Day Three -- Human Behavior

A whole lot of dog training is about reinforcing behavior you want but it is also about behaving in a way that will promote the behavior you want. When I am teaching things like recalls, I want a fast and enthusiastic response. This is a time for me to drop my inhibitions and be a little silly, encouraging him to come towards me. I'm also going to move farther away from him as he comes towards me. So I'm loudly clapping, cheering him on, and moving away from him as he comes to me. In exchange, I get that nice big smile from him as he happily moves quickly towards me even when he was playing with another dog.

When he gets to me, I'm still going to be praising him and rewarding him with one small treat after the other. This helps him learn that it really pays off to come to me and it helps prevent him from taking off as soon as he gets the first treat from me.

My behavior is much different if I am working on stays. For stays, I want him to be calm and settled into his position so I want to mimic that behavior. My praise is quiet and slow. If I pet him, my strokes are slow and calming. If I were to praise him in an excited voice ("GOOD JOB!"), he's likely to get excited and break his stay. In dog training, we try to set them up for success as much as possible. The more he can do correctly, the more I can reward his behavior which equals more feedback to him and an increased learning rate.

It's never a black and white issue. Every dog is different. Getting to know your dog will help you determine how much or how little of something works for your dog. Some dogs need quiet praise or they get too excited. Others need really upbeat praise to keep them motivated. Some dogs need high value treats to work through distractions. For other dogs, high value treats can be the distraction that causes them to respond inappropriately. It takes a bit to figure out what works for each individual dog but, once you do, you'll find that work more like a team rather than at odds with each other.

We start out right away teaching leash skills, surprisingly without the leash. When we are teaching polite leash skills (aka walking on a loose leash), we're actually teaching the dog to walk by our side. The leash should just be a safety measure. I start out by rewarding him for walking right by my side. Ideally, his ear is lined up with the seam of my pants. I talk to him a lot and occasionally pat my leg to keep him with me, as well as periodically rewarding him. 

Pretty soon he's figuring out that it pays off well to walk next to me. We practice with a leash too but I find that doing it this way really teaches the dog what behavior we want. I also do not want him to learn to pull. This happens a lot with people because they want to take their puppies for long walks. But puppies have short attention spans and actually do much better with very short training sessions. And every walk at this point is a training session. It's too much to expect them to walk right next to you for long periods of time. It's like sitting a 2 year old down for a 3 hour lecture and expecting them to pass the test at the end of the class. And, when a dog pulls on the leash, that behavior is reinforced and so it makes it much more difficult to fix. You can use natural consequences to reward behavior you want so, in this case, stopping in your tracks if he gets ahead of you on leash. He does not get to move forward (i.e. get reinforced for that behavior) if he is pulling on leash.

We use a similar technique for a lot of the things he wants. We can use "sit" as a way for Ubu to "say please." Want to go outside? Sit first before I open the door for you.

Want attention from me? Sit first and I will give you attention.

It sounds like we've been working all day but, not to worry, there is plenty of play mixed in. Play is a very important part of training, bonding, exercise, and stress relief. Plus it makes a boy very happy.