trainthetopdogway

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Are You With Me? Why you are losing your dog in the ring and what to do about it

By Betsy Scapicchio and Linda Brennan

This topic came up because of our observations at recent obedience trials.  Unfortunately, we saw quite a few people lose their dogs in the ring.  For example, the dogs visited the judge, sniffed the floor or headed to the ring gate.  After the teams left the ring, the handlers were understandably upset and they blamed their dog.  It wasn’t the dogs’ fault!  These same handlers allowed their dogs to sniff the floor, pull on the leash, and dash off to visit their friends before and after their turn in the ring.  How was the dog supposed to know that the rules are different inside the magic baby gates?!

The real problem was that the dogs and handlers were completely disconnected from each other right from the start.  What does it mean when we say that dogs are connected to their handler?  We teach our dogs to stay with us both physically and mentally. This is one of the very first lessons that we teach our puppies.  Being “on a With Me” means two things to our dogs: 1) When the handler moves, the dog must move with her and 2) The dog can never leave the handler.  It’s really that simple—it’s just not easy to be that consistent, at least in the beginning.

The first rule could also be called “Shut Up and Move.”  This rule puts the responsibility on the dog to stay connected to the handler.  Often handlers get a false sense of security by doing all of the dog’s work for him.  If the handler is constantly reminding the dog to pay attention and stay connected, for example by talking to the dog, using the leash, luring with food or otherwise entertaining the dog, when the handler stops doing those things, as we must in the ring, the dog doesn’t know what to do.  He’s not being a bad dog, he just never had to do the work himself.  We must teach the dog how to take responsibility for staying connected to the handler.  Fortunately, this a a simple skill that can be taught to the dog.  Then it is up to the handler to constantly maintain it.  

Here are a few simple steps to teach your dog a good “With Me:”

When teaching this for the first time, we begin with a food lure.  We do this with our puppies first thing.  With the dog on a loose leash, put a cookie near the dog’s nose and lure him toward you as you step backward one or two steps.  Mark and reward the dog for moving toward you.  Give the cookie with your hand against your body to ensure that the dog comes all the way in.  The dog should always be facing you as you back away from him.  

Once the dog is moving with you each time, remove the food lure.  When you back away from the dog, mark and reward him for following your motion.  If he fails to move with you, allow the leash to pull him toward you.  Then back up again.  When he follows your motion, mark and reward.  

As soon as the dog is reliably moving with you each time, begin to ask the dog to move multiple times before rewarding.  Each time you move, praise but don’t always reward.  For example, move once and praise the dog for moving with you.  Then move again and mark and reward.  Gradually ask for more repetitions before rewarding.  Be sure to stop after each backward movement.  It should be a series of stop and go movements; don’t just keep moving.  Once you are not rewarding every time, be sure to mark and reward when the dog moves quickly and immediately in response to your motion.  

From there, we progress to adding distractions and eventually teaching the dog to do an Off-Leash With Me.  

Important points for teaching your “With Me:”

Although you can teach a verbal command for With Me, you do not need to use it every time you move.  Once your dog is required to be with you, it is not your job to keep reminding him of his job.  Do not use your voice to get the dog to stay with you!  (Remember Shut Up and Move!)

Use a leash!  You cannot teach your dog to stay with you if you have no way of ensuring that he will move with you when you move.  Three feet of leash is all you need.  The leash should be loose at all times unless the dog fails to move with you.  If your leash is constantly tight, that is a sure sign that your dog is NOT with you!

Get off the food lure!  We only use the food lure briefly to show the dog what we want.  Once the dog has the idea, the food must become a reward rather than a lure.  Keep it in your pocket until the dog has done something worth rewarding. Never reach for a food lure because you don’t have your dog connected to you!  Otherwise, you never will without the food.

Notice that we have not said anything about where the dog is looking when doing a With Me.  We do not require that the dog stare at us the whole time; however, you will likely find that your dog does look at you with great attention.  If he is committed to staying with you, his focus is on you!

When teaching your With Me, stay at each step for at least a week to ensure that the dog has ample time to understand before moving to the next step.

The second rule, that the dog can never leave his handler, effectively removes the environment as a source of reinforcement for your dog.  If your dog can no longer leave you to go visit other dogs or people or wander off after a toy or speck of food on the floor, your dog will be much less distracted by those things.  You have made those things irrelevant to your dog.   If your dog does leave you, don’t just call the dog back to you.  Go and get him and bring him back.  If your dog leaves you and you call him and he comes back, he thinks it OK to leave as long as he comes back when you call.  Unfortunately, that won’t help you in the ring if he wanders off during an exercise.  We aren’t saying that your dog can never visit with other people, but that needs to be with your permission and not while you and your dog are training.  During a training session it should be just you and your dog working together and ignoring the rest of the world.  If you have a very friendly dog, do your controlled meet and greets before your training session begins.  

The next question is when does my dog have to be “With Me?”  The answer is during your entire training session.  Those two rules apply the whole time.  In fact, “With Me” becomes your dog’s default behavior.  For example, if you are doing a recall and you release your dog after he sits front without giving him another command, he is automatically expected to stay with you.  A release word, such as OK, releases your dog from the exercise he is performing but it does not release your dog to the environment.  You want your dog to remain on stand-by for the next command rather than allow him to leave you to pursue his own interests.  

Keeping your dog With You throughout an entire training session might seem like a daunting task, however it is just a matter of cultivating good habits.  The main requirement is for the handler to stay attentive to her dog at all times.  If your attention wanders, your dog will get into trouble before you realize it and then you will end up correcting the dog for your mistake.  The end result is what we observed in the ring.  Handlers were disappointed in their dogs because they didn’t stay connected but they had never taught their dogs to take responsibility for being connected!

The good news is that having a dog who stays connected prevents problems.  Most problems are really a lack of attention and commitment to stay with the handler.  In our travels teaching Workshops around the country, we have met many, many dogs who had good training to do the various obedience exercises, but were lacking a good “With Me.”  This prevented them from being able to perform in shows even though they knew how to do the exercises.  Heeling is a prime example.  Most of the problems that people argue about with their dog in heeling really have nothing to do with how well the dog can heel, but rather result from a lack of connection between the dog and handler.  If our dog understands that it is his responsibility to stay connected to us and that he does not have the option to leave, it is much easier to focus on teaching and perfecting his obedience skills.  

Motivation is a key component to training.  However, it is almost impossible to motivate a dog who has no interest in you and doesn’t want to stay with you.  Did you ever notice that although your dog will play with you at home, he won’t do it when you are in training class or at a dog show?  Why?  Because he is distracted and not connected to you.  You can’t complete with the environment!  If you remove the environment as an option, your dog will find you much more fun and interesting.  You cannot simply entertain your dog and try to be more fun than the environment because there will always be times when your dog might choose something else over you.  Remove the choice and you are the source of all things fun!  

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Are You and Your Dog Just Going Through the Motions?

By Betsy Scapicchio and Linda Brennan

When you train your dog, are you just going through the motions or do you have a plan?  From the time we begin training our puppies, we utilize a system.  Each session and each exercise is planned so that we can effectively teach, motivate, proof and maintain our training.

Starting with a puppy, the plan begins with having all of our training equipment and treats organized and available before beginning a session. We have already mapped out what exercises we plan to work on and what we need to do for each one.  In the beginning especially, you may need to write out your plan in advance to be sure that you can completely focus on your puppy during the session. Remember to include play breaks in your plan, and even a potty break if necessary.  

When our young dog is learning new exercises, the plan can be very simple.  For each exercise that we plan to work on, we can begin by reviewing the current step and assess whether the dog is ready to move on to the next step.  We should be prepared to move on as soon as our dog tells us that he is ready.  If we are working on many different exercises, we don’t need to cover every exercise at each training session.  We may choose four or five exercises in any one session.  If an exercise is particularly difficult for the dog, we need to allow extra time.  We may also want to follow up a challenging exercise with one that is easier for the dog.  You can plan your session to spread out more difficult exercises with simpler ones in between.

When planning your session, keep in mind your dog’s current training level and how long you can realistically expect the dog to stay engaged and working. Remember that learning is stressful and your dog will need to take breaks.  By planning ahead, you can keep your sessions shorter and get more accomplished.  

As our dog begins to master a new skill, we incorporate motivation and proofing.  Once the dog understands what to do, we add games and vary the rewards to make it more fun.  When the dog is performing well and enjoying it, we can begin to add proofing without over stressing the dog.  We often begin with what we call “Concept Proofing,” where we make the exercise itself more difficult.  For example, doing a 270 degree right turn instead of an about turn, placing the dumbbell up on its end, or adding extra articles to the article pile.  Then we can add Distraction Proofing, by exposing the dog to gradually more difficult distraction on the exercises.  For example, having another person follow the dog around on heeling and getting closer and moving around more as the dog gets comfortable with the distraction.  Remember that our goal in proofing is to make the dog more confident by having him perform correctly not to push the dog into making errors.  For instance, don’t combine Concept Proofing and Distractions at the same time until your dog can handle each proof separately with confidence. (See our blog “Do Dogs Have to Be Wrong to Be Right?”)

When planning your training, remember that your dog may be in teaching phase in some exercises and in the motivation and proofing stage of others.  Some training opportunities may be suitable for one kind of training more than another.  For example, if you are gong to be in a new and distracting location, plan to focus on the exercises that are ready for proofing and avoid the exercises your dog is just learning.  We try never to put the dog into a situation that he isn’t ready to handle.  Save the exercises that the dog is learning for quieter times at home or in familiar locations.  When you are working on distractions and proofing, make seeking out different and distracting locations for training part of your training plan.

Perhaps the most difficult phase of training is “Maintenance.”  Once the dog knows all of the exercises, it is easy to fall into the routine of simply doing a few repetitions of each exercise or running through the whole ring routine without a plan in mind.  But to be most productive, each training sessions still needs to be planned.  If you are currently competing with your dog, his performance at recent trials can help you to formulate your plan.  Target working on improving your dog’s weak spots.  But simply repeating those exercises will not make them better.  Begin by asking yourself how you taught the problem exercise.  Look for where the exercise is breaking down and what steps you could revisit from the teaching phase to refresh your dog’s skills. That will inform your training plan.  Do not allow your dog’s skills to deteriorate by endlessly repeating your mistakes in the hope that the dog will somehow improve.  (For more thoughts on the Maintenance phase of training, see our previous blog “Do You Train to Maintain?”)

Although in general, it is important to have a plan and stick to it, there will be times when you need to deviate from the plan.  Sometimes training doesn’t go as planned. For example, there could be unforeseen distractions or your dog could regress or get confused on an exercise.  Clearly, you will need to adapt to deal with these situations, but don’t get drawn off-course lightly.  If you fail to stick to your plans, you will soon find yourself without any plan at all.  

We hope that we have inspired you to make your training more productive and easier for you and your dog by investing a little time up front in planning your training.  Initially, you may find it easier to keep a notebook for your plans, while eventually you may be able to keep it all in your head.  Regardless of how you find it easiest to plan, the effort will pay off in the ring.  If you feel like you are in a training slump, having a plan and evaluating and revising your plan as you go might just be the ticket out!

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Dog Training 24/7:   How What You Do the Rest of the Time Affects Your Competition Training

by Betsy Scapicchio and Linda Brennan

Every minute that you spend with your dog you are training him.  This is especially true for competition dogs.  People think that what happens when they aren’t formally training their dog doesn’t matter.   But it does!

Your relationship with your dog is not limited to the time you spend training together.  Most people spend far more time with their dogs when they aren’t training.  But how you interact with your dog during those times goes a long way to define your relationship.  Dogs naturally crave leadership.  But if you allow your dog to be a wild hellion at home, what message does that send to the dog?  Then when you step into the ring and expect your dog to willingly perform for you, how can you be surprised when he chooses to do otherwise.  No matter how well trained your dog is, if the only time you are consistent in your expectations about the dog’s behavior is when you are formally training, your dog can still slip into his bad habits from home, because he has practiced those behaviors far more on a daily basis.  Having rules and consistent exceptions at home, along with regular everyday life training will make it so much easier for your dog to excel at his competition work.  For example, having a reliable recall, a steady sit and down stay, and being able to walk nicely on leash seem like just pet training.  However, how can a dog be expected to heel perfectly and do signals, if he cannot behave like a good pet.  Being able to groomed and waiting to go through a door are even less formal behaviors, but they contribute greatly to how the dog views his relationship with you.  If you are struggling with your relationship with your dog, first look at how you are interacting with the dog at home.

