PE for Wally 7 - Throwing A Ball

A video this time of me getting Wally to do his throwing. He's pretty good with the ball...not so much with the Post-it Note! Still, I thought it was pretty cute and not that bad.

I'm still thinking of ways to try to hone this. Throwing at a target. Maybe trying to throw it into a bowl, box, basket, etc. Throwing it to me. Things like that. Not quite sure how to go about "explaining" it to him with shaping, but it's mulling around in the brain.

PE For Wally 4: Balancing And Walking With a Ball

Alrighty then, back to training. This is what I'm talking about.

While still trying to get all the stuff we had or at least something similar, there is still that medicine ball - it survived. So might as well use it.

So that was the idea for this. I wanted him to put his front paws on the ball and walk. Of course, he looks at me like I'm some psycho alien dog. "How do you come up with this stuff to make me do?" kind of look.

But, all resistance is cast aside when a bread ball or a piece of ham enters the picture. Food is king in his world.

With that, I put the ball in front of him. Since I choose shaping first and foremost I wait to see what he'll do with it. Well, he remembers the times I had him pushing the ball and that's what he started doing. That nose kept hitting the ball, moving it around. When that didn't work, he put his paw on it. Oh, that's progress (pawgress?) so he got a click and treat. He did it again - okay, I'll give you one for that too. No, not the third time.

So, reluctantly, I went to a bit of luring. I held the food high over the ball. That was all the help he was getting, he had to figure out how to get it. If he tried to go around the ball, the food disappeared. After a few tries of that, he saw going around was not a winning strategy.

After a bit, he put one paw on the ball and tried to lean on it. The ball moved, and he backed up, but I gave him the food anyway for the effort (it's a step in the right direction). He tried the going around thing again, but then he put his front paw again. He did keep it on the ball and was leaning on it.

I waited and he finally put the other paw on the ball. That got him more food. Now we're getting somewhere. At this point, the lure went away. He knows he can make his body do it. So now it's time for him to...just do it.

After some thinking (he was like, "what's up with that?") he put his paws on the ball. That made the food appear, BUT not get it. He was like "now what?"

I didn't say anything, just held the food up there. If he got off the ball, the food disappeared. He learned quick not to do that - so he started whining. Like THAT would work. I just turned away with the food in the same spot, so he put an end to that. He then gathered up his nerve and reached up for the food by standing up. His back legs were standing and his front paws were on the ball. YES! I quickly all but threw the food in his mouth.

But now I want duration. I want him to walk after all. So once he figured out how to get the food, I held out a bit to delay the reward and get him used to standing in that pose. Then gave him the treat.

Next step was the walking. This was interesting. I moved the food further away. He looked at it like it was evil for moving. I left it at this distance and he looked at me. I just turned away again and left him to figure it out. He started moving the ball with his paws - that got rewarded. Now we're cooking. He kept it up and took a step with his back legs. Another reward.

Now that he did it twice - I moved the food farther away. He slipped off the ball - and the food went away. Tough. Get back on that ball and figure it out.

He popped back up on the ball (that part he's figured out already) and tried again. He took a step, but I want more steps. I moved the food to trigger that "get back here" mode in him and he took more steps. Shoved the reward in his mouth.

Now he had to do it with no lure at all. Instead, I used my hand as a target and called for "touch" on my hand. He had to walk with the ball to touch my hand. When he did, I got a reward out of my pocket. A couple of those, and then I called it a session. As usual, he was jumping up and down and acting like he conquered the world!

I don't know about the world, but at least you're a step closer to conquering walking with a ball. I will try to capture some photos of this or maybe even a *gasp* video (maybe - I'm an amateur dog trainer, not amateur video producer!)

PE for Wally 3: Wally The Outfielder?

Today, we did more with catching, and this time I used a new object. For this session, we played with a black and white baseball.

Immediately, I noticed a more keen reaction to the ball. Perhaps the different colors on the ball made it easy for him to track the baseball's movements. With the disc, sometimes it seemed he couldn't pick it up very well.

It may be a height issue as well. With the ball, I throw it underhand, so it may enter and stay within his vision for longer time, helping him track it in the air. Whatever the reason, he was going after it aggressively in the air.

He has a harder time grabbing it, sometimes it pops out of his mouth, or he misjudges it, and it bounces off his nose. Sometimes, I swear he's trying to catch it with his paws! He seems to be coming up with a way to catch it more reliably, by moving towards it a bit. Perhaps he's trying to understand how to catch the ball at it's highest point.

His enthusiasm is still strong when I do shorter tosses (short as in: about a foot from him, if that). He jumps up high, sometimes making a twisting landing. He hangs on to the ball, though, and I started doing some of those tosses in more rapid succession. He liked doing these, so I'll definitely do more with him. These shorter tosses are easy to do indoors as well, making for more chances to practice.

I've considered using a smaller ball (like his tiny soccer ball) so it's easier to catch, but then again he can catch this ball. He just has to learn to judge it and adjust to the throws.

Push, Push, Push!

Today, I wanted to take the ball pushing to another level and put a goal to it. This would be doing the behavior like a job and something that has to be done to finish the job.

The ball wasn't his soccer ball. I tried that, but it was much too small for this. His head had to go to low to actually push the ball instead of just tapping the top of the ball. So that was out. That left it to the big blue exercise ball. That one is probably too big, but, hey, he had to deal with it.

