According to Wikipedia, Coonhounds are treeing dogs. They were developed for their keen sense of smell which especially included air scenting animals above them in trees. They have the ability to track, chase and corner the animal both on the ground and in trees. A trained coonhound will bark and keep its prey treed until the handler/hunter arrives.

The Evidence

We went out for our morning outing this morning. Kara did her thing like usual and then went over to the side of the yard where our shed is. She started barking single barks and stood her ground looking like this:

I tried calling her to come in the house but she kept rooted to the spot barking. It wasn’t a crazy frantic barking. It was a different kind – like an alert. She didn’t move forward so I went to see what she was barking at. Here’s what I saw:

He didn’t seem the least bit concerned about the barking dog and just sat motionless watching us. After I came and acknowledged what she saw I was able to get her into the house easily. She’d done her job by getting me to come see this creature.

The Conclusions

OK, we know she’s pure Poodle with no part of coonhound in her. But she definitely has scenting ability. So the conclusion is she’ll do great when we start Nosework class next week!

Maybe we should think about tracking. What do you think?

P.S. For those of you interested in wildlife, this is a Virginia Opossum commonly found in North America. He was young and cute and not at all harmed by our encounter. He was no doubt hanging out waiting for a mouse to come by.

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The simple answer is because it creates a thinking dog. It also makes you a better trainer and besides it’s a whole lot more fun!

Some trainers will say: “But your dog will get confused!” And I answer, yup they do, but when you work through that confusion the result is much stronger behavior.

The main example is the recall. The Novice recall requires the dog to come directly to you. The Open drop on recall requires you to drop your dog half way to you when they come. Once the dog learns the drop on recall and you go back to a straight recall, they often anticipate the drop. You’ll see the dog hesitate half way to you or drop on her own without your cue to drop. Most clicker trainers love this anticipation! It means the dog is thinking. Once you work through the idea that sometimes you drop, sometimes you don’t it depends on if you get a cue, that drop cue becomes very strong and much more reliable.

In technical, scientific terms it’s referred to as Stimulus Control. Stimulus Control is a very powerful concept. It is defined by Mary Burch and Jon Bailey in their book How Dogs Learn this way:

“Behaviors are under stimulus control when the responses are controlled by the antecedent stimuli. The stimulus will control the behavior because the behavior has been reinforced when that stimulus was present.”

The antecedent stimulus is the cue, in this case to drop. This cue will control the behavior because every time it is used and the dog responds by dropping, a click happens and a treat is delivered (most effectively in the drop position.) What is assumed but not stated in that definition is if the stimulus is not present, the behavior will not happen. So if the dog anticipates and drops without the cue, then nothing happens — no click no treat. They learn that they have to wait for the cue and once they do, they no longer do the behavior when the cue is not given.

This way of training encourages the dog to really think and pay attention, not just go through boring practiced behaviors. And it makes you a better trainer because you have to be very aware of your cues and how your dog is responding.

I’ve posted a couple videos of Kara doing the beginnings of the Open and Utility exercises so you can see her in action. Leave a comment if you have any questions about this way of training. And soon I’ll have a video on how we work through the anticipation.

My training friend Sara (who trains the same way) and I joke that we’ll debut my Kara and her Rizzo in the Versatility Class before Novice!! That would raise a few eyebrows! What fun!

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Next is the Retrieve on the Flat. Again short distance, but our form is perfect. She waits for the cue and I give ONLY a verbal cue. I’ve had to work very hard on myself not to move anything when I give the cue. We are both looking straight ahead at the dumbbell. Good job to both of us!

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Next is the down signal. Unfortunately you can see me give the signal but you can see her down in place. It’s the perfect position I want with no movement forward. You’ll also notice I say yes instead of clicking. I use both interchangeably.

Next is scent discrimination with the real articles. We’ve been working metal and at this point I have 3 other metal and two leather out in the “pile.” You’ll notice she loves this so much I have to work to keep her from going to the pile before I give the cue. Sometimes I put her in her crate in between. You might think she sees me place it, but I block her view when I put it down and you can see she’s using her nose to find the right one.

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We didn’t do much with the scent sticks for quite awhile and then I decided to  see what she remembered. You’ll see in this video that she remembered perfectly! It’s time to move her on to the real articles so watch for that next!

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Why did the chicken cross the road?

Pavlov: We fed the chicken on the opposite side of
the road each day at 4 p.m. until the chicken’s
autonomic system actually began causing the
chicken to cross the road at 4 p.m. without even
questioning the why.

B.F. Skinner: On prior occasions when the chicken voluntarily crossed the road, this behavior was followed immediately by a reinforcing consequence.

Cesar Milan: I bullied, chased, poked, and intimidated the chicken until it raced across the road, because I am a strong leader.

Barbara Woodhouse: You just say Walkies with the right accent and place a crumpet on the other side of the road.

Karen Pryor: By associating R+ with road crossing and P+ with standing still, with a VR schedule, and offering a reward in keeping with the Premack principle, we increased the intensity and frequency of the road crossing behavior.

