24. Tricks

24. TRICKS

LEVEL TWO

Dog performs a trick of the partner’s choice. It may be very simple.

DISCUSSION: WHY do we teach tricks? Some people think tricks are "demeaning". I don't agree. Everything we ask the dog to do is a behaviour. Whether we call it a trick or an exercise or a job, hey, it's ALL tricks. Tricks:

a) give the dog something to do when she meets new people. Having something to do makes the dog less fearful and helps her concentrate.

b) give the trainer something to teach that isn't "important". If you got your puppy with high dreams of a conformation Specials career, you don't really want to learn the techniques of training while working on gaiting or stacking! Make your mistakes on Sit Pretty, or Shake Hands. If YOU screw up, so what? Your dog never does a good job of shaking hands. Altogether now, AAAAWWWWWWWW.

c) help forge the relationship. Give trainer and dog (and family) something to giggle about together. I've known so many people who won't let their children interact with their big-deal competition dog. So sad. Kids AND dog are missing out! But if the kids screw up your Sit Pretty, where's the tragedy?

These Levels are designed to teach your dog several fun and interesting tricks, AND to give you specific practise in all the different ways of getting behaviour. Let's get started!

Any trick at all. C'mon, you can do it! If the puppy pulls on her tugtoy with you, put a name on it: Pull! If she bangs her dish around with her paws, put a name on it: He shoots, he scores! If you say "Where's Paul?" does she run to Paul? That's a trick. Scratch the door? Ring a bell? Put her head in the collar? You can do it!

LEVEL THREE

Dog performs a shaped trick of the handler’s choice.

DISCUSSION: Yes, we're starting early with the most difficult way to get behaviour. Why? So you've got it under your belt as you move through the rest of the Levels. You CAN shape the dog to take the dumbell! How do I know? Because you shaped her to do this trick! I'll be talking about backing up as the trick for this Level, but that's only an example. You can shape any trick you want to.

EASY BEGINNINGS: Back up. Sit on the couch. Clicker trainers have a nickname among themselves – Couch Trainers. This started when someone asked what she could train her dog to do while she was sitting on the couch recovering from foot surgery. The answer was: maybe not heeling. So, sit on the couch with your clicker and treats, dog in front of you on the floor. Do nothing. Stare at the dog's feet (don't stare at her eyes, that's too much like Watch). If you're an experienced trainer, you might be able to look at all four feet at once. If not, just look at the front ones for now. If the dog is automatically sitting in front of you, toss a treat away and click just as she comes back to you, before she has a chance to Sit again. Toss the treat away, and click before she Sits again. Do this until she forgets about Sit and just stays standing in front of you.

The dog will try Watch, but that doesn't make the click happen. She might try other behaviours – a play bow perhaps, swinging her head, a growl. Ignore them, stare at her feet. Sooner or later, she'll get fed up enough to move a foot. CLICK! But she didn't move it backwards! Nyuh uh, MOVED A FOOT. First we have to get her feet moving, THEN we'll talk about which direction they move. So she lifts one foot, click. Wait for it again. She moves any foot, click. By the 20th time you click for a foot moving, her front feet should be getting pretty mobile. At this point, you could forget about backing up and go for one paw held up, or a two-foot stomp, but we're going to stick with the backing up.

When she understands that you're going to click when she moves a paw, stop clicking forward motion. Pay attention now. Shaping is about paying attention and watching very VERY closely. You WERE paying for lifting a paw in any direction, including straight up. Now you're not. You've achieved the first thing you were looking for, which was any motion of any paw. Now you need more talent. Now the foot must move sideways or backwards (or even straight up and straight down), NOT forward. Getting her paw to understand that it can't move forward might take five clicks, or it might take 200. Doesn't matter.

