#training ask

[fruitless-vain]

So Yoshi is a service dog. Does Sham have a job too?

Also, do dogs enjoy learning commands? Is it more like play or a chore for them?

Shams job is keeping his brain cell between his ears, it’s a really rigorous task that consumes his whole day but someone’s gotta do it 😔

(Yoshi is the only SD in my home, Shams ‘just’ a pet. He knows how to retrieve certain items that are too heavy for Yo which he’ll do for me from time to time at home but that’s it for him)

Whether or not a dog enjoys cued behaviours tends to depend on a couple variables - how that behaviour was taught, the dog’s personality, and their history with the behaviour

How it’s taught:

If you teach a dog to walk loose leash by kicking them (exaggeration, don’t do that) every time they walk ahead you’ll eventually get them to stop walking ahead of you but they won’t be doing it because they enjoy it. They’ll be walking behind you because they’re scared and stressed by the potential outcome of walking ahead.

If you offer rewards for walking by your side they’ll be walking there because they’re excited about the potential outcome. They’ll end up enjoying loose leash walking because the anticipation of the rewards is firing off all those happy chemicals in the brain making the activity reinforcing and enjoyable.

(There’s so much more nuance to this but you get the idea)

The dog:

Some dogs were bred with following human cues in mind, by default their brains want to receive information from someone, they can find joy in the mere principle of getting a direction (herders, retrievers, etc)

Some dogs were bred with independence in mind, their heads need to be able to problem solve independently, or be focused on the environment (sled dogs, guardian breeds, etc.). As such they might not be as engaged in traditional behaviour=reward sequences and therefore less suited for service dog level behaviours.

Within breed categories each dog will have their own personal preferences, what they find rewarding, how long they can hold focus for, how much they actively want to work. Yoshi, my SD, a herder, can hold focus and react to cues on a dime for hours, she can do repetitive training sessions multiple times a day without losing motivation or eagerness to participate, she can get the same single piece of kibble as a reward for a month and not get bored of it. Sham, my northern mix pet dog, can focus for about 15 minutes on a good day, loses interest in repeated cue sessions, needs loads of breaks, and values environmental rewards over much else.

Both can be taught basic cues and have fun with training sessions but some will not thrive in more intense training settings that don’t line up with their personality and breed traits.

History with the behaviour:

Even if all the stars align, you trained the behaviour where the dog highly enjoys it, the dog is highly motivated, and everything seems perfect you can end up with a dog that hates the behaviour just because of something that happened one day.

If I’ve asked my dog to sit 200x and nothing bad happens and she’s excited to do it then one day I ask her to sit and a blast of lightning and thunder goes off behind her and scares her heavily it’s possible that she will be afraid of sitting again. The environment poisoned the cue for her, if it was scary enough she could think that sitting might make the lightning occur so she’ll be averse to sitting out of fear for that lightning again.

If you feed them from a certain bowl for years, hide medication in their food one day and they find it + it’s gross they will start to be wary of that bowl and potentially avoid eating anything from that same bowl again (or avoid that food entirely). One bad experience poisoned both the eating behaviour and the container itself.

(This is a huge reason why SD handlers hate seeing pets in not pet friendly places, one bad experience while the dog is in gear can cause them to anticipate being attacked by a dog any time they go to work. Causing the SD to have to retire early)

For the fundamentals of cues and training a dog /should/ enjoy it! The whole point of training is that it’s a fun enriching experience for the animals involved, it makes communication a two way street, makes living with one another easier, and allows for compromises to be made for the benefit of everyone. Any dog Can enjoy basic training, sometimes you need to get creative with what rewards you use, and sometimes training looks like one singular rep instead of 15 minutes of repetitions. Training gets their brains thinking, enhanced problem solving, and is overall a very enriching game.

When we’re talking in the service dog degree of things we absolutely do not want our dogs to feel like any of their tasks are “chores”, a dog who loathes their tasks is unreliable, doesn’t like their job, and will usually end up retiring early. You want a service dog to love their job, a dog who’s excited every time they’re needed, who gears up for work readily, and wants to work, is a dog who is actively looking for things to do, is paying attention for scent alerts, is responding to cues promptly and efficiently, is ready for the worst case scenario. A dog who doesn’t love their job is a dog who might not pay attention to a scent alert, who might not respond in an emergency, and a dog that’s ultimately just unhappy.

