Fenzi Dog Sports Academy - BH250: Creativity with Cue Concepts

Course Details

Have you ever wondered how you can use cues to improve your dog's performance? Or why your dog inconsistently responds to a cue you give? Have you suspected that she's actually responding to a different cue than the one you think you're giving? Are you sure she really understands your verbal cues?

In this class, we'll address all of these questions, and more! We will discuss exactly what a cue is, the different forms cues can take, and how to find out which ones make the most sense to your dog. You will learn the fastest and easiest way to add cues to behaviors, how to train several cues for the same action, and how to change cues. You'll discover the secrets to stimulus control (that elusive ability to get control over a cue so that your dog only does the behavior when you ask for it) and latency (the speed at which your dog responds to you).

Not feeling creative? Creativity can be learned! Throughout the class, we'll be looking at the many ways we can improve the variety of imaginative new ideas for behaviors our dogs can do.

We'll also play with some fun advanced concepts, like "teaching with opposites" in order to proof a cue, using cues as reinforcers, how chaining and back chaining work, and the concept of "adduction" (adding two behaviors together) in order to teach really cool combination tricks.

In this class you can choose to improve response to cues for behaviors from almost any sport or combination of sports: obedience, rally, rally FREE, agility, tricks for therapy dogs, parkour, freestyle and others!

Registration

There are no scheduled sessions for this class at this time. We update our schedule frequently, so please subscribe to our mailing list for notifications.

Registration will begin at 9:00 AM Pacific Time.

For answers to commonly asked questions see our FAQ page.

Enrollment limits: Gold: 10 students, Silver: 15 students, Bronze: unlimited.

Silver level for this class is offered as "Working Silver". In addition to asking GENERAL clarification questions about the class lecture materials, silver students will now have the opportunity to submit two short videos, one minute each, for critique and review. You may submit two questions. Each question MUST have a one minute video attached so the instructor can actually answer a question that they can see. The question must relate to a topic in the class and the video must be a demo of the question. Please see the discussion forum for a detailed explanation - feel free to sign up at bronze, read the explanation, and then come back here to upgrade to silver if that interests you, and if space is available.

If you are interested in a bronze level subscription, you can sign up at any time during the registration period.

Syllabus

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Cue syllabus

Week 1
Lectures:

What are cues?

Types of Cues. Examples of each.

Which type wins?

Choosing Cues. Conditioning cues.

Examples of cues used with special needs dogs (deaf, blind)

Discrimination in Dogs

When and How to Add a Cue to a Behavior

Changing cues from one to another
Train several different cues to one behaviour

Adding a New Cue to an Old Behavior

How do you Know that the Dog 'Knows' a Cue?

Can I ever Stop Using the Cue?

Proofing a Cue

Practical: Make a list of all behaviors your dog knows

Test to see if your dog knows the cues you think she does.

Choose 2 behaviors to give an object cue and train it.

Optional Experiment: Checking to see how tuned into our body language our dog is

Week 2
Lecture: Poisoned Cues.

What is a Prompt?

Latency of a Behavior

Speed of a Behavior

What is a Concept and How Does it apply to Cues?

Testing your cues: How do you know your dog really knows them?

Creating subtle cues for performing/incorporating them unobtrusively

Practical:

Improve latency of 2 behaviors

Fade an obvious cue into a more subtle one

Week 3

Lecture: Teaching with Opposites

Behaviors that Use Environmental Cues

Practical: Choose one set of behaviors and use them to train the cues.

Week 4

Lecture:

Testing to See if Your Dog Really does know a Cue

Stimulus Control, The 4 tests for Stimulus Control.

Match to Sample

Practical: Choose three behaviors and put them through all 4 tests for stimulus control

Train a dog 2 (or 3) different behaviors with the same environmental cue (object) but different verbal cue

Week 5

Lecture: Chaining and Back Chaining

Useful Tips

Patterning

Premack Principle

Anticipation, good or bad?

Identifying chains in dog sports and life

Practical: Choose 4 behaviors from any dog sport, trick, or service task and train them in a series.

