05 DecEpisode 36 | Training “Look” using the “Invisible Triangle” method
Everyone is impressed by a dog whose eyes meets a human's gaze with magnet-like intensity on cue. Teaching a dog to "touch" his or her eyes to your eyes is a great exercise to practice no matter what the pooch's training level is. When teaching this attention-based behavior to a dog-- whether you use a word such as "Look" or the dog's name -- Annie suggests focusing on your training mechanics before jumping to setting criteria for your dog. In this episode, she clearly breaks down how to build a stellar "Look" cue from scratch, in just six quick steps, using only sixty tiny treats.
Music: "Look for the silver lining" ukuele cover by Renei Yarrow.
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Transcript:
**music**
Annie:
Hello, everyone. Thank you for listening. Today I’m going to walk you through what I call the Invisible Triangle method of teaching “look.” I think look is a really excellent thing to teach any dog, any age some people call it “watch me” or “attention,” whatever you want to call it, basically you’re teaching your dog to connect their eyes to your eyes on whatever cue you give. And of course that cue, today we’re going to use “look” you could be using their name, you could say “eyes,” you could say “bubblegum baba ganoush.,” it doesn't matter but you are to give it some kind of cue. Of course, if you don’t give it a cue and you just teach them that locking eyes with your eyes is always a good thing that certainly not a bad thing to teach either.
I generally think that everything we train our dogs to do, pretty much, comes down to targeting- targeting being teaching them to touch one thing to another. Of course, pretty much the first thing I teach every dog I work with is to hand-nose target so to touch their nose to my fingers, to my hand or to touch their nose to an object. And while there are lots of reasons I like to teach this specific exercise, the big reason is that I think of it as a building block exercise that you can use to teach lots of different things because really what you’re teaching is if you touch X to Y then good thing happens and basically everything you’re ever going to train your dog comes down to something that can fit into that equation. Sit is if if you touch butt to ground. Down is if you touch body to the ground. Go to the crate, well, that's if I touch body to crate. And I think that teaching look is really just the same thing except that if I touch my eyes to my human eyes good thing happens . And like I just said, certainly if that becomes just the default behavior, it's never going to be a bad thing since if your dog locks eyes with you, you certainly have your dog's attention and that's a great starting place for getting your dog to do whatever it is you want or need him or her to do.
So there are many ways of teaching look- this way that I came up with is what I like because we are really just gonna break it down to its smallest components and it is almost all work that you are going to do, we are going ask very little of your dog so while I would like you to have your dog in the room with you while you work through the steps that I’m going to outline your dog is going to have have a pretty easy time of it. And if you have a friend or partner, someone you do training with who you can have with you as you go through the steps, I think that's a good idea. We are going to use exactly 60 treats but if you want to start by counting out 120 treats I think it is wise because you can do one round yourself and your partner give you some feedback and then your partner can do one round and you can give feedback. Or you can go through all the steps yourself and then do another round with another 60 treats in a new spot, whether that's a new room or maybe even in a quiet spot outside but you can go ahead and start generalizing this training to new spaces right away.
Now I know you might be thinking 60 treats times two that 120 treats- is Annie crazy? That's ridiculous. But keep in mind, I want your treats to be as small as you can get away with. You can get 60 treats out of half of a hot dog, if you quarter the hot dog and then slice it real thin. If you're using a pencil eraser sized treats like Tricky Trainers which I really like which we at school and at Storeforthedogs.com then you only need 15 of those treats because each one, you can kind of use your thumbnail to break each one into four pieces or you could use like a food roll. We recently started carrying the Happy Howies line of food rolls and at our studio and at Storeforthedogs.com. One of those, a couple thin slices, chopped up will bring you to 60 treats. I mean you could even use a bowl of kibble or you can break each piece of kibble into a couple pieces depending on a piece of kibble you're using. But part of the reason why I want your treats to be really, really small and I want your dog to swallow them really quickly because we’re to be going for speed here and if your dog has to do a lot of chewing in between reps, it's gonna slow you down. Also if you something really crumbly and your dog is looking to pick up the little crumbly pieces, that is also going to slow you down which is one of the reasons why kibble might not be the best choice, depending on the kind of kibble you’re using and your dog. So think about what your dog is going to be able to swallow superfast and that isn't that end up in crumbs on the floor.
