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Written by Jean
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Monday, 17 September 2007 12:55 |
Obedience training is nothing like it used to be. I remember way back when we used to march endlessly around, yanking at our dogs with choke collars and being brow-beaten by a military-style instructor. Nowadays, the principles of how animals learn and a greater influx into the field of people who really know how to teach other people have made the whole thing much more enjoyable and efficient.
But even if you enroll in a first rate obedience course, most of what your dog learns is at home, day to day. So, here’s a primer on what kinds of tools and toys you need to get started training your dog. You can start today if you want. No need to do long, dreary sessions – just fit it in while commercials are on TV in the evening, before you put the dog’s dinner down, on the corner for a minute while out on his walk or for a couple of minutes when you first come in the door from work.
What You Need
The first thing is awareness: time would be even better, but if you don’t have time, I’ll settle for awareness. You need awareness to notice all the great training opportunities there are during a regular day with your dog. Dogs are learning all the time whether we are training them or not. They are learning machines. Which brings us to motivators.
You’ll need a short list of your dog’s big gun motivators: the gold, silver and bronze medallists of his life. These will likely be things like meeting and playing with other dogs, some tasty food like cheddar cheese, freeze dried liver or diced roast chicken, going for a walk, sniffing certain shrubbery or fetching a ball or Frisbee. The ball and Frisbee addict types are called “high drive” by trainers, meaning, specifically, high predatory drive – the ball or Frisbee feels to them like a fleeing critter and turns on something deep inside. These types are easy to motivate but tend to be busy busy busy. Dogs like border collies, malinois, field line goldens and Labs, working line German shepherds, Jack Russells and some Aussies and cattle dogs spring to mind. Dogs who are not high drive can also be trained – they’ll have gold, silver and bronze level rewards too - and in some respects these guys are easier to live with.
Your dog might also be into car rides, getting the door opened to the yard or having the door opened to come back in again. These are also exploitable as motivators.
You will have to stop giving these things out for free. Always, always, always ask him to do something first before you grant one. Sit before din-dins goes down is the easiest one but far from the only one. If he’s jumping around like an idiot in the front hallway before you take him for a walk, for heaven’s sake, don’t snap a leash on him and take him out for a walk! Ask for a sit-stay. If he doesn’t sit-stay, simply walk away and try again in a few minutes. You may have to settle for a fledgling effort at sit-stay the first couple of times but by all means raise the bar once he’s getting it. In a few weeks the dog could very well be immobile, glued into a sit-stay in the vestibule while you don shoes, coat and attach leash. He wouldn’t dare move for fear of you canceling the walk temporarily. Remember what I said about opportunities during day-to-day life? You’ve got him some of the time; so when you do have him, don’t squander it.
The next item is a short list of the behaviors you want to install. This might include sitting when greeting people rather than jumping up, lying down on a mat rather than begging at the table, coming when called and, everybody’s favorite, fetching the Sunday paper. It’s your list, so you choose.
I’d strongly recommend, if your dog pulls on leash, you run quickly to your local pet gear store and pick up a head collar or “halter.” These are the devices you may have seen around that look like little bridles for dogs. Some people confuse them with muzzles but they’re not. They work on the same principle as do hackamores for horses. They reduce pulling on leash. They do all the work mechanically so as soon as the dog has it on, he can’t pull as much. This saves you the time and energy of de-pulling him, so you can do other stuff instead, like walks, play, other training and hanging out together.
There are a couple of disadvantages to halters – they may take a bit of time for the dog to get used to it and learn to associate it with walks, and they don’t have any effect on pulling when they’re not being worn – that is, they don’t train the dog to not pull, they just physically prevent him from being able to pull. Now, if you’re a puritanical type, you may be thinking, “yeah, but shouldn’t I TRAIN him not to pull rather than cheating blah blah blah.” I find this frankly tedious. Life is too short – if there’s a piece of equipment out there that solves a problem and makes walks more of a pleasure, heck, let’s celebrate rather than feel all guilty about it. There are a few different brands of halter, e.g. Gentle Leader, Halti and Snoot-loop. Make sure you get it properly fitted and get pointers on how to use it from someone who knows what they’re doing.
Another really handy item is a bait pouch. This is something to make treats and toys portable. A fanny pack would do or one of the pouches especially designed for dog trainers. Some people line them with sandwich bags and some people just put the treats right in and wash it occasionally. It’s important you be armed with those gold, silver and bronze medal rewards so the dog learns to obey in a wide variety of circumstances and, if one of his top motivators is food, a bait pouch makes it a whole lot easier.
Now for some toys. If you’ve got a high-drive dog, stock up on balls and Frisbees for outside and plush and latex toys for inside. When it comes to toys and high drive dogs, you hold all the cards in the deck because you have a magical ability: the ability to make a toy that’s just lying there come to life – to move like a living critter. You make it alive when you throw it and you make it resist like real live wildebeest when you play tug games. You must exploit this power you have! Don’t give it away for free.
An important caveat about tug games. They are not about dominance and they do not increase aggression. These are myths. Now, that said, this is an intense game and the dog is using his mouth so it’s vitally important that there be plenty of strict rules. Do not play tug willy nilly. The dog must be taught to let go on command, to only grab the toy when invited, to only tug on certain selected toys and to be really careful to never accidentally make contact with the handler. To install these rules, read up or find a trainer with some expertise. The reasons for playing are 1) the potency of the motivator for obedience training, 2) the energy burning and exercise potential, and 3) the fun and bonding.
Another cool device is a clicker. These are tiny hand-held boxes that make a clicking noise when you press on them. They are used by all kinds of animal trainers to improve the timing of information to the animal. The clicker is sounded prior to giving the actual reward, as a precise way of saying to the animal “That’s it! That’s the behavior that you’re about to be rewarded for” so there’s no risk of rewarding the wrong behavior. Timing is really important in animal training. If your reward is a second or two late, you likely will reward a different behavior than the one you really wanted. You may have seen trainers at sea world using whistles to signal to the marine mammals that they just won a fish. Same principle.
Here’s another example. Let’s say the reward is a piece of freeze dried liver and the behavior is running over to the mat to lie down on it when people come to the door. In practice sessions, every time the dog goes near the mat, the trainer sounds the clicker and then furnishes a piece of liver. The trainer could even train at a distance with a clicker. Imagine from your armchair trying to deliver a reward to a dog within one second when he’s twenty feet away on a mat! This can be accomplished by clicking the clicker when the dog hits the mat and then furnishing the liver afterwards. This way, the dog knows the liver was for the mat touching rather than for something else.
Finally, a Word About What You Don’t Need
Training collar – Although there still exist trainers who insist it’s not harmful and even that it’s necessary to use some sort of special collar that chokes, pinches or shocks the dog, growing legions of trainers are achieving as good if not better results on dogs of all breeds with all kinds of personalities and problems without the use of pain, startle or domination. I mean, in human society, there are still boarding schools where they insist it’s benign and necessary to paddle or cane the kids, but it’s pretty well established that it’s quite possible to raise a good, contributing member of society without hurting them to educate them. Same thing with dogs.
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