Train Like a Pro

Is there something you're finding challenging to teach your dog?  Want to know why an experienced dog trainer can make training look easy?  Keep reading for the skills that can take your training game to the next level and how to develop them.

Motivation

If you don't have a dog that is motivated to engage with you and respond to you, you're not going to be able to teach new things.  You need to have a learner that is engaged and interested in responding.  How you get this depends on the situation.  If your dog is easily overwhelmed by unfamiliar places, spending some time hanging out and watching the world go by can really help.  Once your dog feels safe and comfortable they may be a whole lot more interested in what you are wanting to teach.

You need to have something your dog is motivated to work for.  This can vary by location and situation.  There's a saying among dog trainers "The dog determines what is rewarding".  It doesn't matter how much you  think your dog should enjoy being petted on the top of the head, if they don't enjoy it in the moment, then it isn't going to function as a reinforcer and promote your dog doing that behaviour you wanted again.  In fact, it may actually result in your dog being less likely to do that behaviour in the future.  It's common for dogs to be happy to work for their kibble in their home, but turn their nose up at it out in public.  Consider the difficulty level of your ask - does your dog need to work harder to ignore distractions, do a more challenging task, concentrate on learning a new thing?  That can help you determine the value of your reward.  Also consider the amount of focus/activity required for the task.  Rewarding your dog with something that they get super excited for may actually make it more challenging for them to focus calmly on the task, so for tasks requiring focus and concentration you may be better off using a food reward, then an exciting game of tug or fetch at the end, when your session is done.

Thinking about what you want to use to reward in advance helps avoid the scenario where your dog doesn't respond, and then you pull out something more interesting.  If you do that too often, you can inadvertently teach your dog to wait to see what else you might offer.

​How to Level Up: Plan your rewards in advance
Consider the situation and the task
Consider the desired energy level
Watch for things your dog loves that you can use as rewards

Observation

Training isn't a one way street, although often we'd like it to be!  It is a conversation.  You explain to your dog what you want them to do by breaking it into small steps and rewarding them for effort, approximations or correct responses and your dog communicates to you if they understand your request, how they feel about trying that step (ie. if they are frightened), etc.  It's important to be able to see and recognize the signals your dog is giving, so that you can respond.

Another application of observation involves your training session and troubleshooting.  You cued your dog to take a jump, and they took a different one instead.  Why?  Did they not understand - is there an earlier step in training you need to review, or a smaller step you need to take?  Did they not get the correct information - was your cue not clear?  Did they not receive your cue in time to adjust their path - was your cue late?  Is there something about the positioning/approach/landing/appearance of that jump that caused your dog to avoid it?

How to Level Up:  Video your training and watch afterwards.
Video review is highly recommended by expert sport trainers.  You get a chance to watch for small signals, review your body language, cues, timing, etc. and see your dog's responses.  Then you can plan your next session based on your observations.

Body Awareness

For you!  We often talk about body awareness or hind end awareness for our dogs, but it is important for us too.  Our dogs are so amazing at watching us for any small cue about what we are going to do next.  Does your dog get excited when you pick up their leash or training bag?  Look at you attentively when your hand is in your pocket?  They are reacting to our actions/movements.  

One of the main things I see when it comes to our awareness is people reaching into a pocket or treat pouch to get a treat before their dog has completed the task or they have said their marker word.  Sometimes this results in the dog stopping what they were doing in anticipation of a treat (i.e. their dog was heading to their place, but stops and returns to their person when the hand goes in the pocket) or to only do something if they see this motion that indicates a treat will be forthcoming (i.e. their dog stands and looks at them and doesn't start responding to the cue to come until they see the hand go in the pocket).  It is very normal for us humans to try to be efficient - on some level we assume our dog will respond and the next thing we'll need to do is give them a treat so our hand starts moving towards our pocket without us really realizing.  But our dogs notice.

This is why obedience competitors often train with others.  So people will notice the extra movements they are unintentionally making that will lose them points or qualifying scores in the ring.  I believe that starting out in the sport of obedience made me consider what I was doing with my body, because extra cues are not allowed in the ring.  This trained me to consider what my body was doing when cuing my dog and has been very helpful when training everyday life skills as well.  If I want my dog to come when called regardless of whether or not I have a treat I need to be aware if I'm moving my hand into my pocket so that doesn't become the cue my dog uses to decide whether or not to come.

