This element is the ‘merged behaviour’ and the requirement reads:

5.  Merge at least 3 behaviours that occur simultaneously into one new behaviour.

Essentially, this means:  3 separate behaviours, each able to be cued independently, which are then merged and performed simultaneously to a new cue.

I’ve found it incredibly hard to think of 3 things which Slate can do simultaneously (!).  I keep beginning to train something and then realising it just doesn’t meet the criterion and scrapping it.  For example, I began thinking she could ‘Speak’ (bark) whilst in a Down… but that’s only 2 behaviours.  And, if she’s speaking, she can’t also be holding something in her mouth.  And if she moves to another position, she will leave the Down and isn’t then doing 3 things simultaneously.

So we’ve made little progress on this one so far and we really need to get a move on:  After this, there’s just the free-shaping to do, and then we’re done with CAP3.

My next idea is to include some targeting, so she can target a particular spot, perform some behaviour on the target, and either speak or hold something in her mouth.  I just need to think about the details.

For an example of someone else’s submission for this criterion, take a look here.  (For those subscribed by email, check out this link to watch it.)

With Slate, I’ve been working on directions, extending the Walking Baseball drill over a greater distance.

I’ve also been teaching her ‘Back’ to only the verbal word – no hand signal.  Why?

Often in Open working tests, she is working out of sight in dense cover.  Many times, I know she needs to go back more, but once I’ve stopped her, she can’t see me.  It is then hard to cast her anywhere.  So I figured that teaching her ‘Back’ to the word alone would enable me to push her back when in dense cover.

Dogs learn body language far more easily than words, and whenever possible will use our body language cues rather than anything verbal.  This was a practical exercise in that fact:  All her life, I’ve said ‘Back’ whilst giving the ‘Back’ cast, but when I removed the hand signal and only said ‘Back’, she at first had no idea which direction I wanted – she had been cuing entirely off the hand signal and I could well have been saying ‘bananas’ for 7 years, as far as she knew.

At the moment I’m working on it within the Walking Baseball drill, saying ‘Back’ rather than giving the Back cast.  Once it’s secure 100% like that, I’ll try to set up situations where she’s sat out of my sight and there are also dummy options Left and Right.

Meanwhile, Adam has been working with Grey using about 10 small disc shaped dummies:

He hides them over a slowly widening area, at a progressively further distance from him.  And then sends Grey to retrieve them.  This is a sort of spaniel-esque set-up and it was my final response to our previous problems with Grey, training handling.  The thinking behind it is that, if a dog can’t be taught to handle, the next best thing is to train persistency in hunting up an entire area with confidence, drive and determination.

The disc shaped dummies are great because they lie flat in light cover and are much harder for her to see, encouraging her to use her nose.

It’s a little early yet to know if this approach is going to work, but so far it’s looking promising.

We really should get on with some water work training, but the weather has just been so miserable recently.

The treats were a hit.  They are too expensive to use on a daily basis but, when we’re travelling and can’t store fresh food, these are a really good and healthy alternative.  (The K9 Natural Treats are another option.)

However, the Ziwipeak Oral Healthcare chews, I really would not recommend.

I got the dogs a ‘Deer Hoofer’ and a ‘Deer Shank’ each.  Grey was largely ok with them both, since she is not a greatly destructive dog with chews:  She is happy just to chew slowly and to take her time in a spaced-out state of chewing-bliss.  (You know, the look of contentment and satisfaction which only comes with chewing something.)

Slate, on the other hand…  Slate is very destructive and approaches every treat or chew toy as a challenge to her destructive capacities.

She broke off a shard from the ‘Deer Shank’, which I had to remove.  Then, the morning after eating it, before her breakfast, she threw up bile and a small sharp splinter of the bone.  Once this came out, there was no more throwing up.  (Which is what led me to believe it was the cause.)

A week later, I gave them both the ‘Deer Hoofer’.  Again, this rapidly got split up by Slate into the hoof part – which she ate – and a section of bone.

I was unsure how to tackle the bone aspect of these chews:  Ziwipeak (food, bones and treats) is air-dried raw.  So should air-dried bones be treated as cooked or as raw?

As everyone knows, dogs shouldn’t have cooked bones – so I reasoned I should treat this as a raw bone.  After all, Ziwipeak are selling them and their market is folk who want to feed BARF, but can’t for various reasons.

So I concluded that I should chill out about these bones:  Slate would manage them, just as dogs manage raw bones and it wouldn’t be an issue.  I decided not to rush in and take away every small bit which broke off.  After all, I thought, Ziwipeak would know that their bones would behave like this and there were no cautions or warnings on the packaging.

