How to teach Shame/Cover your face to your dog?

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#1
My friend has a Cavalier King Charles spaniel and she is interested to know about how to teach this trick: Shame/Cover your face. Also other users can ask advice of it so this thread is not just for my friend.

My friend has been trying to find tutorials about it. She was not actually teaching Lotta but she just tried what she has seen in them. In one tutorial they suggested to tickle the dog's snout. Lotta didn't like it. In some of the tutorials they suggested to put tape or sticker on dog's snout. My friend tried to put tape on Lotta's snout and Lotta didn't like that either. Lotta tried to take the tape off with her paw but my friend didn't think Lotta would learn anything that way. Besides, Lotta is a Cavalier King Charles spaniel. Lotta has a small snout and there isn't much room to put something on it. Besides, it might look silly.

Does some of you know ways to teach it without touching the dog or putting something on her snout? In clicker training a dog is usually teached to do things by herself. That way is more suitable for Lotta.

When we are talking about how the behaviors are teached for the dog in clicker training one option is shaping. That way is suitable for Lotta because of this: Lotta acts silly when my friend tries to train her. When the dog is acting silly, it helps when the wanted behavior is divided in small parts and she's always rewarded after taking just a little step for the right direction. So, does someone know how to shape the trick? What are the steps?

My friend is not sure if some of the abovementioned ways would work with Lotta. Does someone know where one can find tutorials where the dog is teached to do the trick by himself? Does someone have other ideas? We are going to create a thread where we are going to discuss about Lotta's behavior and training.
 

Toller_08

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#3
There might be a way for some dogs to completely shape this behaviour, but I think most need a bit of encouragement in order to offer this behaviour. It's not a natural behaviour for any of my dogs at least unless there is something irritating them in which they feel the need to paw at their face, so when I taught this trick to Journey, I tickled the tip of her nose and wasn't against trying a small piece of tape if I'd needed to. I didn't need to with her though. I ruffled her nose twice, clicked/treated both times, and then she just continuously offered the behaviour on her own.
 

Laurelin

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#4
I captured it. I'll freely admit though that a lot was luck. Summer just so happened to have something in her eye while I had the clicker out. I clicked and treated and in < 2 minutes she was offering it.
 

Kootenay

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#5
I've never had the tape thing work. What I've found is some dogs react by pawing their face if you blow at them (some definitely don't, Jasper barks and Onyx bites!), so I've taught this trick to my sister's dog and kind of started it with one of mine by doing that.

My sister's dog Bindi has it down!

[YOUTUBE]Qr8Jh4qBne0[/YOUTUBE]

I'm pretty sure I could capture it with Onyx because she does it fairly frequently, but I never seem to be prepared!
 

Elrohwen

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#6
Tried the tape and it bombed. Watson thought the game was "jump away from the tape monster" and after the second time wouldn't let me get it on his face. There was a lot of barking and play bowing.
 
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Like we have told, this didn't work with Lotta:
In some of the tutorials they suggested to put tape or sticker on dog's snout. My friend tried to put tape on Lotta's snout and Lotta didn't like that. Lotta tried to take the tape off with her paw but my friend didn't think Lotta would learn anything that way. Besides, Lotta is a Cavalier King Charles spaniel. Lotta has a small snout and there isn't much room to put something on it. Besides, it might look silly......./

/........When we are talking about how the behaviors are teached for the dog in clicker training one option is shaping. That way is suitable for Lotta because of this: Lotta acts silly when my friend tries to train her. When the dog is acting silly, it helps when the wanted behavior is divided in small parts and she's always rewarded after taking just a little step for the right direction. So, does someone know how to shape the trick? What are the steps?
This is one option and my friend is still interested to know how is it teached that way.

There might be a way for some dogs to completely shape this behaviour...../

/.......when I taught this trick to Journey, I tickled the tip of her nose.....//..... I ruffled her nose twice, clicked/treated both times, and then she just continuously offered the behaviour on her own.
Like we have told, Lotta didn't like it.

I captured it. I'll freely admit though that a lot was luck. Summer just so happened to have something in her eye while I had the clicker out. I clicked and treated and in < 2 minutes she was offering it.
Lotta does this behavior extremely rarely. Besides, one time is not enough for Lotta to learn a behavior. So, my friend would need to find ways to teach this behavior to Lotta. We have already told what doesn't work. Could someone advice how to teach this to Lotta?
 

Elrohwen

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#8
The point of using the tape is that they don't like it and rub their nose - that's what you're trying to capture. I guess I'm not understanding. You put tape on, she rubs her nose, click and capture that behavior! Unless she hates it so much that she's running away and hiding, it sounds like it would work for you.
 
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#9
I've known a couple of people who used a Post-It note when tape didn't work. I don't know why one would work and the other not, but it's another option at least.
 

