One simple concept, properly applied could be used to make your dog stop and look at you when a door was opened or an open door was encountered,without prompting. It's dead simple and serves as the basis of jumping up on an object, getting off the couch, get in the car, and get out of the kitchen. Pretty cool, right?
The Threshold concept defines many important behaviors: On and Off, In and Out and is important to establishing a sense of place in dogs. Used with Attention and Targeting, moving dogs from place to place or on and off objects becomes a piece of cake.
Pawsitive Vybe is a weekly 1/2 hour dog training & lifestyle webseries on YouTube that seeks wider distribution and production support. It is self produced by the diarist and presented here as a public service to the woozle lovers of the dKos community. If you dig it, share it.
crossposted @ Pawsitive Vybe
Pay no attention to the little orange dust bunny... just look past it if you would.
The Threshold concept defines many important behaviors: On and Off, In and Out and is important to establishing a sense of place in dogs.
Surf by Segment:
0:52 - Building a Sequence with Sasha
3:18 - Show Intro
4:27 - Attention to the Threshold with Hops
5:41 - Common Thresholds
7:50 - Setting the Tone with Harry
11:32 - Sponsor Message: FitPaws
12:25 - Show Backer Shoutout
13:42 - Disc Management Jam with Kiva
16:39 - STARR and the Car - 3rd Time's a Charm
17:44 - Deju Vu at the Door
18:57 - Try This - Generalizing the Threshold
20:30 - A Dose of Classical Conditioning
21:32 - Finding Thresholds
23:04 - Closing Cuts & Credits
Leveraging Concepts
Now, you might think all of this is overkill,"Like why would I ever need to know this stuff let alone teach my dog about it?"
Well, thresholds are common occurrences in daily dog life. Odds are you have 10 of them, at least, in your house, with three or four of these evil thresholds negatively impacting your sanity and sense of being.
Crates, doorways, hallways, stairwells, front door, porch, out of the kitchen. Between the couch and chair? Thresholds exist just about everywhere. Mastery of the Threshold makes for the one of the coolest dogs of all: a dog who knows where to be.
Where he drones on and on about Context vs Concept...
No, I won't do it... Here's the skinny:
These Threshold behaviors are normally taught in context. The front door, the door to the bathroom and the door to the playing field, those are the most common thresholds. Handlers get this performance and then call it a day with the training. But the dog doesn't have a full picture of the Threshold as a concept and the dog cannot leverage it outside of the context of that situation - front door... bathroom door... playing field. So when they encounter a novel Threshold they have no idea what to do.
But if instead of focusing on getting out the door, if you work on teaching the dog how to navigate the Threshold and generalize it a bit you can tease out that concept and put it to use elsewhere to solve problems. (If you want more, try this: Performance is not Understanding... and maybe some of this: Contextual vs Conceptual Understanding in Dog Training)
In or Out? On or Off? It's a Threshold
If you are going to get up on something, at some point in time, you go from Off to On. Same thing with In and Out. The moment you go from off to on is the Threshold and somewhere, somehow, with some part of the body, it gets crossed. Those are our criteria for shaping btw: look at, approach,head over, 1 foot on/in, 2 foot, 3 foot 4... it's a pretty standard progression.
But there is a whole level of awareness, spatial and situational, that you can get by paying a little bit more attention to the Threshold as a concept and giving it some proper exercise.
In and Out and On and Off become extremely simple operations, especially when attached to Attention and Targeting. It's almost like your dogs start to handle themselves.
Doorways are Destinations, Not Staging Areas
Common understanding of doorways and dogs is that of a Staging Area. A door is just the beginning of the story, and it leads to somewhere new, the end. Many common Thresholds are very highly charged and the charge is always related to what's next? We like to reframe the understanding:
Doorways are Destinations
By putting value on both sides of the door, focusing on Attention and the crossing of the Threshold, and repeating your entrance into a situation, the entire nature of the door changes. The door is no longer a Staging Area to go outside, the door becomes a Destination in and of itself. A destination at which I stop and look at my handler and wait for his cue.
Don't be stingy here. Thresholds should be valuable on both sides. And the more reps the better. It is pretty cool if your dog hops out of the car on cue and whips around to give you eye contact, right?
Generalize, Generalize, Generalize
Of course the doors in and out of your home need to be worked, and on and off the furniture once in a while, surely count for something, but you really want to generalize and work the skill so you can stretch that Threshold concept out and give your dog a very deep and nuanced understanding of place in the environment... and a desire to hang out there.
Just a few extra minutes per day playing with this Threshold concept can make a huge difference in ease of team movement and quality of life.
Once you and your dog are exposed to the Threshold concept, you can't help but be impacted by it in terms of your training. It's critical to teaching so many skills. A little bit of focus on this while working on skills like jumping on a table, go to a mat and lie down, or go slow down the steps - just a little bit of focus can do wonders for performance and understanding.
Making Decisions All Day is Hard Work
Resist the urge to start cuing the behavior. You want the dog to see these situations and decide to offer Attention. Attention, the base level of communication becomes the go to behavior when the dog sees a situation or opportunity. Because you have generalized the behavior so well, gates, doors, hallways, spot, etc. everything is a potential situation and there's definitely opportunity...
Let your dog have the responsibility for making these decisions. Make that part of your dog's job. Play games with this Threshold or that one, keep it fresh and random. It will tire him out, I promise. Every day Fact of Dog kind of things:
- going outside
- moving from room to room
- kenneling up
- waiting your turn
- leave me alone - I'm cookin'
These common situations provide a ton of repetitions for training to stick, and provide plenty of stimulation, exercise even, if the handler just lets the dog make these decisions on a day to day basis.
Let Go and Let Dog, I guess...
Discussion in Comments Below
I'll do my best to answer any and all questions on the show, the Threshold concept,
Attention/Dismissal or
Targeting in the comments below. Don't be shy, the only silly questions are the ones not asked.