Bill Koehler: A few well-timed pops on the choke chain and the chicken was happy to cross the road.

Dr. Nicholas Dodman: I gave the chicken fluoxetine, sertraline, paroxetine, carbamazepine, and azapirone and then it was happy to cross the road.

Patti Ruzzo: I crossed the road, pausing every step to spit a treat out of my mouth like a human pez dispenser and the chicken followed along catching the treats.

Victoria Stilwell: So what if the chicken crossed the road, who cares where the chicken went … the bigger issue is do these pants make me bumm look fat?

Connie Cleveland: Because chickens are problem solvers.

Diane Bauman: We put turtles on the road and made sure the chicken was well proofed in crossing it between the turtles LOL.

Susan Garrett: I taught the chicken a motivational tug and it happily danced across the road.

Blanche Saunders: Forward! Say heel and jerk the leash! If the chicken lags, jerk forward , if the chicken gets distracted use a series of short snappy jerks. When you get to the other side cuff him before he sits and if the chicken sits crooked cuff it again.

Electric Collar Advocate: Whenever the chicken does not cross the road I give it an electric shock. But do not worry, the shock is no more than you would feel if you walked on a carpet wearing socks and it does not bother the chicken at all. The feathers standing up and the smell of burning flesh mean nothing. In fact, they are happier having nice clear communication than they would be otherwise.

Purely Positive trainer: Chickens are just like little people in feather jackets, and if you love them and give them diamonds and feel sorry for them all the time, they will be happy to cross the road for you.

Paris Hilton: Because I put it in a Gucci bag and carried it.

Shelter director: Any chickens that do not cross the road will be euthanized for their own good, and the others we will adopt out tomorrow for only $200 each. Please send us money so we can keep doing more of this important work!

HSUS member: I do not know anything about animals, I have never been around animals and am not really fond of animals, but we passed a law mandating that chickens be kept without cages because animals belong only in the wild and cannot be happy coexisting with man, so now they are walking wherever they want.

PETA member: Chickens have the right to live in a world without roads. Any chicken that lives within a hundred miles of a road is suffering an inhumane existence and might eventually be hit by a car so we should kill it today to ensure that it does not die tomorrow.

And my addition:

Bob Bailey: You’re late! If your clicks were timed better you would have gotten the chicken across that road a lot faster with fewer reinforcements.

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I can hear your next question! But if I train this won’t my dog be making noise all the time??!?? I sure don’t want that!

That’s the beauty of clicker training. The dog learns very quickly and early that doing things out of context doesn’t pay. When you’re shaping something the dog will throw all sorts of behaviors that have worked in the past until they discover the one that is paying in this case. Then that’s the one they offer. So if they make noise around the house outside of a training session and you don’t acknowledge it, then they stop doing it. It didn’t pay. A word of caution though. Looking at the dog or telling the dog to be quiet is acknowledging the behavior. Just totally ignore it.

In this video I’m showing the very first step which is classically conditioned. I make a noise and follow it immediately with food. The dog doesn’t have to do anything to earn the treat. You’ll see this noise is not a all scary for Kara and after the first couple she just sits and waits for the treat. This is good. You don’t want to scare your dog, you want her to like this.

Towards the end of the video I delay the next noise so Kara can make a strong connection between the treat and the noise. I’m also making the noise close to her and in a variety of ways. This is just the first step. In the next video we move on to her making me make the noise.

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Here’s the sequence:

1. I present the target
2. She runs up and hits it with her nose
3. That makes me make the noise
4. She gets the treat

We do that for a few repetitions and then I start to make the target hand more stationery. She’s very conditioned to target the moving hand when it stops rather than a presented stopped had. So you see her hesitate not sure what to do. I give her a tiny bit of help and then back off it so she gets the idea better. By the end of the video she’s getting better at it.

Based on this training session I know I need to do at least one more with a non-moving target before I can move on to the next step.

Stayed tuned for more!

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This is the first time Kara worked with the wobble board. You can see her default behavior is to sniff it or hit it with her nose. I clicked the first two sniffs to let her know that we were working with the object. After that she did put one foot on it so that became what I would click. But you can tell she hasn’t made the connection yet that it’s the paw touch that earns the click. You can see her hit it with her nose and then look up at me – where’s the click? When no click happens she tries something else which alternates between circling it and hitting it with her paw. The circling behavior comes from earlier shaping we did to circle a cone, see our video: Building a Chain.

After a bit she realizes that it’s the paw that pays so the nose touches start to get less. You’ll notice I missed a couple clicks! She’s a little hard to see sometimes so I miss some good opportunities. You’ll also notice I feed across the board and a couple times she put both paws up when getting the treat. I wanted her to understand that she could put both paws on it as that’s the next major step in training this.

You’ll also see that I made a rookie mistake! After the first time she put two paws up I tried to get her to do it again. She really hadn’t gotten the two paws behavior so you can see she didn’t offer it. I realized I went too fast and went back to clicking one paw. Since she kept offering something other than paw touch, I realized she didn’t totally have the idea of what I wanted yet.

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