Here are the three tricks: Luring, the bench, and successive approximation. They鈥檙e each useful on their own, but I鈥檝e combined the three to illustrate a way to teach a young, unfocused, hyperactive dog the cue for lie down. These are the three tools and how to use them:
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All you need to know about going wild with man’s best friend.1. THE BENCH: Usually you see force-fetch trainers using benches, but placing your dog on an elevated surface isn鈥檛 just for the ear and toe pinchers among us. In my case, the training bench is just a simple kitchen chair. Placing your dog on an elevated platform does several things at once:
A. It puts the dog closer to your level, so you can establish the all-important eye contact rather than the less-useful top-of-head contact.
B. It forces the dog to focus and calm down. When you put a young pup on a table or bench, he鈥檚 immediately out of his element, which requires thought: 鈥淲here in the hell am I, and how do I get down from here?鈥 Cooper eventually realized that he couldn鈥檛 safely exit the chair, so he stopped probing the edges and started paying attention to me.
A note of caution: Make sure you鈥檝e got a soft landing for the pup and be ready for him to fall. Tie him up there with a slip knot if you鈥檝e got a way to do it safely. Puppies have terrible depth perception; it鈥檚 almost certainly going to take your vigilance to keep him on the bench and make sure he鈥檚 not falling off. Cooper slid off the front of the chair the first time I put him there. It was only 18 inches to the grass, but he landed on his snout and carried on and limped for an hour before deciding that he was all right.
C. It鈥檚 the first step toward desensitizing a dog to fear of heights. Remember, get your dog comfortable with all of the situations that might scare him later.
2. THE LURE: Luring is simply using food or some other inherently desirable object to coax the dog into positions, such as down. Lures aren鈥檛 the best for getting a dog to offer behaviors, but they鈥檙e about the only way to teach a hyper, young pup to lie down besides following him for several hours waiting for him to tire. With Cooper on the chair, I just showed him a piece of liver and then lowered it so that it was slightly below the edge, where he鈥檇 have to croon his neck to get at it. This is how the lure works: Show him the food, move the food in the direction you want him to go, and hope he follows with his body.
3. SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION: It鈥檚 unlikely that a dog is going to follow that treat all the way into a good down position on the first try. So we use successive approximation to show him that he鈥檚 more or less headed in the right direction with his behavior. The first time I tried this with Cooper, he followed the treat until he was hunched over a bit and then backed off. So rather than try to force him or keep coaxing him, I gave him the quick verbal bridge鈥斺漡ood鈥濃攁t his low-point and gave him the treat. The next time I require another fraction of an inch of dip before giving him the bridge and the reward. This is why behaviorists call it successive approximation: You give the full reward for the incomplete-but-improving behavior. When you hear trainers talk about 鈥渟haping鈥 behaviors, this is what they mean, specifically. By about the fifth try, Cooper realized he鈥檇 be able to get at that liver best if he just flopped down on his belly. So that鈥檚 what he did. Once he鈥檚 giving you that behavior, it鈥檚 just a matter of getting it down to an automatic response when he sees a treat while sitting on a chair, then adding the cue: down.
In order to get Cooper to offer this behavior on his dog bed, I had to slowly raise the criteria by placing him on different chairs, then objects like tables that are similar to chairs, then a stair step, and finally on his dog bed. The reason you can鈥檛 just expect him to know it on the ground is that teaching a behavior like this on a chair will most likely make the chair a more important cue for the behavior than your voice. Remember, dogs are not primarily verbal communicators by nature. Whenever you think your dog is disobeying you, ask first: Is it his fault for not understanding or am I not communicating properly?
This article originally appeared on 国产吃瓜黑料 K9, the former dog blog of 国产吃瓜黑料 magazine, on May 20, 2009.