by Bailey Coldwell & Heidi Atwood
We want you to know that there are parts of dog training and simply living with dogs that can be challenging for us as well. We often receive feedback about how we make training look easy. Some of the finished cues and tasks that we teach our dogs to do may seem overwhelming. When in reality, a lot of our dog training results have to do with breaking down the steps. We are here today to share some of our biggest challenges as dog trainers, as well as share tips on more advanced and specialized dog training tasks.
One dog training challenge can be due to family and work obligations. This can get in the way of dog training since we sometimes have no choice but to respond to the needs of our families, our jobs, and ourselves as well. Unexpected changes in our plans and routines can cause stress when we have to put a training session off for another day while we are attending to life events and issues. That’s ok! Look at dog training as anytime you are able to reward good behavior and acknowledge that your pup has made a great choice. This is something that you can fit into your schedule anytime you notice your dog doing something great, or even NOT doing something they shouldn’t. It can be harder to notice calm behavior, but if you make a point to look for it and toss your dog a piece of kibble for entertaining themselves or resting nicely, it gets easier to notice. Enlist the help of other family members to do this as well, and have rewards readily available for everyone, or great praise can sometimes be enough to help your dog understand that this is a behavior that they should repeat. Also, keep training sessions brief, since dogs can have fairly short attention spans. I would rather do several 5 minute training sessions with my puppy than try to schedule in a longer amount of time, which might cause me stress if it doesn’t work out as expected.
Health issues sometimes give us no choice but to take care of ourselves or others, and send us “off-track” with the training we were accomplishing. If possible, get help if you have someone who can do things for your puppy if you are unable. If that is not possible, know that you can get back on track when you are feeling up to it. In the meantime, keep your pup busy and learning with mentally challenging items that will also encourage the pup to rest and relax.
Distractions can get in the way of a puppy being able to focus on the training and the handler. We want our dogs to be able to handle distractions eventually, and we will intentionally and gradually work on this once they are able to focus on the handler even if something else is happening nearby. If your puppy is getting too distracted by other people, the environment, or other animals, try to find a quiet place to train, knowing that later on, you can help them get acclimated to these situations by proofing the training, which will mean gradually increasing Distractions, Distance, and Duration during training, in an effort to increase Difficulty.
Even as a dog trainer, I can feel discouraged throughout puppyhood when my young dogs suddenly start a new undesirable behavior or seem to have backtracked with a particular skill. I often have to remind myself that training is not always linear, especially during adolescence. Throughout my years of raising young puppies, I now try to prepare myself for training inconsistencies and areas that are often challenging for adolescent dogs. I remind myself that even if my 4 month old puppy is perfectly looking up at me while walking on a leash, unbothered by the world, there is a chance that my puppy will become overwhelmed or fearful of certain triggers down the road and I might need to take some steps back in certain environments until I can remind my dog how to be carefree in that situation. I try to tell myself that my dog isn’t trying to give me a hard time, they are having a hard time.
Dog training goals will vary from handler to handler. Some goals are going to be small, while others are going to initially seem confusing, challenging, and making us unsure of where to begin. Having trained service dogs in the past (who are trained for a specific task(s) to assist an individual with a disability), my number one piece of advice is to take advanced tasks and goals one step at a time. This also is how I have taught my personal dog quite a few “fun cues” and tricks. Many of the advanced skills that we teach dogs start with the simplest of steps. I am going to give an example of this, by breaking down an advanced skill to help show you how this can be done.
Dogs can be taught how to interrupt a repetitive movement that the handler does. One way that a dog can do this is by using their muzzle to push/put pressure on the handler to encourage the handler to stop doing the movement. Here is an example of how this advanced skill can be broken down:
Start with a simple ‘touch’ cue using your hand, where the dog is touching the hand with their muzzle.
Advance ‘touch’ by placing the hand (palm facing the dog) on a different location on the handler’s body, such as a leg, and having my dog do a ‘touch’ cue.
Once the dog is touching the hand placed on the handler’s leg, a new cue can be introduced that will encourage the dog to use the ‘touch’ cue on the leg instead of the hand. The new cue is introduced in front of the old cue until the old cue can be phased out. An example being, “Nudge . . . touch”. Once the dog is responding well to this, the handler can try to just say the new cue, ‘nudge’, and not follow it using the old cue, ‘touch’.
Instead of using the handler’s entire hand while saying “nudge”, they can start to point to their leg. Slowly fading out using their hand at all to target and just being able to use the verbal cue.
When doing the verbal cue successfully, the handler can then start to add the human behavior that they desire the dog to interrupt. If the behavior that they want the dog to interrupt is, for example, shaking their leg, the handler will ask the dog for a “nudge” while shaking their leg.
Similarly to how the handler phased out the ‘touch’ cue, they can now phase out the verbal ‘nudge’ cue. They can try to shake their leg and see if the dog will nudge them without needing to verbally be told to do so. If the dog is struggling, they can remind them what to do by saying “nudge”. The goal of this is that the handler doesn't need to give any verbal cue. The dog will see the leg shaking and know to nudge it to interrupt the behavior.
The handler should then practice shaking their leg in a variety of situations and environments to help the dog generalize the cue and be able to perform it in real time.
As you can see, there are multiple steps to take in order to reach the advanced skill. However, each step is relatively simple and easy for the handler and the dog. Overall, when working to advance a skill with your dog, brainstorm how you can break down the process to set everyone up for success.
With any advanced skill, also be mindful that you can be doing everything correctly and just need to get in more time and repetitions. You might need to occasionally remind your dog of the skill and show them that it is worth it to do so. We have to remember that our dogs aren’t perfect. We should be able to phase out how often we are rewarding our dogs, but it doesn’t hurt to remind them that they are doing a great job! Even if they are adult dogs.
We hope that this blog post has helped to give you the reassurance that training can surely have its challenges, even for us as dog trainers. If you are feeling overwhelmed by training goals, find ways to make it simple. You can also always chat with any of us trainers about a task that you want your dog to learn, and we can come up with a game plan to help you reach that goal. Lastly, if you are ever feeling discouraged, remind yourselves that we have all struggled with teaching our dogs certain cues and behaviors. We have worked on dog training for many years and therefore, it might appear as though it is always easy for us. But this is not true. We continue to learn through hands-on experience with every dog and handler we work with (including you!). Remember, this is our profession. Just like how you might be a better chef than any of us, more knowledgeable about finances, or have more artistic abilities than us, we are here to help with your dog training needs, but we are positive that you have a skill that you would be more successful at than any of us. Don’t be hard on yourselves if you discover your own dog training challenges or setbacks.
Comments