Training Two Dogs at Once, Part II

A continuation from earlier today, we've done a bit more with the bell ringing.

One factor I didn't mention, but definitely considered, is the social pressure in the behavior. It's harder for a dog to come right up to another to ring the bell than to ring it when held by a person. It's a bit invasive to be going that close to another dog in this context, and there's a bit of 'respecting' the 'resource' that the dog has.

Blaze has a much stronger target but was still reluctant to touch it when Griffin held the target/bell. This shows me that the behavior isn't quite as strong as I expected and that even as lacking in social skills as he is, Blaze was still hesitant about going that close to Griffin.



I pulled out my trusty Animal Training book to re-read the section on group training and see what Ken Ramirez had to say about it.

- Avoid group training when you can. Have one trainer per animal.
- Non working animals can be stationing/training with their handler.
- If one person is working multiples, those behaviors really should be fluent first before working in the group.
- Be careful about reinforcement. If you have a pushy animal, maybe reinforce him first and further away so that the others don't loose their reinforcement.

On my list for ages and that I've been working on, is a good stationing behavior so that when I'm training dogs in the house at home (necessary when it's COLD out!), the non working animals are not getting agitated or making noise. We've been at the early stages with probably only about ten sessions on it over the last year, but I can ask one dog to do a few behaviors while the other is working. It also makes me realize that I need to develop more markers (visual, tactile) and work on creating more secondary reinforcers.

A slight tangent, I came across the article "Pup Psych 101: Secondary Reinforcement in Agility" article by Dara Tarolli in Nov 2010 CleanRun. While the article talks about secondary reinforcers....it appears that it's actually more about markers (which are a type of secondary reinforcer, but not all secondary reinforcers are markers!). Markers definitely are very helpful, but secondary reinforcers can be too. I went to Ken Ramirez's Learning Lab session on this at the last Expo and was helping out. But I want to know more! Anyone else read this article and want to comment?

Training Two Dogs at Once

I thought it would be cute to get the dogs to do some tricks together. Back when Blaze was an only dog, I desperately wanted another dog to train so that he could have breaks, but also so that we could do tricks with two dogs. I had a trick book as one of my first dog books ever, and there was a whole chapter on multiple-dog tricks that I just wasn't able to use!

And somehow that never happened even with dog 2 and dog 3. Luna learned to jump over Blaze but that was about the extent of it.

So last week I decided it would be adorable and festive to teach Griffin to hold a bell and to have Luna ring it. He knows how to hold things. She knows how to target. How hard would it be? A five minute training project at most.

So, Griffin had a session of bell holding. Easy.

And I had Luna do some targeting. Great. Not fluent, but she was touching it and knew that's how she could access treats. If I had more time I would teach her to push it hard enough for a ring. But hey, five minute trick.

But when I put the parts together, her touching was ultimately the weak piece.



Some of my training friends are very strict about marker= treat. And I am to...for the working dog. But you can see when Luna was working and Griffin was present, I fed him too. I couldn't not! And you can see from his expression, he was expecting a reinforcer. What would happen to his click-treat association if I hadn't fed him?

And I used the click for the marker when both dogs were working as well as their separate markers...it may have been more efficient to use one marker for together, and each dog to have his-her own separate marker. Then I wouldn't have to feed Griffin for Luna's clicks.