E384: 줄리 플래너리(Julie Flanery) - 훈련을 다듬기

Maybe you are only observing the dog's actions and marking and rewarding the actions along that path, that path, that line of towards the end result. But you can also use shaping and other methods in conjunction with each other. So for example, if you're using luring, oftentimes we use luring in a way that creates the entire behavior. But you don't have to do it that way. You can actually lure smaller increments of a behavior rewarding along that path so that there is actually more reinforcement being provided in that session. Targeting is another example. Oftentimes we use targeting to teach a behavior. And we can actually use shaping in conjunction with our targets. We can shape towards the target, again, compounding the reward history for that particular behavior. Props. If we're using props, oftentimes we're using shaping in conjunction with our props. We're not waiting for the dog to interact entirely with that prop. But we can mark and reward those increments that take us along that path toward the end interaction with the prop that then the prop can sometimes take over from that place. So it's not really an all or one necessarily. I think most people are using shaping in their training sessions much more frequently than they think they do. They may not be using shaping on its own where we are simply observing behavior and marking that observed behavior without any other prompting or luring or props or targeting. Something that's often referred to, though it's a little bit of a misnomer, as free shaping or shaping without any other prompts. Free shaping is actually a term that Deb Jones coined many, many years ago, probably 25, 30 years ago, that she meant to mean free shaping as in do whatever you want. I may not always mark the same thing. It was more of a creativity exercise. And I think most trainers now refer to free shaping as shaping without the aid of any other prop or props. Do you have, you know, for people who are listening to this and maybe not super familiar with shaping or they haven't done a lot of shaping, do you have kind of favorite behaviors that it's, you know, easy, easy-ish, easier? Well, I'll tell you a secret. Once you understand shaping and learn how to use shaping, they're all easy. But you're right. There are some behaviors that are better to start with for beginners. Often those behaviors involve a focal point, a prop for the dog to interact with. Shaping oftentimes, it involves, not oftentimes, it always involves movement. Generally, movement from A to B with some part of the dog's body.

And if that movement, if that part B, that end result is interacting with a prop, that gives the handler a visual, I guess, from the starting point to the prop so that they can better visualize those small increments. So things like going around a cone or getting on a platform or getting inside of a box, those types of behaviors are often easiest for a handler that is new to shaping to be successful with and for their dog to be successful with. I think it also focuses the dog on the prop as well so that they're right away keyed into interacting with something out there. I like the box exercise. I use the laundry basket, but same idea. Anything the dog gets into, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I think the most common thing we hear about shaping, like across the board, right, is that people have trouble breaking things down. We hear all the time, don't be a lumper. If somebody is just kind of stuck, they don't know how to break things down further, do you have advice or thoughts and tips, tricks, any of that for kind of how to find more splits? Yeah, and I do think that is one of the areas that people struggle with. We are really good at picturing entire behaviors. We aren't very good at breaking that down into smaller pieces of behavior. And really, what they are, they're just measurements of a behavior. So if you think of a ruler, you have a one-foot ruler and you have 12 inches in that ruler. We look at the ruler and we think one foot. And what we really want to do is break that down into the 12 inches. So maybe having a visual in your mind of your ruler, your starting point is one inch, your ending point is 12 inches. And you're trying to observe all of those little pieces along the way. Remember, shaping involves movement. And so from point A to point B or point 1 inch to 12 inch, there is a lot happening in between there. And because we have a tendency to focus on the end result, we can find it very difficult to observe those little bits of movement in between. But here's the thing. Observation is a skill. And it's a skill that can be honed. So for example, if I, if you, let's say you wanted to get a new car and you decided that you're going to get a Toyota RAV4. And suddenly you start seeing Toyota RAV4s on the highway everywhere because that is where your focus is. It's on top of mind. And so you're seeing it everywhere you look. The other way that you can, that can help a handler to observe those smaller increments is to set up a visual aid for the handler. So for example, if we want the dog to, again, I'll use move from point A to point B, maybe you're shaping to a target.

Maybe you're shaping around a cone to a platform and you are, as again, a tendency to wait too long to mark, to create too big of increments of behavior. We can set up visual cues for the handler to define their next criteria, their next point along that path to mark. You can use, oftentimes I might use a piece of tape on the floor, 10 pieces of tape on the floor. If I want my dog to move to a specific area, let's say moving to a mat, I can place five pieces of tape between the dog and the mat. And that gives me a visual of where I'm going to mark my dog's movement along the path to the end behavior. Healing, for example. I can shape heel position by placing a piece of tape alongside of me and maybe a larger piece of tape on the outside of me. And I can set my criteria based on where the tape is in relation to me. For example, I'm going to mark when my dog has one foot inside the tape line. I'm going to mark when my dog has two feet inside the tape line. I'm going to next mark when my dog has three feet inside the tape line. So I'm not really guessing at, or I'm not thinking or trying to discern on the fly, ooh, where should I be marking? Ooh, should I do that next? Where should I, ooh, is he moving too fast? Oh, is he moving too slow? I don't have to take anything into consideration other than my dog's foot placement, whether it's inside or outside that taped mark, that taped area that I have marked. So that can help some handlers as well. But again, I think that those observation skills come much more quickly than people think they will once they start applying shaping more frequently. It's like any skill, the more you do it, the better you get at it. And I think that's true for our dogs too. The more they do it, the better they get it. Because I think they start to understand that process as well and can work towards that end result. You brought a couple things in there that kind of jumped out at me. So I'm going to just kind of talk through them for a second, if that's okay. You talked about, like with your ruler analogy, like knowing your starting point. And I think a lot of the times people don't think about when they're working on a shaping plan, where they're actually starting from, where the dog's going to be, what position the dog's, just like all of those pieces. And I think, you know, just kind of kind of call out, you kind of breezed by it. But I think it's like an important thing to, you know, think about when you're trying to, you're looking at your starting behavior and your end behavior and finding those in-between points.

