Search Results for 'roach'
Book: Audiophotography
I just got a new book that might interest others: Audiophotography: Bringing Photos to Life with Sounds. Computer Supported Cooperative Work Series. David Frohlich. 2004. Kluwer Academic Publishers.
“Audiophotography combines a detailed ‘user studies’ approach to photography, with consumers’ own critiques of new media content they have generated themselves.”
The book includes a CD of examples. I can see how this kind of media could also be considered videoblogging just as well as motion video with audio tracks. In fact, I’m somewhat surprised that iPhoto does not allow you to record a narrative voice track with photos.
The most interesting example on the CD has a photo with four thick edges labelled “ambient”, “conversation”, “music” and “voicetrack”. You can select and play multiple tracks simultaneously. How neat is that!
Listen to this post. (New and improved… my actual voice!)
the inner game of dog handling
When I read Tim Gallwey’s The Inner Game of Work, I immediately realized that he was talking about dog handling. 
In fact, it became very apparent to me that what we are doing in dog training is coaching the dog and ourselves in joint action. And in the K-9 SAR world, we often find ourselves in the position of coaching other dog handlers.
In K-9 SAR, most people agree that the most desirable traits in the dog are: drive and focus. Why is that?
Gallwey writes:
If there is one thing that excellence in sports and excellence in work have in common, it can be summed up in a single phrase: focus of attention. Focus is the quintessential component of superior performance in every activity, no matter what the level of skill or age of the performer.
It is by focus of attention that we make contact with everything in our world and by this means alone that things become knowable and understandable to us. Thus, attention is critical to all learning, understanding, proficiency of action. It is only when we are giving our full attention to what we are doing that we can bring all of our resources to bear effectively. Why? Because when we are giving attention, self-interference is neutralized. (pp. 43-44)
Focus contributes to performance, but drive is the dog’s motivation to choose to focus. Gallwey calls talks about three elements of focus: non-judgemental awareness, choice, and trust.
Awareness contributes to focus by bringing clarity and understanding to observation. It is difficult to quiet the inner voice narrating and pronouncing judgements on what is going around oneself, but if you do, and try to focus on observation in and of itself, you find a sort of peace and understanding — a clarity to the landscape, as Gallwey says. I’ve heard Sheila Booth and other well known dog trainers say that the best dog trainers are those that spend the most time observing dogs. And SAR dog handlers will be the first to tell you that your ability to “read” your dog, recognize and understand small changes in behavior, is critical to your success as a team.
When Gallwey speaks of choice and focus, he really means the desire, or commitment, to do something. This is equivalent to what dog handlers call drive. Drive is desire, almost to the point of obsession, to pursue an activity that involves interaction with the handler — an interaction that can be manipulated (e.g., like a game). From the handler’s perspective, to use choice effectively, set a goal that is challenging but very defined and achievable. Choose one thing that you will focus on in training and don’t worry about the rest. Think clearly about what that goal is, what the desired outcome is, and what the critical variables are. Narrow your focus to one variable and try to minimize the effects of other variables. This is truly a game you play in your head before you even begin to actualize it physically. Your ultimate training goal is success. You want to set yourself up for 100% chance of success, but make the goal challenging enough to be interesting. I find that finding things to improve upon drive future goals and also drive me to push even harder. But it’s also important to set oneself up for success so that there is continually pleasure in the game.
Finally, trust contributes to focus by letting go of mental control in an activity. When you are too conscious of your choices and hear a narrative judging every action, then you fall prey to confusion and paralysis of action. But the more you can trust your actions, the more you will become engaged in that action and the more trust you’ll have in yourself and in your dog. This is a common theme in dog training seminars: trust your dog. Building trust is foundational, and in itself, is a goal from which you can construct many dog-handler games.
