끝을 염두에 두고 시작할 때 개 훈련이 더 잘되는 이유 #126

And they don't think, well, what are the chances that he's going to come back? In episode number 119 here on Shaped by Dog, I did a whole session on how to end your training. Yeah, it's great that I'm teaching you how to train a dog, but it's really important that you understand the importance of ending a certain way so that the dog knows this is now my time. This is not dog time. There are so many behaviors that people try to teach a dog without teaching them the end. A sit-stay, for example. They teach the dog to sit and immediately start telling them to stay, stay, stay, stay, stay. And what is the dog doing while they're saying stay, stay, stay? The dog is trying to leave. Why is that? Because you didn't teach them the end. Think of a big open field in the middle of winter. Now, if you are in subtropical conditions, try to imagine like camping out in a walk-in cooler for a little while. And, you know, maybe it's your dad's place and he says, okay, I've got a job for you. There's like a hundred fence posts on one side of the field and a hundred on each of the other three sides. What I need you to do is start putting these new wires on these fence posts. Well, how many wires? Just don't ask questions. Just start adding the wires to the fence posts. And it's winter and it's cold and you're twisting them and you're going, well, okay, I've done three. Is that enough? No, that's not enough. Keep going, keep going. And so, you like, you've done, okay, I've got almost a 10th of this row done. I think that's enough, right? No, just keep going. You've got to keep going. Why do you keep stopping? You're going to make this job longer if you keep stopping. Sound familiar? What if that whole field was filled with snow and you got the opportunity to drive a snowmobile? And so, you're out there, oh, it's just so much fun driving the snowmobile through the snow and you've gone 10 seconds and they say, hey, come on back in. It's someone else's turn. Oh, no way. My turn, sucker. Try and get me. Nobody started with the end in mind, right? Like if I was going skating on our backyard rink, I'd be told, okay, you can be out there till nine o'clock and then it's your brother's turn. It was very clear. The end was nine o'clock. I was going to get in all the fun I could before nine o'clock. All right. So, begin with the end in mind. Why is it so important? I just gave you two really, really good examples. Because if the behavior that you've got your dog engaged with is something they don't see a lot of fun in, they're going to constantly be trying to get out of

it. Think of teaching a puppy to sit and stay. How many times is that dog or puppy going to try to get up and move away? Because they don't understand until when. Until like, when is this thing over with? I think of myself as a child, we drive up to the cottage and it was a two and a half hour drive and we'd be packed like sardines in this car. And I would constantly say, I'm pretty sure you've heard this one before. Are we there yet? Are we there yet? I don't want to be in this car anymore. I need to get out. I need to do something. So, one of my brothers taught me, do you see this? This is Stewart's Hall. You know, when we see Stewart's Hall, we've only got a few more turns and then we'd get to Mr. Chambers' farm. You could see Mr. Chambers' horses. You would know just one more turn and we're back to the cottage. That's it. And so, it gave me, all right, I know when we're getting close. I know when I can relax. You know when the end is near. So, the two reasons why it's so important for dogs is because it's something they don't want to do. They're going to keep trying to stop. And if it's something they really love, they're not going to stop. So, you throw a ball and you expect that dog to bring that ball back, but they're having a great old time romping around, rolling on the ball, digging on the grass, pulling up the grass around the ball. You're supposed to bring me back. Isn't that man's best friend? Isn't that what you do? Just remember, man's best friend is a reflection, is a mirror, is just, it's the shape of a dog, but really it's a mirror reflecting the training you've put in. And so, what you've got is what you've given. You've got a dog who didn't understand the end. They didn't understand, you want me to both chase it and bring it back. Or something as simple as tug. Tugging on a toy and now I, okay, I want to do something else. So, give it to me. Oh, this is fun. I didn't want to give it to you. No, really. And then you start the, you know, the, no, I miss, get mine, it's mine, it's mine. Cue up the bad dog trainer routine, a video that I did back with my dog, Buzzy, I don't know, in the nineties at some point, right? That it creates a new game for these dogs. Tugging was fun, but oh my gosh, you trying to get this out of my mouth. This is second level fun. Anytime you want to teach a behavior, you have to begin with the end in mind. It's a concept called back chaining. So, if I want the dog to stay, the very, very first thing that I teach, there was a question in episode number 123 that came up when

