Category: Shaping

Crate Expectations Part 1: Shaping interactions with a new crate

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I have been helping a student get their dog used to a crate, which reminded me of the crate training tutorial I wrote a year ago and never ended up sharing anywhere! I’m going to split it into 4 blog posts. If you try this protocol with your own dog and run into problems, feel free to ask your questions in the comments and I’ll try to help you out!

Traditionally, dogs used to be “trained” to spend time in their crates by means of just putting them in the crate, closing the door and not letting them out until they stopped whining or barking. Not only is this stressful for your dog, it’s also hard on your neighbors who might not approve of your dog barking in their crate all night. The good news is that there are other, less stressful ways of getting a dog used to a crate. It might take a little longer to get duration than if you just locked your dog in, but it will be much less stressful for both you and your dog.

dog training, life skills, crate training, dog crate, dog kennel

If your dog already has negative associations with their crate, I recommend getting a different model (plastic instead of wire or wire instead of plastic) and starting from scratch with a new crate in a different location. It’s easier to build positive associations to an entirely new object than to change your dog’s feelings about a crate they already dislike.

I usually use a combination of shaping and luring to get started. If you are an experienced shaper, feel free to free shape the behavior instead. Also, please note there is more than just one way to train your dog to enjoy spending time in their crate. The steps I’m sharing here with you have worked well for me – that doesn’t mean that you couldn’t get equally good results with a different and equally stress-free training technique.

Crate Training Setup

  • Remove all other objects around your crate to make it obvious to your dog that your training session is about the crate.
  • If your dog has a tendency to wander off or is a young puppy with a short attention span, put an x-pen around yourself and the crate or keep them on a leash.
  • Keep each session to 1 minute – set a timer to remind you to stop training and give your dog a break.

Click any Interaction and Feed in the Crate

  • Click any and all interactions with the crate. Throw a treat into the crate so the dog eats inside! If your dog hesitates to step in the crate, put the treat near the door so all they have to do is stick their head in to get it. With every click, put the treat a little further inside the crate until your dog has to step in to get it – first one paw, then two, three and finally four.
  • Can you get in three to five more clicks and treats while your dog is still in the crate, has just finished eating the previous treat, but hasn’t had time to come out again? Great!
  • After three to five rapid-fire clicks and treats, wait a little. If your dog comes out, wait with your click until they show interest again. If they stay in and wait, add another click and treat inside the crate, then click and throw a treat out to set them up for another rep.

Hadley – Session 1

At the time I worked on this tutorial, Hadley was the least crate-trained dog in our house, so I’m using him to demo the first steps. I chose a crate he has never been in and a location I have never worked on crate training before: out on the patio. In order to keep him from running off, I put an x-pen around Hadley, myself and the crate. He’s making it easy and has no trouble going all the way in when I feed in the crate after the first click. Note that I don’t wait for him to go all the way in before each click – I really do click any interaction with the crate. Looking at it is enough at first! That’s the shaping part of this exercise. However, I feed in the crate so he has to go all the way in for his treat. That’s the luring part!

00:54 Now I want more than just looking at it – walk towards it to get a click!
01:23 For the first time, I wait a little bit to see if he’ll stay in on his own or come out again. Just a fraction of a second … He stops and looks at me and I immediately reinforce this choice with a click and treat.

Hadley – Session 2

00:13 I delay the click a tiny bit to see if Hadley will choose to stay in the crate rather than come out … He does and looks at me expectantly! Yey!
00:23 Click for sticking the head in the crate.
00:51 Click for one paw in.
01:08 Click for two paws.
01:16 Again, I delay the click and Hadley chooses to stay in the crate rather than come out.

  • Delay the click just a little longer once your dog is successful: you started with clicking for looking at the crate and proceeded to clicking for sticking the head in, putting one paw in, then two paws, three paws and finally all four paws.
  • Once you get four paws in, start adding duration: with your dog standing in the crate, delay the click longer and longer: dog in the crate – click immediately. Dog in the crate – count to 1 in your head, click, treat. Dog in the crate – count to 2 in your head, click, treat. Dog in the crate – count to 3 in your head, click, treat.
  • If/When your dog leaves the crate before the click, wait for them to go back in and start building duration from scratch: dog in the crate – click immediately. Dog in the crate – count to 1 in your head, click, treat. Dog in the crate, count to 2 in your head, click, treat etc.
  • Eventually, most dogs will offer a sit or a down in the crate – just standing there gets boring. Jackpot the sit or down with praise and a handful of treats!

Check back next week for the following steps!

All parts of the crate training tutorial:

Part 1: https://adventuredogsanarchy.com/crate-expectations-part-1-shaping-interactions-with-a-new-crate/
Part 2: https://adventuredogsanarchy.com/crate-expectations-part-2-lying-down-in-the-crate-and-starting-to-build-duration/
Part 3: https://adventuredogsanarchy.com/crate-expectations-part-3-adding-a-cue-and-extending-duration/
Part 4: https://adventuredogsanarchy.com/crate-expectations-part-4-building-relaxation/

Scent Discrimination Part 3: Introducing It’s Your Choice

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Yesterday (Thursday), Grit had her two daily sessions again. In session 5, I introduced the It’s Your Choice Game: in one hand, I have food, and in the other one the coaster. In order to get the food, Grit has to put her nose on the coaster. She’ll then receive the food out of the food hand, and I’ll have her eat it off the coaster. I love how if you pay attention to Grit’s eyes and facial expression in this session, you can see the wheels turning! Duration isn’t a criterion for now – I want to click the moment she makes the right choice. Teaching the dog to choose the target over the food is not a game I invented – there are lots of variations on the It’s Your Choice theme. I’ve learned this particular version in the Nosework classes at FDSA, where Phoebe learned to put her nose on top of a hot container in order to get the food from the other hand.

