[For Want of Poodle]

A few days ago, I stumbled on this old post from the late Dr. Sophia Yin. Love her stuff, but the website can be hard to navigate.

Dog Training Classes Can and Should Be More than Sit, Stay, Stand

Dog training classes can and should be more than sit, stay, stand. From focusing on their owner to controlling impulse control, our global approach allows the dog-human teams to improve at an incredibly fast rate and provides a structured way for humans and their dogs to really enjoy each...

drsophiayin.com

Anyway- the game is teaching the dog to repeatedly, without a command, sit in front of you, and look at you, as you wander around the room, walk backwards, etc. This then progresses to teaching the dog to leave it with a treat - dog ends up glancing at the thrown treat, getting rewarded, then being allowed to get the treat (premack), really strongly reinforcing looking at you. If the dog gets distracted, you can back up a few paces, and dog will come to front again.

I struggle with "LAT"( LOOK AT THAT), but this was really fast for Annie to learn. I have even successfully used it to distract her on walks where a dog is barking at us, which is pretty impressive for a new behaviour.

Elsewhere Dr. Yin has a whole series on how to use this to walk past something your dog is reacting to.

It has also been great for Trixie, whose response to "come get your leash on" is to hide in a safe corner. Repetitively getting her to follow me around and come to my front is a great exercise for her too.

Anyway, hope it helps someone else too, I am enjoying it.

 

[PeggyTheParti]

Love Dr. Yin and heartbroken that she's no longer on this earth with us.

Our trainer (back when classes were still a thing) would sometimes send us her videos for homework. The "speed treating" principle was a revelation for us. As a reward for automatic sitting, it cut Peggy's jumping in half overnight:

Training Sit: Say Please and Suddenly Settle Demo

Training sit is a basic exercise; however, training dogs to say please by sitting automatically is the foundation exercises for training focused, calm behavior.. Watch to see the importance of your body language and movement when training this exercise.

drsophiayin.com

Thinking about your other thread, about how to be adequately enthusiastic for effective training, I think Dr. Yin is a brilliant example of how you can keep your energy steady and authentic while still being engaging. I find her mesmerizing. I bet Peggy would have fallen head over heels in love with her.

 

[For Want of Poodle]

Yup, googling that is actually how I found this old blog post!