xena98;21350 said:
When he jumps into the drop your still letting him know that is alright which is probably why he still does it??? I went through this with Gabby and she is a soft dog I pick her up and place her half way on the contact and tell her again touch it and click when she has run down it and than make a big fuss lots of treats etc. she gets it that you do it correctly mummy goes crazy lots of treats otherwise you get put back on do it correctly mummy goes crazy. At the moment I think it still grey which is why he does it.
Well Lance is still very new to the 4otf training so I am focusing on what criteria at a time. Right now, the only thing Lance has to do is down on the mat right after the aframe. Until he is fully confident on this one criteria, all other details I will try to manage so that Lance isn't practicing "wrong" behaviors, but I'm not going to correct him if he fails another criteria that I haven't introduced yet. Right now Lance is still trying to figure out if I am rewarding a down with 4 feet on the floor (yes), a down in a 2o2o (no), down with one rear toe (no) so I'm not adding in the run through the obstacle, and not requiring a nose touch but giving extra treats if he does.
He hasn't jumped the contacts that often so far as I am not having him do the full obstacle yet. But at this point in his training I might use a hoop (that is small enough to keep his head down) to manage the jumping. I only get to do this work once a week right now so it will take us awhile to progress but I"m not in that big of a hurry. I am a little worried if he will be able to understand the no jumping part once we get to that step since this was our huge issue with training true running contacts. But we're not to the point where i can judge that right now.
I mentioned that Lance is a very soft dog. If I were to not reward the down in any way even if Lance jumped it, this would destroy his confidence on the obstacle. I can't just pick him up and have him try it again, even if I don't say anything in a harsh voice. Once Lance is fully confident and trained on a trick/obstacle/etc. then I can start doing a happy "oops" voice and simply have Lance try again. But when Lance is first learning something he shuts down very easily and I have a very tentative dog.
So when Lance jumps but still hits his down (which really isn't that often), I don't give him his treats but do still praise him. This really is a big distinction at this stage since Lance is still getting loads of treats for doing the 4otf. We have not moved to a variable reinforcement schedule and if we had it would look different to Lance since the reward would be praise AND a release to another obstacle or play with me. Lance may not know why he didn't get a big treat yet, but he does know that something was off.
But really thanks for the advice! I just wanted to let you know that I am being consistant in my training, he's just not to the point where I can add in the other criteria. And on a side note, Lance actually has his very first agility trial tomorrow! We're doing jumpers and snookers so he won't have to do any contacts.