The best video for teaching ‘Wave’
This is the best video demonstrating wave. This trainer makes it look easy but here’s a little behind the scenes review:
• Notice the dog is not moving forward while they are working. Clearly the dog has been reinforced for working on a mat and knows the he will get his reward for maintaining that sit position (his default position). Even when she sets him up farther from her, he maintains that sit position. He’s also not trying to touch his paw or his nose to the target.
• Notice how she’s working in a corner. If you work a dog in a corner there’s less opportunity for him to move anywhere. Distractions are minimized.
• Notice the trainer also ‘clicks’ the dog just for sitting. The trainer explains “this is to reinforce the default behaviour. If the dog is not reinforced for “doing nothing” when there is no cue, then they cannot learn to discriminate when the cue is present, and when it is not.”
• Notice when he offers a wave that’s not high enough, she uses the target to get the better version and then clicks. She doesn’t click a less than perfect wave.
• Notice the verbal cue ‘Wave’ comes before the target comes out. If you put them together the more salient stimulus (the target), would block the verbal cue and the dog wouldn’t learn it. You need to present the verbal cue before the target.
By the way if you want to know who this excellent trainer is, her name is Sachiko Eubanks, and she’s a graduate of www.learningaboutdogs.com
Happy training.
I’m glad you brought that up… it is interesting. Because she’s using a target stick, a tertiary reinforcer, he is still being rewarded because he knows a click, then treat will follow. It might be a better strategy than clicking and trying to shape a better paw raise. In this case also you can never feed the dog in position so you can’t show them the perfect behaviour which might also be why she went this route. I think the most important thing is that the dog doesn’t look stressed – he is confident and knows exactly what’s expected of him and that should be the goal of all of our training strategies. The other thing to consider is that shaping is hard with a paw raise. Compare it to shaping a down. It would require lots of attention and mechanical skills on the handlers part.
Alright now I challenge you to make a Wave video demonstrating your technique and then I can make my decision…. I know you never refuse a challenge…. btw, this is fun. I like analyzing a good trainer’s training plan.
Ohh, a duel! Fun!