If a behaviour is seen as a chore then something went wrong down the road and we need to evaluate if it’s something we can fix or if it’s something the dog just doesn’t enjoy. End goal for any training is always for the dog to be an eager and excited participant who’s having fun with the entire process

[flock-talk]

Hey, I've been trying to teach my yellow naped amazon to 'fetch'. I've used an easy object, and I put it down for him but when he picks it up all wants to do it chew it and break it instead of dropping it, and I can't even swap the object for food because he rejects food I try to reward him with, even though he does like the food. I was just wondering if you have any suggestions? Thankyou

1) largely the easiest answer is to just be patient. They eventually get bored and drop the object, you may have better success by using a dish to get them to deliver the object to as opposed to your hand, they usually get interested in the sounds in makes which leads to dropping it in to the cup more frequently.

2) another option is to encourage any small progressions towards your hand, as opposed to diving straight in to completely dropping the object reward them for turning the object closer to your hand first and work up to letting go of it

3) find another object they find less interesting, experiment with things see if there’s toys they lose interest in faster that’d increase the likelihood of dropping it

4) find a toy they like better that you could offer afterwards to encourage them to trade out/ drop the current toy

there’s some options, experiment with a few and really being patient is the best advice I’m going to be able to give you.  Tricks hit snags, it’s just a matter of getting creative and being calm throughout the process, even if you’ve got to wait for that one accidental time they drop the toy to be able to reward sometimes that one time is all it takes to kickstart the process for them.

[thebleuspider]

“Careful. You’re starting to enjoy this a little too much.” (federalblu-britishmarksman)

💙When it came to sparring practice the leggy vixen generally only ever chose one man to do it with, but the thought of finding herself under the handsome sniper was far too tempting to deny. Much like she hoped she would, Madilin found herself on her back with the deliciously sweet gunmen pinning her down. The look on her face was far from displeased at where she found herself, as she bit at the edge of her lip with a coy smile when Nathan pointed out just how much she was enjoying herself. "Am I not supposed to?"

💙With a swift thrust of her hips and legs, the willowy widow quickly flipped the pair of them over. Landing her lithe frame on top of his with a satisfied huff before she leaned down over him, letting her thick high pony-tail hang down along one side of her face as she peered down at him. Looking like a pleased kitten that had gotten her kill as one of her slim hands slid up his chest, both in a sensual touch as much as it was to keep him in place. "If jou like, amour, I can find a way to make zis even more enjoyable for jou.~"

@federalblu-britishmarksman

[flock-talk]

Hi! Could you please explain the basics of using a clicker when training? Thank you! :-)

A clicker serves to make a sound that marks when the correct behaviour has been completed.  Through clicker recognition training you can teach a bird to associate the clicker’s noise with a reward which in turn ends up telling them that when it’s been clicked a treat is going to come.  This understanding is important because it allows the bird to know exactly when they did the right thing, if you don’t give any sort of audible cue there will be a delay between the time the bird did the right action and the time you were able to deliver the reward, this click acts to bridge that gap to make learning easier and faster.

How you do clicker recognition training is super simple, just click the clicker and immediately reward, that’s it! This helps develop that association that the click = treat which is key to the whole use of a clicker, if they don’t know what the click means it’s not going to be very helpful.  You’ll know the bird understands what the click means by their body language, initially they may not show much interest in the sound, maybe a bit of curiosity but not much aside from that. When a bird does understand that the click = reward they’ll start getting ready for a treat, turning their attention to you, maybe reaching out for a treat, bobbing for one, there’s an obvious change in behaviour from just sitting to actively waiting for you to give them that treat. The more you work with a clicker the more they understand it and eventually you can end up with responses like this where the sound of you picking up the clicker gets them to come running on over because they know a training session is about to happen.

When using the clicker to make behavioural alterations it’s important to make your clicks precise, click exactly when they do the right thing and reward quickly after.  The best way to learn how to use a clicker is to grab a friend and play that game where you’d say ‘you’re getting warmer’ using only the clicker, no words, no pointing, just the clicker to help them know they’re on the right track.  The more precise your clicks are and the better you get at clicking when your friend progresses the right way the faster they’ll go the right direction and get to the end goal, exact same thing as training commands. 

One of the easiest things to train with to help you get better at using the clicker and to help your bird get better at understanding it is target training.  Use the clicker to teach them to direct their beaks towards the end of a stick until they are willingly able to walk, run, fly, and climb anywhere to try and touch it.  Again the concept here is super simple, present the bird with the stick and click whenever they make a small progression towards it.  If they look at it click and reward, take a step towards it, lean over, or touch it, any sort of progress they make in the general direction of the target stick is a step in the right direction and earns them a reward.  Over time they catch on that what’s earning them treats is going towards the stick and you can narrow it down to where they only get rewarded for touching it.

