A challenge for you all to ponder....

[Horace's Mum]

I want to teach Horus something completely new, and completely different, and really challenging. I'm not entirely sure what it will be, but I have always wanted to teach him to "read" - words or symbols. My thought would be to read a colour and nose touch that colour.

So, your challenge (and I mean everyone and anyone) is to ponder the many different ways I could do this, fire me with ideas, so I can sift through them all and work out what might work. I have a rough idea, but my mind works best when I have as many ideas as possible, and I want to get this one right so don't want to overlook something.

You don't have to come up with the complete training manual for it - I will be doing it in stages I'm sure, so any ideas for any part of it, however large or small, would be fab. Everyone who posts fairly regularly should be able to come up with something, however bizarre!!

To make it easy for you, I don't expect you to adapt for a deaf dog, I will do that . So if you can think of something that involves sound or whatever, fire away, I translate into deaf dog automatically!!

If I can pull this off I will do training videos to show you our progress - it may take us a while though!

Any other totally wacky ideas other than reading also welcome! I may have bitten off more than I can chew with this one, not that H can't do it but that I can't work out how to teach him!!

[katz]

Ooh this sounds fun! Well for what it worth here goes.
First off I would teach target training using clicker (you'd adapt) getting him to touch with he's nose
Then I'd make up some cards with different coloured shapes on them (I would use cards as you don't really want him to go touching say all blue cars he sees lol)
I would then place cards on floor in a pile and ask him to touch particular colour and treating him when he does and withholding treat when he dose'nt.
Then I would place all cards on floor in a long line and ask him to touch the particular colour you have trained him to touch.

But what do I know

[minkee]

Well the first stumbling block would to be find out which colours he can actually pick out! Dogs see blue and yellow... If I was teaching this, and dogs had the same colour vision as us, I'd start off either by getting some kid's toys in red blue green yellow etc - I'm thinking the type where babies push different shapes through different holes. So the yellow one is square, the blue one is round. And then teaching to 'get' each one separately, with a different cue (the cue being the colour name, probably). This much in itself would be tricky, as my Scout has a tendency to go 'get' whichever thing she likes the most, rather than whichever one I want her to. Not worked on it hard admittedly! Then once he can distinguish between these by the colour word, move up to the identical objects stage...

The other way, would be to START with identical objects (probably balls - I'm thinking 'ball pool' balls, so that you can have a bunch that are identical), and do the same as in the previous stage. It'd probably be quite tough though! I don't know how well they actually could distinguish between the colours. Assuming you could do that though, so Horace could distinguish between a blue and a yellow ball and pick the right one each time, I'd then get a blue and a yellow identical bowls, and teach the same thing again with the same words. It'd probably be like starting over, but once he's got THAT too, I'd get a... blue sock and a yellow sock (identical!) and go again. Hopefully he would begin to generalise and work out that 'blue' means 'things that are this shade' and 'yellow' means 'things that are THIS shade'.

As for the reading part, I have no idea

Perhaps to take the challenge down a notch though, or at least in a different direction - you could consider teaching 'left' and 'right' or 'high' and 'low'. It still has the same generalisation techniques involved (eg. it's not a specific object you're after, but an object in reference to its surroundings) without the 'grey' area of colour recognition. I'd start 'left' and 'right' by having a treat in my left hand - shaking it, and when S puts her nose to it say 'right!' (because it's on her right) and giving her the treat. Building this up until she can 100% get my left hand and my right hand correct on cue, then transfering it to ... my feet perhaps. Then to identical bowls by my feet, then to bowls behind her (eg. at a distance from me) then to other identical objects, and then to closer together, further apart, etc etc. Does any of this make sense?!

[reactive123gsd]

Awe I want to help to but I don't have enough experience.... Sounds fun can't wait to see what you do *high five*

[Nettle]

We still don't know what colours dogs can really see - and you will still find people who read years ago that dogs can only see black and white and who will waste no time in telling you that!


So how about smells instead? You can have - let's see now - Bovril, meat paste, fish, cheese, fox muck (oops sorry didn't mean to put that ) anything you can think of - and make the smells more and more subtle. Dab each smell on a separate cloth and see how you go.

Don't use citrus scents though - dogs hate it.

[emmabeth]

Annnnnnnnd just to confuse things further, I'm going to suggest shapes!

[bendog]

I don't have any useful advice, but some interesting videos along the lines of what you are thinking of:

http://youtu.be/KbI13nbDRRI
http://youtu.be/pw-GDJi7c_w

Sealion matching symbols
http://www.springerlink.com/content/15l ... 3_ESM.html - not sure this will be accessible outside of University so heres a youtube version
http://youtu.be/LBbaSeEaWfw

Might give you a few ideas!

[Horace's Mum]

Thanks guys, I've not been ignoring you all, just wanted to wait and see what you came up with and think about it before replying!

Bendog, that sealion was on a tv programme recently, and is what has spurred me on to do something big if I can.

I may go with shapes rather than colours, because of the issues of not knowing what he may or may not be able to see. I am thinking along the lines of using simple symbols on card alongside a shape sorter as big as I can get. Symbols counts as reading in my book, because it is used so much alongside words for people with learning disabilities, it is just reading without the alphabet!!

Katz, we already do loads of clicker work with our 3 clickers - sign, light or vibe collar - and I fully intended to do all of this with a clicker because Horus understands that so well!

Nettle, I have an awful suspicion that he would rather chew smelly cloths, and if they smell too yummy he might well guard them too much to make it fun. I have tried doing scent stuff before but he just gets obsessed with licking the object I scented and that's about it - childhood traumas overcome clicker fun!!

Everyone else, thank you for you input, it is all along what I had in mind. I have to admit the challenge of training deafies is when it comes down to connecting commands to objects - we have never successfully named toys for example, because he is either looking at me or looking at they toy, you can't do the whole thing of naming it as you play with it etc as shown in the video of Chaser. Having said that, I haven't really bothered trying very hard because none of our toys last long enough to warrant having a name!!

I am going to think it over for a few more days, and try and source and equipment I need before I begin, but when I do I will start a new thread so you can follow our (probably very slow) progress if you so wish!!

Keep the ideas coming, thinking along the lines of shapes and symbols...........