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Hi!
She is picking this up really nicely – backing up to the target is easy for her.Note how she is looking really high at you. That is because the food is in your mouth. Because everything between the click and the food delivery gets reinforced and built into the behavior, you are getting the high head position because she sees you reaching for the food up high then handing it to you (it causes her to lift her head and look at your face, which then gets built into the behavior). We ideally want her head down below her topline for this game, so a little adjustment: have the food in your hand, 4 or 5 cookies so you don’t have to reach up for it. And, either bend over or sit on a chair so you don’t have to bend over and hold your hand nice and low, ready to deliver the food but don’t move it til after the click- that way your food delivery is super quick and low, so she doesn’t look up at you.
I think the looking up at you is causing her to not be straight – the gates as a channel certainly help! The lower food position will definitely help too. You can use the gates but they will need to be faded, so maybe use them for one more session while you get the rewards nice and low, then fade them out 🙂
Nice work!
TracyHi!
She generalized the back and forth to the cone very quickly – yay!!!! You added in working up to standing really well too – she noticed but then went back to her wrapping. This is perfect because we are building on this with new fun stuff tonight! The next step on this particular behavior is to replace the cone with a jump wing (at some point soon, you can do the next series of games on the cone). And it is a good game to take to new places to help transfer concepts to new environments.
Stay tuned for the new games coming tonight after the live class – she is in the perfect spot to move forward with them!Great job 🙂
TracyHi!
I understand about wanting to stay indoors when it is cold!!! I am definitely a warm weather lover!And I am so excited to hear he is having a blast with the toys! Your space here is plenty big enough for blinds, the blind looked good and I love the toy play… but he is speedy and you will need a bigger head start 🙂 He did a good sit here – will he be successful if you lead out more before the release? If yes… COOL! Give yourself a few more steps, so you have more time to do the blind. If he might break, no problem – we will be building up the stay behavior separately and you can do a cookie toss to start him or, if the cookie will interfere with toy play, have someone hold him so you can do it like a restrained recall. Now, do it with people he likes – and if he worries about people holding him, have him on leash so they don’t lean over him but rather just hold his leash for a few seconds.
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi! That is SO COOL about the fitness course! I bet you are great at it, too!!!! I only know bits and pieces of it, which is why I send everyone over to the experts after the initial introduction of the equipment LOL!! Where did you take the class?
The wing wrapping is going really well! The pop up crate worked with no questions, he immediately started the wrapping behavior. Yay! And hi Emmett! He is always good to see 🙂
Since it was basically perfect here:
>>Based on what you are seeing here, how would you recommend I proceed or tweak? Maybe stand up with it flat, or open the crate up and try sitting?>
You can pop open the crate and get the behavior rolling, and then go to standing up (which will probably be super easy). And, you can also go to a cone or a jump wing. We are starting to get fancy now, and tonight we add in more to this game – it will get really fun! I moved up the next steps to start tonight because everyone is doing so well. Stay tuned for when it gets posted about 9pm after the live class 🙂
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi! Talk about quick reinforcement and placement, I had to watch this twice to see it all – fast is good when it comes to reinforcement here!!!
Great job setting up the session to be able to ‘get’ the behavior – you got it immediately and with his head nice and low. Yay! Nice mechanics too – low hand for the cookies and super quick placement so he never looked up at you and never had any questions. So now, you can start to ping pong the # of steps you get before you click: some of the clicks should come for the first step or two like you did here… and you can mix in some click/treat for another step or two beyond that. And keep going with that nice low hand! It really helps him keep his head down and use his feet independently.
Great job here! See ya tonight!
TracyGood morning! So much good work here, and it was fun to see the whole family involved (the BC watching Mike’s plank session was hilarious and the Papillon at the top of the frame during the toy races was cracking me up!!!)
Plank work: he is a confident dude on these! Very nice! Both of you can stand still more 0 he did better offering when you were stationary. When you were moving, he was looking at you both more. So you can just be stationary and let him hop on, then you can cue a hand cue (or step over the board) to turn around, then release to hop off.
You can both use tug toys for this too as it will be more stimulating and a good challenge: can he still think about his body when he is more stimulated? Then you can release and tug or throw the toy.
Based on his success here, you can raise the plank now or go to a longer plank (also elevated) if you have one.
