In the week and a half that I've had Lilli, I've watched her confidence grow so much. She's always been a very spunky dog that will "sit pretty" to get anything she wants, but within the last couple of days I have really seen another side of her. She is really so much more than the "one trick wonder" dog.
We have been working on walking through a hula hoop. She loves squeaky toys, so I thought it would be fun just to throw it through the hoop to see if she would go through to get it. She would walk through it to get to the toy and then quickly realized she could just as easily go around the hoop to get to the toy. Great little problem solver :)
I then began to to shape her going through the hoop so we would have a solid behavior. Shaping means that you reward small approximations to the overall behavior. With the hoop, a look in the direction of the hoop received a reward. Then a paw in the right direction received the reward. She caught on quickly and was soon walking through without too many click/treats.
I was able to document the progress. You will see that I started to add the cue words "go through" after a couple of passes. She was doing so well, that I wanted to add the extra direction of "yes, this is what I want you do to and these are the words that will let you know when I want you to do it."
I was even able to ask her to do other behaviors she knows to make sure that going through the hoop only happens when I ask.
Eventually, we will raise the hoop higher so that she will be jumping, but tonight's session was a great step forward!
Here is a little video of our training session. Shaping is a great tool for training because it builds confidence and allows your dog to think for themselves and make the right choices!
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