When you've got at least 80% of her paw movement NOT forward, you can move on to the next step: JUST backward motion now, no more sideways or up-and-down. Now it gets complicated, because one paw can't move backwards too many times without taking another paw with it. Somewhere in here, you're going to have to apply a little of the art of training. If you click JUST her front paws moving, she might move JUST her front paws, and that means sooner or later she'll be backing her front paws into a Sit. You're going to have to start watch her back paws too, and clicking them for moving. If you started only watching the front paws, you've had some practise watching paws. Aren't you glad you're on the couch? Much easier to see all four paws from here than if you were standing up!

From here, it's just a matter of getting distance. At first you clicked any motion of any paw. Then you clicked any motion that wasn't forward. Then you clicked only backward motion. Then you click TWO paws moving. Then two paws moving BACKWARD. Then you click a BACK paw moving, then a back paw moving backwards, then three paws moving backward, then four paws, then two steps, then three steps… and you've successfully shaped a behaviour.

In reality, backing up is something most dogs learn very quickly. I've written it up in tiny splits, so don't be frustrated if you follow the splits, but many dogs learn to back up across the room in one session.

I use 300-Peck for this behaviour, but I slow it down a bit, so I'm clicking maybe 5 times for one step, then 5 times for two steps, then 5 times for three steps, and when she makes a mistake, back to the beginning, X5 for one step, X5 for two steps, etc.

PROBLEM SOLVING:

SHE WALKED OVER AND TARGETED THE TABLE. HOW CAN I GET HER TO MOVE HER FOOT? You're not watching the right thing. Unless the table was right beside her, she HAD to move her feet to get to it. The problem is that you're looking for gross movements, large movements. What you need to be looking at is tiny movements. There were lots of tiny movements that you missed before she got to the table!

SHE BACKS UP TWO STEPS AND STOPS! In any motion behaviour, we have a tendency to wait to see how far she's going to go. We hope she'll go three steps, so we let her go two steps and stop, then we think "Well, I guess that's as far as she's going to go. I better click!" Look at the sequence. You're clicking her for taking two steps back and STOPPING. For motion behaviours (backing up, Come, Swing, Heel) you have to be sure to click the MOTION rather than the end of the motion.

BIG HAIRY SECRET! Here's the secret to getting the motion behaviour – if you want to click for three steps backwards, don't click the third step. Click the motion that FOLLOWS the third step. If you're clicking the third step, you're clicking the END of the step, or the non-motion that follows the step. If you click the beginning of the next step, you're clicking One, Two, Three, LIFT! - clicking motion.

ADDING A CUE: When the dog is moving backwards readily, and moving until you click, you can tell her what the behaviour is called. You can call it something plain, like "Back up", or you can do something cute with it, like "Back away from the biscuit!" or "What do you do if you see a snake?" (In this case, the word you teach her is "snake". Once she's responding to that, you can add the rest of the sentence).

CONTINUING EDUCATION: Backing up is the beginning of a truly solid Stand, the beginning of the Moving Stand in Utility, a great Heeling maneuver for Rally and freestyle, and if it's fast enough, it works itself into a neat play bow. Work it in different locations, different distances, and different positions around you.

LEVEL FOUR

Dog and handler demonstrate “101 Things To Do With A Box” or chair.

DISCUSSION: Many instructors suggest this to beginners. I don't. Asking a beginner dog and handler to play "101" is lumping. It scares them. Without a clearcut goal in front of them, they tend to panic.

101 is about thinking. It's about teaching you to see what the dog is offering you, and to teach you to guess what's going to come next. It's about teaching the dog to offer behaviours, to think about what she's doing and what the results will be, and to keep working when she didn't get what she wanted the first time. Stick with it, it's worth the effort. Watching a dog play 101 is as close as you will ever get to knowing what she's thinking.

EASY BEGINNINGS: Sit on the couch. Get comfortable. Have lots of treats and a clicker. Dog in front of you on the floor. What's your criteria? ANY MOTION. Not any BIG motion, but ANY motion. In fact, if she BLINKS, there was motion. If she breathes in or out, there was motion. Flicks an ear. Drops her nose a quarter inch. Shifts her weight. Wags her tail.

