원거리에서 말을 듣는 반려견 파트 2: 자극의 결정적 타이밍 #148

of understanding of dog training or not. And over this period of now 12 years, here's what I've learned. We're different. What we do is very different. So different that I decided I'm going to do a podcast dedicated entirely why we're different and what we do works. I can just tell you that it's a combination of me being a geek about science, wanting to be kind to my dogs, wanting to be congruent in the way I show up to the people in my life and having this competitiveness to want to excel at the highest level of the sport of dog agility. All of that makes an urgency to what we do here. And so, yeah, we're science geeks. So, we figure out what can we do to increase the level of buy-in from every dog. And so, we do have dogs that will listen at a distance, but guess what? It doesn't happen overnight. And that's why in the first episode in this series, I talked about the importance of your dog understanding salient cues that pick three, sit down and stand are the ones that I recommend. That you go back and you get buy-in from the dog because of having immense value for them for doing those behaviors so that they do them with enthusiasm and focus for you and for their work. The understanding of the cue, your understanding of the impact of the placement and the delivery of that reinforcement, how that can make or break a behavior for a dog. And then the dog's understanding of a release word. So, the cue, the reinforcement, and the release word. All of those things we really stressed in the first episode of this podcast. So, in the last episode, I talked about picking three behaviors. I suggested the sit down stand, creating amazing value for the dog to want to be part of this enthusiasm and focus for work because of the clarity that that dog got. We talked about the five C's that we're getting connection first, then building clarity and confidence, losing with confidence on those three behaviors. But it was dependent upon your cueing and that the dog understood just a verbal cue separate from a physical cue. That you understood how your marking of the behavior and the placement and the delivery of the reinforcement had a massive impact on whether the dog learned what you intended them to learn and how well that dog understood their release word. So, those four elements were critical. Talked about them in the last episode. So, if you haven't listened to that, please go back and listen to it because I also shared in that episode a experiment I did with 48 students who had came to a workshop here. Yeah, they became the topics of this scientific experiment

and they were okay with it because it's not like I did anything unethical to them. Their big takeaway was they learned when you want a dog to listen at a distance, you need to focus on getting immense value for as many distractions as you can close up. Okay. So, that takes us full circle to where we are today. And so, we've got the two types of distractions. And guess what? They're both really, really important. The first is we need to teach our dogs to ignore any distractions while they're in a control position. So, you might go back and ask your dog to sit or stand or down and then work through them, not moving when you bounce a ball or throw a cookie or run away or have somebody ring the doorbell or any other things that you could do when you're working on control behavior. But then what do you do when the dog makes a mistake? What is your normal right now? Just think about it. When you're working on your dog, sit, holding a sit position, are you going to say, ah, ah, no. Are you going to say, oops, try again? Are you going to take them by the collar and gently pull them back? What are you going to do when the dog makes a mistake? That's where I love, love, love the results we get from our students who go through crate games. Crate games is an online program and it is well worth your investment of your time. Because here's what happens. My young puppies, when I start playing crate games with them, or rescue dogs, when I bring in a rescue dog, they get to see 30 to 50 different types of distractions. I'm going to give you a list. I'll put them in the show notes here. 30 to 50 different kinds of distractions. And if they make a mistake, all that I do is I gently close the crate door. I don't like slam it in their face because I don't introduce high level distractions unless they've got clarity and confidence at the lower level distractions. All of our training, if you don't know, everything that I do is in the form of a game. What does that do? We get buy-in. We get a dog that wants to keep going. Think about a lot of times in dog training, people either don't ever want the dog to fail. They prevent failure or when the dog does fail, they lose the dog. Oh, they're so deflated. Oh, I didn't get it right. But in the context of a game, here's what happens. We strategically build confidence and confidence until we introduce a distraction that possibly may be too much for the dog and they may fail. Most of the time when I get failure, it's intentional. I go, okay, we've had a lot of reinforcement. Why, Susan, why would you intentionally make a dog fail?

Because I know the crate door is going to tell them that they are wrong. And if you've ever played a video game, video games are intentionally set up so level one is super easy. Yeah, kids might get through level one. They might get up to level two and then, oh, you made a mistake, game over. Are they going to go, this is a stupid game and I don't want to play it anymore? No. They've had enough connection, clarity, and confidence that that failure makes them lean in a bit. They narrow their eyes. They go, come on, I got this. Now I can do it. I know I can do this one. I got it. I got it. Think of a little leaguer, right? They strike out. Does that mean, yeah, they might be frustrated, but they want to try again. And that's what I see in my students that go through crate games, that go through recallers provided they are not trying to make the dog fail and fail and fail and fail. We create clarity and confidence. We get the dog up on their toes going, oh my gosh, what do you got for me? No, bring it on. Cause I can do it. Like you got me once, you're not getting me again. That's, come on, come on. That's when you can keep growing challenge. Now, what I see sometimes with crate games is people might bounce a tennis ball and the dog goes, oh, and they close the door. Yeah, you were wrong. And then they open the door again and they bounce a tennis ball and the dog might go, okay, yeah, yeah, I know you, I shouldn't move. And then they don't then go, yeah, good choice and give reinforcement for that choice. They then go, oh, you didn't move for one. I'm going to go two. You didn't move for two. I'm going to go five. And the dog goes to move again. So then they got failure followed by failure. Crate door closes again. And now the dog isn't quite as keen. And if you keep doing this, you get a dog who will play your game, but with a lifeless expression. Oh yeah, I know I shouldn't be. It no longer is an engagement level. We need the engagement level. That's the success of our program is we get that dog buying in. Every time I challenge my dogs, it's like they're saying, yeah, oh yeah, I've seen that one. What else you got for me? Come on, you can do better than that. This is crazy. That's, you know, that's my, my voice that I hear in my head based on the look on my dog's faces, the ears on the top of the head, the way they whip around and come back again. All right. So, I've introduced so many distractions in the crate that when I get them outside and they make a wrong choice, all that I have to do is control

