Hi all, I often read people saying that they do regular 5-10 minute training sessions throughout the day with their pups. I was wondering if anyone could help me out with understanding what kind of things you do in such a quick 10 minute session, if you are stuck in the house? With my four month old we have covered things like sit, down, stand, touch, and a couple of fairly pointless-but-fun tricks like spin. The other items that come instantly to mind as good to work on - heel walking, recall, retrieving - seem like they would require to be outside in some space rather than on the kitchen floor! I work from home and am looking for things that can be useful, and keep the pup entertained/engaged/tire him out, which I could do when taking regular ten minute breaks from working. I feel like there should be a million-and-one things that fit the bill, but for some reason I have hit a mental block and seem to default back to more sits/downs etc, which sometimes feels like the pup is going through the motions to get treats. Thanks! Pete
We do all the Kennel Club good citizen requirements. https://www.thekennelclub.org.uk/media/21392/gcdsbronze.pdf https://www.thekennelclub.org.uk/media/21404/gcdssilver.pdf Our pups take the tests too, ‘tho they don’t often get to take Gold as we don’t have them quite long enough. I only do ten minutes at a time, two or three times a day. I also do ithe ‘stay’ and ‘wait’ exercises during the day whenever they are getting a chew or a Kong. (and when I’m loading the dishwasher)
You don’t need a big space to play tug and this can also help teach ‘leave it’. There’s a video here that’s a bit long-winded at first, but does show exactly what I mean. The other thing to do indoors is to build up distractions while your pup is in a sit or down. So getting them used to you walking round, waving your arms, making a noise etc without them moving. Also teach your pup to go into a sit down when you are in different positions, as many people teach it only when they are facing the dog. Definitely start practising recall in the house - getting it secure there will pay dividends when you are outside where there are more distractions. Make sure the training sessions are fun for your pup. The most important thing for your puppy to learn is that you are good to be with.
@RedRory Yes I often feel the same. What command words to teach either for a purpose or for fun. Ive added "roll over" (for fun) and "middle", where he comes in between my open legs and sits, looking up to me. I started heel work indoors, just wandering through the house....you dont need much space. "Leave it" is another good indoor command that has outdoor benefits. Im trying right now to get him to catch treats that I throw or drop from above, and to close a door (go in behind it and use his body to push it over towards closed. Find things and bring them to me (success depends on how much he wants that thing but the concept of it is getting there!) and to lie down at my feet when I am working, to go to certain rooms. I'm always looking for more things that have practical benefits aside from the benefit of training for the sake of it, so I need to sit down and have a think. Im off for the summer and want to do some more intensive training work with him.
Adding distraction as Joy said is great, and there is also precision, duration and distance to add, as well as combining behaviours. Can you ask your pup to sit, or go into middle, and then throw a treat and have him stay in place without restraining him or cueing him to stay? No? Great, there's something you can work on! In middle, can you have him stay in middle as you walk forwards, backwards, turn in circles? Can you put him in a sit and walk out of the room for several minutes without him moving? Have you taught him two feet on and four feet on? Have you changed surfaces, sizes, heights? Made them wobbly? Have you trained coming to heel from all different directions? Included obstacles? Have you trained a straight sit at heel where he adjusts position as you move, even tiny amounts? Same with a straight sit in front? Have you trained a "go to mat" from different positions, from different rooms even? And will he stay there for as long as you want him to, even if you're bouncing a ball or scattering food around the room? Can you give a verbal cue with your hands on your head, or arms crossed, or laying on the floor, or while doing jumping jacks, or with your eyes closed, or your back turned etc etc and he still performs the behaviour? Training an initial behaviour is always the easy part. Generalising it to different scenarios, durations, levels of distraction etc is the challenging bit!
Thanks Boogie - lots of food for thought in there. May I ask, just to get a sense of how you as an experienced trainer make progress, what kind of age you would typically be entering a pup into the tests for bronze and silver?
More great ideas here, thanks Joy! I do have a hallway that could be suitable for practicing recall, though I might need to buy a long rug, as the pup can find the hardwood there a bit slippy, so I wouldst want to encourage him to charge down the hall just yet! What steps do you take to make the session fun for your pup? Beyond using treats, lots of praise, keeping duration under control? Sorry for the basic questions, but sometimes I feel like in my inexperience I am terrible at dog training, but I am keen to learn
Thanks Kobe. Middle sounds fun, and right now I have no idea why I did not think just to begin heelwork in the house. Seems very silly now it has been presented to me as an idea!
