Quote: Cameron Feathers

The word you use doesn't matter, as long as it is not something that you use when, say, you catch the dog in the trash, or use a verbal correction. The marker that you use has to be only reserved for marking behavior that you don't want.

Well, I've been guilty of this. Time to change my negative marker sound!
BTW, I tried the paw over the nose thing the way you described and got pretty good results for our first session. Will do another session tonight... very fun stuff!

Good thread, Kurt!

Very helpful!

Thanks from me too. I'm working on almost exactly the same paw over nose trick with Molly but I want her to do it from the "down". In the end I want the whole trick to work like this: I'm going to order one of the camouflage vests from here at LB. I have some Sargent stripes to put on it. I'll have Molly do some sit then down then sit when I tell her to do push ups. Then I want her to crawl on her belly and when I shout "incoming!" I want her to put her paws over her head like she's about to be shelled. Just a trick I thought would be fun to have her do.

I have the push ups going nicely and I taught her the crawl by luring her with food from a down. At first I kept my hand on her shoulders to keep her from just jumping up and running over to get the food. She caught on really quick so I don't need to do that any more. Now I'm trying to get the paw over head thing. I'll have to give the piece of tape a try for that.

I'm still learning clickers and shaping. I did get her to retrieve a flashlight for me when I knock it off the table. I did that by pure shaping. I just put it on the floor and marked when she got close. I kept marking closer and closer until she was nosing it around. From there I waited until she mouthed it and later when she picked it up. I finally got that all together so she will pick it up and drop it in my lap. Sometimes it seems like I'm learning more than the dog is.

Do me a favor. Don't do that trick with any combat vets around.

I already showed it to some guys from Camp Atterbury. They seemed to think it was pretty funny.

I came off too abrupt.
The trick sounds really cute.

People yelling incoming just loosens my bowels a tad, and I'm not alone in that. Every vet is different. It all boils down to individual combat experiences.

Then again, if you weren't actually yelling "incoming", it wouldn't faze me in the least.

My blood pressure goes through the roof when people playfully yell "Medic!", when they do stupid shit like cut a finger.

nothing like classic conditioning, is there alyssa?

btw, really a nice thread w/lots of great info in it.

 Quote: alyssa myracle

I came off too abrupt.
The trick sounds really cute.

People yelling incoming just loosens my bowels a tad, and I'm not alone in that. Every vet is different. It all boils down to individual combat experiences.

Then again, if you weren't actually yelling "incoming", it wouldn't faze me in the least.

I see your point now. I thought you meant it was disrespectful or something. I got the idea for the trick from a friend's comments about one of Ed's videos. She calls Ed a, "doggie drill instructor". She's an Army recruiter. I'm going to show her how much Molly wants to be in the Army.

I don't have the whole spiel worked out but it will go something like this, "OK dogface. If you want to be in the Army you have to do pushups", then do the, "up down, up down" etc. Next I tell her, "crawl soldier". If I were saying, "incoming" for real I imagine my voice would be a few octaves higher with a lot more panic but maybe I should make it more of a question, "What do you do when someone shouts, 'incoming' " then she does the paws over the nose thing.

Next year I'm thinking of taking her to the air show in Indianapolis. They always have a military encampment with people displaying military collectibles and other exhibits. If you have an act or exhibit you pay a small fee which goes to the children's hospital and you get to camp out for the full three days of the show instead of having to leave at the end of the day. It would be too much for her this summer but by next summer I should have her used to a lot of people and noise.

Reminds me of the story I was told about an instructor in the south who would yell SNAKE! and the dog would jump into his arms. Always done around newbies...