FE420: Bye, Bye Cookie: Hello Delayed Reinforcement!

4-1A: Sequencing with Rewards at a Distance (Flow)

Goal of the Exercise

This exercise combines two of the topics we've been discussing in this class:

1. Not rewarding every behavior and
2. Getting rewards off our body. 

Really this is just the week 3 lecture on "more work" but using the reward at a distance skills instead of in your pocket!

For this lecture, we are going to work on only well-known behaviors. Behaviors that if you cue it, you know the dog can do it and can do it well.  At that point, they don't NEED a reward for every rep. These are well known behaviors after all. But we also can't just go cold turkey and never reward it again.  We need to gradually extend work and teach the dog that they can do it without the reward on our body.

This lecture will continue to look at the concepts of flow introduced in lecture 3-3B. The next lecture will look at more formality with pauses and distinct exercises for an obedience focus. I start with this flow lecture first as it's typically easier for most dogs!  

There is a specific section on agility in this lecture as agility is all about flow!

Prerequisite:

Before starting this lecture your dog should be leaving the reward you set down and going with you fairly easily as you move away from the reward. (lecture 3-1)

And should have some exposure to doing more than one behavior before getting a reward. (lecture 3-3A and 3-3B flow section.)

Flow Sessions with Rewards at a Distance (Obedience)

Keep working on having your dog watch you set their reward down and then move slightly away from it in order to do some simple work. 

Your goal will be to increase the number of behaviors before the reward and gently push at their boundary. Watch closely for signs of frustration and make sure to reward the hard vs easy reps differently too! Easy might just mean a send to the dish. While hard might mean a dish send + 3 cookie tosses! Or maybe easy = kibble, and hard= cheese!  

Remember to mix in plenty of easy reps along with your harder ones!  Aim for at least a 2:1 ratio of two easy reps for every hard one!  

Over time, what sequences/behaviors qualify as "hard" should start to change.  Just because X+Y+Z felt hard one week, that doesn't mean it's going to be hard this week.   Make sure to evaluate on a regular basis what actually feels difficult vs what is just a habit to reward. 

Try to focus on flowing smoothly from one exercise to another without a lot of pauses. Think of using cone sends, heeling, going through your legs, etc to keep your dog moving and not having as many obvious places where the dog starts to think about the lack of cookie. 

Most of your work at this point should be moving AWAY from the reward, and giving the cue to the dish when your back is still to it!  You don't want your turn towards the dish to be the cue to go to the dish or you're digging a hole for future weeks!

I love this video with Jo working on a few cues before the reward. The jump easily gets Jo moving away from the dish and flows well to the stationary work at the end. 

Here Marina is working on adding some excitement with running from the dish with mom and working. The first rep show is going over a jump and a cone, and then she moves on to some heeling and a cone send!  She keeps it very fast paced and very little duration of work while still accomplishing the goal of adding in more work!

Agility

In agility, keep working on mixing up how many obstacles you're doing.  Most of your work at this point should be moving AWAY from the reward, and giving the cue to the dish when your back is still to it! Don't make the mistake of always moving towards the reward as you're cuing it or the dog will start anticipating that motion towards the reward= go!

Working with the toy on the ground was (still working on!) a really difficult choice for Ginny even with a solid foundation of doing it in obedience for her zen bowl and the toy.  These are 2 short sessions working on this skill.  She's slow and thinking lots!!! The height of the jump isn't the primary issue, but I still choose to lower it to make it easier for her to choose to the jump when her brain hurts.

And this video with Ginny is after several weeks of work on this skill. I show a few longer sequences before cuing her toy reward, mixed up with some shorter 3 obstacle reps.  This is after quite a bit of work on running with her toy at a distance, it's ok if you're not ready for this much work!  Note that in the 2nd clip and very last clip she has to do a turn somewhat near the reward. Skip that if your dog isn't ready!  We will discuss that more in a later lecture.

Homework Recap:

1. Review the step of putting the reward down and moving away from the reward. Get eye contact, cue the reward.

2. Work on moving away from the reward, cuing a simple behavior, then cuing the reward.  Make sure the reward cue is primarily given when the dog's back is to the reward!  Cue the dish, THEN turn towards it. 

3. Mix up the number of cues you ask for before cuing the reward.  Mix up a minimum of two easy reps for every hard rep!!  Remember that "flow" can make it easier. 

• Reward differently on easy vs hard reps!