So what you are going to do is count out 10 treats, I want you to hold those 10 treats in your nondominant hand, the hand you do not write. So I'm “righty” so that’s my left hand and if you are going to use a clicker, you are going to hold the clicker in the same hand. Now we have talked about using a clicker before, it's not required, but it is going to be useful to have some kind of marker for this exercise. When I don't use it clicker, I use a word- the word I usually is “yes.” You're welcome to use either a clicker or a “yes” for this exercise, I don't usually suggest using both, just because it's overkill and our goal is to be giving minimal, very clear information and I think using a clicker and “yes” at the same time is just more information than we really need to be giving.
So you have your 10 treats and your clicker in one hand, you are not going to be using your clicker just yet that we are going to be using it shortly, so I want it ready to go. Your other hand should be empty and I suggest you do this exercise kneeling on the floor with your dog in front of you on some kind of mat. Now, like I said, I’m not asking very much of your dog for most of this exercise so I actually don't really care very much where your dog is or what he or she is doing but I do suggest having some kind of training mat out, I like using training mat anyway and you're going to be placing the treat onto this mat, ideally the same spot on the mat regularly, so I have a feeling your dog is going to end up on that mat, interested in that specific spot where the treat is appearing.
So you have your 10 treats, your first treat is going to be kind of like a freebie treat. I want you to grab a treat using your right hand from your left hand- the hand that has the clicker on it, grab one treat out, put it on the spot that’s, sort of, your X spot on your training mat. Okay?
Whenever I'm teaching look, I always like to start with a free treat on the ground, reason being is ultimately what we’re teaching a dog to do is to look up at us because we are above them and a good way to make sure your dog is going to look up at all is to start with them looking down. So, like I said, there are lots of different ways to teach look but pretty much every way that I like to teach it always starts with a free treat on the ground to make sure your dog starts out looking down so that you can reward your dog for looking up.
Now this is going to be Point 1 of your three-point triangle. Point 2 is going to be your left hand if you have your treats in your left, Point 2 is going to be your right hand if you treat in your right hand and then Point 3 is good to be your forehead, kind of, in that third eye spot. Right so we are going to go through the 10 treats in your hand. going one point to the other to the other and I will say it out loud to help you get it right. So point one was the treat you already put down. Point 2 is going to be taking that treat out of your hand. Point 3 is to be your forehead and then you are going to put the treat back down on the mat at Point 1. Now you are reaching into her hand, grabbing a single treat, putting it on your forehead, putting it back down on the mat at Point 1. Now you're grabbing a treat from your hand, putting it at your forehead, back down at Point 1. Treat from hand, treat to forehead, back down at Point 1. Treat from hand, treat to forehead, back down at Point 1.
Now what is your dog doing while you're doing this? I don’t care but we’ll get to that, but I'm gonna guess that your dog is interested in the treats that you are putting on the mat. Okay?
Once you've gotten through these 10 treats, we’re going to move on to Step Two. Again, you're gonna start with that freebie treat on the mat right in front of you. Now you’re going to reach into your pocket han, let's call it, your Point 2- grab that treat and you’re going to bring that treat to your forehead, now the only thing that's gonna change this time is that as soon as that treat touches your forehead- are you excited to have the some hot dog grease on your forehead right now.. as soon as that treat touches your forehead, I want you to click or if you are not using the clicker, you're going to say “yes.” But Point 3 is now going to be marking that moment and usually we click when your dog does something to mark the moment that they do something that we like, I’m switching things up a little bit, you're clicking yourself here. Okay? I promise this is not forever, this is only for one small part of this exercise.
