Stop micromanaging your dog

While training with someone the other day, I watched them continually telling their dog to set up for an exercise. The Golden was staring at me adoringly and was trying desperately to make his way over to say hello. The dog was completely ignoring his handler and was watching me wherever I went. Because of this team’s issue in the ring, I did what I would normally NOT do. I watched the dog and smiled at him, inviting him to me with my body language. I did not call him, I did not motion to him, because it wasn’t needed. 

After watching the frustrated handler for a couple of minutes, I interrupted him and asked him why he didn’t just let the dog leave. Of course, the handler gave me a very odd look and responded with “What?”.  This is not a green dog, but rather a dog working on UDX legs in competitive obedience. The overly friendly dog knows exactly how to set up for an exercise, he just would rather go over and say hello to the judge.  

Assuming you have laid the proper groundwork....let the dog make a decision. If the dog makes the wrong decision, simply tell the dog what was expected and ask him to try again. If he makes the correct decision, tell him how wonderful and smart he is, then break off for a quick game of tug or a few cookies. 

I wish I would have video taped the short time we worked with this dog, as he quickly grasped what was expected of him. 

To show the handler what I wanted him to do, I called in another person (who the dog loves) and I had her sit down on the ground. I let the dog know I was now working with him and moved towards the setup spot. The dog saw the other person on the ground and off he went!! I quietly walked towards him, said “oops, where did you go?”, while I took a hold of his collar with both hands and walked backwards about 10 steps while I talked silly to him. I then released him and told him how smart he was. I moved towards the setup again and off he went!! I repeated my quiet correction. When I released the dog this time, he jumped up on me for a scratch on his shoulders before we headed back towards the setup spot. All of a sudden, he ran forward...then stopped and looked at me. Yes! Same quiet correction, but less hands on his collar. Fourth time to setup and he stayed with me while we setup for the exercise. 

Next, we repeated the same drill with his owner handling the dog. He had to repeat all of the steps that I did, as the dog tried to leave him several times to go say hello to the person on the ground. The hardest part for this person was not saying anything as soon as the dog left him. No hollering the dog’s name, no saying “come” or “here”, just letting the dog go, then walking to him and communicating what the dog did was incorrect. The last setup they attempted was perfect. Beautiful attention, with an upbeat and animated dog. I told him to release him and go give the dog a reward....and then quit! Don’t try to do another one. Put the dog away in his crate and let him think about what just happened.

Obviously, when in the show ring, I would recommend that the person call their dog if the dog tried to leave them. However, if this drill is practiced and enforced consistently, he will get a much better response from his dog when he does need to use a verbal command. 

This same drill would apply to dogs who self-release themselves to run for their rewards. Let the dog go...then fix it. Even if the dog got to their reward before you did (hopefully the food is unattainable if the dog does this), simply walk to them, take the reward from them (tug toy, etc.) and drop it on the ground, take a hold of their collar gently while you walk backwards, quietly telling them how silly they are and how they are supposed to stay with you. Then release the collar, but make sure you stay engaged with your dog. When your dog stays next to you, tell them how wonderful they are and try again. 

If done correctly, your dog will not deflate or lose attitude. If anything, your dog will become pushier and more animated because they now understand exactly what is required from them. Stop micromanaging your dog and make him accountable for his decisions. But first, you need to let him make a decision. 

Train hard. Play harder.
Shannon

Setting up is an “active” position....

While training with a friend yesterday, we were working with her dog on effort regarding getting into the heel position. He is not a super motivated dog, either via toys or food, but he will occasionally work well for treats or personal praise. 

I thought some people may like to see how I require effort from my dog when setting up. I do not simply want him to move into place, he needs to hustle and get their quickly and with attention. This is the starting point for EVERY exercise you do. If you dog is slow to get into position or is unmotivated, you are starting off on the wrong foot. I also firmly believe in teaching your dog a motivational bounce and a hand touch...both of which can be used when your dog is not giving enough effort. Effort NEEDS to come from the dog. If you don’t require effort in practice, you will definitely not have effort in the ring.

Comparatively, here is a dog that knows what “place” means (heel position) and he knows what a bounce is, but yet he doesn’t really want to give much effort. 

I am going to REQUIRE that he give me effort, even if it is lacking somewhat in the precision department. If your dog feels like this hands on work is a “correction”, you need to really up the rewards and/or verbal praise to counter balance the work. Your dog’s attitude should not deflate when you put your hands on him!!

I do not like to “pop” my dog to get him quickly into heel position. I like to use my hands either through oppositional work (like at the beginning of Gunner’s clip) or directly in their collar. I will also use random “call to heel” drills, either with a toy or a cookie, whatever the dog will work harder for. The dog can be set anywhere for this drill, but it is easier for the dog in the beginning if he is behind you or slightly off to the side. 

