First a little bit on Jill. She is interesting because she has very very high toy drive, she grabs toys and she will bite hard if your hands accidentally get in the way. She will fetch for hours but when I first got her (in January of this year) she didn't have any interest in tugging, all she wanted to do was retrieve. I like having a tug drive because it easier to reward at the place of reinforcement than a throw. So I used the principles of "reward transfer" to teach her to like tugging as well as retrieving. I did this by engaging her in a tug, then pulling an identical toy from a pocket and throwing it while she was tugging. She learned that to get the throw she had to tug first. When utilizing reward transfer the higher value thing (the retrieve) has to occur after the lower value thing (the tug). I was also careful not to give her the throw after she let go of the tug. She had to be actively tugging but I wasn't concerned about how long or how hard. Once the new game had value both intensity and duration can increase. A reminder for any type of training - if you don't have value then don't expect intensity!
An example of toy drive - Jill did this little arrangement while Mike was sleeping. I can just picture her whispering quietly, "when mike wakes up we are going to have a really fun time!"
In spite of crazy toy drive Jill is also VERY easy to please and extremely sensitive. Any information that tells her that I am not happy with her work results in a drop in her enthusiasm and drive. I am not talking about a correction, even things that are more accurately described as "no reward markers", do this as well.
She did very well in her search and rescue training because it was very clear from the start how to get the reward and she got very little pressure to perform in a specific way before the find, just run through the woods and go to the person once she found them. Initially the "victim" handed her the toy and then we backchained a few behaviors like a return to me, jump on me, return to the handler. It was quite simple and she did it well. Detection work was less smooth because she clearly felt like something was EXPECTED of her and, in spite of her toy drive, she worried about what that was. This could be due to her basic, eager to please personality, or possibly due to her lack of experience with offering behaviors at a young age or more likely a combination of both. I start my pups off very early teaching them to be comfortable offering and experimenting with behaviors.
So for obedience training I have a toy nut, who, at the sight of a toy, bounces like a kangaroo in place, going "gimme the toy!, gimme the toy!, gimme the toy!. However she is sensitive and not only can I not use a correction, I can't even use a no reward marker, meaning something that tells her she is choosing the wrong thing. I need to get through the toy happy dance and ask for a specific task that requires precision without losing the enthusiasm but getting the precision. There are a great many ways to train the behavior but I want her to look like she is happy and enjoying her job at the same time. What is the point of selecting a high drive, enthusiastic dog if my training technique takes that away, just leaving me a dog going through the motions?
In the second part of this blog I will describe in a little bit more detail how I am attempting to achieve this.
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