"All-Positive Monday 22" - Building Desire In Catching And Carrying

With Wally more and more interested in catching things, and getting a bit better at it, I took part of the day to have Wally like the ball even more.

I want him to do anything he can to get the ball in his mouth. To do this, I turned to shaping-type activity.

The behavior I want is him getting the ball in his mouth. Once he did this, he got a reward for it. Nothing happens with any other behavior. Nothing else is good enough, no pawing, poking, pushing the ball, just picking it up.

I went through about a dozen of these and then switched to a more active scenario. I rolled the ball, and he had to go get it, but without me saying so. I want it to be the default behavior. See ball moving...get ball in mouth.

Our prior working on retrieve training interferes with this as he is used to waiting for the cue to go after whatever it is. I want to frame this differently, so he can understand the difference between the two activities. That is something for me to think on.

After doing this, I held the ball in my hand and moved it around. He had to try to grab the ball. Again, all of this in an effort to get him to go into "Must. Get. Ball. In. Mouth." mode. Each time he succeeded, he got a click and a reward. I also kept getting him and keeping him excited the whole time, which had him increasing his efforts.

However, it didn't stop with just the ball. Also on the agenda was developing his "pick up and carry" desire. Since we had been working with getting the ball in his mouth, this would be a good follow up since it's also involving getting objects in his mouth.

This is a little more difficult since he's not as apt to carry a lot of things, but I used the ball again. Instead of catching the ball, he had to pick it up and carry it to me. Success netted him a game with the ball. That would be the reward I used for this set of exercises.

After getting him warmed up with the ball, I used other light household items, like a duster, balled up napkins, stirring spoons, and so on. Hopefully, this could be the precursor to other actions like putting the object in a box and moving him further along in becoming something of a "housework dog".

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.

PE for Wally 2: Catch Practice

I recently discovered that Wally has shown an interest in catching and isn't terrible considering we've never really put much interest into it. Still, though, he seems to want to catch things and gets all excited about the chance to do so.

To that end, I got him a small blue disc, designed for dogs of course, that is rubber and soft on his mouth.

First thing I always want to do with him is introduce the object in a calm way and praise for interaction with it. Then slowly increase excitement level and play around with it with him. I want to do this to remove any concerns he may have about the object and have him desiring the object. This will come in handy.

Fortunately, he took to the disc VERY quickly. This is surprising to me, but I'm glad for it! He's already trying to grab it when I hold the disc in my hand. If I move it around, he's trying to bite it and all of that. A lot of desire for the disc already.

With that out of the way, I'm "throwing" the disc from a very short distance. This serves a dual purpose: 1) I can see how he tries to catch, tracks the object, and how he prefers to make the catch. 2) I can learn how to deliver the disc to give him a higher chance of success. This is a new thing for me, too, so I have stuff to learn and improve on as well.

This is where we are at now and we're both having fun with it. Hopefully, this gets us off on the right foot.