Jane Killion - When Pigs Fly Seminar



This is my wrap up of the Jane Killion seminar - When Pigs Fly that we attended in February.  I can't do as through a job as Crystal over at Reactive Champion - check out her blog post here and here

One of the reasons I don't think I am able to give a very objective review of the seminar (unlike Crystal's very excellent posts):  I was experiencing it with Tibby.  I wrote about our week-end here, here and here.  It was stressful for both of us and I was very sleep deprived. 

I think Tibby did an amazing job.  Considering the whole stressful crating situation.  She worked for me almost the entire time.  A few times she went to check out the crowd, but she could have shut down or refused to eat treats or done any thing she wanted to do!  But she stuck with me. 

It was a big crowd of people.  I don't get nervous in front of large groups, so that was good :)  Make me talk to one or two people though and I have trouble!  I guess Tibby doesn't get stage fright either.

Heeling with me.

Jane showing me how to heel Tibby past a difficult spot - scary people.  Although she didn't mind going to check them out on her own!

This was one of the times that Tibby went to check out the crowd.  It could have been a lot worse.  I was happy every time she came back to me!

These people are getting closer and closer.

Look at Tibby's awesome recall here!

So here are a few notes that I thought were interesting:

  Attention is like respect. If you have to ask for it, you've already lost it.
If your dog can't perform a trained behavior in every distracting situation - then your dog doesn't know the behavior.
90% of problems with clicker training/training behavior are because the person is clicking too late.
Pleasure that does not strengthen behavior is indulgence. Punishers that do not decrease behavior are abuse.
Reinforces fail, because 1-not reinforcing in that context and 2-emotional interference (stress)
The seeking action of free shaping a behavior activates a vigorous release of dopamine in the dog's brain - like doggie crack!
The customer (dog) is always right - What does your dog want? That is the reinforcer.
Binary training - Either a 1 or zero. Reward or no reward. She doesn't use no reward markers.
To phase food out of training she uses a method called Thinning the Ratio. It's the same method used by casinos - random pattern of reward.
There isn't any special quality that makes someone a better trainer - they are just mechanically better and it is something that can be learned.
Difficult dogs are your trainer and they make you a better teacher.
Attention is 2 steps - Teach the concept and work the envelope. The envelope is the edge of where you can get the dog to perform the behavior without going over threshold/distracted.
Distractions are cues for attention.

Any one that knows Tibby, knows that this next part was Amazing!  I mean last summer I sat with her in the car for 2 hours at an agility trial.  We tried to get out of the car for 2 hours, but she was so over the top about the other dogs that being in the car far away from every one else was as close as we could get with out Tibby having a whining, screaming, lunging, pulling on the leash fit.  Not a focused, attention giving dog like she was here

The other dog actually touched her tail.  And she stayed focused on me.



So it was a great seminar.  It was a learning seminar.  Not all the things we learned were in the seminar.  I learned just how much I can trust Tibby.  How far she has gone and how far she can go. 




Here is the video from our working spots.  I know no one is going to want to watch an almost 46 min. video!  But if you do here it is!

Right Side? Left? Plus Great Attention!

Little video from class last night.  Tibby is super cute!  I love the way she watches me and follows my body language.  And how she goes over the A-frame.  It would be fun to have an A-frame at home - Tibby likes it so much :)  She's really very brave.  I'm not sure I would run up and over something like that.  Dogs are very trusting!

I'm not sure if it was from the treats last night or chewing on her bully stick, but Tibby woke up with a yucky stomach.  She threw up this morning (thankfully we made it outside first) some green bile.  Then tonight she ate a turkey neck and then threw that up too.  I thought the throw up this morning might just be a quick thing, but probably the turkey neck wasn't a good idea - since she must still feel sick.  Except that she doesn't!  She wants to play and eat!  She can't understand why we aren't DOING SOMETHING!!  She ate a couple pieces of kibble that she found at the bottom of a Kong and drank some water a couple hours ago.  So far that has stayed down, but I'm letting her have a little fast and then tomorrow she can have rice and chicken.



So anyway our video - I thought running with Tibby on my right side flowed better.  If Tibby had a send I could have pushed her to the tunnel, instead of having to rear cross.  The Teacher told us that running them on the right side was a really horrible way to run it and we could try it if we wanted, just so we could feel how awful it was.  So we could learn.  She asked us if we wanted to try running it on both sides and I was like - YES!  That's what I have been wanting from the beg.  To get to try different things with the courses.  I was the only one who tried to run differently both times.  When other classmates were going up and running it exactly the same, I kept asking Zoe's Mom, "Aren't we supposed to try the left side and then the right side?"  I was confused about what every one else was doing.   When we got done The Teacher said, "Now do you see how horrible the right side felt?  The left side is much better - right?"  All I could say was, "Well, we got to run some more."  Technically true, not a lie, but not what I was really thinking.   Minnesota Nice, anyone? 

Zoe's Mom said after this class ends she's not going to do agility any more.  I told her it can take a long time to train a dog.  That we have been working for almost a year.  That Tibby was really, really, really hard to train.  She said she doesn't want to work that hard or train that long.  She wants Zoe to know how to do everything right away.  It doesn't work that way!!!  Although I can never forget that Zoe's Mom was the one who said Tibby would never be able to weave.  Well, ha ha!  She weaved 6 closed poles on Tuesday!  At class!  And no I didn't get video proof :)  I'll try next week!

In the video you get to see our classmates - Blondie, Zoe, Maisy and Cord (or Cort, I'm not sure which).  I would LOVE to get a video of Cord the Aussie running - it's very funny.  He bites his handler the entire time.  She yells at him.  He knocks down entire jumps.  She yells at him.  He jumps over tunnels.  Did I say it was funny?  Maybe I meant sad.  But kind of funny.  Take out his owner yelling all the time and it would be super hilarious.  I'm actually waiting for the day that she kicks him into a tunnel.  She's getting really close.

Focus

I love this picture!

Crystal over at Reactive Champion took it.  She has been doing a really nice re-cap of the seminar. 

Check it out!

Attention As A Behavior and You Can Teach It!!

and another one with a cute picture of Tibby

Reinforcement Training

P.S.  I just wanted to explain the picture a little bit.  Jane is sneaking up on us and crinkling a bag of hot dog treats.  That wasn't the hard part for Tibby.....there were also people going in and out of a door next to us.  The next seminar session was arriving.  Tibby is very motion sensitive, so I think she did a very good job.  Jane asked (a few times) them to stop opening and closing the door, so Tibby could be successful.