January MDSA Workshop - Part One

The topic in this month's MDSA workshop is lure vs. reward.  The first exercise was to work on doggy zen, but since it is something we work on every day, there wasn't much opportunity for me to work on my clicker skills with this exercise.  So after working Max, my elderly Airedale, on the balance disc, I decided to try shaping the Aussies to stand on it.  Both of the girls were able to both sit and stand on the disc.  Dusty got as far as standing on it during his session.  (The girls have a definite advantage though since I shaped both of them to ride a skate board when they were about a year old.)

I worked with Libby first, and it took her 2.5 minutes to give up on looking at me touch the disc!  However, once we finally got going, she was able to accomplish more on the disc than Belle or Dusty, both of whom were quick to interact with the disc initially.

   

Next, I worked with Belle.  The video footage was very illuminating for me.  Belle is the easiest of the Aussies to work with because she has always wanted to do the right thing.  Libby just wants to run the whole world and is easily distracted by what's going on around her.  Dusty wants to work with me, but can easily get too wound up to think.  Yet, Belle is the only one that I resorted to luring.  I think it is because she is trying so hard and just seems to need a clue about what I expect.  However, it is telling that I was able to progress further with Libby on this exercise (once she realized I was not rewarding eye contact) than with Belle.

  

Dusty was last.  When looking at me didn't get an immediate click, he looked at the disc.  It only took about 2.5 minutes to shape him from just looking at the disc to putting his back feet on it.  It took another minute and 15 seconds to shape a stand on the disc.


Lessons Learned: 

• I have to make sure I click (or say "yes") and then give the treat.  No movement with the treat until the click is complete.
• I don't give Belle a chance to work it out for herself.  I'm too quick to offer a lure or a prompt.  Probably because she tosses out behaviors so quickly.  

Some Training Thoughts

I dusted off my video camera a couple of days ago to film my efforts with Belle on working turn and forward, turn and reverse through my legs and reverse weaves.  The edited video is below.  Ilona Wright, who is conducting this month's workshop on backing, pointed out that at that at :45 seconds I bring out the lure after Belle has failed several times to respond to my touch command.  Somehow in my readings, I managed to miss the instruction to never, ever do this since you are basically rewarding a behavior you don't want.  (You are also confusing your dog as to what the verbal actually means.)

Ilona's advice is to break off what you're working on for 10 seconds or so, and then work on the behavior that your dog is not performing.  In this case, I was trying to get Belle to walk backwards between my legs and remain lined up with my knees, but she was backing up faster than I could.  I wanted her touch my hand and back up, but that didn't work too well, so I put a cookie in my hand to keep her in place.  That probably would have been fine if I had done it as a first step, but I didn't.  I tried to use a cue that Belle doesn't respond to all that well (despite the fact that it is one of the very first ones I ever taught her) and after that didn't work, I hauled out the lure.

We are working on complicated behaviors.  It is my job to break them down into pieces that Belle can learn.  She is the final arbiter of whether or not I have done my job well.  I she doesn't execute my command, either I have failed to motivate her or I have failed to teach her what the command means.  Since Belle is a very motivated dog, it is normally the latter.

 

November Is Backing Month

November is being devoted to backing on the MDSA Seminar list.

Here are the important points I came away with:

1.  If your dog's rear end is flaring away from you when the two of you back up (dog at side or heel), work on having the dog go from a sit to a stand at your side.  When your dog is consistently moving into a stand that is parallel to you, you can move on to the next step. 

Have your dog stand, then give her a back cue or command, then take one small step backwards.  Practice this until the two of you nail it before adding a second step.

2.  To help your dog back straight away from you, place a target mat on the floor and backchain the behavior.

3.  Train your dog to stand between your legs and be comfortable there.  (I did this ages ago by having Belle do it before I put down her food dish.)  Once the dog is comfortable, you can work on backing up, turning, or moving forward with the dog between your legs.

--------------------------

 

I was being pretty diligent about spending a little time each day working on backing with Belle and Dusty.  Then a couple of days ago, I wanted to demonstrate how to stand when teaching reverse weaves.  Belle did fine starting from my left, but when we tried it starting from my right side, we encountered difficulties.  Mainly, I had a very hard time getting her to align herself in a straight line and close to me.  Time to get serious about my criteria for heel and side (heel position at my right side).

I  decided I would use meal time to reinforce the two positions.  I found that when I used a platform, Belle had no problem bringing her rear end in line.  After working on it for three meals, I can see she is much improved even without the platform.  Interestingly, both Dusty and Libby assume a much straighter "heel" position than Belle despite the fact that I don't work with them nearly as much.  Go figure.

Fanny Gott

I'm back from NYC and finally enrolled in Fanny Gott's Heeling Class as an auditor.  I was really surprised to find that of the three Aussies, Belle is most in need of the practice.  I noticed a couple of months ago when watching video of us practicing freestyle that she was rather focused on my hands.  That struck me as so strange since she has been so successful in agility.  I guess the difference between the Aussies is that Libby and I did obedience together when she was younger and Dusty is unfortunately way too obsessed with me.

I can see that I will be employing Fanny's technique of moving backward while the dog is standing with her left shoulder at your left side (or right shoulder at your right side) for a while.  It is also a technique I will be using with my 4H'ers come clinic time.

The platform work that Fanny demonstrates for her class is also very impressive.  It seems to be an excellent way to teach a dog where heel is.

October 4, 2012

I must confess that journeling is not my strong suite.  However, I have been working with Belle a couple of times a day, and I try to work with Dusty at least once a day.  Lately, I've been working a little bit with Libby so she doesn't feel left out and with Max because he is getting to be a very senior dog and will benefit from some gentle exercise.

