Theory of Training: An Annotated Training Session with Diesel

edited December 2011 in Behavior & Training
Some of my colleagues at work asked me to record a training session with Diesel so they could understand what I meant when I was talking about adjusting criteria based on performance. I took this video in early November when Diesel was 4.5 months old. We're doing some lineing and casting drills where I'm teaching him to follow hand signals at a distance. In scrutinizing this video, I definitely see some mistakes that I made, but in general it was a very successful training session. I tried to point out rewards and (verbal) punishments in the video, as well as describe when and why I changed the criteria for the task I was giving him.

These drills came near the end of a 2 week sequence of learning, so you'll see rewards are relatively sparse. Also, because he is nearing mastery of the concepts at this point, the criteria changes are more significant than they would be near the beginning of a learning sequence.

I have a second video from the following day, but I haven't gotten around to editing/annotating it. If people enjoy this one, I'll post the second one when I get around to finishing it.

I hope you enjoy!



Comments

  • Wow! This is pretty cool. I'm looking forwards to the next part.
  • Diesel is a very energetic pups, loI. I find it interesting with our use of hand signals. I obedience, the signal you give for going back is used for a distance down and your 'over' signal I've seen used to designate which jump the dog should take. Very cool
  • Diesel is looking really good! He seems to "get it" and is intune to you. I saw only a minor distraction with something that probably smelled good or odd on the grass, lol. I'm looking forward towards the following session (video).
  • I finally got a chance to watch this, Dave. Very cool! Do you have a video of a finished lab doing these types of commands? I'd love to compare since I'm not familiar with them.
  • I'm having a hard time finding a good video of it, but this is a good introduction to casting being demonstrated by a finished dog:


  • Ok, I see. So D is really not that far. That's impressive for a young dog. Nice work Dave!

    Question: How did you associate the "NO!"? Did he figure it on his own, or did you need to add another punishment (correction) in the beginning in order for him to understand "NO!" meant "incorrect"?

    ----
  • We used no a lot in the house when he was a crazy mouthy baby puppy. When I started using it during training he seemed to just understand it without a problem.

    Then again, Diesel has always just seemed to know when I expect something from him.
  • I haven't watched the finished dog yet but I'm super impressed with Diesel. That's pretty darn amazing for his age.

    The best dogs to traim are the ones that seemingly inherently just get it.
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