According to Sue Ailsby’s wonderful dog training site, we’d been all over her training map in the past 3 months. The most basic dog behavior, Come, was one of our spottiest. But the main goal I’d set to get before the more fun stuff, Go-to-mat for at least 10 minutes, was a difficult Level 4 into her program. I’d been adding Duration, but randomly and in large increments, with mixed success.
Both Ailsby and our dog trainer friend, Denise Dawson, recommend a couple of methods for adding Duration. One comes from the Baileys, early students of Skinner. The trainer adds one second after the animal gets 80% correct at the previous level. For example, I C/T for a second-long Down-Stay for 10 times. If Thor Down-Stays correctly 8 of those 10, I can up it to 2 seconds for another 10. If he breaks the position, I start the count over. I keep going until I have the duration I want.
The other method, called “300 Peck,” is credited to horse trainer Alexandra Kurland who developed it from an article she read about training pigeons. This one adds a second at a time, with a C/T after each add. For example, counting out loud, it’s “1, C/T; 1-2, C/T; 1-2-3, C/T” until the animal breaks. Then you start at one again, continuing to add seconds until you get the Duration you’ve set as the goal.
Kurland’s original article describes training a horse to walk quietly by her side, with each step an increment of Duration, rather than the more passive–and more difficult–waiting that I’m asking of my cats on mats. But when I tried the 300 Peck method, it seemed to increase fidgeting.
I decided to compare that with the 80% Success method. Since Thor was the most placid and had the longest duration so far, I assigned him the 300 Peck. Moxie and Gus got the 80%.
In a week of sessions, Thor never got past 10 seconds, almost always breaking around 6. He was noticeably more restless, possibly anticipating that concentration of treats he got whenever we started over.
But with the 80% method, even fidgety Gus got past his initial fussing, grooming stage, settling down to a Flop by about 8 seconds. And Moxie is rapidly passing up her durations with random reinforcement.
Dawson said she’s never seen animals that understood starting over in the 300 Peck method as rewarding for breaking the position by fidgeting. Maybe it’s me not interpreting the techniques correctly, or maybe it’s cats instead of horses or dogs, but the Baileys’ method seems to work better for us.
As I mentioned in the Treats page, part of the reason cats can’t train as long as most dogs and horses is simply because their stomachs are smaller. Kurland talks about getting up to 125 steps in an hour the first night she did the 300 Peck method with her horse. Assuming even minimal breaks back to 1, that’s hundreds of treats!
Even with breaking every treat into halves or quarters and limiting free feeding to keep up their appetites, our sessions will never last longer than 5-10 minutes. If we get a couple of sessions a day, we definitely risk diarrhea from the treats, even with Thor and Mox.
Getting a solid 10 minute Down-Stay on Mat is going to take lots of treats and lots of sessions. And lots of patience.