Hi Snowbunny Thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed response. As my answer to pretty much all of your "can you" questions is currently a resounding no, this gives me a great "go to list" of behaviors (new and existing) to work on! I shall have to get on youtube and get learning how to make some of these happen! I wondered do you have a particular resource/method for teaching coming to heel that you found particularly useful? I guess that this list shows also that there are some things I REALLY need to work on with the cues that I have already begin to try to train, that I should not gloss over in my haste to learn fun new things. To this end I guess a couple of follow up questions come to mind: - How should I go about working on precision? For instance, I have a half decent "sit" right now (works most places; needs more proofing against the biggest distractions; can get duration of around 2min; can leave the room and return; can stay when food is thrown, but generally only if eye contact is retained). However, on some occasions (and I am not sure why) his sitting is pretty slow/sloppy. He hears the cue / see the hand signal and then has a good think about whether to bother, thankfully normally before eventually doing so. Would it be worth bringing some high value treats back to the sit command, but retaining them only for the sharpest sits? - I have noticed that with nearly all things we have worked on he is much much better at responding to a hand signal than the verbal cue. For instance for down he will always respond to the hand gesture, but the verbal cue can be as poor as 50/50 right now. How do I work to deal with this? I had thought about returning to luring, and using only the verbal queue without the hand gesture. But things like down the hand signal he recognizes is pretty close to the lure, without treat in hand! Anyhow - thanks as ever for your kind guidance!
Ours go for bronze at about 5-6 months and silver at 10-11 months. Bronze is pretty easy - it’s the down-stay with lots of other pups doing the same at the same time that catches some of them out.
Give your verbal cue, then wait a couple of seconds. If he doesn't respond give your hand signal. Eventually he will understand your verbal signal. Looking at our training class, this is a thing a lot of people struggle with. It's all down to practice. Practice, practice, practice. I can see which owner/dog pairs don't practice! Another thing to try, once you've got your verbal cue nailed, try it with your back to the dog - taking away any subtle signals that you're not even aware you're giving. Have fun. Lots of fun training. Both of you.
I often command my dog with the hand signals alone. We are foreigners where we live and sometimes I want to command him without the locals lecturing me on why I speak English to my dog and not the local language (yes busybodies and some days I dont have the energy to tell them where to go!) I also need him to behave when I can't talk to him....today for instance my husband and I have a joint staff meeting. We work together but rarely have to be in the same meeting at the same time. It's a long one and over puppy's dinner and playtime. In the heat he just lies alone in the kitchen all day and come 6pm gets up and about. Seems mean to leave him another 2 hours at that time....so he is venturing to our office for his first staff meeting. I'm hoping the hand commands and his dinner fed kibble by kibble at my feet will be enough!!!
With my latest pup, I just made it really rewarding being with me. From day one, we built a strong reinforcement history that being with me was brilliant. This led to an almost automatic heel because as I walked, she wanted to walk with me. She's now 19 months and I have a struggle to get her to go and do normal dog things sometimes, because she's so keen to be with me! But, as far as "formal" things we did, I would feed her in place for being in the heel position and, once she had a good position, I would start tossing the treats slightly away from me as I walked, so she would have to reorient to me. You can see a bit early on in this video from when she was five months old. This is obviously on a narrow path; it's better to start off in a bigger flat area so you can throw the food in different directions. Make it easy at first, don't throw too far and walk slowly so the puppy doesn't have as far to move to catch up to you. Once pup has the idea of the game, you can start adding your verbal cue as your puppy is moving back towards you. Keep reps really quick at the start; as soon as your puppy gets to you, mark and throw the treat away immediately. This can be a really fun game where (once the pup has the idea) you can start challenging them by changing direction, pace etc. I also like to teach a "default sit" when I stop, meaning that when my dog is at heel and I stop moving, they sit without me giving a verbal cue. Depending on what you want to do with your dog, you may or may not want this. There are a few ways of doing this, but if your puppy doesn't already have a default sit, you can start by cueing the sit at heel when you stop. Stop, "sit", mark and reward for sitting. After doing this enough that your puppy is fluent, drop the "sit" cue and just wait a couple of seconds. If he doesn't sit, cue him, and do this a few more times before trying again without the verbal cue. If he does it, throw him a party, tell him how clever he is and make a huge deal of it. It will take a while before it "sticks" properly, so don't worry if you have to add in the cue again from time to time, especially in novel environments. Once you have this down pat, you can start combining the two so that you can be stood still and call your puppy to heel and they line up next to you. Using place boards