Category: Advanced Stuff ¤
  Author: Victoria Farrington ¤
   Title: Dash, KP & The Steps ¤

	A few people have asked me to clarify what I meant by the subject
line.  I must be saying it wrong because it's pretty basic KP stuff.  But
I'll re-explain it anyway.  
	At the NH seminar, KP started to talk about the recall and then
there she was, this brilliant woman, standing in front of a group of
people she'd described as very bright, and she's drawing a set of steps.
I dono't mean to impugn her artistic ability, but a child could have drawn
this.  Yet she was very intense about it.  ANd I"m sitting there thinking,
what does this mean???  I've seen her do the same thing on a tape, I
believe.  She didn't give any specific information about the steps
themselves, only that each one was a different behavior for each dog.
	SO on the long drive home, I was brooding about it and how I'd
seen it work with Dash.  Dash, as I tell people over and again, started
clicker training when he was almost 3 years old, a confirmed rodent
chaser, a some time bolter, an occasional "deaf" dog disappearing into the
brush.  He'd already shown no real response to the classic Koehler head
over heels tumble.  In fact the gun dog trainer who was on the other end
of the check cord that flipped Dash finally said, "I think he's
anticipating but not AVOIDING the tension.  I think....the damn dog's
enjoying himself."  His tumbles were suspiciously acrobatic.  A prong
collar worked but he had to rediscover it each time and so when it wasn't
on, or when it was inside out, it didn't work.  All the puppies from Mom
and Pop's previous litters either blew off a shock collar when in chase
mode or were figuring it out.  (One could not be fooled by a dummy shock
collar.  A tritronics rep said this was impossible but then they showed
him a demonstration.  More of those "that damn dog" comments.  And these
breeders have over 30 years experieince and have used shock collars
successfully and judiciously with foxhounds.)  So we couldn't believe in a
shock collar as an option.
	So when I set to work on Dash's recall, it was as a backup.  I
firmly believed he had to be on leash for the rest of his life or loose
only in situations I believed safe.  (And I'm a worrywart.  I patrolled
fenced yards before I'd let him go, just to make sure there wasn't a Dash
sized bolt hole.)  I used toys, soccer, the teenagers who played soccer in
our field, car trips, beach expeditions, and even the neighbor's problem
with mouse infestation as reinforcers.  I put over a year into teaching
him to drop or stop when there were squirrels in front of him.  I taught
him that if my husband rode away on a bike and Dash didn't respond to the
cue, my husband just stopped pedalling and nothing happened.  Dash hates
it when nothing happens.  I did the same thing with everything he really
wanted, sniffy trips, his dog pals, on and on.
	So there I am on my way home from NH trying to figure out this 15
step business and KP's diagram.  I think you have to fill in the steps
yourself.  (All thisi yacking and THAT'S ALL?????)  Shiva wouldn't chase a
cat if I paid her in duck bones.  Dash wouldnt blow off a cue for a chance
to bite the rake.  But Dash had to learn to respond to cues, specifically
a recall cue, when cats were chase-able and Shiva had to learn to do
things when a rake was being used.
	I think I'm going on and on because my pet peeve (as opposed to my
pet, Peeve) is when someone says taht +R doesn't work because no dog in
the world will accept a tiny bit of chicken frank instead of chasing a
whatever, and so this becomes the reason to use +P.  I don't believe that
anymore.  As Carol pointed out, it's conditioning.  The dog isn't thinking
at some point, isn't weighing options.  It may take time and patience to
work the dog through whatever 15 steps of recall that particular dog may
need but it can happen. As long as the dog doesn't get something valuable
CONSISTENTLY by blowing off a cue, the dog can still learn to respond to
the cue in order to get something valuable as opposed to nothing.  I don't
even think it matters in terms of reliability if the dog every once in a
while gets something valuable when it hasn't responded to a cue.  As soon
as I read a post or article by Morgan SPector in which he talked about
"reinforcement history," huge lightbulbs went on for me.  It's the pattern
the dog is learning, not the specific instance, that matters most.
	In early summer, I was a very bad person and I let Dash ride to
the recycling center without putting on his seatbelt.  It's a ten minute
drive and I was well, just being lax.  I opened the door and suddenly a
chicken appeared between the dumpsters and hightailed it between the lanes
of cars pulling through.  Dash jumped OVER my shoulder and hit the ground.
I was too terrified to say a word so if I'd had to say even NO! he'd have
probably been under a wheel before it would have mattered.  But we'd
practiced this business of him seeing a ssquirrel and having to come back
and tap my shoe or get a signal from me before he could chase it.  ANd
that's what he did.  His feet hit the pavement, he whirled around and
stared at me, barking, and I snatched him up and put him in the truck and
then sniveled into his fur.  It was habit to him and it held up.  I really
don't bank on this, I don't believe it will work everytime an exciting
chicken presents itself as prey but it DID happen and it CAN be done and
everything else is my responsibility.  So often I hear people justifying
shock collars as the only possible way to save a dogs life.  Any and every
thing you do to get reliable responses is, in fact, saving a dog's life.
	Blabbing again,
	ANd please do excuse the tardiness of my public and private
responses.  Ii am still having monitor problems and can't always reply
when I want to.  Perhaps one problem is that the manual says, "Turn on
your monitor."  Now I don't know what it takes to excite a lizard but I
refuse....
	Victoria Farrington