“How To” basics

There are some things that are useful or even mandatory to have before you can start teaching your dog things. I will point out the most important that come to mind

Engagement

There is no training when the dog is not engaged with you. In my language (that is estonian) it is referred to as having a contact. What it basically means is that the dog stays with you and wants what you have. If the dog is not engaged ie. will leave you for something more interesting, isn’t paying attention to you or just isn’t interested in what you are offering, there is not much training going to happen. Or if you start getting frustrated and mad and that shows in your demeanor (and, trust me, it will to a dog who is an expert in body language, reading your tone of voice and smelling your body chemistry) then it is more likely that you are teaching your dog that training time is something unpleasant and this, obviously, is VERY counterproductive.

Getting engagement is easier with some dogs than with others. HERE is a video of engagement training with a 12 week old puppy (there is a second part to this session that can be found on the right of the YouTube page) and HERE is Michael Ellis himself with his adult competition dog Pi doing engagement work. Leerburg channel has disabled embeding so unfortunately I am not able to embed these videos. But I am able to embed a video of Prana when she was about 11 months old and how our sessions look liked then. By this time I had trained her about 5 months mostly working on engagement, not behavours.

Motivation

If you are going to train your dog you need something that he wants. It would be perfect if the dog wants food, loves to play and adores being praised and petted by you. These are the easiest things to use as rewards in training. However they are not the only ones. Every day there are endless possibilities of reinforcing your dog with life reinforcers- activities your dog loves. Going for a swim is not very practical for free shaping a high five but once you have something hi-five-ish you can ask your dog to do before letting him in the water you can defenately reinforce it with a swim. Going outside is a life reward. Going inside is a life reward. Going for a walk is a life reward. Jumping on the bed, getting on my lap, getting in or out of the car, letting him off the leash, scraching his back etc. It is your responsibility to observe what your dog likes and use it in your advantage.

If your dog is not crazy about food or toys do not despair- you can work on that. Start in an environment that is boring to your dog. Before that let your dog go for a while (talking about hours here, not weeks) without any attention or interaction with you, other members of the family or other animals. I have crates so I would put my dog in a crate and let him get bored there. After a while take him to a very boring room where there is nothing besides you and your toys and/or treats to get reinforcement from (a bathroom for instance) and start training. Take the best possible treats you can think of- at first you can take several different to find out what your dog likes most. Make it very simple for him and keep the session short quitting on success and before your dog has started to lose interest.

Training with treats try to make the delivery more interesting- make the treat run! Incourage the dog to chase the treat a few steps. Be animated and be happy. Do NOT get frustrated- your dog WILL know! If you feel that you are getting anxious try to find the final positive note to end the session with. I will promise you that if you have a dog that is not all that crazy about training it will all go downhill once you get frustrated and it will be harder to dig yourself out of that hole later. Prana is not a dog with great appetite but if I take a piece of kibble out of her bowl that she left because she was full, she will will literally be willing to climb up the wall for it. She doesn’t love the food as much as she loves the whole package that goes along with training. I recently went for a demo in a kindergarden and had my sisters collie-mix with me (she is great with kids) and though she has some nice moves on her she was full and would just spit out the boring kibble I had brought. It was ok since she was not really expected to do anything but once she had observed the other dogs do all sorts of things she changed her mind, started craving the kibble and at the end of her tricks started barking out of excitement. It is always a two way street- not only does the value of the food stick on the training but the value of training sticks on food too

Training with toys try to make the toy very interesting moving it in a way that would spark a dogs pray drive. I have never seen a rabbit run in a dogs mouth. A bunny does not need to smack the dog upside the head to get a chase going on so please refrain from poking your dog in the face with the toy. You might annoy them into biting it but you also might annoy them into loathing toys and training time alltogether. It may take time but with the right toy (search around a bit- different dogs like different toys but usually softer is better) you will probably get at least some interest. A bounce is a great start deserving of great praise. Pawing is again one step closer and biting is jackpot. Tug a little (few seconds) and let the dog win. (Once you stop gasping for air you can so a little research and find out that letting the dog win doesn’t make him agressive or dominant, it just makes him love the game more- if I may bring a little analogy my little sister lost a few games of Alias about 10 years ago and still will not play it however I, who won, adore the game to this day- just sayin’…) Then with your voice, body language and backing up try to encourage the dog to take a step in your direction with the toy and once he does grab the toy and play a little game of tug again and let him win AGAIN. After a few repetitions (the whole session will probably take less than a minute) trade the toy for a treat and end the session on a happy note with the dog wanting more. Do NOT give up! It might be frustrating and you might feel silly squealing and jumping around to get your dog to play while he is giving you the Don’t Wanna, Don’t Hafta but persist. And once you get it try to err to the side of caution and end the session before the dog loses interest. Praise, praise, praise until you are blue in the face- blue is one colour dogs do see so you will get some colour in your face through their eyes as well

One of the biggest lessons so far in the Puppy Peaks program with Susan Garrett is seeing how long she persists and works through the Don’t Wanna, Don’t Hafta moments. KEEP AT IT! Ofcourse set the dog up for success with using a location with no distractions and starting with a dog who is bored and full of energy but do not give up without a fight and this is one fight that is reallyREALLY fun and you both will benefit greatly from it.

