반려견이 고집스럽다고 생각하더라도 무조건 말을 듣도록 가르치세요 #144

maybe they're not going to get it 10 times out of 10 times, but I'm pretty sure they'll get it nine times out of 10 times. So, sure I'll take that bet of $100,000 10 times because I know nine times out of 10, they're going to get it right. And I'd like to believe my dogs are going to get it right. 10 times out of 10. So, do you have any $100,000 behaviors or does your dog have any $100,000 behaviors that ask the same cue 10 different times? You're going to get responses enough that you say, yeah, those are $100,000 behaviors. Or are you just willing to take the loony bet? Okay. I bet you a buck that when I say this cue, my dog's going to get it because I really don't know if they're going to do it or not. And I don't mind losing the dollar. Okay. So, think of your cues as just a reflection of the training that you've put into that dog. And you can say, no, Susan, you don't get it. All of my dogs understand, but this one, he's different. He's stubborn. He's stupid. He's whatever you want to fill in the blank. Your dog, no matter if he's a different breed than all your other dogs, or you got him as an older dog, or he had the chance to learn not to listen. That dog is a reflection of your ability to train dogs like that one. Okay. So, the mantra fits for everybody. Your dog's ability to perform a cue in the face of competing reinforcement value. So, sure, maybe you can bet $100,000 on your dog will sit when the fridge door is open and you're holding out a cheese slice or cheese stick. Maybe you can bet $100,000 there because the competing values for your dog's attention are pretty low. But what about when your dog is chasing a deer out in the woods? Is that $100,000 recall that you'd be willing to bet $100,000? I tell you, I'd still bet $100,000 of that nine times out of 10 at a minimum. And I'd like to think 10 times, my dogs are coming. My dogs are coming. So, how do we get your dogs to have those $100,000 behaviors? Well, let's peel it back and think about how those behaviors were trained. First of all, was there some consistency? I got to tell you, I was watching a YouTube video and I probably shouldn't. I only spent a couple of minutes there. And I saw the YouTuber say, we're going to teach your dog to stay, sit, stay. And he had this puppy, didn't know anything. And he told the dog to sit, stay and put his big hand in front of his face. He gave him a couple of cookies for that. He said, okay. The dog didn't release. So, he said, come on, buddy. Got him out of the sit, told him again, sit, stay. And the dog lied down. He said, that's okay. Gave him a cookie for that.

And I'm like, how's a dog going to learn? What is a down and what is a sit if you're rewarding both? So, a couple of things to be learned from this. Number one, yes, you have to be consistent with what the cues mean. Number two, don't waste your time watching dog trainers on social media just because they have a lot of followers. That doesn't mean they really understand how to train dogs. Please. Okay. I digress. So, how consistent are you with how you trained it and how you reinforced it? So, if you ask a dog to sit and they lie down, is that okay? If it is, then you've got to understand you're teaching your dog that things that you've put value in don't matter all the time. Just write down, like you've got a pen and paper handy. If you're driving, that's okay. Do this when you get home. Make a list of all the cues you use regularly with your dog. If you're a sports person listening to this, write down all the cues that you use that you expect your dog to understand. When I say seesaw, I expect you to run up the seesaw, get into position, hold position, wait for release. What does it mean? Write that down. And then you can write another column. What does your dog think it means? And be honest. And if those two things aren't the same, let's dig a little deeper and find out how you trained it. So, the first thing that is a big bugaboo with training is something called overshadowing. And it's when a lot of people believe they've trained something, but they don't recognize the influence of their body or maybe training props on the behavior. So, take this, I'll call it a 5P test. Take any one of your cues and you're going to try five positions. Does your dog respond the first time? Are they $100,000 behaviors or are they loony behaviors? So, it could be you standing up. You're going to stand perfectly still. Pretend there's a bolt going from the top of your head through your feet. You're not going to lean. You're going to stand still. You're going to have your head in line with your spine, hands at your sides, and you're going to give your dogs the cue to sit and then the cue to down. All right. Now you really want to get funky with this. Close your eyes. You can put the video camera on, but make sure your eyes aren't telling them anything either. Okay. A lot of dogs won't do these simple behaviors unless the owners are flipping up their hands or putting their hands down or leaning into them or, you know, getting gruffer with their voice. Is there been any overshadowing? Five Ps. Standing still is one. Next one, jumping jacks. Ask for the simple behaviors. Next one,