Wait a minute – wasn't this about a box? Never mind, we're starting small. I want you BOTH to be successful. Let's start with her head. Just look at her head, and click ANY MOTION at all. She flicks her eyes to one side, click and toss the treat on the floor. Watch her head again. She picks up the treat and stares at you. No click. She stares at you. No click. She glances in the direction you tossed the previous treat. Click and toss the treat back over THERE again. She picks up the treat and stares at you again (has it occurred to you that after she picks up the treat, she CHEWS or SWALLOWS – that's a clickable motion. And then she TURNS HER HEAD back toward you – that's a clickable motion. So if you dog is really into clicker training already (and if you're up to Level Four, she should be), you can ignore those motions and wait for one that's separated from the diving-for-the-treat behaviours. If your dog is stuck, stressed, confused by the whole idea, you can click the chewing or swallowing or turning back toward you.

What you're aiming for is to increase the number of the dog's responses. Get her moving. This will increase her "clicker stamina" – that is, it'll help her understand that drifting to a stop doesn't work with clicker training. She has to figure out what you're paying for at the moment, and offer you more and more of that behaviour in order to get paid. Right now, you're paying for motion of any part of the head. If your dog is offering all kinds of behaviour, marvelous. If she's not – especially if she's a crossover dog with previous training in some other method – you may HAVE to click the blinks and chewing in order to get her In The Game.

OK, now you've got her moving, get a cardboard box, smaller than the dog. Put it near her. Sit back on the couch. Click for turning her head toward the box. Looking at the box, walking toward the box, arriving at the box. Now what? Click whatever she does when she gets to the box. She might touch it with her nose – click. She might touch it with her paw – click. She might take step to go around it – click. She might bite or lick it – click. When she's really into it, when your click-rate is at LEAST once every ten seconds, STOP CLICKING WHATEVER YOU WERE CLICKING.

Now we're getting into the "One Hundred And One" part of the game. The game is designed as a creativity enhancer. There are two ways to play, depending on the dog's enthusiasm and your own. The first is to click one box-behaviour each day. Say she was touching the box with her right front paw and you were clicking that. Click it for maybe two minutes, and then remove the box and go do something else. Come back tomorrow and click the original behaviour ten times. As soon as she's excited about offering that behaviour again, STOP clicking her for touching the box with her right front paw. You need a different behaviour, or a variation on the original. Maybe she belts it hard enough that it moves. OK, click that. Maybe she puts both front paws on it. Maybe she jumps on it. Maybe she bites it. WhatEVER. Take the next thing she gives you and click that. When your click-rate is up again, when she's really in the game and having a good time, remove the box and go do something else. The next day, don't pay more than ten times for her first behaviour OR her second behaviour.

If your dog is really clicker-savvy and already knows how to up the ante on a behaviour, you can try playing the second way. That is, you don't click ANYTHING she offers you more than ten times. Touch the box with the right front paw, click for ten of those, and then don't click them any more. She bangs the box three more times with her right front paw, then glares at you and gives you the "Hey Stupid" reaction – HEY, STUPID! I TOUCHED IT! AREN'T YOU PAYING ATTENTION? That frustration makes her jump on it with both front paws, just to be sure you notice. Touch the box with both front paws, click for ten of those, then don't click them any more. Gradually, as she learns that no click means she has to offer you something else, you can work up to the sophisticated-dog version of the game, where you don't click any behaviour more than twice.

PROBLEM SOLVING:

SHE DOESN'T DO ANYTHING! HOW CAN I CLICK? Look harder. I had a crossover dog at my house one day. I noticed that ten seconds after she ate a treat, she'd swallow one last little bit of saliva. Every time. So I started clicking the swallowing motion. In the beginning, this meant she was getting one click and treat every 10 seconds. Six a minute. A fairly slow rate for a beginning, but she wanted the treats, so she was with me. She had no idea what the silly clicking noise was, but I was dishing out a treat every 10 seconds so she was going to hang out with me and get all she could. And every time she ate a treat, ten seconds later she'd swallow again.

