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Strategies to Get Through Distractions in Dog Training – Video

July 10, 2014

We’re on the homestretch in perfecting Levi’s downs.

We worked on latency, cues, and distractions. If you’ve kept up with our posts, you’ve seen his downs getting better each week. In our final week working on down, I’m sharing some other things you can do to help improve your own dog’s behavior — whether you’re working on down, come when called, sit, or anything else!

We’re sticking with distractions this week because that’s what gives most people (and their dogs) fits when it comes to “listening” or “obeying.” It’s not that dog won’t do it, it’s that the dog really can’t do it in the face of the distractions.

These tools will help your dog breeze through distractions quickly and easily:

Make sure your dog is getting paid enough. Trainers use a phrase: “use a high rate of reinforcement.” That means click and treat a lot. Imagine if you were struggling through a difficulty a crossword puzzle and solved only one clue an hour. You’d probably give up on the crossword puzzle quickly — it’s just too hard. If you’re not reinforcing your dog enough when things get hard (when distractions are present), he’ll give up and won’t focus on you anymore.
Use a treat that your dog doesn’t usually get. Trainers call this a “high value reinforcer.” If your dog’s diet is mainly kibble and a milky bone here and there, when you work on distractions, ramp up the treats to grilled steak! If you have 100 widgets lying around your house, and someone asks you to fill out a survey for them and the reward is … a widget (!), you’re not likely to be in any hurry to fill out their survey. Why would you? It’s a widget — you’ve got loads of them. If, however, they gave you $100 instead of the widget, you’d probably already have completed that survey and asked if they had another one!
Make the task easier. Trainers say “lower your criteria.” That means accept less than you normally would because you’re adding difficulty by way of distractions. So if your dog simply can’t down when the bicyclists pass, click and give him a treat if he starts to lie down and his elbows bend. If your dog is overly distracted by the bicyclists, you way wish to click and treat your dog for simply looking in your direction. If you’re training for a 10K and your running coach wants you to run 5 miles and weight train three times a week, but you can’t do it because your work schedule has you out of town for four days, he may instead say it’s ok if you run and lift two times a week. Instead of getting a big, fat “F” for the week (and potentially derailing your momentum and progress), your coach knows it’s better to do something, rather than to do nothing. It’s the exact same thing we’re doing with our dogs with this strategy — we’re setting them up to be successful. Success leads to more success.

Talk Back!

Have you been using these tips and tools to improve your dog’s behavior? Leave a comment below and let us know what you’re working on and tell us about your success!

Introducing Distractions to Your Dog Training – Video

July 3, 2014

Distractions are what really get our dogs in trouble.

It’s not that they aren’t listening to us. It’s not that they’re ignoring us. They simply can’t do what we ask in the face of distractions.

In our last article, we showed you how we introduced outdoor distractions. But what if your dog can’t listen outside, even in a quiet backyard? Or what if you don’t have a quiet backyard and directly out your door is the hustle and bustle and there’s no “in between.”

Start your distraction training inside. It’s much easier to work on distractions indoors because you control the distractions (because you are the distraction!).

Remember when working on distractions:

introduce distractions systematically (not all at once, but piecemeal)
if your dog can’t do the behavior for which you’ve asked, don’t ask multiple times — simply reduce your distraction
make sure you’re using a really high-value treat
if your dog can’t do the distraction, find the point at which he can be successful

Here’s a video to give you some ideas and show you how to reduce your distractions if your dog’s having a hard time.

Teaching Your Dog Down with Distractions – Video

June 26, 2014

Distractions are every dog owner’s nemesis.

Distractions are what cause your dog to be “stubborn,” to “not listen,” and to be “hardheaded.”

Yeah, no.

Your dog isn’t any of those things. He’s just distracted. Really.

Don’t believe me? Take a look at the video I posted yesterday — our outtake from the video you’ll be seeing today.

Levi understands the word “down.” However — and this is the really important part — he can’t concentrate on doing the actual behavior when other stuff is going on. That doesn’t mean he’s ignoring me, blowing me off, or stupid. He’s distracted!

You can’t punish a dog for being distracted. (Well, I guess technically you can, but man, what a jerkface you’d be for doing that.)

To avoid becoming a jerkface, try this instead:

Step 1

Relax all your other criteria. You don’t care if it takes repeated cues. You don’t care how quickly your dog responds. You just care that your dog can do the behavior in the face of distractions.

Step 2

Take your dog to a quiet location outdoors and ask for the behavior. In our case, we’re working to improve Levi’s down.

Step 3

If your dog can’t do the behavior, either cue him again or move him further from the distraction.

Step 4

When he does the behavior, click and treat with an extraordinarily delicious treat.

Things to Remember

Use a really delicious treat. I’m talking steak, salmon, chicken, tripe, meatballs, etc.
If your dog can’t do the behavior, move further away from the distraction.
Your goal is that the dog is successful. This isn’t a test! You’re allowed to help your dog!
Don’t worry if you have to give the cue twice.
Don’t worry if the dog does the behavior quickly.

Outtake From “Down” Video – Levi Goes Off Script

June 25, 2014

You’ve heard the joke about working with dogs and kids. The basic advice is: just don’t do it.

As a dog lover and dog trainer, dogs are my life’s work. And mostly the dogs are pretty good on camera.

I produce a video every week and almost all of them involve a dog (or four). It’s hard to believe, but there aren’t a ton of outtakes.

This video, though, had many. Our topic was…DISTRACTIONS!

