DOG TRAINING Tapping into your dog’s natural learning ability
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How Dogs Learn • Dogs learn in one of two ways: They learn by associating an emotion with an experience. An experience can be positive, negative or neutral, and this emotional effect predicts how well they react to that same experience next time around. • Dogs also learn through their actions getting reinforced. Reinforcement can be either positive (he is rewarded) or negative (he is punished) • Very much like children, huh? Except for one key difference: Dogs live in the “now”, so actions need to be reinforced immediately (within seconds) after they happen. So be careful about what reinforcement you apply, and when. www.zutail.com
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Dog & Cat Talk: Knowing canine body language is crucial
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Dogs Need to Chew • Dogs need to chew and if you don’t provide appropriate and enticing options for your dog, it will find something else to chew on. • By putting away items you don’t want your dog to chew and supervising and re-directing inappropriate chewing to the options you’ve provided, you can effectively fixate your dog on its own chew toys and save yourself a lot of damage and frustration. • By providing your dog with its own toy box, your dog will know where to go when it wants something to chew. www.zutail.com
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Dogs Need Socialization • A dog that’s not thoroughly socialized before sixteen weeks of age is more likely to experience a fear reaction to anything new after the socialization period is over. • Socialization means exposing your dog to everything it may come in contact with throughout its life before its brain is fully developed, which occurs at around sixteen weeks of age. • This includes, but is not limited to: adults, children, men and women of different sizes, shapes and colors, different sizes, breeds and colors of friendly and healthy dogs, accessories, glasses, beards, canes, wheel chairs, sights, sounds, smells, new environments, etc. www.zutail.com
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Aggression Prevention • Assertive Challenges – Resource Control • Ignore Demands – If you don’t follow, your dog can’t lead. • Everything must be Earned – Control the resources by requiring your dog to earn everything of value. • “Leave It” Your dog learns to happily remove itself from whatever it’s focused on when it hears the “leave it” cue preventing possessive aggression. • “Drop It” and “Take It” Your dog learns to happily drop any item on cue preventing possessive aggression. • Putting special treats in your dog’s food bowl while it’s eating • Putting special treats in your dog’s food bowl while it’s eating teaches your dog that people approaching its food bowl are giving instead of taking away. Because of this your dog prefers you in, instead of out of its food bowl, preventing food bowl aggression. www.zutail.com
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Fear Aggression • Socialization – If your dog likes new dogs and people, it’s unlikely to bite them. • Protect your Dog – Protect your dog from those who may tease, frighten or hurt it. • Handling Exercises – Teach your dog to enjoy being handled. • Positive Reinforcement Training – Positive reinforcement training prevents punishment that causes fear, stress, anxiety and aggression. Remember, every canine-behaviour, no matter how annoying, is normal and natural! www.zutail.com
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Training Treats • Training treats are a temporary training tool to be used properly then put away. Remember, any tool is only as good as the person using it. • We’ll use treats to create and polish behaviours and put behaviours on cue, then fade the training treats away replacing them with other valued rewards such as attention, praise, walks, car rides, games, etc. Use properly, food rewards, also called training treats, serve the following purposes: • to motivate your dog to think and make choices • to lure your dog’s body preventing the need for physical manipulation • to reinforce the desired behaviour making it more likely your dog will repeat the behaviour and understand the meaning of the cue www.zutail.com
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• Once your dog understands each cue and signal we’ll take the following steps to fade the treats/rewards; 1. First we’ll begin by asking for more responses for each treat reward, requiring the dog to work harder for its rewards. We’ll reinforce the behaviour intermittently meaning the dog knows the treat is coming – it just doesn’t know when. The dog keeps offering the behaviour in anticipation of the eventual reward. Like the slot machine, the secret to rewarding intermittently is to only reward the dog often enough to keep it playing your game. 2. Next, we’ll remove the treats from our body so our dog’s response doesn’t depend on the presence of food. 3. Then we’ll gradually replace the food with other real life rewards that are valuable to your dog, things it will receive daily anyway such as meals, walks, car rides, games, toys, safe bones, cuddle time, attention, off leash play and play with doggy friends. www.zutail.com
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Thank You!
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