Wanna see what it looks like to transfer a cue in real time?
In November’s newsletter, I featured an article about how to transfer a cue.
I’m on business travel and was browsing through my iPad video library and ran across this terrific, albeit short, video, I took when I was in England earlier this year.
It’s such a great example of exactly how to transfer a cue. (Transfer cue = changing the way you ask for a behavior.) It was timely, too, so I thought I’d take a break from my produced videos this week and show you some training done by a regular dog owner, in real time.
Our students in England were regular dog owners; they aren’t trainers or professional handlers. Several months ago, when I began the Dog Training 101 series, I asserted that dog training isn’t rocket science. It is definitely science, but it’s easy to learn the nuts and bolts and this video proves my point.
If you recall from the newsletter article, to transfer a cue, you give the new cue first, then the old cue
Click and treat when the dog gets it right. After several repetitions, begin to separate the new cue from the old cue by a second. When the dog gets it right, click and treat, of course.
When done correctly, the process can happen quite quickly. The video shows just how quickly you can transfer (change) a cue for your dog.
When you watch the video, you’ll hear two different clickers. We had several dogs and trainers in the room working on transferring cues. It’s a bit distracting, but it’s easier if you watch the woman more and listen to the clicks less. There are also a few conversations happening while I’m recording, so again, pay attention to just what the dog and the woman are doing (as opposed to trying to make sense of the audio).
What I love about this video is how quickly and easily this woman teaches her dog to sit when she holds up a piece of paper with “SIT” written on it, even thought he already knew (very reliably) the word.
These videos are great. Please keep them up. I have been reading through your blog and all the older entries. My service dog came to me trained and over the first few months a trainer came and helped us get oriented and fine tuned behavior to my needs. There have been big changes in my needs…I’m actually much better since I had heart surgery. Asher doesn’t need to do some of the things he did before, but I would like to teach him to do other things. When the trainer was coming I felt frustrated because even though they were committed to train Asher to my needs, I did not understand the process and didn’t feel very confident or knowledgable enough.
Thanks to your blog and links I am getting the full education on the training method and understand much better how to teach behaviors, clean up older ones that never quite were right and Asher seems happier because I know how to engage him much more and he is less bored and is learning fast.
I understand now that I have done the cue transfer without even know what I was doing…so he somehow taught me how he learned. Most of the verbal commands-sit,down, under, stay have been transferred to hand cues because Asher often goes to church with me and I would use hand signs with the whispered verbal cue…and now I just have to use hand cues. I am feeling much more confident than I did just a few days ago. I bought a clicker (I was always afraid to try it because I didn’t understand it…but wow…I know he was clicker trained when he was raised by his foster family….and his memory for it lit up as soon as I started using it.