Zen – stay away from food

Hämtat från: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/traininglevels/files/Zen/

I planned on saying ”leave it , leave it, leave it, etc” continuously as we did the figure 8, but as soon as we entered the figure 8, he made a beeline for the food and started trying to eat it.


Way too much work for you!

I have to preface this idea by saying that my dogs rarely eat anything that isn’t actually food…

I like to scatter a whole bunch of pieces of ripped up cardboard on the ground, ask a dog to heel with me and point out which small brown bits are actually food by giving a verbal CR and saying ”Get it!” with a big pointing finger and body motion.

At first, none of the brown bits are food at all. It’s in my hand and I cleverly (at least according to my dogs) drop it as I’m leaning forward to point. They do waste a certain amount of time at first sniffing all those brown bits but I keep walking as if it’s no business of mine if they want to waste their time and pass up real chances for food–and they pretty quickly catch on that only I can identify real food. As long as they’re with me, I pay off heavily. If they leave my side to investigate, the rate of reinforcement drops
to zero for doing so.

When they get good at this, some of the pieces are real food, some of the pieces are plain cardboard and some of the pieces have been rubbed with a bit of hotdog so it smells like food but still is not food. It’s probably not very nice but I like the disgusted looks on their faces when they dive for a piece and come up with scented cardboard. Nine times out of ten, they spit it out and give me a dirty look. Every once in a while, the Airedale will chew and swallow a piece but I’ve never seen her do this more than once a
month at most.

Then I take them to places where they have found food in the past or may expect to find food–like around camp sites and on hiking trails and near garbage cans. It’s a little inconvenient to go ”salt” the area beforehand and I find myself explaining to people that I’m not littering, just preparing the area for a dog I’ll run and get, but it means they eventually learn to wait to make the effort because,math wise, it just doesn’t pay off. If I trained in a real building or ring (what a concept!), this would be one of the first things I’d do, just because people drop or stick food in odd places a dog might come across.

IOW, it’s the opposite idea of saying ”leave it” a lot. The only bits that are good to eat come with a verbal cue and a lot of body language that’s unmistakeable to them.

I also do this with brown paper bags, little boxes if I have a bunch for some reason, and things like little bowls and bait bags. Sometimes there’s nothing in any of them but I pay the dog for leaping on the one I point out. Sometimes only some of them really contain food and I point these out. Afterwards I occasionally release them to check out all the items so that they discover that I really was leading them to all the food and the rest are just boobytraps.

The very cruelest trick of all is the empty but fragrant pizza box. I put it on the floor, watch as they leap on it in joy and then I clear my throat and call attention to the fact that I’m standing behind them happily eating the pizza. If they come to me, they get some pizza. If they continue to rip up the box, well, they’ve ripped up a box. They fall for this about three times before they decide it’s a fool’s errand. And they now treat all pizza boxes on the floor as if they’re radioactive.

I do have to admit that when we tried this with a student’s lab, he apparently decided that nothing, not even big hunks of pizza, was more exciting than ripping up a previously occupied pizza box….We abandoned the idea of teaching him to ignore them but she found a new and thrilling PR for him. (And she could still use ”get it!” to allow him at them.)

I don’t know how much it will help in a week but it’s an idea.

Victoria Farrington