24 OctRecreating OK Go’s White Knuckles video: a 10 step challenge!

Here at School For The Dogs, we always welcome a training challenge—especially a fun one!

Join us as we put together our own version of the OK Go video White Knuckles. This incredible video, released six years ago, required over a dozen dogs to perform a wide variety of behaviors around four dancers and lots of moving objects. The whole thing was shot in one take (they filmed a lot more than one to get it right, of course).

We're not aiming for one take, but we are looking to see if we can train the same behaviors, with enough reliability for the dogs to be able to perform with a handler off camera.

One by one we will be presenting 10 challenges taken from this video. Look complicated? Don't worry— we are going to break it down! Check back here each week for instructions, and tune into our Facebook and Youtube pages. Work on one behavior, or try doing them all!  Then, when you've got it, send us a video!

We will simultaneously be working on these behaviors at School For The Dogs during our Day School sessions. Our goal is to get through all the behaviors by Christmas, and to have enough of you send in videos of YOUR dogs so that we can piece it all together and re-create their video. It might end up making the coolest holiday card EVER.

Post your video to Facebook or Instagram and tag us or use the hashtag #schoolforthedogs. Alternatively, email us!

If you'd like to receive tips on training these behaviors, enter your email here.

Here is the full list of behaviors we will be working on, starting next week:

• STEP 1:Stand with front two paws on an over-turned waste bin
• STEP 2: Circle twice around the ankles of two people
• STEP 3: Climb onto the back of someone doing a “downward facing dog” position, then sit on the person's behind
• STEP 4: Pick up a waste bin and carry it
• STEP 5: Jump over knees/under arms of two people who are sitting in chairs and making an arch with their arms
• STEP 6: Jump onto wheeled chair or stool, and then stay seated while chair is wheeled around; Walk in a heel position with a person, stopping and sitting when the person does
• STEP 7:Give a high-five
• STEP 8: Jump hurdles
• STEP 9: Go from sit to down to sit
• STEP 10: Lie down with chin on ground

STEP 1 CHALLENGE:

Train a dog to balance with two front paws on an over-turned waste bin.

So far, we've done one session working on this with Roma, a border collie, and one with Gilby, the Frenchie. Roma pretty much has it;Gilby is almost there. We will keep working with them throughout the week and will post progress on our Facebook page. In order to teach a dog to put two paws on the bin, it can be helpful to first teach them to put their paws on a slanted surface. We use a Klimb platform at an angle. You could use a large book, or even a folded or rolled up yoga mat. At first we tried to get them to put two paws on the platform when it was flat, but we use these platforms a lot in our studio, and the dogs have gotten rewarded many times for jumping on to them– and we didn't want all four feet! It was easier to not let the back two feet enter the equation than try to train the dogs out of the habit of jumping all the way on.

One thing that worked well was doing a little bit of luring. Ultimately, the behavior's cue, as you can see in the video, is going to be a finger pointed at the bin. Because the final cue is a point, it's pretty easy to fade the cue — use a hand or object to help lure the dog into position during the training, and then slowly make that helpful hint more and more subtle, with the final cue just being a point. With the Klimbs, the best place to put the target stick seemed to be about a foot over the edge, high enough so that the dog realized he'd get to it fastest if he used the Klimb to gain some height.

Once you're able to get your dog to put two front paws on something relatively broad and stable, you can then begin generalizing the behavior to a new object that is a little closer to what the final one will be. With Roma, we used an overturned Tupperware container, that was only a little higher than the Klimb platform, but, like the final object, is plastic and a bit wobbly. It was a good stepping-stone challenge. With Gilby, we used an overturned water bowl. The bowl wasn't very high, but was a way to introduce to him that we wanted him to put his paws on something with a pretty small diameter, as opposed to the Klimb.

Whenever you make one thing harder for a dog in a shaping session, you can make the other stuff easier. Introducing a dog to a totally new object you want them to interact with may mean scaling back on everything else. With Roma, when the Tupperware bin came into play, I started out by just rewarding her for interacting with it all, and then slowly raising my criteria (waiting to reward her to interact with her nose, and then with a paw, and then with both paws….). Once that seemed pretty easy for her, we got out the plastic bin. It'd be best to practice this with a weighted bin. The final bin will not be heavy, but for training purposes, the wobbliness of the bin would be better introduced after the dog completely understands the behavior. So, we will see if we can get something comparable and heavy this week. In the meantime, I held the bin in place and she got the idea quickly. She is, after all, a border collie!

There is no one way to shape a behavior. Each person has their own approach, and it helps to know how high you can raise criteria without your animal throwing up their paws and giving up. In my experience, it is always better to err on the side of making things easy, and, when a criteria is met, get a lot of repetitions of it in quick successions before you raise the bar.

For this exercise, make sure your treats are extra small, as you might be giving double rewards: One when your dog is balanced on the object, and one tossed nearby to reset him for another trial. Because we ultimately want the dog to stay balanced on the bin for a few seconds, rewarding him in the position can be helpful to help fortify his association with being in that position. Tossing a treat nearby can help get them off so that you can then get another repetition.