Dog Training - out and about, or a story of an international Dog Training Spy

The idea behind taking your dog to classes is this – you convince a dog to follow your instruction of whatever kind, and dogs just generalise it and behave in the same manner in all sorts of environments and circumstances. Well, this is the theory, but the practical side of it varies greatly from trainer to trainer. So in order to get a better picture on the subject I embarked on another exciting journey- please see below.

Months of visiting dog training clubs is about to come to an end. Competitive and Pet classes, professional and part-time trainers, large and small groups held in the mornings and evenings, midweek and weekend as well as indoors and outside (yes, there are many places where you can take your dog to work outside even on a cold November morning!) – There are so many choices people have when searching for a place to take their dog for some tutoring/training.

I cannot comment on a few establishments whose trainers turned really protective and would not agree to a visitor such as myself after being told that I am not looking to enrol a dog, but would like to learn the ways they teach. I guess they have something to hide or perhaps they are just not as confident doing it in front of someone who’s not a novice!

You have to agree, that whatever your trade is, after years of doing it day and night you might lose a sense of reality to some degree, get rusty and wish to brush up on the way you work, and on the ways the business is organised elsewhere. Well, this was my idea.

It was all initially intended to gather some new and effective training hints and secrets to share with my students and have a chance to meet up with some really knowledgeable and skilled trainers. But what came out of it was something not quite as planned, but rather a bit different – I saw a niche in the programmes and methods practiced so widely in and around our area. I probably understood a bit more the reason behind the fact that so many trainees come to us at times supplementing their training elsewhere with what we teach, and more often, people come and see our place for themselves and decide to stay on. I am going to tell you why shortly.

I personally own a mutt of a dog called George (he came with the name from RSPCA kennels where I teach) with no birthday, particular breed looks or characteristics. And even though he’s been on the Kennel Club working register for a few years now, I do not live for shows or competitions; neither can I commit myself to hours of heelwork and stays in order to succeed in a show ring.

This is how it is done elsewhere:

This is what I found myself watching in those numerous classes: a variety / mixture of combinations of Sits, Stays, Downs, Stands, Heel, Sits, Come, Downs, Heel, Sits and so on with longer and shorter breaks in between; just Stays, Come, Heel, Sit, Stand, Down, Come for the whole session…

Some of the more inventive classes would also enrich the routine with “Off-you-go” or even “Good Boy” and “Good Girl” but that’s about it, all keeping the dogs on the lead the whole time. All the places I have been to use rewards, some more than others.

And every time when coming home or having a brief moment of having to do something useful with my hound, I would take him for a short round of Heelwork …and struggle to design a “Precision” training routine that at the same time would be fun, exciting, variable and easy to teach.

Precision training can take as many shapes as you wish. You could be working with some experts making a work of art of an old obedience round – it looks fantastic when you pay attention to every little detail. Or you can put your dog (and yourself, not sure, who’d have to work harder) through an agility training program changing the course every few minutes. This will still gain that perfect anticipation / attention and focus from your dog. Heelwork-to-Music seems to overthrow all the Schutzhund, Working and Gun dog trials in the multitude of elements taught, as well as voluntary participation from the dog involved. And I hope I manage to explain to you why.

