Monday, 21 April 2014

Teaching the Shame trick, trying anyway

Apart from training hard for competitive obedience, I also decided to do some trick training, I browsed through my trick training books and decided to go big, I will start with training “shame”, I mean how difficult can it be too teach, Blaez is definitely not a newbie when it comes to training and we do training sessions 5 days out of a 7 day week, he will catch tricks fast, I mean come on this is going to be a breeze! Well that was four weeks ago, we are getting there, slowly!

Before we started I did my research to decide the best way to go about teaching the treat, essentially the trick requires that the dog has to put his paw over his muzzle so that it looks embarrassed or ashamed. I found this video on Youtube that made sense to me"Dog Trick Tutorial: "Cover your eyes!!", you take a small piece of adhesive tape like Sellotape or Scotch tape and fold into a little circle, which you then with your dog in a down position and treats next to you stick the tape on top of the dog’s nose and the moment he rubs it off and his paw goes over his nose you mark and reward, sounds simple enough? Well it isn’t, first the tape didn’t want to stick on Blaez’s nose, and he kept thinking there was a treat in my hand so his head kept going the direction my hand went trying to put the damn tape on his nose, it ended up on his ear, on his head and finally on his nose where it just roll down and fell on the ground without him even noticing that I am sticking stuff all over his head, so day 1 didn’t go so well, but I laughed so much I had to end the session, it was so funny, imagine a dog sitting there all excited for treats and pieces of tape stuck all over him to which he is totally oblivious to.
                                          Piece of adhesive tape
                                          thicker adhesive tape and stickers

My enthusiasm was not dampened by the previous day’s misfortunes so I was back to it with my little roll of adhesive tape, it went relatively the same as day 1 and I got a bit frustrated with tape not sticking so I grabbed a roll of masking tape, yes the whole roll! Now I didn’t bother about making little circles or anything,  I just ripped a piece off that is about 10cm long and stuck it on his nose, well he just sat there with the tape on his nose, looking at me with the greatest anticipation of getting the treat, well that was me finished I just started laughing again, so I poke him where the tape is stuck to him, and he just sits, then I  wiggle the tape and he lifts his paw, finally, so now I stick the tape and after a bit of coaxing he will attempt a swipe, but we were making no progress, so back to the drawing board.
In the book 101 dog tricks by Chalsy and Kyra Sundance there was another version of doing the trick, she takes a big postid and sticks it on the dog’s forehead between the eyes, ok I thought that also makes sense, putting it where it will bother him (partly over his eyes) will make him want to take it off and voila he swipes at it, mark and praise, again not so easy, I found some stickers roughly the same size as posteds and fortunately I had a roll because 1 sticker lasted about three to four sticks then it does not want to stick so well anymore, so I would just move on to the next sticker, but I must say we didn’t really make any progress either, he could give paw before we started this trick and somewhere in the mix of things he decided giving paw is the right thing to do, now it started to feel like we are going backwards as he is starting to confuse tricks, I decided to give the trick a rest for a couple of days and try again the next week.

That Saturday at the dog club I mentioned my troubles with the trick to one of my friends there that said she started the trick but gave up, but she used a rope that she draped over the dogs nose, I thought I might as well give that a try as giving up is not an option! I have spent way too much time on this trick to quit now; I was more determined than ever to conquer the shame trick!
                                          Blaez waiting for a treat, does he even notice the sticker,lol

So Monday we are back at it, week 3 of trying to get this trick under the belt, I get a piece of rope and drape it over Blaez’s nose but that did not work at all, it just fell off especially when he looked down, so then I got the bright idea, something that will stay there, like an elastic band, but I didn’t want something to tight, a hair band will be perfect, I found an old hair band that would do the job.

So I gently but quickly slip over the top jaw nose and almost immediately he pulls his head down and brings his paw over his nose to rub the hair band off, I mark and take the hairband off and treat in mostly one swift moment, he did manage to bite right through the hairband while trying to get it off but at least we are making some progress, he really likes the hairband and gets all excited when he sees it, probably because there is a huge flow of treats that goes with it, but I got him to actually lift up his paw when I pretend to put the hair band on his nose, so yay for that, we are going slow but hopefully one of these days he will do it, I would appreciate some ideas or experiences on how to teach this trick J

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