Little Lizard is no longer for sale...A little Premack seems to go a long way....

Well, I might have to keep the naughty Lizard after all. There was no class today, and I had to pick up raw food from the Co-0p which is right by the yard so I deceided to take Liz and work on the distractions today. Ever since she discovered those durn gophers in the yard she has had trouble concentrating and seems to have taken a big step back wards. I got to the yard and I made sure and got everything out and set up BEFORE I got the Liz. I started with some mat work, and working on clicker training homework for the tricks class-because she really likes that stuff and stays connected. When she got bored I just sat in the chair and ignored her, and it only took a tenth of a second before she was coming back and asking to work again, whooo hooo! I released her to explore the yard a few times and I got a killer, fast, driven recall, so all was good. Then she noticed the gophers....and the durn thing was sitting there poking his head out of the hole teasing Lizzie. I deceided to do a little Pre-Mack conditioning...there is a fancy definition of the premack principle, which states that more probable behaviors will reinforce less probable behaviors. In other words if someone wants to do an activity they will perform a less desirable activity to be able to do the activity they want to do, and actually over time they will have the same value for the less desired activity as they did for the more desirable reward. I deceided to put it to the test, to get a mole, Liz had to do the poles! If she did the poles, I let her go chase the gopher! By the end she was getting the idea. So, it might seem like a little thing to have her doing the weave poles, but to have her doing them and not taking off with the gopher sticking his head out and right next to where we were working, that was HUGE for a distractable little Liz.