9. Go To Mat

9. GO TO MAT

LEVEL TWO

Dog goes to, gets on a mat, dog bed, hammock, or pause table from 5’ away, 2 cues only - two voice cues, or a voice cue and body language, etc.

DISCUSSION: Wow, your dog is well-enough trained that you're going to start putting some of her learned behaviours together into a chain! And using things she knows already that look sort of like new things you'll be teaching her! Congratulations!

Go To Mat is a combination of Distance work (she has to go over THERE to the mat, just like she has to go over THERE to go around the pole), Crate (she has to control herself over THERE with you over HERE), and Down (she has to lie down when she gets to the mat). A complicated set of behaviours, but usually an easy one to learn and to teach.

And how important is this behaviour? Picture your dog crated whenever you need a moment without her, no matter where you are, and without you having to cart a crate around. When I teach a class or do a seminar, my demo and Service Dog (Scuba) is always with me, ready when I need her, but she's never wandering around distracting people or dogs because she's on a grooming table or a mat. From the comments I've had, this seems like a big hairy deal to many people, yet it's one of the first behaviours I taught her and it's easy for both of us. Picture going for a walk and finding someone having a seizure. Hop your dog up on a nearby bench and deal with the situation. Sure, you could ask her for a DownStay, but you never know, when you're not looking, who's going to be petting her, stepping on her, shooing her. And no matter how good your DownStay gets to be, your Go To Mat could be better. I don't know why dogs are more secure with something to mark the spot than without, but there it is.

EASY BEGINNINGS: Get a mat. You can start with a dog bed, a towel, a carpet sample, a jacket. Use the same mat for at least the first couple of weeks. Once she understands the behaviour, you can start playing around with different mats. Get your treats, clicker, and mat. Sit down and put your mat on the floor close to you where you think the dog will naturally be when she realizes you have food – probably right in front of you. The dog comes over, stands on the mat, you click (boy, training dogs is hard work). That's setting yourself up for success, then waiting for the behaviour to happen so you can catch it. Click and toss the treat on the mat X10, then toss the next treat off the mat. Click when the dog returns to the mat and toss the next ten treats on the mat, then another one off the mat.

Move the mat A FEW INCHES away from you. Click when the dog returns to the mat, and the next ten treats on the mat. Then toss one off the mat. Why are you tossing it off the mat? This gets the dog OFF the mat, and gives her a chance to get back ON the mat. There are two parts to this behaviour: a) BE on the mat, and b) GET on the mat. Repeat this sequence another ten times, then move the mat a few more inches away from you. Keep going.

When you finally get the mat far enough away from you that she's not going to hit it naturally, she might go looking for it (EE HAH), or you might have to switch from waiting to shaping. If she can't find it, sit with a totally quiet body and LOOK at the mat. When she turns her head toward it, or moves her body closer to it, click and toss the treat on the mat (the art of training is in how you set things up and how you combine waiting, shaping, and luring into an explanation that the dog can understand). Now go to five clicks with treats tossed on the mat, one click with treat off the mat, then five more on and one off. When she's figured out the game and is finding the mat by herself every time, you can move to one on, one off OR you can move the mat further and further away from you. Remember, when you make ONE thing about a behaviour more difficult, you have to make everything else simpler, so every time you move the mat, go back to clicking X10 and tossing the treat on the mat, then once tossing the treat off. You want the clicker to keep saying "Yes, no matter where the mat is, I'm still talking about the mat!" If you tell her this often enough, you should get to the point where you have to hide the mat to get any other behaviours out of her. If she sees the mat, she should be heading for it.

One more part of the equation. She needs to be ON the mat, not just TOUCHING it. Once she's eager to head for the mat, you can start shaping the number of paws on it. If she's consistently putting two paws on, start with that as your base behaviour. Click two paws on X10, tossing the treats away from the mat. Then stop clicking. She runs back to the mat, puts her two paws on, looks expectantly for the treat. Nope, sorry, not good enough. IF she really knows that you've been clicking her for being on the mat, you'll get what I call the "Hey, Stupid!" reaction. She looks at you, she waits for the click, she doesn't get it, she frowns, and she shouts "Hey, Stupid! I DID stand on the mat! LOOK!" and in that "LOOK", she does the behaviour again. She moves further on to the mat, just to make sure you don't miss it THIS time. Click three paws on, and move on from there until you've got all four paws on. You need to be very clear about your criteria with this behaviour, or you'll pretty soon have her standing NEAR the mat wanting a click.