A clicker can be replaced by nearly any noise you can make but there are reasons that clickers are preferred over human noises.  A clicker is consistent, it sounds almost identical every time it clicks and it’s fast, all it takes is the press of a button and it’s done.  Using words like ‘good’ and ‘yes’ are also totally viable options but they can make learning a bit harder for the animal.  Every time you say good you say it differently, you will often use those words in sentences outside of training which can make it lose it’s meaning to the bird, rather than getting a treat every time you say good they’re only getting it sometimes and that can be confusing.  The other issue is length, a click takes as long as it takes you to press the button and let go, the words tend to take longer to say which then makes the indication a little less precise.  Rather than clicking right when the moment happens your good is dragging on for a few moments past the completed action so the bird has a much larger gap of things they did that could have potentially been earning them the reward.

So the key to good clicker usage is precision and consistency, the better you get at clicking the moment the bird moves the right way the faster your bird will be able to catch on. If you do accidentally click the clicker do be sure to give them a treat anyways just to keep that understanding strong, when it makes a noise they know they’re getting reinforced and we don’t want to abuse that understanding by confusing them with needless clicks that warrant no reward.

If you’re looking more in to training there’s a lot of information on the training page that you may find helpful!

[flock-talk]

I have been teaching the turn around trick on a T-stand. When I move my parrotlet to the table to ask turn around.. She will go after me and try and bite my hand or fingers. I am wondering why this is happening?

Could be a few reasons!

Tricks are learned in one location and as a result they sometimes have to be partially re-taught in different places.  When they learn something they remember how to do it in one set of circumstances so when you’re asking for them to turn around somewhere new they may not fully understand what to do with these new circumstances.  Taking a little bit of time to reintroduce the concept should get them to have the ‘ah-hah!’ moment and they’ll remember exactly what to do learning it at a much faster rate than the first time you trained it (typically within one or two sessions but all birds will be different).  Over time the more different circumstances you have them in when you cue them the easier they’ll be able to generalize the concept to almost any condition.

Being that they may not know what you’re asking for on the table they may find you hand cueing them to be threatening.  Depending on how you give the cue it can stimulate different responses, being up high may be seen as a threat, a hand coming to grab them, and wiggling a finger will often produce an aggressive response.  On the perch they’ve learned that the hand means turn around but on a table they may still view it as something to be worried about.  Very slowly teaching them the concept on the table would help resolve that issue.  Ensure that if you do try this that you aren’t intentionally causing the aggressive response, keep your hand at a moderate height, move slowly, make the cue very clear and take it slow.  If they do aggress remove your hands and treats from the situation, pop them behind your back for example, look away for a moment until the bird has calmed down.  Doing that tells them that aggressing makes all the enjoyable things go away and they aren’t getting any captivating reactions out of you which helps extinguish the behaviour.

The other thing could just be a matter of location, if the table is really low and your whole person is hovering over them they may just be afraid to be in that position.  If it’s near a lot of their toys or food dishes there may be some possessive or territorial aggression happening here. Hormones may also be a factor, if they’re on somewhere flat and cozy they may perceive it as a place to nest or something else about that location is hormonally stimulating for them. The last thing I can think of right now is that it may just be entirely coincidental, perhaps every time you ask for it on the table you’re at the end of the session and they’re just exhausted and don’t want to train anymore.  Maybe they’re just really hungry and don’t want to be bothered at that time, getting ready to sleep, or some other factor that would affect their behaviour internally.

I’d start with taking a look at the environment, double check there’s nothing there that could be setting them off or some other factor you hadn’t yet considered to be playing a role.  If you can’t seem to locate anything try to slowly re train the concept on the table very slowly and respond to the aggression as detailed previously.

[flock-talk]

I have a training question. My GCC only knows wave right now, but when I start teaching her more tricks should I mix in the old trick in with the new one each session? Because because right now she is confused and keeps trying to wave when I try to teach her something else.

Not really, she’s trying to wave because it’s the only thing she knows earns her a reward, she wants the treat so she’s going to do what she knows normally gets her the reward (in this case, waving).

When training a new concept you’re not applying the old trick to the new unless they’re supposed to be connected in some way.  When she waves just don’t offer her a treat, remove your hands from the situation and wait for her to stop, and try again.  The only time she should be waving is when you’ve cued her to wave, the more you solely reward her for waving when cued and not at any other circumstance the less she’ll randomly wave since she’s learning that the only time ‘wave’ gets rewarded is when you’ve asked her to it.  If she’s getting frustrated during the session you can certainly throw the wave cue in from time to time to catch her interest again but you shouldn’t be rewarding her for waving when waving is not what’s being asked.

