Sue Ailsby on (Sniff) Zen

After – once again – being confronted with the Sniff Zen hole in our training, I went on the Training Levels list and searched for posts marked as "Sniff Zen". I knew that a few months ago, someone else had posted to the list about this very issue, and I was hoping for some gems from Sue. This is what I found (several messages condensed);

The key to Zen is that the sniff article (human) is not available until AFTER you get what you want (if available at all).

This means that you have to set up the situation so that you can ensure the sniff article is removed if he starts to sniff it.

Think of sniff Zen exactly the same way you think of hand Zen, except that sniffing is just as rewarding as eating the treat out of your hand, so you can’t just have them stand there while he keeps sniffing.

Either you remove the dog (yes, with the leash - and he will learn from that, because the distance to the sniffee gets greater and greater) or the sniffee removes herself. Either way. the dog is NOT allowed to get close enough to a person to sniff them until he understands that sniffing will make them go away.

You can’t say “my Service Dog only jumped on your table and ate your expensive dinners because one of you ordered lobster. He LOVES lobster! You can’t expect him to walk by lobster without eating it, right? It’s your fault, too. You knew there was a SD in the restaurant, and you deliberately ordered the smelliest meal you could!”

If I say Leave It, I mean Leave It. If I don’t get Leave It, I’m going to spend a good deal of effort retraining Leave It because it’s really, really important.

If it’s something the dog is free to sniff, and it’s a time when she’s free to sniff, I can/will certainly release her to sniff to reward her for giving me a great Leave It. If I don’t get the Leave It when I ask for it, that absolutely guarantees that the dog will not get to sniff that thing.

The same with Watch Me. For the most part, as long as she’s doing her job, I don’t care WHAT she looks at, but if I ask her to Watch Me and she doesn’t, we’re going to get totally out of sight of whatever it was she wanted to look at. The ONLY way to get to look at something, or sniff something, or eat something, or get petted, or play - is to give me what I want.


“What I see is that he is being rewarded for sniffing. He sees it as a more complete combination of moves.” CK Bales.

You’ve developed a chain of sniff-Zen cue-back off-c/t-sniff-Zen cue etc.

Now think of this in the whole Levels context. Your cue is NOT working to get the behavior you want (which includes duration). What do you do?

STOP USING THE CUE. You are naming back-off-get-clicked-start-again instead of back-off-bozo-go-get-a-life.

Think of this in another context. I teach the dog to Down. She Downs on cue. Now I want to add duration - a down-stay - to the behavior. I stop using the cue, and stop clicking for her going down. I am no longer training her to GO down. I’m now paying for STAYING down. I don’t pay for initiating the behavior any more, but for holding it.

This isn’t a come-when-you-see-me-eating-and-if-you-don’t-actively-attack-me-you’ll-get-some behavior, this is a mine-all-mine-nothing-but-mine-and-I-resent-the-very-thought-from-crossing-your-mind behavior.

At this point I’d go further and teach the-only-appropriate-behavior-when-I’m-eating-is-you-on-your-mat-across-the-room. I have a friend who has this rule for coffee. When she’s holding a cup of coffee, every dog in her house - mine included - hugs the floor until she’s done. It doesn’t matter what they were doing at the time - wrestling, walking through the room, playing with a toy - when the coffee cup shows up, they all hit the floor.

Sue Eh?
www.sue-eh.ca

Sniff Zen

Today I took Luna to the pet store to buy a small bag of kibble to tide her over until her regular brand is delivered. Sadly, the pet store changed owners and the brand I wanted was no longer sold, so we left with something else. Oh well, it's only temporary.

In the store, Luna showed some gaping holes in our training. Holes I've known about, but can't be bothered to fix; she could not keep her nose to herself and she went into sticky-shepherd-blank-stare-mode when she spotted the baby chicks in glass cages (just for Easter).

OK, that means we need to do some work on Sniff Zen and Animal Zen. I'll work on Sniff Zen at home, then go to the pet store and work on it there. Criteria will be Loose Leash, nose to herself, ears open (aka listen to what I say). For the critters we'll have to do some Look At That, I think.

So, in the next 2 weeks, I want to visit the pet store at least 3 times, by the end of which Luna will hopefully, if I do it right, have a default Pet Store Zen.