Shaping: Touch the Ball of Yarn

Last night I tried some shape training with DuPont.  He was first introduced to the clicker during his previous stay here so he's already got a good understanding that 'click' = I did it right, I get food.

One of my favorite games is shape training because you don't necessarily have to go into it with a set goal, you just hang out with your dog, clicker and treats and see what happens.  The first thing I ever did with DuPont that involved the clicker was the Eye Contact Game.  Unfortunately, he now plays the game so well that he will sit in front of me and quietly stare into my eyes every chance he gets, even if we aren't working.  This made our start to shaping a little more difficult because I needed him to move around in order to capture something!

Eventually he got bored with staring at me and started sniffing around, which sparked the idea for the ball of yarn in the carafe. 

My original video was 6+ minutes long, however my phone and YouTube are fighting today so I had to cut it down to less than a minute for a quick upload.  But you can get a general idea of what we are doing here.


It was a lot of fun once he got into it. I could actually see him thinking about what was happening. "So you're telling me that if I touch this ball with my nose, you're going to give me food for it? Alright, then!"

What has been most interesting to me (and quite a relief) is that while he can get really high up on the energy, crazy scale, he calms down very nicely and when it comes to actually working, he's been eager to learn. He takes treats very nicely, a far cry from the shark he is when a toy is running away from him. In the video I'm tossing treats out, but this is only because to ensure his understanding I need to move him away from the target so he has the opportunity to go back and demonstrate that understanding.

I've done a few sessions with him since he's been back and I haven't seen any of that discomfort I'd talked about, but we haven't worked on the down yet and that seemed to always set it off. It might end up being something that needs to be shaped instead. He's such a fun guy to work with though! I hope that whomever ends up adopting him enjoys this sort of thing. It's great for DuPont to have this calm brain time and it's actually a lot of fun.

That's all for now. Once I think of a better way to shoot longer videos, I'll have more to share!