The finished video will be on the Smart Dog Blog tomorrow, but until then, enjoy Levi’s improvisational skills as he goes off script in this short goof clip.

Perfecting the Down: It’s All How You Ask

June 19, 2014

Ever wonder why your dog won’t do what you ask?

Maybe it’s you.

Not you really, just the way you ask.

Most people don’t know that the cues they use to ask for a behavior could be the cause of your dog’s slow responses. [Read: your stubborn dog isn’t really stubborn — he doesn’t understand what you’re asking.]

Wondering what that even means? Read on (and then watch the video) for an explanation and — even better — a simple solution!

A cue is the way you ask a dog to do something.

It can be a word. It can be a hand signal. It can be just about anything the dog can see, hear, smell, or otherwise perceive. We’ve been tracking Levi’s progress on his “down” behavior and this week, we’re focusing on the cues. [Here’s our previous video and post on latency, another contributing factor to Levi’s “bad” downs.]

Here’s how you can get better responses from your dog when you ask him to do something.

Make sure the dog understands what you’re asking. In the video, you’ll see that I have two different ways to ask Levi to lie down: a hand signal and a word. Using the word gets a much quicker and cleaner response from Levi. Using the hand signal nets a very slow, not very pretty down.

Aha! There’s one of my problems: Levi doesn’t really know the hand signal.

It’s not Levi’s fault the down is slow and sloppy — turns out it’s a trainer problem. [Read: that dog’s not stubborn!]

No worries, there’s a quick and easy solution to teach Levi that the hand signal means the exact same thing as the word.

First, give the not-so-good cue (in Levi’s case, that’s the hand signal), then immediately give the known cue (the word, in this case). Be sure you’re not doing them both at the same time. One, then the other.

It looks like this: not-so-good cue –> known cue –> click and treat when the dog does the behavior.

Repeat that sequence several times. You want the known cue to “translate” the not-so-good cue. After about 15 – 20 repetitions, begin to pause one second between the two cues. Hopefully, if there have been enough pairings, the dog will start to anticipate that the second cue (the known one) is coming and will begin the behavior a little more quickly. If not, go ahead and give the second cue (the known cue).

It’s only a matter of time before the dog understands that both cues mean the same thing!

Remember, work only on one aspect of the problem at a time.

In our last video, we worked only on latency. We didn’t worry about which cue he knew better or about distractions. In this video, we let latency and distractions go while we focused solely on improving Levi’s response to the hand cue. Next week, we’re going to work only on distractions and won’t worry about latency or which cue he knows better. Then, once each aspect of the problem has been improved, we’ll put the whole thing together and we’ll have a much-improved behavior of down!

How to Fix Your Dog’s Behavior

June 12, 2014

Your dog isn’t ignoring you.

Your dog isn’t stubborn. He’s not blowing you off.

Nope, you’re not getting off that easy. Your dog just doesn’t know what you think he knows. Don’t worry, the fix is easy and you’ll learn how to fix just about any behavior you’ve taught your dog.

The folks at the service dog organization for which I’m raising Levi have requested that I clean up and improve his “down” behavior. There are a few specific complaints they’d like me to address:

it takes him awhile to start the down after he’s asked
occasionally it takes him too long to execute the down once he’s started
he will sometimes need two different cues (the word “down” and the hand signal)
when he’s in public, he has a harder time doing all the above

Sound like a big problem? Nah, it’s actually just a few little ones that are relatively easy to clean up.

It’s easy to see where inexperienced people could say that Levi was ignoring me when I ask him for the down. “Because he doesn’t want to do it.” Or “because he’s stubborn.” That’s the easy way out and doesn’t give you any sort of plan for improving the dog’s behavior.

That’s passing the buck and it doesn’t fly here at Smart Dog U: you’re the trainer, it’s your responsibility to fix it!

Let’s look at each piece of our puzzle and deconstruct each one.

This is how professional trainers solve problems everyday, but it’s not limited to just the professionals.

You can take the information here and work on your dog’s own issues using these same techniques.

It takes Levi awhile to start the down after he’s asked.

This is called latency. The amount of time it takes the dog to start the behavior after he hears the cue.

It takes Levi a while to do the down once he’s started.

This is called speed. The amount of time it takes the dog to actually do the behavior once he’s started it.

Sometimes Levi needs me to ask him to down twice, with the word and the hand signal.

This is a cueing problem. Levi doesn’t know one of the cues, most likely.

In public, Levi’s down behavior deteriorates. Everything’s slower, and he needs more than two cues.

Behaviors have to be dead solid to be immune to distractions. That Levi’s behaviors deteriorate in public means that he’s not ignoring me — he doesn’t understand the down as solidly as we thought.

Now, doesn’t that seem a lot more workable than simply saying “My dog is ignoring me?”

Here’s how we’ll fix the first problem: the latency (the amount of time it takes the dog to start the behavior).

Ask the dog to do the behavior, down in this case several times in a row. Count the number of seconds it takes the dog to start the behavior. Find the average amount of time it takes. From this point forward, when you’re working on latency, you will only click and treat those downs that have a shorter latency than your average. For Levi, his average was about one second. I will only click and treat the downs that start less than one second after I cue him. The other, longer-to-start downs won’t get clicked and treated at all. Levi will soon realize that only those faster ones count.

Additionally, I can help Levi by cleaning up my own cues, by getting him jazzed up with some super-short and energetic play breaks, and by clicking him the instant I start to see him start the down process (instead of waiting for him to get all the way into the down).

We’ll address the next problem in next week’s video. Stay tuned, you can use these techniques to spiffy up your own dog’s behavior.

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