Sunday, May 23, 2010

Finally. . . Reyna Stands!

Finally, after 13 months Reyna has really learned the "stand" command. I have to admit, I am not good at teaching this command. So it is really my fault, not hers. Today, it just dawned on me that I have been totally confusing her and she didn't really know what I wanted when I gave her the "stand" command. She would always offer me various behaviors, because she wants to please me and do right. But the poor thing was clueless because her raiser was not being clear with her.
So tonight, I decided to mark the precise moment in time when her butt popped up from a sit into a stand. I used the word "good" as a verbal marker. We are not able to use food when training this command, so I wasn't sure if a verbal marker would work without food. Well, within 10 minutues Reyna understood what I was asking her to do and she was consistently doing the command correctly. Take a look at the video. I am so proud of her! (and proud of myself for FINALLY figuring this out!).


4 comments:

  1. Thanks for the tip! I haven't had any luck teaching stand. Gabrina and Betsy both knew what it meant when they were doing puppy push ups or putting their vest on, but they never really understood it. I will have to try it this way :)

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  2. When I started out, I used a leash cue. I would pull slightly forward on the leash and the second her butt popped up into a stand I marked it with the verbal marker "good". After a few minutes, she didn't need the leash cue anymore. How simple is that? The way GDB says to teach the command never worked for me. And I have been struggling with this command for soooo long! Good luck and let me know how it goes.

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  3. Cabana is spotty on "stand", too, even though we've worked on it a lot. I've read the reason that stand is so difficult for dogs is because they are used to performing an action, rather than thinking about position.

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  4. It is one of the more difficult commands, thats for sure. I think what happend is I clearly defined an "action" for Reyna when I give the stand command. The action was when she pop her butt off of the ground. That finally made sense to her. She can also do a stand from a down, which was more difficult, but she can do it now without a problem. Maybe I'll have to get a video of that :)

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