Here is an example how I go on for too long, get the puppy to lose interest and then work to get it back and then end the session in time not to have him lose focus again. You problably can’t understand estonian but just before I end the session and pick the puppy up I say “let’s keep playing” but stop myself in the nick of time This is a 4 week old puppy (Jägervision Beat Service aka Matu) who is really just started to get interested in playing so I “fight” really softly and don’t make alot of sound as I discovered they find it distracting and just come and try to climb on my lap (for this I have found that laying flat on the floor is a better position). With an older puppy I would be encouraging him with my voice to take it and fighting a bit more (but not so much that I do all the tugging and the puppy just tries to hang on for dear life as he might get overwhelmed and might be discouraged to play). I hope to fallow this video up with one when Matu is older and tugging better.

With a dog with posession agression you might want to consult a proffesional on how to get a grip on this problem before you start tugging. Tugging does not create the problem (that does have strong genetic component to it) but you trying to grab the toy he has won might trigger it. Teaching the puppy to trade items will prevent the problem and teaching the dog to do the same will create a dog who will be happy to give you anything but use your common sence to evaluate your dog and do not put yourself in a position where you are likely to get bitten.

A good time to start using toys in training is when your dog really wants to play, will bring the toy back and out it on your command. The first is pretty obvious- if the dog doesn’t want the toy then he is not going to work for it. The last two are really pretty obvious too- if the dog won’t bring the toy back or won’t out you can do only one repetition of the behaviour and are forced to hunt your dog down and/or fight him to get the toy back. There is a good chance the benefits of this are less than the damage and all the bad habits the dog is able to practice each time so get there ironed out before moving forward. A very funny but so uttely true video do demonstrate something I have observed on training field before Also demostrating very good self control skills and very well laid rules

Fallowing the lure

At times it seems that luring is thought of as inferior but I think of it as one way of getting behaviours. It is pretty easy for both owner and the dog to become dependant on it and find it hard to fade the lure but I do use it pretty often and I think that in trick (and also in obedience and agility and probably more) training it is useful when the dog knows how to fallow a lure. If you look closely at the videos I linked under the engagement topic you can see that with this engagement work the dog is learning to fallow the lure as well. It is very simple to teach really and to the food crazy dog it almost comes as a natural thing- they fallow the hand that will produce the treat when they do. Later it is pretty simple to manipulate the dogs postion like this.

Here is a video I did last fall with my doberman to show an example of how to lure a behaviour- in this case the spin.

Shaping

This is by far not as simple as luring but it is too a skill that every dog should have. To anyone not very familiar with the term it is training where you start with a maybe a mere hint of the behaviour (maybe a glance at the general location of a chair) and reward progressive approximations torwards the goal behaviour (waving while sitting pretty on the chair perhaps). It does not involve you doing anything else but observe, mark (click or marker word) and reward but the underlying plan is the all important key here. And once the dog has figured out the behaviour he has been rewarded for it so much that the dog often finds the behaviour itself rewarding but this is not an absolute rule.

For a dog with a long history of only luring or maybe even correction based training it might not be so simple- these dogs have learned to rely on human help to tell then what to do and the latter has also learned that all creativity will be punished. As for the trainers it is not a walk in the park either to just sit there and watch your dog eagerly waiting for any hint on what to do next when you have always been showing them. It might be nerve wrecking for both of you at first but helping your dog at this point will not be helping him but rewarding the opposite to what you want at this point. There are a few things you can do to make it easier. I like to use a prop at first- it seems to be easier to a dog to understand that he must interact with an object to get rewarded. Reward placement is your friend here- reward on the item or in the direction where you want the dog to move.

Here is a video I did the same time as the dobermans spin video- it is too the spin but this time I shape the behaviour.

And here is an example of shaping using a prop. For a dog who has never been shaped before don’t pick a behaviour with so many parts (my hands refuse to write that this exercise is complicated but for a beginner dog it might be too much at first) like this- choose just the beginning when the dog puts a paw or paws on it for instance.

 

With different tricks there are different basic knowledge that make learning it easier. I will try to start my How To-s from easier behaviours to build on later. Body awareness excercises are ALWAYS good and beneficial and some of them are really useful for later use as basics on more complicated tricks as well.

Hope you liked this post and found something new It is VERY hot here in Estonia (about 60 degrees C hotter than it was in the coldest days of winter) so training is difficult even indoors so I probably will not be making many videos of flashy trainings since there is not much flash to go around in neither me or the dogs. Prana has the worse case of false pregnancy (having the puppies around isn’t helping) and despite reducing her food portions almost to none, she has gotten terribly fat and is not losing any weight no matter what I do Tomarrow there is a dogshow in the beautiful courtyard of the castle in Haapsalu and my 6 year old daughter is making her debut in the Child and Dog handling contest with our obese Prana (since Enzo is not ready to show with her, Liisu has puppies and Veeda, well a 6 year old girl and a doberman about the same age in the showring aren’t probably the best idea ) and tiny Enzo is in Man and Dog handling contest with my dear fiancée Janek who won the 4th place with Liisu last year. Ofcourse both Enzo and Prana are entered in the conformation rings also and we are hoping to score some points torward the showdog of the year contests.