Speech mats?

[Moozillion]

I’ve seen a number of YouTube videos where a cat or dog steps on various buttons on a large mat. Each button says a word. The owners/users truly believe their pet can communicate in sentences such as: “Puppy walk later” (that’s 3 specific buttons that are stepped on in proper sequence) or “Kitty want food now” (that’s 4 word buttons, stepped on in sequence.
You get the picture.
I believe they can understand things like food, out or play.
But things like “soon” or “later” I just don’t see.
And proper word sequence?????🤷🏼‍♀️

Any experience or thoughts on this?
Attn: @Tom

 

[TammyJ]

Don't think so, but then, who am I??? LOL.
Yes, @Tom

 

[Tom]

My trainers and I have talked about this before. In a field of career professional animal trainers that spend all day every day training dozens of dogs to do high level advanced stuff, nobody has seen a credible case of this sort of thing. None of us believe it, but we also cannot say that someone somewhere has a super intuitive dog that they've spent 100s or 1000s of hours training that hasn't figured out which sequence of buttons makes mommy or daddy happy.

I have personally had 6 dogs in my lifetime that were simply above and beyond any normal dog/owner situation. I speculate that most people never see this level of interaction because of its rarity. I've trained thousands of dogs and only seen this a few times, and I've only seen it with other professional trainers a few times. These dogs were so smart, intuitive, and eager to work that they almost seemed psychic. Clearly they weren't, but they were so tuned in to me after so many years of training that I could think a behavior, like "sit", and they would do it. I would hide from their view and think a behavior and get nothing. But if they were looking right at me and I thought about sit, they'd sit. It was eery. They were just highly tuned in to my every breath, eye movement, subtle body posture shifts, etc... War dogs and police dogs sometimes get this way. Seeing eye dogs are another time when someone might see this. Most pet owners will never see this and have no knowledge or understanding of what I'm talking about, though they may love their dogs tremendously.

There are people out in the world that are just born animal trainers. Some of them don't even know it. There are certain skills of perception, intuition, timing, observation, and certain thought processes that some people are simply born with. I have tried dozens of times to teach people these things and failed every time. You are either born with "it", or you are not. Its a talent and there is a spectrum. No matter how hard I try or how many hours of practice I put in, I will never shoot hoops like Michael Jordan, ride a dirt bike like Ricky Carmichael, or hit a golf ball like Tiger Woods. Likewise, none of them will ever be able to work an animal the way I can. Everyone has their talent in life. Some people never discover it. I always had this "talent", but didn't realize it until I was in my 20s or 30s and beating the best professional dog trainers in the highest level of the hardest dog sport there is. I was informed much later by some of the bosses that I used to work for that they could see it, but I didn't see anything out of the ordinary until much later. The signs were there, but I didn't ever even give that a thought. I was just trying to make my way through the world like everyone else. The mental shift after this realization was interesting too. It really relaxed me and calmed me down. I no longer felt I had anything to prove, and truly didn't care what anyone else thought about me or my abilities. I had attained a bit of a "zen" state.

In any case, there are people walking around in the world that have my same abilities with dogs and there are super intelligent, willing, cooperative, intuitive dogs out in the world too. When one of these people and one of these dogs get together, seemingly magical things can happen that are far out of the ordinary. Now, with the advent of the internet, and with video recording cameras literally in the hands of every member of the public 24/7, we see a lot more of these things than we ever have before. Its pretty neat and often inspiring.

Are people training their dogs to form sentences and speak using these devices, a la Koko the gorilla? No. None that I have seen. I can train a dog to do 10 different behaviors. I can then "chain" these behaviors together one after the other in the right sequence and have the dog perform them. Watch the "Doberman Gang" from 1972 if you want to see a crude representation of what I'm explaining here. I can also do this with birds, rats, monkeys... I once trained a parrot to fly about 20 feet and turn into a window to go land on a nightstand next to a sleeping lady in a bed. He then had to walk across the nightstand, push an empty wine glass off the edge so that it would fall and shatter and startle the woman awake, and then turn around and fly back out the window to me. Once he rounded that corner and flew into that window, he could not see me and I could not see him. He had to do this several times all on his own. He did it perfectly every time, just as we had done while training. It took me three days to train that bird to do all that. Imagine all those different behaviors that were strung together... Flying, turning into an open window, flying a cross the room ignoring lots of good landing areas and landing only on the correct spot of the correct table, walking to the wine glass and pushing it correctly over the edge, peering over at it as it crashed, then turning around, flying back across the room, out the same window, turning toward your trainer who is standing there with a big smile and a treat... That took three days of training. How hard do you think it would be to train that same bird to go push a button. Then another button. And another, all in the correct sequence. Maybe a day or two for a well trained bird that already has a good working relationship with its trainer. Now imagine what a talented trainer with a talented dog could do if they set their mind to it and spent weeks or months working at it.

