Mistakes in dog training

I trained and photographed this happy guy years ago. :)

Mistakes are a normal part of life…right? We all make them but when we make mistakes in teaching our dogs, it can be the difference between understanding and not understanding for them. I see mistakes being made in dog training all the time. Mostly it is from trainers with little experience under their belt. They are out there trying to teach k9 guardians “how to” but they are doing it wrong themselves. A little error can make a big difference in how easily a dog “gets it.” Even long time dog trainers can get it wrong when they didn’t learn it correctly themselves.

The biggest mistakes I see being made are:

• Calling a dog out of a stay. Why? By calling them out instead of officially releasing, you plant a seed that they will be coming to you at some point which weakens the stay.

• Allowing a dog to eat (as a reward) what you have just told them to leave. Why? Like the stay, you are planting a seed that they are going to get what you have said is off limits. This weakens a leave it.

• Not enforcing a stay. Why? You teach a dog that stay doesn’t really mean stay.

• Using verbal cues incorrectly. Why? It is hard enough for dogs to learn in a simple, concise manner; mess it up and it is so much more difficult for them to learn.

• Using a behavior marker incorrectly. Why? Because behavior markers can be very powerful. Use them incorrectly and they lose that power. I cannot believe when I see a trainer prompting a behavior with a clicker; the click is to follow a desired behavior.

Education is a never ending process. We are in a constant state of learning; even those with closed minds learn stuff just by living and experiencing. The difference is seeing better and doing better. I have seen other dog trainers completely confusing their human and canine clients by trying to teach something incorrectly.

Nine years ago I took Elsa to a puppy class strictly for socializing. We went through the obedience steps that were being taught out of respect for the trainer; but her real training was being done at home by me (her Mom). If they offered up incorrect information, we just skipped it and sat out. One of the things they had us do was to teach our puppies to go to a blanket. Elsa already knew this, so we showed off a bit. ;) The problem came when we were to get our dogs off of the blanket, click and reward. So we were to click for our puppy going on the blanket and click for off the blanket. This was extremely confusing for the puppies. Am I to be off or on? I simply tossed a little kibble off the blanket to get her off but did not click as I’d been told to do. It made no sense.

There are so many different trainers and methods of training out there. I try not to watch trainers who I do not want to learn from. Although I do like to watch k9 guardians working with their dogs; but have a hard time not helping when they are not my students. Keeping lessons clear, concise and simple is the way to teach our dogs. When we get into a muddy area due to a trainer not clearly understanding what they are doing; we can confuse our canine students.

Much of my training philosophy is based on common sense. I believe that common sense is far too underrated these days. That said, the common sense must be based on canine communication requirements. Meaning that if I use some method that my or your dog will not understand, it’s not going to have a great rate of success.

Dogs learn through the action/reaction process. What happens when they do something?

feedback - a reaction or response to a particular process or activity:

If the feedback or direction is not clear, then you venture into muddy water. Muddy water is fun to play in but not learn in.

Have a training question? Ask me.

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Me Monster

The “Me Monster.”

Me - adjective

of or involving an obsessive interest in one's own satisfaction:the me decade.

Monster - a legendary animal combining features of animal and human form or having the forms of various animals in combination, as a centaur, griffin, or sphinx.

All “Me Monsters” are not human. Riggs is a “Me Monster” and I’m sure that many of you live with or know a k9 version of the “Me Monster.” So what is a canine “Me Monster?” There are many different versions of “Me Monsters;” but for Riggs it means that he wants and needs all the toys and will never stop in his quest and he wants to be the first and only one greeting us when we get home. Last night as we sat watching television; Elsa jumped off the couch and ran to get her ball. She wasn’t interested in playing ball, she just wanted to have it with her on the couch. I immediately jumped into protective mode, knowing full well how Riggs would react.

Riggs wants whatever Elsa has. It makes no difference how many toys he has at the current time, he needs what she has. Even when he has a ball in his mouth he will try to wrangle another ball in there. He has a small mouth so he cannot physically get two in there at the same time. So he is being educated about taking Elsa’s things; not by Elsa but the humans in the family. Elsa is beyond tolerant of his “Me Monster” antics.