Initially, he thought this was just the ball pushing "game" where he could push the ball once and get rewarded. Once he found out that wasn't it, he turned less happy.

I kept up with it, he had to keep pushing the ball. That was the one of the hardest parts for him to understand. He had to push it. With me telling him multiple times, he thought he was getting it wrong. He started even shaking, but he would keep taking treats so he wasn't stressed out that bad. As such, I ignored the shaking and all that and kept him working.

Then I opened the patio door and made that the goal. He had to push the ball out of the door. This is the other part he had a hard time understanding. The goal was to get the ball out of the door, but he just thought about trying to push it when I said "push".

As such, I started directing him to try to give him the best chance to push the ball in the right direction. This helped quite a bit, but also threw in another instruction for him to keep track and be aware of. This really worked him both physically and mentally. I also wanted him to move quickly and keep going.

He did manage to do so, and we repeated the exercise several times. He seemed to get better at it, and at the least pushed the ball harder.

After that, we went outside and pushed the ball around out there too. On the grass, he had to push it harder to get it moving, so I went easier on him. Still, he had to move the ball, and push it multiple times. I also had him push the ball back inside the backyard gate before we went for a walk right after.

All in all, it was a pretty exhausting day for him. From the mental and physical demands of doing the "work" and then going for a long walk. He had a lot in his day and now he's crashed out for some well-deserved rest.

From Learning the Ball To First Spanish Struggle

Today was a mixed bag day. First, we got the chance to introduce the ball. Then after that, we worked on converting another cue to a Spanish word, which for the first time might be something of a struggle.


Yeah, Same Thing As Pushing, Wally.

Here is the ball, the pelota, in question:

La pelota, object number 2

With this ball, he quickly caught on to the idea that he was to touch the ball. He was equating it with the pushing stuff we've done during exposing him to the basics of treibball, which got him quickly into the mindset of poking the ball with hose nose forcefully.

This enthusiasm allowed me to just focus on saying the cue "pelota" and having him wait to make sure the connection is being formed between the cue and the behavior. Since progress was so fast, we didn't need to move so methodically as we did with the rabbit and not nearly as slowly as with the colors. How great! Immediately, we could go with distance and he looked around readily for the ball no matter where it was.

The only reason we had to stop was because I had to go get another piece of bread! I'm glad I chose to use the soccer ball (and this size of ball) after seeing these results. Hopefully, when it's time to add in the rabbit, this kind of progress will manifest itself again!


Say It Isn't So! Our First Spanish Fail?

Perhaps we were due. Perhaps it was working too well and the Dog Training Fates said "enough of this, time to make them have a set back!" and threw this monkey wrench in. Perhaps I wasn't saying the word consistently enough, but...I doubt I've been particularly consistent as it is, plus...it's not a hard word to say.

"Pares" a form of the verb "Parar" which means "to stop". As you probably can guess, this is the new "wait/stay" cue. While trying to think of why suddenly the struggle here as opposed to the other successes, some thoughts came into my head:

1. This is an "old" behavior, perhaps 'stay' is too established in his mind
2. Going in line with #1, perhaps I've forgotten how I 'explained' the behavior to him
3. The sound of the word itself is too difficult for him to pick up
4. We have just one cue that starts with a "P" sound, perhaps he's not used to hearing it
5. The stay/wait wasn't as strong as I thought to begin with, so this just exposed it

I recently read about the "stay into a moving stand", and, thanks to a post on a forum I'm on, I got a lead/tip on a hand signal she used to do it. I can't find the freaking post so I can link to it. I know who wrote it and I'm looking on the right forum. Ugh. Anyway...trying that route seems to be working a bit.

With him walking beside me, I give the hand signal and say "pares" and if he stops, he gets a click and treat. At this point, I'm also stopping since that often triggers him to do the same. Everything to try to get the association going and make a connection.

Success has been hit or miss and so far getting him to wait or stay in any other way while using "Pares" has not worked particularly well so far. Hmm...it's too bad I can't fully remember how I first did "stay" with him so that I could try that. No way we're giving up, though. I know it's just a matter of getting those first few breakthroughs and then we'll hit the ground running from there.

Object Discrimination 1: Rabbit vs Ball

I figure it's time to start doing some "real" object discrimination again. I've done it some time back, and then tried it here or there, but probably going too fast or not using things he can really see. They last time I really did this semi-formally, it was trying to have to tell the difference between a picture of Dora and Kai-lan, two kids characters he seems to like.

That didn't go well, and then I started working on his bone and ball, and didn't really go that into it for some reason.

And of course, keeping with the Spanish theme, I looked up the words for ball and rabbit in Spanish and will be using them as the cue. In case you're mildly interested, rabbit = el conejo and ball = la pelota. I'm debating between including the "el" and "la" for purposes of a cue. It adds a syllable and there's going to be lots of "el"s and "la"s if I keep teaching objects, so I don't think it adds any information for him.

The two objects are of vastly different shape, size, and color. This helps keep it easy for him to see a distinct difference in their appearance. Both of these objects are very familiar to him (they are some of his toys).

The only other question is what size of ball to use. I could use the BIG exercise ball, his soccer ball, a smaller ball than that, or his tiny soccer ball. The tiny ball might be TOO small. Hmm...perhaps this might be something to experiment with. All of the balls are different size from the rabbit, so there's one less thing to worry with.

I think he'll end up enjoying this as much as the colors, and it will be interesting to see if he doesn't pick this up faster since it's a physical object instead of something somewhat abstract like a color.