First Session: The Secrets of Top Working Dogs: Teaching decision-making skills with Steve White

A great inside look at the importance of developing fluent behaviors in working dogs. Steve showed and discussed examples of police dogs, SAR dogs and service dogs. He uses R+/P- to train police dogs and the resulting dogs’ performances under pressure demonstrate how advantageous these methods are for working dogs.

Second Session: “Did He Say Left or Right?”: Modifier cues: what they’re for and how to teach them with Ken Ramirez

This was a great session, with quite a few “a-ha” moments. The discussion extended beyond modifier cues to what Ken calls “concept training”. If you have ever seen the Africa Gray Parrot who can count the number of colored shapes on a plate - this is an animal who is performing beyond a simple cue/response situation. Animals are capable of so much more than what we give them credit for. Many of the attendees at the event are service dog trainers/owners/handlers - and the tasks and responsibilities that these dogs must master is kind of awesome to contemplate.

Third Session (Lab): Retrieve This!: The great American hot dog retrieval challenge with Steve White

In this session, we worked on shaping the dogs to “retrieve” a hot dog. This was a great way to demonstrate how a behavior can/must be broken down into small increments to make progress. Steve’s strategy was different than the one I used with Ellie.

I shaped Ellie to recognize that she needed to do her regular retrieve with the hot dog by “re-training” the retrieve with the hot dog instead of a toy. We just started at step one and moved on. Steve didn’t it a bit differently in that he took the dogs retrieve behavior and presented a non-interesting item. He shaped the hot dog by gradually making the item more and more like a hot dog.

Now - the strategy that I used with Ellie was perfect for her learning style and temperament. I tried it with Katy and she just chomped on the hot dog and ate it right away. I still want to teach her to play this game since it’s a wonderful challenge. I think that Steve’s strategy will work better for Katy (also, Katy’s retrieve, though enthusiastic, still needs work).