Opening and Closing the Door II

Tapped out on new things to try with Wally this week, I decided to see if he knew how to open and close the door...with me being on the other side of the door. It sounds silly, but this is a big change. Usually I'm already through the door.

Sure enough, he got mixed up. He wasn't sure what to do. I put a small opening in the door, like I usually do for him to open it, gave him the "abres" cue, and he closed the door! He did the wrong thing out of his confusion. Same thing for telling him "cierras" to close the door.

So we have a new thing to work on soon. I don't know why I didn't think of this earlier. Another thing to try is doors that open from different sides. The bathroom door opens from a different position so he has to figure that out. Again, seems silly to us, but to a dog, it's a big deal.

I think I know how I'm going to do it, and, as usual, will try to make a game out of it - or at least keep it moving fast and exciting.

Other than that, we've been rained out most of the week and he's been in no real mood to do much of anything, and neither have I, really. He did do some catching on one rainy day when it wasn't so bad, but once the pouring rain came, he and I both just wanted to get back inside as soon as possible. And once inside, he just wanted to dry off and get warm and I was pretty much in the same mindset.

At least now, we have something new indoors to try.

Wally vs Me: Day 1 - Abres/Cierras

As planned, we could get the first of these "competitions" in and we did it as the schedule said with opening and closing doors - Abres and Cierras.

Here's the scorecard:

Wally wins the first event 29-9

Wally pretty much beat the challenge pretty handily, though I have heard that if the dog doesn't perform at 80% or higher, there's still work to do. In that case, we need more work on this. I wouldn't disagree with that as I also want Wally to do something well at least eight times in ten. Preferably eleven times in ten.

Looking at how this went, there was some bit of a...I guess "lull" in the beginning where he must needed to warm up or something. Perhaps it's getting his mind "in the right attitude", so to speak, to begin thinking about instructions. That's something I noticed right off the bat, which is a lot of the point of this whole idea at the end of the day (that and fun interaction with him, of course!).

There was also one specific context that really, really gave him problems and is where I got most of my points (and lemon cake). That context was when the basement door wasn't just barely opened, but wasn't all the way opened. This totally confused him. Like, completely. He would try to go down the stairs or close the door, it was difficult for him to get things down. Mental note made - there's one place we need to really work.

Continuing on, he struggled a bit around the bathroom door. In this case, it was mostly an orientation issue. At the basement door, he is heading in from the door's left. The bathroom is the exact opposite, he has to come in from the right. This confused him initially, but he started to work it out, though somewhat tentatively. So there's another context we could stand to work on. Approaching the door from the right.

After that, there wasn't much problem. Upstairs, he had to push the door open with his nose. No problem as he has to do that to open the basement door from the inside (as in after coming up the stairs from the basement). What impressed me was that he did the "cierras" from inside the room and I'm still on the other side. Even more so is that he did the "abres" just as easily from the same place. In fact, once he did the "cierras" and then "caught" the door on his nose before the door closed to open it back up, likely because the rewards were outside the room, but regardless, he solved the problem on his own.

We did a few with me in the bathroom and him pushing the door open as well (probably not the best thing to show him, in retrospect!) and he did it without problem. 

After that, I was out of cake, so that was the end the session. Wally had tons of fun doing his "dog laughing" and almost literally FLYING down the stairs (no idea why...), I mean, he literally like just sort of slid/jumped/something down the last four stairs.

Looks like Wally did a very good job, and had a lot of fun. All and all a good day.

New Game Idea: Wally vs Me or Competitive Training

I just got this idea in my head and have started to flesh out how I'd go about it and what the competition would be like. But first, I'll explain what I mean.

Competitive Training?

"Competitive Training" is what I call it because Wally and I will be "competing" for a common high-value resource that we both want. Badly.

If he performs the required behavior correctly, he'll get a piece. If he does, he gets to watch me eat what would have been his piece.

But this won't just be with Ye Olde Bread Balls (at least not this time, and he does love them) but this will be what might be his highest-of-the-high value, the penultimate food prize, the true to-die-for morsel he could ever think of...

Lemon cake.

I have some, and I will use it as the bounty.

Oh and we'll keep score, and I'll post it, just like a baseball box score.

