Teaching Your Dog about Learning
Dogs are not born knowing how to communicate with us—or rather, they aren’t born knowing what our words mean. Over time, your dog learns about how to interact with you; they learn what our likes and dislikes are, what our words and gestures and body language mean. Our dogs are always learning from us, every moment of every day. Our dogs learn good things that we want, like to go potty outside, but our dogs are also learning not-so-good things, like that they don’t have to come until you say “come,” “coooooooooommmmmeeeeeee,” “plleeeeaaaaasssseee coooommmmmeeeee,” ten times and jump up and down. When we don’t set our dogs up for success, when we aren’t clear about our expectations for them and don’t create circumstances where they are going to be successful, we often end up training our dogs in things we don’t mean to (for example, that “come” isn’t a verbal cue in and of itself, and that when we want our dogs to come, we will do that whole literal dance and say “come” a bunch of times). This doesn’t mean that you need to “teach your dog who is boss” or otherwise force them. Quite the opposite, our goal with training should be to make working with us the most fun option, eliminating the opportunity for our dogs to make mistakes—so, for example, only taking your dog into your yard or to the park on leash with lots of high-value treats, so you can support and reward the “come” recall to the point when the behavior is solidly understood by your dog and they think it’s a lot of fun to come racing back because it doesn’t mean the end to play, it means yummy treats and more playing. We want to make engaging with us the most rewarding option available to our dogs.
Next to treats, patience is the most important thing to have when you are starting to teach your dog tricks. We talk to our dogs all day long, but a lot of what we say doesn’t make sense to them. Dogs don’t come pre-programmed to understand what different words mean. Training your dog is about building a relationship and developing a shared language. Your dog has to learn what those random noises coming out of your mouth mean, and the only way that can happen is with positive training, patience, and fun repetition. Our dogs are going to get confused or make mistakes, but nothing they are doing is really a mistake. If our dog fails to do a trick in the way we want them to, it means that they aren’t ready for the level of difficulty. It’s a moment for us to step back and help our dogs to be successful.
No Punishment
There is no place for punishment in tricks. If you find yourself getting overwhelmed and frustrated, it’s time to give your dog a treat and take a break. There are a lot of reasons not to punish your dog in general—causing your dog pain or fear or discomfort while learning is contradictory to the learning you want your dog to do, and doesn’t help them to retain information. Ideas like your dog needing to be dominated or shown who is “alpha” have been discredited by canine behavior and training researchers. Dogs are not “mini wolves”; they are not looking at us as “pack leaders.” Essentially, you want training with your dog to come from a place of mutual respect and fun. All training, especially trick training, should be enjoyable for both of you, not something that makes your dog overwhelmed or shut down.
Positive Reinforcement
I define positive-reinforcement-based training as methods that come from a place of mutual respect, without use of fear, pain, or intimidation. Basically, this means training that centers the relationship between the person and the animal, and doesn’t use tools like shock collars/e-collars and prong collars that cause pain to communicate what the human wants.
Clicker Training
One method of positive reinforcement training that is useful for all animals, from puppies to goldfish, is clicker training. Clicker training is based on marking a desired behavior and then providing a reward for it. The reason that a clicker (those little box-shaped devices that are sold for about a dollar on the counter of most pet shops, that have a button and make a metallic “click” noise when pressed) works is because trainers are able to deliver the click more clearly, quickly, and more precisely than a verbal marker or food reward alone. The approach grew out of trainers working with marine mammals, and has taken the dog training industry by storm because of its ease and effectiveness. Basically, clicker training lets us communicate more clearly with all animals, from cats and horses and rats to wildlife like dolphins and zebras! Yes, really—the same methods people use to teach an elephant, you can use to teach your dog! Pretty cool, right?
Clicker training is successful because it allows trainers to clearly “mark” (a.k.a. communicate to the dog) that they have performed a specific behavior that is desirable, and then come in and reward with a treat. Essentially, it allows us to improve our communication with our dogs as we are training, because the clicker is such a clear signal to our dogs (once they’re properly introduced to it) that we can use it to mark very small behavior cues, enabling us to train very impressive and specific tricks, like dunking a ball in a basketball hoop.
If you want to give clicker training a go, get a clicker (again you can find them inexpensively at most pet stores) and a bowl of very small pieces of very high-value treat. When you first introduce clicker training to your dog, your only goal is for your dog to associate the click with something great (the treat). So, you will click, and treat, click and treat, several times in a row. At this stage, we aren’t asking for any kind of behaviors from the dog—we just want them to start making the connection that the click means good things (treats) are coming.
After a couple of short training sessions like that, ask your dog to do something they already know how to do, like “sit,” and, right as they get into the appropriate position, click, praise, and treat. Repeat a few times. The goal is for our dogs to understand that the click is our way of telling them that what they are doing in that moment is what we want when we give them a specific cue.
Keep your training sessions short when introducing the clicker and all the other training we are going to be doing. A few short (five minutes or less) training sessions spread through the day is much more effective (and fun) for your dog than one long training session. My goal with training is to always end a session with my dog having been successful and having had fun—essentially, you want to end with your dog wanting to do more, not bored and frustrated.
Sirius and I had a wonderful time at Clicker Expo 2019.
If you are interested in learning more about clicker training, check out the work of Karen Pryor, Karen Pryor Academy, and her Clicker Expo annual conference. Learn more at karenpryoracademy.com. If you are interested in animal behavior and training and have the opportunity to attend Clicker Expo, I can’t recommend it highly enough. They also have a variety of online learning opportunities, and a growing number of positive-reinforcement-based trainers across the country and around the world are incorporating clicker training into their classes.
Patience
Dog training can be exhausting and overwhelming. We’re communicating with a completely different species, and sometimes asking them to do very unnatural things, like putting a little ball into a little basketball hoop! It’s important to make sure that you train when you are in a good mood and in a good place to keep your training sessions fun and positive. Different dogs learn at different speeds. Don’t compare your dog with someone else’s dog, or, if you share your life with multiple dogs, don’t compare one dog to another. Different dogs learn differently, and even learn different kinds of tricks at different speeds. For example, my dog Charlotte learns anything with small details very quickly, but is much slower to learn tricks that require her to position her body in certain ways, a skill set that my youngest dog, Sirius, excels at.
Our dogs are individuals; there are some tricks that your dog will enjoy more than others. Our dogs learn through repetition; again, you want to train more frequently in short, fun training sessions with lots of toys and treats. Dogs do learn through repetition, but you can do too much of a good thing. No one likes a drill sergeant (even a fun one), so, if you find your dog seeming to be a little less