Another factor in your relationship with your dog is how much freedom you give him at home.  Allowing your dog to do whatever he pleases, whenever he pleases, does not help prepare him to work with you.  This is not to say that you cannot allow your dog to do things like sleep on the bed or be loose in the house, but those privileges come with responsibility.  When our puppies are young, they do not get more freedom than they can handle.  As they mature, they can earn more.  Also, ensure that your dog knows that you are the one in charge.  Otherwise, some dogs may try to take the leadership role.  For example, it is okay if your dog sleeps on the couch, unless he starts to be reluctant to move or get off when you ask him too.  Worse still, if he starts to growl at you when you ask.  If your dog gets the message at home that he is the leader, how can you be the leader when it’s time to train?

In a household with multiple dogs, this effect is multiplied also.  Bad behaviors spread quickly through a group of dogs.  However, being consistent in your rules will keep the pack harmonious.  For example, feeding time is a great time to reinforce good behavior.  Something as simple as ensuring that each dog waits for his own food and doesn’t bother any of the other dogs will reinforce your relationship with all of your dogs.

In addition to your informal interactions with your dog, consider how often in life you use commands, such as come, wait or down.  How well does your dog respond?  Although you may not think it is important if your dog comes to you on the first command when you are just calling him in from your fenced yard, how will he know that it is different when you use that command in the ring?  If, in your mind, you think that your dog’s response doesn’t matter, you are probably repeating commands and failing to reinforce them, either positively or negatively.  It does not take many instances of allowing your dog to ignore your commands for him to decide that what you are saying doesn’t matter.  Each interaction with your dog is either training him or it is “untraining” him.  If you make the effort to pay attention to how often this is happening, you may be surprised.  Rather than waste opportunities, use times like the dog’s meals to have quick little training sessions.  This is an excellent way to reinforce commands as well as teach new behaviors.  Not mention that when you utilize what the dog wants to reward behaviors that you want, you are preventing many other less desirable actions that the dog might otherwise do.  For example, if you are using your dog’s meal to reward focused attention, not only are you improving your dog’s skills, but your dog is also not barking and jumping at you to get the food.

If your dog is constantly getting into trouble at home, that can have a terrible effect on your relationship.  If you are always yelling at the dog for inappropriate behaviors, that won’t fix the problem and it is destroying your dog’s trust in you.  Instead, set the dog up for success by controlling the environment.  For example, use baby gates to keep the dog in the room with you, crate the dog when you are away, and keep the dog on leash if he won’t come reliably off leash.  Constantly telling your dog “no” and yelling at him should be a red flag that something is wrong.  If your dog knows the right behavior, then correct mistakes immediately and things won’t get out of hand.

Many problems at home are a direct result of lack of impulse control.  Worse still, each time your dog rewards himself for his lack of impulse control, for example by steeling food off of the counter, the problem behavior has been reinforced.  Everyday life provides many opportunities to teach and reinforce impulse control.  For example, asking your dog to wait at the door until he is released to go out is one simple way to build impulse control.  The more your dog learns to control himself in everyday life, the easier it will be for him in competition training.  This is especially important if we want to be able to motivate the dog and create speed and drive in our exercises.  Without impulse control, we cannot motivate without losing control.

Another major source of problems is when handlers allow their dog to interact with the environment, rather than keep the dog under control.  For example, if you come into your training building with your dog at the end of the leash and your dog sticks his head into someone’s cooler or goes to visit other people and dogs, what do you think your dog will be thinking about when you are trying to train him?  Since these behaviors occur when you are not formally training, handlers sometimes think that it doesn’t matter.  However, letting your dog interact with the environment in a training setting will make your dog more distracted in training.  He will be on the lookout for opportunities to go investigate whatever interests him in his surroundings, whether that is people, other dogs, or other distractions, such as food, toys or interesting smells.  On the other hand, if your dog understands that he never gets to visit or sniff when he is doing something with you, then he will be much less likely to notice all of the other options.

If you pay attention to the many opportunities to improve your dog’s behavior that pop up in everyday life, you can improve your dog’s training with very little time and extra effort.  Take a few minutes here and there thought out your day to do a little training.  Plan ahead to keep your dog out of trouble and prevent problems.  Your dog will love the extra attention from you and you will be pleasantly surprised at how much you get back from your dog.

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Houston We Have a Problem—What to do when you know something is wrong, but you don’t have the skills to fix it

by Betsy Scapicchio and Linda Brennan

You’ve trained your dog and done your homework.  The dog knows the exercise and then suddenly, you have a problem.  What to do?

When does a mistake become a problem?  Although we structure our training to minimize mistakes, they can and will happen.  It we catch the mistake right away, we can usually prevent it from turning into a problem.  A problem occurs when a mistake becomes a repeating pattern of behavior.  For example, a dog moves forward on the signal exercise.  If this happens once and we correct the behavior (see our previous blog on Corrections) by explaining to the dog that forward motion is not correct and then prevent the dog from repeating the mistake, we can avoid a problem.  However, if we allow the dog to continue to move forward in the signal exercise and repeat that behavior, we now have a problem. 

Thus the first key to avoiding problems is to learn to handle mistakes so that they don’t turn into problems.  Trainers are often temped to ignore small mistakes, hoping that they will improve on their own.  They don’t.  When training, keep your criteria in mind and ensure that your dog is continually performing the exercise in the way that you want.  Pay attention to details.  As experienced trainers, we can often anticipate what errors could occur and be ready to prevent or correct them if they do.  Knowing ahead of time how you will handle possible mistakes will help ensure that they don’t turn into problems.  Before training your dog, ask yourself if you are clear on your criteria and what you will do to handle any deviations. Remember that every time your dog repeats the wrong behavior you are inadvertently training the dog to do it wrong.  As we always say, if you allow your dog to repeatedly do something wrong, then finally get it right once and quit, you have trained the dog to do it wrong because repetition is more important than ending on a single success.

Small mistakes turn into big problems.  Even if your goal is to qualify and not to earn a 200, you still need to prevent small mistakes from happening.  Remember that small errors in training become big errors in the ring.  It can be easy to gloss over all of those minor errors in training, but then be surprised when problems show up in the ring.  Those little errors you ignored in training, can turn into an NQ.  We often hear that a particular mistake “only happens in the ring.”  However, what shows up in the ring is usually just an exaggeration of those pesky little mistakes you ignored in your training.  For example, in training, l the dog takes several steps forward and then slowly sits on the go out.  Then in the ring, the handler is surprised to have a problem with the dog not sitting on the go out.  We aren’t.  We know that a slow, delayed or inaccurate response in training often becomes no response at all in the ring.  But trainers often overlook these poor responses in training and utter the four most deadly words in competition obedience “but he did it.”  We know that HOW he did it is more important for future success.

Solid foundation training is the best way to prevent mistakes and problems from occurring later.  Often trainers are in such a hurry to get to the fun and flashy stuff that they neglect the basics.  The longer we work with dogs, the more we understand how important a solid foundation is for future success and how long it takes to do that properly.  Take your time and don’t rush your dog through the basics.  Skills like attention, heeling, recalls, fronts, finishes, and positions are used at every level of competition.  Mistakes often occur because we thought our dog knew something that he didn’t.  So we need to go back and revisit that piece of his foundation training.  If we continue to ignore a gap in the dog’s foundation, we risk creating a serious problem later. When mistakes and problems do occur, always go back to your roots.  Ask yourself, how did I teach my dog to do that?  If you go back through the teaching steps, you can often identity exactly where the issue occurs.  Spend a little time reviewing that step and then build back to the completed exercise.  Trainers are sometimes reluctant to go backward in their training but that can be the quickest way to move forward in the end!  For example, the dog is not doing a good drop on the drop on recall.  If you go back through the steps of teaching the exercise, you might realize that although you taught the dog how to do a down from a stationary position, you never really taught the dog how to do a down in motion and at speed.  By returning to the teaching steps and clarifying that behavior for the dog, you can fix the problem by filling in that gap in your dog’s education.  No amount of correcting the dog is going to help if the dog doesn’t understand how to perform the behavior correctly!  

Many problems occur because the handler allowed the dog to practice making mistakes in training that could easily have been prevented if the handler focused on keeping the dog right. When challenging our dogs with proofing and distraction work, our goal is to prevent mistakes rather than correct them.  This strengthens the dog’s understand instead of undermining his confidence.  (See our previous blog “Do Dogs Have to Be Wrong to Be Right.”).  For example, when first adding distractions to the scent articles, we use a tie-down mat so that the dog cannot make a mistake.  That way the dog can be successful and we can use the distractions to build his confidence.  This strategy applies for small mistakes as well.  For example, in command discrimination, we use a chute, stick or block to keep the dog’s feet from moving forward as he executes the changes of position.  We often find that trainers are reluctant to keep using aids to maintain the dog’s accuracy because they are afraid the the dog won’t be able to perform without them in the ring.  However, we find that in many cases this is the best way to ensure successful repetition of the correct behavior. (See our previous blog “Just CHUTE the Dog.”)  Why allow the dog to make mistakes in training that may turn into problems later.

The first challenge when a problem does occur is to correctly identify what the problem is.  Often, it is not the piece that you think it is, but rather what is occurring prior to or after that piece.  For example, in the signal exercise, if the dog has a problem with not doing the down, it often the dog’s attention and motivation in the stand that is causing the problem.  If the dog has a good understanding of the down, then correcting the down will not solve the problem.  In fact, by correcting the wrong problem, trainers can create more stress and compound it.  In this example, the cause was the previous behavior, but it could be something afterward.  In this scenario, a dog does not want to take the jumps in directed jumping, perhaps because he is sore or injured, and then starts to refuse to do the go out.  Working on the go out will not fix the problem, because the dog is refusing so that he won’t be asked to do the jumps.  When a problem occurs in an exercise, evaluate each step separately to see where the dog is struggling. That is another benefit of breaking the exercises down into small steps when teaching.  Consider that the “problem” could be the step before or after where you are seeing the result.

When looking for the source of a problem or mistake, don’t forget to consider motivation.  Is it a lack to motivation rather than a technical skill that is causing the problem?  Particularly when the dog is already trained, handlers sometimes forget that they need to maintain the dog’s motivation as well.  When teaching, we are careful to build in motivation, since learning can be stressful.  Later, we pair proofing and with motivation, so that the dog enjoys the challenges.  A more motivated dog is more likely to be successful and a successful, confident dog is easier to motivate.  For example, a dog with a slow retrieve is more likely to be distracted and make mistakes, including a slow pickup, failure to retrieve, slow return or poor front and finish.  By motivating the retrieve, we can speed up the dog’s retrieve and lessen the chance that any of those mistakes occur.  The problem is not that the dog doesn’t know how to retrieve, but rather that the dog isn’t motivated to perform the behavior.  We can’t afford to be lazy trainers and use the excuse that the dog just doesn’t like to do it.

Sometimes the best course of action is to seek help.  Knowing how to prevent and correct problems is difficult and requires experience.  You may need guidance from someone whose own experience competing and training their own dogs and their students dogs as demonstrated consistently in the ring gives them the necessary tools.  Before deciding whose advice to take, ask yourself whether it makes sense in the context of how your dog was trained.  There are many good ways to train but jumping from one system to another will just confuse your dog.  Also remember that it’s likely that your problem developed over time and it won’t be fixed instantly.  When you decide on a course of action to take, follow through before deciding that it won’t work.  It is very confusing and frustrating for your dog if you are constantly changing techniques.  

Mistakes and problems are an inevitable part of training and competing with our dogs.  Our strategy for preventing them and how we handle them when they occur will determine how successful we are.  

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It’s Not You; It’s Me — How Handling Can Make or Break Your Performance

by Betsy Scapicchio and Linda Brennan

Obedience is a team sport.  There is nothing better than watching a handler and dog who perform together as one.  We often focus only on the dog’s job, but our responsibility as the handler is just as important, if not more.  When it comes to the dance of competition obedience, it is up to us to lead.

At shows, handlers are quick to blame the external environment for the dog’s mistakes.  However, we should be looking inward rather than outward.  Ask yourself how the dog performed outside the ring compared to inside.  If the dog was fine outside the ring, then the external environment is very similar and we need to ask a different question.  Were you the same inside and outside the ring?  What we need to focus on here is the cues that you are giving the dog.  That includes the cues that you are consciously using but also the many cues that you may not even be aware that you give your dog when you train and show.  For example, if you look at your dog in training, but don’t look at your dog in the ring, that is a huge change in the picture that your dog sees.  If you use a food lure or tight leash in training, when these aides are not there in the ring, the dog doesn’t know how to perform the exercise.