is useful for this (although I've never used one myself). To do this, you'd first teach the puppy to sit square on a place board (or mat). You want a board or mat that's not too much bigger than he is when he's sat, so he gets the idea of lining up against the edges. I think these things are often clearer to the dog when there is a slightly raised surface, which is why place boards are useful. You can make your own out of wood or high-density polystyrene covered with a non-slip surface like felt. Once your puppy is really comfortable with the idea of sitting straight on the board, you just stand next to the board and call him to heel. He should automatically line up. To start with, it's easiest for the puppy if you're stood in front of him, facing away, so he just has to run forwards and is already straight. Then, over time, you want to eventually work towards calling over longer distances and at different angles until he can be called from any location, run to you and align himself at heel. There are all sorts of other things you can do to add finesse to this, such as teaching pivoting at heel, but you can start with the "big" moves and work on the "small" moves later. A very smart woman (Dr Susan Friedman) said something along the lines of "make your cues smaller and your reinforcement bigger". Meaning, we have a habit of trying to make our cues clearer if our dogs don't respond, or respond slowly. "Sit" becomes "sit" becomes "SIT". Well, nine times out of ten, your dog heard fine the first time, you just haven't given him a strong enough reinforcement history*. This is something I recently started on with one of my older dogs, Willow who, like Rory, can sometimes be a little bit slow to sit. Sometimes this is actually because she's over-aroused and anticipating the reward, but often it's very much that "do I have to?" look that we all like to anthropomorphise. The reality is simple; she was the first dog I ever trained to sit on cue and I rushed it, dropping the reinforcer too quickly because I didn't have a very good handle on the mechanisms at play in learning theory. So I've gone back to basics with her and I throw her a party every time she sits on cue. The snappier it is, the bigger her reinforcer - the biggest for her being the chase of a ball. In about a week of doing this a few times a day, she's showing huge improvement. Someone else (I forget who) said, "use treats to get a behaviour and play to make it snappy". Food is really convenient to teach behaviours because we can do loads and loads and loads of reps in a short timeframe, but although my dogs (being normal Labradors!) are very food motivated, their top-drawer reward is chasing a ball. When I was working on their running to a straight sit at heel, they were reinforced for every good one with the throw of a ball - this led to them racing to me when they heard the "heel" cue, jumping into position as quickly and precisely as possible to get their reward. Shadow would even sometimes do flyball turns on my stomach! I couldn't have achieved that same level of enthusiasm with food alone. You need to learn about your dog as he grows - and his motivators will also change as he matures - and make sure you always know what his highest value reinforcers are so you can use them. This can change dependent on environment, too. In an empty field, the chase of a ball might be the most exciting thing, but maybe you find that if another dog enters the environment, that your dog would be more motivated to greet that dog than to chase the ball. If appropriate, then, you could use that dog as a reward for doing something. So, if you ask for a sit and he does it, he gets rewarded with greeting the dog. * A note on this. Dogs sometimes have off days (or hours), just like we do, when they're not in the mood for a multitude of reasons. We need to respect this and, rather than trying to flog a dead horse, which will have a longer term impact on turning him off to training, just go find something else to do. Dogs are very visual learners. I have visual cues as well as verbal ones for many of the dogs' behaviours. This is because I do a lot of initial training using lures and I turn the lure movement into a hand gesture I can use silently. Dogs are far more tuned in to our body language, which is very important to them to work out our emotional state, and less to our verbal communication, since we do tend to prattle on about nothing So, for example, I have a visual sit cue, which is my hand open and facing upwards, moving in an upward direction. My down cue is the opposite - hand open, facing down, moving downwards. You can see how these have evolved from a simple lure. That's fine to stick with if you only ever want to give visual cues; no-one says you have to add verbal cues. But, if you do, then you want to make sure they're clean and separate from your visual. The way Sue (@edzbird) has explained above is the way we introduce a new cue. It's always new cue - old cue. Then fade the old cue. You need to make sure they are separate, so don't say the verbal at the same time as doing your visual. Verbal -> visual. Do this several times, then pause before the visual. If he performs the behaviour, awesome, if not, just add the visual. It can take some time to get this down pat, but by giving him enough time to think it through (you'll see the cogs turning) and making a huge deal when he does do it, he'll get the idea. Like everything, you'll have to perform this transition in different environments before it's generalised. Right, I have to go do some work! Let us know if there are any other questions.
Wow - thanks everyone for your input, and to SnowBunny for the huge wealth of detail and experience shared above! I look forward to digging more deeply into all of this information!
