Canine Nation

Sometimes the most important thing we can do when we are training our dog is...nothing. How else will we find out what our dog knows if we don't stop every once and a while and see what they know? It's a lesson my own dog taught me many years ago. It has led to a delightful give and take that allows me to learn from her as she learns from me. Sometimes you just have to wait for the dog!

In the dog training world, "correction" has a special meaning.  What the term means depends very much on who you ask.  As I learned it, a "correction" doesn't really "correct" anything at all.  It just stops my dog from doing something I didn't want.  How does a yank on a leash or a poke in the side tell my dog anything about what I want them to do other than stop what they are currently doing?  Perhaps that lack of information can be detrimental to my dog!

Perhaps the most difficult part of changing the way we work with our dogs was changing how we think about them.  Moving to reward based training with Mark and Reward training was remarkably simple but it also gave us more than we expected.  The simple concepts behind Mark and Reward are based on science and cooperation.  And that led us to some very profound discoveries about ourselves and our dogs!

Our dogs have expectations. They may even have expectations of us that we don't know about. What if we took the time to set their expectations to help them fit in better with our lives? It's not as hard as you might think!

Markers - Those little words or noises that say "Yes! That's right!" They are a great way to help our dogs learn what behaviours are we want from them. Markers provide a consistent "language" that helps us communicate with our dogs on their level. And there are some other benefits too!

Modern dog trainers like to talk about the science of behaviour and training. But sometimes concepts and how we apply them can get jumbled up when talking about them with dog owners or even other trainers. Getting the science right is important. It's important that we don't confuse ourselves as well. Do we sometimes misunderstand or misinterpret science?

Some people take their dogs with them everywhere they go. Some people really shouldn't take their dogs with them. Some people take their dogs with them to places and they get afraid and bite people. And then they wonder why.

Wouldn't it be great if you could get a dog with all the outgoing affection of a Golden Retriever, the intensity of a Border Collie, the protection skills of a Doberman, and the lapdog size and weight of a Pomeranian? Well, yes. And no. And lots of stuff in between. The genetics of it all say that we get what we get when we breed for specific traits, physical or behavioural, and we can't change one side without affecting the other.

We used to call it a "command" when we wanted our dog to offer us a behaviour. I find the parallel with issuing commands to computers very interesting. Do we have unreasonable expectations about our dogs and our training with them? Do we expect unquestioning obedience and compliance from our dogs just the same way we expect our computers and other appliances are supposed to just work? Dogs are not something we can program. They are beings that we need to TEACH!

Modern dog training has brought us some new views and new approaches to training. Some of what we do these days is just a refined version of things we have been doing for a long time. That’s why I think it’s important to understand “shaping” versus “prompting” in dog training. Both have their merits and their pitfalls and we should be well prepared no matter how we decide to train!