Let’s all have fun training our dogs!!
If you think of shaping as a puzzle for the dog to solve you want to make sure each puzzle is the appropriate difficulty level for that dog.
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You wouldn’t give a 3 year old child a 1000 piece puzzle to start with. No understanding, interest or progress would be made. The same is true for the dogs we train.
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One of my go to’s for varying the difficulty in the training puzzles I present to the dog is:
Where I throw the treats.
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By throwing treats in different spots relative to where you are standing or where the object is, you immediately set the difficulty level for the dog.
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In the video I eventually want Gus to be able to walk in a circle around the cone.
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We just started working on this, and I throw the treats in a pattern that naturally sets Gus up to circle the cone, 1 click and treat at a time. Can you see this?
I’m always trying to use a technique called SHAPING to train dogs because SHAPING requires the dog to really engage mentally. The only time I don’t use shaping is if the dog isn’t into food rewards.
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Always remember that to use the shaping technique your dog should be motivated by getting FOOD treats.
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I like to think of shaping as setting up a scenario where the dog has to figure out what to do to get the treat. It’s a puzzle for the dog with them finding the solution by trying different things.
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The human part of the team uses a sound (usually a clicker or a short word) to tell the dog they got the correct answer, then gives them a good treat.
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In the video the solution is touching the ball with your nose NOT paws. Ozzie has had a lot of practice and understands to figure out what he was doing when he heard the click.
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After just a few repetitions he stops using his paws and only uses his nose resulting in more treats. Ozzie figured out the solution!!
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Shaping is straight up awesome because you get to see your dogs intelligence shine!!
Getting to know the dogs that board with us is one of my favorite parts of my job!
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All dogs are different and there is nothing that all dogs have in common although many dogs can share similar qualities.
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Understanding the dog in front of you and acting accordingly is every dogs number one request.
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As you can see in the video, Esther is not a big fan of the clicker (and maybe other things that aren’t as obvious) so I pivot toward using the word YES instead.
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In general I’m always asking myself:
-Is the dog confident or reserved/nervous, with people? With dogs?
-What does the dog like (food, toys, praise etc.)
-How old is the dog?
-What training has the dog had?
These questions give me a good starting point to help provide each dog with their own unique best experience!
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What do you think is most important when getting to know a dog?