I asked at the end, if you would like for me to share with you how I teach duration, just leave me a comment. A lot of you said, oh yeah, I really want to know how to teach duration. People whose dogs struggle with duration on control behaviors, I think there's two big things that have gone wrong. Number one, they didn't understand until when. Are we there yet? Do I have to do the whole row of fences, right? If you begin with the end in mind, if your dad had said, you see that row of fences, you know, if you could just get 10 of them done, you know, in the next hour, then we'll go and have a break with some hot chocolate and whipped cream and vegan chocolate chip cookies. Hey, I would do those fence posts, I think. And so, with our dog, when we're trying to teach a duration behavior, the two mistakes people make is they don't teach them the understanding of you hold position until you hear this word break. And when you hear that word break, you then will move. The second mistake people make is they try to teach it out in an open area, like on a leash and the dog's sitting in an open or in a hot zone, like on a cot. Best place to teach a duration. And when are we there? When is it over? Is in Crate Games. I'll put a link in the show notes or in the description, or I'll put a little tag here on YouTube if you've not heard of Crate Games. And so, we've got to think of this behavior. If we don't teach the dog how we want it to end, if it's something that they love, they're just going to keep doing it. And then we're going to get into, you know, an adversarial relationship with that dog. And we do not want to have an adversarial relationship with any dog. Something as simple as tug. The very first thing that I teach is I want them to engage. Yes, you go back to dash, D-A-S-H. We want them to have desire to work with us. We want them to have fun. Now I won't teach the out cue until I've got a dog that I know is a really great tugger. And I will kind of pry their mouth open and fight them for the toy a bit because that helps to turn on that instinct. You want to hold tighter and, oh, this is a good game. But once I see I've got a dog that loves to tug, then I'm going to teach that dog an out cue. It's simple. It doesn't have to be a fight with your dog. And surprisingly, I don't actually use a lure. As many people will tell you, put a cookie on the nose, a dog will spit out the toy, and then you give them the cookie. I find that works with a puppy initially, but they quickly go, hmm, do I want the cookie more

than I want the toy? And a lot of dogs are just going to say, I actually would like that toy. So, if you're interested in learning more about how I teach the release, leave me a comment here on YouTube. If you're listening to this, come on over to YouTube when you get a chance and leave me a comment. Let me know that you would like to know how I teach a release that is very different than what anything that I found on social media and YouTube of how other trainers teach a release to their dog. Okay. So, let's get back to back chaining. When you're back chaining, what you're doing is you're moving towards what you know best. And so, anything simple, like if you were going to teach one of your children to memorize a poem, you would teach them the last two lines of the poem. And that would be it. All right. Can you say those last two lines of the poem? Yeah, you nailed it. Come on, let's go have hot chocolate with whipped cream and vegan chocolate chip cookies. I'm going to learn poetry now too. And so, once they've got those two, then you're going to add one line before it. Do you know that one line? Yeah. Now that one line triggers what you know best, the final two. You see what most people do is they forward chain when they're trying to memorize. They memorize the first line. They memorize the second. They memorize the third. They memorize the fourth. Here's the problem with that. What you know best is the line you repeated the most. And those lines are behind you. What you don't know very well or not nearly as well are the ones that lie ahead. And the further into a process you get, the more anxious you get because what you knew best is behind you. For that reason, in the sport of dog agility, where I have to memorize how 21 obstacles are laid out on a course, I always break that course up into maybe sequences of three to four or five obstacles depending on the flow. And I just focus on the last few. And when I've got those last few, then I'll add the few before that together. And then now I know if I'm starting at a world championship and the first three, they're easy. They're in front of me. I can see them. The ones I know best, they're at the end. Those are the ones I'm running to when I'm running out of air. And maybe I'm a little nervous because I'm about to win a medal at the world championships, but it doesn't matter because I know those ones better than I knew any of the other ones before it because I back chained. And that's what happens when we train dogs with thinking of, I'm going to begin with the ending. You're always moving to a place where the dog has confidence.

Oh, I get it. I run out and I bring it back and then I put it in your hand. Yeah, I can do that. I know. I go out and have fun. And then when you call me, I come flying right back. People in, who do competition obedience, that when they leave their dog on a sit and they have to recall the dog and the dog has to sit in front of them and hold position and has to be a very specific, accurate position. Now, I guess in some venues, the dog actually comes into the side, but either place, there's a targeted spot where the dog lands after they've been called. Now people don't practice that recall over and over and over because that's a whole chain. And what if the dog sits crooked? Well, you don't want to reward that because it's not what you want, but then you don't want to not reward it because the dog did this beautiful recall. For that reason, we only practice the end behavior. And I would even break it down to just practicing my dog's head position before I practice their butt in order to get really nice, straight behavior. Back chain towards what the dog knows and loves and knows. Yeah, I'm there now. I got it. Right? And then you're never going to have a dog who gets anxious on a stay. If you train it with confidence and joy, the injection of the joy goes, yeah, I got this. I can do this. Yeah, no problem. Yeah, I know. I wait until she comes back and then she says, good dog and break. Yeah, I like that. And you're always going to have a dog, no matter how much fun they have, they'll understand that fun goes through you because the behaviors were taught intentionally, not with lures or bribes, but by step-by-step process that brings great outcomes, outcomes that both you and the dog are going to want to repeat. Makes sense, right? Now remember, if you're interested in having me do a video teaching you how I teach my dogs to release something, just leave me a comment. I'll see you back here next time here on Shaped by Dog.