Shaping Success

We did another shaping session yesterday with clicking and treating for looking at the chair seat and moving a foot. It didn't get farther than that.

So today I thought about how I could set her up even more for success. I decided to rearrange so she could only access one side of the chair. That way she would be focused on that side and not running from one place to another. I used a stool on the one side, thinking that if she got onto it to get at the chair I could also shape the behavior that direction.

But Molly stayed at the accessible side of the chair. After lots of treats for looking and moving a foot, she pawed at a few treats. I clicked and treated a few treats for that.

Then she did it--paws on the chair up to support herself. I jackpotted. Then I clicked and treated several times for being on the chair.

Then I said "down," a command she knows for getting off the sofa, and treated her for getting off the chair.

Right afterwards, she was back on the chair again! I did another jackpot and lots of clicking and treating for being on the chair. I said down again. She hopped down and I treated.

We repeated several times until she'd been up on the chair about seven times and was going up right away after a down. She got lots of treats and praise.

When she was volunteering the behavior, I did start saying the cue, "paws up," when she was on the chair. I don't expect her to hop onto a chair on command, but I do want her to start associating the words with the act.

Once again Molly has made us very proud with her progress. She actually got a special dinner tonight. We were out running errands and got some liver for her. So she got cut up pieces of liver mixed with a little kibble. She was very happy.

More Shaping

In a second session tonight, I was clicking when Molly paid attention to the seat of the chair and moved a foot. Then suddenly she had her paws up on the chair. I jackpotted.

Then she hopped down. A few looks later, she did it again. Another jackpot. Then we quit for the night.

I'm so proud of her!

Shaping a New Behavior

I have a new thing I want to teach Molly. Bending down to put her harness on her isn't comfortable for me, so I want to teach her to put her paws up on a chair to make it easier for me to put it on her. It is going to take a while to train and I'm not expecting her to be doing it reliably soon, but we have to start somewhere.

First, we need a chair and somewhere to train. I picked the living room because we train most often there. This one seemed like a good choice because it is light and handy. It also usually has a cushion on the seat, so if her nails scratch it a bit in training, no one will notice.

I took the cushion off. If I had left it on, Molly might start interacting with it instead. I thought it better to take a pure item.

You may notice the cable wrap on the chair legs. This chair used to be in the kitchen and we wrapped chair legs to prevent chewing when Molly was a puppy. We've never bothered to take it off.

I used a variety of treats. I had some shrimp left from a failed watch session earlier that I wanted to use. I'd mixed some kibble in the make them taste better. She wasn't eating the kibble reliably though. Then I also used some pieces of a sample bag of another kibble that we'd gotten. Mixing it up kept her guessing and interested in training--a little anyway.


At first Molly wasn't sure what to do and she wandered around a bit. So I put her leash on to keep her more restricted to the area around the chair. Then I sat and wait for behaviors to build on.

Shaping builds a behavior very slowly based on things the dog volunteers. If I wanted to, I could have held a treat up over the chair and lured her to climb on it, but I want to work on my shaping skills.

So when she lay down like this and didn't know what to do and kept looking out the window, I started clicking and treating for the slightest look closer to the chair. I needed her to learn that today things revolve around the chair. It took a while, but I did get her looking at the chair. Then she got a bit more interested and got up again.

So once she was up and moving around, I started clicking and treating for looking at the chair and being near the chair. This got her really doing. She'd look at the chair and I would click and treat. She even started touching the chair with her body sometimes and I clicked and treated that. She had a few close sniffs that were almost nose bops. I clicked those, too.

At one point she sniffed standing up with her head over the seat. I clicked and treated. After she'd done it a few times, I started clicking and treating only for interaction with the seat. My goal eventually is to get her higher with paws on seat.

After lots of clicking and treating for stretching herself over the seat, we quit for the day. It was a good session, probably about 10 minutes. I don't want to overdo it too much. We'll see how it goes next time.