In training, we must prepare the dog for competition.  That means using the same cues and handling that are required in the ring.  We must be consistent and predicable.  Any change will cause the dog to question his job and perhaps make a mistake.  For example, if you give your signal or verbal command differently than you do in training, you can expect that your dog may not recognize it.  This might happen if you tend to hold your down signal in training, but give the signal quickly in the ring.  When this happens, people are quick to say that their dog is “ring wise,” implying that their dog is deliberately performing differently in the ring than in training.  However, it is is not the dog’s fault if the handler is not performing the same in the ring as she does in training.

When you are tempted to assume that an error is the dog’s fault, look at yourself first.  Ask yourself whether you have given your dog the right information.  Video can be very helpful.  Film yourself in training as well as in the ring and compare the two.  Focus just on your handling.  What do you see that is different?  Remember that dogs are masters of body language, so every gesture and difference in your posture can have meaning to the dog.  Strive to keep the picture of you that your dog seeing consistent.  For example, when you watch video of yourself in training, you might discover that you are talking to your dog frequently during times when you cannot talk in the ring. Your dog will certainly notice the difference and it may affect his performance.

Heeling in particular requires the handler to do just as much work as the dog.  If we are not smooth and precise, we cannot expect flawless heeling from the dog.  We love heeling because it is the ultimate showcase for teamwork between dog and handler.  The connection should be evident. This a fluid exercise as the team executes turns, halts and changes of pace, so the handler must be constantly cuing the dog.  These need to be practiced and perfected, and then it is up to the handler to lead the dog in the ring.  Your heeling cannot be better than your ability to do your part in your performance.  A very common example of the impact of handling on heeling in the ring is when the dog fails to sit on a halt.  This is most often the handler’s fault for failing to cue the dog in same way as in training.   

Heeling is not the only part of your time in the ring that requires good handling.  Every second that you spend in competition requires you to be on your game.  Not only do you need to be consistent with your cues for the dog for each exercise, but the transitions in between are just as important.  How you handle your dog between exercises can set the dog up for success or failure.  You need to practice all of those little pieces of your performance so that you and the dog can perform them in the ring.  For example, in Novice, when the handler and dog move from the stand-for-exam exercise to the off-leash heeling, how they make the transition will effect how the dog performs on the exercise.  If the handler allows the dog to just meander to the set up point for the heeling, how likely is it that the dog will reconnect for the heeling?  Practicing and executing a happy, connected transition from the stand-for-exam will greatly improve the dog’s chances of success in the off-leash heeling.

As the exercises get more complicated in Open and Utility and the dog is required to do them in different orders, transitions are more important than ever.  In addition, many exercises can be done in the same location in the ring, so it is imperative that the dog knows what exercise we are about to do.  For example, in Open the command discrimination and drop on recall can be done in the same spot.  If the dog doesn’t know which exercise we are doing, he may break position on the command exercise or fail to come on the recall.  To help solve this problem, an additional piece of handling that we teach is to name each exercise for the dog.  We tell the dog each time what exercise we will be doing on the way to the exercise and/or at the set up point.  For example, if the broad jump is the first exercise to be performed in Open, we tell the dog as we enter the ring that we are going to do the board jump.  This only helps if you are consistent in doing it all the time in training, so that it is familiar to the dog when you do it in the ring.

Another very specific example of how transitions affect our performance is how we enter the ring with the dog.  To help bridge the gap between outside the ring, when the dog and handler are more comfortable, and inside the ring, we must train the ring entrance.  By perfecting this sequence in training, we can maintain the dog’s attention and motivation from outside the ring and bring it into the ring where it counts.  If you struggle to get your dog into the ring and set up for the first exercise, you are already setting yourself up to fail.  Not only is your dog not in the best position to perform successfully, but your confidence is probably not very high either.  Take the time to train this piece and you’ll feel much more confident stepping into the ring.

The more thoroughly you train every aspect of what happens in the ring, paying careful attention to each detail, the more successful you will be.  When all you have to do in the ring is to execute your handling just as you do it every time in training, then you can focus on yourself and allow your dog show how well you have trained him.  The best compliment that your dog can give you is to perform exactly the same way in the ring as he does in training.  Then you know that you’ve done YOUR job.

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Relationship — noun, the way in which two or more concepts, objects, or people are connected, or the state of being connected

by Betsy Scapicchio and Linda Brennan

What do we mean when we talk about our relationship with our dogs?  The unspoken connection that develops over time spent together, not just in training but in life as well, between dog and trainer.  This connection is based on understand each other and earning each other’s trust and respect.

While we happily incorporate learning theory into our training methods, sometimes focusing exclusively on the external rewards for the dog, such as food or toys, can make people lose sight of their relationship with their dog.  Although it is important to use both positive and negative reinforcement in your training, our dogs have a much more complex relationship with us.  We cannot treat them like a rat is a maze.  Our dogs do not go from a sterile environment into a training session.  We constantly interact with our dogs in daily life and that effects our training through our relationship with the dog.

Our relationship is based on our actions and the dogs actions.  It is what you and the dog do together and how you interact.  It is not based on whether the dog sleeps on your bed or sits by your feet when you watch TV.

How do we develop a good productive relationship with a dog?  Good relationships are based on trust.  From the dog’s perspective, we develop that trust by giving him a safe environment, consistent rules, and predictable interactions with us.  As his training processes, we need to be fair and clear as we break each task down into simple skills for him to master.  We do not push the dog to perform tasks that he hasn’t yet mastered or to learn faster than he can handle.  

Relationships are not based on cookies and toys.  Those are tools that we use to teach and motivate the dog, but it is the games that we play with the dog along the way that incorporate ourselves that create our working relationship with the dog.  For example, if we are working on recalls, simply giving the dog a cookie each time he comes to us is not going to motivate the dog enough to produce consistent fast, happy recalls in the ring.  However, if we instead play games using that cookie, such as running away from the dog or tossing the reward for the dog to chase, and keep the rewards fun and unpredictable by varying what we do each time, we can create a dog who loves to give us fast recalls.  For more examples, see our video “Are We Having Fun Yet?”

Some dogs are easy to form a relationship with and others make you work for it.  It may depend on your temperament as well as the dog’s and how well you fit together.  Breeds with certain characteristics may be easier for you to mesh with, but each dog is an individual.  You need to work to develop trust and a good working relationship with each new dog that you have.  Be sure not to compare your current dog to your previous dogs or to assume that the dogs are the same or you may lose the dog’s trust by expecting him to be something or know something that he does not.

Handlers break their dog’s trust in many ways.  Inconsistent expectations are a common problem.  When trainers allow errors to happen and ignore them and then later correct the dog for the same error, the trainer’s behavior becomes unpredictable.  For example, the dog frequently drops his head in heeling and most of the time the handler ignores or misses it.  Then the dog drops his head and the handler corrects the dog.  Instead of teaching the dog not to drop his head, all the handler has succeeded in doing is making the dog wary of his unpredictable behavior.

Another problem is expecting the dog to perform at a level for which is not really prepared.  When we show the dog before he has completely mastered the required elements for a class and learned to put them all together without help, we damage our relationship with the dog by turning the ring into a stressful place.  This is often compounded by the fact that our expectations for the dog have not been met and we are disappointed too.  Even if we are unhappy with ourself and not the dog, the dog may internalize our disappointment and become more stressed.  In essence, we have created a situation in which neither the dog nor the handler will can be happy in the ring.  This can be the case even if you think that you are not attached to the results in the ring, for example, by saying “I don’t really expect to qualify, I just want to see where the dog is at.” The dog is still going to be stressed when he makes mistakes in the ring and you are in no position to help him.  We want the dog to feel that we are always there for him in the ring as well as in training, so it is our responsibility to ensure that the dog is completely prepared.

Perhaps more than any other dog sport, obedience is a sport of teamwork.  Dogs are not machines.  It is the connection between dog and handler that catches your eye in the ring.  When you see a brilliant team, it is their relationship that you see.  You see a dog who is fully engaged, interacting with the handler and enjoying performing in the ring, rather that than an accurate but robotic performance.  When you lose that connection with the dog, you lose the dog.  When things do go wrong in the ring, it is your relationship with the dog that can get you through.  If your dog fully trusts you, then you can support him even if he does get frightened or stressed without damaging your relationship for the future.  As the leader in our team, we need to ensure that we are consistent and reliable for our dog in the ring.  That means knowing our job and doing it correctly, as we do in training, every time we compete.  This makes our teamwork really shine when the chips are down at big events, like tournaments.

Remember, when you go in the ring at a show, you bring nothing with you but your dog and your relationship.

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What Can a Behaviorist Teach Us for Competition Obedience?—Turns Out Its a Whole Lot

What We’ve Learned from Brenda Aloff

by Betsy Scapicchio and Linda Brennan

People are always talking about “thinking outside the box.”  One way that we stepped outside the box was to incorporate some of the ideas about training and dog behavior that we learned from Brenda Aloff.  While Brenda doesn’t specialize in competition training, although she has completed in obedience and other dog sports, her techniques and ideas bring new insight into our training methods for obedience.

We have always known that our dog’s state of mind, both in training and in the ring, will determine their ability to perform up to their potential.  No matter how well trained our dogs are, if they are stressed, whether that manifests as stressing “down” or stressing “up,” they cannot perform at their best. If we have tools for manipulating our dog’s state of mind, then we can help the dog to work at their optimum level.  While this idea seems both obvious and at the same time difficult to do, we really can teach our dog to allow us to help them get into the right state mind. 

First, we must be able to assess our dog’s state of mind.  This begins with looking at his arousal level.  In other words, how excited is the dog?  If he is not aroused at all, then he will not be engaged with his handler, likely to be distracted, and disconnected with the handler.  The dog whose arousal level is too low is usually described as bored, stressed, ring-wise, lazy, or lacking in drive.  For example, such dogs often lag on heeling, walk out or back slowly from retrieves or other exercises, or fail to sit on halts, fronts or finishes.  If the dog is too aroused, he is likely to be noisy, fidgety, and highly distractible.  These dogs get the zoomies, they forge, they anticipate, and they can’t concentrate and lack focus.  For example, overly aroused dogs may scootch forward on signals, anticipated commands, or fumble the dumbbell.  Clearly neither of these states of mind are what we want for our obedience dog.  The dog who is at the right level of arousal is engaged, focused, and drivey.  He can exercise good impulse control and work with joy and enthusiasm.

Brenda has helped us to be more aware of our dog’s state of mind and given us tools and techniques for altering it.  It is fascinating that dogs can and do learn cues for relaxation to lower their arousal level and also cues for bringing their arousal level up as well.  When we have the awareness of the dog’s arousal level and the tools for changing it, we can apply them to keep the dog at the optimum level for whatever task we ask of the dog.  The culmination of this control is what Brenda calls “Energy Matching.”   

We are particularly aware of our dog’s state of mind when we want to teach them something new.  Dogs, like people, learn best when they are relaxed.  We keep our dogs arousal level high enough to keep the dog engaged, but not so high they they have difficulty focusing and learning.  When the dog knows a task, we can then gradually teach the dog to perform it at a higher arousal level if we want. For example, for most dogs, we teach heeling with a food lure who produces enough arousal to keep the dog engaged while learning focus and position.  Then when the dog understands heeling, we increase the motivation and allow the dog to work in a higher level of arousal.

We all want our dogs to be drivey.  However, without impulse control, more drive can be a disaster.  Brenda’s tools for building impulse control allow us to keep the dog’s high level of drive without losing control.  Many dogs have trouble controlling themselves when they are highly aroused.  These dogs tend to make noise and have trouble staying still.  Correcting these behaviors directly rather than improving the dog’s impulse control, tends to raise the dog’s level of frustration and makes the problems worse instead of better.  So impulse control is key!

Another area that Brenda has helped us with tremendously is dealing with fear and anxiety issues.  Although there are some dogs who are naturally very confident in all environments, many dogs need our help to be comfortable in training, in showing and in real life as well.  We need techniques to help our dogs feel secure and confident.  That is where our relationship with the dog is paramount.  Our dog should be able to see us has his anchor so that we can provide the confidence that he needs.  Handling fear and stress issues is tricky because it is easy to accidentally reinforce the undesirable behavior in our dogs. For example, if you are heeling with your dog and there is a sudden loud noise which causes your dog to react fearfully, what you do next can determine whether your dog learns to be more confident or whether he will develop a fear of noises in the future.