Fun With A Practical Side

I love games and think they are a big help to training dogs. These "competitive training" sessions will help him learn the skills that are the subject of the day and also give him more opportunity to practice them in a highly positive emotional context/environment, which seems to help him learn things very quickly. It will also take some of the edge/frustration of getting a no-reward marker and he'll have to control himself enough to understand the situation, listen for the cue, and then think about what the right behavior is.

Doing this will also allow me to mix up the training sessions for him. I can be more animated and dramatic because I'm not as concerned with picking up the behavior as I am making it all this big deal to him. I'll also do this to up the challenge subtly as I'm now being as big a distraction as anything else and revving up his emotions to higher than usual levels. Oh yes, I plan to get him barking and wagging and jumping up.

Plus, if it's easy, what does he learn?

There's also another practical purpose - the days he "loses" or "barely wins" are areas in which we need to work more on during "formal" training sessions. Gaps/weaknesses in what we've done so far will show up, giving me a better picture of where we are.

Rules of the Game

Here's the rules:

1. The only "behavioral rule" will be to stay engaged in the game at all times. This won't be a problem, though, unless something unexpected happens and freaks him out. We'll put the game on "pause" if that happens to let him settle down.
   
   
2. Each day, a new skill will be picked and at least 20 trials will be run through but there could be any number at the high end (realistically, probably about 40 at the most - I only have so much lemon cake and can make the pieces only so small!)
   
   
3. Any known context is applicable and can be called upon.
   
   
4. Only reasonably well-known behaviors/cues will be required. For example, asking him to get his dumbbell from a pile of objects is fair game, asking him to get "azul" instead of the "conejo" is not.
   
   
5. A success gets him a treat, a failure means I eat it instead.

And the preliminary schedule of "events", so to speak:

Day 1 - Abres y Cierras (opening and closing doors)
Day 2 - Arriba y Abajo (going up and down stairs)
Day 3 - Vámonos y Pare (going and stopping)
Day 4 - Pelota y Conejo (determining his ball and rabbit)
Day 5 - Azul y Amarillo (the return of the blue and yellow cards or cones)

If I think of more stuff he'll have fun competing against me with, I'll add them in somewhere and the schedule can change.

Oh, and yes, all the cues will be the Spanish words I've been using.


Hopefully, we'll be able to kick this off tomorrow. Also, I hope Wally wins and beats me badly! That would mean he's learned everything very well and in more than just one situation!

A Day of Spanish Cues: A Mini-Test and More Work On Stay

Just to mix things up a bit, I decided to give a little "test" to Wally on the Spanish cues we've been working with for quite some time now and it looks like he has an understanding of them. This was not only a test of giving the right behavior in response to known situations, but what he figures out when given the cue in new situations (for that cue).

Also, we worked more on training stay and did throw in a little more working with recognizing the ball and rabbit, but that was nothing that hasn't already been mentioned before. The majority of cues he got were in Spanish, so it was a day of Spanish for Wally.


The Mini-Test

Abajo, Arriba, Abres, y Cierras

First up would be the mini-test. This would be on the first four Spanish words I really introduced to him and used in training him.

Abajo y Arriba
 
For "abajo" and "arriba", I put him near the stairs and he had to go in the proper direction that I gave. At first, it was easy, I stayed where I usually do and cued arriba or abajo. As expected, this was no problem for him. He got these easily for both sets of stairs. A really good job and didn't really miss any, aside from the occasional "extra" barking before he would do the proper movement, especially, for some reason, with arriba. Maybe the sound of the word just sounds exciting to him!

Having mastered that, it was time to up the challenge some. I moved back from him to add some distance with him staying put. Then, I cued the direction. He was anticipating another instruction at first, and the first few times, he was confused. This was especially the case on "abajo" likely because he was even farther from me and he had to pick out the sound with some walls and such between us. Even though this was harder for him, after a while, he picked up on it.

Next was really tricky. I had him come to the middle of the hall. Arriba was to make him go up one set of stairs, but abajo was for another set. This really threw him for a loop for quite some time! Up until this point, arriba/abajo belonged to the same set of stairs, just a different position relative to him and I (probably, at least that was some part of the "picture" he had). Now, we're in the middle and it was less obvious. Wally had a tough time with this, and I certainly made a mental note of it.

The next test was as tricky as it didn't involve stairs at all, but a chair he could jump/climb into and jump down from. Or at least I though it would be tricky. He figured it out somewhat quickly, though it's probably something we could stand to work on later.

