I've been thinking a lot about adding clarity to duration behaviors and also thinking about how can I create a clear path to the reinforcement and training.

I'm always considering how I implement the DS in my training.

If you're not familiar, I'm talking about distance, distraction, duration, and difficulty.

I'm always trying really hard to treat them like individual volume knobs, and I imagine that if I'm turning one up, then the others need to turn down.

And hopefully I'm only amplifying one at a time because I just want to compare the one to my previous Rep.

So the question that's been sitting on top for me is how can I add clarity, especially in behaviors that I'm amplifying or focusing on duration?

Hey friends, I'm Crystal Wing and this is what's on top.

It's a place to chase curiosity with me.

Mama O always asks what's on top and that's where we start.

Whatever is sitting at the top of my brain, what's hanging out, you know, around here I embrace a lot of curiosity and usually it's about the connections with dogs and dog training and humans being human and all the random life stuff that somehow ties back to our dogs.

Sometimes it's a short reflection.

I think today might be a little longer again.

Oops.

Sometimes it's something my dogs are teaching me and sometimes it's a conversation with someone whose brain I love to explore.

There is no big productions.

There's no over editing.

In fact, there's very little editing.

It's just my dogs and me sharing what's on top today.

So why is duration on top?

Oh, no particular reason.

I'm not focused on any specific goals with my dogs in obedience.

It's it's kind of a free moment right now that I don't have any competition specific ideas.

I have search and rescue that I'm always working on, but otherwise I'm just playing with some ideas and helping out my club.

That's where this started.

I was helping a club mate working on the long ass down.

Yes, that's what we call it.

The sport that we're working on is IGP.

And in this sport, if you're not familiar, the dog is on a long down and there's another dog that's on the field working and the dog that's on the long down is about 20 paces from the handler.

I, I need to look at the rule book again.

It's not fresh in my brain.

And at the lower level they can see the handler, but the handler is facing away from them, so the dog sees their back.

And at higher levels they go a little further and the handler is out of sight behind a blind.

The other dog and handler are doing their entire obedience routine on the field.

At the highest level.

This includes the three dumbbell retrieves where it's over the the, the flat over the jump and the scaling wall.

And then there's several healing patterns and motions.

There's a down and a stand in motion with long recalls.

So there's a lot to it.

Our long down needs to hold steady for, well, it used to be a lot longer for the BH.

It says a lot less now.

They've taken a lot of healing out.

But I would say up to 15 minutes that that's a good amount of time to really expand and make sure your dog can be there.

Lately I've been thinking about something else.

When I coached track, so I was a high school art teacher for 23 years and I coached a lot of sports, cross country, track, volleyball, basketball, softball.

I did a lot of coaching and one of the things that I had noticed is if I didn't tell the kids how far or how long they were going to run, and I asked them to give 60%, if I didn't tell them how long they were going to go, it would look more like 40% because they were unsure of that distance when I was really clear.

And I would tell them, you know, you're going to do 400 and then you're going to do a walk of 200 and then a 600 and walk, you know.

So I had like a pattern.

They'd really be able to understand the distance they were going and I would see that clear 60% effort.

So OK, it makes sense.

Now think about our dogs.

You're going to get different effort, especially I'm, I'm thinking of myself first actually.

So out of myself, if you tell me that to give, you know, 60% and just go run until I say otherwise.

If I know I'm going to 1000 meters or 100 meters, I'm absolutely changing my effort.

So how do I communicate this to my learner and in this instance to our dog?

A lot of times I'll try to have thoughtful progressions, I'll add more time, but what about when they're really fluent in a behavior and we start pushing longer and longer?

I just feel like there could be a better way to get the better intensity if I could communicate them in a better way, especially in foundation.

But imagine a progress bar.

You know what I'm talking about.

So I think about in emails when they say this is page 2O four, I kind of have an idea.

Or they say this survey will take about 5 minutes.

It usually takes me longer, but at least I have a rough idea.

O I've been thinking about also how I use reverse lure and that's another concept.

Maybe for another episode if you're not familiar with it.

But that's another way that I teach the concept of duration in my foundations.

I try to teach it through different behaviors at the same time because with concept training, I can teach it using a chin rest and a nose touch at the same time.