Our philosophy about distractions has always been to use the distractions as a way to keep the focus on the handler, rather than making it about ignoring the distraction.  Brenda has added to this with her view of distraction training being more of an issue of desensitization.  By approaching it in this way, we can keep our dogs motivated and confident as they learn to ignore distractions.  Our goal is a dog who stays confidently connected to the handler rather than acknowledging the distraction.  For example, what does your dog do when the judge approaches you at the start of an exercise?  Is your dog distracted by the judge?  Does your dog avoid looking at the judge, but loses attitude because he is worried about the distraction?  Our goal is a dog who remains confidently attentive to the handler and isn’t bothered by the judge at all.  This is a classic example of distraction training which we refer to as “judge pressure.”

Brenda also has a fascinating take on “pressure” in general.  Being a horse person, she has applied what she learned from the horse world and from the natural horsemanship movement and studies in classical Dressage Riding in Lightness to dogs.  Although we don’t think about pressure as much with dogs as people do with horses, dogs naturally respond to pressure.  We see this very obviously in herding dogs, who use pressure to control the stock.  We also see how dogs respond to pressure in agility training.  In agility, the dog is always aware of the handler’s position relative to the dog and any movement toward or away from the dog will evoke a corresponding response from the dog.  In obedience, we can use pressure also, if we become more aware of it.  For example, when working on recalls and fronts, how the dog responds to the pressure of the handler will affect both his speed on the recall and how close he is willing to get on the front.  We constantly speak to our dogs with our pressure toward or away from them, but so often we are unaware of doing it.  Our dogs also use pressure to control us.  For example, pushy dogs often crowd their handler on heeling or crash into them on fronts.  Learning to balance the pressure is another useful tool.

These are some of the things that we have learned from Brenda so far.  Her life experiences both in dogs and horses have enabled her to form a fascinating understanding of dog behavior which can provide some of the missing pieces in our competition obedience training.  Adding her insights has given us a more varied set of tools and a greater appreciation of the canine mind and how best to influence it.

Although we give workshops, we are always learning and looking for new ideas and techniques that mesh well with our tried-and-true methods.  We learn constantly from our dogs, our students, other dog trainers in any discipline, and each other.  We encourage you to broaden your knowledge and understanding as well.  When you find someone with experience and proven ideas, see if they have something to offer to compliment your training.  Our minds are always open.

For more information on Brenda Aloff, please visit her website:

https://brendaaloff.com 

Brenda offers online classes, seminars, books and other opportunity for learning.  Her “Get Connected” book is a MUST read for all dog trainers!

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Repetition - It’s Not a Dirty Word

AKA, You can’t do with repetition with a —fill in your breed here—!   

by Betsy Scapicchio and Linda Brennan

So often we hear that “you can’t do repeating with a Fill-in-Your-Breed-Here.”  However, from Chihuahuas to Great Danes, we’ve yet to find that to be the case.  It all depends on your training.

Dogs, like people, learn by repetition, so it is an integral part of teaching your dog any skill.  Think back to when you learned something new.  Whether it was the multiplication tables or how to drive a car, it took many, many repetitions of the new skill before you became proficient at it and even more repetitions before you could do it without even having to think about it.  It is only by practicing the new behavior over and over again that the dog learns it.  In order to burn the neural pathways in the dog’s brain, the correct behavior must be repeated.  The more times the behavior is repeated, the more ingrained it becomes in the dog’s brain.  

There in lies the danger of repeating errors.  If your dog repeatedly makes the same mistake, you are now training him to do the behavior incorrectly.  What your dog repeats is what he is learning.  No matter how many times the dog does the behavior, if he is not doing it correctly, he will not learn to do it correctly.  Repetition alone is not the key.  Repetition of the correct behavior is the key!  No matter how many fronts you do with your dog, if your dog isn’t sitting straight each time, his fronts will not improve.  So use whatever tools or help you used to teach the exercise to your dog in order to ensure his success.  For example, you could use a front chute, platform or your hands as a guide to guarantee that your dog’s front will be straight.

That is why it’s so so important to ensure that the dog does it right.  Allowing your dog to make errors, does not teach him how to do something correctly, even if you correct him after the error.  When teaching your dog something new, break the behavior down into small enough steps so that the dog can learn each step easily and be right. For example, to teach your dog to do fronts on the retrieve over the high jump, you must break it down into each simple skill.  First the dog must know how to do fronts from different angles and distances without anything in his mouth.  Then we add distractions and ensure that the dog can still perform the behavior correctly.  Then we add the dumbbell in the dog’s mouth on a recall, before asking him to retrieve and then front.  Separately, we teach the dog to jump and then add the front.  Only when he can do each step correctly do we put the exercise together and expect the dog to be able to do a front after a retrieve over the jump. As you are teaching each step, many repetitions will be needed before you can move to the next step.  Do not hurry from one step to the next before the dog has done each one a sufficient number of times in order to master that step.  Only when your dog has learned all of the necessary steps can you then begin repeating the entire exercise in order to ingrain it in your dog’s brain.  (See our previous blog: “Are You a Step Skipper,” https://trainthetopdogway.tumblr.com/post/165665534523/are-you-a-step-skipper.)

When we organize our training sessions, we balance repetition of individual exercises or parts of an exercise versus sequencing of exercises together.  When our dog is learning a new exercise, we use repetition to teach each part and then put it together as a whole.  When we are polishing and perfecting, we also use repetition.  For example, in order to perfect and maintain our finishes, we must practice them many, many times.  Even once the dog knows how to do an accurate finish, we must continue to do them over and over to ensure that they stay good.  We cannot assume that the dog knows how to do it and it will stay good.  We can then also practice our finishes in the context of the exercises as well as in sequences of exercises.  We cannot always structure our training session just for repetition.  We must also practice sequences of exercises as they will happen in the ring, since in the ring we only get one chance to get it right.

Generally when people say that you can’t do repetition with a particular breed it is for one of two reasons.  One reason is that the dogs get bored and either will invent their own variations of the exercise or they will just loose motivation and quit.  Another reason is that the dogs perceive repetition as correction.  People claim that only certain breeds can tolerate repetition, but in reality it is frustration that the dogs can’t tolerate.  

If we repeat exercises without motivating the dog, we risk having the dog decide that this isn’t very much fun. However, if the dog is doing the exercise correctly and we are adding in motivation and making it fun, our dogs will do the exercise as many times as we ask them to.   When the dog is right, motivation comes easily for both the dog and the handler.  For example, when we practice fronts, we often do games like restraining the dog and doing a cookie retrieve and then calling the dog into front position.  This is much more fun than simply doing a recall.  If we want to practice fronts in the recall, then we can alternate recalls with games.  Whatever exercise we practice with the dog, there are always games that we can play to keep the dog motivated so that he will want to do the exercise over and over again.

The other huge source of problems is when the dog views repetition as correction.  This happens when handlers simply repeat exercises when their dog is wrong rather than making a correction and explaining the error to the dog. After a while, the dog begins to assume that if we’re doing it again, I must have done it wrong.  This makes it almost impossible to repeat a behavior enough to learn it correctly.  (See our previous Blog: “Correction – noun, a change that rectifies an error or inaccuracy” https://trainthetopdogway.tumblr.com/post/154700392118/correction-noun-a-change-that-rectifies-an)

Be sure to randomize rewards as the dog learns each exercise.  Don’t simply repeat and reward every time.  That will create a dog who expects a cookie for everything that he does.  That doesn’t work very well for the ring!  (See our previous Blog: “Food for Thought – Do You Need that Cookie?” https://trainthetopdogway.tumblr.com/post/156004802733/food-for-thought-do-you-need-that-cookie)

Set your dog up for success and make it fun and you may find that your “fill-in-your-breed-here” is also an exception to the rule and you CAN do repetition!

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Puppy Training 101: What To Do With Your New Puppy

by Betsy Scapicchio and Linda Brennan

So you have a new puppy and you are eager to start training.  There’s so much information out there now and you can’t wait to teach your puppy all of the exercises right through to Utility.  However, is that the best plan?

What should your priorities be when training your puppy?  Before you rush off and start teaching go outs and articles, take the time to begin at the beginning.

Our first priority with our new puppy is to create a strong working relationship built on trust.  To do that, we start with simple skills such as “stay with me” and “come when called.”  We teach each behavior slowly and the puppy learns how to learn and develops a strong bond with the trainer.  Don’t just rush ahead.  Start simple and build slowly.  Remember that puppies, just like people, learn by being right.  Lots of early successes build confidence and will teach your puppy to enjoy training.

Our training system breaks each foundation behavior down into small pieces that the puppy learns quickly.  We get to reward frequently as the puppy becomes more proficient.  We progress slowly so that the puppy makes few errors.  For example, even a behavior as basic as sit is taught with lots of simple steps which result in the puppy learning a perfect sit.

When you train your puppy, you must be aware of fear periods which can occur at various times.  Be observant of your puppies reaction to situations.  Also consider their emotional state when they have difficulty learning a new behavior or performing a behavior they already know.  Fear periods can come on suddenly but usually do not last long.  Don’t push your puppy when he is in a fear period or you risk long lasting harmful effects.  When something odd happens, give your puppy a little time and see if he gets over it.  

Keep in mind your dog’s physical and mental maturity also.  Just as you can’t expect a kindergartener to do geometry, don’t assume your puppy is ready to do advanced work.  We lay the foundation for all of the advanced work, but in small pieces and in an informal fashion.  For example, we start playing with our puppy with the dumbbell right away to build drive for the retrieve, but we don’t expect the puppy to go and get it and bring it back.  We structure our training so that the puppy learns about the skill in a way that will help him to be successful later when we formally teach the behavior.

When training, we do use a leash and other tools to ensure that our puppy does the things that we ask of him.  Don’t allow your puppy to develop bad habits by having him wander off and leave you for distractions.  Remember, in the context of training, your puppy needs to be socialized, in the sense that he is comfortable in different locations and around other people and dogs, but he doesn't need to be social and interact with them.  We know that sounds difficult for some people, but your puppy does not need to be petted, or worse fed, by other people when you are in a training context.  Think about whether you would want your adult dog to look to strangers for attention and treats!  
 When we take our puppy training on the road, our first goal is simply to bring our puppy to a new location and ensure that he will be engaged with us there.  To begin, choose a quiet location and don’t overwhelm the puppy with distractions.  A good goal is to plan to get the puppy to play with you in a new location. This is a good indicator that the puppy is relaxed and focused on you.

Puppy training sessions, especially in new locations, should be very short—no more than five to ten minutes.  Remember, new locations are not the best place to teach your puppy something new.  Keep the teaching of new skills for quiet and comfortable locations.   
Each time you go to a new location, it will begin to take less time for your puppy to focus and engage with you.  As the puppy becomes better at ignoring the distractions in the environment, you can choose slightly busier locations.  Don’t make it too hard for your puppy to succeed.  However, you may find that some environments are more difficult and it may take time to get your puppy comfortable and ready to engage with you there.  Take your time and end the session with a little bit of play or fun interaction, like tricks.  Remember, you are’t there to teach the puppy something new; you are there to teach him to engage with you in new locations.  

Before we take our puppy to a new location and actually expect him to work, we have gone to many locations and just engaged with the puppy and played.  Once your puppy is attentive and engaged with you in new locations, it will be easy to get him to perform any of the behaviors that you have taught him at home.  

Our puppy’s first ring experience should be at a match show, so that we can make it fun and exciting for the win and ensure his success. We begin by being very informal and training just as we would at home.  Working on simple things that the puppy knows already, such as little bits of heeling, motivational recalls, and fun retrieves.  Be sure to include plenty of play.  You want your puppy to love being in the ring with you!

Enjoy your new puppy!  Have a training plan so you don’t overdo.  Take your time and build your relationship.  Savor your new partner’s puppyhood—it doesn’t last very long.  

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Did Your Dog Tell You He Was Ready to Show?

by Betsy Scapicchio and Linda Brennan

One of the questions we get most often is how do we know when our dog is ready to compete.  The answer is simple—the dog will tell us.  How can he do that?

