Clean Run Magazine - January 2007 - 27

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was bogged down with the six-month “deadline” since she was five
months old at the time! Then I decided to teach her to retrieve an object,
a pen or my keys. I still felt there was something missing in my approach.
I was worried about transferring her retrieve back to a toy while
maintaining enthusiasm to play. There had to be another way. A s was
becoming my fashion with Whisper, I put the training problem “on ice.”
I put all “advice” out of my head. Whisper’s natural love for toys
was growing. I watched in fascination as her herding instinct started to
develop. I noticed this most in a game she started to play with balls and
her rubber duckie. This game has since generalized to all toys, rawhides,
people, other dogs, or anything with which she wants to interact. She
would lie on her dog bed and bury her face, except her eyes. She would lie
still but stalk the toy with her eyes. Suddenly she would jump up and tag
the toy with her nose to get the toy to move. She would then run circles
around the toy and repeat the behavior. She was having a blast. I
continued to watch and observe. ball with her nose, I gently rolled the
ball. This step was the beginning of our cooperative play. She learned I
could join her little Sheltie games. I remained very nonchalant and
laid-back for about two weeks and did not initiate any play with Whisper.
My goal was to make the ball moving contingent upon Whisper interacting or
tagging it with her nose. While I did not know where this game would lead
us, instinct told me it was time to up the ante. The next time she played,
I did not roll the ball when she tagged it with her nose. She looked at me
with a little grin on her face, and picked up the ball, and immediately
dropped it so it would move and continued playing her stalking game on her
own; “I don’t need you.” Her glare said it all. She thought she had
outwitted me but she was actually busted. She had shown me she could pick
up and hold something in her mouth. I had something I could work with. The
next requirement was that she had to pick up the ball before I would make
it move. Her enthusiasm for the game continued. I had a new shaping plan
for the retrieve; I would use her natural instincts to train a play
retrieve. Raising criteria proved to be easy and fast. We worked at
Whisper’s pace. Pretty soon she would pick up the ball and carry it
somewhat toward me, drop the ball, and grin at me, inviting me to play. I
increased the difficulty in this manner until Whisper was dropping the
ball reliably at my feet, and grinning like a fool for me to roll it along
the ground again. She can and does play this game for hours. My shaping
plan did not include teaching Whisper to bring a ball or toy to hand. I
half-heartedly started to teach this but have not followed through with my
training. I’m very happy with Whisper’s enthusiasm for balls and other
toys. She will now track and fetch a thrown ball and has even learned to
catch. Whisper really enjoys play and it has become much more of a
cooperative game rather than something she does on her own. It took a
while before Whisper could play in other contexts than my living room; she
will now play ball in the park, after she’s had a good sniff. Our Frst
Agility Class i Wh e n Whisper turned a year old, I enrolled her in her
first agility class. She had been exposed to equipment a couple of times
when we took agility lessons with her breeder. We worked on relationship
and obedience skills needed for agility on our own. On the first night of
class, the first thing the instructor asked the class was whether our dogs
would play. I confidently said yes, Whisper would play with me. The
instructor then asked the class to engage our dogs in play. I brought out
Whisper’s toy, and she happily tracked the toy and engaged with me. When
the instructor watched us, she said, “But she’s not tugging.” I had
worked hard at teaching Whisper to play with me and I was happy with the
results thus far. Apparently, it was not good enough for agility. My heart
deflated. I began to feel that nothing I did with my puppy was good enough
and started to wonder how important play in agility really was. Using
food, I saw Whisper’s love for agility grow; she was so happy anytime we
would train. Over the next year, I was often reminded of my insignificance
as a trainer by various instructors. The more I tried to get Whisper to
tug, the more she shut down. As usual, I was taking my personal pressure
out on my dog and she was suffering for it. Premack Proven Whisper stalks
the ball, willing it to move. One day, after she stalked and tagged a ball
with her nose, I decided to see what would happen if I made the ball move
slightly. She came alive, ready to pounce and tag the ball again.
Interesting—my new training plan began to develop. I watched intently
when Whisper started her stalktag game. Anytime Whisper tagged the January
07 | Clean Run T h e previous fall, I had attended a clicker training
seminar with Kathy Sdao. One seminar topic covered the Premack principle,
which states that a low-probability behavior is reinforced by the
opportunity to perform a highprobability behavior. Life rewards are a
derivative of this principle—something I use often in pet dog training.
What really opened my mind is that Kathy explained that you can change and
build a dog’s hierarchy list of favorite activities by reinforcing him
with his favorite things. That fall I had discovered that Whisper’s
favorite thing in the whole world was when I kicked leaves, snow, or
grass, or splashed water in the air for her to chase. When I do this, she
whips herself up into a barking, twirling Sheltie frenzy. Could I 27 Warning : Unknown : The session id contains invalid characters, valid
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Clean Run Magazine - January 2007

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Clean Run Magazine - January 2007