By the time I'd handed out twenty treats, the second swallow had speeded up considerably. It was now only four seconds from the actual treat-swallow. Which meant our click-and-treat rate was up to twenty a minute – a very good, fast rate guaranteed to keep her in the game. And the clickable second swallow had gotten more pronounced. It now included a definite lip-sucking noise.

Another twenty treats, and I got a definite smacking-kiss noise with every swallow. At that point I gave up all thoughts of playing 101 with her and started putting a cue on the smacking noise. Jesse, Do you love me? SMACK! Which, you have to admit, was a SUPER trick, and who could possibly imagine that you could teach a dog to make a smacking noise on cue?

The bottom line is, if your dog "doesn't do anything", you're still looking for large lumps of behaviour. She doesn't have to play a tune and juggle dog biscuits here. Remember that game you played when you were a kid where everybody had to freeze and stand absolutely still? Consider sitting still, staring at you, like a statue, your basic behaviour. ANYTHING that isn't that is clickable. When my pup is intent on Stay, she her nose slowly, slowly, slowly, rises. If I'm getting that nose-rise, I know I could walk across the room and do jumping jacks and she'd stay there. Nobody else notices this because it's a very tiny motion. THAT'S a clickable motion.

BUT IF I PLAY THIS, SHE'S GOING TO BE JUMPING ALL OVER WHEN I WANT A STAY! Sure she will, for a minute or two. Until she figures out that what you're paying for at that moment is sitting still. Don't worry about this, it's a momentary aberration. Reread the instructions for teaching the duration behaviours (Watch, SitStay, DownStay, StandStay). A dog that's offering behaviours when she needs to be still is simply a dog who doesn't understand duration behaviours yet.

ADDING A CUE: I've never had a voice cue for 101. My cue is situational. When there's an object, a dog, and a clicker, the dog automatically starts trying to discover what makes the click happen.

CONTINUING EDUCATION: Consider the amazing benefits of having a dog who tries to discover what makes the click happen! My Service Dog In Training – I dropped her leash, so I shaped her to pick it up and give it to me. Agility – any obstacle means treats to her. Is she supposed to jump on it? Jump over it? Walk on it? Go through it? Obedience – the broad jump is SO easy to teach if you pay for getting from one side of it to the other one day. The next day you pay for getting from one side to the other by putting fewer than four paws on it. The next day it's two paws, and you can usually "jump" from there to jumping from one side of it to the other.

Obviously you can play 101 with all kinds of objects. An exercise bike. A park bench. A person. A chair. Playing 101 for a seminar audience, my Scuba once jumped on the seat of a chair, put her front paws on the back of it, pushed, and rode it to the ground. Because I clicked her for it, when we set it back up, she did it again.

LEVEL FIVE

Dog demonstrates a captured trick.

DISCUSSION: All you need for this is imagination and the ability to watch the dog! Stitch occasionally lay down with her front paws slightly crossed. This became Princess Paws. Shaking, yawning, smiling, whispering, these are all captured behaviours. The difference between a behaviour and a trick is what you call it. I teach the dog to lie down on her side, that's a grooming behaviour. The cue I use is to point my finger at her and say Bang!, suddenly it's a trick.

LEVEL SIX

Dog performs a lured trick.

DISCUSSION: This should be the easiest trick. She learned to follow a touchstick way back in Level 4. What can you get her to do with that? Bow? Spin? Back up? Circle you? Stand on her back legs? Sit Pretty? Scuba's most popular trick is to show me her front pads. For us, this is "Did you wash your hands?" but it could also be "Stick 'em up!". This was a result of me luring her slightly too far back on a Sit Pretty, making her lift her paws to balance herself.

LEVEL SEVEN

Tableau of at least 3 tricks, one following another to tell a story (eg, a “broken leg”, bad temperament, “shooting” the dog, followed by the dog “dying”).

DISCUSSION: You might not even need to teach anything new to the dog for this Level, just use your imagination to put three tricks together. I saw a cute one recently. The dog had several good tricks, followed by the question "When you get to Hollywood, are you going to be a snob?", whereupon the dog flipped his nose up in the air and held it there.