Choose 4 more and back chain them together.

Week 6

Lecture: Blending Behaviors to Create More Interesting/Challenging Behaviors (Adduction)
AND

THEN (An Advanced Skill!)

What is Creativity?

How to Develop More Creativity with dog behaviors

Practical:
Brainstorm with the group to generate ideas for new behaviors to teach your dog by blending.

Choose two pairs of two behaviors that you want to blend and train your dog to blend using AND. Use your newly learned creative techniques.

Choose one pair of behaviours that you want to blend using THEN. Apply your newly learned creative techniques.

Prerequisites & Supplies

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Prerequisites: Dog must be able to perform at least 12 different behaviors. Can be basic ones (such as sit, down, nose touch), tricks, advanced behaviors from any sport, or any combination.

Equipment: Whatever objects or obstacles you need for your dog to be able to perform the behaviors.

Sample Lecture

Lecture 9 Minimizing Cues

Look back at your list of cues. Are there any cues that you would like to see minimized? That means make them less obvious to a viewer. Since dogs are discriminators, they can do very well with responding to tiny cues. If a behavior has a long history of being cued by an obvious cue, it may take a little longer to minimize it.

For verbal cues, you can decrease the volume, even whisper.

You can minimize a hand cue by morphing it into a finger cue, a body movement can be made more subtle by lessening the degree, or changed by putting emphasis on a movement you are already doing. An example: using a slight bend of a knee as a cue for the leg weave.

An environmental cue can be just a few representative objects that are found in the larger environment. An example for this is using 2 ring gates with a space between and a table nearby to represent the larger trial arena. What other ways can you minimize cues?

Have you ever heard of Clever Hans Effect?

Clever Hans was a horse that counted with his foot. The owner thought the horse could do math. He could add, subtract, multiply, do decimals etc. After several years, what was discovered was that Hans was actually watching his owner and anyone else for subtle cues to tell him to stop tapping his foot. The end of the person’s question was the cue to start tapping. If the person knew the answer, Hans was always correct. If they didn’t know the answer, he was not. They found that he was watching them for some subtle cue to tell him to stop tapping. By putting a visual barrier between the horse and person who was asking the question, the horse could not answer the question correctly. This was because he could not see the end cue he was given to stop tapping. In this case, he learned many different subtle cues such as people holding their breath, raising eyebrows, smiling, pushing out their chin etc that were all unconscious behaviors on the part of the person who knew the answer.

Cues can be very subtle!
Our eye focus, movement, and direction can be a cue that directs our dog’s behavior. Making eye contact with a dog’s back end can control it. The dog will swing their back end into heel position and back out again in both directions. No cue is given other than you looking at her back end and moving your eyes in the desired direction.

A sidestep can be taught this way by having the dog in a front position, looking at the dog’s rear end and you taking a step to the side. The cue here is a combination of a side step and handler looking at her back end. Holding your breath or even just breathing shallowly can be a cue for a dog to stop or start a behavior as we saw with Clever Hans. Service dogs pick up on cues that are imperceptible to humans to alert to oncoming anxiety attacks, breathing issues (asthma etc). We don’t even know what they pick up when alerting to seizures. Is it a scent? A subtle body movement? Eye movements? We don’t yet know. Some dogs can predict seizures up to 45 minutes before they occur. They are detecting something but we don’t yet what.

Interestingly, the “loudness” or size of a cue doesn’t affect a behavior.
A shouted ‘sit' gets the same sit as a whispered one, if the dog knows that cue. The same applies to a shouted or whispered recall (as long as the dog can detect it at a distance). A bigger circle motion of the hand doesn’t get a wider spin-unless the dog has been taught that is what a larger circle means.

Did you know that your dog will start paying more attention once you minimize your cues? Just like when someone talks too loud all the time, and we start to ignore them, dogs do the same. By minimizing your cues or at least varying their 'loudness', your dog will start to pay more attention.

Test Your Knowledge:

In agility, the orientation of the handler’s shoulders and resulting direction of travel determine the obstacles the dog takes.