Driving ahead – also looked great! He is a speedster. When you throw the toy, try to have it more parallel to your running line so he doesn’t cut in front of you. If it lands in front of you, move away a little so you are running parallel then converging in towards it when trying to win the race, rather than him curling in front of you.
Speaking of trying to win the race… have you tried cheating to win yet? Since there are two of you: Karena can hold him as Mike throws, and then Mike can take a head start before Karena lets go for the race (and vice versa). You *might* win. Ha! I like to win sometimes because it brings out a whole new gear of speed and the dogs learn to really feel the wind in their hair 🙂His response to the blinds is strong, super fast reactions to the change in connections! Yay!! One suugestion for the reward arm: As you finish the blind and have the reward presented in the arm across the body, keep your forearm against your belly as you make the new connection. This will get great connection by dropping your dog-side shoulder back so he sees where to be, and you will also be able to run faster. Having the arm away from the body tends to over-rotate us, which slows us down 🙂 Plus, having your arm touching your belly allows us to begin fading the arm-across-the-body reinforcement now that he is so good at reading the new connections.
The double blind at the end was so funny – he got to you really fast LOL!!! You can give yourself a bigger headstart and do the first blind sooner, keeping that dog side arm tucked in like a sprinter – that will give you more time to do the 2nd one and having your arms in tight to you will make the blinds even quicker (like figure skaters bring their arms in tight to turn fast)
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyRight! Keep an eye on how she develops, with a focus on balancing the reinforcement strategies without avoiding any one or the other. Build the toolbox so you have a full set of tools for whatever the future brings 🙂
Tracy
Good morning!
On the planks, she is looking really confident getting on, off, turning. Nice!>>She definitely has a preferred way to turn.
Yes, we see that in most dogs – so be sure to work it slowly and put yourself on both sides of the plank, so she turns that directin towards you and away from you. But overall I like what she is doing here! Can you raise the plank more?
>>alternating chase and strike with some tugging to try to get out of our rut of only using those toys for chase.>>
I am glad she likes chase but I think in training sessions you can do less of it as the first toy interaction, to help create a conditioned response of “we drive to play with da momma unless told otherwise” in training. That can help get her away from the stickier behaviors but just looping in more of the play style that will help us in training and also makes the session more efficient. So for this it would be:
– cookie on the plank
– release
– strike
-chase (which rewards the strike)And eventually the chase gets faded because it is not efficient placement in the training where strike (tugging) is far more effective and efficient.
>>At the end of the session, she is hopping up and turning around with the toy in her mouth.
That was so cute! I loved it!!!
>>We did some more backing up – I’m trying to get upright. The erratic bouncing of the treats is not helping at the moment – the treat never seems to end up in the correct place.
Backing up is going well! Because the hand is the cue, I am not sure you can get any more upright than you were here, so no worries about that. We are going add a destination back into her backing up (wobbly things) so that can help you not have to use a physical cue (bending or arm) because the context provides the cue (which will also strngthn the verbal. Since her form looks really good, I am not going to worry about having you be fully upright – the form is more important than anything else right now.
Wing wrap –
There are a zillion ways to get dogs to run around cones 🙂 and in fact we add one tonight! I am not worried about the tight turn behavior – so this is more of a way to sort out reinforcement procedures in shaping with her (more important than running around cones but less fun at first LOL!)
A couple of different strategies:
Because stationary food is still in the blah category for her, you can insert toy play into it more: cone – food – tug tug tug – cone – food – tug tug tug. This would involve a toy in each hand and she already has a back-and-forth procedure for that.
Or, you can just do the shaping with 2 toys (standing if needed)
Or, insert food movement:
cone – toss the treat to the side – cone – toss the treat – tug tug tug.I personally work this shaping a behavior of motion with all of the reinforcement options: stationary cookies, moving cookies, toys, etc. That gives us a strong reinforcement platform to build from.
As with the plank – Try not to have the chase as your main toy play because it moves her further from the desired behavior, not closer. The option for moving toys that I see is to toss the toy back behind you (not forward away from you) so she brings it back and ends up in a better reset position to offer going around the cone again.
Nice work here!
Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
>>I’ve played two toy games. But, she won’t play if she’s distracted. I’ll keep working on that.
Having a foundation in the games is perfect! The next step is to find the threshold of where the distraction takes over… and work as far from that as possible with as many high value toys as possible. Then gradually moving closer to threshold.