So you are going to start again by putting a freebie treat down on your preferred spot on the mat, grabbing another treat from your pocket hand- that’s going to be your Point 2. Point 3 is again, at your forehead except this time, when to get your forehead, you are going to click. So treat 1 on the ground, treat 2 from hand, treat 3 at forehead and click when you get there and you're going to do this 10 times and it really shouldn't take you a whole lot longer then, I don’t know, 20 seconds to get through 10 treats like this. And again do not be concerned about what your dog is doing, in fact, if you find you’re too distracted by your dog, do it with her eyes closed. We are still in the human practice portion of this training exercise and your dog should be expected to do nothing except eat the treats that you're putting down on the mat.
So treat on the ground, picking at a treat from your hand, putting a treat at your forehead, clicking when you get there and then putting that treat on the ground, getting another one from your hand, clicking at your forehead, putting the treat back down on the ground 10 times. Got it? Alright great, good job.
Alright if you want to take a quick break, wash that hot dog grease off your forehead, you are welcome to.
And our third stage, treats numbers 21 through 30, are going to be used doing pretty much the same exercise you were doing before, we are just going to change one small thing and that is you are going to start adding in the word “look.” Now like I said, you don't have to use the word look, you could use another word, you could use your dog's name – not a bad idea. In fact, you can do this exercise and teach it with multiple words. After you teach “look,” you can go ahead and teach “eyes” or “watch me” or whatever. You can teach your dog’s name like this. The only reason I suggest using something other than your dog's name at this point is because I'm guessing you’ve probably used your dog's name to mean many things in the past and I want you to pick something that's kind of brand-new, something that doesn't have meaning to it. And I like “look” rather than “watch me” or “look at me” just because it's a thing that you can say very quickly and crisply and I find it something that you can say using a kind of excited voice. And that’s the voice I want you to use. We definitely know that dogs respond to pitch and they tend to respond to higher pitches differently than they respond to lower pitches and I'm gonna want you to use that higher pitch, use that higher register– I call it my “dog sexy” voice. “LOOK” rather than “look.” It’s kind of like higher voices, higher pitches tend to attract dogs, lower voices tend to sort of encourage distance between a dog and wherever the voice is coming from. And I say that because it's not always human, certainly dogs use pitch with each other and you know there's a difference between that kind of puppy sounds of, you know, “mommy, come to me” and “grr, woof, get away from me. I want distance between me and you, kid” kind of voice.
So you got your next 10 treats in your hand. Start out again freebie treat on the ground. grab the next one from your pocket hand, your Point 2. Point 3 you’re going to bring that treat to your forehead, now when it gets to your forehead, you are going to say “look” and then you're going to click. So same exercise as before except you're saying “look” before you click and you are saying “look” the second that treat gets to your forehead and then bring that treat back down to Point 1. Alright? So now it’s at Point 1, grab a new one from Point 2, your pocket hand, bring it to your forehead, “look” and then back down to Point 1. Point 2 is grabbing it from your pocket hand, up to your forehead. Point 3: “look,” click and then back down to Point 1. Again, whatever your dog is doing at this point, doesn't matter.
Now I am going to let you in on a secret of why I like this exercise. One reason why I like this exercise is that you are not allowed to say “look, look,” you're only going to say “look” once, what reason would you have to repeat it you're not actually asking your dog to do anything yet, your dog has that no requirements, no prerequisites here so there is no reason to encourage them to actually be looking at you. If they do look at you or if they have looked at you up until this point that's just gravy but, like I said, as far as I'm concerned up until now you could've been doing this exercise completely with your eyes closed.