lying down. Will your dog do those behaviors while you're lying down? Next one, try it with you in another room. And you're going to say, well, I don't care if my dog does it down when I ask them to from the living room and they're in my bedroom. But what about when your dog's running across the park? Do you care then? Because it's just distance work. It's just, they can't see you. So, just give that one a try. That's position number four. And finally, you're going to get your dog in a place where you can run away and you're going to run away from them and ask them to do that cue. So, has there been overshadowing of your body position? That's just one simple thing. Those of you who are doing a sport, there are other things to consider. And that is the closeness to you, the further, how far away you are. Are you still using props at home like gates or wires to get behaviors? Okay. The next thing I want you to consider is the rhythm of the behaviors. So, most people ask the dog to sit when they're already standing. Now your dog is demonstrating, I can go from a standing position to a sit. And then you might ask a dog to down and they'll demonstrate, I can go from a down, I can go from a sit to a down. But let's try it in reverse. I want you to ask your dogs to down and then sit from those, that 5P test. If you do this, you're really creating a greater layer of understanding of those two cues. Sit means sit from any position. Down means down from any position. You've heard me, if you've been listening to this podcast, you've heard me talk about DASH. D-A-S-H. Teaching anything to a dog, we want DASH. So, the first thing is we want the dog's desire to work. And that is your relationship, your connection to that dog. Are they focused on you? Are they willing to do the work you want to do? If not, don't try to train them anything. All right. So, it's relationship comes before trying to train any tricks or behaviors. So, yes, my acronym could have been GOTRASH. I just didn't think the t-shirts would have sold as well. So, we went with DASH, desire, the dog's focus for you. Okay. The A, now we can train the accuracy of the behavior of the sit, of the down, of the stand. I'd love for you to have three behaviors that we're testing here to see if they're $100,000 behaviors. All right. Once you've trained the accuracy and you split it into layers and really help the dog to understand, remember when we're training, we're always working from my 5C pyramid, get that connection, then grow clarity, and then grow confidence. We never try to challenge them until that dog has

that confidence. Then we look for the speed of the behavior. How fast will the dog sit? If they really have that confidence, if you split things down and they really understand it, without your overshadowing it with your body, speed will happen. And then the final element is the H, is the habitat. And that goes back to environments. Guess what? You could be in the living room doing jumping jacks and standing still and lying down. You've changed the environment for the dog. The environment doesn't mean, well, my dog can do it in Newfoundland. My dog can do it in British Columbia. My dog can do it in Ontario. Environment can just be, you've changed the environment by making it more exciting by adding another dog to the picture. Okay. So, how was that dog trained? What is your criteria? Was there any overshadowing? And the next thing is bribes. Were there bribes involved? Does the dog have to know that you've, you're packing lunch before they'll offer behavior? Right. Think about this. Imagine you have a friend, you know, maybe you went to high school together. You see them once in a while, but you really don't see them that often. Out of the blue, they call you up. It's probably been a couple of years since I've been together and say, Hey, I got a piano in my living room. I want to move it down to the rec room. I'm wondering if you're free to help me move my piano this weekend. And you're going, Oh, geez. Yeah. I was going to have a root canal. So, and they go, by the way, yeah, a few of the friends from high school are getting together. We're going to have pizza and beer after once we get the piano moved. Oh, okay. Pizza, beer, friends, social. Yeah. It sounds like great. I'll be there. All right. Month later. Yeah. Geez. It's about that piano. Don't like it downstairs so much. The sound isn't quite the same. So, wondering if you're around this weekend, maybe we'll move it back upstairs. Oh, my back. Yeah. Well, no, we're going to have pizza and beer and a couple of the people, you know, we're going to, yeah, yeah. Eventually the pizza, the beer, the social, like how many times can you move a piano? No, I don't want to do that for you. And so, if your behaviors that you trained your dog were dependent on you having a big meatball in your hand or you waving around their favorite toy, or you, you know, the dogs in the backyard and you shake a canister of cookies before they decide to come in, that is bribery related rather than relationship related. Remember Gut Dash? We want the behaviors, the pieces of the behaviors to be parts that you have shaped. And so, in that way,