Toy races looked great! You won a couple and that caused her to go faster on the next rep (PERFECT, good girl!) Yes, a little choking was happening, sorry Sprite!!! I also use these toy races as a way to get toy play in distracting environments, even if I put the pup on a long line to have more room to run. If you have a helper/holder, you can do them as restrained recalls (which are intensely valuable in helping her learn to ignore people while still loving them). In an environment where she might not be able to play tug with a toy in your hand, I bet she can do toy races to a thrown lotus ball (to jump start things) and then to a throw favorite toy.
Another way to cheat-to-win without choking is an air cookie. I think one of the demos with my blue merle pup involves a total air cookie – I tossed a fake one, said “hey look!” and then took off. It worked a total of once, it is completely a schoolyard tactic – but totally entertaining and he was super engaged LOL!! So feel free to try the air cookie cheat 🙂
Great job here!
TracyGood morning!
Only 7 miles LOL! Lucky dog!!!! Sounds like fun 🙂
On the video, the games are all looking really good!
The distinct sends are getting snappy! I like when he bursts away to the prop 🙂 He did well wit the forward and sideways and backwards sending. YAY!!! There are so many applications of this for future turn cues on jumps.
A couple of small details: “things” were better when he was on your right than when he was on your left. I say “things” because it might be that your mechanics were better on your right, or he is more comfy turning to his left, or both. When you were indicating the prop on your right, your connection was clearer (you were looking at him a little more and less forward to the prop) and that manifested as your pointing hand moving more with his nose and less ahead of his nose. When he was on your left, you were pointing sooner/faster which was more ahead of him, which can be disconnecting so the cue is not as clear, so the behavior is not as clear. So when he is on your left, you can try to move your point hand with his nose more (your leg was great on all reps!) Let me know if that makes sense of if you need a visual – it is really subtle.When you added toy play before the send, he was more excited but the sending was still lovely! You can also reinforce with the toy (bite! or whatever your marker is).
On the backwards sends, don’t forget the ready moment to help him be ready and snappy- at 2:15 when he got super creative (which was ADORABLE) there was no ready moment so he was unprepared and lost his chain of thought for a moment.
2:32 was HILARIOUS when he missed the prop and then REALLY hit it LOL! Good eyes on your part to be able to see the hit and no hit.
We build on this tonight in a couple of different ways 🙂>> This is a non-slip silicone type potholder.
Perfect!! For the games that get added tonight, we can widen the playing field by putting it on a kitchen towel or something bigger (it will make more sense later LOL!)
Backing up is also looking really strong – when clicking, you can add in waiting for 2nd back foot to hit squarely on the board – this session had some one-footers and also some hits on the very edge, so you can successively work up to both back feet fully on the board (this is also really helpful for future running dog walk work if you plan to use the rear foot targeting method)
The dish procedure was working well but also because all the reinforcement is forward and off the board, it might have been contributing to the feet hitting only the edge. So with the dish marker, be sure feet are solidly on the board. And you can also use a catch procedure here too to really get being at the wobble board and away from you to be very valuable – it is more of a rolled treat so his head stays down, rolled between his front feet to the base of the board. Then you can ‘dish’ to reset the loop for the next rep 🙂Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning! Lots of great stuff here 🙂 Glad you got to have a fun dinner with a friend, that is always better than video editing LOL!
Looking at the videos:
Wing wraps – I think you can now go to treats that require little or no chewing 🙂 Chewing takes time, puppies lose their flow when they have to crunch and chew… – what do you have that she likes that is soft and easily swallowed, for speedy reinforcement? It will makes things more efficient for her 🙂
She is doing well on the wrapping here! So now you can switch your stanchion out for something bigger – laundry basket, barrel, cone – eventually a wing – so she has to go around something bigger and can’t see you as well.
When that goes well on a bigger object, you can work up to standing 🙂Hand touch – the mechanics are looking sharp here! So now, to prep for what is coming: just do it on one hand so she is not going back and forth. Leave the target hand locked out in position for a couple of reinforcement in a row – then play tug, then you can switch hands.
The touches look good to your palm, really strong! But for the purposes of what is coming, I do recommend a target of some sort (for saliency as a big target is bigger than your hand :)) I know, I haven’t told anyone what we are using this for LOL! but it is coming next week, I SWEAR hahaFocus Forward – I think this session was more about the collar grab/reset than the focus forward. The focus forward is fine, she is happy to look at the treat and move to it 🙂 As with the wrapping, I recommend a treat that requires less chewing – string cheese is great for this. And also, you can (and should) also do this with a toy.