Many agility instructors will have intermediate students run a course with no verbal cues or arm movements, yet the dogs are usually 80% or better in taking the correct obstacles. This is because they are looking for the direction the shoulders are oriented to and follow that direction. If the handler turns too soon, the dog will not take the jump.

Here’s an interesting example that shows how the direction of handler’s movement is a cue to the dog. Arm signals are also used. The timing of the cue is critical when the obstacles involve a change of direction or a choice or more than one obstacle. This video breaks down the timing of the cues as well as you can see the low latency, high speed and precision of behaviors from the dog.

Video shared with permission.

If you really want to have your dog pay attention to you and impress people, try minimizing our cues. Onlookers will have a tough time figuring out how your dog knew what to do! LOL!

Homework:
Think of the different sports or activities you do with your dog. Think about how you deliver your cues.Which ones do you exaggerate when communicating with your dog?

Choose one sport and make a list of at least 3 cues that you want to minimize. Think about how the sound and visual environment might affect the degree that you minimize each one.

Make a plan of the steps you will use to minimize each of the 3 cues and share that on your gold or silver thread. Once Donna has a look at it, go for it!

Testimonials & Reviews

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A SAMPLING OF WHAT PRIOR STUDENTS HAVE SAID ABOUT THIS COURSE ...

Donna's lessons/lectures and videos provided extremely useful, clear and detailed information. She gave us background theory and practical approaches to cues. I will continue to refer to the materials from this class for a long time to come. I truly cannot believe how much I learned from this course.

A very strong community formed in Donna's Cue class. Perhaps it is partly due to the evolution of the Fenzi Academy as we get to know each other in various classes. It most certainly though is largely due to Donna's very personal engagement and connection in the class. Her lectures are filled with detail and numerous excellent videos to guide each stage of the process. We learned to identify what cues our dogs actually know. We found that sometimes they were responding to body movement, not the verbal cue we thought they knew. We learned to get the behavior the way we want it with low latency (speed) and stimulus control before adding the cue. Donna encouraged each of us to stay at our own level and not move ahead until we were ready.

Donna has a way of presenting complex information in a manner that is easy to understand. She broadens the topic from "this is for competition" to "this is for life" which I really appreciate. She mixes very practical methods with more academic methods. This was a fabulous class that I would not hesitate to recommend to anyone who would like to improve their use of cues.

I highly recommend this class for anyone interested in a deeper understanding of cues and what they mean to our dogs. Donna Hill is an excellent instructor who prepares great lectures and gives lots of prompt feedback on assignments. I feel this class was well worth my time. I will be working on, and studying, the concepts learned in this class for as long as I am working with dogs. Katheleen C.

This is what I wrote in a thread that Donna started for our last week of class and would like to share it here as well since it sums up my thoughts on this class. ~ "This has been such a fabulous class and I'm sorry that it is nearing the end. Donna, you are an exceptional teacher! You provided us with excellent lecture materials and followed it up with great guidance and suggestions as we worked through the assignments. Buffy and I have had lots of fun and we both have learned so much. As we continue on our training journey I will work hard, and use what I have learned through this class, to maintain existing behaviors and teach new behaviors so that we always strive to get better stimulus control, low latency, and speed." Brenda W.

Everyone who wants to add depth to their dog training should take this class. It truly makes you understand how important it is plan your training and execute your cues carefully. It also makes you even more aware of how smart our great canine companions are - even when our communication is boggled at best, they somehow figure out what we are trying to communicate. I cannot say enough good things about this course and the instructor.This testimonial is to Donna. It is apparent in her teaching that she is well educated and well versed in this topic and that she has applied her knowledge in a practice. She also has good teaching skills. Diane S.

The intellectual conversations taking place between students and instructor was invigorating and inspired me play along at home even though I was a bronze participant. Stacey M.

Donna Hill has an innate curiosity about dog behavior in general and a keen eye when it comes to seeing communication issues that the trainer might miss. While the apparent content of this course is a review of concepts that the participant may well be aware of, it's something else to be held accountable for applying them in the training process. Beyond the homework, the discussions led into many interesting areas. Judith S