I decided to watch how Slate would approach these bits:  Perhaps she knew not to swallow them and would chew them smaller.  I told myself that I should have faith and trust her ability to eat bones, BARF style.

In this way, Slate came to eat (I think) a pretty big chunk of bone – the size of a hazelnut, perhaps.  Since then, she has attempted to throw up in the mornings – but nothing has come out besides a bit of bile.  I reckon this chunk of bone is too big to be chucked up.  (And perhaps it’s good that it isn’t chucked up – it might be a choking hazard.)

She is eating normally and her poos are normal, so there doesn’t appear to be a blockage (yet).

But I do regret giving her this bone.  And our dogs won’t be getting any more.

So, in conclusion…  I don’t recommend the Ziwipeak Oral Health chews, for sure.

The SRHP Club test seems to have relocated to Scotland, whilst GSPC South West in Hampshire have only given 2 weeks notice of their upcoming test next weekend.  As I’ll be teaching a class then, I can’t make it.

Looking at the list of dates and locations, I think we’ll make it to only 3 this year.

But Grisha Stewart her very self has commented on my recent blog post about functional rewards.  (That is Grisha Stewart, as in:  Behavioural Adjustment Training Grisha Stewart.)

And she has cross-posted it to Facebook and Twitter, resulting in hundreds of hits for this blog.  Hoorah.

The blog’s most popular posts, with many hundreds of hits each, are now (drum roll):

1. Facts about SRHPs in the UK
2. Blue Weimaraners
3. Positive-only gundog work:  prevention, repetition & distraction management
4. functional rewards in gundog work

So, you can see that I have been strongly reinforced for writing about controversial topics in both the breeds I’m involved with.  And also for reward-based gundog training.

Although it has to be said that, despite many hundreds of people seemingly reading the blue Weimaraner post, no one’s opinion seems to have changed if discussions on Facebook are anything to go by.  And nothing much is happening for the health of SRHPs, seeing that they still don’t even have ANY recommendations for the Accredited Breeder scheme (ie hip-scoring).

So, hundreds are reading.  But nothing is happening.

So stats aren’t everything.

Conclusion:  It is not that her hair used to be in her eyes, since she’s still doing it and yet she can see.  (Damn.  And yet.  It saves me kicking myself.  It would be pretty stupid if it were her hair, right?)

I could attempt to make the excuse that she is in season, except I don’t think it’s this either.  I don’t like to make excuses:  These things are almost always about the dog just not understanding and/or the trainer failing to make it understandable.  Which is why I’ve persisted for so long and gone back to basics on it so many times.  But I’ve got to say that I’m stumped on this one.

It raises interesting questions:  Are all dogs/breeds equally capable of handling?  Are some dogs/breeds more handler-able than others?  Is failure always trainer-error?  Is confidence (or lack of it) inheritable?

These casts are not that far (around 100 yards); they have been taught progressively using white poles and a pile of white dummies – they are not difficult.  Slate has been running them perfectly every day (waiting for Grey to catch up).

This is supposed to be only the preliminary part of the casting exercise.  What it’s really supposed to be about is lining the dog, stopping her halfway to a pile and then recasting to another pile.  However, I never reach that point with Grey because she is never running the lines fluently enough to risk stopping her.  (Stopping a dog has the side-effect of increasing no-goes for many dogs, anyway, so you need to make sure the dog is confident on the lines before stopping and casting…).

So I’ve decided to go for the option I thought of last year, after the debacle at the SRHP working test.

In short:  Much less focus on handling, and much more focus on training her to keep hunting an area up until she finds something.  So, it’s about persistence, endurance and perseverance.

This is much more along the lines of how HPRs are trained on the continent and in the US (where they are not trained to take casts).  In UK HPR circles, this was the way things used to be done until things became influenced by retrievers.  Even now, some judges put more emphasis on ‘independence’ and the dog taking the initiative, whilst others like to see a dog taking casts and being handled about.

If I can get Grey to do something like the NAVHDA duck search (in or out of water!) and to persevere and hunt up an area well… that is probably the next best thing to having her as a handling dog.  It is a hell of a lot better than ending up with an insecure mess which won’t go or stops herself because she’s not sure.  We won’t be able to do complicated set-ups involving the retrieval of dummies in certain orders and that kind of thing, but we should get by even on difficult retrieves with one dummy.

