Jo's Old Site

Yesterday afternoon mum and I took Dita and Ilse into Ipswich as we have enrolled ourselves in a basic level clicker training class. It was also good to see Liz again who took the class with a helper, and she had also helped me and Deena years ago with our UD training.

Anyway mum and I and our dogs enjoyed the class, as first we worked on what we did for our homework last week which was to get our dogs to touch our hands with their nose, and we also got our dogs to pull on a tug toy and since I have been doing a bit of assistant dog training one of the things that mum and I discovered is how useful it is to get a dog to target on objects and to pull things.

As these skills can then be used to push or pull open doors, and to assist in pulling off socks from a person’s feet etc…

Also during the lesson we got to play an enjoyable game without our dogs too, and the reason for this is to help beginners learn how to shape behaviour. Mum thought at first that I wouldn’t be able to take part in this game but it was quite an easy game as we took turns in being the dog and then being a trainer.

I got mum to sit on my seat, and to do this we had to click the clicker when the person we are training is near where we want them to go and mum did this quite easy and quickly, and then it was my turn to be trained.

And mum got me to walk over and all I had to do is stand near another person’s chair which was further away, and even though I did it the only problem I had was that I couldn’t hear the clicker even though I was wearing my hearing aides; mum was guiding me with verbal praise as I was walking and looking back now and then.

Liz is now getting us to work on getting our dogs to go around a chair, and we also have to teach our dogs some tricks.