First the dog needs to master all of the necessary skills for that level of competition.  For Novice, the dog must be able to heel with attention both on- and off-leash, including halts, turns, changes of pace and the figure eight.  He needs a solid and attentive stand for exam (which will benefit us greatly in open and utility) and a fast recall with an accurate front and finish.  He also needs to know both a sit- and down-stay.  In Open, the dog needs his off-leash heeling skills, including the figure eight.  He also needs a reliable drop on recall, a retrieve both on the flat and over the high jump and a broad jump.  He needs a sit- and down-stay and soon he will need to master the Command Discrimination exercise as well.  In Open, the dog also needs to perform four fronts and four finishes.  For Utility, the dog must heel off-leash without verbal commands and have attentive signals.  He must master scent discrimination, directed retrieve, the moving stand and directed jumping.  Fronts and finishes figure prominently in Utility, as do pivots.  (For a reminder about Criteria see our previous blog: https://trainthetopdogway.tumblr.com/post/167744143013/what-is-your-picture-of-perfection)

Another skill required at all levels is often neglected.  We also need to teach a good ring entrance and attentive transitions between exercises.  These are skills that must be taught.  We cannot take it for granted that the dog know how to do these pieces.  When your dog becomes distracted and disconnected as soon as you walk into the ring, this does not set you up for success in the class.  Similarly, if we fail to practice moving our dog attentively from one exercise to the next, we are likely to lose our dog’s attention and perhaps the dog as well between exercises.  The other side of the coin is that the handler must be well versed in her ring procedure, commands and handling so that she can execute her job well in the ring also.

Did you eliminate all lures and help that can’t be provided to the dog in the ring?  Often people aren’t even aware of all of the help that they are giving their dogs in training.  The problem occurs when they can’t give that help in the ring.  Then they wonder why the dog isn’t performing as he does in training.  For example, in heeling, you might be aiding the dog in training by talking to him, by luring him with visible food, or by keeping your leash tight or all of the above.   If you dog is accustomed to being held in position or focused on something that’s not going to be there in the ring, then heeling without those aids is a completely different behavior that he doesn’t really know.

Did you add distractions?  Just because your dog can perform without distractions doesn’t mean that your dog really knows the exercises.  Once the dog has learned to do the behaviors well, you need to introduce distractions to ensure that the dog can still perform despite the distraction.  That’s when the dog really tells you that he knows the exercise.  When we do proofing and distractions, we do not attempt to cause mistakes.  Our goal is to keep the dog performing correctly as we add distractions.  The distractions we use are very realistic—things the dog is likely to encounter in show situations.  That can provide ample distractions.  For example, in heeling, one of the most important distractions is the judge.  We must expose the dog to having a stranger, both men and women, following us around as we heel.  If you pay attention at shows, you will be able to identify many distractions that you need to use in your training.

Did you take the show on the road?  It is equally important to expose your dog to different locations.  Dogs are very situational and need to perform in lots of different places to generalize behavior.  Some exercises are even more susceptible to this than others.  The obvious example is the go out in Utility.  Each location has a different background and presents a different picture to the dog.  There may be gates and stanchions or ropes or curtains or a blank wall.  Dogs need to be familiar with any picture that they may be presented with in the ring.  

Did you sequence the exercises together?  It is a much different thing to always work on individual exercises than to work on chains of exercises.  In the ring, you will do each exercise only once.  The dog must get it right the first time and then move on to the next exercise.  This is especially important in Open and Utility, where people often train multiple repetitions of each exercise and forget to train sequences where they move directly from one exercise to the next, as they would in the ring.  In Utility, where many exercises may begin in the same spot in the ring, the dog must be able to switch gears from one exercise to the next.  When practicing sequencing, remember to include ring enhances as well.  For Open and Utility, we must include removing the leash as part of the ring entrance sequence.  Also be sure to sequence all of the different orders of exercises in Open B and Utility B.  When you put exercises together in different sequences, you may identify problems in moving from certain exercises to other exercises.  For example, when sequencing for Open, we might do a retrieve over the high jump, followed by a flat retrieve, and then a drop on recall.  Not only do we want to ensure that the dog can do each one correctly the first time, but also that the dog knows to take the jump on the high jump retrieve but not on the flat retrieve or the drop.

Do you maintain motivation in a ring situation?  As you proof, sequence and train in different locations, you still have to keep your dog motivated.  We continue to incorporate games and rewards throughout our dog’s training.  If we don’t make it fun to keep doing these exercises, over time the dog will lose interest and drive.  It is important to keep motivating the dog within the exercises, especially when making the exercises formal and sequencing them for the ring.  We don’t want the dog to think that it’s no fun when we go into the ring. For example, in Novice, we might do a formal sequence of off-leash heeling into the recall and then release the dog to a game when we walk away.  In Open, we might do a formal retrieve but then release the dog to play tug with the dumbbell.  (For more on how we motivate, see our DVD��“Are We Having Fun Yet? at https://www.barkingdogvideo.com/products/are-we-having-fun-yet-4-dvd-set-by-betsy-scapicchio-and-linda-brennan)

Are you aware of all mistakes the dog is making in training?  Many times we watch trainers work with their dogs and either the trainer misses the mistake all together or they simply help the dog or repeat the command and proceed as if the dog had done it right the first time.  Then the trainer expects the mistakes that happen in training not to happen in the ring.  For example, trainers often miss attention mistakes.  In heeling, this might result in the dog missing a sit or going wide on a turn.  The handler then tries to deal with the resulting mistake but doesn’t address the underlying problem.  In another example, the dog may look away when the handler gives the down in the signal exercise and rather than deal with the attention error, the handler simply gives another command to down and continues as if the dog had done it right.  In either case, we cannot reasonably expect those attention errors not to occur in the ring.  In training, we must first be attuned to all errors that the dog makes.  It is helpful to be prepared by being aware of what possible mistakes the dog may make.  Then we need to have a plan for correcting them, after being certain that we have taught the dog to do the exercise correctly.  Once the dog knows the exercises, it must be the dog’s responsibility to perform them.  Otherwise we cannot count on the dog to do it right in the ring.

Is your dog confident?  If you have followed through and made sure that your dog can do all of the exercises with distraction in different locations in sequence without mistakes and with motivation, then the result should be a dog who performs confidently.  Your dog’s confidence shows not only in whether or not he does the exercises but in how he does them.  A confident dog performs with speed and looks happy and relaxed while doing a good job.  Nothing improves the confidence of the handler more than having a confident dog!

Remember that dogs are very honest.  If your dog is not performing in the ring it’s not because he’s choosing not to do it.  It’s because he isn’t fully trained.  He’s telling you he’s not ready yet.

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What Is Your Picture of Perfection?

by Betsy Scapicchio and Linda Brennan

When you train your dog, do you have a clear idea of what the end result of the behavior that you are training should like like?  In order to develop clear criteria and communicate them to your dog, your must first have the perfect picture in mind.

So how do you find your perfect picture.  For those of use who have been doing this for a long time and have trained and shown many dogs, our perfect picture has evolved over time and we have a clear image of what we are striving for.  For those who are newer to the sport or want to improve their level of training, you need to do a little homework.  We used to recommend that our students go and watch at local shows and try to attend any tournaments that were in our area.  Now, it’s a simple as watching performances on Youtube.  There are many different styles of training and handling that can be successful in the ring.  You need to find the picture of training that appeals to you and suits you and your dog.  There are many successful trainers and competitors who have posted videos of themselves showing and training.  

The AKC rulebook defines each exercise in detail.  It is important to read the rulebook as well as to watch different dogs and handlers perform the exercises.  Then develop your own mental picture of how the exercise should look.  If you have only a vague general idea of what the exercise is, then it will be very difficult to communicate that to your dog.  For example, if your picture of the drop on recall is simply that the dog comes to you, downs, comes to front, then finishes, there will be many unanswered questions when it comes to training your dog.  How fast should the dog come?  How should the dog execute the drop.  What constitutes a good front?  Our mental picture has great detail: First our dog sits attentively in perfect heel position.  Then we give the wait signal and verbal and the dog continues to watch us eagerly as we walk away.  Then we turn to face the dog and stand up straight with our feet together and arms by our sides.  We give our recall command and the dog responds immediately and races toward us.  We then give a clear and powerful down signal and the dog drops quickly in a backdrop down without any forward motion.  The dog waits attentively to be called again.  When we call for the second half of the recall, the dog gets up and runs in just as quickly as before.  He looks up at his focal point and sits straight and tucked up in a perfect front position, where he continues to look up and wait for his finish command.  On command, he jumps up and turns to sit straight in heel position for a flawless finish.  As you can see, this is only one exercise, but it has many parts and each part needs to be clearly defined so that we can teach the dog to do it perfectly.  

We have found over the years that many times handlers are not clear on the criteria for their dog’s behavior.  If the handler isn’t sure what the dog is supposed to do, how is the poor dog to know?  For example, in heeling have you clearly defined your dogs focal point and position?  Have you even considered what that is?  Often people expect their dogs to watch them on heeling, but haven’t even thought about exactly what the dog should be looking at.  Does your dog look at your face?  Your hip?  Your hand?  Some other target?  There may be no one right answer for everyone, but everyone must have an answer.  “Up” and “I don’t know” are not good answers to this question.  The more clearly you can describe your dog’s job, the better you  will be able to communicate that to him.  Think about how you would feel if your job was only vaguely described and you found yourself getting in trouble for doing things wrong when you had no clear idea of how to do them correctly.  You’d get pretty discouraged and unmotivated in a hurry!

Unfortunately, for many dogs, this is the normal state of affairs in training.  Instructors need to assist their students in forming good, clear criteria for their dog’s behavior.  Students need to take responsibility for making sure that they know what they are training their dogs to do before they attempt to do it.  Often newer trainers don’t yet see the big picture and they therefore don’t see the value in the finer details on an exercise.  Experienced trainers have probably learned the hard way how important it is to train the foundation exercises with the finished product in mind.  For example, if we teach the novice stand exercise without looking to the dog’s future in utility, then we might be tempted to allow the the dog to walk forward into the stand and to look at the judge as he does the exam.  Neither would necessarily cause any problems in novice; however, both would be very undesirable as foundation work for the the utility signal stand and moving stand.  That is just one reason why it is so valuable to have seasoned competitors who continue to show regularly as your instructors, mentors and inspiration for the perfect picture that you aspire to emulate.

When you are training, few things are as frustrating to your dog as inconsistent criteria.  Dogs need things to be as black and white as possible.  The same thing cannot be wrong one time and right the next.  Often, trainers either miss mistakes or ignore them.  Be observant!  It is much better to catch a mistake immediately before it becomes cemented into the dog’s behavior through repetition.  Sometimes trainers ignore mistakes either because they don’t think it’s important at this stage or it’s “good enough” or because they are focused on other aspects of the dog’s behavior.  For example, if you aren’t watching your dog closely and half of the time you don’t notice that he is glancing away while you are heeling, it will be very hard for the dog to understand why you sometimes correct him for looking away.  If you think that it’s not important for your dog to watch you as you walk away on the recall, you may be very frustrated later that your dog comes to your slowly and doesn’t work his fronts.  If you allow your dog to do his signals slowly because it is “good enough” and “he did it,” then when you get into the ring and he is a little more distracted and he fails to do the signals at all, don’t be surprised.  If you are focused on the dog’s dumbbell retrieve and reward him despite the fact that he mouthed the dumbbell on the way back, then you are inadvertently rewarding behavior that you will probably regret later.  The more consistently you apply your criteria to each and every behavior, the more consistent your dog’s performance will be.  If you allow a wide range of performance in training, then you will get an even greater variety in the ring.

Although you begin each exercise with a clear picture of the desired result, when you teach it to your dog, you must break it down into smaller pieces and then gradually raise your criteria. For example, when teaching attention, you begin by rewarding the dog for one second of focus and then progressively ask for slightly longer periods of attention.  Trainers sometimes get stuck at a certain level of performance because they fail to raise their criteria.  Criteria can be raised in several ways.  Following our example of teaching attention, the first way, as mentioned above, is to increase the duration of the behavior.  We can ask for one second, then two, then three, then five, then ten, before rewarding.  Another way to raise criteria is to make the behavior more difficult.  In this case, we could add distractions and gradually make the distractions more challenging to the dog (for example, by bringing them closer to the dog) before rewarding.  You could also raise criteria by chaining more behaviors together before rewarding.  For attention work, you could ask for several seconds of stationary attention followed by a few steps of heeling before rewarding.  Another way to raise criteria is by asking for more repetitions of a behavior before giving the reward.  Fronts provide a good example of this.  In the beginning, we might reward the dog for every straight front.  As the dog gets more proficient, we begin to reward only every other or every third front and eventually we reward randomly.  It is important to avoid the trap of rewarding for the same level of performance forever.  If all you ever reward is three seconds of attention, then three seconds of attention is all you will ever get.  When you cannot increase your criteria further, then be sure to randomize the reward.

