FF145 Food Cues and Markers: Powerful Reinforcement for Clean Training
Is your dog barking at you, demanding that you get that treat out of your pocket NOW? Easily frustrated, skyrocketing into arousal and unable to think about anything but the food in your hand?
Course Details
Or, are they easily distracted? Looking everywhere but at you, sniffing the ground, and wandering away?
Or... both?
This course can give you a focused confident dog that understands how to earn those treats! This 6 week course on reinforcement/rewards teaches you, the dog's teacher, how to be consistent and clear in your actions and in your words when training your dog/puppy. You'll learn that reinforcement is the most important part of teaching skills, and that clarity around how to earn that treat is soothing for frustrated, stressed out and easily distracted dogs.
This class is about location specific marker cues. I promise to simplify reinforcement procedures for you, with lots of real time practice of timing, and cue discrimination. We’ll cover the most popular marker cues in the first couple of weeks, along with looking at clean training loops, resets, and timing of simple behavior cues. I’ll add offered focus, down stays and some practice on how to capture and shape simple behaviors as well. We’ll talk about the emotion attached to different marker cues and how you can use that excitement or calmness to teach specific behavior skills. We’ll customize it to your dog, picking a behavior to teach and exploring why you might use a specific reinforcement procedure over another to help train that skill. This class is SO FUN! Playing, eating, all the reinforcement things!
This sounds like a foundation class, right? It is, but I promise even advanced students will find something they need to learn. I’m continually seeing students with 15 different marker cues but the dog acts the same with each one until the sight of the actual treat. Tip-all those cues are not helping you if you don’t see anticipatory body language between the cue and the presentation of the treat!
People who will benefit the most from this course are new trainers, pet owners, trainers with lots of book experience but not a lot of hands on, trainers getting into dogs sports for the first time and of course, trainers who want to know more about Location Specific Marker cues.
Dogs that will do best in this class are ones that will eat food in your home location (house)!
There will be a TA for this class.
Teaching Approach
Written out lectures, with bullet points, steps and video examples of each steps. Instructions are written out, not on the videos.
Syllabus
Week 1:
- Definitions
- How to feed
- Mechanics
- General Marker Cue
- Marker cue #2-Move to Hand
- Voice Control
Week 2:
- Adding Known Behavior
- Marker Cue #3-Toss
- Eye Contact
- Marker cue #4-Room Service
- Cue Discrimination
- Anticipatory Body language
- Hand Touch
Week 3:
- Arousal/Excitement Level
- Marker Cue #5-Dish
- Focus Forward
- Marker Cue #6-Sniff
- Recall
- Marker Cue #7-Catch
Week 4:
- Standby
- Marker Cue #8-Ground
- Imprinting Stays
- Marker cue #9-Chase/Fight the hand
- Marker cue dictionary-suggested uses
- Marker Cue # 10-Slow/Freeze
- What is the point of all these marker cues?
Week 5:
- Position Dependent Marker Cues
- New Behavior-How and what marker cues?
- Reasons dogs may not want treats
- Other forms of Reinforcement
- Praise-a Marker cue?
- Toy Marker cues
Week 6:
- Multiple dogs-Multiple markers?
- Switching Reinforcement
- Dog Trainer's No
- What if it isn't reinforcing?
- Changing previously established Marker cues
- Marker cue #11-Jackpot
Prerequisites & Supplies
Sample Lecture
Marker cue 2-Move to hand
Goal:
Handler thinks about Marker number 2, what they will call it, whether they already have it, and then practices, first without the dog, then with.
This is the first of our location specific marker cues and is the one that I use most often.
My ideal is that the dog walks a step or two to my hand, takes the treat without biting me.
Energy level for “most” dogs is medium.
Focus after the marker cue is towards the hand that is moving or has the treat in it.
Anticipatory Body Language-Dog gets up and moves forward when they hear the marker cue
I call this X but you need to call it whatever makes the most sense to you.
Remember our bowl practice? This time you have 2 of them!
Materials needed:
- Treats in pocket or pocket hand
- 2 bowls/containers about 2 feet away from you on either side. We can adjust this as needed for individuals. No dog at this time.
The timing goes like this:
- Home position-1 treat pre loaded in hand, rest of treats can be in other hand, or pocket or wherever is most comfortable
- X-verbal marker
- Pause
- Feed one bowl
- Reload hand
- Home position
- X
- Pause
- Feed other bowl
That looks like this:
(insert student video!)
Advanced:
Add the dog!
Feeding the dog on one side, then the other. The ideal is that the dog moves a step or two to either side.
That looks like this:
Checks for you:
Home position-are you still when you say the verbal marker cue?
Hand position-is it clear to the dog when they can follow the hand, eat the treat versus not eating the treat (hint-home position)
Do they move easily or need encouragement?
Dogs that try to eat your hand need clarity as to the hand position, closed versus open.
Dogs that are unsure about following the hand need clucking noises, some hand movements, etc...
Homework:
Show me your steps!
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...