So I mean, I don't do a chin rest and nose touch simultaneously, but meaning I'm teaching both of those behaviors and I'm adding duration to them and it starts really going well because they start understanding that concept.

O think about approaching your training from multile angles to help add clarity to the concept.

O duration is the concept.

How many places can I build in, do this thing longer, stay still longer.

The hardest thing for me, we would play these human shaping games kind of like Portal, but not really.

And I'm I love being the dog.

I love it.

I love trying to figure out what the handler or what the trainer wants and you know, they're they're clicker training me and I'm trying to figure it out and I'm trying all the things that I want to get there as fast as I can.

So I might be a touch Malinois twice the object was for me to be still.

That was the absolute hardest, but well, OK, that could be for another chat.

But still, it made me really think about and understand what my dog is going through.

I mean, I'm talking about busy dogs.

OK, so I have a lab now.

I have a Malinois and I have a Dutch Shepherd, so I have busy dogs.

So I want to talk about where the actual inspiration for this episode came from.

And I got really inspired.

And it's about a crab and an octopus.

OK, bear with me here.

So Nancy, my training bestie here in Saint Louis, she shared a YouTube video and then I shared that in my Facebook group and it is some phenomenal training.

Once I get this podcast stuff figured out, hopefully I can get it in the show notes.

If I can't, then you'll have to get it on my Facebook page, my group.

But the video that I'm so inspired by is from the YouTube Mathias Cronce and it's called I Taught an Octopus Piano.

It took six months.

You're never going to guess what the video is about.

It's exactly as it sounds.

It starts off with him in the fish market purchasing an octopus.

And if you plan on watching it, I'm going to spoiler alert.

So maybe stop me now and go watch this and then come back.

But if you don't mind the spoiler alert, I'm going to tell you what happens.

So this octopus was going to be somebody'd dinner.

He gets it.

And he had a goal.

He wanted to teach an octopus how to play piano.

And I didn't know that all eight of their tentacles have each has its own brain.

How cool is that?

So yeah, you're going to learn a lot of cool stuff in it.

But here's the progression.

So first day, he has some observation.

He wanted the octopus to feel safe.

He didn't want it to get hurt.

So it was just hanging out together.

They were building trust, building a relationship, and he had a lot of patience.

His first little prototype, he would put it in the aquarium and the octopus thought it was a boat and he was just like writing it.

And what he's wanting to do is teach the piano.

So he can't just stick a regular piano in an aquarium.

He has to make all of this.

But what he was doing was just trying to shape successive approximations of touching the key.

It was an individual little piano key.

So imagine if you plucked a piano key and put it in an aquarium and it would make a little tink tink sound.

Well, he then figured out that octopus don't really push, but they pull.

So now he has a next iteration and he, if you can imagine like a little white golf tee looking thing, he put that onto the key at the end.

So that way the octopus could wrap its tentacle around that and it could pull.

So when it pulls now it makes a little tink tink sound.

With that, he's like, I'm on to it.

I can do this.

We built an entire piano for the octopus in the aquarium and he named the the octopus Taco, which is really clever.

So it was cool because he could play it now and before he just, he couldn't do it.

So he couldn't quite get him to be able to do more than one key and he couldn't figure out how to get him to to play different keys.

So he went for help and he went on a search and all he could really find were octopus recipes.

So he did find an octopus expert, I guess named Luigi, and they figured out using an underwater speaker because, well, here's another kicker.

Octopus can't hear.

So it's really hard to help him understand to play a melody if he can't hear it.

But with this speaker, it would create vibrations.

So it was reinforcing for the octopus little Taco that if he pulled the little lever, then it would make a sound which made a vibration in the water.

And he would leave the key and go up to the speaker to enjoy that vibration that it was creating.

And yes, he called it a little octopus vibrator.

Yeah, my sense of humor is there.

The cool part was it really helped the octopus enjoy the piano because, you know, no ears.

And it helped him understand the task.

And so he kept playing random notes, and it was getting more readily happening.

So then he started researching how other animals played, and he saw the light up keys.

So there were several iterations because it's really hard to make light up keys to go underwater.

He got it and he was rewarding for each pull of the key.

So if you pull the key, you get a reward, which is whatever the octopus eats.

And so it was this continuous rate of reinforcement, you know, So 1 to 1, you do the, you do the note, you get the food.

