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The Barking Dog Questionnaire

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Posted April 30th, 2007 by Aidan
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Please select the block which best describes the situations where your dog's barking is the biggest problem or is most likely to occur. It is common for a dog to bark in situations that appear in several blocks, but pick the block you think represents the biggest problem situation you would like to work on.

- only when you or your family are around
- when people visit your home
- when being ignored
- when not getting something he or she wants
- when confined
- when left alone for longer periods

- when excited
- at dog sports such as agility
- when other dogs are active
- at certain noises such as the vaccuum cleaner

- when left alone for short periods
- continuously, for several hours a day

- at night
- when people or vehicles pass property
- at the fence
- at neighbouring dogs at the fence
- in the car

- when sees other dogs
- when sees unfamiliar people
- when frightened
- when walking at night

Remember, pick the situation which best describes situations in which your dog is most likely to bark, or situations in which you would most like to solve this behavior problem in. If you really feel that your dog falls into more than one category, you can come back to this page and select another category, taking care to fill out all the details again in the next page that appears.

Whoops! If you are actually after the 300 Peck info, read on...

"300 Peck" was a method that came from training pigeons to peck 300
times in the lab, via horse-training and was adapted successfully for
dog training by a few people. My favourite variation comes courtesy of
Sue Ailsby (http://www.dragonflyllama.com).

What is "300 Peck" used for?

When we want to increase distance or duration, we need to find a way to
increase distance or duration while still setting our dogs up to
succeed at least 80% of the time.

Let's say we want our dog to "sit-stay" for 30 seconds. If we asked
our dog to "sit" for 30 seconds without any prior training, then he
would almost certainly fail within about 2 seconds and we would have
nothing to reinforce. Nothing would be learned except that "stay" is
meaningless.

Another example might be sending our dog around a pole 10' away. If we
sent our dog around the pole 10' away with no prior training, chances
are our dog would either sit there with a blank expression, or find
something else to do.

"300 Peck" helps us bridge those gaps in a manner which is easy for us
to implement.

Let's use the "sit-stay" as an example. We'll assume our dog has
already been trained to "sit" on cue. So we ask our dog to "sit". Then
we count silently in our head "1-alligator", if our dog is still
sitting, then we click and treat.

Then we ask our dog to "sit" again, as he probably got up when we
clicked (which is fine).

Then we count silently in our head "1-alligator, 2-alligator", if he is
still sitting, click and treat.

The next trial is "1-alligator, 2-alligator, 3-alligator", if he is
still sitting, click and treat. If not, then ask your dog to "sit",
and count "1-alligator". If he is still sitting, click and treat.

The basic rule is that on each trial we increase the count by 1, if our
dog succeeds we click and treat. If our dog fails, we simplt restart
the count from 1.

A typical session might look like this:
sit - 1, click and treat
sit - 1,2, click and treat
sit - 1,2,3, click and treat
sit - 1,2,3,4, click and treat
sit - 1,2,3,4,5 - fail
sit - 1, click and treat
sit - 1,2, click and treat
sit - 1,2,3, click and treat
sit - 1,2,3,4, click and treat
sit - 1,2,3,4,5, click and treat
sit - 1,2,3,4,5,6, click and treat
sit - 1,2,3,4 - fail
sit - 1, click and treat
sit - 1,2, click and treat
etc...

Another practical example can be found in Positive Petzine message #28 -
"Turning the Tables - Turning Your Dogs Begging at the Table Into an
Asset". In that article we taught our dogs to lie down nicely beside
the dinner table while we ate our meal. You will notice that this is a
long duration behaviour.

Imagine you want your dog to walk on a nice loose leash. You can teach
this literally step-by-step using the "300 Peck" method. 1 step, click
and treat. 1 step, 2 steps, click and treat; etc

Although it is not obvious, in practice, "300 Peck" enables us to
increase our criteria with greater than 80% success rate overall - and
we don't even have to think too hard about it! We just have to
remember what the last count was and add 1 if we clicked and treated.

This method also works by default to set the exact right amount of
difficulty in any given situation. Sometimes there are distractions
which we don't even notice, but our dogs do. "300 Peck" takes the
guess-work out of setting appropriate criteria for the situation and
always pushes for the maximum performance. To quote the oft-repeated
phrase from 'help wanted' ads - no experience necessary!

Helpful links:
http://www.dragonflyllama.com/%20DOGS/%20Dog1/levels.html

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