Daily Photo - Clicker Training Revisited

Last weekend I convinced my cousin to bring one of her dogs over for a play date sort of thing and it went well (She has two small dogs that have a tendency to redirect frustrations at each other, so understandably she was a little concerned about one meeting bigger dogs.) I suddenly became interested in training my dogs again. They know the basics reliably, sit, down, leave it, drop it, ball, Frisbee and a few other besides. They're both iffy at stay, passable at come, and one knows more tricks but ignores them rather regularly. For the last few years having two meant one was freaking out in the other room while I was training the other one. Boomer especially has a little breakdown if left alone without another person or dog. I know I can fix most of their irritating behaviors, it would just take some time. I especially want to remove Boomer's tendency to jump on people when they stop petting him. Early this week I picked up this book off the new books shelf at the library. I skimmed it, and got a few ideas. I pulled out my two clickers, which conveniently over time now make very different noises. One has a nice hard click and the other has a lazier one. Turns out the dogs have zero problems knowing which is theirs and will sit in the next room behind a gate quietly waiting their turn. I of course had to write their names all over each clicker to keep me from messing it up. I decided to look up clicker training specifically and found some more books. I got two out of the library, the theoretical one Reaching the Animal Mind: Clicker Training and What It Teaches Us About All Animals and the more instructional one Clicking With Your Dog: Step-By-Step in Pictures. I noticed later the instructional one is put out by the author of the other one. Both books said the true way to use a clicker is shaping. I'll admit I'm guilty of luring quite a bit. Only one of my dogs really has any idea how the shaping works. The other will just sit there and stare at me until I give him some kind of clue (Poor Boomer.) Since getting the books at the beginning of the week I've gotten both to touch a target stick on cue, touch my hand on cue, sniff things I point at and one to go through a hula hoop (Boomer is too afraid of the hoop so far to put more than his head through.) Both are much better at their existing behaviors, though I've realized I only taught Boomer sit, down, move, leave it, drop it, get out and ball. He just learned those so quickly with luring I got lazy and stopped. Toka has sit, down, roll over, paw, spin, over, move, up, off, leave it, drop it, catch, Frisbee, ball, closer, get it, bring it and get out. Both have added touch, hand and sniff, with Toka learning an alternate spin and hoop as well. My eventual goals are rather strange for each dog. I want Toka to reliably do things like spins when we play frisbee and I want Boomer to stay in the bathtub once I start running the water so I can wash him inside rather than walking 3 miles in the rain every few weeks. (He loves the tub, he used to shut down in it, but now he loves hopping in, but not the water part, that I did with luring.) The bad part about reading two books about clicker training is I now have goals in mind for one of the cats and the bird. However since I'm using Boomer's clicker the dogs need to be hanging out in the yard for me to train either of them. Otherwise he sits and the door whining and carrying on, another example of why I'm liking having different clickers. I want Max to spread her wings on command and I'd like Abby to stand all the way up on her back legs ( I might give up and try high five though.) I'm going with hot dogs, sunflower seed chips and tuna fish as rewards and tuna fish seems to work much better than cat treats with Abby. Maybe I'll even manage to get that 13 yr old loony cat to stop chasing Abby all over the house.