If you and your dog are just starting out, you need to clarify your “perfect picture” so that you can set clear and achievable criteria for your dog throughout the training process.  For the trained dog and seasoned competitor, it is important to continue to raise your criteria to challenge your dog and keep you both at the top of your game.  No matter what level you and your do are at, take the time to consider whether you have set clear criteria that will get you to the performance you envision.  

[trainthetopdogway]

Do You Train to Maintain?

by Betsy Scapicchio and Linda Brennan

Teaching your dog the exercises for competition obedience is relatively easy and straightforward.  But, what to do once your dog knows everything and is competing?  How do you maintain your dog’s training for a long and successful career?  After having many dogs who have stood the test of time and were just as happy showing at age ten as when they started competing by age two, we have mastered the importance of maintenance.

Since your dog is fully trained, your training time needs a different focus.  It’s time for maintenance.  What does that mean?  Just as an athlete needs to continue to workout in order to maintain his fitness, our dogs training needs to be maintained.  How do we do that?  Once our dogs are fully trained and competing, our training focuses on keeps our dogs motivated, confident and accurate.  

Motivation in key.  We want our dogs to be just as eager and happy in the ring at age ten, after years and years of shows, as they were when they first started out.  When we taught our dogs the exercises, we build in games and motivation.  What that means for each dog can be a bit different.  Some dogs love to play chase games, others enjoy tugging, while others enjoy being petted and praised and doing tricks.  We never stop including the motivating in our training.  No matter how high drive your dog may be, over time if you do not continue to motivate him, he will eventually slow down and lose interest in obedience.  For example, although your young dog may run in on his recall, after years of doing recalls and drop on recalls, your dog is probably going to slow down if you do not add games and give him a reason to run in.  We’ve often been asked why we continue to play games and motivate our dogs when they are already fast and happy—the answer is easy: if we don’t keep doing it, the dogs won’t stay that way!

To keep up our dog’s confidence, we use proofing to make the dogs right.  Proofing enhances our training when we challenge the dog’s ability to do the exercises while helping to ensure that he does it correctly.  There are two types of proofing that we use—distraction proofing and concept proofing.  

Distraction proofing is what first comes to mind for most people.  When adding distractions, we try to be realistic about what the dog will encounter at shows.  We definitely need to proof for judge pressure, visual distraction, noises and different locations.  We don’t over proof by using outrageous and frightening distractions because that will create stress which can become associated with the exercises.  When we add distractions, we begin gradually.  We think of it more as if we are desensitizing our dog to the distraction.  We are not using the distractions to make our dog make a mistake.  (See our previous Blog: “Does Your Dog Have to be Wrong to be Right.”).  Our goal is to build the dog’s confidence by teaching him that he can perform the exercises successfully despite the distraction.  If you add distractions and your dog’s performance suffers, then you are pushing the dog too hard too soon.  Always ask yourself if the distractions you are using are fair and realistic and if you are ensuring the dog’s success.  For example, having a person stand near your dog when he is doing signals is a necessary proof, because there will be a judge near the dog in the ring.  However, starting out by having the person bounce a tennis ball or clap her hands right behind the dog would certainly cause the dog to fail and might even startle or scare the dog.  We would begin by having the person stand quietly at a little distance away from the dog.  We would also help the dog to be right by decreasing the distance between the dog and the handler.  We would not begin by being full distance away.  When the dog demonstrates success, then we can gradually make the distraction more difficult.

Concept proofing is taking the exercise itself and making it more difficult.  For example, by adding more articles to scent discrimination or spreading the articles out more.  Many exercises can be proofed in this way.  Then the exercise that the dog actually does in the ring seems easier by comparison.  Again, our goal is to keep the dog successful and build confidence.  Another example, would be doing angled retrieves over the high jump so that the dog will take the jump in both directions even if the dumbbell is off to one side.  When doing this proof, we would help ensure that the dog takes the jump both ways by using a gentle pop on the collar toward the jump on the way out or tapping the jump on the way back if needed.  We also use concept proofing to help the dog by contrasting different exercise to clarify them for the dog.  For example, we proof gloves versus go outs or high jump versus flat retrieve.  Again we are challenging the dog’s understanding of the exercises but working to make the dog successful.

As anyone who competes regularly in Open B and Utility B knows, keeping our dog’s fronts and finishes accurate and their heeling sharp is also critical.  We need to be able to maintain those skills to a very high degree without losing motivation, so we need to have lots of fun ways to practice.  We build games around practicing those critical foundation skills and we never stop playing them.  For example, we have to practice fronts almost every time we train.  We go back and revisit the fun skills that we used to teach fronts, like cookie-toss-and-come-to-front games as well as working on the bucket or bowl, to maintain our dog’s accuracy without losing drive.  Heeling requires maintenance too, but also lots of motivation!  If you find heeling boring, then imagine how your dog feels.  We love heeling with our dogs and we make it fun so that they do too.  

No dog is going to be perfect all of the time.  Just because you taught the dog an exercise doesn’t mean that he knows it and doesn’t need to work on it.  In the course of a long career, problems will inevitably come up.  They will challenge your ability to stick with your training and rebuild your dog’s confidence.  Don’t abandon what has been successful for your dog in the past in a search for the magic bullet that is going to fix all of your problems.  Go back and revisit how you taught your dog the exercise and you will most often find the answer there.  (See our previous Blog: “Are You a Step Skipper?”)  Trust in your foundation and the method that got you this far.  Each dog we have teaches us new lessons and the more we show our dog the more we understand what makes that dog tick.

Remember, teaching the exercises is the easy part.  The journey that you and your partner take over years in the competition ring will be challenging at times, but it is the most rewarding part.  

Our own experiences have lead us to think long and hard about the “Maintenance” phase of dog training.  We’ve been there and done that with numerous dogs of our own, not to mention our students and their dogs.  Our journey includes:

Betsy’s seven OTCH dogs with a combined total of over 4200 points, including three dogs with over 1000 points each, plus other CDX and UD titled dogs

Linda’s two OTCH dogs with over 1000 points each, plus other CDX, UD and UDX titled dogs

We both show at two or three shows a month, sometimes at individual shows and other times at clusters like NOC qualifiers

Plus we regularly show at tournaments including the NOC, the Classic and Westminster.  

We also compete in other venues like rally, agility, hunting, and herding.

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Are You a “Step Skipper”?

by Betsy Scapicchio and Linda Brennan

As instructors, we often encounter problems that aren’t really problems, but rather just the result of skipped steps in the training process.  When we teach our dogs each exercise, we break the exercise into many small steps to ensure that the dog learns each part of the task before moving on to the next piece.  

There are many benefits to teaching your dog in small steps.  By making each step just one simple skill, the dog learns quickly and can practice doing the step successfully many times to solidify that skill before moving forward to the next step.  Teaching in small steps prevents the dog, and the handler, from becoming frustrated because the dog seldom makes any errors if the the steps are small and clear enough. By breaking each exercise into many small steps, when an error does occur, we can address only the step where the error occurred and go back and reinforce that piece the way it was originally taught without ruining the whole exercise by repeating and correcting mistakes.  Thus, small errors can be fixed quickly without becoming “problems.”

For example, if we were teaching the retrieve over the high jump, we would not begin by simply tossing the dumbbell over the high jump and expecting the dog to go out over the jump, retrieve the dumbbell, return over the jump and execute a perfect front and finish.  We would teach each skill separately.  The dog is taught a step-by-step retrieve.  The dog is taught how to jump.  The dog is then taught how to recall over the jump.  The dog learns a “cookie retrieve” over the jump.  Then the dog is taught to recall over the jump with the dumbbell in his mouth.  Finally the retrieve is done over the jump, with our aid.  Then as the behavior becomes more solid, the front and eventually finish are added, after separately teaching the dog to front with the dumbbell.  This is a many step process, but the dog will learn the exercise better and more reliably in the long run!

When you are training your first dog, if you have good instruction, it. is easy to take the teaching process slowly and master each step before moving to the next.  However, when you have already trained other dogs, it is easy to rush the process because we forget how much work went into teaching our prior dogs.  We somehow expect the new dog to know what the older dog knew, but we forgot to teach it to him!  

How do you know if you’ve skipped a step?  When you have a problem, stop and consider what mistake the dog is actually making.  Be specific!  Then ask yourself, how did I teach the dog to do that part of the exercise?  Go back and review the steps that you took to teach that part.  See if the dog’s performance breaks down at some point.  If the answer to your question is that you don’t know how you taught that part or that you just sort of “did it”, then you probably skipped that step!  

For example, you are doing the retrieve over the high and your dog returns around the jump.  Simply repeating the exercise will probably produce the same result.  Stop and consider whether you taught the dog how to jump with the dumbbell in his mouth and how to return over the jump from various angles.  If you have not specifically taught these skills, then you need to go back and teach those steps.  

Another example would be a dog who doesn’t stop and drop promptly on the drop on recall exercise.  Although you may have taught your dog how to drop and how to do a recall, did you teach your dog how to drop in motion?  How to drop at a distance from you?  There are many steps to complex exercises such as this one in order to create a chain of behaviors that results in the perfect drop on recall exercise.

As we move into the open and especially the utility exercises, each exercise becomes more complex and is a longer chain of behaviors.  If we fail to teach each piece separately, then small errors in a single piece of the exercise can cause the whole chain of behaviors to fail.  We often see this when an exercise “falls apart.”  It starts with one little mistake but if that error is not addressed in the right way, by taking it out of the whole chain and reviewing the steps needed to fix it, then the dog becomes frustrated and confused and the mistakes tend to snowball into a problem with the whole exercise.

It is important to build on a solid foundation by teaching in a step-by-step approach. The foundation exercises of attention, heeling, handling, sit, down and stand positions, recalls, fronts, finishes and retrieves serve as the initial steps in teaching the more advanced exercises in Open and Utility.  If we skip steps in our foundation, the complex exercises will crumble!  Often people are in a hurry to get to the advanced work and don’t want to spend time on the foundation.  However, if we do this, we, and the dog, pay the price later.  

For example, if we don’t teach the dog attention and specifically distance attention, then we are sure to have problems with the signal exercise.  If we don’t teach the dog a good back-drop down, then problems are likely to appear later in both the drop on recall and signal exercises.  Many problems with the advanced work can be traced to foundation skills that were not solidified before moving on to teach those exercises.  Taking your time and teaching your dog’s foundation with small steps will not only produce a better result but will get you there faster in the long run.

Our step-by-step approach to training and taking our time to teach, especially on foundation skills, gives our dogs the confidence that comes from always being right.  So if you might be a “step skipper,” it might be time to slow down and rethink your training plan.

For more information on how to “Train the Top Dog Way,” visit www.topdogobedience.com and www.barkingdogvideo.com.

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“Doggy Willpower?” – Does Your Dog Have Impulse Control?

by Betsy Scapicchio and Linda Brennan

Does your dog tend to get distracted when you compete?  Does your dog whine or bark when working?  Does your dog anticipate commands?  Does your dog move on stays or have trouble waiting without moving forward?  Does your dog get frustrated quickly in training?  All of these and many other problems in obedience are all manifestations of a lack of impulse control.  

What do we mean when we say impulse control?  We are referring to the dog’s ability to control his desire to obtain something that he wants.  In some cases, this becomes delayed gratification.  He learns that by doing a particular behavior, he will eventually obtain what his wants.  Impulse control is also what is required for a dog to remain still when he wants to move.

The International Society for Research on Impulsivity defines “Impulsivity” as “behavior without adequate thought, the tendency to act with less forethought than do most individuals of equal ability and knowledge, or a predisposition toward rapid, unplanned reactions to internal or external stimuli without regard to the negative consequences of these.”

Every day our dogs exhibit impulse control—or the lack of it (impulsivity)—in our regular lives.  For example, when you let your dog out of his crate and he waits patiently to be released, he is exhibiting good impulse control. When the dog is crying and digging at the crate to be let out, he is showing poor impulse control.  It is easy to look for examples and asses your dog’s level of impulse control at mealtimes, walks or play sessions.