[flock-talk]

I'm so frustrated and on the end of my last nerve. Every time I even walk towards my door to try to leave my bird flies onto me and won't let me leave. He has many foraging toys and plays with them when I'm around (and when I'm not around) but he just hates when I first leave and when I finally manage to get out he screams for a bit. I've tried teaching him stay but he just gets so distracted during training, I'll put him on his perch reward him and he'll just hop onto the floor and look (1/2)

Around for treats. I don't know what to do anymore. I don't even think I'm frustrated with him, it's just myself. The only way I'm able to get out of the room is by putting treats down so he gets distracted enough.When I try to teach him I will reward him for being on his perch and then he'll just hop right off and look around the table through the millet shells thinking they're actual millet. Even when I wait 1 second between rewarding he still ones it.I'm so mad at myself(2/2)

Take a bit of a breather and just relax, every single trainer will have days like these where it just seems impossible to convey a concept to an animal, when this happens it’s best to take a step back and clear your mind for a bit.

With training it’s always best to have an idea of the end goal but don’t try to focus on it too hard, instead keep your mind on the immediate task and celebrate the small progressions.  When we start expecting more than an animal can reasonably do at any given moment we start to have a breakdown in communication and things can seem a lot worse than they really are.  

Right now let’s take a look at some of the problems and try to find the easiest solutions!

1) easily distracted

2) hops on to the table for treats

3) over attachment/ dependence

So let’s break this in to smaller steps, don’t even worry about the bigger picture right now, throw that out the window, put it on the back burner, forget about it for now, the first problem is that the bird gets distracted easily, that is going to impede their learning and make everything else difficult so let’s take a look at that.  

Why is he getting distracted?

Well I guess we have the answer to part of that already, he sees the seed shells and wants to go look through them!  Best solution? Keep the area tidy, have a little trash can nearby and wipe the seed hulls in to the trash after every few repetitions and vacuum the floor before training, this way there’s nothing there to be distracted by.  Another way to help this will be the rate of reinforcement, offer him treats long before he even has the opportunity to hop down for the hulls, immediately once he’s done swallowing you want him to be munching down on something else.  Don’t even worry about ‘stay’ right now, just focus on his ability to sit and listen to earn rewards.  You may find it helpful to use a less messy treat, maybe get some hulled sunflower seeds and chop them in to super tiny pieces, they tend to make less mess than millet.  Also try to look at the treat that you’re using, is this something he really wants or is there something he may like even more? Often nuts will be loved since they’re fattier but it’s different for every bird, figure out exactly what motivates your bird best so they can really be set up for success.

The more work you do just sitting there rewarding him the more he’ll ignore those empty shells, the less you’ll have to wipe them away, and you can be ready to move forwards.

Guess what? Just by solving that one little problem we’ve already been working on the bigger issue!  Sitting there rewarding him immediately after swallowing has been teaching him that staying there is all he has to do to earn a reward, now it’s just a matter of increasing the time between rewards.  Don’t go blasting too quickly right now, wait for him to swallow wait a split second and give him the treat and just keep doing that over and over until you see that he doesn’t really plan on moving.  Now let’s try just a smidge more time, again repeat until he doesn’t show the slightest intentions to move.  Little itty bitty progressions, it’s super slow and your mind will want to keep comparing to the bigger picture but do try to avoid that.  These tiny progressions are what we need to focus on if we want to get anywhere, just keep going, little by little and sooner than you know it you may be able to take marginally larger gaps of time for each repetition until he’s able to sit there for an extended period of time.  Super simple process but it is very long and requires quite a bit of determination on your end.

Once he’s totally fine with that it’s just a matter of distancing yourself, exact same steps as before but this time instead of time we’re expanding your distance from the bird.  Just lean back and reward until he doesn’t plan on moving, then take a small shuffle back and reward, then half a step and reward, and so forth.  Remember to watch their body language, if the bird is peeping, pacing, or leaning they’re not ready to be on that step quite yet, bring yourself closer to them and try again.  As I said before this is a really draining process because it’s hard for us to sit down and do the exact same thing for ten minutes, it feels like we’re making no progress because we compare the bigger picture to the step that we’re on so we beat ourselves up about it.  If you need to compare try to think about where you were yesterday and what has happened today, even if it’s just a small bit of progress it is still progress and that is what we need to remember.

Keep track of yourself while you’re training, if you notice that you’re starting to get a little irritated or upset then just end the session there, progress is seldom made when we don’t have our heads in the game.  Watch that you don’t over train the bird, start off with short 5 minute sessions, maybe twice a day at most, and see how it goes, over time you should be able to work up to 15 minute length sessions but it is always dependent on the bird.  If the bird starts losing motivation and getting distracted then it’s best to end the session, if they’re not happy working then they aren’t going to make any progress, it’s just going to teach them to hate training.  So watch your training times, watch yourself, and maybe keep a log of each session so you can see the progress being made.

It’s so easy to get flustered when training, it takes a lot of patience and a significant bit of self understanding to know when to stop as well as understanding your bird, progressing at their rates, and keeping track of their motivation levels.  It’s not easy that’s for sure, but it does pay off in the end, just have to stick through it.