Dogs Are Man’s Best Friend

05/05/2020

05/05/2020

Protocol for Teaching a Safe “Trade” With Your Dog

Start with your dog on a leash and either stand on the end of the leash or tether him to something solid so he can’t leave with the item at any point in the “game.”

1. Say “Take it!” and give the dog a low-value object – something he will easily and willingly give up in exchange for a high-value treat.

2. Offer him your high-value treats – close enough that he can sniff then, but don’t try to push them into his mouth. (Anything that resembles coercion will likely increase his resistance.) Have a large enough supply of high-value treats that it will take him a little while to eat them all. Do not use a cue yet.

3. If he drops the low-value item (in order to explore or take the higher-value treats you offered), click your clicker (or use a mouth click or verbal marker) and, while you keep him occupied nibbling at the high-value treats in one hand, pick up the low-value object with your other hand and hide it behind your back. You must use two hands for this! If you let him eat the high-value treats and then race him back to the object, you’re likely to lose the race and you might elicit resource-guarding.

As soon as he finishes eating the treats in your hand, bring out the object from behind your back, say “Take it!” and give it back to him. This teaches him that he doesn’t lose the object – that he can trade with you and then get it right back. This will make him more willing to trade with you again in the future. It’s a win/win for him!

If he doesn’t show any interest in taking the low-value object after you’ve traded it for high-value treats, you may need to start by giving him a slightly higher-value object and/or using lower-value trade-treats.

If he doesn’t drop the item, make a short “Hansel and Gretel” trail of treats under his nose and then trailing a foot or so off to the side. Engage his mouth with the treats in your hand after he follows the trail, while you pick up the item with your other hand.

If he still doesn’t drop the item, you need to start by
giving him an even lower-value item and/or using far higher-value treats in your hand. (Think meat, not dry cookies.)

4. When you can predict that he will always drop the item when you offer your treats, you’re ready for the next step. First, give your cue (“Trade!”), pause for a few seconds, and then do what you’ve been doing: offer the treats, click when he drops the item, and pick up the item with your free hand while you keep his mouth busy nibbling treats from your hand.

5. After several repetitions, sometimes pause a few seconds longer before offering your treats. Your goal is to get him to drop the object when you say “Trade!” – before you offer the treats. When he will do this reliably, it means you have the behavior “on cue” – he drops the object because he heard and understood the cue, not just because you stuck high-value treats under his nose.

05/05/2020

05/05/2020

05/05/2020

05/05/2020

🐶5 Professional Dog Training Tips

Ever wonder how professional trainers can get your dog to do things � seemingly effortlessly � that you struggle to get him to repeat? Here are five of their most effective training secrets.

✅1. Start Proactively Managing Your Dog’s Actions
I can’t stress this enough! I would much rather proactively prevent the development of bad habits via humane management than give a puppy, adolescent, or newly adopted dog too much freedom and have to fix things later. When left to their own devices, it’s easy for dogs to experiment with unwanted behaviors, and, like people, dogs get good at whatever they practice!

✅2. Pay Your Dog in Valuable Currency – Treats!
When it comes to using food in training, what, how, when, and how much are powerful variables to consider. There are lots of ways to reinforce a dog beyond simply using food, but food is so powerful and so effective in the vast majority of cases that we feel its use should be thoroughly explored.

Because we’ve seen food treats work so well, trainers will usually experiment with a variety of food items to help discover what motivates a dog; we understand what is motivating in one setting might not cut the mustard under different circumstances.

✅3. Be a Team Leader, Not a Pack Leader
The concept of pack leadership is still alive and well in modern-day dog training, and, in my opinion, it brings with it a lot of baggage, namely that it’s important for humans to be “dominant” over their dogs by “winning” behavioral battles and not letting dogs “get away with” failing to comply with a “command.” Blech!

I do believe dogs benefit from leadership, but it’s more about their need for clarity in understanding what works and what doesn’t (good training!) than asserting dominance over a subordinate.

I prefer to think of my dogs and myself as a team. Sure, I’m the team captain, and as such, I appreciate being treated by my canine teammates in ways that feel “respectful,” but I also understand how, as team captain, it’s my responsibility to fairly teach my dogs the skills they need in order to help them appropriately exist in our human-oriented world.

✅4. Be Patient with Your Dog
Behavior can be changed, but true behavior change takes time. It’s important to be patient and commit oneself to a training protocol for a good bit of time before deciding it’s not working.

In one of my favorite books, Tales of Two Species, Patricia McConnell writes, “It takes growing humans about 20 years to learn to control their emotions (Okay, some people never do!), so be patient with your dogs and think in terms of months and years when training, not days and weeks.” I love that!

✅5. Be Present with Your Dog
Take the time to really see the wonderful creature with whom you share your life. When you take your dog for a walk, pay attention to your dog. Interact with him. Play with him. Practice behaviors. Make it easy for your dog to be correct and reward correct behavior.

Also – and this is a big one these days – stay off of your phone! If you want your dog to pay attention to you when you feel it’s important, your dog needs to believe your attention, in general, has value, and he needs a strong history of rewarding experiences. Aspire to create meaningful, engaged interactions with your dog on a daily basis, whatever that looks like for the two of you.

Similarly, remember to meet your dog at his level during every training session and every real-world encounter. Clients often exclaim, “He’s not like this at home!” or “He does it at home!” when their dogs struggle to perform as requested in a busy group class. Dogs are context-specific; generalization takes time.