Blog Bite: Text From “That Was Easy #1” Video

Since the second video appears first, I wasn’t sure if everyone would get to see the text I just thought I’d share the text accompanying the “That Was Easy #1” Video in the blog. You can watch the Special Paws Channel on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/specialpawstraining. Here’s the text:

The “Easy Button” trick is lovingly dedicated to the memory of Alfonse. Special Dark’s version of the trick was inspired by trainer and chow fancier extraordinaire Layla Loveless, whose wonderful Alfie was the king of the easy button trick and spent many happy moments pressing it in response to the question “how was your homework?”

Notice that when I ask for the “high five” my hand is already up when I start to ask for it. With any behavior, it’s always best to make sure your dog can respond to both a visual and a verbal cue. This way no matter which you use in a given situation you dog will know how to respond. Normally if you’re still in the process of teaching the cue, you might choose to get the action reliable before you add the verbal cue. Remember the usual order is: verbal cue, pause, hand signal. Why? Because dogs will respond much faster to our body language than our words, it’s what they’re looking for. So if you give a hand signal while you’re saying something to your dog, your dog will usually hone in on the body language, and discard the words as extraneous information!  When you train a new verbal cue, your dog eventually learns that your new word predicts a particular hand signal that he already understands and that once he performs that hand signal there is usually a reward. Eventually your dog will hear the words and not wait for your hand signal and skip straight to the fastest route to the reward—performing the behavior you’re asking for! And voila, he’s learned his new task, now you’re ready to face your treats.

Do you think Special seems to be responding to the hand signal or the verbal cue when I ask him for the high five? Why would both of these signals be present together in that situation? Can you tell from this clip whether Special understands both the verbal and visual signal for the high five?

 In actuality, Special will give a high five for three signals: the visual signal alone and also for two different phrases! Why? It just sort of evolved as we continued working on new things with him. Much like over time, after he learned all the cues separately, I overlapped the verbal and visual cue for this particular behavior. He only needs one cue. But because after he’s learned both a visual and verbal one, I’m used to only giving verbal cues and by the nature of this trick I must make some sort of physical gesture towards him, my human brain has merged the two! And it took making this video for me to realize that!

The key is the overlap (if there is going to be an overlap) should only come after the dog has learned all the cues separately. My overlaps only occur during high fives and paws. Why is there even an overlap at all? Only because I love to talk to him! Remember, our dogs only need one cue– and they’ll focus on the easiest to understand and disregard the rest. It’s a reminder to always be aware of what you’re signaling to your dog. What you think you’re signaling may not always be what they are understanding!