So now he finally gets the light color changing keys to work and the octopus doesn't go to the light up key.

He changed the color, he changed the intensity.

He removed all the keys back until there were only two.

But little Taco just couldn't figure it out because, well, as you all know, Taco is an octopus and not a chicken.

So then he had to ask the true question, what does Taco like?

Well, the octopus likes crabs.

So this is the cool thing.

He made a little crab picture and it would show up on the key right in the very front.

He would spin it around and when the little crab would show up, then Taco would grab that key and he was like, oh, that's the key.

See what I did there?

And he realized that he actually really was into the movement.

So instead of having little spinning crab pictures on each of the keys, that little golf key that I was talking about that he's grabbing on to make the the note happen, he made it so they could wiggle.

So if one of those wiggled, it would cause Taco to run over.

I guess octopus don't really run, but he would go over and he would pull that little moving lever.

That was it.

So the wiggle would create the note.

6:00 every night training sessions.

They were loving it until they hit a plateau.

I know that never happens, right?

We never have that in dog training.

Well, it happened and he couldn't get 3 notes in a row and he's, I called Taco and he gave up.

And I've since I've done that, I've also felt that we have to step away for a minute.

So then he went back to training, but it just kept going worse and worse and worse.

And he wasn't rewarding until he got the little note and he just couldn't get it to build.

How do you teach the creature to keep going?

How do you teach duration?

So he went to the books, he reached out to a guy named Gim, I think was his name, and they created a crab elevator.

And this is where I thought it was brilliant.

They made this progress bar for the octopus.

It's like a tube, a vertical tube, and the crab starts at the top.

And every time that Taco would pull the little key, the crab would go down like an inch and he'd pull the next correct key that wiggled and it would go down another inch.

So every time he hit the correct key, the crab would get closer and closer until it spat out the bottom and he could eat it.

It became so cool.

That Taco became so obsessed with work because he knew how to get his reinforcer that there were so many times that he had crabs just running around in his little aquarium and he put the next crab in.

He just wanted to keep working.

Oh, that's flow.

That is what we just get so into.

So I'm thinking, how can we create the little crab elevator or the octopus and crab story for our dogs?

That's where I'm really stoked.

There are so many themes in this episode.

I mean, you have the appreciating the learner, you have the building trust and relationship.

You have the setup of the environment.

You have the idea of using what brings the learner joy.

And then the perfect moment at the end with play guitar while Taco is sitting there playing the piano.

It is so cool.

Like I could watch this video over and over.

So I think I want to hit a few key points just to make sure that we're really clear on those.

One of the things that I thought was so important was that relationship first attitude.

When the learner feels seen and understood and motivated, that's when you can start expecting complex behaviors.

But you have to have that relationship first.

He built that trust, that safety, and then engagement with an octopus.

It was going to be Taco something, I forgot what the name of the dishes, the environment.

He had to use the environment to kind of to tune to the tune piano tune, get it.

So he used the prop and kind of tuned it to the learner.

So the piano was built, it was adapted and then the octopus was able to then pull it and then you had the crab drop.

So instead of having to force this kind of human ratio piano scenario, it was, OK, let's see how we can create an environment that this octopus can thrive in.

And he asked, what brings you joy, little Taco?

Well, Taco can't hear.

So that wasn't helping.

So he had to use the speaker.

And then for him, it was the relevance.

So the crab was the real motivator.

And the movement is what, you know, challenged him.

And and honestly, after a while, it was the challenge itself that became so reinforcing.

So for our dogs, what lights them up?

What element of play or novelty or movement, your toy, your your handler interactions, What is the crab drop for your dog?

That's the question I really started asking.

And I also started thinking about, you know, when are the times or even I'll pose this to you.

When was the last time that you sat back and you asked what lights up my learner rather than what I want you to do?

But what is it that truly makes you happy?

So let's dive into how the video shows some of this adaptation stuff.

The piano wasn't simply a normal piano, that food delivery mechanism, It was all customized.

One of the examples I have for that was Radish shows.

She's my lab, Malinois, 4 years old, and I was working on Retrieve.

I learned that she was pressure sensitive.

She doesn't like to get real super close into a front.

We've since worked on that a lot, built her confidence.

