Category: Advanced Stuff ¤
  Author: Victoria Farrington ¤
   Title: More on Choices ¤

	I foster terriers, most of whom are much more excited by the 
possibilities of life until they learn the clicker game and even then 
there are soooo many things out there.  This is something that has REALLY 
helped me figure out what I was doing wrong.
	Imagine you're in an exciting place.  You have work to do, 
satisfying important work--herding, protecting, ratting, barking your 
fool head off.  Or there's that cutie you'd really like to flirt with.  
Or there's a gossip session going on and its the kind of gossip that will 
make you gasp and giggle.  Your phone rings.  It's your best friend and 
she's saying, hey come have a piece of pie with me while we do stuff 
together.
	Now, you love your best friend, pie is good, and you DO like to 
do things with her.  But you know you're leaving with her, you live with 
her, there are other chances for pie.  Nonetheless, you leave your work, 
your flirting, your gossip and...guess what, your friend goes on and on 
and on.  You eat so much pie you're blue in the face and that's okay but 
you miss the gossip, the cutie leaves, your work goes undone.
	So the next time your friend calls, you don't answer the phone.  
(You have caller i.d.)  Or you hesitate--should I or shouldn't I?  Or you 
think--well, pie is nice but I have work to do...
	My dogs seem to catch onto to EITHER/OR thinking given any chance 
at all.  Either I do a recall and get something OR I go sniff those 
bushes and catch up on the gossip.  If you try to do too much stuff with 
a dog too soon, you can turn PR's into something at least symbolic of 
-P--the dog is being denied cool dog stuff by doing what it does to get 
pie, so pie isn't so attractive.  (I'm really not sure how the 
terminology applies here.  This is pie-thinking!)
	I make their choises Lose/Lose or Win/Win.  Hey Fido and he turns 
his head to look at me, click/pie and then an added bonus he gets to 
sniff the bush.  Hey Fido, nada, and I just stand there while Fido gets 
neither pie nor a chance at the bush.  To make a point, I usually take my 
terriers somewhere, give them 1 quick chance at responding to a cue and 
if they don't, we're back in the car so fast their heads spin.  After 
several shots like this, they give in--and I'll take any attempt to 
interact with me when the dog is stubborn--and they get EVERYTHING.  This 
has worked even with Dash and squirrels.  I stood and stood and stood and 
waited while he watched squirrels, he finally got so impatient he turned 
and gave me desperate eyes, I clicked and held out food he didn't really 
want but pushed out of my hand to get rid of it and then we chased 
squirrels.  (I offered the food until he could eat it so that he'd learn 
there were multiple PR's available when squirrels were in sight and so 
the food wasn't linked to my denial of squirrel chasing.)
	When they aren't losing anything by taking the PR, when one of 
the available PR's is what they want to do, they don't compare activities 
and if you play your cards right, they have no idea they can just go 
sniff that bush without c/ting AND they don't differentiate between cool 
doggie stuff and stuff they do with you.
	I feel inarticulate at the moment so I hope this makes some 
sense.  I was unintentionally teaching my dogs to reject food by c/ting 
and then trying to get more out of them.
	Just an idea.
	Victoria Farrington