Toby saying "I do! I do! I want more!"
I love teaching Toby, my service dog, new behaviors, it keeps his mind sharp. He also loves working with me to learn new things. Tricks are also nice for him to learn because some people are afraid of dogs and I encounter many at my church. I have Toby take a bow and they often seem a little less afraid and start asking questions, sometimes then they even work up to petting him when they see how well behaved he is after we've 'talked' several times. Any service dog is an advocate for all service dogs and their handlers (their handicapped person or their trainers) and I want Toby to be a good representative. I've even heard young people tell their parents, or vice versa "you are not supposed to touch a service dog unless their person says it's ok, it distracts them from their job" and I know they are either someone I Toby and I have worked with before, or someone else has.
When switching a dogs food, slow is better, because sometimes it disrupts their digestive system. So start by adding only a little to their food, adding more each day until they are totally switched over or you are on that dog food only (in the case where you are keeping them on it). Since I only have 4# and Toby is a big dog, I decided to use Science Diet Ideal Balance at training treats. First I needed to see what 'value' Ideal Balance might have. Treat have different value, some like maybe steak, or hamburger Toby will do just about anything for, that's really high value. Other's aren't very interesting to him, but he will eat if there's nothing else, that really low value. There is much that Toby isn't interested in at all at eating. I also wanted to do Ideal Balance as treats because my other dog can't eat chicken. His digestive system can't seem to handle it, and he's 18 years old, so I don't want to take any chances.
When teaching Toby, I 'shape' the outcome, slowly adding more and more until I have the total behavior I want. I don't use a clicker, as I have a muscle movement disorder and thus trouble with timing, so I 'mark' with my voice saying 'yes!', this tells him what he is doing right that moment, is what I'm looking for, so he tries various things until he knows exactly what that is.. As you can see shaping any behavior takes a while, and at first, one has to use higher value treats. Some things a dog will do with no or very low value treats, which is often what a behavior becomes after they get so they will do a behavior any situation (with more people around, distractions, being out in public, then with lots of noise and/or people, etc). Some behaviors require higher value for longer because it's something they don't normally do, or they don't like to do much. For instance, picking up my hair scrunchies has always been something Toby really enjoys, he has never needed anything more than my praise and a good scratch (which is another reward - it isn't always treats, he also likes to play as a reward.) However going potty in public, on command while on duty, is something he doesn't like to do, he takes his job seriously, so that took work with higher value treats for much longer.
To show how something might be shaped, I'll tell you about how he learned to bow. For some reason shaping the bow was something that was much harder than anything we've ever done. I got the treats out (that told him school was in session, figure out what to do to get the treat) I watched him, and when he looked down I said 'yes!' while he was still doing it, and he looked at me to get the treat. We kept that up until he understood that 'down' was something we were looking for, but yet now all the way down in a down position. We kept working on that until he figured out that looking down got the treat, while going into down position got a 'uh huh'. So then I began requiring his front end to be lower to get the treat, while his back end was still in the air. This took a long, long time for him to get. I would often try to get my foot under his back end to keep it up, but that was a challenge for a couple of reasons, firstly because I couldn't seem to control my body to get it under there fast enough to mark his butt in the air and also because of my movement disorder, he's used to moving out of the way of my body doing things, so he thought I was just having weird movements, so he would stop and move over and then lay down. We kept it up. To show how difficult this was, most times, I can shape a behavior and have it finished and be working on adding distractions and reliability in less than a week. This we worked on throughout the summer. Have you even learned something that you just couldn't seem to get and then suddenly it's like you get it and wonder why you never could? My movement disorder hit as an adult, so when I was a teenager, backwards skating was one of those things. So Toby finally figured out I was doing that to keep his back end up and I wanted his front end down and voila, he had it! We've continued to add distraction, longer time and reliability.
What we have been working on lately with Toby is teaching him various things in a 'begging' position, (a lot of times I use his other knowledge to teach him something, like a paws up to teach him to get something off of a table by name etc.) you know on their back haunches with their front legs up in the classic dog begging position, however, Toby is a big dog. We don't really do the 'begging' just the position of it, but he's been learning to go into that position to wave 'hi' and also to look like he's raising his paws like 'put 'em up!' This morning, I motioned for him to sit, then held the treat above his head, so he knows he's supposed to go into beg position, then I 'wave' at him, so we worked more on it until I could just wave at him, and he knew that was the prompt to sit on his back haunches and do his best to wave, or I make a motion like pointing a gun at him, he puts his paws high. We worked previously on giving high five or high ten on my hands (a kids favorite.) We are working on adding distractions to that one. So I gave him the first treat and he happily took it and chomped. This told me that finicky Toby liked the way it smelled and the fact he didn't spit it out said it had some value to him. So I asked him to sit up again, which he did, that told me that there is enough value to do it again. So far, Ideal Balance Chicken is a bit of a success! We practiced using the Ideal Balance as a treat until I could wave and he would sit up and try to wave, and we worked on high fives. I teach Toby to do the behaviors with either a motion or a command. I don't want to have to be speaking commands during something quiet, like church. So I worked on high fives with both a vocal command and a motion. He continued to happily chomp Science Diet Ideal Balance as treats! We'll try another training period tomorrow and that will tell me if he's still interested in Ideal Balance, and I will be able to add more into his diet. I also think I will play a game with them that he likes. I hide treats and he has to find them using his sense of smell. I'll have to put Mutt Lee in another room when we do that and be sure Toby gets all the treats. I pray that you do Ideal Balance in beef or lamb and rice.
