was this box in the middle of the floor and I'm just standing around with the clicker in my hand (we've charged the clicker for him, but haven't engaged in much training with it with him).  He couldn't for the life of him figure out what was going on. If I wasn't going to tell him to do something, he wasn't going to do anything. He couldn't break out of "sit or lay down and wait" even when that clearly was getting him nowhere. The farthest we got after about 15 minutes was looking at the box, but that was not a consistent behavior, more like an occasional fluke.
 
So, he got the rest of his dinner in his dish and changed places with Marlowe. Marlowe was clicker trained from the almost-get-go and quite delightfully I had him pushing the box around the kitchen with his nose in just a couple minutes. He has the same usual mealtime training as Conrad and is quite reliable with that, but was able to realize quickly that that wasn't working and was willing to try to figure out what would work. We went from looking at the box, to sniffing the box, to putting paws in the box, to pushing the box around the room, in rapid succession.
 
That there was the perfect illustration of why I "crossed over" and DH and I both made the commitment to help Conrad make the leap, because he has enormous untapped potential and all these years I've ignored it because I've never given him the opportunity to be think creatively, never showed him how, and never showed him why it's a good thing to do so.

I decided while dinner was on the stove to play "101 Things To Do With a Box" with the dogs. I put Marlowe outside and did it with Conrad first. I trained Conrad using more "traditional" methods (the choke chain still hangs shamefully on the door knob with the leashes) but I know from observing him in many venues that he's not a dumb dog at all. So, I set up the game, and I was struggling to find things to click Conrad for. He knows from his training what the proper mealtime behavior is (lay down, wait for the release word), but this was a different situation. I didn't have his kibble in his bowl on the floor but in a people-bowl on the counter. There was this box in the middle of the floor and I'm just standing around with the clicker in my hand (we've charged the clicker for him, but haven't engaged in much training with it with him). He couldn't for the life of him figure out what was going on. If I wasn't going to tell him to do something, he wasn't going to do anything. He couldn't break out of "sit or lay down and wait" even when that clearly was getting him nowhere. The farthest we got after about 15 minutes was looking at the box, but that was not a consistent behavior, more like an occasional fluke.

   I didn't understand the point of the game? Were you teaching him something?  Or did you expect him to break a stay, and do what he wanted?

So, he got the rest of his dinner in his dish and changed places with Marlowe. Marlowe was clicker trained from the almost-get-go and quite delightfully I had him pushing the box around the kitchen with his nose in just a couple minutes. He has the same usual mealtime training as Conrad and is quite reliable with that, but was able to realize quickly that that wasn't working and was willing to try to figure out what would work. We went from looking at the box, to sniffing the box, to putting paws in the box, to pushing the box around the room, in rapid succession.

   So I again, I am confused.  So your dog knows the procedure for feeding time and since he didn't want to wait and decided to poke around the box then he was compling and doing what you preferred?

That there was the perfect illustration of why I "crossed over" and DH and I both made the commitment to help Conrad make the leap, because he has enormous untapped potential and all these years I've ignored it because I've never given him the opportunity to be think creatively, never showed him how, and never showed him why it's a good thing to do so.

  I can understand if you were trying to train them both to do something and one was unwilling to learn.  But it sounds like you were "testing" to see who would break the "routine" and do something without being released from a command.  You also stated that you haven't trained Conrad on the clicker yet, so he would be confused to your desires, I would imagion.  However, Marlowe was trained on the clicker so she would know what you allow and how to repond to the clicker, yes?

101 things to do with a box is a game that clicker trainers play with their dogs to see how many behaviors they can get the dog to do - the object is to get the dog to interact with the box.  Nudge it, push it, put a paw on it - anything that is an interaction with the box gets rewarded, just to see how many novel behaviors come out.
Houndlove's experience is just what I mean when I say that coercion or "correction" trained dogs are afraid to do anything that the handler doesn't tell them to do.  If they do, and it turns out to be wrong, they might get a punishment, so they do nothing novel - they don't dare move, except to answer the commands of the owner.  A clicker trained dog will move, and because they do, it is much easier to elicit and reinforce complex behaviors. 
Interacting with a box may seem pointless, but you can always train the dog to interact with his toy box by putting his own toys away.[]

Oh alright its a game that is common.  I'll have to put a box with stuff in it and see what my dog will dog.  I already know he will poke and pick out what ever is in it and probaly chew it up.  But if I put him in a down/stay he won't get up even if he is interested, I would have to just put the box there when he is free to do what he wants.

Well just to clarify before I spend most of my day in meetings (talking about creativity and curiosity in young children, as a matter of fact) ...
 