Session 5

In session 6, I got rid of the food hand and focused on duration again. I want to make sure Grit doesn’t loose her duration when I introduce other criteria! You can see her duration has already deteriorated, so it’s a good idea to build it back up. I’ll work on duration some more in the next session before I go back to It’s Your Choice.

Session 6

Scent Discrimination Part 2

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Grit had her 3rd and 4th session on Wednesday. In session 3, I asked her to target the coaster (rather than my hand) right away. Since I didn’t warm up with the chin target on my hand, I lowered the duration criterion. I fed her on top of the coaster to raise value for the target and pair my own scent with the smell of food, and I built a little duration back up.

Session 3:

In session 4, I was going to continue what I had started in session 3. However, Grit felt a little intense this session – if you’ve got a Malinois, you’re probably familiar with this: sometimes, she’s so fast trying to get things right that she forgets what exactly we are working on. This is what happened in session 4. Grit targets things – but not necessarily the coaster. At 00:02, it’s my knees. At 00:03, she offers a down, followed by a spin at 00:07. At 00:34 and 00:46, she targets my wrist. At 00:48, it’s my forearm (I want her nose a little further down, on the coaster). At 00:53, she tries to run around the camera and tips it over. At 01:04, she targets my knees again, followed by my forearm and offering a spin, and my forearm again. (Yes, she’s an operant dog!) I lower the duration criterion, and immediately click her for choosing the coaster. I keep the duration low, and she recovers by the end of the session.

You can recognize she’s in one of her intense states of mind due to the way she looks at me and her response speed. She already showed signs of this in session 3 a few minutes earlier. That’s neither good nor bad – it’s just part of who Grit is. Once she knows this relatively new behavior really well, she’ll be just as fast, but get it right even when she doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about the behavior.

Session 4:

Does your dog have moments of increased intensity? I’d love to hear about them in the comments!

Scent Discrimination Part 1

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I decided to journal Grit’s scent discrimination training in order to keep myself accountable and follow through. I started a month or two ago, but somehow stopped working on it soon after. This time, we’ll keep at it – we want to get our TEAM 1 title soon, after all, and this is the last behavior we’re missing.

I’ve never taught scent discrimination before, so this is new to me. I’m going to use a mix of the method Denise Fenzi showed me when she was visiting in September (using flat articles the dog can’t pick up, and starting with handler scent rather than a food lure from the beginning), and the way Phoebe learned nosework in Melissa Chandler’s Introduction to Nosework class at FDSA.

I’m not using anything resembling an actual article for FCI obedience. If I screw up, it’ll be on a random object rather than a competition object – so I have nothing to worry about and can experiment. For now, my goal is just an indication of the article that smells like me. Until Grit can do this perfectly, I don’t worry about the retrieve required in FCI obedience. In fact, I use flat objects precisely because they cannot be picked up. The indication I’m going for is a sustained nose/muzzle target, as if it were a nosework hide. Once Grit can reliably find and indicate the object with my scent, I can then transfer the indication to actual FCI articles and add the retrieve.

Step 1: teach a chin/muzzle target with 5 seconds of duration (we’ve already got that).

Session 1: warming up the chin/muzzle target (only asking for very little duration).

Step 2: transfer the chin/muzzle target to a coaster held in my hand.

Step 3: get 5 seconds duration on the coaster target.

… to be continued tomorrow!

Shaping Confidence, or How to Deal with Penguins

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In Hadley’s book, quite a number of things are alarming. One of them: new objects in familiar spaces, like the neighbor’s trash bag that hasn’t been sitting out the day before, or a penguin wearing a hat, standing provocatively at a doorway where no one used to stand. (I totally get that. Penguins are not supposed to wear hats; now that’s just weird!)

My favorite way to deal with scary stuff is to make it part of a game. I’ve done this with Phoebe back in the day when she had a random-objects-are-scary phase in her adolescence, and now I’m using the same strategy for Hadley. By means of shaping, I want to give Hadley the experience that he controls the situation, and can turn scary stuff into cookie vending machines by means of choosing to engage with it.

Engaging with scary objects in return for a cookie is entirely his choice, not mine. I’m not luring him closer, and I’m not forcing him to engage with the scary object in any other way. Hadley decided whether he goes all the way up to an object, touches it, or just plays a little LAT from a distance. If he chooses to disengage after a little while, that’s okay, too.

Now that I’ve finally decluttered my camera phone, I got to film today’s encounter with a penguin wearing a hat. We met that weird bird on our way home from a walk in the neighborhood. We frequently walk past this house, and never before has there been a penguin standing in front of it. Obviously, Hadley was concerned. It looked quite devious in its green hat, pretending to be all innocent, just standing there provocatively. It might just have been planning to murder us all, and Hadley was right to point this out to me.

This is what our penguin session looked like:

Note that rather than using strategic points of reinforcement, I’m feeding away from the penguin, so the increase of distance acts as an additional reinforcer (R-). The whole thing took about 5 minutes, including a few breaks whenever either Hadley chose to disengage and do sth. else for a little bit, or when I went to reinforce Phoebe who I had put in a sit-stay. When Hadley offered looking at the penguin or approaching it again after a break, we were back in the game. At 0.30 in the video, you can see from Hadley’s body language that he’s getting too close. I should have clicked sooner, i.e. after fewer steps towards the penguin. He trusts me enough to keep playing, so for the next click, I lower criteria to just a few steps, something he can easily do. Then I gradually increase criteria again. At the end, you see his first bold touch. He’s not worried anymore and recognizes the penguin as the latest cookie-vending machine that has been placed here for his convenience! Engage with it, get a cookie from mum. Sweet!