The symptoms of a lack of impulse control are often misinterpreted as stress.  Vocalizing, especially whining, inability to stay still, and lack of focus are some examples. While a dog who is frustrated and lacking in impulse control may very well be stressed because of it, viewing the dog’s behavior only as a result of stress does not help you to correctly address the cause.  When we acknowledge that the dog’s behavior is a result of a lack of impulse control, we can begin to teach the dog how to have more impulse control and build his ability to sustain it.  When the dog has more control, his stress level will decrease.

Is impulse control a learned behavior or is it innate in the dog?  We believe that it is both.  Some dogs seem to come equipped with great natural self control.  Other dogs are very impulsive right from the start. However, it is possible to instill more impulse control in any dog.   Unfortunately, it is also possible to cause a lack of control and make a dog too impulsive. Like any behavior, impulse control can be practiced and can increase over time.  Later in this Blog, we’ll look briefly at how we teach the dog to have more impulse control.  

For competition obedience, as well as for agility and other dog sports, competitors are increasingly looking for “High Drive” dogs.  However, in order for their drive to be useful in competition, the dogs must also have great impulse control.  Lots of drive and little control can be very frustrating for the trainer as well as for the dog.  These dogs don’t focus well and are frequently noisy and difficult to control and train. With great drive should come great impulse control.  This means that teaching and building impulse control right away is crucial.  Sometimes people are afraid to impose control over their dogs in the mistaken impression that it will lessen the dog’s drive. Good impulse control enhances the dog’s drive by keeping the dog’s stress level lower because the dog doesn’t get frustrated.  We know that we can only effectively teach our dogs when they are in the right state of mind.  A dog who is frustrated and stressed because of his lack of impulse control is in no position to learn or perform.  Teaching good impulse control allows us to channel the dog’s drive into the exercises and situations where we want to make use of it.

One manifestation of lack of impulse control that may not be so obvious is distractibility.  Dogs who are easily distracted, especially after being taught attention work, are displaying a lack of impulse control by choosing to attend to the environment rather than focus on their trainer and the desired behavior.  Another way to think of impulse control is as the dog’s ability to stay on task.  For example, if your dog simply cannot sit in heel position and ignore the approach of the judge despite training your dog to be attentive in heel position, this may reflect a lack impulse control.  In people, Attention Deficit Disorder is frequently correlated with a lack of impulse control.  So if you are frustrated by your dog’s lack of attention despite your training, perhaps you need to spend more time building your dog’s impulse control.

We begin very early to teach our puppies impulse control and continuously build on it.  Just as everyday life has many opportunities for your dog to display his lack of control, you can easily take these situations and turn them to your benefit by using them to teach your dog control.  The first key is to be prepared ahead of time. Plan to use your dog’s meals and other things that he wants, such as getting out of the crate or going outside, as rewards for small moments of self control.  Begin by asking for just a second or two of stillness and focus before rewarding.  You can quickly increase the duration before rewarding.  It is helpful not just to make your dog wait, but to require that he focus on you as well.  This will help him to use you as an anchor for his impulse control and also promote attention.

Teach your dog a simple behavior like a sit that you can use to help your dog to maintain control when distractions or excitement challenge his ability to do it himself.  By gently holding the dog still in position until he can relax, we are showing him how to relax and control himself.  For example, with a puppy we would sit on the floor with the puppy between our knees and gently hold him in position until he relaxed.  By releasing the puppy only when he is relaxed, he learns how to calm himself.  Initially, we would do it in a very quiet and non-distracting environment.  As the puppy learns to settle himself, we can begin to practice in more exciting and busy situations.  (See the accompanying video link to watch Betsy alternate between playing with her puppy “Zen” and settling her.)

We do many different focus exercises to help build the dog’s impulse control.  We teach puppies to respond to their name. We teach stationary and moving attention.  We teach distance attention games.  We teach a “with me” and loose leash walking.  All of these exercises challenge the dog to develop more impulse control in order to sustain longer periods of attention and do it despite gradually increasing levels of distraction.  

Of course, stays are an example of impulse control too.  Many stay problems reflect the dog’s lack of impulse control.  With the handler away, the dog is unable to resist the temptation of a distraction.  In order to sit or down quietly and be relaxed, the dog must be in control of his desire to break from position whether to go visit a tempting distraction, go to the handler, or simply leave the situation.  No matter how much we correct the dog who breaks stays, if we fail to build his impulse control he is destined to fail.  Build impulse control by building on success and increasing your stays in small increments.

Good training increases your dog’s impulse control, while bad training can make your dog more impulsive and lead to more stress and frustration.  An easy example is how using restraint to build drive on a recall can help or hurt your dog’s impulse control.  If you restrain the dog by the collar and allow him to leap and whine and pull, then release him to do the recall, you have rewarded your dog for displaying no impulse control.  This is often done in a mistaken attempt to build drive.  However, if you restrain the dog gently in a sit by letting the dog lean forward into your hands, but do not release the dog if he moves, vocalizes or strains against you, but rather call him only when he is quietly intense. Then he will explode out of the sit and race to you.  (See the accompanying video link to watch Betsy do a restrained recall with baby “Zen.”)

We have learned over the years to think more and more about our dog’s impulse control and how that affects all of their obedience work.  We are careful to instill it and nurture it in our puppies and continue to build it throughout our dog’s career.  If you are having a problem, consider that a lack of impulse control might be part of the problem.  The good news is that you can work on improving your dog’s impulse control not only during your formal training sessions, but in everyday life as well.  (Visit the link for accompanying video clips to watch Linda work with “Spell,” “Heart,” and “Reese” as a group so that each dog has to stay while the one dog gets to play and work with Linda.)

For accompanying video clips, please visit:

https://bdv-test.myshopify.com/pages/video-clips-for-train-the-top-dog-way-blog

[trainthetopdogway]

Just CHUTE the Dog: Using Training Aides Effectively

by Betsy Scapicchio and Linda Brennan

Training aides, such as chutes, can be used as a very effective tool in your training.  Often people are leery of relying too much on these tools and are quick to remove them lest the dog become too dependent upon them.  However, when aides are used correctly, we find them most effective when they are used consistently right from the very beginning.  It is much harder to fix problems after the fact using these tools and many behaviors deteriorate quickly if the aides are removed too soon.

We use tools, such as chutes, sticks, cones, string, platforms and boxes, when teaching behaviors to the dog because we can immediately make the dog correct so that we can practice perfection. Since learning depends upon repeating the correct behavior many times, we need ways to ensure that the dog performs the behavior the way we want it each and every time.  Using aides also gives us the opportunity to reward frequently because the dog is performing the behavior well.  This reduces the stress on the dog from learning something new.  For example, when teaching the sit for heeling, we place the dog up against a barrier to ensure that he cannot sit out of position.  This allows the dog to practice sitting in the right spot and we are able to reward it each time.

Another reason that we use training aides is to create the motor patterns that we want the dog to perform.  In many cases, part of the skill that the dog must learn is physical, for example to turn tightly back toward the handler as the dog picks up the dumbbell.  This is as much a physical skill as it is a trained behavior.  Creating motor patterns requires great repetition, so having a way to ensure that the behavior is executed perfectly both physically and mentally is crucial.  Often the only way we have found to achieve that is by using training aides.  These aides are used over long periods of time to maintain the physical conditioning that produces the correct behavior.  For example, if you have a dog who tends to sit with his back legs not tucked under, then using a front chute is a way to condition the dog to sit with his feet underneath him.  It would be difficult otherwise to explain to the dog that although he is sitting straight in front, he is still not completely correct because his feet are sticking out.

We also use training aides so that the handler can stand still and appear the same as she will when she is in the ring with her dog rather than having to use her body or her hands to guide the dog’s behavior. For example, when teaching fronts, if we use chutes so that the dog has no choice but to sit in the correct position, the handler can stand still with her hands at her sides.  This is very helpful since that is the picture that the dog will see when performing the exercise in the ring.  

One of the most difficult aspects of using aides is when and how to remove them or reduce our usage of these tools.  More often than not, people are anxious to remove them and to test whether their dog will perform correctly without the aides. However, the more often that you do the exercise without the proper tools, the less consistent the dog’s performance will be.  For example, we use a stick or chute to ensure that the dog does not move forward in the signal exercise when going from the stand to the down and the down to the sit.  If we use the sticks consistently, the dog learns to down and sit in place without any forward motion.  This is both a learned behavior and a motor pattern.  When we remove the stick, we allow the possibility that the dog may move forward.  If that happens, then the behavior of staying in place will deteriorate.  If we sometimes use the stick and sometimes do the signals without it, then we may actually end up with two different ways that the dog does the signals--one way when the stick is present and a different way when it is not.   Our goals is to have only one way that the dog does the signals, so we will keep our aide there for a very long time and not test the dog’s response without the aide very frequently.  That way the dog doesn’t think about whether or not the stick is there, he just does the behavior the same way every time.

Heeling against the wall (or barrier)

In our foundation training, there are many places that we use aides right from the start.  In teaching our puppies to sit, we use chutes, like broad-jump boards, to ensure that the puppy will sit nicely tucked up and straight.  We also use the broad jump boards to begin teaching the sit in front position.  We use many different barriers, such as walls, baby gates, and large cones, to teaching heeling, especially circles and turns.  We use five-gallon buckets and feeder bowls to teach rear-end awareness and to begin working on the dog’s understanding of front position.  We condition our puppies to run straight on recalls by making a runway of chutes using sticks.  The puppies learn to wait by sitting on a platform.  In this way, we are also accustoming our puppies to the aides so that when we use them later on the more advanced exercises the dogs are already comfortable with them and respect them.

Ready to do a Recall in the chutes on the flexi

Our novice training builds on the foundation skills. We continue to use the long chutes of sticks for recalls.  We use PVC chutes for fronts and sometimes finishes as well.  Another tool we use for fronts is dowels.  For heeling, we continue to use large cones to work on turns and figure eights.  We use a board or stick to ensure that the dog stands straight in heel position.   Chutes and platforms are both useful for working on stays.

Using the PVC Front Chute for angle fronts

Using clear dowels for Fronts

Teaching the Novice Stand next to a broad jump board

Open presents more opportunities to use some of the same tools as in novice, plus others as well.  For jumping, we use ground bars to ensure a correct takeoff and landing and string to make sure that the dog clears the height.  On the broad jump, we use a string suspended over the jump for height and a board beyond the jump for length, in addition to a barrier, such as a flower flat or cone, to keep the dog from cutting the corner of the jump.  On retrieving, we use chutes near the dumbbell to condition the dog to turn quickly on the pickup.  

A string suspended over the High Jump

Broad Jump set with sticks and tubing, cheat board and flower flat

The utility exercises offer more places to use our tools. In signals, we begin with the dog in a chute to keep him in position.  We also use our chutes for articles to keep the dog working tightly in the pile, prevent circling and encourage the dog to come back straight to the handler. Glove pickups are worked just like the dumbbell using chutes.  Chutes are essential for teaching the dog to run straight and turn and sit tightly on the go outs.  

Ready to teach the turn and sit for Go Outs in the broad jump boards

Chutes set up for doing Go Outs

Another group of aides is the leash, tab, slip leash and flexi-lead.  Using a leash is important in controlling the dog’s position in heeling and other exercises, however, we do need to be careful not to keep the leash too tight because that is one aide that the dog will tend to rely on.  However, that doesn’t mean that we should work without a leash either.  We use the long tab or slip leash to transition from on-lead to off without giving up control of the dog.  For distance work, like recalls, the flexi is a great tool.  It is essential is exercises like the drop on recall to prevent anticipation of the drop.  By combining the flexi with motivational games, we can use it to keep our dogs running quickly on recalls and retrieves.  

Always remember that practice doesn’t make perfect, pefect practice makes perfect.  So don’t be lazy and don’t be afraid to use your aids to help your dog work correctly.  Making the effort to ensure the dog’s success will pay off in the ring.  So the next time you’re tempted to try it without your tools just to see what happens, don’t do it!  

For video clips of us using some of the aids mentioned and pictured here, visit:

https://bdv-test.myshopify.com/pages/video-clips-for-train-the-top-dog-way-blog

[trainthetopdogway]

No Second Chances – Have You Accidentally Taught Your Dog to Respond to Second Commands

by Betsy Scapicchio and Linda Brennan

In the obedience ring, it is only the first time and first command that count, so why do people give their dogs so many second chances in training?  