And if you haven't defined your starting behavior, you're going to have a really hard time figuring out what those in-between points are. Right. I think that's absolutely true. So I think that people think of a starting point as, I'll give an example, set up and heal or sit next to me or be on your mat first. And in reality, the starting point is wherever the dog is at the moment when you have your clicker in your head. So for example, if I'm going to shape a behavior, oftentimes I will be in a specific posture, not a straight, stand up, straight, stand in heel type of posture, but a very relaxed posture that indicates to my dog, you can offer. And often it's my first click that tells the dog, oh, we are now shaping and reward is available if I move and do things. Okay. So the dog doesn't have to be in a specific location, either in relation to you or in relation to a mat or a prop or anything like that. Start where the dog is at. If the dog is moving, you have something to click. Oftentimes I get the question, what do you do if a dog won't move? Or what do you do if a dog moves too much? The answer to both of those questions is really the same. Click. Because the click, number one, slows the dog down. It stops movement. So if you have a dog that's moving too much and you're like, oh my God, what do I click? I can't. It's just, they're moving all the time. I don't know if I'm clicking the right thing. Don't worry about that in your first couple of clicks. Okay. Just click any movement because that will stop the dog and they will then collect reward. That gives you a moment in time that gives the dog a pause and you can now have a better view of what the dog is actually doing and what your next click point is going to be. The other thing, if the dog isn't moving at all, you can toss a treat that often jumpstarts movement. And remember I said click any movement because that is what we want the dog to be thinking about. Move. Move. And that will often jumpstart the process so that when they move back to you or move back to the prop, you have a starting point there to build from. Did that answer your question? I'm trying to think now. Oh, your question was about the starting point. Where do they actually start? And they start anywhere. The moment you decide I am starting a shaping session, your first click starts the process no matter where the dog is at. So obviously, like no matter how much we like try to plan things out and break it all down in our head and write out a plan, we're working with another living being. So sometimes we get the totally unexpected, right?

First, do you ever just totally change what you're working on because your dog just offered you something else that you'd also like to work with? Is it okay to do that? Um, I try not to do that because one of the tenants of shaping is consistent information going to the dog. And remember in shaping, we are working along a path to get a dog to an end result. And if during that session, we suddenly start changing the rules, um, let me, let me reverse that a little bit. Every time we're shaping, we're in effect changing the rule of what we want the dog to offer. We're changing the criteria each time or every few times we click. Uh, and dogs get very good at understanding that. However, if we suddenly change the overall picture, the big picture of what we are marking and rewarding, we've been marking, let's say I've been marking my dog moving to the cone, moving to the cone, moving to the cone. Suddenly my dog spins and I mark that. So now the dog's like, oh, well, I don't know what's going on here because I was moving to the cone, moving to the cone, moving to the cone. And suddenly I got a bee in my bonnet and I turned my head and spin and now she's marking that. Well, what is it that I'm, what am I supposed to be offering? What am I working on? So I try not to do that. I will often though, maybe quickly end the session, finish up a couple of more reps. If I really, really want to work on what my dog just did or offered in the middle of a session that had nothing to do with what I was marking and rewarding, um, I will try to end the session. Um, and then I will try to set up that same behavior again or restart an entirely new session where that is my end goal. So when you say restart a new session, are you, do you mean like take a short break and then do it again? Or do you mean like, like, what are you, what are you seeing as a, this session is finished, the next session is started? Yeah. Um, I would give my dog their all done cue that says we're done with that session. I would go take a break because I'm going to want to think about how am I going to get that particular behavior again? What is, what is my plan for shaping that behavior? So I'm not going to go straight from I'm shaping behavior a, Oh, look, I want to shape something new. Let's take a two minute break and then shape something new. Cause in general, I'm going to need a little bit of time to kind of figure out how to either prompt that to get it started or what are my first starting clicks to convey to the dog. This is what we're working on now. So it's generally more than just a few minutes.