And why don't we want to repeat “look?” Because I don't ever like to repeat cues, I want my dog to understand when telling them the first time if I have to repeat it, to me, that means either I really haven't made it worth their while where they had no idea what I'm talking about and I think it’s usually the latter. You think about learning another language, if you've ever been to a foreign country, if you're not understanding what someone is saying to you it doesn't really matter how many times they repeat what they're asking. And with dogs I think that's a mistake we make all the time even when, even when we know better. So I like to find ways where we can make it not even an option, where repeating a cue just would seem ridiculous. If you listen to the episode I did on teaching “sit,” for example, I talked about using a snap as a cue rather than saying the word “sit” and one reason for that is because the words “sit” seems to fall out of human mouths really, really easily. We say “sit” five times in the two seconds it takes a dog to respond to the cue “sit” whereas if your cue is a snap, it's just a lot more awkward to start snapping like crazy if your dog doesn't do what you're asking right away.
So I encourage you to just observe yourself when you are giving cues and if you find you are repeating a cue a lot, either start over and teach that cue from scratch or ask your dog for what you want, give that cue and then hold off, give your dog 5-10 seconds, if need be, to respond. Part of training is shaping that distance between when you asked for something and when your dog does what you ask him to do, shaping that amount of time to the point where it becomes shorter and shorter and practice will get you there.
Sorry to go off on that tangent but now we are for this fourth step, we are finally going to set some criteria for your dog who I hope has at this point become pretty interested in just hanging out right in front of you and probably in trying to figure out why you are holding this piece of hot dog in between your eyes all the time. So step four is going to be identical to step three except after you say “look” I want you to actually wait for your dog to look up even a little bit and then you're going to click. So if this is the first time you're going through these steps, I don't want you to wait for your dog to lock eyes with you like you’re Ingrid Bergman and this is the end of Casablanca, I just want your dog to look up at you at all. And that might mean picking a specific criteria that is unique to your dog, for instance, sometimes if I'm working with a French Bulldog or dog who has, kind of, those big bat ears like that, I'll decide, I’m going to click the second I see the inside of that dog's ears. Or maybe your dog has a little patch of light on his or her chin, you can decide you're going to click the second that they're looking at you enough that you can see that patch of white. Or it can be clicking as soon as you see your dog's eyes, even if those eyes aren't fully locked with your eyes just yet.
But okay, so we’re starting again: Point 1 with you freebie treat on the ground. Point 2 grabbing a treat from your pocket hand. Point 3 putting that treat at your forehead and you’re going to say your word “look” in your best dog sexy voice as soon as the treat gets to your forehead. Now you're waiting just to beat, waiting for your dog to look up at all, again remember this is why we put the treat on the ground to begin with to encourage your dog’s head to go anywhere other than down- your dog's head's gonna have to go up and you’re gonna click and the treat is going to come back down at Point 1. Grab another one from your pocket hand, Point 2. Up at your forehead, say “look,” wait for that looking up just a little bit, click and then treat back at the ground. Remember you're not allowed to say “look” more than once but you can use your tone of voice to kind of help your dog look at that you. And I'm gonna guess that if you're using right tone of voice and if you're holding up a piece hot dog between your two eyes, your dog is going to want to look up you.Nice work here, we are more than halfway through this exercise.
