Premack Principal

I stayed up late Saturday night and watched lots of dog videos on youtube. There are some really good instructional training videos out there. Puttering around with how I'm going to train something is sort of fun but it's also nice to have a clue how to start.

One of them was on the Premack Principal. Really great video. The Premack Principal is that you reward low probability behaviors (whatever you want the dog to do) with high probability behaviors (what the dog wants to do). The movie was for encouraging attention with two dogs. Dogs are paying attention to a dog on the other side of a fence and barking and running around. Sarah (who made the video and is the trainer) clicked for any sign they were tuning in to her and then released them. Some patience and repetitions later the dogs were tuning in a lot more often and the distraction was less interesting because they weren't being prevented from going to it. I read about this in Control Unleashed but seeing it actually work was really cool.

So I tried it on our offleash walk this afternoon with quite a bit of success. Dogs got treats for looking. It was easier for Tom because Opal coughs up treats when she's running around. By the end of the walk, Tom was checking in quite frequently. Problems I ran into:
1. when he was far away and turned towards me I clicked and then he'd have to come up to me for a treat. He needed prompting to come over and a few times he didn't.
2. The iclick clicker isn't quite loud enough when we got to the beach with the waves. Not a big issue.
3. I do wonder if it'll dim my "okay" command. The idea is you want to release the dogs and then you click if they choose to stick around. Overall, sticking around is a good thing, but it can get annoying. I think the idea is to have a "that's all" or "enough" cue that means that I'm done training.

Overall, a very good exercise.