Usually I'm just going to take a much longer break, maybe work some maintenance behaviors with my dog, take a few minutes to kind of plan out. How am I going to actually draw that behavior or the starting bits of that behavior out of the dog so that I can now work on that particular skill. But I generally try not to interrupt a shaping session that is moving along a path and suddenly take a sharp turn and move into something else. Because I think that sharp turn can be very jarring to our dogs. I will say that is how I ended up with Levi's chin rest on the ground turning into a sneeze cue. So, you know. But it's worth. Yeah. So, okay. So what do you, how do you handle it in the moment if you don't want to stop, change, you know, take the break, figure out something new? If, you know, your dog is suddenly offering you something, well, that's not what I wanted. They do the spin instead of the cone. How do you kind of try and get things back on track? Oh, wow. What a great question. Because that does actually happen quite a bit, especially with people that are new to shaping or inexperienced with shaping. They haven't quite gotten the skill of breaking things down fine enough that what the dog offers next is a logical choice for the dog. So the best thing, what I do, I release the dog from that rep with my release cue. Okay. That's a general release cue that I mean there's, that rep is over. There's no reinforcement for that particular thing. And I can either just take a break from there to kind of collect my thoughts, or I can toss a treat and then mark the dog's move forward movement again. Then that will often help get them back on track again. So either way, our tendency is to freeze and to stop. And I would rather you just toss a treat, release the dog, toss a treat rather than freeze or stop. Because remember, the dog looks to us for information. Most of that information in shaping is going to be from our marker. But our dog does take into account our, I don't know, our demeanor, our emotional state, our responses to their response. And so in order to keep the dog's confidence up, don't freeze. Just release and toss a treat and move on from there. And if you really need to, release, toss a treat and end the session so that you can figure out how to set up your next session. So you are offering your class on shaping at FTSA in December. So talk to me a little bit about the class. Tell me, you know, kind of what you're going to cover, who might want to join you, all the good stuff. Yeah. It's one of my favorite classes to teach because we get so much behavior out of the dogs.

And it's, I think that a lot of the students that take the class are pretty surprised at how good their dogs are at shaping. I think that it's best for people that have some experience with shaping. They know what it is. This isn't a brand new starter class. I know nothing about shaping. Teach me exactly what to do every moment of every second of every session. Okay. It's not quite that type of a class. But if you have shaped your dog, if you understand the concept of shaping, if you have ever shaped your dog to do anything, even if it wasn't successful, then this class is for you. It's for people that want to build their skill in shaping, for people that want to use shaping more in their training. To me, I think shaping behaviors builds the most understood and robust behaviors in our dog's repertoire. I think it creates far more robust behaviors than luring because the dog is initiating the process. The dog is initiating the behavior. He's initiating the movement. He has control over the reinforcement based on what he offers. And all of that helps to internalize the behavior and strengthen the behavior. Shaping provides compounded reinforcement history. So that means that the reward history for that behavior is far stronger than if we were just luring a behavior, getting an entire behavior for a single reward or a few pieces of treats. So anybody who wants to get more out of their shaping sessions, to be able to learn to observe in a way that will create more successful shaping sessions and less frustration. One of the reasons that people stop shaping behaviors is because either they or their dogs start to get frustrated. And that is due to a lack of skill and skill can be built. So that's where this class comes in handy, where we're going to help you build those skills so that you can build a strong repertoire of behaviors and you can eliminate any frustration that you or your dog may have when using shaping as a training method. I think from previous times it's run, you've had some students teach some pretty cool behaviors or tricks or kind of some fun stuff, haven't you? Oh, my goodness. Yes. It's a very – how do I put this? It's not a self-directed class, but it is in certain ways. So you're – You encourage creativity. I do encourage creativity. And though I'll give you a framework from which to start. So, for example, one week's exercises might be that you're shaping something that is either over, under, around, or through. But you get to pick the behavior of, you know, what that all entails. It could be any one of those. Shaping around something. I don't know. Shape under something.

What you shape under, what you shape through is totally up to you. So it does give the handler a little bit of leeway and freedom to work on something that would be fun for them and fun for the dogs and something that they've never really worked on before. And then we also take a look at some of the behaviors that we shape and see how can we apply those to our sport or what we actively train our dog in or what are the activities that I do with my dog where I can actually use this particular behavior that I'm shaping now, that it's going to strengthen some area of my current training or my sport training. Any final thoughts or maybe key points that you can't really focus on? Yeah. So we're going to do two things. One, provide information to our dogs. And two, take information back from our dogs. Our dog tells us through the entire shaping process what they understand. What is it? Are we conveying the information to our dog that we think we're conveying? Shaping allows us to objectively observe that. Are we being a good communicator and we can then also be a good observer of what our dog is telling us in terms of what they understand? So, yeah. But I think that's the biggest thing is just because you're not good at it now doesn't mean that you and your dog can't be great at it. It's a skill like any other that needs to be practiced. I like that. Thank you so much, Julie. I appreciate having you on the podcast. You bet. Thanks for having me, Melissa. It was really fun this morning. Always. And thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week with Nancy Little to talk about getting rewards off your body and the other skills that you need to be ready to compete. If you haven't already, subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice. You'll have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzie Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzie for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty free by bensound.com. The track featured here is called Buddy. Audio editing provided by Chris Lang. Thanks again for tuning in. Happy training. Be tune in. Be tune in. Thank you.