LwL 6 Pattern + Marker

Very early on, I worked on Luna’s vocabulary. So we were always doing our thinking at the metaphorical drawing board and she was always a partner in thinking:0) My approach was to introduce words to our book of “Things I know” that had significant meaning separating them from the usual sounds we humans are often making.

For Luna to be able to function in a novel situation with the grace, confidence and presence of mind that she had at home was always a goal we had. I compartmentalized and ranked the places we would go with Luna by novelty, crowd factor, noises and ‘will there be dogs?. Predictability was one of the greatest stabilizers and reinforcers for Luna which makes sense as few of us learn and thrive with random changes in our environments. I did this like Luna-Math in my head so when I planned trips I would have a set of criteria to meet for her in my mind and I would also take my cues from her as we went to new places.

I wanted to work on a shortcut for translating security and reliability to Luna as a way to abbreviate some of the acclimation time in new places. Basically, I wanted to be able to have some default behaviors to help us process new locations with familiar markers. Also, I wanted to have a way to ‘get out of dodge’ quickly and efficiently if we needed to. The point of connection where we were working seemed to resonate with her and I wanted to extend that connection to field trips. I think predictability was one of the greatest reinforcers for Luna.

Marker Cues were part of Luna’s very first first lesson and on page one of her Skill Portfolio Book. I felt that the power of Marker Cue Face was being underutilized. The question was how to extend the benefit of the marker cue without interrupting or altering her response to *Face*. either by our side or in a Sit or Down with distractions present….or even on a mat in a new location. First, I wanted a duration walking practice which would have the potential to transition from one environment to another with relative ease once the skill was acquired. I also wanted to be able to maintain communication and reinforcement while lowering the feeding moments.

A pattern** game felt incomplete as it would be putting aside a marker cue with a massive reinforcement history. Additionally, then Luna’s mom would need to understand the application of the pattern versus the marker cue and mom and Luna functioned almost as conjoined twins doing their well practiced Face/Rock walks. I wanted an extension of the power of their teamwork, not a change.

I took two videos to explain what this looks like and I’m putting them here. What you won’t get to see is how fluidly and beautifully Luna walked with her humans with this practice. And for fun I used to walk in figure eights around posts in a church parking lot and was gobsmacked by how we presented almost like we were in an obedience trial. So the seeds of this skill looked like:

A,B,C *Face* Practice

More A,B,C *Face* Practice

One of the coolest things about Luna learning this was hearing from her mom that the two of them had been on a walk and had seen some kind of a class where five people were walking dogs and she said the ‘A,B,C’d their way around it’ with no drama from Luna!! See, once Luna learned something she was super good at it. If you showed her how to do something and it made sense to her she was show ring beautiful,,,,,and lit from within.

** I don't love the term pattern but it's what we have so using it. I prefer to look at what we're doing with our dogs as communicating with them in all of the things we do. Making communication positive and predictable strengthens both our trust bond with our dogs and our environmental fluency with our dogs.

Copyright Emily Rogeness 2021