Twister and the girls

I bought the Nina Ottosson game called Twister. I have had it out about 4 or 5 times since I got it. Here are some videos of both girls playing with it. Taari is seven years old and Nessa is 9 months.





I can think of a few reasons why they are different when they play it (and why Nessa is better at it). It could be their personalities. Nessa is more thoughtful. It could also have been that I helped Taari out too much when I was training her initially and she hasn't been trained to think as much as Nessa. It could also have been some of the games that I played with Taari when she a puppy. For example the door stop makes a noise no matter how you hit it. Perhaps I should play more of these games with Taari to get her to think more.

Silent Signs

While waiting for the for the talking signs I decided to work on getting Spice and Taari to paw a coaster with a picture on it. I went too fast at first and have back tracked so I will describe what I am now doing.

1. First I started with a "blank" coaster and worked on their pawing technique (clicking and treating for a good paw on the coaster).
   
2. Then I printed a picture of the Dog Tornado Game and put it on a coaster. I put the Tornado Game between my feet and held it so that they couldn't try to play the whole Tornado Game. Then I put the coaster nearby. I pointed to the coaster and when they pawed it I clicked and put a treat in the Tornado Game.
   
3. Eventually I stopped pointing and they were pawing it on their own.

I will repeat 3 and maybe 2 if needed in more sessions. After that I think that the next step is to do the same with the Dog Brick Game.

Keyboards, Signs and Buttons

After hearing about and reading a paper by Alexandre Pongrácz Rossi and César Ades I thought it would be interesting to try teach my dogs to use something similar to the keyboard device that they used. The device in the paper turns out to be quite expensive so I am going to give other devices a try (they are essentially talking signs). I will associate something with the sign that will identify it to the dog and the dog will press the sign/button and a word or short message will be played.

I can think of at least a few applications or experiments I could do with these devices.

1. Teach the dog to press a specific sign/button when it wants something (i.e. go outside, food, play, petting, a specific toy, etc.).
   
2. What types of symbols work best for the dog (arbitrary, pictures, drawing). Taari is very visual - watches TV, sees images on bags. Spice on the other hand isn't and it might be a good test of his eye sight.
   
3. Teach the dog to count. Do I use a number two "2" or represent two with two large dots?
4. Another way to play some of the games that are in Kay Laurence's book Learning Games.
5. Teaching the dogs a sequence. First push A, then B and finally C. This may be a way to exercise the dogs in the house when it is too cold and/or the sidewalks are too dangerous.
   
6. Expanding on the above, as well as a sequence have a "command" attached to the sign. For example when the dog pushes A the sign says "sit", then the dog goes and pushes B the sign says "down", etc. You could almost imagine a rally type course set up with these signs. Of course you may have to program the signs to say "command" pause "release". But I think that would be doable since they can record up to 10 seconds.

Too many choices at this point. I will have to figure out something simple to start with.

Also after thinking about it - do I want the talking signs to talk to me or to the dogs? I think that to explore what the dogs can communicate to me the signs should talk to me. Can I have the signs do both? Perhaps especially if they are "different".