"Holding breath" as a start-button behaviour

If you turn on the sound, you'll notice how she stops panting the moment I turn towards her.

She hasn't always done this, but a while ago I noticed her doing it occasionally, and it was quite straightforward to reinforce it so it happened more often. And now she does it most of the time.

I try to achieve something similar with most behaviours where this is natural (that is, in situations where the dog "expects" to receive a signal within a few seconds, and there are quite a lot of cases like that!).

If it's not exactly "holding her breath" that fits the situation, it can just as easily be another "I'm-ready-come-on-dad-behaviour", such as you seeing the dog tense her muscles and lock her gaze on you (or the retrieving dummy), stop wagging and freeze her tail straight up – or something similar.

Having a fixed criterion for the "wait position" makes it easier to maintain reliable cues, and you avoid picking up on small quirks like whining and so on. Our cues are just as important conditioned reinforcers as the clicker, so it's important to use them precisely.

When you see the dog "do more of what it does when you give the cue", you know by definition that your cues are (conditioned) positive reinforcers – and that's what they should be! 🙂

Stimulus control is actually largely about behaviour chains. When the dog learns to "wait for a cue" (as in this film), we've in practice chained together "sits calmly and holds her breath" + "runs to dad".

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