the reinforcement comes after the action, not before it. It's so important. So, if you have been in a class where they teach you to lure everything, then I've got to tell you, you've got to have a plan of how to eliminate that lure and get behaviors without the lure. And if the dog doesn't do something, do not resort back to the lure because the dog's choice of not to do the sit when you asked prompts you to bring out something better, then guess what? You're the guy that's got the piano that needs to be moved and your dog's waiting for you to up the ante, right? How about pizza, beer, some friends over and you're throwing a couple bucks for gas, right? We don't want that from our dogs. So please, my best suggestion is don't use bribery in your training. And if you have been using bribery, make a conscious effort to get rid of it and don't bring it back. Reinforcement are things the dog really wants that are given after a behavior has been done, a response has been given. Not before. Okay. And finally, the environment, right? Dogs are doing the best they can with the education they've got and the environment we've put them in. So, that means you've got to be conscious about what is that environment that you've taught the behaviors. Where's your $100,000 behavior happening? So, in your kitchen, fridge closed, nobody home. Do you have behaviors that you know your dog will give you? And once they give it to you, then you can go to the fridge and reinforce them. Now, what about in other rooms of your house? Remember, we're changing the environment. So, a quiet house, different rooms. You've got 10 out of 10 great responses, all five position changes. Yeah. I think we got $100,000 behavior in a quiet house. Now, let's invite a couple of dogs to run around. Do it all over again. No, my dogs, they're good with that. All right. Now, let's invite a guest over. Have them ring the doorbell and you go through those things. Oh, I got loonies. Yeah, I just got loonies. Okay. So, all of those are escalating environments that we need to build our dog's confidence and understanding that cues are not optional. I want my dogs to know when I ask you to do something, it's immediate. It's always. It doesn't matter that I'm a kindness-based trainer. My dogs will do it. Why? Because I inspire them to do it. I keep my 5C model in mind. I don't move up to challenge until I've got confidence in all these environments. All right. So, we got our empty house challenge and then we've added a guest. All right. We haven't

even gone outside. Let's go in the backyard. Let's go in the front yard. Let's invite a dog fence fighting on the other side of the fence. Let's plant some nice smells around the backyard and go through the same 5P test to see if your dogs will respond. Do you still have $100,000 behaviors? All right. Let's go to the park. Let's go to the beach. Let's go out in the forest with a deer running away from your dog. Do you have $100,000 behaviors there? You can get them. You can get them. Okay. So, let's start right now. It starts with a plan. Eliminate the bribes. Eliminate the props. So, those of you who are doing sports, if you've got like things to create the behavior and then you take them off and the behavior's gone, well, guess what? The dog didn't ever understand the behavior. They just understood the behavior with your props. So, the plan happens in layers. And if you go through some of my YouTube videos, I've got some great ideas on what you can train your dog to do. I strongly encourage everybody start with, it's your choice. I'll put a link in the show notes and I'll put a link in the description here on YouTube on how to start with getting rid of bribes, creating choice. So, the dog sees food and says, I need to engage with you because you are really cool. And if I do cool things with you, I have the potential to earn something. All right. So, we've eliminated bribes. We've eliminated props. Now, I'm not saying I would never use a prop, but every time I decide to add a prop to my training, I have a plan on how I'm getting rid of it and keeping the behavior. Super important. Okay. So, your plan. And please, I'm just going to be a reminder. Your time is valuable, but far more important than just your time is your dog's experience and your dog's ability to create a relationship with you. Please do not waste your time on social media dog trainers that have these great massive big followings. I'm not saying people with big followings are automatically bad dog trainers, but big followings don't automatically mean that they're worth your time. Okay. That's out of the way. Now we've got our plan. You're going to record keep. You're going to know what are your $100,000 behaviors and where, what environments, strategically layering, amping up those environments so that we are bringing out our best. The challenges don't overwhelm the dog and them going, yeah, I'd love to move your piano, but I got to chase this deer. I'll be right back. We want to layer those challenges. And so, honestly, when my dogs see a deer, a couple of them will head towards them. Most of them just look at

me. The ones that say, I'm going to go, I'm just going to have a go. I'll be right back. I just say, yeah, we're not doing that. Come on this way. And they're like, oh, okay, chill. Right. I forgot. All right. You will get there. You will get there. And that's our Recallers program is, is strategically layering games. Now working towards the eventuality that your dogs will listen. Now I'm putting all this in a podcast. It's pretty, you know, I can't give you all the absolute every step and every plan to get there, but I'm just sharing with you it's possible. Now what's happening next is you need to take consistent daily action. You need to review your bank statement regularly, right? If you never look at your bank statement, guess what happens? You get surprised. So the bank statement review is here's the list of the verbal cues. I believe my dog knows. Here's the expected response. I think we should have. Here are the environments that I believe we've got a hundred thousand dollar behaviors. And here are the ones that I think I got loony behaviors or a hundred dollar behaviors that I'm going to continue to grow. Record keeping allows you to strategically have the dog of your dreams, have that amazing relationship. And most of all have dash in every behavior that you could hope for. I'll see you next time here on Shaped by Dog.