Teaching Toby to lift his left hind leg...

I don't normally do this... but I wanted to see if my theory held true. I've been trying to figure out how to teach Toby to be more aware of his back legs... something I've never clicked before. I've tried a few sessions just clicking any time he moved his left rear leg... but he just decided he need to move back and forth, most specifically his front feet or he needed to bow when that didn't work. Very stressful for him when neither proved a high rate of reinforcement.

So I decided to try something else... lifting his back leg and clicking it. My thoughts being that he'd start anticipating me lifting his leg and lift it on his own and I could jack pot that and work from there. I wanted to do at least 10 sessions (about 10 reps each)... to see if I saw any progress. I'll probably have to do many more than that, but I'm watching. So far this is what I've come up with:

Session 1: 10 Reps
I lifted the paw and clicked each time.

Session 2: 10 Reps
Same as before, I lifted and clicked. He's still showing no signs of lifting on his own, (I'm lightly touching his leg and then lifting, the hope being he'll lift it on his own soon just at the touch). If anything by the end of this session he's putting more weight on the leg I'm lifting...

Session 3: 10 Reps
The first rep, I barely touched him and he lifted his leg! Probably a fluke, but I cheered and c/t. The rest of the reps I did have to lift his leg, but his leg was 'lighter' in the last two reps.

Session 4: 10 Reps
The first two reps and I was barely touching him and he was lifting his leg. Then his leg got stiffer and I had to lift it up each time, before he relaxed a bit and in the last two reps it was easier to lift his leg. We ended the session with a quick cheer, me tossing his treat and a brief game of tug.

Session 5: 6 Reps
Back leg stiff the whole session.

Session 6: 10 Reps
Very light leg the whole session. Still no anticipating me picking it up yet.

Session 7: 10 Reps
Very light leg. About 3 reps where I had lifted his leg and his muscle twitched as if he were going to lift it higher so I clicked that. We'll see if that was good or not later...


Interesting...
I got distracted after Session 7 and he fell asleep when our break took me quite awhile... so that's it for tonight. I'm not going to wake him for this. ^_^ Interesting enough... I did two sessions with Reba as well... here's what I got:

Session 1: 10 reps
She was wild for the first 2 reps, spazzing out each time I tried to touch her (in a good way. She was dancing for treats!) Then she calmed down and her leg was super light the whole session.

Session 2: 10 Reps
Same as session 1, except she calmed down after 1 rep.


Reba is much lighter on the leg to pick up. Partially because of her size, partially because she's either really thinking this through (possible) or she's so focused on the food she's not thinking at all, and is just floppy (probably more likely). We'll see how they both go. It should be a cute experiment.