Now for the next 10 treats, treats number, where are we, I guess, 41 through 50, we are going to give your dog a break again, no criteria again, you know, we are, sort of, ping-ponging back and forth between criteria for you and criteria for your dog and right now it's on you again. This time your triangle is gonna take on a bit of a weird shape, kind of, the shape is, of like, the sail of the boat or, kind of like, a wonky bicycle seat. Your first point of the triangle is again, going to be that freebie treat on the ground, second one is still going to be from your pocket hand- your nondominant hand where you are holding your clicker and your treats and now the third point though is going to be behind your back and I suggest you actually kind of tap behind your back as you do this just to make sure that you're hitting a very specific point here. I usually do it maybe four or 5 inches above my butt. And we are doing this, of course, to start getting the treat out of the equation. I’m generally not a really big fan of luring and, like I said, there's lots of ways to do this exercise you’re not using luring. The problem of luring, you know especially , when you're luring with food is that it's very easy to get stuck in like treat land, where your dog is like I am only going to do this if I can see the treat, otherwise what's the point? Also, I tend to think luring kind of looks, sort of, dorky; people end up with the, what I call, the “raindrop” hand or the “Mamma Mia” hand that is pinched, always looking like it's holding a treat even if there's not really a treat in their there. They’re waving their hand all around with this fake treat and that it's nerdy, it’s dorky. I don't want you to be the nerdy dog trainer. So this step is all about removing the treat from the equation in a rather systematic way, but we do use it to begin with because sometimes it can help to jumpstart something when you're first starting out and when your dog is first starting out. And whenever we are shaping a behavior with a dog we’re never making making two things hard at once, we only ever want to add one level of difficulty, one criteria at a time and that often means sort of taking a step back on other criteria and this is true of behaviors when we are shaping behaviors with ourselves as well. So we’re going to take out the “look” word that we just added, I promise we will add it back in a minute just because we’re changing the shape of our triangle, I want to focus on that for a moment. And so we are going to go back to clicking without saying a word and clicking just for yourself, again the dog has no criteria again for this portion of the exercise. You are going to put that freebie treat down, Point 1. Point 2 grab the treat from your pocket hand. Point 3 now is going to be behind your back and you're clicking when your knuckle taps behind your back. Remember I said that the triangle is now sort of taken on a funny shape. Bring that tree back at Point 1 putting it on the ground right front for your dog. Point 2 grabbing the treat from your hand again. Point.3 bringing it behind your back clicking it when it gets there. Bringing it back to Point 1.
So now we are in our very last segment of this exercise, we’re now using treats 51 through 60 and we’re going to put it all together and we are going to start asking something of your dog. Again, if this is a very first time you are doing this exercise, your criteria is still pretty low, we’re looking for them to be looking up at all but I've taught this exercise many be times and many times I’ve seen people pleasantly surprised that while they weren't paying attention to their dog, for the majority of this exercise, their dog was getting it and by the time you get to this sixth step, your dog is making really great eye contact with you. So keep your expectations low but be prepared, also, to be pleasantly surprised.
So, again, start out with your freebie treat on the ground, Point 1. Point 2 grab the treat from your hand. Point 3 you're going to bring it behind your back but again, like we did before, you’re now going to say the word “look” and I want you to say it like you have one chance to get your dog out of the burning building. Ok? You only have one chance to say this word so make it count, use that high-pitched voice “look!” Gooey, gooey. Yummy, yummy.
And I want you to wait and click until your dog looks up at you at all. Click or say your marker word like “yes,” bring the treat back to Point 1. Grab another treat from your pocket hand, Point2. Get it behind your back, the second your hand hits your back, you're going to say “look” then you're going to wait, click when your dog looks up, then go back down at Point 1 and keep this up for 10 rounds.
And I wish I could peer through my microphone here and see you guys doing this exercise because I think we have a lot of dogs locking eyes with a lot of humans right about now. But like I said, we’re not looking for that just yet; however, as you practice this and I suggest doing one or two rounds a day, if you can, or at least a few times a week, it shouldn't take you more than five minutes, all told, to go through all of the steps. You can start raising your criteria little by little, but again I don't want you repeating your word “look” so that might mean clicking a lower version of “look” then you have in mind for your ultimate goal just so that you're not there saying, “look, Sadie. Look, Look.” Right, that's not what we're going for at all.