So about the harness grab and her not wanting to come back… that is great info! So for this game, use a reset cookie to bring her back and turn her around so she is facing the right direction. Then you can either slip a finger on her harness or in front of her chest, then throw the treat or toy and release quickly. Definitely don’t bring her back by the harness as she really didn’t like that, and it will bleed over into making this game sad-making. Separately, work on a reset procedure of having her follow your hand for a treat, turn around by following the hand, then a gentle touch then an immediate release to the toy or treat. And definitely gets toys involved in all stages of this – she is going to be more like to reset when you have a couple of toys involved 🙂
Toy play – You can now incorporate having a couple of toys here, a bit of back and forth with different toys. The back and forth should both keep her engaged and also less interested in chewing on the one toy 🙂 and we will get a look at her reinforcement preferences (helps us to plan training and also to balance the value of various reinforcements). And that can also start to develop the retrieve as a nice by-product, because she will be coming back to you for the next one and not having any one-on-one time with the toy LOL! And you can add in talking her her, sometimes a little touch of the harness and let go so she gets a little more harness love built in too, eventually working up to moving her by the harness while tugging. We might never need to move her by the harness during training, but we sure do want her to not move away from it if we reach for her.
Decel – this is going well too! Remember to work both sides and not just left side 🙂 When she gets to you, feed the treat closer to your leg (your hand can be touching your pants) and with her head turned in a bit, especially on the pivots. Don’t keep her head straight or turned away – we do want her head position to be turning towards us here. She did really nicely so you can add a little action by walking away after the initial cookie toss, so she sees a little motion after she eats the tossed treat – then you can add the pivots in after the decel. If you have a longer hallway, you can add even more room and motion, she will like that 🙂 And for this one: toy play! You can totally get toys involved in this too!
Pre-Game with the prop – she might have been a little tired here but I don’t think she was was done – she had just started to get some good hits going when you moved the prop further away by a significant amount (to her!). She was not ready for that, had some errors, then got frustrated and jumpe don your head. So it was not so much of a “I am done” moment, it was more of a “I don’t know what you want now” moment. With puppies in particular, I live by the 2 failure rule in training – if she asks 1 question or has one failure, big red light goes off in my head. If she has 2 questions/failures, I make it easier immediately to recover the high rate of reinforcement. Then you can more gradually increase the difficulty.
She had one failure before you moved it then another right after you moved it – then 2 more at about 1:00 then she was frustrated. So even though she had reinforcement between the 2 initial failures, there were still 2 failures so I suggest making it easier (by moving it back to where it was) when that happens. Then in the next session, you can move it out again by but an inch, not 6 inches.>>I might need to find a new Thing since this bag is kind of slippery when she steps on it.
Or attach it to something that elevates it a little while also anchoring it, like duct tape it to a bath mat?
Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
>>Holy crap! I let my OCD take over! Poor Spot, he’s such a good boy to put up with me.
Yes, set a timer or get a couple more dogs that need training, then you will never go too long with any one dog haha!!!
>> I figured out that there is a sh*t ton of ash in the dirt there though, so it won’t really be ready to use till I get some rye grass planted. Dogs, toys and I were soot covered when we got home. LOL!
OMG! Never a dull moment, right?
On the video: This went really well!! He was a really good boy with the threadles and balance reps here!
Things started off really nicely, lots of success. He is collecting nicely on the turn jump when you ask for it (even if it is the wrong cue, he still understands it as collection, good boy!)
On little error at :25:
Bear in mind that there is a positional cue associated with threadles (being in the gap between the jumps, not further past the first wing of the next jump) and only later on with more experienced dogs do we proof it by having you way far ahead. So at :25, you ended up getting way far ahead. You had a nice cue and he gave a good collection on the turn jump, but then you accelerated out of it, which ended up putting you in serp position between the uprights of the next jump as he was deciding to threadle or not – so he chose to read position and he serped. I think eventually the thredle verbal will override position (an you can open your upper body back to him a bit more too) but not yet – for now, aim to be also in the positional cue like you were at :34 which went a lot better (but had a little too much decel) and also :42 which was really strong and didn’t have any decel 🙂
It is a fine line of getting into that positional cue and not too far ahead and not too far behind, so moving a little closer to his line for now will help and not blasting ahead too much.>> When I did the 180 the first time I used a right command and got the threadle. After that I just used jump and he got it.
on the balance there – I think he was just in threadle mode after a bunch of threadle reps, which is pretty common. On the next rep, you were clearer with the closed shoulder and position so he got it. I am not sure if the right cue got more threadle focus for him and the jump cue was a better option, or not – so next time, use the jump cue on your first balance rep and see how he does. But also, balance more frequently so he doesn’t get locked into the threadle vortex and start threadling all the things, all the time 🙂
The traditional threadles at the end looked really good! He is really doing a great job of giving collections on that turn jump, which is setting up a super nice threadle!!!!
