반려견의 목줄 없는 청취 기술 파트 3: 훈련 단계 #152 #팟캐스트

If you did 100 of those sits that your dog would stay just as often or break just as often with or without you saying sit or stay. So, we want to get rid of that. And the worst thing that I saw, people ask the dog to sit, they'd walk away. The dog would, they might get like 10 feet away and the dog would stand. And they would turn back and repeat the cue, sit. And hey, great. You got sit at a distance. But if you listen to podcast episode number 151, where I was sharing about location-specific reinforcement markers, you actually reinforce the dog for getting out of position by giving him a cue to go back into another position, hence creating a behavior chain. So, we want to not get too far ahead. We just want to work really, really good understanding close-up, which means jumping jacks and, you know, sitting down or lying on the floor and asking your dog to do these behavior cues, sit down and stand with your back turn or getting your dog in a stand and pretending to lure them to the down and say, sit or all kinds of things that tests if the dog is listening. Are they listening? Are they just guessing? Are they in their back brain or are they in their thinking brain? Because that's where we want our dogs to be. To be thoughtful, even when they're in a high state of arousal because maybe they get excited about work or maybe you've got some really, really cool cookies. So, don't jump ahead with this. Really, it's such a valuable investment of your time. Sit on the floor and just practice these cues. Maybe just pick one for a week and then pick another one for a week. Really get your dog understanding and wanting to jump into those positions. Okay. A few other things that need to be in place. It's your choice. I gave you the link in the show notes, but I'm going to do it again. In this episode, we want your dog to understand some location-specific reinforcement markers. We want them to understand search, which means you can leave position to find food. We want them to understand how they can get food out of a bowl. You can say, bucket. I like bucket. Or you can say, get it out of a bowl and search for on the floor. You can also use a toy. So, a dog that understands a specific… If they love toys, let's use toys. Let's bring toys in because we want things that the dog wants. Okay. So, those are the fundamentals. Remember, we want to be on team distraction. Team distraction is all about building understanding through all those layers of distractions that you can come up with to create clarity and confidence in your dog. Five C's is what gets the job done. All right. Now,

I spoke in the second episode of this series that a lot of people spend time teaching dog to hold position from a distance while distractions are going on. But that's not real life because real life is things like Fenton and Richmond Park with a herd of elk or whatever kind of wildlife they were. That we need a dog to listen when they are otherwise preoccupied. They're not holding position, waiting for a distraction to happen upon them. And that's where we're heading today. But first, what we need is we need a dog to be able to change positions at a distance. And so, we're going to work that up slowly. And it starts by getting your dog used to you being far away and you asking for a position change. Now, that far away might be one step away. If your dog is like most dogs, you leave them in a sit down a stand and you ask for a position change with you one stride away, very likely that dog's going to creep towards you. Why? Because you represent the value. The value is over here. They are over there. They want to help you give them their reinforcement. They want to get close to the value. So, here's where them understanding that the reinforcement will come to them. Super important. So, what we're going to do is something easy. You can put your dog in an X-pen. You can put them behind a gate. You can even tether them with a leash, ideally to a harness, so that you can get a distance away and they can't creep forward. Practice doing your three behaviors. Sit, go in and reinforce, go back out a stride or two. Down, go in and reinforce, go back out a stride or two. Eventually, you can add two position changes. But we want the dog to be keen to do it and the dog to understand that the reinforcement comes to them. If your dog really understands search, then what you're going to do is the dog goes into the position. You say, search and toss them the cookie. Now, ideally, you got to be a good throw because if the dog's tethered, we don't want them lunging and getting caught up. And if the cookie bounces outside of the X-pen, obviously you're going to have to go in and get that cookie. This is level one, but here's the kick in the pants with this one. Most of the time with this exercise, what the dog is learning is not what you're teaching. And that happens sometimes in dog training and that's when you get the V8 palm to the head. Instead of, I could have had a V8. That's not what I thought I was teaching you. Because here's what happens. You think, look at me, I could get across the room now and he's in that X-pen and he's doing all these position changes

