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!

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. 

Good Morning, Good Night

"Good morning Tibby.  Time to get up for the 2nd day of the seminar!"

I was very tempted to skip the 2nd day.  Really, really tired when my alarm went off at 5:45am.

I'm glad I didn't.  Today was much better than yesterday.  For starters, we all slept through the night.  Not a peep out of Tibby.  She woke up when the alarm went off, rolled over and went back to sleep.  Ah!  So tempting to follow her example!

I crated Tibby out of the car and it was much, much better for both of us.  She went to sleep in the crate and was behaving more like herself - i.e. doing a visiting loop (not quite a zoomie) around the room during our working spot.

I'll write up a full post soon, but I thought the session (Attention As A Behavior) this morning was better than yesterday.  I'm actually a little confused about why today's session wasn't yesterday, because having focus/attention seems to be the basic 1st step to do yesterday's heeling exercises.  I wanted to ask Jane about that, but I forgot.

Anyway, we made it home.  Tibby was happy to see her couch and she is crashed out there now.  First she had to chase Catty around the back yard and then she fell asleep.

I think the most interesting thing at the seminar was the people.  I met Crystal and Laura - it was fun to finally meet them.  And I got to pet Vito!!  :)

The other people were interesting.

Hopefully none of those other non-blogfriend people read this blog, because I'm going to talk about them!!

After our first working spot on Sat. two women came up to me and we had an odd conversation.  Maybe I was just tired and it was totally normal.  "Is she spayed?" 'yeah'  "Oh, too bad!"  Other woman to 1st woman, "Is she what you're looking for?"  1st woman, "Oh, yes.  Exactly."

1st woman to me, "She can really move.  She has excellent structure.  You know in a performance dog you want the whole package and I hope you know she is the whole package."

Me, "Well, I think she is :)"

I also made a new friend (Kirsten?) who had a working spot in the afternoon on Sat.  Her dog was a Brittaney Spaniel (Sparkles) puppy that did a nice big zoomie loop when it was supposed to be heeling.  Kirsten (well, I think that was her name) was crying outside the seminar room after the first rotation through the working spots.  Tibby and I were waiting to go back into the seminar room and I was able to give her a little support/I've been there/it gets better/don't give up pep talk.  She was nice.  I did feel bad for her, because I've been there and it sucks.  Like NO ONE understands until they have been there.

So to the people who were sitting next to me!!! - No, she doesn't need to get a herding breed, "because you can train one of them in half the time".  Really?  That's the point of dog training?  'cause that sure isn't why I do it.  I heard a lot of breed-ism this week-end, which was kind of odd considering the seminar material.  Lot's of, "Well, you might need to do that with a terrier, but not with my sheltie/BC/ect."  I guess I don't get it.  A dog is a dog.  They have good traits and difficult traits, but they are all dogs.  I wouldn't trade Tibby for any dog.  I have never seen another dog that I thought, "Ooo, I wish I had that dog instead of Tibby."  Why do I love Tibby?  Because we have learned together!  Everything is part of the journey.  Sometimes the journey is bumpy, like Sparkles Mom was experiencing or Tibby in the crate-dungeon-of-doom, but each part is an important step.

Every day your dog is with you you're training it.

SO

  Why would anyone be in a hurry to get to the end of the road?

Exhausted

We didn't get a lot of sleep last night.  Tibby was restless most of the night.  I took her out to potty at 4:30.  She slept a little after that, but we had to get up in an hour and I couldn't fall back asleep after going out in the cold.  So very tired.

Tibby was playing with my socks this morning.

This is Tibby's dungeon of doom.  Yeaaah crating did NOT go very well. 

 First of all we got lost on our way to the seminar - stupid 35W turning into 94.  So we were late, BUT the seminar started late, so it wasn't that big a deal.  Tibby barked from 8am to 10am.  Straight.  Without stopping.  I could hear her from the seminar room and I checked her a couple times and yep it was Tibby barking.  She was really stressed, so I took her into the seminar room - even thought that wasn't allowed, unless she was crated.  I tried crating her in the seminar room, but she barked there too.  So my 3rd option was to crate her in the car.  That worked a lot better.  She actually slept. 

The whole crate thing stressed me out too. 

I'll write a post about the seminar after I see the video from it.   I'm tired and I want to think about it.

See, this is how tired we are.

Tibby mugging my Mom for popcorn.

Cute right?

Awww, I love her feeties.