So, make sure this exercise of moving into heel position is something you teach your dog how to do correctly. It sets the tone for the entire exercise you are about to do and puts both of you into the correct frame of mind to work. Insist on effort from your dog EVERY time you train or work. It doesn’t matter if you are outside throwing a frisbee or if you are doing formal obedience work. What you “accidentally” train in relaxed playtime WILL carry over to the ring. Take every opportunity to instill engagement and teamwork with your dog and you will both reap the benefits. 

Train hard. Play harder.
Shannon

Foundation work...something that NEVER goes away

I’ve been a little lax on training lately...no specific reason, just busy with work, kids and life. I have a couple of weeks before my next trial, so there has not been any pressure.  Gunner, however, never takes a break and demands that we do something at least once a day.

Even though it was a cold (for Florida) morning yesterday, I decided to head to the dog club to train. Our “building” is basically a covered concrete slab, but it is better than nothing, and we have a good group of people in the club. So, we bundled up and headed out.

Since Gunner had a couple of days off of “formal” training, I decided to just work on a few foundation skills...go-outs to a target, rear end awareness and dumbbell pickups. Here is a dog who has over 400 OTCH points, doing go-outs to a target, while someone in the next ring did complete exercises from start to finish. If you know me, the devil is in the details. I work small pieces of exercises, trying to improve each detail of our performance. That’s not to say I train those pieces perfectly, but we do train them. :)

I want to make sure Gunner's go-outs stay fast and straight, so we started with short go-outs and I rewarded heavily off of his target. We then worked back to full length go-outs, with me still running up and rewarding him for hitting his target. I asked him to turn and sit a couple of times before rewarding him and he happily obliged. At one point, I told him to jump....and instead, he went back to hit his target. Yay! This allowed me to correct a failure to jump, the same thing that happened at a trial a couple of weeks ago, when he decided he better go back and hit his stanchion....twice. Oops! I did not tell him to "jump" again, instead I gave him a NRM, went to him, put my hand in his collar and took him towards the jump. Then, while giving my hand signal, I told him to jump and praised him for going over the jump. To test him, I did a few more go-outs with target touches, then asked for a sit followed by a jump. He didn't hesitate before heading for the correct jump. Good thinking on his part, but this is probably a drill that needs to be repeated once and awhile. 

If I had gone to the club and only done complete exercises, this error would probably not have surfaced. Gunner's go-outs and responses to cues would also continue to get slower and less sharp. Forget the formality and train your dog, don't test him. I don't care how much "fun" you try to cram into an exercise from start to finish, if you do the same exercise over and over, you become predictable and boring. Your dog gets enough of that in the obedience show ring, don't let it carry over into training too. 

Train hard. play harder.

Shannon

Correct errors by requiring more effort

Competition obedience training is difficult, especially when done properly. Dogs do not naturally walk around with their undivided attention on you, all while staying perfectly straight in heel position. They do not naturally retrieve an object while doing a perfectly straight front, with their head up and their eyes on you. 

We’ve all heard the statement “make the right thing easy and wrong thing difficult”. But what happens in our world of competition obedience, when the right thing is already hard? You will hear me talk a lot about effort. If the dog does not put forth enough effort during training, I immediately stop working on what I’m doing and go back and work effort. I put a lot of myself into my training, and I expect my dog to do the same. My dog quickly learns that if he would have done the exercise correctly the first time, it would be a lot easier. This doesn’t mean my definition of “correctly”, is without effort, it just means that if he doesn’t do it correctly, he’s going to have to work MUCH harder. 

Let me give you a few examples...

1) I send my dog to the article pile. He finds the correct article, picks it up and trots back. “Oops, good find it, but you didn’t ‘hurry’!” I require that my dog runs back to me in practice, every time if possible. At this time, I may require that he do a couple of hand touches or bounces, something to give me extra effort. I then set up and do it again. If he runs on the next article, I may break off during his run back and give him some cookies. Notice, that I said I break off “during his run back”. Why not wait until he got to front? Because I want to reward the RUNNING. How does he know which part I’m rewarding if I wait for him to get to front. Worse yet, say his front isn’t perfect and I have to ask him to work harder on his front. I’ve now lost the opportunity to reward the run entirely!

2) My dog adjusts the glove in his mouth when he’s coming back to me on the Directed Retrieve and the glove falls out of his mouth. I say “Oops!” and I quickly walk out to get the glove. I hold my dog’s buckle collar with one hand, while my other hand holds the glove. I tell him to “get it”, as I’m keeping the glove just out of his reach (picture me spinning in a circle). Only when he’s really driving to get to the glove, do I let him jump up and get it. I do not force fetch him to the glove, that’s an “easy” correction in my opinion. Anyone can force a dog’s nose down to the glove and make him pick it up, but YOU are doing all the work. My correction gets the DOG to give the effort. The only way he is going to stop chasing the glove around in circles is if he really runs to get it. As soon as he grabs the glove, I praise heavily and tell him how smart he is.