Gallwey’s principles apply beautifully to dog training and to dog performance, in general. The dogs that seem to perform best at SAR are those that have great focus of attention. They don’t let other things in their environment interfere or distract with their goal. In fact, Gallwey sums up the Inner Game in the following manner:
P = p - i
Performance = potential - interference
Perhaps this is the hardest thing to help a new handler see: her success as a dog handler / trainer depends not on training the dog to perform a perfect sequence of behaviors, but in building focus of attention and minimizing distraction or interference. A dog that can play to the exclusion of all other environmental distractions, to the exclusion of fatigue or bordom — is a dog that has focus. I would guess this is why SAR dog handlers, in general, prefer play rewards over food rewards. Using play as a reward entails that the dog has developed focus of attention in play. Once you have this kind of focus, you know when the dog plays the search he can maintain focus. A dog so immersed in search as play, is a dog with exceptional performance. And this is what we want as dog handlers and trainers. (Hound handlers know their dogs can be very focused to the exclusion of distracting communication from their handlers so they don’t worry too much about building play drive.)
One game that is a terrific coaching game for the dog and handler is “two-stick”. Remember the movie Karate Kid where the young karate student, Daniel, spends hours “waxing on and waxing off”? What Daniel is doing is conditioning a behavior that requires no conscious thinking. Two-stick does this too. But it is a coordinated, joint action between dog and handler. The aim of this game is to keep the dog running along two 180 degree paths with the handler in the center. You throw a stick in one direction and when the dog comes running back with that stick, you yell “drop” and then throw the other stick in the opposite direction. If you play this game very well, the dog should drop the stick near you while accelerating to catch the second stick that you have poised to throw in the same direction that he is now running (toward you). So as he’s now moving out to retrieve the second stick, you’re picking up the first stick and preparing to throw it the opposite direction. This is a joint game. You are trying to keep an even flow by ensuring the dog drops the stick near you while the dog should be very driven to move faster when he sees the second stick in the air. He should want to catch that stick while it is in flight!
How do you get him to do this? Use the stick as a reward. And use operant conditioning to get what you want from the dog. Catching the stick in the air can be a jackpot, for example. So throwing it just beyond where the dog can catch it in the air drives the dog to move faster. Periodically, you throw the stick in range where the dog can catch it. This is just like gambling and building addiction in the dog. And it is coaching. You are building focus by observing closely the speed and state of the dog (is he slowing down or getting tired? should you throw it less far or let him get it?), developing drive, and building joint trust in this game. Meanwhile, you are conditioning your mutual ability to observe and respond to shared actions in an inutitive way without consicous thinking. You are learning to read each other and play with one another in a truly focused exercise. Just like karate, SAR dog handling requires acute focus and conditioned response on the parts of both handler and dog. This is why most trainers say developing a foundation (reward system, drive, etc.) is key to your success. What they really mean is you need to develop focus of attention and also a rich relationship where you and the dog work as a team. This is an inner game that build both pleasure in the game and heightened performance.
There are many other games besides “two-stick” that you can invent to play with your dog. Find something that your dog finds fun and build off of that in developing focus. Once he starts enjoying and focusing in game-playing with you, you’ll be able to invent new sorts of games and he will become more and more amenable to focusing during these new games.
Another thing I get from reading Gallwey is a reminder to be careful not to tell a training handler what he should or shouldn’t do. “Judgemental feedback brings resistance, doubt and fear of failure. Neither student nor teacher is likely to be aware that this approach to change undermines the student’s innate eagerness and responsibility for learning.” (Gallway, p. 5). When a student comes to Gallway to fix a problem in tennis, he tells him that he will postpone fixing it until later. All he wants him to do is observe some detail of the ball. As soon as the student relaxes and focuses on observing some quality of the moving ball, the problem disappears. And he doesn’t even realize it! The perceived problem is a threat that creates a distortion in the action. So from this, I now have the idea that pulling aside a new handler and working with her on two-stick instead of a search exercise (just as Mr. Miyagi in Karate Kid pulled Daniel aside and had him learn to wax the car), can help teach her the inner game in a very non-judgemental environment and also give that handler a success-building tool.
What I particularly found interesting in Gallway’s book was the idea that people identify themselves with their particular way of doing things. If you tell someone to do something differently, then you are, in effect, judging them. People naturally identify with the way they’ve learned to do things. They will look for subtle ways to resist and will take these suggested “changes” personally. I see this a lot in the dog training world. And have also experienced this “identity effect” without understanding why I felt resistant to someone’s advice to “change something”. I get the sense that we could dramatically improve our own abilities as team mates and dog handlers by thinking hard about how we coach ourselves, our dogs and each other.