Abres y Cierras

Working these two was more limited as they relate to doors. At first, it was right near the door. A warm-up of sorts was leaving a small crack in the door (so his nose could fit) and cuing abres while a clearly opened door would have me cuing cierras. No problems here, he moved quickly and only got them mixed up when he wasn't thinking straight and just eager to one of them, usually the last behavior he did, regardless of the cue. That excitement. Looks like we need more work on controlled excitement training as well.

Increasing the challenge came mostly from creating ambiguous situations or cuing the same direction more than once (Especially for abres as this has easily practical uses - I may need him to open the door wider for something).

With the ambiguous situation, I put the door with more than a small crack in it, but not quite halfway open to where it would be clear which one I want (or where it would be impossible for him to close due to the angles and position of the door). Now this made him think! I could see him pausing before acting as if he's trying to remember which cue when with which behavior while looking at the door. It looked like he was thinking "okay, where do I need to push the door to do that?".

At first, he sort of just guessed, or took the easier looking action, but after getting some light "nope" markers, he started to think about what was going on, and starting picking the right behavior more often, and once he started getting rewards again, he was making a clearer connection and being right more, and more frequently.

To close out the test, I cued abres/cierras from various locations. I might not always be right by the door, and neither might he, though most of it was me being in different places. This worked well, he didn't get mixed up by where I was, he was focused on the door and manipulating it correctly. He did better than I might have thought initially, but I wasn't too shocked as I probably did this now and then just in day-to-day moving around the house and such.


Stop, Wally! Pare!

He's getting it better. I resumed working on the hand signal and saying "pare" and that's helping to stop a lot faster. I've even been able to move away from him while doing this and he'll stand still. Excellente! I think he'll continue making the connection as I continue drilling it (in a fun way of course!) and using a lot of Premack Principle, which is probably how I taught "wait" and "stay" to begin with.

I'm glad and maybe a bit "relieved" that he's getting a better grasp. I think there's still a little disconnect with the sound (once I gave the cue while on our walk, where we worked on it this evening, and he took a second to even register the sound, but then stopped on a dime. Another thing that will come with continued work and repetition and of course plenty of rewards (read: bread balls)!

Of course, I looked up "Spanish dog commands" in google and found this little chart of cues in foreign languages, including Spanish. Of course, there's a different word for "stay" but, hey, I figure it's fine. He doesn't know - and it's not really "Stay" (as in stay put and don't start moving) but "stop moving" (implying he's in motion) so it's more a wait.

Plus, not everyone uses the same English cues - so, yeah. Still, it's a nice little chart. I'm also using SpanishDict.com to look up meanings and such (Again, it matters to me - of course not at all to him...as long as I can say it consistently!) The link goes to "parar" which is the infinitive verb form. I'm choosing the Usted Subjunctive form for verbs at this point, though I broke from that for abre and cierras... not sure why.

Well, guess that wraps up the day. Muy bien, Wally!

When In Doubt, Use a Foreign Language?

This may well be just placebo effect, the idea that something is having an impact when it really isn't, but it seems that ever since I used "abres" and "cierras" for opening and closing doors, it just clicked with him.

Perhaps it's just because the sound is so distinct, there's no "processing time" wasted trying to parse the sounds. He hears nothing else that sounds like that, so it registers quickly and exactly to the behavior. Or perhaps it just clicked in his mind as things sometimes just do for him. Or maybe using his obsession with Dora the Explorer in training got us both picking up some Spanish - for me, new words to try (and a new found interest in Spanish in general), and for him, he's familiar with the sound, since the words were spoken on the show. It may not be totally unknown. Maybe that helped it click - like "oh, I've heard that before and now I know what to do when I hear it!" It would be funny if every time Dora says "abre" on the show, he goes and opens the door!

In any case, I'm not going to let this thing go just yet. That's just the way I am. Soon, I'll be started with the color training in earnest and I'm thinking of using the Spanish words for blue and yellow, "azul" and (or should I say "y") "amarillo", respectively. (Who knew Wally's Dora fetish would come in handy! LOL)

I figure it's worth a chance. Perhaps the sounds of the Spanish language will be so different to him that it will help him learn the colors better, making for a clearer connection. Or perhaps it won't do anything beneficial at all. It can't hurt to try. All it would end up costing is a slice of bread and some time. Wally won't care about the "waste" of bread - considering he'll be doing the eating, and what's a little time in the interest of trying to expand his knowledge?