Oko

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#10
Maybe the visual of the post it note makes the difference? Anyhow, I'm capturing this slowly with Feist.
 
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#11
"My friend tried to put tape on Lotta's snout and Lotta didn't like that. Lotta tried to take the tape off with her paw but my friend didn't think Lotta would learn anything that way." My friend meant that this way didn't seem suitable for Lotta. My friend just tried that again and Lotta did this:
The point of using the tape is that they don't like it and rub their nose...//... Unless she hates it so much that she's running away
I've known a couple of people who used a Post-It note when tape didn't work. I don't know why one would work and the other not, but it's another option at least.
"Lotta is a Cavalier King Charles spaniel. Lotta has a small snout and there isn't much room to put something on it. Besides, it might look silly." My friend did try to touch Lotta's snout with something but she retreated. So, one cannot put anything to Lotta's snout and: "Lotta does this behavior extremely rarely."

When we are talking generally about clicker training, there are ways to teach behaviors to dogs they don't do by themselves. What about this trick then? Are there ways to teach it without touching the dog or...?
 

Maxy24

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#12
When we are talking generally about clicker training, there are ways to teach behaviors to dogs they don't do by themselves. What about this trick then? Are there ways to teach it without touching the dog or...?
It's theoretically possible, I just don't think anyone here has done it that way so it's hard for anyone to say exactly how to do it. You'd have to teach the dog to duck his head and lift his paw in air, and those are both easy enough. The tricky part comes with shaping the dog to move that paw to their head/muzzle. With patience I'm sure it can be done.

Here is one video I found that teaches it a different way, unfortunately it doesn't show what is likely the hardest part...phasing out the hand the dog had his paw on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFgz2xIpDHI

Other videos look like the dog maybe learned the trick lying down and were essentially taught to peek under their leg and then push their head under their leg, then they were somehow transitioned to do it while sitting or standing.
 

k9krazee

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#13
It's theoretically possible, I just don't think anyone here has done it that way so it's hard for anyone to say exactly how to do it. You'd have to teach the dog to duck his head and lift his paw in air, and those are both easy enough. The tricky part comes with shaping the dog to move that paw to their head/muzzle. With patience I'm sure it can be done.

I was going to teach Crossbone this last night by shaping it -- but then I got curious to how he'd react to the tape first. I put the tape on his nose, he pawed it off, I gave him a jackpot of treats and then he continued doing it without the tape. Mind reading dog means a failed attempt at a shaping tutorial!!

BUT! Crossbone already knows how to cross his legs when he's laying down (taught by shaping and rewarding any movement of one front leg on or over the other) so I would have started with that and increased the criteria (slowly) to him moving his paw over and putting his head near his paw - then under his paw- until reached the desired outcome.

Can't post the video right now but here's a couple pics

Dog crosses legs


Puts head near legs


Covers face


 

Dizzy

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#14
Bodhi does this to the command "bad dog!". She does it on the floor, covers her nose and looks naughty lol.

It took ages!! I started by luring her whilst she was in a down position. I lured the treat to her wrist area. So she understood nose was coming down towards leg/wrist/paw area.

Then I lured her nose UNDER her paw/wrist area - so she had to snuffle her nose under her wrist to get the treat. You have to be quite dexterous to this and click etc!!!

Once she got the connection that I was clicking for her nose being near/under her wrist area, then we shaped the behaviour from there. Started out as nose to wrist area, and slowly shaped her covering her snout.

But she needed a lot of coaxing to realise where I wanted her nose to be.

I hope that's helpful!! Was a long process, but once she got the first bit the rest came more easily :)
 
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#15
My friend was looking for a method where a dog is teached to do it mostly by herself like this one:
....You'd have to teach the dog to duck his head and lift his paw in air, and those are both easy enough...../

/.....Here is one video I found that teaches it a different way, unfortunately it doesn't show what is likely the hardest part...phasing out the hand the dog had his paw on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFgz2xIpDHI

Other videos look like the dog maybe learned the trick lying down and were essentially taught to peek under their leg and then push their head under their leg, then they were somehow transitioned to do it while sitting or standing.
That seems to be the most suitable of ones that has been found so far. Obviously Lotta should be teached first to nod and shake. So, we need to revisit this trick. My friend needs advice for teaching shake. We are going to write about it in another thread.
 

Maxy24

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#16
I'm home for spring break and have been trying to free shape this with Tucker. So far it's going pretty well after only three sessions, I'll try to get a video tonight or tomorrow. Tucker is at the point where he will lower his head and move his paw. Right now he mainly scratches at the ground with it so I have to try and get him to lift it more or hit his face by accident. Or maybe try and get him to poke his paw with his face. I don't, we'll see what happens.
 

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