Training is going very well and we are now focussing on proofing the sit/stay while out and distracted. When Libby does it I praise and treat but am not sure what's the right thing to do when she ignores me. If I ask for a sit and she trots off do I just ignore it or get her back and insist until she does it? I don't want my voice to become 'white noise' by over commanding or calling her as she'll learn to ignore me a lot. What do you do?
Maybe some back tracking is in order? Back to the beginning steps of teaching sit and stay. It's pretty common for them to get to a point in training and then seem to "forget" they ever heard that word before and seem to ignore. We even studied it in my adult teacher training as it happens with people too. Theory says they learn something and seem to know it but it's only in short term memory. Around about five weeks in (variable, the time) the learned thing moves from short term to long term memory and whilst in transit is temporarily unavailable. So you backtrack in training a bit. Does the timing seem like this might be the case? REgardless of theory, backtracking helps often. So does a little holiday from training, I'v found.
It depends - on quite a lot of things. Don't give a cue (not a command) unless you are in a place where you have your dog's attention and your dog is really engaged with you. If you don't have engagement, then you have nothing and it's pointless trying to get your cues to work*. It's too easy to forget you need to work on engagement before you try to work on anything else. It depends on whether you are training a cue, or you are giving a cue that is well known. If I'm training a puppy to sit, then I shouldn't be saying the cue she is learning unless she is actually carrying out the behaviour and this applies in every new place I'm training in. But if my older dog, in a familiar place, ignored a sit cue to wander off to sniff something I'd just go and put my hand on his collar and return his attention to me. If he kept doing it though, I would know that he is not engaged with me and I'd try to work out why or do something different. *Obviously, you can give a cue that asks for engagement if you've already trained it. Like a 'ready' cue or a stop or a recall that returns the dog's attention to you.
More generally, in positive reinforcement training, I think you ignore mistake while learning something and undesirable behaviour that you think will just go away if you ignore it. I don't ignore my older dog not following a well known cue. I don't punish him, either, but if I'm asking him for something well within his capabilities and he just decides that smell is far too interesting to resist, I do go get him. So if I've asked for a heel down a path and he just swerves off to a sniff, I just put my hand on his collar and stop him sniffing. If I didn't do this, he would quickly develop a habit of heeling but dashing off to sniff every two minutes. I'm sure there is a more theoretical answer that doesn't require me to do this, and instead depends on me carefully calibrating what I ask for with the precise desirability of the sniffs in the environment and the value of my reinforcement - but I live in the real world.
I agree with everything Julie said I'm also going to try using the collar (or in Max's case harness) idea. He is a lot better at walking to heel but he does like to sniff a fair bit! Sometimes with Max, as he is so keen on sniffing everything I try to act a little bit exciting e.g I raise the pitch of my voice or look like an idiot to everyone else but starting moving around unpredictability so he's like "hey she's doing something fun I'll focus" and that's when I gain his attention I wouldn't say use good all the time but it does help I usually take food not because he won't sit or stay but Max is very weary of strangers which is a work in progress, some people he's fine with, some he ignores and others well others must give off a very bad vibe :/ One last tip is the "watch me" que but again only really good when you already have their attention Good luck with the training though
Thanks for that. I think it's mostly down to something else being more engaging! I could go back a stage but I do regularly just ask for a sit without the distraction. She does it if close to me or runs back to me to do it so at a distance isn't really working yet. We had a fab day Thursday where she sad nicely beside me while I chatted to a couple of people, one even had an old dog. Then yesterday it was as if I hadn't spoken at all, I didn't have her engaged. Even without the distractions, mostly she does what's asked and sometimes looks but then entirely ignores me as if she's thinking "Really? What on earth for? Is it chicken or a normal treat? Hmm, normal. Nah!" And off she trots. There's nothing awful, I'm not talking about a disobedient dog in the main, I'm just wondering how to do this right for the long term good. If I ignore her does that teach her to disobey? If I insist, the walk could get pretty dull! Or when asking for an 'off', mostly she drops the thing she has in exchange for a treat but sometimes decides the thing is better. Do I go chasing? It just makes it a game. Do I keep demanding? It makes my voice meaningless and still a game. I'm still learning too!
It still depends.... Generally, the advice is to do the 'least reinforcing thing'. LRT. Sometimes this is going and getting my dog, sometimes this is ignoring and so on. But you shouldn't have a string of errors where you are having to do this - so when you say that if you insisted on a sit on a walk it would make the walk very dull, it sounds like you are asking for something your dog can't really do. If I had asked 3.5 year old Charlie for a sit (in an environment where it was reasonable for him to sit) and he wandered off, I'd go get him. If I'd asked 6 month old Betsy, I'd wait for her to re-engage and then work on engagement, then ask her for something easier than a sit, which would be a hand touch and make sure I released her before she wandered off again. In this particular circumstance you have to decide what the best option is or at least what the least worst option is. Demanding or repeating a cue, or chasing, are all pretty unattractive as options. If a dog ignored a give cue, I would either ignore the dog and walk off and pretend to do something interesting without the dog, or if that really wasn't an option I'd use my interrupter cue. I did this last week when we asked Betsy to pick up a pheasant and she started to play with it (rather than bring it back). I walked towards her with a hand full of treats in the air and said 'Ready!', when she looked up, I thew the treats away from the pheasant with the cue 'find it'. I've trained this thousands of times in my kitchen, garden at home and it worked. If that hadn't worked, I'd have been pretty bloomin' stuck and it would have been my fault for letting her anywhere near a pheasant!
That's very helpful. It's basically what I do really so good to know I'm doing it right. That's probably true! My daughter said I expect too much. At puppy class this week they said to teach 'stay' without moving away at this stage whereas I've been teaching Libby to stay at the bottom of the stairs while I go up. It's pretty successful for a while then, if I'm too long, she comes to find me but I don't mind as she's in training and I know I'm pushing boundaries. I want to treat her for the good bit but am sometimes too late so can't treat! That's probably confusing for her.
I'd say it really matters that you are asking for a stay, going out of sight and she is coming to find you - you really don't want this to happen at all. It does matter, and it will result in an unreliable stay. It hinders, not helps, your training to 'push boundaries' like this.
