Today I took Maverick out to do some Sit Stay proofing in front of a grocery store. My goal was to have him paying attention to me around his highest level distraction (new people) as well as holding his Sit Stay with people in motion around him.
To give you a little background, Maverick was raised and reinforced being allowed to go up and greet people at his will. This worked out fine for socialization, but has been very detrimental to working in performance venues. It has led to judge visiting, being drawn to/distracted by the spectators and in recent times leaving the ring to go greet friends. I have been working to transfer the value off other people and back to working with me. This has been a very difficult value transition. In the past I have introduced verbal and physical corrections for non-compliance or non-attention. Clearly that hasn't been successful, so I have gone back to pure shaping working solely on impulse control around people and value in attention on me.
So back to today... it was a cold day, so I brought along a 2'x2' floor mat so his bottom didn't freeze, a light line to use while working, some medium value cookies and of course a tug. I started off by dropping everything I had about 20 ft from our door. This was a new area to work so at first he thought he was there to socialize. The first gentleman that approached Maverick was out at the end of his lead, wiggling his butt begging for some attention. Thankfully, the guy respected my request for him not to pet Maverick since we were training. I patiently waited for Maverick to acknowledge my presence and once he did rewarded him from the reinforcement zone (RZ) I've been working to develop. As we've worked like this in the past, Maverick quickly realized he was there to work and started to give me great focus. We did a couple quick heeling and focus drills at a distance from the entrance, ran back had a quick game of tug (with some position work thrown in) and then moved closer to the doors for some Sit Stay work.
I first set the mat up to the side of the entrance, set him up in a sit and did a couple quick repetitions (varying between 5-30 seconds). I then started adding more distance with me standing across the entrance (about 15' away) and got some great focus from him. He noticed people walking in to the store in the doors behind him, dealt with the noise of shopping carts at a distance and held his Sit Stay. Things were going very well.
Then things got a bit messy... I'm not sure if others run into this when out proofing their dogs in public places, but it is a constant fight to keep people off my dog to prevent reinforcement of the behaviours I'm working to prevent. I can work all these behaviours easily at home in a controlled environment, but as soon as I'm out in public I have people calling to my dog when he's in a Stay, running up to pet him, or standing around talking baby talk to him. I have worked on all these things with other dog training buddies and have had success, but out in public when I don't always see it coming it can be very detrimental to my training. Maverick has learned that eventually when he breaks someone will pet him, talk to him and he will get rewarded for breaking. It's a constant frustration of mine, and of course he can sense my frustration which makes him more likely to break. As a true bulldog it is much more fun to decide to go hang out with fun people than work with a frustrated owner. The problem being I don't want to end the session on him breaking and getting rewarded. This time I took him farther away from the doors, reinforced what I wanted (Stay), had a quick game of tug and then went back and worked it again with higher level distractions and had success.
We then ran into my second issue, all of a sudden Maverick is really interested in the ground. He is holding his Sit-Stay, but is completely ignoring my presence and is in a position where his face is practically on the ground. I waited for him to look at me and then clicked... and then he broke diving for some goodie on the ground. Arghh..... for the life of me I couldn't figure out why he was diving, but then when I went to pull out the bag of cookies to refill, I realized there was a hole in the bag and cookies were falling out through the hole in the bottom of my pocket (thanks to my pocket munching kitty). So the ground was littered with cookies everywhere! Maverick is generally pretty good about not bait diving, but I think the distraction of people, plus the distraction of a cookie-filled floor put him in a state of 'Too Aroused to Respond'. I picked up the cookies, asked for some quick, short heeling, played some tug and called it a session.
So all in all we had some successes and some major failures on my behalf in controlling the environment to set up for success. The next time I go out proofing I will have to make sure:
1. There are no holes distributing cookies everywhere
2. I can better control the people in the environment (I may get myself an 'In Training' vest in hopes of discouraging some of the bulldog-molesters)
My goals for Maverick's Sit-Stay sessions are to work on:
1. Staying even though people are calling him
2. Staying with food distractions
3. Proofing with noises coming from behind (he broke when a garbage man and a row of shopping carts snuck up behind him).
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