and aren't I amazing. And then you take him out of that barrier and you try it from the distance and he does the same old creep towards the reinforcement. What's going on? What you were teaching wasn't what the dog was learning because potentially what the dog was learning is get as close as you can to the barrier and do the position changes when you're close to the barrier. So, there's a couple of things we can do here. We can gradually decrease the barrier. If you have a lower barrier, that's grand. I don't happen to have that, but maybe go out, get the little fencing from Home Depot that you can put around that the dog could easily step over, but it represents the barrier. Get all the way down to maybe just take your broom handle on the ground. That could be the barrier. If you can do that, that's great. You can get at a distance. But if you can't, here's a few other suggestions that work really well. Teach your dog a paw target. Now, it just so happens I have a great video on YouTube that teaches the dogs. It's called Perchwork Pivots and Spins. It's all about teaching the dog how to put their paws on a target and then you can grow their behaviors. You don't even have to get to that point. It's just getting the dog to put their paws on a target. You can use anything for a target, even a book, and you're going to get your dog with their paws on the target and you're going to start beside the dog. Ask for position change. Gradually get further away. If the dog's paws come off the target, which they may end down and that's okay. But if they are creeping forward, then you've got to go back in. We want them to understand you have to be in contact with this target for reinforcement to happen. Throw the reinforcement back. We want the dog to get used to. Reinforcement will come to you. You don't have to come close to me because the reinforcement isn't coming from me anymore. Okay. Another thing that you can do, you can do this with a paw target or without. You might need to start with take your, a bowl and you can put a cookie in the bowl, put it down. I would put it say in front of you and you can start near your dog. Ask for a position change. And when the dog does it, you're going to give them their cue, get it or bucket, which tells them they can leave position and get that bowl. Eventually, we want to get that bowl closer to the dog and you're going to get further away. So, they can do their position changes. Now they've got to have great, it's your choice for this to work. And if you've

got great, it's your choice, it's never a challenge. They know they don't steal until they hear the cue, bucket. All right. Now we want to transition from that to an empty bowl. And it's a promise of reinforcement to come. Get those position changes from a distance in your house. And when the dog does, you're going to say, search, toss it in the direction of the bucket, but you know, or the bowl, it's going to bounce all over and that's okay. Search is the permission for the dog to go and get it. Now you can do the same thing with a toy. If you have a dog that loves toys, do exactly the same thing. The only challenge with that is you're going to do one position change, tell them, get it or the name of your toy or bring me or whatever it is. And eventually go to two position changes, go back to one and then three. It's a little easier with food, but you can do it exactly the same way. Building, ping-ponging between one, two, three, or five position changes before you give them the release of bucket or get it or search. Okay. All of this is happening inside the house. Now, if you're using your cue search guys, I want you to be really, really intentional. Get the reinforcement behind the dog. I'm going to say that one more time. Where do we want it? Behind the dog. Why do we want it there? Because we're building value for reinforcement not happening in the direction of us. We want the dog to listen at a distance, not creep towards us. So, don't give them any reason to come anywhere near you. All the reinforcement is going to happen behind them. How are you going to throw a cookie from a long distance? Well, they either use heavy cookies or maybe put the cookie in a food toy so that you can throw it back there and tell them they could rip it open and get the food toy or get the cookie out of the food toy. All right. All of this has happened in the house. And now we need to transition to outside because the big distractions don't happen in the house. I like to do a gradual transition. So, if you have like a porch, a front porch, a back porch, that's a great place to start building that transition. Then you go to the grass and then you move around to maybe the neighbor's grass, maybe to a park. You want to build distance and get these position changes so that our dog always knows when I ask you to do something, you just do it. Now, we want to work to remember the bunnies aren't going to wait with the dog in position. We need to get our dogs moving. And so, now you're going to be walking with your dog and ask for a

position change and keep moving. Again, if the dog keeps moving, build in a target. Maybe ask them to stop near an empty bowl. Maybe ask them to start near a perch for their feet. And eventually you're going to get that quick response when you ask on a walk. Now, build that up even further. Ask a friend to maybe drag a favorite toy. Slowly release the dog and then ask for a position change. If they go for the toy, the friend just gathers up the toy. Too much, too soon. Maybe go back to the dog stationary. The toy's just in front. Ask for a few position change and then tell them they can get it. You could do this with a flirt pole if you're by yourself. You could do this eventually working up to like throwing a favorite toy, a frizzer, or tell them they can go for a swim and on the way there, ask for a position change. All of this is challenging the dog. But remember the five C's. You're not going to jump to university because you're going to get too much failures. And that's not what we want. We want the dog to stay confident. We want the dog to stay happy. We don't want the dog to become worried. And we absolutely don't want to get you in a frame of mind where you feel the need to raise your voice. It can happen. It will happen if you work through the strategic layers of learning that I've laid out for you in this program. I'd love to get your feedback. If you're watching this on YouTube, please leave me a comment. Let me know how it went for you and your dog. I'll see you next time with you doing amazing distance work with your dog right here at Shaped by Dog. Tater hit the target. Now it's your turn. If you're not a subscriber to this page, go ahead and hit the subscribe button now and be sure to turn on the notification bell so you won't miss another video. And if you are already a subscriber, that's for you. Go ahead and get yourself a cookie.