Still learning

Sometimes, moving on to a new "trick" or "behavior" needs a little bit of a jump start. 

We have a folding two step stool that we had bought for Max to be able to more easily get in & out of the car.  He never accepted it.  When he needed it, after his spleen was removed and he was recovering from major abdominal surgery and was very weak, he would jump over it or around it rather than use it.  So, we thought it would be good to teach Marley to use it now so it's old hat when he gets old (or for any other reason) needs to use it.  It can also be built on to do other things later.

I mentioned it to Rebecca in our class.  I told her it was not going well.  He'd do anything to avoid stepping on it.  He'd press forward as far as he could, go around, whine, bark, etc.  She said she'd taught her dog "Target" plus another one, "Touch" so she could shape other behaviors.   We'd already used "Touch" to mean touch-your-nose-to-my-open-hand-to-get-the-food-in-my-closed-hand  I didn't want to confuse him.  That involved touching with his nose; I wanted to build on touching with a paw.  Hmmm. 

Ah-HAH!  Build on "High 5" (touch-your-paw-to-my-held-up-hand).  I got out a foam craft circle.  Since we'd built from Touch to Target when Rebecca introduced "Target" in class, I had him "target" a couple of times, then had him High 5.  Then I held the foam circle against my raised hand and told him to High 5.  I moved it close to the stool.  Then I put the circle on the bottom step of the stool.  Bingo!  I quit telling him to High 5.  He was getting the idea and I would be able to switch him to a new word as the new behavior solidified.  He got pretty good about slapping a paw on that circle. 

On the second day I introduced the word Step and moved the circle to various places on the floor and both steps of the stool.  Success!

Sometimes the hardest part of starting a new behavior is going to be finding the small thing to start with so we can build on it.