I was very excited about going to Level 3, as my puppy has not been doing enough hooning around and he is getting on my nerves. Well, we enjoyed one little walk with some off-lead playtime, and then I found out that we aren’t supposed to walk off-lead until Level 2. Back to our boring on-lead walks it is then!
From a young age, Able has had a habit of bringing a stick in from the garden every day to chew up. I tolerated this at first because I was just so relieved he was taking a break from trying to eat my house. I guess I’ve been assuming he would outgrow it after a few weeks, but he turned eight months this week and it’s worse. Since lockdown the daily stick has become three daily sticks, and the spot on the bedroom floor where he chews them up is beginning to resemble a forest floor.
Over the last month I’ve been working on Able’s basic stopped contact behaviour several times a week. Most people train this by getting the dog to touch a contact on the ground, either with their nose or their paws. I trained my second dog Toad with a paw target and had great success, so I’ve continued to use the same method with all my other dogs. I think the nose target method is more popular these days, but a lot of the training is very similar. I’ll make notes of how I would use a nose target where relevant.
Front Feet On the Grass
To help my puppy position his front feet, I taught him to target his front feet onto an ice cream lid. Large plastic lids like this are ideal for contact training because they are so cheap and easy to get hold of, and easy to cut up later when you want a smaller target.
One of the hard parts of stopped contact training is to make sure that the behaviour is really independent of where you are, relative to your dog. As trainers we naturally form a habit of shaping skills with our dog in front of us, where we can see him easiest. And then our dogs naturally form a habit of working right in front of us and facing us, so that their heads are as close as possible to the bikkies…
I’ll do a lot of work later on making sure that the finished product is really independent, but I thought I’d try to start the target behaviour without my puppy staring at me. I did our first session sitting behind a fence at a show, where there wasn’t much room in front of me for my puppy to stand. This was a coincidence but it proved to be very helpful – by throwing the cookies to the side I soon had a puppy who would run from one side of me, across the front of me and onto the target, and then out the other side looking for his cookie. I did another session like this from the couch at home, and then it was time to introduce the actual stop.
I introduced this by shoving out my cookie-laden hand right in front of the target, just as my puppy was approaching. I’d feed him three or four cookies on the target, and then throw a reset cookie ahead so that he would continue his motion forward across my body. After four or five repetitions I removed this cookie interruption cold turkey. Able would automatically pause next to me with the expectation that cookies were coming, and I’d throw half a dozen down on the floor between his front legs, then throw a reset cookie forward once he’d finished eating.
This is the first goal in two-on/two-off training with a paw target – to get the dog to go to the target at speed, and automatically stop (without any verbal or physical cue from the handler) with at least one front foot on it. It doesn’t matter which foot so you don’t need to keep track of that – just reward whenever you see the main part of the dogs foot (not the toes) touch the target.
Nose target variation: This is obviously the step that’s most different if you are using the nose target method. If your dog already knows a hand target, it’s easiest to introduce the target in that context – hold it in your outstretched hand and your puppy will probably touch it automatically. Keep your hand out and reinforce multiple times. Withhold your reinforcement sometimes and look to see what your puppy does – he should either keep his nose against the target, or move back a little and press into it again several times. This is how your puppy to stay on the contact for an extended duration.
Gradually move your hand closer to the ground, and then eventually just drop the target onto the ground. Reward by dropping food onto the target. Do not use verbal cues at all while training this – the presence of the target is the only cue the dog should need to touch it.
Now you can get the puppy moving across your body. Throw a reset cookie about a metre to one side, and then wait for the puppy to remember about his super-duper-cool nose target where he gets lots of bikkies. Drop a couple of cookies onto the target again, and then throw another reset cookie out the other side. Build up the distance that you throw the reset cookies to about 3m. The game gets more challenging as the puppy has a bigger run-up, because he is coming in with more speed!
Remember that, regardless of method, the stop should be automatic. That means no verbal cues and no physical cues. This is why I like to do my initial training sitting down – it’s harder for me to subconsciously cue the dog by leaning my body or shifting my weight into the foot closest to the target…
Back Feet … What, I Have Back Feet?
I started my last puppy Spring with her two-on/two-off at about six months. She learned the front paw target very easily (plus I had lower standards) but she just couldn’t get the back feet right. I eventually realised that she literally couldn’t feel the difference between when her back feet were on the ground and when they were on the plank. I fixed this by teaching her to back up onto an overturned shallow rectangular bucket, which took weeks as I hadn’t done any previous rear end awareness training with her.
I thought I could skip this step with Able for two reasons. Firstly, I’ve already done a lot more body awareness work with him – things like Paws in a Box, which is getting quite hard as he grows and the boxes we use don’t. Secondly, I started Spring with a plank on the ground where there wasn’t much height difference, but I was starting Able’s contacts on a slightly raised platform, so I thought the height difference would make things clearer to him.
I was wrong. After two sessions of not making much progress, I ditched the plan A … and taught him to back up onto the mop bucket. This was harder than expected, as the original bucket didn’t move south with me and the new bucket (I think it’s a kitty litter tray) is a bit on the tall side. You ideally want to use something that’s well below your puppy’s hock level for this exercise.
Back Feet on the Equipment
This is what we’ve been working on for the last two weeks. I started by changing our orientation so that I’m standing up, and my puppy runs ahead of me to the target. This setup allows me to restrain my puppy (by pushing back on his chest) so that he explodes forward and hits the target, fast! To keep him straight I place his dinner bowl with a few bikkies in it a couple of metres past the target. I stand still while I send him, then walk up behind him and feed him in position (with his head facing forward), and then I release him to go to the lolly jar.
At this point I added a verbal cue, “TARGET!!!” This is always said with a lot of enthusiasm because I want this to be a high-energy game. It’s important to remember that the cue is not for the dog to stop. The cue is for the dog to look for the target, and then seeing the target is the cue for the dog to run to it and stop. So I say “TARGET!!!” just before I let my puppy go, and then I’m still and silent until he’s stopped on the target. Don’t stay at this stage too long, because even with the lolly jar I found it quite hard to persuade Able to go straight. I just wanted to establish the cue so that it would help with the next bit.
The rear paw target. I placed the overturned bucket just on the starting side of the target, so that Able would have to negotiate it in some manner to get to the target. I brought him forward and positioned him with his front feet on the platform (so that he could actually SEE his ice cream lid) and then gave his “TARGET!!!” cue. His front end stepped forward to touch the lid, and his back end (after some rear end awareness work) automatically finished up on the platform.
This is exactly the position I want – rear feet ON the equipment, and front front OFF (on the flat target on the ground). The platform is standing in for the ramp, which I will introduce later. This setup fits much better into my living room, so that I can do lots of repetitions of this over the winter when it’s always cold and dark and miserable outside. I think it’s also a bit easier for the puppy to tell whether his back feet are on the platform, because it’s a bit higher off the ground than a very low plank would be.
This week I’ve moved our starting position back a bit, so that Able begins with four feet on the ground and has to go onto the bucket and then off the other side to reach his front paw target. There was a little confusion where he would stop with his front feet on the platform (which was where I was stopping him initially) but this quickly disappeared since I wasn’t feeding for it.
Nose target variation: The training process here is exactly the same – you’ll just be reinforcing for a different behaviour on the target. You may not need the lolly jar out in front, since the dog will have to point his head forward to do the target behaviour. It can still be challenging to get the puppy straight though – he’ll want to keep an eye on you so he’ll probably go through a phase where his rear end flops off one side of the platform or the other so that he can see you more easily in his peripheral vision. Good things take time!