It's going well, but with a retrieve, I wanted her to sit right in front of me, her toes lined up with my toes.

She's looking up at me and she's holding whatever object it has in her mouth because for Mondeo ring it can be anything.

That wasn't going to happen, so I needed to break it down in pieces.

So one of the apparatus that I made thinking about the Taco example of the different pianos is my dad does HVAC service and they have to throw away the board that goes underneath the air conditioners.

And they're amazing.

They're heavy duty plastic and they're different sizes, like between 36 and 48 inches.

And so I would cut, I cut one of those in half, which basically turned it into a Cato board for free.

Like how cool is that?

I put a yoga mat on the top of it.

And then what I did was I drilled two holes in it and put a coupling for PVC in the front edge so that I could stick 2 PVC rods.

And then it made a dumbbell holder and I could make it the exact height that I needed so that she could hold.

I don't know if you can see this, I'm trying to describe it better.

So imagine Cato board with two PVC rods coming up from the front edge that's just wide enough to hold.

Well, I'll say a dumbbell for the sake of something that's holding a dumbbell that then the dog could sit on the platform and they could hold the dumbbell on the platform.

Hopefully you can get that visual.

I'll try to put something in my Facebook again.

I, I did a whole 30 day challenge, so it's all there.

But what was cool about this was that Rad could hold something in her mouth.

She could hold something while moving.

She could hold something well seated, but she did not like to hold it while she was seated close in front of me.

That was too much pressure, so I wanted her to rehearse that posture of how she sits with her head up holding that item.

And I also wanted a low pressure way of changing that item out so I could have lots of different textures and things.

So that's how I adapted this prop to be able to help her have this behavior without having the pressure of me there.

And we didn't use it for very long, but it was just enough to help her kind of understand that.

This also goes back to learning styles.

So we have different, I think about the octopus, you know it, it needed to learn to move.

It was visual, but not visual when it came to the color, but it did respond to the movement of the little wiggly finger.

So think about how you can change your props, your equipment, your context, your rewards to match the style of your learner.

When I go back to my favorite part of this, we start talking about how we can take this kind of octopus behavior of the crab dropping, and it's getting closer and closer as he's playing the keys.

You know, I never said if he's a boy or a girl.

Huh?

Now I'm kind of curious.

But what's happening though, is because you have to have this sequence of behaviors, it's two things.

So is it that you're doing one thing longer or is it a sequence?

That's what I liked that really tickled my brain about this example of the little crab dropping down.

It's building duration and it's sustaining that behavior for a longer time, but it's also creating that sequence.

So a lot of times we ask for one action and then we stop.

But when we're chaining or maintaining focus or sustaining behavior, how do we communicate that to our dog?

So if we use this kind of crab drop metaphor, what's the crab in your training for a dog?

Maybe it's the toy, the scent, the Hyde reward, the handler cues, but we slowly can move it towards the learner as they hold the behavior.

Now some pitfalls.

If we force duration without first building the joy in the relationship, we can make a lot of frustration happen.

We can get absolute disengagement and stress.

So the sequence matters.

Build the relationship first, take care of your environment.

Now we can start thinking about duration.

So start small, maybe 2 to 3 seconds.

And honestly, I start even less than that, depending what we're talking about, or just one repetition, reward immediately, then gradually increase.

And you can ask, you know, what can I reward that feels like the crab drop for this dog.

You know, maybe it's a toy that becomes more reachable as the behavior continues.

One of the examples in bite sports, we have a thing called defensive handler.

And the dog when the decoy gets close to you and the decoy hits you with their hands, both hands.

Then the dog is allowed to bite the decoy.

And so the dogs love to bite the decoy.

That's their favorite thing.

They're wearing the suit.

And So what we do is we use this kind of crab and octopus situation.

So the decoy will be standing maybe 5 feet away from you and you're facing each other.

Then if you take a little sidestep and you're expecting contact heel, when your dog moves with you, the decoy takes a sidestep and a half step forward closer to you as soon as the dog reconnects.

So if you take another sidestep and the dog stays with you, then the decoy reacts to what the dog does.

So if the dog moves with you, the decoy takes a diagonal step closer to you as well until after like two or three steps or whatever you are in your progression, the decoys getting closer and closer with each successful repetition until they hit you and the dog gets to bite.