To achieve this, we’re going to put out around half a dozen dummies to help her be sure to find one.  We won’t line her up.  Then we’ll work on encouraging her to hunt harder, for longer – and wider.  It is a bit spaniel-esque, only over a larger area…

Feel better now we have an agenda and something to work on, instead of this stagnation and lack of progress.

It’s called Behavioural Adjustment Training, or BAT for short, and it was developed by the US trainer and behaviourist Grisha Stewart.

In BAT, the dog – which is usually fear-aggressive – is rewarded for displaying any behaviour besides aggression.  These other behaviours might be things like sniffing the floor, scratching, turning away from the feared thing and so on.  Many of these behaviours communicate mild stress, and the dog learns that communicating this mild stress is enough to avoid the scary thing – escalating to mad barking and lunging is not necessary.

Crucially, the reward used in BAT is not a treat or a toy, but is movement away from the scary object or dog.  That is:  The dog learns that if he does anything other than be aggressive, he gets to put distance between himself and the scary thing.  It is crucial that the dog is worked just below the threshold for being aggressive, to avoid aggressive displays from being reinforced (by removal from scary thing).

Over time, the dog learns from this that he is in control:  If he is scared, he need only behave in non-aggressive ways, and it leads to him being removed from the situation.  This feeling of being in control helps him to feel safer and more confident.

Grisha Stewart has coined the term ‘functional rewards‘ to refer to these rewards in the environment – the kind of thing which I’ve called ‘environmental rewards‘.  She defines functional rewards as:

If a behaviour is done to achieve a particular consequence, that consequence is a functional reward for the behaviour.  Dogs do what works, i.e., dogs do whatever best earns a functional reward.  With BAT, we look for the functional reward of the animal’s reactivity (“real life” consequence that reinforces the behaviour) and use that to reinforce behaviours that are more appealing to people. (p202:  Behaviour Adjustment Training by Grisha Stewart)

Here is a short video demonstrating basic BAT:

What BAT makes use of – in functional rewards – are essential to reward-based gundog training.  For example:  What are the functional rewards in gundog work?  What are the consequences to a dog’s behaviour which can be manipulated to achieve outcomes we want?  What are the rewards which are not treats and toys, but are present in the environment?

Take, for example, the method of steadying up young pups which is used by Perfection Kennels and illustrated on their DVD ‘The Perfect Start’.  I have looked for a video clip to show you the method, but can’t find one – so you’ll have to put up with me describing it instead, since I have both The Perfect Start and The Perfect Finish DVDs.

After some preparatory stages which I won’t outline here, a bird is placed in a remote-controlled bird launcher.  The dog or pup is allowed to approach the launcher and, as soon as the dog scents the bird, the bird is released.  That is:  There is no waiting for a point, before launching – as soon as the handler sees the dog has scented something, the bird is released.

As a result, the dog learns that, if he wants the bird to stay there and not to fly off – he had better just freeze and not keep approaching, when he scents the bird.  Otherwise, if he moves, the bird is launched (scared off by him, he thinks) and he ‘loses’ it.

After enough repetitions of this, and once the dog is reliable, the handler can even begin to walk forwards from the dog – as if to flush the bird.  (As is done in North America – in the UK the dog flushes the bird.)  Again, if the dog moves once the handler starts walking about, the bird is launched and the dog ‘loses’ it.

End result:  As seen on the video, is a staunchly pointing dog which holds the point steady, whilst the handler kicks up a bird.  And no harsh methods have been used – no e-collar, no check-chain jerks…

The ‘functional reward’ here, is the positive reinforcement of standing there, smelling game scent.  This is not a treat.  It is not a toy.  It is not in the handler’s pocket.  It is a trainer, using a reward in the environment, through manipulation of that environment, to reward the behaviour he likes.  The negative punishment for moving, is the loss of the bird.

For anyone wanting to use reward-based training methods with gundogs, it’s really important to be able to manipulate what I call ‘environmental rewards’ and what Grisha Stewart calls ‘functional rewards’.  In gundog work, rewards are not just treats in your pocket and toys.

It’s important to say that the Perfection Kennels methods do later involve e-collars and check-chains – the methods are by no means entirely reward-based training methods.  But this one very significant part of their system is entirely reward based, and works through the application and removal of rewards.  As such, there is a great deal to be learnt here, if you want to use reward-based training methods with any pointing dog.

As mentioned before regarding US retriever drills:  Don’t reinvent the wheel or throw the baby out with the bathwater – learn about traditional methods or methods from non-reward-based trainers and see what you can salvage which is of use.