We find that generally people aren’t even aware that they are giving their dog second commands.  When the dog doesn’t come when called, drop on recall, or do the sit signal, they just give the command again.  When the dog does it on the second, or third, command, the handler then continues as if the dog had done it correctly. Unfortunately, by training this way, you are teaching your dog to wait for extra commands before doing the behavior. Then when you are in the ring and your dog waits for additional commands, you end up failing the exercise. When we watch dogs at shows, we find the signal exercise is particularly vulnerable to multiple commands.  For example, the handler gives the down signal. The dog doesn’t drop.  Then handler then says down and gives another signal and the dog does the drop and the handler continues the exercise.  The dog has now learned to wait for the second command with the verbal before dropping.

When the dog waits for extra commands, he is not being a bad dog.  He is doing what he was taught to do.  Remember that what you repeat over and over again in training is what your dog will learn.  Also, think about it from your own perspective.  If you were told to do something, but you weren’t quite sure what to do, because you were a little distracted or nervous or confused about what the cue means, you would quite naturally wait for the person to tell you again and give you more information.  That’s exactly what you dog is doing when he waits for you to tell him again. Sometimes you will see the dog begin to react to your command, but then pause and wait for additional information.

So the first task is to make yourself aware of whether or not you are giving second commands.  This can be tough to do because you may be doing it unconsciously.  If you train with a partner or take lessons with an instructor, you can ask that person to point it out to you, nicely of course.  If you train primarily by yourself, it can be very illuminating to video a few of your training sessions. That will provide you with a window into what you are really teaching your dog.

So if we shouldn’t be giving our dogs second commands, what should we be doing?  As the trainer, it is your responsibility to ensure that the dog performs the right behavior the first time, every time.  How we do this depends on the stage of the dog’s training for that particular command.  When we are first teaching a new behavior, we need to cause the dog to perform the behavior by luring or physically aiding the dog.  For example, in heeling, we lure the dog with a visible food treat as well as guiding him with the leash.  When teaching the down, we lure the dog down with a visible treat as we help to correctly position his body.    For fronts, we lure the dog into front position while using our feet or chutes to put the dog in the right spot.  There is no need for a second command, because the dog is always doing the right behavior.  They are simply learning to associate that behavior with the command or signal.  When teaching a complex exercise like signals, each small piece is taught separately before we chain the whole behavior together.  

In the next stage, we add negative reinforcement to ensure that the dog begins to take responsibility for doing the behavior on cue.  This is an important step that is often overlooked.  To continue with our examples, in heeling, we use gentle motivational leash pops to keep the dog attentive.  The pops are added while the cookie lure is still present and will aid in fading the lure.  For the drop, a small leash pop downward is added again while the cookie lure still present, so that the dog forms an associate between the pop and the down. Then the lure can be eliminated.  For fronts, a slight leash pop toward us is added while the lure moves from our hands to our mouth or other focal point and then becomes invisible.  It is important to remember that the pops in these cases are being used as negative reinforcement, not as punishment or a correction.   We are not waiting for the dog to fail to perform the behavior on cue before popping; we are giving a pop almost simultaneously with the cue so that the dog responds immediately to the cue.  Later this will help the dog to understand the correction if he does make an error.  By using the negative reinforcement right away with the command, there is no reason to give a second command because the dog is going to perform the behavior.

Once the dog is consistently doing the behavior without the food lure and is not relying on the gentle leash pops, the dog ready to be responsible for responding to the cue.  Now we can add a correction if the dog fails to respond to the command.  For a complete discussion of how we use corrections, please see our earlier Blog on that topic.  For now, the most important point is that we mark immediately when the dog fails to respond to the first command rather than simply giving the command again and continuing with the exercise.  Just doing this will help immeasurably with your training.  Now the dog knows that he has made a mistake if he doesn’t perform on the first command and it’s not OK to wait for a second command.   On heeling, it is now the dog’s responsibility to pay attention and maintain position. If he gets out of position or loses attention, we will correct the dog.  We do not give additional commands to the dog to get into position or to “watch, watch, watch.”  If the dog relies on you to keep him in position or get his attention back when he gets distracted, how is he going to do a whole heeling pattern off-leash in the ring without any additional commands?  For the down, the dog is now corrected if he fails to drop immediately when given the verbal command or signal.  Do not just repeat the signal or add a verbal or even hold the signal until the dog drops.  You’ll only get one chance in the ring, so he needs to do on the first command.  For fronts, the dog must respond immediately to the recall command.  Otherwise he will be corrected.  However, when it comes to maintaining straight fronts, we will continue to help the dog to be right for a long period of time.  For example, we use chutes or sticks to keep the dog sitting straight. Otherwise, if the dog sits crooked and then we fix it, how is the dog ever supposed to understand that he needed to sit straight in the first place!  Judges are not going to wait while you and the dog fix it.  Again, it is crucial that the dog gets to repeat the correct behavior over and over again.

Before your next training session, give some thought to whether you have fallen into the trap of giving second commands.  If you’re not sure, take a look at the exercises that your dog struggles with in the ring.  Ask yourself if you’ve been “helping” him with too many second commands and cues. If you’re not sure, video you training session and take a look.  Then come up with a plan to teach your dog to respond to the first command.  If you’ve been letting your dog respond to the second or third command, it isn’t fair for you to just start him after the first command. You may need to go backward in your training, briefly, to explain to the dog that it is only the first command that counts!

 Stay tuned for our next Blog on “Using Aides without Relying on Crutches.”

[trainthetopdogway]

TRAIN THE ONE YOU’RE WITH

By Betsy Scapicchio and Linda Brennan

Although other articles have already been written about training the dog that you have, it is an important topic that we want to address.  There are so many and varied breeds of dogs training and competing in obedience that we need to consider the differences between dogs of different breeds and individual dogs within the same breed.  When we train, we have a method that we have refined over the years and use very successfully; however, we must constantly adapt our training to the individual dog as well as to the person doing the training.  Sometimes that requires us to think outside the box.

Over thirty-five years, we have trained many different breeds of dogs our selves plus we have instructed students with a vast array of breeds.  We have trained Chihuahuas, Terriers, Welsh Springers, German Shepherds, and Australian Shepherds as well as Border Collies, Goldens, and Labs. Our students have trained and put advanced titles on everything from a Pekingese to a Great Dane. We’ve produced OTCHs in breeds including Keeshounds, German Shorthaired Pointers, Tervs, Goldens, Labs, Poodles, Springers, Dobermans, Irish Setters, Border Collies, Poms and more.  All of this experience has taught us many lessons to consider when training your individual dog.

The first thing to consider is that each dog has their own learning style.  Some dogs learn quickly, while others require more repetition.  It is crucial to keep this in mind, since the fast learner will pick up new behaviors quickly, so if we allow him to make errors, they will be ingrained fast too.  It can also deceive us into thinking that the dog really knows his job when he actually has not yet done enough repetitions to solidify the behavior.  For the slower learner, sometimes the trainer will be impatient or get discouraged before giving the dog a chance to adequately learn the task.  We may also need to break the task into even smaller steps.  It is our job to recognize our dog’s learning style and use that to avoid creating problems by correcting dogs before they have really learned the skill.

For example, when teaching the directed retrieve, if your dog quickly learned to mark the glove, you might be tempted to rush through and put the whole exercise together rather than spending time teaching and perfecting the pivot and each detail of the retrieve.  On the other hand, many dogs require much more work to teach a good mark, as well as to teach the other parts of the exercise.  Rather than getting discouraged because your dog is not marking the glove well, it would be much better to spend time breaking that skill down into small pieces and teaching each part carefully.  Allow your dog to progress at his own rate, rather than rushing forward before he understands his job.

Just like we are each motivated by different incentives, our dogs differ in what they find motivational.  Some dogs love to play.  Other dogs are very serious and like to work.  Some dogs are very food motivated, while others are more toy motivated. Although we try to develop as many motivators for our dogs as possible, by teaching our dogs to play and tug and enjoy being petted and praised, it is useful to be aware of what really motivates your dog.  We cannot decide for the dog what will motivate him.  Just because you want to play tug with a ball on a rope, doesn’t mean that your dog will find that motivating.  It is our job as the trainer to observe what makes our own dog tick.

For example, most of our Border Collies and Retrievers enjoy tugging, while many of our small dogs enjoy doing tricks, like spinning and touching.  For some of our dogs, jumping up on us is great reward.  For others, having us bend down and pet them and quietly praise them is very motivational.  YOU cannot decide what will motivate your dog; you must observe what your DOG finds motivating.  Watch your dog’s reaction to your motivation.  Does he get happier?  Wag his tail? Come into your space?  What is his facial expression?  We recently had the experience of watching one of our students with a large breed dog competing in the ring.  The dog worked well and at the end of each exercise, the handler praised the dog by thumping him on the chest.  When she came out of the ring, we asked her if she thought her dog likes being praised that way.  Like most of us, she hadn’t really thought about it and didn’t realize what was apparent to us when we observed the dog’s reaction, which was that he really didn’t like it.  We then talked about finding a more motivating way to praise him in the ring.

Dogs, like people each, each have their own personalities. We often have students who tell us that they “I can’t be like you.”  But they don’t have to be.  Just be the best version of yourself with your dog.  By the same token, dogs can’t all be the same either.  Some dogs are very high drive and energetic , other dogs are more low key and less confident.  Some dogs will keep trying even after they make mistakes, while other dogs crumble at the thought of a mistake.  We need to be aware of our dog’s personality.  When we select a puppy to train, we look for personality traits that we enjoy working with.  It is important to consider your own personality when choosing a puppy.  A dog who might be perfect for one trainer can be frustrating and end up as a disaster for another.  There are no perfect dogs, but there can be dogs who are the perfect dog for you.  Some of our dogs came to us as rescues, so they weren’t necessarily easy dogs, but yet they were the right dogs for us.  People often say that they have their “heart dog” who is extra special to them. What are the personality traits that make that particular dog fit so well with your own personality?  

When selecting a new puppy, begin by examining yourself and your own traits to see what traits would work best for you in your next obedience dog.  For example, if you are a low-key, soft-spoken person, then a dog who is over the top, probably won’t work well for you.  By the same token, a dog who requires too much motivation to work is not a good choice either, since it would require you to move out of your comfort zone and be more exuberant.  If you are a very serious person, then a silly, goofy dog might not be a good match for you.  When choosing a dog, remember to consider the common traits in the breeds that you are looking at, but also recognize that individual dogs in a given breed can vary greatly.   If you are not sure what would be best for you, work with an experienced obedience trainer to gain more insight into your own strengths and weaknesses, as well as to suggest possible breeds and evaluate individual dogs or puppies.  It is also important to consider whether a male or female would be a better choice for you as well.

Once you have a dog, it is your responsibility to train the dog that you have, not the dog you wish that you had and not your previous dog.  It is difficult not to compare our dogs with our own previous dogs or with our friends’ dogs or even with other dogs from the same litter.  Just as you are different from the other students in your class, as well as from your own siblings, your dog is an individual.  We don’t use the dog or the dog’s breed or sex as an excuse for inappropriate training.  You can’t necessarily fit a square peg into a round hole, but you can find the best way to work with each dog.  Actually, the dogs who challenged us the most as trainers are also the dogs who have taught us the most about training as well as about ourselves. Many times we simply had to come up with another way to explain something to the dog, even though we thought our usual method was very clear.  Other times, we’ve had to search for ways to motivate a dog when the typical options just didn’t work.  

When looking for help with your dog, look for an instructor who has a method that compliments you and your dog.  It is important to have a method, but to be flexible within your method to accommodate each individual dog and handler. While you cannot expect each dog and handler to progress at the same rate, your instructor needs to guide you through the ups and downs of training and help you to solve the challenges that crop up along the way.  If you are willing to put in the work, your instructor should be willing to help you find a way.  

Remember, you and your dog are each individuals with your own learns styles and characteristics.  Don’t use your weaknesses as an excuse, but realistically examine your strengths and weaknesses to determine the most effective way of training your dog.  In our experience, we have seen many dogs who had the potential to be an OTCH, but the handler didn’t have either the desire or commitment to pursue such a lofty goal. On the flip side, we have also seen handlers who are determined and willing to do the work, but the dog simply doesn’t have what it takes to reach the highest levels.  Just like not every person is going to become an Olympic athlete or concert pianist, we all have our strengths and weaknesses and we work hard to achieve our own successes which can vary greatly from dog to dog. One dog may be capable of competing at the highest level at large tournaments, while another dog can earn a UD, but is not suited to large competitions.  We have seen dogs with tremendous potential, but who are not with a trainer who is well matched for them.  Other times, the handler is ready but the dog just isn’t the right fit.  When the right dog ends up with the right trainer, that’s when the magic happens.