Clean Run - October 2011 - 51

treat. Don’t expect him to actually turn in a full circle at ﬁrst, just to begin turning his head in the desired direction. Continue using the lure to turn the dog farther and farther until he is doing a quarter turn, then a half turn. Once he’s doing a half turn it’s just as easy to continue and ﬁnish the circle as it is to turn back the way he came.

As soon as the dog will follow the food lure in a full circle we begin fading out the lure. Do this by using the same exact hand motion, but without the food in the hand. If done properly dogs will follow the empty hand. Once the dog completes the spin, click and give a treat. Alternate repetitions of luring with repetitions with an empty hand signal, fading out the lure over a few sessions.

CLASS WRAP-UP
Three of this week’s exercises (offered focus, recalls, and mat work) involve raising criteria. Criteria are the standards we set for the behavior (how we would like it to be performed). We want to go beyond basic proﬁciency to get better and more enthusiastic responses. So we raise our standards by adding reasonable and realistic challenges to the exercises. However, if we ﬁnd that our dogs are failing to understand what we want, we need to quickly lower our criteria to a level they can meet, then start adding challenges again. Continuing to ask a dog to do something that he’s not capable of will only lead to a loss of conﬁdence and a lack of enthusiasm. A good trainer is constantly raising and lowering criteria to ﬁt the individual dog’s needs. Our two new exercises this week (foldback down and spin) are taught using luring. We have found luring to be an effective and efﬁcient way to train body movements and positions. You may, however, be more comfortable shaping these behaviors, which works ﬁne as well. Personally, I love shaping and use it for much of my own training, but often use luring in classes. Typically, students are not proﬁcient and comfortable with shaping, so there is a much steeper learning curve for them. I’ve also found that students have many misconceptions about shaping and are often a bit resistant to it. We do introduce shaping activities in many of our classes, but we also feel that luring is a valid and useful technique as well. D

Luring the quarter turn

Luring the half turn

Once beyond the half turn, it is easy for the dog to ﬁnish the rotation for a full spin One problem students sometimes encounter in ﬁrst teaching this exercise is that the dog backs away rather than turns. An easy way to avoid this is to have the dog positioned so that there is something behind him (such as a wall or bench) to prohibit backing up.

Deborah Jones, PhD, has taught a wide variety of psychology classes at Kent State University at Stark (North Canton, Ohio) for 15 years. Her specialties are learning and social behavior. Deb enjoys participating in dog sports and has earned advanced titles in agility, obedience, and rally on sporting, toy, and herding dogs. She is co-author (along with Judy Keller) of the In FOCUS books and DVD series. October 11 | Clean Run 51

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Clean Run - October 2011

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