SERIES A. Convergent land double and a land blind (both dogs)
Both marks were "thrown" with an RL, using a weighted streamer and a pre-positioned duck.
The right mark at 100 yards, the memory-bird, was thrown first, right to left. The left mark at 70 yards, the go-bird, was thrown second, left to right. The line to the memory-bird ran thru the line to the go-bird.
After the marks were both picked up, the dog ran a blind to the left of the left RL. For Lumi, the blind was at 160 yards and the angle between the blind and the left RL was 15°. For Laddie, the blind was at 180 yards and the angle between the blind and the left RL was 30°.
Neither dog had difficulty with series. After picking up both marks, Lumi lined her blind. After picking up both marks, Laddie required only one WSC for his blind.
PM: Oaks Area 2
SERIES B. Double land blinds (both dogs)
For Lumi, the distances were 50 and 120 yards. For Laddie, the distances were 160 and 210 yards.
Danger Zone Refusals
In today's work, I began a new handling procedure to deal with a particular problem. In this section, I'll try to explain the background, theory, and approach I'm taking to address the issue.
Both of my dogs exhibit a common problem: If I blow WS when the dog is near the retrieval article, the dog is likely to spot the article and run to it, pick it up, and deliver it instead of sitting.
I'll refer to the proximity of the article as the "danger zone". The size of the danger zone varies depending on the dog's experience and skill. An FC AFC Lab might have a danger zone of two yards, meaning that the dog is reasonably likely to slip the whistle if the handler blows WS within two yards of the bird but will be responsive at greater distances. For Lumi, I'd say the danger zone is about 15 yards. For Laddie, I think it's currently around 30 yards.
I find danger zone refusals complicated. While slipping a whistle is undesirable, retrievers are bred to retrieve, and a dog who spots a bird and runs to it, picks it up, and delivers it is doing exactly what she was born to do. My understanding is that if a handler blew a WS when the dog was a few yards the bird as a "safety whistle" in competition, in order to stop the dog from running past the bird and possibly out of sight, and the dog then turned and ran to the bird instead of sitting, most judges would not take away points for such a refusal.
Acceptable as it may be to a judge, every time the dog practices a danger zone refusal, she is reinforced for slipping the WS. The reinforcement is even stronger if the handler then blows a come-in whistle, which is not unusual. In an event, the handler might do that, for example, to try to influence the judge in thinking that the dog is still under control. Even in practice, a handler might do that out of habit, if the handler's habit is to blow come-in as the dog is about to pick up the bird. Whether the handler blows come-in or not, danger zone refusals are highly reinforcing for slipping whistles, and predictably, the more danger zone refusals my dogs have had at times, the less reliable their WSs have become.
For some weeks, I've been using the Walk Out (WO) procedure to prevent my dogs from reinforcing on slipped whistles. The procedure was extraordinarily effective with Lumi, whose WSs have become nearly automatic. However, the WO is more difficult with Laddie, first because I work him at longer distances than Lumi, and secondly because he's so fast. By the time I've taken a few steps, he's swooped around, picked up the article, and run to meet me with it.
As a result, I've felt that I needed a new way of dealing with Laddie's relatively frequent danger zone refusals.
After some discussion in private correspondence with Alice Woodyard and Jody Baker, I've come to understand a rather simple approach to addressing the problem of danger zone refusals: Don't blow WS when the dog is in the danger zone.
In some set-ups, this approach wouldn't work, because if the dog ran thru his danger zone, he might go out of sight. But in many of our set-ups, I can just let Laddie keep running, then stop him once he's outside his danger zone and not likely to spot the bird as he turns to sit.
The strategy also might not be appropriate in a test, because the danger zone for some dogs might be larger than the judge's tolerance for the dog being off line. But my dogs and I have months of winter weather before our next test, and my expectation is that Laddie's danger zone will become significantly smaller during that time.
Why should Laddie's danger zone shrink? My theory is this:
- If you blow WS, and the dog sits, and then you cast the dog to the blind and the dog is able to find the article, then that is highly reinforcing for sitting when whistled. One reinforcer is simply the cast, because receiving a known cue is a conditioned reinforcer. Of course a more important reinforcer is getting to the blind and finding the article, possibly the single highest reward for a retriever.
- If at the same time that you are practicing a string of successful whistle sits, you can also avoid practicing refusals — in particular the danger zone refusals — you are building an ever larger differential between reinforcement history for the correct response and reinforcement history for the incorrect response.
- As Matching Law results in the dog becoming increasingly likely to sit when whistled, the dog's tolerance for the distraction of the nearby article also increases, causing the danger zone to shrink.
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