PROBLEM SOLVING:

SHE JUST STARES AT ME AND DOESN'T LOOK FOR THE MAT! Just back up, you moved the mat too fast. Or sit back and use the mat as shaping practise for both of you. And do other things with the mat that aren't in prime training time – for instance, hold her dish and walk casually around the room (she's following, of course). Walk around until you've "accidentally" gotten her on the mat, click, and put the dish down – on the mat.

SHE JUST STANDS ON THE MAT INSTEAD OF LYING DOWN! No big deal, Down isn't part of the behaviour at this level. Click it if it happens, otherwise don't worry about it.

ADDING A CUE: You know how to add cues now, right? Don't say a word until the dog is offering you the behaviour. When she's running to the mat, over and over again, practically screaming "Look, I'm running to the mat! Look, my paws are on the mat! Aren't you going to click?!", It's time to tell her what the behaviour is called. I call it "Hit the rack".

CONTINUING EDUCATION: As we're going to be asking for an automatic Down on the mat in the next Level, you might as well start clicking any indication of sitting or lying down on the mat. Move the mat around the room (start moving it slowly, or else put it in a totally new place and start training it from scratch) – I want to be able to tell the dog to Hit The Rack and have HER do the work of figuring out where the mat is. If you have access to a doggy hammock or pause table, you can transfer your Go To Mat to the that as well (Holy cow, the dog's first agility behaviour!). One trick I really like (but can't use as Scuba is a Service Dog. Her main job is picking things up, and her BEST job is picking up her leash – I put her in an obedience fun match once and it took me five minutes to get my leash on the ground behind her. Every time I put it down, she picked it up and handed it back to me!) is using the leash as a Mat. Wherever you are with your dog, you've got a leash, right? If I was going to teach this, I'd start with a very long leash, or a couple of leashes snapped together to make a fairly large puddle of leashes, then cut it back to one 4' leash. Or you could use your purse. Your mitts. Your car keys. A chair. A couch. A bench in a park.

Using the leash as a Mat reminds me of another great trick I saw once, though it has only to do with leashes and not with this behaviour. The handler threw her leash down on the ground yelling "SNAKE, SNAKE!" and the dog leaped into her arms.

LEVEL THREE

Dog goes to his mat, bed, etc from 5’ away, one cue only, lies down, 1 cue only, and remains Down without fussing with no additional cues for one minute.

DISCUSSION: Another of the many duration behaviours in this Level. Here we're asking the dog to hold a DownStay, but as the time gets up around ten minutes, we'll relax the Down as long as she stays on the mat.

EASY BEGINNINGS: Two things added at this Level – Down on the mat, and Staying on the mat. Start with Down. You've got a good Down on cue from L2, and in L3 Downs you're working on Down from a distance – this fits in nicely with both of those. You can simply ask her to Down when she's on the mat. Down, click, and toss the treat off the mat. Down, click, toss. X10, then wait to see if she offers you a Down when she gets to the mat. If she does, X20, click, toss off the mat. If she doesn't, another ten giving her the Down cue and try for the volunteer behaviour again.

Or, you can NOT cue the Down, just start right in on duration. She goes to the mat, you count ONE, click, toss off the mat. She goes to the mat, you count TWO, click, toss off the mat. Etc. If she hasn't started to lie down on the mat by the time you get to 20, I'd go back to the first paragraph and start cueing it before you click.

When she has a clear understanding that she goes to the mat and lies down on it, you can start your duration counts. For this, toss the reward ON the mat X10, then once OFF the mat, then continue your count. So, she gets on the mat and lies down, click, toss ON. She's down on the mat, count two, click, toss ON. She's down on the mat, count three, click, toss ON, etc. She's down on the mat, count ten, click, toss OFF the mat. She runs to get it, gets back on and down on the mat, count eleven, click, toss ON, etc. As usual, when she gsits up or gets off the mat at, say, 12 seconds, get her back on the mat and start your count over again from one second/click, two seconds/click, etc.