What I struggle to organize at our venue as well as for my individual training plans, is an exciting and variable routine of hand feeding reinforcements and polishing up the same standard obedience exercises – sits, stays, heel and recall… I know I am not that good at it – teaching a dog to be accurate and “spot-on” for an obedience ring is hugely different from convincing the same dog to become compliant and to try hard to please which is what I have been polishing up as a science for ages. OK, if you are good at what you do and creative at the same time, your dog might be asked to also perform a few stands, downs, send-aways etc, and experts in the field would also break down each exercise and introduce tons of tiny sub-exercises, such as keeping close, holding it’s head up high enough, and remaining in a close position with its’ shoulders level with the handlers left leg (knee, thigh or heel for different breeds). I absolutely love watching advanced handlers and trainers who make up a hundred and one tiny precision tests of, say, heel position, that are really different if you think about it – heelwork in slow, fast, and normal pace, touching the leg and not breaking the position when being rewarded, walking in a left-hand and right-hand circle, a figure of eight, passing distractions, anticipating the reward and being treated with right and left hand, recalling to heel from different directions at the start and end of each exercise. This list for a true expert in competitive obedience will go on for pages and pages, and lucky dogs being taught this way will have plenty to do and will hardly get bored neither will their handlers as they have to master absolute brilliance in each of the above micro-tests. Obviously, once you get involved in this sport, you might discover that all of the above does not even begin to describe the huge number of points you’d be training all individually trying to achieve that perfect heel position throughout your obedience round. Briefly, you might want to polish up the attitude of the dog being asked to walk passed the distraction and stay focused on the handler, work with and without food incentives in sight, and also food carried by the handler and/or laying about on the floor. You’d be working on prolonging your dog’s attention and consistency during, say, 10 or 15 minutes sessions as well as their, reaction to other dogs and people on the floor and doing the same outside and in. Many minute and hardly noticeable fluctuations will escape even some experienced minds, things like training a dog whilst it is being excited, and remaining calm and un-interesting as well as being near your dog when producing reinforcements as well as doing so from a few steps away. Verbal and non-verbal signals, stationary positioning with left (and later on - right) leg slightly bent, brought forward, lifted back etc.; straightening and changing angulations  both on the move and standing still, then alternating the two… I do not doubt that handfeeding just for the obedience round can be stimulating and intriguing for a dog, but how many of you, readers, are prepared to spend your time firstly getting into all of the above plus lots more, and then putting it all into practice having a professional understanding of what you are doing, and where to go from there?

And this is how we do it:

I guess developing the feeling when you just know that your dog is doing great takes time, and whether you are achieving it doing your obedience round, or teaching a silly vocabulary of rollover and jumps – you still know what to do and how it needs to look once it is all complete. But again – imagine the surprise of the newcomers being asked to go home and practice all the nuances of that positioning and heights of sitting when doing sit-stays… Send them home to do a hundred and one fancy exercises of crawl, paws and begs – and you will see how happy and inspired they will come back a week later to demonstrate the art of the challenges they remembered from all that “rubbish” you taught them a week before.

So I start with a “follow me” walk. A step or two forward and reward. You remember that we are talking about the feed rather that an extra-dietary treat or supplement – healthy stuff and not junk food!

A couple of “Twirls”. Fun! Fast and refreshing. Then the two together. Then the tugger game – feed – short stay and back into the heelwork. This time a step or two into it and walk about – 180 or 360 degrees turn around yourself, perhaps, a walk between your legs – throw the titbit on the floor, vary the direction of this. Start with the sit – beg – sit and wait. Feed-feed-feed for each of the steps on this routine.

Start with forward and back - walk towards you and back, feed for that, repeat (as we always do a few of those repeats on each step). Get the dog to follow you in a zigzag direction on the walk besides you forward, mild at first, but building up a speed as you go along. Get the dog’s head up and down by luring it where you want it to be. Speak to it, give all of the steps a name – you might, and most likely will, need them all at a later stage.

Try to watch the dog’s gait- is it pacing or trotting? You’ll probably struggle to get a dog galloping to heelwork if the dog is anything bigger than a pug or Pomeranian.

Incorporate all the speed variations into your routine as well as anything else you might think will help (or, rather, complicate it)!

Then I would probably reward myself with a hot drink and after wiping my hands clean sit and have a few biscuits and tea, but continue the work – while in your comfy chair. Try to send the dog from left to right, then into a sit on each side, turn them inwards and outwards when changing sides, and add the number of exercises for each reward – see how they cope with the job.  After all, they need to work for you – their meals are now earned bit by bit rather than given for free in the kitchen. We are already a hundred or something close to it of reinforcements and variations since we started the session a few minutes ago. And we will be running out of their meal soon enough – you will never spend too much time handfeeding, and if it exceeds 10-15 minutes for each meal – start giving a few kibbles together rather than just one at a time, or drop your standards – it doesn’t have to be a hard work at all! Have fun, speak to them, praise at will, and laugh as I am sure they will give you lots of reasons to!

