LAT Game Questions!

I gave the LAT game a try this afternoon on a whole bunch of things. Is it okay to do it on many different things in the same period?

Our neighbors were having their lawn cut so there was a huge/loud mower zipping by the fence so I hand Blaze on lead and clicker/treats ready. Mower's are something he's reactive to. He did very well and caught on extremely fast to the point where he wouldn't look at it till we/it got closer.

Next the neighbors came home while we were out in the driveway so we did some LAT while they were walking by. As I posted before, he's bad about running up to the fence and barking at people when they walk by then once he gets to the fence stopping and walking off.

Then we went walking down the road to a field and walking back and forth doing some LAT with cars. At first it took me clicking and saying 'here here!' in a peppy voice to get him to see I had a treat in hand but once he realized I still had a treat, he did look back at me each time I clicked.

I would also click/treat when I would say 'Blaze' and he would look back at me. This is something we've needed to start working on too.

Could I be confusing him by doing so many different things?

Also, this was our first session doing LAT, but whenever a car would go by, I would click/treat and he'd swing his head back at me, but then he would go straight back to looking at the car. Is this normal? I would immediantly click/treat again and then I started giving him the treat in the opposite direction of where the car was and holding the treat for just a second while he tried to eat it out of my hand. Is that the best thing to do? Click/treat, he looks back, click/treat again, etc.

I don't think so. As long as he seems to be having fun and keeps offering behaviors, I'd say you're doing fine.

Yeah, ideally I like to have the dog's head just a little in front of me when I'm doing LAT, and when I click I treat by my leg.... So the dog has to turn his head completely away from the object to collect his treat. In the beginning, though, often the dogs are too fixated on the object to turn to get their treat, and in that case I just put it in front of their nose and let them have it. But if they won't turn away to get their treat, it means they're almost at their threshold so keep working at that criteria for a while until they'll turn away to get their treat.

Thanks for the reply Lizzybeth!

He does turn his head back to me when I click, like you say - have the dog's head just a bit in front of your leg. But he turns right back to look at the car. I guess that's normal for just starting out?

I'm goign to start the LAT game with Quinn with the horses I think aswell as dogs because she can be a bit reactive of loose dogs, I was wondering about a few of those questions aswell.

Oh yeah, that's normal.... the game is "look at that," not "look at me," lol. If he does keep staring at you and not looking back at the car at all, then you can raise your criteria.... move closer to the car, work in a busier area, etc.

Mkay. The goal, though, is to get him to where he doesn't bother looking, right? I guess the thing that keeps running through my mind is that I'm rewarding for looking.

That's really the point though, isn't it? That looking is rewarding, yes, but looking at you is more rewarding, and that eventually he'll automatically look to you whenever what he's reactive to happens.

Oh, you're right. Because the reward is the treat, not the click. Sorry, still trying to process clicker training (atleast more in depth hehe).

Yeah me too! I've started working with Enzo on the retrieve, and it is SO frustrating to teach. She just isn't getting it right now, and I know it's my fault, I must be doing something wrong, but I've shaped and clicker trained very limited amounts before, so it's a learning curve for both of us.

Definitely! It's hard for me to shuddup. I'm used to doing all my training by voice or body.

I know! I feel like she should know the command by now, but she doesn't, so I obviously need to shut up and let her figure it out, but I'm trying to free shape it into what I want, and at the same time trying to generate interest in something she really doesn't care about very much.

Wait.... not quite...

The reward is the treat, yes, but the click is the marker that tells the dog what he's done to earn the treat. The click makes the treat happen. So if you click for him looking at the car, no matter what he does after he looks at the car he knows that he's getting the treat for the click.... looking at the car makes the click happen which makes the treat happen.

Looking at you is not a behavior you're intentionally training here. But getting him to turn away from the car 1.)tells you that he's not so fixated on the car that he can't look away, and 2.)makes it more obvious to him what he's getting clicked for. If he just stares at the car and you continuously click and hand him the treat so that he doesn't have to look away, it will take longer for him to figure out what he's getting clicked for, and you won't know when you're working under threshold.

No, that's not really the point of LAT. LAT is really just desensetization.... Teaching the dog to have a different emotional reaction to whatever he's reactive to.

Let's use cars as an example. Right now, when your dog sees a car, his adrenaline spikes, his heart rate goes up, his muscles tense; he has an obvious emotional reaction that says that he's excited/aroused. If he continues looking at the car, that emotion will build to the point where he HAS to let it out, and "explodes" in barking/lunging/whatever behavior.

But if you use LAT to teach him that looking at a car gets him a click which gets him a treat, his emotional reaction will change. Looking at the car will become fun because good stuff happens when you look at cars. As long as you keep him under threshold and raise your criteria gradually, he should figure out that from this point forward, cars ALWAYS mean good stuff, so cars should be a lot of fun.

I don't think of it so much as you're rewarding him for looking, as you're rewarding him for glancing, and staying calm while doing so. At this point it's really more like you're patterning him to glance... you're doing most of the work by using the click to dictate how long he gets to look, and by delivering the treat away from the car so that he has to turn away. But as he progresses, he'll start to glance at the car and look back to you even before you have time to click; it's as if he's saying, "See Mom? I'm looking at the car, where's my click???"

THAT's your end behavior, but not because your goal is to get him to look to you when a car comes around. It's because a quick glance and then turning away signals that his emotional reaction about that car has completely changed; the way he perceives cars is totally different than before.

And changing an emotional reaction will go a lot farther in training your dog than just teaching him a different behavior to do when he's scared.


Does that make sense?

Any updates, Lizmo??

I didn't know much about this, and I'm really enjoying this thread

Oops, sorry! Been busy with school lately (big test today) and I really haven't worked much with him. I didn't have the clicker with me the other day on our walk and a car went by, of course he looked, so I said 'good dog!' and he looked right back at me when I said that. Yay!