Video: Practicing Stimulus Control

In May 2014, I wrote a post about stimulus control. It explains what stimulus control is and how we practice it. Our goal is for Bo's responses to our commands to be what's considered 'under good stimulus control.'  In this video, Bo is behind me and I'm giving him commands without looking at him and without hand signals. The goal of the exercise is for him to give the correct behavior the first time I give a command. I practice stimulus control with him in different ways to improve his ability to respond to verbal commands no matter where he is in position to me. There is an easy to understand post about stimulus control on the Dog Willing LLC Web site.

Alert at the Outdoor Basketball Courts

Tonight, Bo alerted to me as we sat and watched Austin play a game of pick-up basketball at his school's outdoor courts. As I watched Austin play, I worried he would go low. I kept a close eye on Bo's nose, watching for signs of him smelling a low. After about an hour of being at the courts Bo stood up and put his paw on my leg. I didn't respond immediately and he shifted his position and pawed me again. I got Austin off the court to check and he was 212. I've been doing scent training with Bo outside in different places to improve his alerting in public. I was impressed and pleased with his alert tonight. There was a lot of activity on the courts, plus it was windy and rainy. Despite these distractions he did his job. 

Working on Stimulus Control

In today's CGC prep class we talked about the principle of stimulus control and learned how we could work on achieving good stimulus control with our dogs. 
Defintion of Stimulus Control:
A conditioned stimulus becomes a discriminative stimulus (or cue) when it is followed by a specific learned behavior or reaction. The response is said to be 'under stimulus control' when presentation of the particular stimulus fulfills these four conditions: the behavior is always offered when that cue is presented; the behavior is not offered in the absence of that cue; the behavior is not offered in response to some other cue; and no other behavior occurs in response to that cue.

There is an easy to understand article about stimulus control on the blog Dog Willing LLC.

In  today's class, I learned we have an opportunity to improve Bo's stimulus control. For example, while he sits nicely when cued with the word 'sit' and the sit hand sign, while he is looking at my eyes --- he struggled with the command when he only heard the verbal cue and was looking at my back. So, this week we will work on improving his stimulus control for several basic obedience commands. We will start with the commands  sit, down, stand and back. We will work with just the verbal cues (no hand gestures) and we will practice having Bo receive the commands at our sides and behind us.