FE320 Toys - Advanced Concepts
Did you have fun in the first toy class? Did you and your dog learn some things? And now you want more?!
Course Details
This advanced class takes the skills learned in Class FE130 - Toys: Building Cooperation and Play, and expands on them, exploring what each gold team, student and dog, needs. Whether it is adding behavior skills to the games, adding switching reinforcement concepts to the games so that you have fluency in reinforcement procedures, or making sure you've got structure and rules to those reinforcement procedures, this class covers it all!
Many students treat this class like a "handler's choice" toy skills class and go on their own path from the get-go. The most frequent topic is adding agility or obedience skills to the games, listening to the dog's "tells" and what to do about it all.
Lectures cover specific marker cues, teaching verbal cues over body language cues, switching reinforcement, (toy types and food) as well as including down-stay so that we can get some calm behaviors in among all the adrenaline skills.
Dogs and handlers in this class at the Gold and Silver level are expected to have taken the previous toy class and to have mastered most, if not all of the skills in that class. You will get the most out of this class if your dog already has an idea of how the chase and tug games work.
This class is not appropriate for dogs that do not have much toy drive or have not reached the stage of adding obedience to the tug and fetch games. Contact instructor if you have questions!
Teaching Approach
This class is more like a handler's choice so students are encouraged to work on their subject/concept of choice. Lectures will be released once a week, all at once, in that week's suggested topic but I won't hold students to the syllabus unless I think it will benefit what they are having challenges with. Lectures consist of written instruction, a series of steps and then more explicit written instruction and video examples of the steps. Videos are short and there is no voice-over or explanation in the video itself. This class needs both dogs and handlers to be able to move, to have the skills in the prerequisite toy class and to have the room, yard, training center to play those skills.
Syllabus
Review marker words:
- Food from hand versus food on ground or dish
- Strike versus Fetch
- Toy on Ground
Review Switching Reinforcement:
- Different toys
- Food versus Toys
- Etc...
Identify highest trigger: wildlife, IPO helper, birds, skateboards
Behaviors with stationary toys in different places, remote reward
Behaviors with moving toy
Take it on the road!
Stages/steps of DOWNSTAY
Triggers/Distractions as cues
Prerequisites & Supplies
FE130 Toys Class
Do you have a dog that chases the ball, yet won’t bring it back? Plays keep away with toys? Tugs but won’t let go? Bites you instead of the tug? Obsesses over toys, yet won’t listen to a single thing you say? Is your dog so high in drive for toys that they can’t think? Or do you just want to channel that prey drive right from the beginning and add the attitude your dog has for tugging or chasing toys to the obedience or agility ring?
Sample Lecture
Week 3: Switching Reinforcement
Steps:
Play fetch with 2 different toys
Here are Jen and Pika showing a game of chase (with some occasional cued strikes!) with a Frisbee and a ball on a rope:
Play tug with 2 different toys. Here is Ones showing fetch with a tug and a ball. He goes after each with equal enthusiasm, but has trouble dropping the ball.
Play fetch and tug with the same toy:
Play fetch and tug with 2 different toys
Here are Jen and Pika playing strike and chase with 2 different toys, a leather tug and a firehose. They’ve even got a “switch” thrown in:
And here are Jen and Pika playing strike and chase with 2 toys that Pika considers VERY unequal, a tug and her prized search article. Pika is a working search dog and Jen has been working hard on her ability to trade these items.
Add the toy on ground cue
Switch between tug, fetch and food
Here is Ones switching between vaya, bite, yes, and dish:
You can always break things down even further. For example, Baylie will happily play tug with 2 toys that resemble balls, but has difficulty playing tug with a “ball” and a “tug.”
Identify your dog’s highest value reinforcement that you control in this scenario, along with the lowest. Is it valuable to try to transfer the value from one to the other? Is your goal to make all reinforcement the same?
Send me videos of you and your dog working on these skills
Instructor
Shade Whitesel
Faculty
Shade Whitesel (she/her) has been training and competing in dog sports since she was a kid. Always interested in how dogs learn, she has successfully competed in IPO/schutzhund, AKC obedience and French Ring. Her retired dog, Reiki vom Aegis, IPO 3, FH 1, French Ring 1, CDX, was 5th at the...