How to Level Up: Check Yourself for extra cues/movements and early cues/movements

• Video your training and review
• Train with a buddy that will gently let you know if you're unintentionally moving
• Train in front of a mirror so you can watch yourself
• If you're reaching in your pocket, try putting the treats on a nearby table/counter and don't move for them until after you mark 

Clear cues

Clarity and consistency are important, if your dog doesn't know what you want, they can't do it.  If your dog is barking at you in training, or disengaging and sniffing or wandering off, check and make sure your cues are clear.  

Often I see dogs responding with an incorrect behaviour when two cues look or sound very similar.  For example shake a paw and nose touch a hand.  If we're trying to teach touch to a dog that knows shake a paw, we'll likely need to make sure to present the hand differently, and it often helps to have the dog standing so the picture is different.  

How to Level Up: Have clear cues for different behaviours
One way to do this is to write out a vocabulary list for your dog.  List the cues your dog knows and the behaviour you expect when you give the cue.  Are there any where you expect different behaviours for the same cue?  Are there any that look/sound very similar?

Timing

The timing of feedback is important!  If you are trying to mark the moment your dog is correct and your marker is late, your dog could think you want something completely different.  A good example of this is the "Touch" cue.  If you are trying to teach your dog to touch your hand on cue, you want to say your marker word or click the moment you feel their nose on your hand.  If your marker is late, you will actually be marking the moment they are moving away from your hand.  Since a marker means your dog has earned a treat for the behaviour they were doing at the moment they heard it, your dog could start thinking your are looking for them to move away from your hand.  Oops.

How to Level Up: Practice your marker timing
Whatever you use for your marker, whether it is a word, a noise or a clicker, you'll want to be very comfortable with it, and practice marking so you have a good feeling for how quickly you need to speak or move.

• Try bouncing a ball and marking the moment it hits the floor.
• Try having someone else bounce the ball and mark the moment it hits the floor.  
• For added difficulty, vary the timing of the bounces so it isn't always the same amount of time between bounces.
• Watch tennis (or other sport) on TV and practice marking the players for hitting the ball  

Often it takes some time to get used to using a marker.  I remember trying to use a clicker while learning agility for the first time and it didn't go well.  But working with the clicker to teach my dog something while I was standing still and they weren't moving so fast went much better, and now I'm faster with a clicker than a verbal word.  I'm not saying you need to use a clicker, but accurate timing with whatever marker you use will really help make things clear to your dog.

Reward Placement

Where our dog receives their reward can influence how they respond in the future.  Have you ever watched a dog playing fetch and observed them backing away from the person while waiting for the ball to be thrown?  Often we play fetch in one direction - we toss the ball away from us in the same direction repeatedly.  The dogs learn that if they want to get to the ball quickly, they may as well take up a position away from us in the direction we are facing.  The reward (ball) placement has taught them that.

We can use this to our advantage.  We can use reward placement to emphasize a position we like (i.e. being on the dog bed, or heeling next to us), we can use it to set the dog up for the next repetition, or both.  The more experienced the dog and person are with using a marker to identify when a reward is earned, and the less extra movement is going on from the person (see body awareness) the more likely using reward placement to set up for the next repetition will be successful, but even then we need to monitor the dog's responses to see if they are starting to creep away from what we want.  Sometimes I'll reward in the position I want, sometimes I'll reward away so the dog needs to return, and sometimes I'll do both!  It depends on what I'm teaching and how the dog is responding.

Two classic examples of where reward placement matters in daily life are in teaching a place cue, and teaching heeling or loose leash walking beside you.  In the beginning stages of teaching a dog to go to place I like to put the reward on the mat/bed/station rather than handing it to the dog's mouth once they get there.  This tends to strengthen the dog's desire to get where the treats appear (on the mat/bed/station) and decreases their desire to move off of that place towards me wanting their treat.

When teaching a dog to walk beside you, if you want them on your left side by are feeding them from your right hand, you'll often see your dog trying to get closer to your right hand.  They may start cutting in front of you, or duck behind you and show up on your right side.  If you switch and deliver the treats with your left hand to your dog at your left side, you see much less ending up in front of you or ducking around to the other side.

​How to Level Up: Reflect on where you want your dog
Is your delivery of the reward helping promote your dog to be where you want?  If it's not, what could you change?  How could you do it differently?

Criteria - Clarity, Splitting, Raising

Our criteria for obtaining a reward should be clear to our dogs to avoid frustration and frustration related behaviours (i.e. barking, shutting down), achievable instead of a big step up from where they area at and increased frequently if we are working towards a finished behaviour to avoid having our dogs thinking that the current step is the complete behaviour.  