So that's a great example of this crab and octopus kind of idea.

Another one you could use is position changes.

So we're playing a lot with that.

I was talking to Denise Fenzie about this.

We brainstorm on these things all the time and she's doing some cool stuff within on this.

What we're talking about is we're at we're at advanced stage, so you can have to break this down a lot smaller, but I really want stability on my positions.

I want them to be able to do the position and then I would like to have the toy off my body so it's like an in direct reinforcer.

So the end goal, not end, but within this series of teaching, this duration, wouldn't it be cool?

And this is what we just tried.

You have the indirect reward of the toy, like back on a table, back behind you.

You're right there close to your dog where they can be successful to have the position you ask for the sit, the down or the stand, whatever you ask for.

Then you take a step back and as the dog maintains that position, maybe you're thinking like a fixed ratio, so it's every two seconds or every one second, I'll take a step back as long as the dog's maintaining what they're doing.

And if at any time the dog changes, then you would stop or you would take a step forward and that would communicate to them.

It's like, oh, not quite right.

It's a reverse lure, but it's just a little fancier, I guess.

So I'd want to set it up so the dog doesn't have failure.

So I'm going to say that I can guarantee my dog could stay there for, you know, 30 seconds.

So if my dog is at that phase, then maybe the toy is 5 feet behind me.

And so every two seconds I take a step back.

I take a step back, I take a step back and I'm taking a step back closer to that toy that's on the table now.

I take the toy and now I take a step forward, a step forward, a step forward.

Now I'm at my dog and I reinforce my dog.

See how that's like a progress bar?

The dog, by doing exactly what I've asked them to do, they're making me move.

They're causing me to go get their reward and I can start building the duration in between those steps.

I can also start building the distance that I go away.

So it's kind of playing with my 2DS.

But again, only adjust one of those, you know, little knobs at a time.

So think about how we can earn that movement toward the toy like that progress bar.

Something I really liked about this was he couldn't just tell little Taco, you know, press middle C and do it again.

He had to explore, he had to get curious, and he had to shape it.

And the system really encourage the novelty and the engagement.

So think about that for human trainers.

How often do we approach behavior training with creativity?

That's the thing that I think lacks so much.

We want recipes.

And instead, what if we start getting creative and start doing more crab and octopus scenarios?

So let's recap.

I've already gone way too long.

We're going to be another 30 minute episode.

My goal was like 5 to 10 minutes.

I meant to start doing stuff I'm not so excited about.

So First off, build your relationship and your trust.

Really appreciate your learner.

Set your environment and your props to match the learner style and employ curiosity and creativity.

That's how you're going to keep behaviors fun and you're going to keep it alive and not dull.

And it may be that you have to use clever mechanisms.

It doesn't have to be though.

I really would like to invite you all to pick a behavior or a learning goal that you're already doing.

And I want you to think about a few questions.

First off, what brings your learner joy right now?

What is your learner really enjoying?

How can you change the environment or the props to tap that style?

And what mechanism will allow you to build duration?

So think you know the reward is becoming gradually more reachable or the timing extending?

And actually one more question, where is curiosity and creativity in your plan?

Because training is not just about the performance.

I think I'm so I don't know what the word is.

Jaded, I guess, from doing 23 years of public school of standardized testing.

I'm so tired of it always being about the test.

It's about the connection, the engagement and the discovery.

I know this octopus piano story.

It's kind of a wild example, but it's so absolutely perfect.

Learners thrive when they feel engaged and curious and invited.

I love how with little Taco in the aquarium, every day at six, the little little octopus comes to the front of the aquarium.

Like, are we doing the thing?

That's what I want my dogs to feel.

That's joy.

So this all started with the question how can I add clarity, especially in behaviors that I'm increasing duration?

And my ending thought or ending question is what if we looked at our learners, whether they're dogs or humans or whatever species with the same fresh curiosity as Matthias did with Taco the octopus.

Thanks guys.

This is a a fun topic to dive into.

Yes I did, I made a diving joke.

There's something here made you think or feel or want to go play or spend time with your dog.

I'd love if you shared it with a friend.

You can find me over on Facebook or Instagram at CBK 9.

That's CBK the number 9.

And until next time, keep chasing curiosity and ask yourself what's on top.