This is my friend Omar. His talent as a trainer far exceeds mine. He's had several dogs like this in the 20+ years I have known him. He coached me a bit and helped me win my first National Championship. He explained the concept that the difference between being a good trainer and being a great trainer might only be a few percentage points, and that a win or loss might be decided by one single point. Do you think Omar could teach Monkey to push a few buttons in series of he wanted to?

 

[TammyJ]

That's wonderful! Looks like one of those "dream teams" of dog and trainer/owner!

 

[Tom]

That's wonderful! Looks like one of those "dream teams" of dog and trainer/owner!

Omar is the one of the most naturally talented trainers I have ever met. Every animal he lays hands on is one of the "dream teams". The dude's abilities are incredible and inspiring.

I was having trouble with my "focused heel" for competition. Omar showed me a video of him and his American Bulldog, Niko, doing an off leash focused heel while walking all around a Schutzhund field while other trainers and dogs actively training and doing bite work... FOR 48 MINUTES!!! For 48 minutes they never broke eye contact and the dog 100% ignored every distraction including whip cracks and bite work with int a few feet of him. That video opened my eyes to what was possible, made my dog one of the best focused heelers the sport had ever seen, and won me several National titles.

We all put these self-imposed limits on what we think is possible. I was trying for 30 seconds to a minute of focus from my dog prior to Omar's help, and failing some of the time. After that video, my world changed. Omar doesn't know or understand those limits. He has no limits. It is beautiful to watch.

 

[Moozillion]

My trainers and I have talked about this before. In a field of career professional animal trainers that spend all day every day training dozens of dogs to do high level advanced stuff, nobody has seen a credible case of this sort of thing. None of us believe it, but we also cannot say that someone somewhere has a super intuitive dog that they've spent 100s or 1000s of hours training that hasn't figured out which sequence of buttons makes mommy or daddy happy.

I have personally had 6 dogs in my lifetime that were simply above and beyond any normal dog/owner situation. I speculate that most people never see this level of interaction because of its rarity. I've trained thousands of dogs and only seen this a few times, and I've only seen it with other professional trainers a few times. These dogs were so smart, intuitive, and eager to work that they almost seemed psychic. Clearly they weren't, but they were so tuned in to me after so many years of training that I could think a behavior, like "sit", and they would do it. I would hide from their view and think a behavior and get nothing. But if they were looking right at me and I thought about sit, they'd sit. It was eery. They were just highly tuned in to my every breath, eye movement, subtle body posture shifts, etc... War dogs and police dogs sometimes get this way. Seeing eye dogs are another time when someone might see this. Most pet owners will never see this and have no knowledge or understanding of what I'm talking about, though they may love their dogs tremendously.

There are people out in the world that are just born animal trainers. Some of them don't even know it. There are certain skills of perception, intuition, timing, observation, and certain thought processes that some people are simply born with. I have tried dozens of times to teach people these things and failed every time. You are either born with "it", or you are not. Its a talent and there is a spectrum. No matter how hard I try or how many hours of practice I put in, I will never shoot hoops like Michael Jordan, ride a dirt bike like Ricky Carmichael, or hit a golf ball like Tiger Woods. Likewise, none of them will ever be able to work an animal the way I can. Everyone has their talent in life. Some people never discover it. I always had this "talent", but didn't realize it until I was in my 20s or 30s and beating the best professional dog trainers in the highest level of the hardest dog sport there is. I was informed much later by some of the bosses that I used to work for that they could see it, but I didn't see anything out of the ordinary until much later. The signs were there, but I didn't ever even give that a thought. I was just trying to make my way through the world like everyone else. The mental shift after this realization was interesting too. It really relaxed me and calmed me down. I no longer felt I had anything to prove, and truly didn't care what anyone else thought about me or my abilities. I had attained a bit of a "zen" state.

