Greetings,
Until my other corgi passed away, occasionally I would experiment to see
if she could/would make decisions based on an object's color.
Everything was inconclusive and I was wondering if anyone else had done
any other work like this.
It appeared that even though we're pretty sure dogs can see the
difference between yellow and blue (the color of the targets I was
using), it seems like they don't have the concept of making decisions
based on color. Although Barbara Nibling (who may or may not be on this
list) did have some success with it.
What I had was two or three mouse pads (or pieces of wood) that we used
as foot targets. One was spray painted yellow, the other two blue.
(The dog has already been trained to stand on a foot target and get a
C/T.) The 3 targets are placed at various positions on the floor and
the dog is brought in. When she stands on a yellow she gets a C/T, blue
gets no response. Soon she was consistently getting the yellow, but
then I would switch the positions of the targets. She would then go
back to the same position where the yellow once was. Upon not hearing a
click she immediately went to another square (this was a highly food
motivated dog, not easily dissuaded or frustrated by much of anything -
if she got frustrated it would be your fault and she'd yell at you - yes
I miss her a lot :). If that didn't work she then went to the third one
until she found out which one earned the click, then she seemed to
memorize the position and did that until I changed the position again.
She never seemed to get the idea that the color was what made a target
clickable. When I started changing the position of the targets a lot
then she seemed to just try all of them. I think she had concluded that
I'd lost my mind. ;)
If you haven't guessed, the inspiration for this is agility contact
zones which are often yellow or a similar color in the US. My idea is
that you get the dog on the piece of equipment and say "Go Yellow" which
would end a lot of heartache and headache for a lot of agility
handlers. This is less relevant to me now for agility as I do running
contacts and will just mark the dog's passage through the contact area
with a C/T or "Yes!" but I'm still curious about it.
This may be harder than Kathy Sdao teaching dogs object names in her
Advanced Clicker Training Workshop and given that dogs don't normally do
nouns, names of colors be asking a little much.
Playing with dog minds for fun and absolutely no profit,
Ellen Clary
ellen@frap.org
I agree, I think Katie is on the right track. Counter Conditioning just
seems to take a lot of time.
The point is to change what is associated with the presence of other
dogs or in the case of herding dogs, other dogs in motion. With my
fear reactive (we think) corgi we play "Look, there's a dog!" (C/T),
and I discovered that I had to start doing C/T when I first saw the
other dog (and I'm looking for them so I usually see them before he
does.) What you want (and what we don't have yet) is for Fydeau to see
a dog and then immediately look to you for guidance and hopefully a
treat/reward. Eventually the hope is that this will relax them and
their attitude towards other dogs will change.
My dog can now tolerate a dog walking on leash across the street and he
used to bark and try to lunge at dogs a block away. And (month's later)
he's miles better in his competitive obedience class.
Along the lines of what Patricia is saying, I find that Click to Calm
and Counter Conditioning really helps with my attitude as well. When we
go out, I deliberately seek out dogs on walks and other "scary"
situations (dogs barking at him, blowers, garbage cans being rolled,
sirens, car alarms, jack hammers, ...) as a way to C/T him, instead of
worrying about the possibility of them happening.
My only concern is that he might start associating the click with being
afraid (even though he really likes the clicker.)
Thank you to Emma Parsons for putting this all together into a book.
Ellen Clary
and Yoshi the nervous corgi who's in love with string cheese
Well the corgi's (Rosie, Cooper and Yoshi) turned out in force atMark observed that for about 45 seconds during the long down, all of the corgis had their heads down doing the "<heavy sigh> I'm so abused." look.
Oakland Dog Training Club and we all had a very nice time. I was a
little concerned that Mark was going to be turned off by the minutia
that we were working on (getting speed coming out of the first turn of
the figure 8) but I was wrong and it turns out that he was thrilled that
the dogs seemed to be having fun, and we all weren't using the
traditional jerk and coerce methods that they were still using at Mt.
Diablo DTC when he went there. Plus we then moved on to jumping where
the boys got to be the stars.
Then the recalls. Cooper is so enthusiastic on his recalls he nearly
runs Mark over. Mark was a little concerned that Cooper was going to
get halfway to him and then do a hard right to go wrestle with Yoshi,
but that happily didn't happen. (And Yoshi didn't do the same or go
chase after any other dog.) In fact later on, Yoshi quite calmly
greeted open level dogs Hank the bulldog and Oliver the cavalier
(pictured on http://www.oaklanddogtraining.org).
Then Miss Rosie appeared with her servant Patricia bearing the yummy
celebratory cupcakes for her earning her CD, and we all feasted during
the sits and downs. The hoodlums did well on their stays except for
Cooper thinking that my walking anywhere near him was a release to come
say hello (friendly fellow), and Rosie perfected her I'm so aboosed look.
One reason they did well is we did not put them in stays next to each
other. We'll save that entertainment for later.
Ellen