I finally purchased an FitPaw Peanut, and try to work out the Aussies every other day at breakfast time.  I fear that Max (my elderly Airedale) will never be able to get on the peanut, but I've been encouraging him to put his front legs up on it to strengthen his core and hind leg muscles.

Fanny Gott is doing an on-line heeling workshop this month.  I emailed her to find out how long the material will be available since I will flying to NYC next week, and can't really begin until I come back.

Shortening Music with Audacity

Yesterday, I received Sandra Davis’ three disc “Dancing with Your Dog.”  On the second disc, she details how she cuts her music to a useable length.  Then showed a routine that she did with one of her dogs using the music she had shortened.  I’m afraid the cut she made left a lot to be desired, so I thought I’d share how I shorten our music.

I use a freeware program called Audacity which displays your song as wave tracks.  I haven’t coded a song yet as Sandra Davis does, but I suspect it would probably save time in the long run.  I just listen to the song over and over to identify areas where it repeats.  I just figured out how to add labels on a separate track so I can easily re-locate spots that I might want to edit out.  Here is how I worked on “Rockin Robin” sung by Chuck Barry.

I listened a whole lot of times to the song, which is 2:34 long.  I’d like to cut it to about 1:45 and there appear to be three possibilities for shortening this song:  Remove one or both of the two “instrumental only” bits and/or chop out a continuous section and try to have the music and lyrics still make sense.  With a song that has a repeat or a chorus, the second option is a very viable option as long as there is not key change between the two sections. 

 

I opened Audacity and selected the song I want to work on from my music library.

Since removing one section is easier than removing two, I started with the second option.  “Bless my soul, he out-bopped the buzzard and the oriole” occurs twice.  So with a little luck, I might be able to cut out all the stuff in between them.  In the screen shot below, I’ve marked the section between the first and second “oriole.” 

  

The oriole to oriole section is about 34 seconds long.  That would make my edited version about 2:00 minutes long, which is 15 seconds short of my goal.  Hmm.  If I want to stick with my target length, then I will also have to cut one of the instrumentals.  I labeled the longer instrumental section in the screen shot below.  It is about 18 seconds in length.  I had to zoom into the tracks to select the beginning of the this instrumental because Mr. Barry leads into it with a loud and drawn out “Ohhhh” and all traces of that will have to be cut to ensure a smooth transition between the spliced sections of the song.

Now that I have a rough idea of what I want to edit out of this song, it’s time to do the actual cutting.  I'll start with the longer section first (oriole to oriole).  I make a selection of what to cut by ear and simply cut it out and listen to the result.  With any luck, I will cut a little less than needs to actually be removed from the song.  If not, I undo the cut and select a slightly smaller section to cut.  Once I have made a cut that leaves a second or so of extra stuff, I zoom in on where I have made the cut.  It is important to leave a little more than you want because removing it is a whole lot easier than trying to put a little bit back in.  

In the screen shot above, I have made the best rough cut I could, I and will be zooming in on the darkened section of the two tracks to do some fine tuning.  The vertical line on the left side of the oriole to oriole label shows where the two split portions of the song meet.

Here is the section I want to fine tune.  I have really zoomed in on the tracks and less than two seconds of playing time is visible.  There is an annoying echo effect that I suspected was coming from the low amplitude wave between the more massive groupings of waves—just above and to the right of the line on the label track that marks where the two pieces are spliced.  However, trial and error showed me I was wrong. (I’m hoping with experience I will get better at reading the soundtracks, and the whole editing process will become a little less of a hit or miss thing.:-)  The two wave forms connected by the low amplitude wave are very similar in shape, and due to the zoom effect appear to last much longer in time than they actually do.  After listening to the effect of cutting out different little segments, I finally tried removing the first big waveform (which is in the gray zone in the screen shot below), and voila.  Once it was removed, the transition between the two pieces was super smooth, and undetectable by my ear. 

Listen to the two clips and you will hear the difference:

My song is now about 1:59 seconds long in actual playing time.  I will add three seconds of silence at the beginning so I can start my music and have three seconds to set up with my dog when I’m working alone.  I could stick with my original plan and cut out the long instrumental also, but I like the change of pace the instrumental section adds, so for now I’ll leave it in and work with two minutes of music instead of 1:45.

I hope you found this information helpful.

P.S.  10/16/2012.  I found a blogger who describes how to use the draw tool in Audacity to eliminate clipping when you delete a section of your music.

Rockin' Robin and The Magic of the Match

I chose "Rockin Robin" as this month's project.  After trying my utmost on the 13th, I was forced to admit that this was just not a good choice for Belle.  It's known as the "magic of the match," and this song is definitely not it for Belle.  I tried one more time today, and I also tried with Dusty.  Although Dusty is much, much rougher around the edges, this song is clearly much more suited to him.

09/11/2012 – I cut “Rockin Robin” down to about 2 minutes and filmed our efforts.

The most notable thing I saw was Belle’s confusion when I wanted her to spin or twirl.  I have to put these two on a verbal so that Belle doesn’t confuse the hand signal with verse or up.

Also, 2 minutes is an incredibly long time to keep moving.

09/13/2012 – Cut “Rockin Robin” to 1:34.  Much better length. 

Forgot to do any backing up with Belle.  Duh.

I had Belle run thru my legs when I brought her back to me after doing big circle around me.  I could have also had her jump through my arms.

Didn’t put much action into either lower corner.

After the roll at the end, I should have had Belle slap me 10.

Work on having Belle start off when I do instead of hesitating and falling behind.

I was tense in the beginning and we were herky jerky.  At about :58, I relaxed and the performance became much smoother.