- A New Face
- It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a Labrador!
- The First Day is a Big Day
- Day 2 with the Guide Dog puppy: Moving Fast
- Puppy Tales
- A Big Day 4 (and end of the first week)
- Service Animal Etiquette. Seriously, People.
- The Unseen Fun of a Service Dog’s Life
- Puppy’s First Clicker Session
- Steampunk Puppy: “They call me CAPTAIN Mindy!”
- Resisting Temptation
- Clicker Expo and After
- Mindy is proud.
- Practicing Recalls
- Toronto Training – a service dog in training hits the road
- Puppy Training on a FitPAWS Donut
- Puppy Goes Hiking
- Fireworks Without the Freak-Out
- Training & Gaming at Gen Con
- Assistance Dog Blog Carnival – a Call for Posts
- Perception and Service Dogs
- Recall Roundup
- Goodbye To Mindy
- Mindy: She’s Back!
- Mindy-Penny and the Return to Ordinary Life
How I get things done: today I placed a blanket and a chew in a sun-spot. I cheat.
She’s a bit young to be have flashbacks already, but here’s a look back at Mindy’s very first clicker session.
After our long flights home, Mindy was full of hollow energy. She’d slept on the plane, so she was awake, but it had been a crazy long day, so she was frazzled. In fact, it had been a long weekend, since she’d left the kennel, stayed overnight with someone new, gone to Clicker Expo, met me, stayed overnight with me, and then flown to sub-zero temperatures.
And I was tired, because I’d done Clicker Expo, too, and then puppy-wrangled through three airports without dog facilities.
So to burn some nervous energy, we ended up having our first clicker session that first night home. I did have the presence of mind to set up a camera, but I won’t pretend this is stellar work. We’re just shifting the puppy brain from spastic to focused.
She’s full of typical puppy mistakes: for one, she can’t refocus to take offered food if she’s seen food in the other hand, but you see her start to get it about 1:15.
I like to start with targeting because it’s so very easy for most dogs. I mean, this puppy is going to poke any hand I stick out there anyway, right? Talk about setting up for success. And you can see her putting the behavior and consequence together.
I have treats (kibbles) and a clicker in my left hand, and I’m offering the target and then usually delivering kibbles with my right. It’s a longish session, and so I ask you to keep in mind that my purpose was to tire out the dog! Turning away from the food at 4:25 is a big deal and a perfect place to quit.
You can see how she goes from wiggly to focused. And yes, she did go to sleep afterward, so mission accomplished!
Laura, that was fun to watch! Mindy is so adorable when she jumps, all full of puppy enthusiasm! And it was great to hear someone else who talks while training!!!
I always say you can talk all you want between the click and the treat. Just additionally conditions your praise as a treat predictor! 🙂
Thank you so much for putting up this video and also for writing Fired Up, Frantic and Freaked Out! I have lived with labs most of my adult life and have a beautiful black lab who will be a year old tomorrow… he IS Fired Up, Frantic and Freaked Out, and we have been… exhausted, frustrated and losing hope. Your book is written so well and makes so much sense that I am on my second read and hoping to start work with our boy this week. I work part-time, 3 days a week and the rest of my time for the last 9 months has been spent working with or attempting to manage this boy’s complete inability to calm himself… exhausting for him and us. He has passed Puppy Class, Family Dog Class and I even spent months doing the “Relaxation Protocol” with him. Although he is “better” than he was months ago, he can’t possibly be comfortable in his own skin and his behavior is not at all acceptable in our human world 🙁 He “knows” his commands, but as you say… he is “unable to do the math”. I am praying for all I am worth that I can follow your instructions correctly and enrich his life and ours… as it stands now, although he is loving, my family has little desire to even sit in the same room with him for any length of time… as my husband put it this morning, he is “relentless” and “constant motion”. My goal is that he be a FULL part of our family as the others were… able to go anywhere with us and enjoy company that comes here. Thank you again and please send some positive thoughts and energy our way!
Good luck! And feel free to email me if you have questions as you work. 🙂
Hi Catherine, we have a 3-year-old German short-haired pointer and he too is a stress head. I am currently working through the Fired Up, Frantic and Freaked Out protocols but have also put him on magnesium supplements which have helped enormously. Research has shown that supposedly ‘highly strung’ dogs can actually be suffering from a magnesium deficiency. You can find out more here: http://dogleadsblog.wordpress.com/2014/02/05/puppy-prozac/
and here: http://nupafeed-dogs.co.uk/#/stress-less/4560867160
Good luck with your boy. Kim
Really? Thank You for sharing your thoughts Kim, I will definitely read your links and discuss it with my vet 🙂
What a good story about improvement being so gradual you didn’t notice until it was gone again! Behavior change can be like that. Glad you’ve found something more that helps, and keep up the good work!
Hi Laura, would you mind describing how you’re holding the clicker and treats in one hand? I have large-ish hands, but when I do that, I tend to click inadvertently. I’m thinking I need to adjust the position of the clicker, but I can’t tell how you’re holding it. Thanks!
I’m using an i-click, which I find much more ergonomic than a box clicker. I can do this with a box clicker too, but I credit that to years of practice and would recommend the i-click. 🙂
The treats (about a dozen smallish kibbles) are pooled in the palm and held with the middle, ring, and pinky fingers. Fewer treats are much easier to start with; I can do a lot but risk of dropping is significantly higher. The clicker rests between thumb and index finger, on the outer edge of the middle knuckle. I know that sounds fairly complicated, so I’ll try to put a picture in a future post!
To really push yourself, you can then try dropping a single treat from the outside/pinky end of your hand after clicking!
Ah, thanks! I do use an i-click. I’m trying to visualize how I hold it…I think I hold it between my thumb and my middle finger, which doesn’t leave a lot of room for treats!