Playing fetch use to be a nightmare with Riggs around. We tried two balls and he was never satisfied with his. He would run after his and then hers, trying to wrangle the two balls into his possession some how. But things are much better now, he has learned that his ball is “his” ball. He is not allowed to touch her ball when they are playing fetch. I did not want to have to put him away when Elsa retrieved, so I trained and he learned.

All dogs are different and even though Elsa has an insane drive to retrieve and adores her balls; she has no desire to own them and loves to share. In fact she prefers to share, and play with others rather than control or own the balls. Nice.

Training dogs that are “Me Monsters” is a challenge but with consistency and determination it can be done and is well worth it. No I cannot take the desire to own everything away from Riggs but I can teach him impulse control.

Riggs fell asleep on my lap last night and Elsa on the other side with her ball tucked safely underneath her. Of course the moment she got up to stretch her legs he swooped in and snagged the ball. It may have been gone but it will never be forgotten.; it doesn’t matter how long she has something.

There are a lot of things that you can do to modify obsessive behaviors and they all have to do with association.

Motivation - what drives your dog?

Tilley in her prime

Motivate - to provide with a motive or a cause or reason to act; incite; impel.

Incite - to stir, encourage, or urge on; stimulate or prompt to action:

So what incites or encourages your dog to keep their attention on you? Do the things that you ask and/or comply? Something that they consider to be of value. That is what you must find.

That said, what is a valuable reward for one dog will not be a reward for another. I would not stand in a long line to buy an iphone (I’m a Galaxy gal). But, if you told me I’d get to try a cool rock climbing wall if I stood in that iphone line for you, I’d be in. It is very much the same for our dogs.

Often it’s not even the idea of wanting to work for us but the emotional ability to function or not. Let’s take my girl Tilley who is now gone from us over 7 years (unbelievable), and her ability to work around a lot of people. Tilley came to us a very shy girl; she was not into crowds (neither am I) or people getting too close (me either). So when I asked her to be my demonstration dog at training classes, she had a tough time with it. I was almost about to give up when I considered her ball.

To say that Tilley was an avid ball retriever is an understatement. She was a mad, obsessive retriever who would do anything just to catch her ball. Later on her frisbee also became an object which she held in pivotal regard. I wore many a bruise when we were in our prime frisbee days as a result of picking up a frisbee or not paying attention. She was a force to be reckoned with when it came to retrieving.

So when I pulled out a tennis ball at obedience class and called to her, she charged to me in a heartbeat. Much different than the painstaking emotional turmoil she went through before the ball arrived. She no longer cared who was around or what they were doing. As long as there was the chance that she might be catching that ball, she was a different dog. In fact she was so different with and without her objects of retrieving that many people could not believe that the meek and soft Tilley was in actually the same highly driven, intense retriever that they witnessed. Fascinating.

So when I’m with a new client we go over drive, motivation and desire. What works for my guys might work for your dog but chances are it’s not going to. We start with low level food when working with no distractions. But if food doesn’t work we find something that does. It is essential to find what motivates your dog; it can be anything like a toy, ball, food, idea of tugging, catching…etc.

Little Mr. Riggs who turned 11 months old yesterday is a scatter brain when we go on walks. He is one of those dogs that very literally does not miss a thing and he quickly gets over stimulated causing all sorts of problems. Yesterday I pulled out a ball and tucked it into the sleeve of my t-shirt. With Riggs in his harness we head out on our walk. Structure is the key to our walks as he is learning about loose leash walking big time. I took out the tennis ball and bounced it several times to see if I was coordinated enough to do what I wanted to do with it. Riggs stopped in his tracks with dilated pupils staring at the ball, YES.

We had our entire walk with only a couple of catches and it worked so well that the ball came with us again today. He is doing much better on his walks and the ball has definitely done what no food could do. In the beginning of our training when Riggs was little, food worked but not anymore. Sometimes he is so stimulated by “things” around us that he won’t take any food from me at all. But the ball? Oh yes.

So it’s all about what makes your dog tick. Just like us, they are all different. It is our job to discover what motivates them. Do you know what incites your dog?