Well done on these! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
This was kind of a baby dog obstacle course! This didn’t seem like too long of a session (short blasts of each thing), but it depends on how much time in between each game you gave her – she is young so maybe she needed a couple of minutes in the middle.Good tugging to start the first video! One suggestion is to have the treats in your hand as you take the toy out of her mouth, so you can click and be immediate with the reinforcement – that way she can keep offering and you can have very fast rewards. You can also click then tug which will get her off the board, so she can then offer getting back on or another click 🙂
Good adjustment to move your hand slowly to get the turns! When you were too quick, she couldn’t quite follow what you wanted there.
Fit bone: on this session (and the others), try to stand still and let her offer, rather than moving around to try to get her to do more. You can release her to tug to get her on and off the fitbone so she doesn’t rely on your motion, then just let her offer – your movement and your hand in and out of pockets will cause her to wait for that as a cue rather than offer. We like the offering because it builds independence and confidence 🙂 You can also click and toss a cookie so she gets off then offers getting back on. Do you have 2 fitbones? That can give her a larger playing field to get back feet on too 🙂
I think it was on this video you mentioned needing 3 arms LOL! I feel that pain! You can get rid of the clicker in favor of fast cookie delivery (use a verbal ‘yes’ then deliver the cookie), or tuck the toy into your armpit so your hands are free for the clicker and food.
3 – cooler:
This also went well! You can see if she wil keep tugging while you take he treats out of your pocket, that will also help with quick delivery when she makes that first offer. As with the others sessions here, don’t move for the shaping parts – move during the tugging, but then be stationary so she can offer independently. She was a good girl to get up on the cooler!!!! That is not easy!!Last video – she got back into the tugging when you moved it away from her (prey drive) so remember to move it away and not towards her or upwards. You were moving it towards her at first so she was not as interested as when you let her chase it – good adjustment!!!
For whatever reason, the gravel was interesting to sniff – it is possible that she simply has not had experience training on the gravel so she was investigating the environment. It is also possible that she was a little concerned about the noise on the gravel and that is how she was showing it? Or, 3 sessions were good but she was a little mentally tired with 4 of these short sessions. Hard to know! I think she did best when you moved the tugging back onto the grass – so when you train again, do this game (wobble on gravel) first and see how it goes! She seemed happy to make it move so it will be interesting to see the next session 🙂One more idea:
The cooler, wobble board and fitbone are all compression exercises for her because of her size (they would be extensions for my Papillon lol!) – she has to gather herself into a smaller shape to be able to be on them. That is great, and now we can also work on extensions so she can stand comfortably or even a little stretched out. You can build extension setups by putting a couple of things together, like 2 of the fitbones, or the wobble board plus fitbone so her front end can be on one and her hind end can be on the other.Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning! Good to see you here and in puppy class too LOL!
The remote reinforcement concept is a great one for puppies, I wish I had started it earlier with my older dogs. My youngsters transitioned to trials really easily because they had a background in remote reinforcement.
>>Here I’m going with “Let’s go get your…” cookies or toy in the future. I know it’s kind of long but I feel I’m most likely to actually use it in a training or show context vs just saying “cookies.”>>
I am with you on this one – I think the ‘let’s go…..’ sentence is great because the dogs will cue off the “let’s go” and the rest of the sentence (I am pretty sure there is a happy conditioned response to the word “cookies” or “toys”), as well as the context and tone of delivery. And it will feel very natural to us at the end of a run, rather than having to remember an exact precision marker in that moment. I mean, I am sure we can work on getting a precision marker instead or we can teach the context with this more casual marker and have it work out beautifully 🙂 I personally think we humans have enough verbal cues on our plates that MUST be precise that we can be a bit casual here and let the contextual cues and brilliance of the dog help us.
