Some time ago we talked about Heeling, Eye contact etc. I recieved great advices, which helped me a lot. Thanks so much to all the participants.

While training another question turned up - The moment of marking and rewarding. Do you mark while the dog is moving in the correct heel position and keeping eye contact - or whatever point of body you chose -, or do you mark just for one of those behaviors and stop for rewarding.

What confuses me is that some people say, we should always mark and reward while moving and others tell the contrary.

Use your primary marker to mark the behaviour you want which then releases the dog from that behaviour . You will then , in this case , be re-starting from the beginning if you want to start heeling again . " I like how you just heeled , here is your reward "

Use your duration marker without delivering a reward if you want the behaviour to continue : " I like the way you are heeling , keep doing it "

I always mark while still in motion and then split off for the reward about 80-95% of the time. I don't want my dog to start dropping it's head and inevitably that happens even if you're super careful about reward placement. Most dogs really can't take food effectively in heel position anyway. My gulper tends to have it go down the wrong pipe and then has to hack it back up. Which is lovely so I don't use duration markers to reward him in position very much. I do still reward from behind and overhead but he can drop his head to eat it while we reset and he doesn't choke as often.

You can give food rewards while heeling but when not marked they will let the dog know to continue what it's doing.

This is called a bridge and it means keep making eye contact, heeling, whatever behavior your wanting.

I use a slow,calm "Goood" as a bridge.

Once the behavior is actually marked then it doesn't matter what the dog does because you've told it what you wanted and released it with the mark.

Yes, thanks a lot Bob. These things are in between clear to me. What confuses me is that some people insist on stopping when giving the TM, while others recommend to keep on moving, reward a short time after the TM and then continue Heeling, unless they want to switch to another exercise.

For me a bridge like your "good" is much more logical. This is, if I understand it right, a duration marker and it does not need to be followed by a reward, but can from time to time. As you write, a TM promises a reward and releases the dog. So it does not matter if he dances out of the heeling line or whatever.

It confuses me, because the advice to TM while moving comes also from professional trainers. For example when Heeling and they teach the dog to make an about turn, they TM while the dog turns with maintaining eye contact, reward and go on heeling. I am sure I am not mixing it up with the Duration Marker. They speak about the TM and some of them then stop and reward and others simply continue heeling. Would this be correct, if we gave
immediately after the reward again a Heeling cue?

Cathy, thanks for your answer. Do you really want to say you mark with the TM while the dog is in motion? As Bob said, the TM releases. Is it not a Duration Marker you use?
Splitting off for the reward I think is a good idea. I too want to teach my dogs not to drop their head if possible. My dogs too swallow the wrong way now and then and then splutter and caugh, which of course makes me wait, which breaks the fluency completely.

Edited by Christina Stockinger (05/08/2016 07:22 AM)
Edit reason: b mistake double

Thanks Ian. So, that is the point. Primary or Duration M. . It seems to me very clear, how you describe it. When we give the Primary Marker, yes, the dog is released and we will have to restart with our command for Heeling again.

But will we not have a problem with the Terminal Marker and the following reward, as this will lead inevitably to a break, unless we are very quick with restarting and of course if our dog is quick with swallowing and will not need a breather for coughing, as Cathy describes so colourfully. .

This would mean, either we use Cathys method, splitting the food reward, or chosing a treat so tiny, that it will slide down by itself and the poor dog will have no chance to enjoy it or repeat the whole procedure only with Duration Markers but no rewards. What is the more preferable method,I wonder.

When teaching the turn I'm not really interested in a bridge so it is marked when correct.

When putting it together with the heeling I will use the bridge IF the turn is good.

When adding ANY two behaviors together I want them both correct before putting them together otherwise you may be correcting for a bad turn while the dog is heeling is good.

If the dog truly understands both individual behaviors then they go together much smoother.

Look at it from sit and down commands.

To many teach the down from a sit position.

That contaminates the sit command because the dog will start going into the down simple because that what it's been taught when the two are consistently put together.

Absolutelz clear answer, Bob. I am so glad having you here to advice us. Thank zou so much.
I am understanding, that I will run a great risk to deteriorate behaviors if I combine them before they are solid, each one of them separately. I might even sacrifice one already solid behavior if I mix it up with an unsolid one, as the dog can not know for which one he is marked and rewarded. I will create only confusion.

Very good comparison with the sit and down. I did this too until about one and a half years ago. I have stopped doing
it in between. First of all I TM and reward each of those behaviors separately before I ask for the next one. Secondly I avoid putting them together always in the same sequence. You were the one who always reminded me to reward randomly, with good reason. And I think this somehow goes into the same chapter. We have to randomize the order of learned behaviors too. If not we will become predictable for the dog and he will get accustomed to a certain order.

But this leads me to the next question. How dog dancers manage this? They can not change the order of a routine, the whole thing must run smoothly,once they present it in a competition. There is no possibility of randomizing exercises. Will those dogs not get fixed on the so often trained same connection of their behaviors? Of course those behaviors were very solid alone before they put them together. But will the intensive training of a routine not blur the single exercises?