3) During heeling, my dog is crabbing slightly or not working his rear on left turns. If that left turn is too difficult for him to put in effort, my dog will now be required to do left about turns, left 270 turns, he will be asked to spin in the middle of his left turn, etc. Anything that requires more effort. 

Don’t fall into a habit of simply “correcting” your dog for an error. What are you teaching your dog? Not much, except for maybe how to avoid a collar correction. Instead, step back and think about how you can require more effort from your dog. Trust me, after a bunch of left about turns, that 90 degree left turn will be much easier for your dog. 

Train hard. Play harder.
Shannon

Food as a crutch

When I first start training a dog to heel as a young puppy, I always use food. Actually, I use food for quite a while to develop muscle memory for a desired head position. But everyone knows that the food has to go away eventually. You may still reward with food, but the food can no longer be visible to the dog as a lure.

In times of pressure or stress, if you continually bring the cookie back out, the dog will never be able heel properly.

Examples:

• Your dog is off of a cookie lure, and while at a match, the dog gets stressed. You immediately pull the cookie out of your pocket and put it on your dog’s nose. 
• During a training class, your dog starts to give you less effort than you would like, so you pull out the cookie and put it in your hand. 
• You are getting ready to go into the show ring and you HAVE to keep cookies in your hand before going into the ring. Your thought process is that you need to keep your dog’s attitude up while waiting your turn. 

If you continue to pull out a cookie when your dog (or you) starts to wilt under pressure or stress, you have turned that piece of food into a crutch. 

Teach your dog to work through their stressors without bringing a cookie back out. This is only masking the underlying problem....a lack of confidence, a lack of commitment or a lack of understanding. Work on building and maintaining drive in all types of conditions. Reward the dog profusely when he gives you effort during difficult situations, even if the overall look is not what you want for the ring. Your reward should be something that your dog finds valuable, whether it be a toy, food or hands on praise. Better yet, teach your dog that all three things are high value rewards. 

Train hard. Play harder.

Shannon

You can’t solve a problem by avoiding it....

My evil, little laugh escaped this morning. I couldn’t help it. Every time someone tells me “I can’t make him do it in practice”, it just comes out. Maybe it shouldn’t...maybe it’s not politically correct...but since when have I worried about being politically correct?

It is not that I want the dog to screw up in practice, but for me to be able to tell my dog he’s doing something incorrectly, first he has to DO it incorrectly. And, my definition of “incorrect” may not be the same as your definition of “incorrect”. Clear as mud? Let me explain. My definition of heel position means straight, in line with my left leg, head up, eyes on me, and focused attention. One word (“Close” to my dog) means all of those things. If my dog meets four of those requirements, but not the fifth, he is incorrect. How I respond may vary, depending on what thing is incorrect, but I WILL respond.

The dog in question is doing a couple of different things - laying down on the Novice sit stay and not coming into front position straight enough on the recall. It was actually the sit stay issue that brought out the evil laugh, when the owner said the dog NEVER fails in practice. The evil laugh escaped and I said “I bet I can make him fail.”

But, the topic of this post is more in relation to the second one...the fronting on the recall. She said the dog comes in too fast and couldn’t get his front. She had been trying to slow the dog down on the recall, to make it easier for him to find front position. Well, maybe, but the “problem” is that the dog can’t find front position, not that he is going too fast. So, instead of trying to slow the dog down, work on helping the dog find front position when he is coming in fast. Make sure the dog understands what and where front position is, instead of just assuming he understands. Now, in doing some of this work, the speed may taper off slightly on the recall, but it is because the dog is thinking about his next job of finding his front position, not because we are trying to slow him down.

When I was showing my German Shepherd years ago, she had the opposite problem. She was low drive and sometimes didn’t put forth enough effort to get back to me. I listened to everyone’s advice, which included never doing any fronts, running away from her when she was coming in, and throwing a treat or a toy. I did all of those things, and you know what? My problem got worse. She knew I wasn’t going to move in the ring. She knew I wasn’t going to throw a toy or a cookie. I was AVOIDING the problem. After one trial where she walked the entire way back to me on a dumbbell retrieve, I decided to address it head on. If she couldn’t trot 30’, she was going to have to trot 5’. So, I went back and worked on short fronts. In the beginning, she worked exclusively on a training collar and a flexi lead. Later, we dropped the flexi, but left a pull tab attached. I would leave her on a sit, walk 5-10’ away and call her to front. If she walked, she got a little bounce forward (basically a failure to come correction) and I’d release her to try again. It only took a few corrections and she never walked in on another exercise in the ring again...although it is a drill that was practiced often.

