I am getting devoured by homework. Junior year is way harder than sophomore. I'm realizing more and more that I don't think lots of homework is a good idea. Way better to have a life and time to do extra currics than spend lots of time on hw. But no one asked me. And the new administration is suggesting 30 minutes a night be assigned in every class. That's pretty insane! That would be 4 hours.
So little dog training. I did just get 101 Dog Tricks by Kyra Sundance and Chalcy from the library. A+ for awesome trick ideas, nice layout and great pictures. C for execution and training suggestions. I have several problems with the training ideas. First of all, don't use a cue until your dog is doing it properly. Don't encourage the dog to do the trick for the first time with the cue. Pleaz! Also, I think they should have encouraged more clicker use. And some of the ideas don't quite work. For instance I tried the suggestions for "bow". "Push your hand toward your dog's nose and downward with your dog standing in front of you." I tried it with several variations and it did not work. I don't have a bow for Tom. Opal has one but not under stimulus control. I taught it with shaping and some luring and that worked better. So, I'd say it's a worthwhile book for expanding your imagination on tricks but you might need to draft your own way of training them. Still looking for a great trick book. Anyone know of any?
I've been thinking about the Susan Garrett's blogpost about dogs training humans. I think that definitely happens a lot. Probably a lot more than we'll ever know. Because isn't the best training the type the trainee doesn't know is happening? But I think there's a fine line between dogs training us and communicating. For instance, if Tom isn't interested in a treat (say a particular kind of canned dog food) and I bring out Zukes, is that training or communication? And isn't it kind of amusing that we are getting trained? There are certainly ways mentioned in the blog post that take a while to retrain and those should probably be nipped in the bud. But I don't think all of the ways are bad.
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Let me know if you find any other good trick books.
ReplyDeleteMmmmm. For a while I was mostly updating this blog and then I switched to doing more of my personal LJ blog and barely had time even for that. But less time= less training, no classes, no trials, unfortunately.
Heehee, falling off the face of the earth. I really like that metaphor! One would get to freefall in space. Sounds like a kid book.