the distraction. I don't have to try to control the dog. Crate games has taught them, oh yeah, I was wrong. I'll go back in position. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The very most I would have to do is just say, what were you doing? And they would, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Control the distraction. And that's something we can do. So, we go from all of the distractions in crate games. We get them outside of the crate. You might do it on a dog bed. You might do it on a hot zone. You might do it, you know, in a place where the dog feels comfortable introducing these different levels of distractions. Outside of the crate, I would suggest you have the dog on a leash. And again, keep them engaged. Short sessions, leave them wanting more. If your dog starts showing signs of stress, go back to our episode podcast number four, where I'm talking about TEMP, T-E-M-P. The dog's going to show you if they're looking away, they're lip licking, they're going, yeah, I'm not really, you know, it's not like they show one sign of stress. Oh my gosh, we got to stop. But your dog will tell you if they're really into this game, right? If they're not looking at you like you're their favorite video game, then you've gone too far. Okay. So, we've got our dog in a sit or a down or a stand. And I want you to work through all of those levels of distraction that, that are easy for the dog. Move to different rooms in your house, move outside, move to the backyard. Record keep. Guys, you've got to have 80% success on this. Now you might have a session where the dog fails a lot. Go back to the drawing board and go, well, did I change too many things at once? Some dogs will just get a hundred percent deflated if you make them fail too much. Other dogs will start spinning out of control. They'll start maybe barking at you. They may, you know, get frenzied. We want our dogs to be buying in, but we don't want them spinning up. Okay. Short session, three to five distractions, release them. I do that in crate games. I might do, especially early on, I'll do like one or two distractions, release them. I play another engagement game at the end of the release. And then we go back and we try it again. I want you to practice this. Different positions, different rooms around the house. And then next week, I'm going to come back with part three, where I teach you how to transition from the stationary time of behavior to the important one. I mean, they're both important, but we need our dogs, before they can listen at a distance, we need to get them involved in another competing behavior and get

them to listen then. Because that's what's going to happen in real life. And we can't do it from a distance unless we get it close up. There's so many behaviors that people go, they immediately think that they're going to try it at a distance. Like a recall. We get a puppy, they get 20 feet away from us and we start, come on, come on, come on, come on. We start begging them to come. You need to practice that stuff close up before you can expect it at a distance. And there's so many layers to put in before you should have the expectation that that puppy or dog is going to listen at a distance. Do not try it at a distance. Don't take your dog to the bunny farm if we're just working this stuff at home right now. All right. People get a new dog or a puppy and they get them playing and they throw a toy for them to retrieve. Why on earth are you working distance when you haven't worked close in? So many times people don't think. What's the value for the dog doing this close up? There hasn't been one established. So, why the heck are you expecting it far away? Be on team distraction. Always be on team distraction, which works super close. And that gives you team distance as a bonus. You don't have to work it. It just is there. And not only that, team distraction gets behaviors that are faster, more engaged, and the dog is far more focused. If you just look at people in the sport of a dog agility, I can tell the ones who've been focused on working distance work because their dogs often are looking back at their shoulder when they're trying to get them to go out and do something. The dog slows down and looks like, really, do I have to? Team distraction will give you team distance. Okay. So, I want you to practice those three behaviors, simple distractions, growing to more complex, but only do it in the three behaviors that we talked about in any, or three behaviors that you picked. Different rooms of your house, inside, outside, do it with you sitting down, lying down. See if you can do it lying on the ground, ask your dog or hold that position while somebody else walks in the room eating potato chips. Like add different layers of distraction, but we're doing it stationary, a la traditional dog training. And then next week, I'm going to give you some time to work on this. I'm going to come back and we are then, because you've worked team distraction, we're going to go up to level two distractions. And that is we want a dog to make a choice when they're in the midst of a different behavior. Control behavior. Yeah. Okay. I can tolerate you bouncing balls in front of me.

In the midst of engaging in a different behavior that probably has other reinforcement value. And you want me to now stop engaging in that behavior and do something else. That's a different game altogether. I'm going to teach you how to play that game next week. I'll see you next time here on Shaped by Dog.