On the video:
This went really well! A couple of ideas for you:Try not to pair “yay” or “good boy” with the immediate RR marker because yay or good boy will instantly become the marker and the dog will stop what he is doing, because he predicts heading to reward (ask me how I know this can happen very easily LOL!! Oops!) And then we get errors and frustration when we don’t want it to be the marker but yet… it is. So – you can praise, that is all good – but if you praise and then want to run to the RR, give yourself a second or two between the praise and the ‘let’s go’ cue. And, sometimes just praise and don’t head to the RR. That way we keep praise as a separate entity and not in any way paired with any delivery of reinforcement.
>> got his nose coming up near my face instead of an elevated hand touch. That’s usually a sign of frustration,
Yes, it was good feedback from him! The high nose touch is stimulating for him in general, I think he had some vocalization in moments when he was not necessarily frustrated – and that is also interesting to note because that was a little later in the session, when he might have been getting depleted despite the high ROR.
For these types of sessions, definitely set a timer. Because things are happening really quickly and the reinforcement is nearby, there are a lot of reps in 4.5 minutes. And I think he was a bit toasted by the end, especially when asking for more and more behavior and when the behavior doesn’t have a lot of action to it. The first minute had a lot of behavior – and then by 3 minutes, you could see him changing his behavior and spending more time near the reinforcement. This is really interesting because the ROR was really pretty high – but if sessions are long and repetitive, we will still get mental fatigue/check outs. We are starting to see more and more studies supporting depletion/mental fatigue in dogs leading to shifts in arousal & errors, even when there has been a high rate of reinforcement. Fascinating stuff!! So, we build mental endurance with shorter sessions that get longer gradually, over time, as the brains mature.
So for this type of session where you can get a lot of behavior really quickly, depletion can happen juts as quickly: you can break it down to 90 seconds or less, then have a break, then come back later for another 90 seconds, etc.
When things are ‘bigger’ (like sequences) and there is not as much behavior happening in that minute and chains/sequences are longer, I think 4.5 minutes is no problem at all because the endurance is in place for the mentally challenging stuff, and if it is not mentally challenging, then it is easier to stay focused.Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
I hate when that happens with the internet! I have terrible internet here at home, I feel that pain 🙁And coffee is a good thing – 2.5 cups in to my day haha!
>>. If the value of the food is too high, he’d rather food. If the value is too low, he’d rather the frizz. I have not tried active food movement with it, so that may be a good place to start.
>>A lot of his not taking food comes with over arousal. I know I need to practice modulating but what’s the best way to do that. If he’s above threshold, he usually won’t tug and may or may not take food.>>Think of it as behavior and not as reinforcement, then. Behavior changes in certain contexts so the first step is to identify those contexts, plan, then train behaviors. And rather than considering “food” as one reinforcement, break it into several different ones: cheese, kibble, MM, etc. That is no different than frisbee, ball, tug toy, hollee roller as having different values.
What puts him above threshold? Make a list. (There is distraction list homework this week anyway :))
It might be a fluid list that changes as he grows up and gets more experienced, this is totally normal.And, looking at the reinforcement hierarchy list: what are guaranteed reinforcements when he is NOT over threshold?
And for the back and forth between food and toys, which is one of the most useful procedures in animal training, two approaches:
– high value food and toy
– low value food and toySo for high value food – high value indicates it is a reinforcement and the toy is therefore lower in value. That means the value building procedure is about the toy, not the food. So you can work the building value for toys procedure in this case. I really like having a lot of action when building value for toys – run a jump-tunnel sequence while holding some cheese, throw a toy that stands even a remote chance against the cheese… any interaction with the toy gets marked with ‘snacks’ or something that indicates the availability of the high value food. And because value building is really just shaping, remember to do this with successive approximations: start with tiny slices of the behavior (interaction with the low value toy) and, over time, build it up to the more complete interaction.
And then the opposite happens for the low value food – it is a different item, and a different behavior. Eat the low value food, get the high value toy or activity. Eat a piece of kibble (criteria: swallow), get the ‘go for a swim’ cue. Of a frisbee toss, or open the door for him to have a run in the yard. Value for that low value food will come up REAL FAST lol! When Voodoo was about Fever’s age, he didn’t have a real interest in food. But he liked running in the yard and he liked agility trials. So in order to go for a run or to enter the ring, he had to execute the cued behavior of eating a treat. (criteria: swallow!) Food value came up really fast and now food is really high value in all situations.
Let me know what you think!
Tracy