As an instructor, I often hear people using avoidance as a training tool. If your dog auto finishes, never do finishes in practice. If your dog lags during off lead heeling, never heel off lead. If your dog likes to go and visit people in the ring, don’t ever give them the opportunity to leave your side. Well, I look at it a little bit differently. You can’t fix what doesn’t happen. Let your dog anticipate things. Let your dog try to auto finish. Let your dog start to lag on heeling. Let your dog think that the steward probably needs to be checked for cookies. But, as soon as they do it, FIX IT!! Help your dog understand what they are supposed to be doing. If they make the decision to do the exercise perfectly, then reward them profusely!! Have a party! Show them they made the correct choice and that they are the smartest dog in the world.

Just don’t think that the problem is going to magically disappear if you micromanage your dog so the problem never happens. I hate to burst your bubble, but you can’t micromanage everything.

Train hard. Play harder.
Shannon

P.S. If you are wondering about the dog who NEVER broke his sit stay in practice...I nicely asked the dog to lie down during the sit stay. He didn’t even think twice. Down he went. :)

Week of the trial...

I trained with a great group of ladies this morning, most of whom are working on their Utility titles with their dogs. Green handlers with greener dogs. :) We are all headed to a dog show this weekend, three trials over two days. Nerves are coming into play for some, as Utility is the most difficult class to pass.

One of the handlers was warming up her dog and I asked her what she wanted to do in the ring. She didn’t answer right away and I commented, “You are not doing a run through. Pick 2 or 3 exercises to work on.” Her response was “What?!? I can’t do a run through?” No....2 or 3 things, that’s it. 

Let me explain my reasoning. Everyone knows that trials are where we “prove” our training. During our normal training sessions, we work hard on keeping our dogs happy and pushy. We work through issues. We proof our dogs to increase their understanding of what is expected.  We polish all of the little pieces of each exercise. We reward a lot, with food, toys or play. But, when a trial is looming around the corner, some people change. They decide to make it more serious, more “ring-like”. They decide that they need to do every exercise, every time they walk into the ring. They don’t want to carry any cookies or toys on their body. All of a sudden, the dogs see a different person standing next to them. The fun, upbeat person has turned into a nervous, silent stranger. There is nothing more boring, for dog or handler, than doing run through after run through. It may make the handler feel better, but they are not helping their dog.

So, this morning, this particular team came into the ring and did gloves, articles and directed jumping. The dog did everything perfectly and both dog and handler left the ring happy and encouraged. Later, they came back in and did the signal and moving stand exercises. Again, nice work from the dog, and the handler left training a lot more encouraged (I think) about the upcoming weekend. 

I try to train my dog with the “train like you show” mantra in my head. I’m not over the top, but I’m not dragging around the ring either. I’m liberal with food (not much toy drive for my current dog) and I’m even more liberal with praise. I work exercises fairly silently, but I acknowledge good effort and correct lack of effort. I break from exercises mid-stride often and rarely do an exercise from start to end. The way I train doesn’t really change, whether we have a trial next weekend or we don’t have a trial for two months. My dog knows all of the exercises, so right now, I consider all work to be maintenance or if I’m working on a new problem. Training dogs is the easy part....maintaining it is something else entirely. This is why a dog who is trained on one end of the spectrum (either a lot of compulsion or reward only) can go into a ring and earn titles, but yet they can not maintain it long term. Dogs are smart. They learn very quickly their handler can not correct them in the ring and they also learn that there aren’t going to be any cookies. 

The week of a trial, I do very little, if any, proofing. I want the dog to get it right EVERY time. I don’t make things easier, I just don’t make them more difficult. Why would I risk damaging the dog’s confidence immediately before a show?  Every time I train, I have cookies on me or in the ring. I don’t let the dog see me put the rewards around the ring or the cookies in my mouth, but they are always there. I will often break and run to one of the containers in the ring or I will let him chase a cookie that I take from my pocket or mouth.  The number of days or times of day I train will not change. If I normally only train 2 or 3 days a week, I will not train every day the week of a trial. 

Does this mean I never do a run through? No, but they are very rare. If a handler has not been in the ring very often, they should do run throughs once and awhile. But, this is more for them to understand the judge’s commands, proper protocol, and how to move from exercise to exercise, not just to get “ring time”. If your dog can work (not play, but work) for 5-8 minutes during training without any cookies, why does it matter what they are doing? It is irrelevant if they do every single Utility exercise, if they do a little bit of everything, or if they concentrate on a couple of different exercises. 

And don’t forget, you are able to praise in the ring. Teach your dog that praise MEANS something. But, make sure the praise you give your dog is genuine. Show it in your voice, your face and your hands. 

Remember, this is a sport we do for fun with our dogs. The training that we do in the months and years before a trial is A LOT more important than what we do the week of a trial. The attitude that we so carefully build and cultivate can be ruined by a well-intended handler who tries to cram in “just one more” training session the week of a show. 

Train hard. Play harder.
Shannon