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Indication Poop Project, part 2!
Last week, I floated the idea of teaching one of my dogs to indicate the discovery of poop on the ground vs eating it. You can find that post ➡ here.
The indication is him LOOKING down at the poop instead of consuming it. This past week, I began clicking and treating him for looking briefly at a tiny plastic container. I put holes in the lid and a treat inside it so he could easily smell it, presumably to inspire some natural interest in it.
I quickly determined it’d be too challenging to reliably click in time to get only a LOOK vs a nose touch (a skill he knows well), at which point I began holding the container so I could control its presentation and make touching it harder. Bond stood on a large ottoman and I held out the container beyond the edge.
I then discovered that my hand was too relevant in the picture, i.e., it was drawing him to look at the container. So I taped the container to the end of a paint stirrer to add more distance from my hand. I was kind of surprised it took a couple sessions for him to reliably shift his gaze to the container rather than my hand.
This coming week, I need to build some duration on the LOOK and then add a cue. The cue may just be used temporarily, if needed, to help transfer this LOOK skill to poop. This early training is also building a strong response to the click sound, something Bond hadn’t had much experience with before. I’m guessing it won’t take long to transfer this skill to poop, but the LOOK training is taking longer than I expected!
What are your thoughts? @ferdie @Cyn @bernerlabreclectus @Atticus @bmacwatt @Tripod_Mom
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2 Replies
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I find this very well-crafted plan fascinating, @virginiad . The Look cue is especially intriguing. I like the idea about your hand undermining your efforts and changing to the paint stirrer with container to “look” at, at the end. Way to think outside of the box! (Paint can???)
I Would love to see how this progresses. I imagine it would take awhile to get him to look. I know when I try to ask a dog to sight squirrels, for instance (much crazier trigger!) sometimes they see and sometimes they are so keyed into me on our walks that they barely notice this once “over-the-top” rodent that used to stir them to barking and lunging! So, I love the way you are shaping this Look cue and adding duration.
Will the Look with duration make it easier for Bond to simply alert, but NOT nose the poop, perhaps alert and move away? I wonder what the next steps will look like!
Thank you for taking me and apologies for taking awhile to write!
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@bernerlabreclectus , since I’ve not specifically trained the LOOK skill before for poop, it’s an experiment. But I can tell you that Bond often sniffs the poop first, before considering the option of grabbing it. Thus, I have a window of time to work with.
My hope is that by laying a foundation on a LOOK skill, it will feel somewhat familiar to him (or will be easier for him to access this option) when poop is the actual target, if that makes sense.We shall see….
The other day, I hoped to find organic opportunities to just click him for spotting a poop pile during our walk. Of course, he ignored all of them (!) even though I easily spotted them in advance and he had easy access to them. Mostly, I wanted to see how powerful a click would be in drawing him away. Here’s a video of him moving away from ‘something’ of interest after a click.0:20
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