If our dogs aren't clear on our criteria for a reward, they may continue to offer a wide variety of responses, or get frustrated when they think they've responded correctly and aren't receiving a reward.  I see this if people cue sit, and their dog lies down.  If they reward the dog for lying down in response to the cue to sit, they can expect that the dog will lie down when asked to sit again in the future.  If you want sit to mean sit, you'll need to not reward lying down.  Another example often occurs when teaching the sidestep in rally.  People tend to want to do several sidesteps, then reward.  But if we're trying to get nice, straight sidesteps it's better to treat each step as it's own repetition and only reward the straighter ones.  If we do a whole bunch and reward at the end the dog is left to wonder if the reward is for performing a certain number, going a certain distance or if it was for the quality of the last step they did.

When teaching more complex behaviours it is important to go step by step.  If we lump several small steps into one big one our dog may not follow our leap in expectation.  Splitting things down into smaller steps helps our dogs follow our train of thought and sets them up to succeed so they don't get frustrated.  Using the example of wanting to get down on a verbal cue only, you could split the steps out as follows:

• Give the verbal cue, then lure your dog into a down.
• Give the verbal cue, then move your hand as before, but without the treat in it.  Mark and reward your dog for lying down.
• Give the verbal cue, then move your hand as before, but not quite all the way to the ground.  mark and reward your dog for lying down.
• Give the verbal cue, then move your hand toward the ground, but not all the way.  Mark and reward your dog for lying down.
• Give the verbal cue, then move your hand toward the ground, but only bend slightly.  Mark and reward your dog for lying down.
• Give the verbal cue, then move your hand toward the ground, but stay standing up.  Mark and reward your dog for lying down.
• Give the verbal cue, then mark and reward your dog for lying down.  If you pause and your dog doesn't lie down, you could add in a step where you move your hand/arm slightly, then try going with the verbal cue only.  

The opposite problem to raising criteria too fast is not raising criteria at all.  I see this often with pivots.  Once people have taught their dog to pivot the required 90 degrees for rally, they often spend a lot of time perfecting that distance, which can result in the dog developing the assumption that 90 degrees is the final distance, often anticipating the sit and not getting up all the way.  When we then introduce 180 degree pivots or more for advanced some dogs can get frustrated that they aren't getting rewarded after 90 degrees.  If you're working towards a more advanced final behaviour, be careful not to spend too long at any one step.

How to Level Up:  Evaluate your presentation

• Is your criteria clear?
• Are you splitting the task down enough?
• Are you advancing in small steps or stagnating?

When to Add a Verbal Cue

Dog trainers often don't start using a verbal cue for a behaviour until the dog can perform the required skill well.  This is because it's a lot easier to put a cue on a finished behaviour than it is to retrain a cue that the dog now believes should be done in a way you don't like.  It can be done, but it's harder.  For example, I will often have a variety of agility obstacles in training that my dog will perform on the release cue "go" which simply means do what's in front of you.  That way if we run into a snag with the weave poles or contacts I can go back to an earlier stage and adjust moving forwards to get past the misunderstanding.  Then when my dog's weave performance is what I would like it to be on a full set of poles I'll start using the cue "weave" to label what they are doing and prepare for obstacle discriminations.  

Another place to think about this is when teaching down.  If you can't silently lure your puppy to lie down, then saying down and having them not respond the way you would like means they are rehearsing not responding to the cue down, turning it into meaningless noise.

How to Level Up: Teach behaviours first, then add the cue as a label

Reducing Rewards

Knowing when and how fast to start reducing rewards is an art.  It is important that your dog first be able to perform the desired behaviour to the standard you want.  Then that they be able to do so in a variety of situations and conditions.  Then, when you start to reduce rewards you'll want to do it slowly, so that your dog learns to persevere, rather than so fast that your dog gives up and quits trying.

One of the best explanations of read of this process was by another trainer that talked about rewarding for effort.  When our dog first learns a cue, it takes a lot of effort for them to respond.  As they practice it, it requires less effort for them to do.  When we take it on the road, or a hard distraction is present responding to the same cue requires more effort again.  Rewarding for effort helps us recognize when our dogs have worked hard and continues to motivate them to continue to respond.

Reducing rewards for the competition ring is it's own challenge because it doesn't take many competitions for dogs to realize that there will never be toys or food in the ring.  Some dogs are happy to play the game for the enjoyment of working with you, while others may find rewards imbedded in the activity (such as retrieving the obedience dumbbell) but for many they work for the reward that comes after their performance in the ring, so we need to teach them that situation, yes, there will be no rewards in the ring but there will be when you are done starting with small amounts of work and increasing.

How to Level Up: Think about reducing rewards gradually, and consider the amount of effort your dog exhibits.