Conrad has been introduced to the clicker, we have done a moderate amount of training with him with it (we "charged" the clicker with him and have used it to reinforce behaviors he already knows), he knows what it is and what it means and will magically appear if he hears the sound it makes jingling from it's keychain ring. It's just that we sort of decided that we needed to concentrate on one dog at a time and since Marlowe was the new arrival who needed the most training, he got the brunt of it. It's hard to train two dogs at once. But I've never taught Conrad anything new with the clicker. He's already gotten his basic household obedience the more traditional way so that is mostly what he knows.

The object isn't just to let him do what he wants - it's to reward him whenever he does interact with it, to actually increase the number of times, and ways, that he does.  When you notice the dog start repeatedly running to the box (since he has to come back to you to get his reward after you click), then you know he gets it.   

Ok spiritdogs I am honestly interested in this.  So tell me when he does interact and is doing what we want, what is the lesson or the point (for a lack of words)?  Is it just for bonding and having fun together?  Is it a set up for agility training?  Is it a mental test?  I am trying to understand.  I would like to try this with my dog, and I can reward him after each interaction with the box, but once I have done that - what exactly did I accomplish besides some fun time?

[linkhttp://beta.clickertraining.com/node/167]Here's a link[/link] to Karen Pryor's article on this exercise (I hope that link works, but if it doesn't if you google Karen Pryor and "box" I'm sure it will come up). She explains the process and also talks about some ways to make the box game turn into something useful for your dog to do aside from just fiddle around with a box.
 
It's mainly just a game, a mental exercise and a way to do something stimulating with your dog. I did it for all those reasons and also because I wanted to do a little experiment to see what the difference would be between my two dogs (on the floor above my office, as we speak, rats are running around in mazes, so maybe some of that spirit has rubbed off on me). Karen Pryor even says in her explanation of the exercise that it is something good to do with cross-over dogs, with older dogs and with dogs who are suspicious. Conrad is all of those things (well, less suspicious and more just prone to anxiety in general), so I thought I'd see how he'd do.
 
Given a situation in which its clear I don't expect anything from him and he can do what he wants, he explores plenty. But in the situation with the box, it was obvious that I was expecting him to do something, and in that case he didn't know what on earth to do and he wouldn't try anything other than what he already knows (sit or lie down) in order to see if that would work.  Marlowe has a pretty good "stay" (or rather, "sit maintain" because I don't use a stay command--"sit" means "sit until I give you a release word") and would have sat there all day and stared at me rather than playing with the box if that is what he'd been asked to do. As it was, he knew he was supposed to do something, but he didn't know what, and the "usual suspects" didn't pan out, so he began to experiment.
 
This illustrates really well how a dog may appear to be very obedient but in fact just be sort of lost and frozen. Conrad sure looked obedient as all get-out, sitting there motionless even when I didn't ask him to do that. Once upon a time, that's all I wanted from a dog, and that's what I got. But now that I've seen what a dog can do, just sitting there and not moving when faced with a novel situation just looks sad to me. The box will be making regular appearances in the house until Conrad begins to understand that being creative and experimenting is also rewarded. I'm really looking forward to working with him. []
 
I think as my first goal with him, I want him to learn to bring me his Kongs to be refilled, because it gets irritating hunting them down around the house every evening! Why should I do all the work? []

101 things to do with a box is a lot like freeshaping.

You choose what you are going to click and treat for. The dog has to figure out what exactly will get you to click.

It's a great way for owners to get better at watching their dogs, it's mentally exhausting for the dog and therefore great rainy-day fun, it's also good for building up a tolerance for frustration and self-control.

And the tricks my pup knows best and the tricks that were generalized fastest are the two he has "learned" through freeshaping: paw and jump.

Thanks, I am going to look through my Karen Pryor books too.  Hum, paw (my dog knows that one) he gets treats for giving paw.  But JUMP??  That's one I try to teach him NOT to do. LOL [8|]

Yeah, I am testing the elegance of putting an undesired behavior on cue with jump... So far jumping up on people sans cue is still a problem. I've been rewarding him for jumping only when he just jumps without making any body contact.

I'll keep you posted.

I did the jumping on cue thing. One thing that I had to be careful of is once the behavior got it's name ("up"), I had to stop giving food rewards for that behavior because the possibility of getting a treat made trying the behavior unbidden way too enticing. Once I just gave praise and pets for correctly responding to "up", the frequency of unbidden jumps went down. I also taught "off", so if he did it without the cue, he got an immediate and fairly stern "off" and I'd turn away. If he jumped on cue, he got loves and pets and smooches before a much nicer-toned "off" and more praise. But no food. He loves food too much!