One little cheat that I do sometimes allow if your dog is having a hard time with this and often if they're having a hard time, I find, it's because people are afraid to use their high-pitched dog, gooey voice is to say your “look” as best as you can,” Look!” and if you really need to follow it with some kind of oral prompt that as subtle as possible but something that will get your dog's attention, like, a little kissy noise or some sort of whispery noise or even some kind of like puppy whimper, but something that you will eventually fade out but something that's going to get your dog's attention because it's different from everything else in the environment and appeals to, like I said, their interest in things that are of a higher pitch. Ultimately what we want your dog to learn is, “gosh, every time my human says ‘look’ he then does that funny little “mew” noise which makes me look at him, so I might as well look at him as soon as he says ‘look’ because I know what's going to be coming next.” However, if you can avoid some kind of secondary cue, like that, or prompt I suggest it just because it's not the habit that we want to get in ourselves and most dogs don't need it, it is just a matter of being patient and I think that's always true of adding a cue, we tend to expect our dogs to respond within half a second and, you know, sometimes they need two or three seconds and you need to breathe and wait for the response that you're looking for rather than trying to help them, or you need to rollback your criteria and reinforce some lesser version of the behavior so they don’t lose interest. And another reason that I like this exercise is because, like I said, you are going for speed here and one reason that there is no criteria for your dog during much of this exercise is because I just want you keeping up the pace. I don't want you waiting to see if your dog is figuring things out. I am going for quantity over quality and, in my experience, if something like this you focus on the quantity the quality of the behavior will get there faster than you expect.
So if you have been working on this with a partner, I suggest switching now, ask for some feedback from your training partner and now it's your turn to critique their work and have them go through the six steps. Or if you've been working through the steps alone, if your dog still seems into it and you think your dog still has some room left in his or her tummy, go try this in another room. Or if you are in a studio apartment and you don't have another room to try it in, justchange something else in the environment just to start generalizing this behavior, turn the TV, turn the radio on, change your position- just do something a little bit different and try the whole thing again. And next time, like I said, you can raise your criteria a little bit or you can try skipping some steps and seeing how that goes. But never be afraid to go back to the very basics, go back to the very first step that we went over, it's never a bad idea to start teaching something from scratch even if you're a genius and your dog is a genius it can't hurt.
I'm eager to see where you all get with this exercise, so please tag School for the Dogs on Instagram. If you post any practice videos or post them on Facebook.com/groups/schoolforthedogs or email at podcast@schoolforthedogs.com
Woof Shout out this week goes to my cousin Ava, who lives in England and has gotten pretty involved in dog rescue and ended up with three dogs who frankly were having a hard time living altogether. Three dogs is a lot for anyone to handle and these three dogs were not the perfect match so she recently made the hard decision to rehome two of the dogs, I believe, one is going to a friend of hers in England and the other is gonna go live with my uncle in New Jersey and Ava recently flew over from the United Kingdom with the dog to bring the dog to my uncle and help acclimate her to her new home, her New Jersey home. Her name is Kira and I look forward to meeting Kira, I think she’s going to be coming to School for the Dogs sometime soon and hat tip to Ava for making that hard choice that I think was the right choice. Sometimes finding different for a dog really is the best thing for that dog.
**music**
Fun Dog Fact of the Day: Someone recently told me that Trump was the first president to not have a dog and I thought that didn’t sound quite right> I mean, I'm kind of glad he doesn't have a dog, I think I would feel bad for the dog only because he says a lot of derogatory things about dogs, or at least he tends to use the word “dog” as some kind of slur when I think many people would be honored to be compared to a dog. Anyway, I looked it up and it’s not true that he is the first president in the White House to not have a dog but he is the first president in over a century who hasn't had a dog. The last dog-less president was William McKinley and only 14 of the 44 presidents preceding Trump have lived in homes without dogs during their presidency. So if you're thinking of running for president, you might as well get a dog and it will probably help your chances. Actually, I don't really know if that’s true but I hope it’s true and it’s worth mentioning that Oprah has 5 dogs, so maybe she can use that to her advantage in the Electoral College or something like that. Maybe? Maybe.
Special thanks to Renee Yarrow for her ukulele cover of “Look for the silver lining.” and as always to Alix Kriss for producing this podcast.
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