Welcome back, Margot! Everyone was very excited to see her and she was pretty happy to be back here.
We'll start out her stay right by getting some good exercise in. It's really our best hope for getting some good work done.
We'll warm up with some recall, too. I want to make sure she is responding well and listening even though she is really excited.
As fast as she was to run off with the other dogs, she was equally fast to respond to me when I called her to come.
Those good results are the culmination of all the practice.
It's fresh in her mind how rewarding the recall can be.
She knows each and every time she gets rewarded for it.
Her polite greetings will be an ongoing work in progress. She's so social and such a bouncy girl. It takes a lot of repetition for her to figure out that sitting works better than jumping.
It's an easy thing to reward throughout the day. It can just be her kibble from her meals or additional treats. She's so busy here, we just use additional treats.
That was a nice break in play with a little self-control built in, now I can release her to go play again.
It helps her willingness to comply when she understands that it doesn't mean she is going to miss out on the fun.
We know we are on the right track when she things we are just as fun as everything that is happening around her.
Thanks for that random check in, Margot! I'll definitely capture that behavior and reward it.
It's the best of both worlds for her.
Much like the recall, using the Treat & Train only works if you have practiced with it in increasingly more challenging situations. We're conditioning her to stay on the mat so, if we started out at the hardest level, she wouldn't have the history of rewards to tell her that staying on the mat was more rewarding than what was happening at the front door or at the dinner table.
We can get her use to us moving away from her....
Little by little getting farther and farther away while rewarding her for staying. If we were doing this without the Treat & Train, I would have to return to her to reward her every time. I can reward much more frequently with the remote and help her progress through the stay much more quickly.
I can add in the distractions of opening the front door. My door is less exciting for her than your front door so it might be harder at home. She has a lot of history with her own front door of fun people coming to the house or leaving to go to some fun place. It's important to work with the front door when no one is there because it starts her out at a level that she can be successful at. If we only tried to use this at the highest level of excitement for her, we don't have the reinforcement history to make it worth her while to stay.
In the meantime, I keep adding distractions to help her learn to stay.
There are two buttons on the remote. The "Dispense" button just dispenses a treat when you click on it. The "Down Stay" button will automatically dispense the treats at the intervals that you have selected for about 2 minutes total.
You can set the intervals between rewards for the "Down Stay" option. So, in the beginning, we might want to set the interval low but, as she improves, we can set it for a little longer in between rewards. In the beginning, I might set it at a Fixed rate of reinforcement but eventually we want to move towards a Variable rate of reinforcement so she's not anticipating when the treat will come.
If you don't have the Treat & Train ready and someone is at the door, having her on leash offers some control so she's not inadvertently getting reinforced for bad manners at the door.
Stepping on the leash allows her to sit comfortable but also allows me to open the door.
This is something I practice when there are no guests as well. She needs to understand what behavior is expected of her before the excitement of someone being at the front door.
Now I'm free to open the door while I am rewarding her for staying in position.
She looks like she is ready to break so I can just say her name to get her back to me.
If she pulls it together, we can remain at the front door.
And I will reward throughout.
If not, we make a quick exit explaining to the person that I need to put her in her crate and will be right back. That way she doesn't learn that she can still greet the person when she is out of control.
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