I don't have time to write as much as I did over the winter, because we're busy planting peas, hazelnuts, potatoes, lettuce, and pruning and tilling and all the things, and then some, that fall into our "Spring." But Mother's Day was fantastic, blooming tulips and daffodils and husband and daughters and dogs and birds all out enjoying it together either eating pancakes and planting. Thank goodness dogs can't buy us presents, who knows what they'd deliver on Mother's Day?

Dandylion has a sore spot on his belly that is worrying me, and Tigerlily is totally engrossed in grasshoppers. I probably never should have mentioned grasshoppers in my last blog!! These are itty bitty baby hoppers, which can entrance her for half an hour or more at a time.  When we are asking for anything outside in the Spring, compared to asking for the same behavior [0] in the winter, it's a totally new criteria [0]. And we have different reinforcements at our disposal.  Here are some video examples of how reinforcements really affect the size and shape of the behavior. If you want your dog to be close to you, use food reinforcements, not a chase after seagulls!

Photo Sharing [1] - Upload Video [2] - Video Sharing [3] - Share Photos [4]

In the beach video, I was doing an experiment and using ONLY seagull chasing to reinforce her. Premack or environmental reinforcements lead the dog to work further out, because she's collecting her reinforcements out there. On the beach with no food or toys, only seagulls, Tigerlily offers very different, BIG behavior compared to when I reinforce with food and toys. She is zooming, having so much fun, and I had to change my freestyle criteria, lower it, because she was working around huge distractions and the reinforcement [4] was the environment.  Can you imagine how healthy this was for Tigerlily to discover? That responding to my cues means I encourage her to enjoy the beach? Bond building! Ultimately, I was giving her HUGE reinforcements in exchange for a little bit of behavior, and for HUGE recalls, all around big distractions. This dog really trusts me.  It was possible to practice this way because we'd just had a big April snowstorm,  nothing and no one else on the beach. When there is someone else on the beach, I  use food reinforcement, and toys too. The more closely we want the dog to work, the more we want our reinforcement to be fairly close at hand. I can only use seagull and beach reinforcement because I can control the reinforcement. If I told her to come and she didn't, then I need to switch to a different sort of reinforcement.

Photo Sharing [5] - Upload Video [6] - Video Sharing [7] - Share Photos [8]This next video one is done using food and toy reinforcement. As usual, I am clicking with my tongue. This camera didn't pick up my click (that's Albert's wedding ring clicking against the camera), but I do tongue click, and toss food as well as frisbee. Notice how I withhold reinforcement when she runs past her target [8]? I don't want any mistake to seem too severe to my dog. I want her to have fun. As above,  you'll hear my keep going signal (yay) and also a no reinforcement mark (oops).  Obviously, she has a lot to learn, and one prerequisite is for her to know how to resist a moving lure (toy) from a standstill, which we've practiced a great deal. So now, I just want her to be moving, walk or trot, and resist it. This sort of practice really helps dog likes her, who have difficulty resisting that impulse to chase any moving object. Here, she's moving without me, independently, but today I think we'll practice this as she is walking and heeling with me, just winging frisbees and dropping balls as we move around together. Hopefully I can get my home-from-college-and-still-sleeping daughter up to help videotape. To view all my videos, go to www.dropshots.com/yasijenny