If you read my bio you know that my wife is in ABA Therapy and I am an aspiring dog trainer. One thing that has hit our radar are buttons that you press and a recorded sound is played.
The Goal: teach our dog (Tommy Pickles) to press buttons to communicate what is on his mind.
Advanced version 2.0 goal: Have the commands sync with Alexa for rewards or environment changes. (More on this if first goal becomes accomplished.)
As I do written documentation on this process I will also be uploading videos in hopes that you can duplicate our success or learn from our failure.
Process:
1. Fully manipulate dog paw to press button.
2. Button pressed: 'treat' is sounded
3. Human: 'good' rewards with treat.
- Use shaping methods to go from full manipulation to partial to none at all.
- Shaping: start with fully pressing paw to button, then give reward. Work toward dog putting paw on button unprompted, then reward. Do this in as many micro steps as is necessary until dog does the desired behavior: full presses button unprompted.
- Yes this does mean that we have just been trained to give him a treat when he asks, but I am very pleased that he is using his environment to get what he wants. This is the brain I want him to develop.
Each button we develop and train him how to use will be a blog article as well.
Follow along and cheers to great training!
-Josh