PROBLEM SOLVING:

SHE'LL STAY FOR 30 SECONDS ON THE MAT BUT SHE WON'T STAY ANYWHERE ELSE! Of course not. You haven't yet trained her anywhere else. Stay on a mat may look exactly like stay in the front hall to US, but they don't look anything like the same thing to a dog. By the time you've started from scratch and explained Stay to her in thirty different places, she'll be starting to understand. Even putting the mat in the front hall won't seem the same to her as having the mat in the living room.

ADDING A CUE: I don't use any cue for STAYING on the mat. The initial Go To Mat cue will get the dog to the mat. Once there, she's on her own. You're teaching her to stay on the mat until you click or call her or otherwise release her.

CONTINUING EDUCATION: The more she practices staying on the mat, the better she'll know it. Move the mat around your house. Use different mats. Use mats, and low tables, hammocks, clothing. And remember, each time you change ONE thing about what the dog knows, change everything else to make it easier, so if you use a different mat, be sure to keep it in a place she knows, and lower the distance and time. If you change the place you put the mat, use the same mat, and lower the distance and time. Effort you put in now to help her understand new things will be well worth it later, because, like everything else you teach her, the more practise she has in generalizing a behaviour, the better she'll be at it.

LEVEL FOUR

Dog goes to his mat, bed, or pause table from 10’ away, lies down and remains Down with no fussing for 2 minutes. Appropriate cues.

DISCUSSION: Remember to decrease the time when you increase the distance, and vice versa. Getting a solid voice cue is one of the most important parts of the behaviour at this Level.

EASY BEGINNINGS: It makes no difference whether you increase distance first, or time. The choice is yours. Best results (or most visible results) will probably be gained by alternating. So work going to the mat up to 6', then cut back to 4' and make sure you have your Level Three 60 second Stay solid. Then go on to 80 seconds. Go back to maybe 10 seconds on the mat, but work the distance to the mat up to 8'. Cut your distance back down to 6' and work your time up to 100 seconds. Go back to 20 seconds and work your distance to the full 10'. Cut your distance to 8' and work your time all the way up to 2 minutes. Finally, work your distance back up to 10'.

CONTINUING EDUCATION: Pay some careful attention to your cue at this Level. With a short distance and no duration on the Stay, move your mat around so the dog has to look for it a bit to find it. When she's really good at finding it, no matter where in the room you put it, put the cue back on. Do it a LOT. In this behaviour's most useful incarnation, you can walk towards one end of a training area, cue Go To Mat, and have the dog run out ahead of you and find something to park on. Wait a minute, does that sound like really good distance on the agility pause table? Why yes, I think it does!

At this Level, you can also start finding better things to do than staring at your dog for two minutes. Cut back to short distances and short durations and fold some clothes. Rinse a couple of dishes. Sweep the floor. Again, this is an excellent leadin to the pause table, works just as well for leadouts at the start line in agility, and is also the beginning of the out-of-sight stays in obedience.

LEVEL FIVE

Dog goes to his mat, bed, or pause table from 20’ away and remains down for 5 minutes. Appropriate cues.

DISCUSSION: The behaviour is starting to look like it will when it's finished. Try doing the dishes or other chores while you're working through the five minutes.

LEVEL SIX

Dog goes to his mat/bed/pause table from 20’ away and stays there for 15 minutes. Appropriate cues.

DISCUSSION: This is the complete behaviour. We expect the dog to be able to find her mat pretty much anywhere in a training area, and we no longer require her to stay Down while she's on the mat. This means she can stand up, stretch, roll on her back, or otherwise relax on her own terms, as long as she stays on the mat.

LEVEL SEVEN

Dog goes to his mat/bed/pause table from 20’ away on one cue and remains there with no fuss for 30 minutes. This behaviour must be performed with no food or clicker in the room or area.

DISCUSSION: The same behaviour as we asked for at the previous Level, twice as long. Doing it without rewards in the area means the dog is doing the behaviour as a part of her everyday life rather than as a "trick" which requires an immediate reinforcer.