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WHEN YOUR CLIENT IS STINGY WITH TREATS!
Turbo is one of the dogs I’m working with in a pet/prison program. He’s bright and very food motivated, but easily excited. His handler, Adam, is having a hard time getting Turbo to focus on him and walk on a loose leash. When I work with Turbo, he’s super-easy to connect with, simply by using a frequent-enough rate of reinforcement.
Being new to the program (after taking over two facilities that another trainer used to work at), I’m still trying to get to the bottom of the reason WHY Adam is so reluctant to use treats with the necessary frequency. One possibility may be his worry about a dog becoming overweight, but that is so not an issue with Turbo as he’s very lean. Another may be his mistaken idea that Turbo has been in the program for a number of months and so he should not need as many treats.
The thing is, dogs are always honest with their feedback. If they’re tuning out their handler consistently, it means the handler is not making themself more interesting/reinforcing than the environment. And if the dog is failing to learn the desired behavior, it’s on us to adjust our training plan and/or the environment to ensure their success.
What ideas do you have to help Adam with Turbo?
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5 Replies
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This is such a great example of how our coaching has the opportunity to guide folks forward gently.
What I’ve found in moments like this is it’s less about explaining why to use more food, and more about helping the handler actually do it in a way that feels easy.
I’ll sometimes turn it into a really short game, “Let’s see if you can go through this handful in 20 seconds.” It keeps it light, but it gets the rate up without a big discussion. Or make it a race between a small group of handlers. Each one gets 20 treats. The one to (legitimately) reinforce their dog and spend all 20 first “wins”.
I’ve also had good luck taking delivery timing off their plate for a minute. Without a dog, I’ll just click at a steady rhythm and have them drop a treat into a bowl every click. No decisions, just react. It tends to clean things up quickly if they are having mechanical issuse flipping treats out of their palm (if pre-loading is allowed). If preloading is not allowed – the motor pattern to grab one treat, drop it in a bowl and return to neutral can also be a race… no dogs, just mechanics.
It might be a fun experiment to just do a couple rounds of Click-Feed with the whole group. You have a clicker. When they hear you click, they feed their dog, then return to a neutral hand position, regardless of what their dog is doing. Will it result in a bit of chaos? Sure, but the dogs will love it and the handlers will naturally see what a higher rate of reinforcement may do to their dogs’ focus.
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These ideas are great and so much fun, @catherine! You may not be surprised to learn that metal-tongued clickers aren’t allowed in some prisons, but we can substitute a verbal marker instead.
I will say, as of this past Wed., it seems that Adam is more on board about the importance of using an appropriate rate of reinforcement. We also did an off-leash exercise in the pod, one dog at a time, where food delivery was critical to keep the dog in the game. Turbo did really well. I think the leash has become a bit of a poisoned cue for him, combined with minimal reinforcement for LLW when it did happen.
Turbo is being adopted this Monday, and the following week, all 8 handlers will have 4 new dogs in the program. It’ll be cool for me to start them all up from scratch together with this new group, all at the same time.
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Generally I would handle this type of situation one of two ways:
1. I would have the client walk the dog while I “drive” the marker word or the clicker. Every time I mark the client then delivers a reward to the dog to demonstrate the frequency of rewards that would be appropriate.
2. Alternatively, I really love to teach Leslie McDevitt’s 1-2-3 Pattern Game for loose leash walking as there is a ton of benefit to this pattern game for both the dog and the client (in my opinion). For the dog, it creates reliability and predictability. For the person, it gives them a set of criteria to follow with very clear instructions. After we have conditioned the “3”, I have the client start walking, each step is a number and they always reward on “3”. I have the client increase the number of steps between numbers (i.e. two steps then say 1, two steps then say 2, two steps then say 3 and reward). We increase the number of steps in between the “numbers” they say out loud in small increments then fade out the verbal part of the game entirely once they get to 10 steps between saying each number (so the dog is essentially being rewarded every 30 steps). I find this to be very systematic and easy for the client to follow. Plus, it gives them an extra tool in their tool box should the dog suddenly be distracted or run into a situation that they need to get out of quickly and efficiently.
However, I really love Catherine’s explanation as well and the idea of taking the dog out of the picture to first teach the client then adding the dog back in later. I should probably do more of that!
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@Alexis , your post is pure genius! I absolutely love your ideas. In fact, the first tip, where the instructor/coach is marking and the handler then feeds, is something I completely forgot was in my toolbox!!!! I will be using that for sure in the future.
Thank you!
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These are really great suggestions, @Alexis – I love the adaptions to the pattern game too. It’s so good to give concrete instructions to folks who are just starting to learn to train dogs. There’s so much mechanical skill that we sometimes take for granted!
Here’s how to:
- hold a leash
- anchor a leash
- slide your control hand down a leash
- balance your weight
- grab a treat
- roll treats out from your hand one at a time
- return hand to neutral
- walk with a dog bumping your leg (or pulling)
- stop without yanking the dog
- walk a u-turn without losing your balance
Also, do all that while making decisions on timing for reinforcement….
No wonder new trainers struggle!
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