In any case, there are people walking around in the world that have my same abilities with dogs and there are super intelligent, willing, cooperative, intuitive dogs out in the world too. When one of these people and one of these dogs get together, seemingly magical things can happen that are far out of the ordinary. Now, with the advent of the internet, and with video recording cameras literally in the hands of every member of the public 24/7, we see a lot more of these things than we ever have before. Its pretty neat and often inspiring.

Are people training their dogs to form sentences and speak using these devices, a la Koko the gorilla? No. None that I have seen. I can train a dog to do 10 different behaviors. I can then "chain" these behaviors together one after the other in the right sequence and have the dog perform them. Watch the "Doberman Gang" from 1972 if you want to see a crude representation of what I'm explaining here. I can also do this with birds, rats, monkeys... I once trained a parrot to fly about 20 feet and turn into a window to go land on a nightstand next to a sleeping lady in a bed. He then had to walk across the nightstand, push an empty wine glass off the edge so that it would fall and shatter and startle the woman awake, and then turn around and fly back out the window to me. Once he rounded that corner and flew into that window, he could not see me and I could not see him. He had to do this several times all on his own. He did it perfectly every time, just as we had done while training. It took me three days to train that bird to do all that. Imagine all those different behaviors that were strung together... Flying, turning into an open window, flying a cross the room ignoring lots of good landing areas and landing only on the correct spot of the correct table, walking to the wine glass and pushing it correctly over the edge, peering over at it as it crashed, then turning around, flying back across the room, out the same window, turning toward your trainer who is standing there with a big smile and a treat... That took three days of training. How hard do you think it would be to train that same bird to go push a button. Then another button. And another, all in the correct sequence. Maybe a day or two for a well trained bird that already has a good working relationship with its trainer. Now imagine what a talented trainer with a talented dog could do if they set their mind to it and spent weeks or months working at it.

This is my friend Omar. His talent as a trainer far exceeds mine. He's had several dogs like this in the 20+ years I have known him. He coached me a bit and helped me win my first National Championship. He explained the concept that the difference between being a good trainer and being a great trainer might only be a few percentage points, and that a win or loss might be decided by one single point. Do you think Omar could teach Monkey to push a few buttons in series of he wanted to?

THIS IS ASTONISHING!!!!!!!!

 

[Moozillion]

Is Monkey a Malinois like Seven is?

And on a different topic, I can't seem to find the section that had your threads about your hawks. Can you tell me where it is? I feel kinda silly since I found it before, but not now...

 

[Tom]

Is Monkey a Malinois like Seven is?

And on a different topic, I can't seem to find the section that had your threads about your hawks. Can you tell me where it is? I feel kinda silly since I found it before, but not now...

Monkey is a malinois indeed. They are a very special breed. Race cars. Terrible pets, but in skilled hands they can perform amazing feats like no other breed of dog.

 

[jaizei]

And on a different topic, I can't seem to find the section that had your threads about your hawks. Can you tell me where it is? I feel kinda silly since I found it before, but not now...

My Latest Endeavor...

Its taken a long time to jump through all the government hoops and other obstacles, but I am finally realizing my dream of becoming a licensed Falconer. I'm only just beginning my journey, after 20 years of dabbling, but here I go... I will post lots of pics and keep this thread ongoing, and I...

tortoiseforum.org

 

[Moozillion]

Monkey is a malinois indeed. They are a very special breed. Race cars. Terrible pets, but in skilled hands they can perform amazing feats like no other breed of dog.

And on a totally different topic- have you ever trained the BIG snakes?
Or alligators or crocs?
If so, what are they like? 🤔

 

[Tom]

And on a totally different topic- have you ever trained the BIG snakes?
Or alligators or crocs?
If so, what are they like? 🤔

Yes, but with reptiles its more manipulation than training. Its understanding how they operate and manipulating the environment to get what is needed. For example, if they want a snake to sit still and not move much, we cool them down a bit. If they want the snake to be active and moving more, we can warm them up a bit. Same thing with bugs.

Alligators are totally doable. Crocs are insane death machines. I do a few alligator jobs each year. I decline the rare croc jobs that occasionally come up. Its not easy to keep the crocs from hurting themselves, us, and their environment. They are explosively violent and highly aggressive. Not conducive to film set work. Alligators, on the other hand, are fairly easy to work with, and mild mannered in comparison.

