Thursday, January 28, 2010

tRicky T-Day!

Actually, we don't have any real tricks to share with you today. Lots of things in progress but nothing ready for primetime! We've been communicating with Marie from resqtails about focus and pivot training for rally/obedience - here's Dare playing the Watch Me game with Marie for instance - and so for this week's tricky t-day video, we decided to show you my extreme powers of focus - it just comes naturally to me and I doubt that it can really be taught! LOL!




Gotta zoom!

Ricky

16 comments:

Diana said...

OMG that was to funny. I had tears in my eyes from laughing so much. Diana

Sara said...

Boy Ricky, I wish my students could be that focused. Could you come and train them?

Dawn said...

You are a truly talented focused dog! Amazing ability to block out anything or anyone else but what you want. Are you sure you're not a teenager? Or a spouse?

Kapitein Haakje said...

TALENT!!!

oooh sanne is teaching us that tick with the beachtowl :D

kissslobbers
El'bow & Hauwii

Lian said...

Gosh! Ricky, you really have the power of focus!

Kathy Mocharnuk said...

THAT WAS SOOOOO CUTE! Ricky has EXCELLENT focus! GREAT video. I would love to see a video one day of some of your pivot training exercises-I would love to see what you are training and how.

Kathy Mocharnuk said...

OK I saw the video on the link of teaching the pivot-thanks for posting the link, I have been trying to do it with the perch with Cricket, and I was reading on the training levels where they use eye contact-but need to work on eye contact more before I would have a hope that would work (so many things on my training list, LOL), so we sure dont have much of a pivot yet, LOL. I still can not wait to see when Ricky learns pivoting.

Morganne said...

Thanks for the laugh! Now that is some serious focus!

Arran, Arthur and Mum said...

omg! You must teach me that!
hehe!
We has tried that but Mum always says leave, and when I has to leave something I don't dare even look at it! We gonna have to try it without leave and see what I do then.
~lickies, Ludo

Natasha said...

LOL! You're such a focused boy Ricky!!

Unknown said...

OMG! you're such a gifted focused boy! Amazing!

NAK and The Residents of The Khottage Now With KhattleDog! said...

Dang!

That's SOME fokhus!

Hugz&Khysses,
Khyra

Sam said...

Hi Ricky!

Don't be sorry for not stopping by sooner - we've actually been planning to make our way over here, too, since we see you on so many of our friends' agility/training/behavior blogs (our favorite subjects!)

As for the Look at That game.. I don't think I ever taught it to Marge formally. I tried using my voice to get her to look at something, by saying "Look at that man!" for example, but Marge wavered between being confused and/or more scared when I did that. So, nowadays, we kind of play a modified version.. where I wait for Marge to notice the stimulus on her own, and THEN click and treat. I imagine it accomplishes the same thing -- the only concern would be degrading the "watch me" behavior, but Marge's "watch me" is solid and practiced often so it's not something I have to worry about.

You say you have trouble with cars...I'm sure you know this, but stand as far away as possible -- is there a field bordering on a street, for example, where you can practice? Also, rather than watching the cars and rewarding for not reacting, you might try playing a game or something in the presence of cars to totally distract you at first (learning will take place subconsciously). If you're a tugger, you can play some tug games way back away from the cars and then gradually creep closer day after day.. if you're not a tugger (like Marge), tossing treats into the grass and making a game out of it is a good idea, too. Not all dogs do well with the classical approach of sitting at x distance from a stimulus and attempting desensitization.. some of you pups need other methods.

Hope this helps some! Stop back soon - we will! (especially since we see you have some AKC agility titles - we're going to just be starting out in AKC this April and we're nervous about competing in such a big organization!)

Sam and Marge

Marie said...

Oh man Ricky! That was so funny. You had me nearly in tears. Dare had a similar reaction to start with, so...here's what worked for us. I had to make a clucking, clickety kind of a noise with my mouth to get her to break the death stare on the treats. Mark even a glance away from the treats in the beginning and then start asking for more duration. I also would bring the treat up to my face once she looked at me and then treated her to reinforce that it was the looking at my face that earned the treat. She got the idea pretty quickly and I faded out having to make the clickety noise. Usually I start holding the treats out to the sides too, rather than close to them on the floor.

Morgan in Pittsburgh said...

Hey Ricky, mom is fallin on the floor laughing. you are too cute!It's like the cheese was talking to you. BOL!
your pal, Morgan

Unknown said...

Gosh - that's not focus, Ricky - that's hypnosis!! Hee! Hee!