Transferring from Treats to Toys
All of the drills in this weeks lessons need to be transferred from treats to toys. Here are a few concepts we can use to do this quickly and efficiently.
Playing with Cookies
Throughout this week we have been quite concerned with being very deliberate and clean in our foundational positioning movements so we can deliver the transferring of value from hand to hand and to ensure that we’re practicing perfectly.
The next step is to use our cookies a bit more loosely and to let things flow a little bit more. We can activate prey drive by moving faster, ease up on the matching and pass the value from hand to hand a bit more figuratively.
We’re going to start playing with cookies.
Hand Targeting
Hand targeting is a great skill to work with these Foundational Drills, and does a good job of proofing the skill. If you have hand targeting, go ahead and start working on transferring the value from hand to hand.
Playing with Toys
We are going to set things up exactly the same as playing with cookies flavor of our foundational position, Set Up Moves
Set Up Moves are tricks that are used to establish timing and position in disc dog freestyle. Traditional tricks include: Around, Through, Backwards Through, and Scoot, but any or all of your tricks, could, conceivably, become a Set Up Move, just put it in front of something else. Set Up Moves are tricks that are used to establish timing and... and Flatwork
[caption id="attachment_27605" align="alignleft" width="300"] Counter Clockwise Working Flank[/caption] Flatwork is the stuff that happens between the catches. How the team moves and transitions, often without the disc, is flatwork. Flatwork concepts in disc dog are taken from the agility and herding world and purposed towards chasing plastic. For the agility minded: The cued Drop is the previous obstacle, the catch... Foundation.
Reinforcement will be in the form of tossing the toy, when the handler wants some space, or a bite and tug on the toy when the dog needs to be closer to the handler. This is rewarding for position and is very important to be be mindful of in all training and play.
The value of the toy may need to scaled when we have dogs that are really high in drive or over aroused. It is possible that we’ll need to use a medium, or even low, value toy to help our dogs be successful to start.
Managing Drive
Using Attention, unsolicited eye contact
Unsolicited eye contact or Attention is a great way to hook up with a dog. If you have something the dog wants he should give eye contact in order to get access to it. This quickly becomes akin to asking permission for things that the dog wants. If your dog offers Attention when they see something they want, most dog... for access to the toys and to play in general can be very helpful in managing drive. Rewarding with Action is a tactic that we can employ to help smooth out this issue.