 

[SinLA]

Yes, but with reptiles its more manipulation than training. Its understanding how they operate and manipulating the environment to get what is needed. For example, if they want a snake to sit still and not move much, we cool them down a bit. If they want the snake to be active and moving more, we can warm them up a bit. Same thing with bugs.

Alligators are totally doable. Crocs are insane death machines. I do a few alligator jobs each year. I decline the rare croc jobs that occasionally come up. Its not easy to keep the crocs from hurting themselves, us, and their environment. They are explosively violent and highly aggressive. Not conducive to film set work. Alligators, on the other hand, are fairly easy to work with, and mild mannered in comparison.

so.. someone says "I need an alligator for a job" where do you get one? Do people rent them out?

 

[Tom]

so.. someone says "I need an alligator for a job" where do you get one? Do people rent them out?

Yes. Two of the other companies that I work with have them. I subcontract them for my job, and they subcontract my animals for their jobs. No company can have everything all the time. Each of us has our own assortment of animals, and we all work together to do a good job in an attempt to increase the overall amount of work for everyone. There is a whole etiquette with this that has been worked out over the decades.

I know where to get most any animal they can ask for with a few exceptions. Can't get koalas, Komodo dragons, moose, cetaceans, and we can't use native bird species that are covered by the migratory bird act. We have to use similar non-native species like Eurasian eagle owls instead of North American great horned owls. As a licensed master falconer, I can trap, possess, train and hunt with a red tail hawk, great horned owl, or several other native species, but I can't use them in film right now. Supposedly there was a recent court case that over turned this non-sense, but no one has wanted to test those waters just yet...

 

[Moozillion]

Yes, but with reptiles its more manipulation than training. Its understanding how they operate and manipulating the environment to get what is needed. For example, if they want a snake to sit still and not move much, we cool them down a bit. If they want the snake to be active and moving more, we can warm them up a bit. Same thing with bugs.

Alligators are totally doable. Crocs are insane death machines. I do a few alligator jobs each year. I decline the rare croc jobs that occasionally come up. Its not easy to keep the crocs from hurting themselves, us, and their environment. They are explosively violent and highly aggressive. Not conducive to film set work. Alligators, on the other hand, are fairly easy to work with, and mild mannered in comparison.

WOW!!!! 😱

 

[Moozillion]

Your job is just insanely cool.
And it cracks me up that you talk so casually about it- like “just another day at the office”!!!!
😂👍✨✨✨✨✨✨

 

[SinLA]

Yes. Two of the other companies that I work with have them. I subcontract them for my job, and they subcontract my animals for their jobs. No company can have everything all the time. Each of us has our own assortment of animals, and we all work together to do a good job in an attempt to increase the overall amount of work for everyone. There is a whole etiquette with this that has been worked out over the decades.

I know where to get most any animal they can ask for with a few exceptions. Can't get koalas, Komodo dragons, moose, cetaceans, and we can't use native bird species that are covered by the migratory bird act. We have to use similar non-native species like Eurasian eagle owls instead of North American great horned owls. As a licensed master falconer, I can trap, possess, train and hunt with a red tail hawk, great horned owl, or several other native species, but I can't use them in film right now. Supposedly there was a recent court case that over turned this non-sense, but no one has wanted to test those waters just yet...

So where do these people "keep" the alligators when they aren't being used on shows? Are they kept as... well not pets per se..., but in like the equivalent of a zoo, but for working animals?

 

[Tom]

So where do these people "keep" the alligators when they aren't being used on shows? Are they kept as... well not pets per se..., but in like the equivalent of a zoo, but for working animals?

We are heavily regulated by local, state and federal authorities. It is very difficult and expensive to get and maintain the necessary licenses and permits to do what we do. We are inspected twice per year by each of the different authorities and of course have to pay them for that privilege.

The animals are housed at private facilities that are maintained at or above the required standards. This is a whole big can o' worms and we could go on and on about it for a long time. You know how here on TFO we warn people that vets don't know much about tortoise care? Imagine having to listen to some government official tell you that your 6 inch sulcata is a female, needs a red light bulb for heat, dry rabbit pellets for substrate, and it should have a vitamin injection so that it doesn't get a vitamin "A" deficiency. Then they hand you a bill for several hundred dollars that you have to pay if you want them to give you permission to do what you do and earn a living. And you better smile while you write the check or they can shut you down if they don't like your attitude.