If we need to continue – lets do a couple of “give me your paw”, come (stepping away and facing a dog, no other commands for that one), and I love putting “catch a biscuit” into this sequence a few times. In between the legs, back into the heel (or other side) stationary position, then try to teach the walk on the other side – I usually give it a name “side” or similar – again, the more variety, the more vocabulary – the better. The more interesting it is, the cleverer the dog will be in enabling you to teach more and lots faster as the time goes by. I love working with clever dogs, so the more “waste of time” exercises you teach, the more time saving this will give you in the long run. There’s no such a thing as wasting it really. Think of how many classes you spend your money on for your kids? Are they likely to become astronomers, historians or ballerinas? Well, some will, but we teach them the whole range, however gifted they are and whichever career you may wish them to pursue.

These dogs learn how great it is to work for their mum or dad. This is how you want your dog to think of you: “However stupid this command may sound, do it and enjoy the outcome. Not sure about it? Do not like the sound of it? Go for it anyway – has your mum ever lied about the good outcome? No, she didn’t! Has your dad encouraged you to use your own brain to figure out what to do? No, you just go with the flow, and take the hints from the person delivering your meal, they do the thinking, and somehow you seem to enjoy sticking to the doing.” This is the message.

There are tricks to get a dog to move into the parallel position whilst at heel and maintain it through the steps. Trainers adjust the dogs to following their shoulder line rather than knee or hands, and the heels / back of their foot to observe the parallel instead of making shortcuts on the turns. But it can, and always does once you start doing it, get far too complicated and just not comprehensive for a novice handler. (Or, perhaps, I am a bit behind in it myself?) Replace it with a little hop on a cue, insert a stop or a “look away” trick into it, educate a dog on moving its’ hind legs independently of the front - and you got it – a dog will try to be precise in doing whatever it does, and when eventually the handler masters the ring discipline – will immediately grasp the new skill necessary for the successful round in front of the competition judge.

So to summarize the above – 5 commands mixed around make  boring, monotonous training that is dull, un-inspiring and disinteresting. “Pick whatever you like” approach allows handlers to experiment, and create as challenging and colourful a routine as they wish, the more imagination put into it, the better.  Hundred or so tricks to do during a class, and to remember them all to take home and recite is  hard work, but thanks to the handouts and demo videos available on-line it is certainly doable, creative and individually adjustable. Like it – take it on-board, and if you don’t – just do not do it. There are plenty of alternatives. Sidesteps and pivot towards the handler may not be the stuff for a first-timer and not for the first lesson, but all the bows, catch and chase the biscuit – are, and it is great to teach things like this, just try it yourself – your dog is a few steps away from you, and instead of calling it back you sharply acknowledge that in a few seconds you two are going to be racing for the treat on the floor a few steps away from you but on the opposite side of you from the dog. Sharp – “Race you” and you two are on your way. Whoever gets it first keeps it. How many times do you think your dog will let you win and ignore the instruction? Not many. Better prospects and lots more fun than teaching recalls, but the meaning is nearly the same – you listen – you win! Do it faster – and the world is your oyster. Pose with your front paws on handlers arm in a sit or stand – get you a treat, do it with the lead on, and you have a problem of pulling when on leash flying out of the window. Teach words like “neck” or “tummy” with a subsequent touch – and treat that. You have yourself another bonding experience, top it up with a figure of eight in front of you and then between the legs hand-following, walk around (finish exercise) and two sets of twist and twirls again – and it a great fun combination that will still teach the compliance, accuracy, attention and focus.

A bit of homework recommended would be trying to put your mind to go through 30 different things your dog would do with you sitting in a chair. You may bribe (and bribery and corruption work like magic, believe me!) and you may use the cues already introduced – as long as you feel you are making progress. After all, there’s no cue for everything, but once you have taught your first 100 skills, the path to generalizing and basing your act on previous experiences should help you both. So, lure, observe the performance and reward, repeat and after a while put it on a cue – this is what you do with any skill / behaviour you are teaching. Done it? Great! Next time you practice, just pour yourself a cup of tea, turn your TV on and make your Corrie night not just about watching someone else’s adventures.

And the total recall: Dog Training as the way to solve problems is a search for a quick fix by lazy people who do not love their dogs. Take your ‘difficult’ dog into the sitting room, teach it to follow 50 silly instructions into 50 different positions and actions – and see if there’s anything left from the problem you were having previously. It is fun, it is creative, gentle on the dogs’ nervous systems and emotional sensitivity, and turns the dogs into little geniuses in no time. And you forget the reasons that brought the dog into the class to start with. What can be better?! No rules to follow, not much effort, no need to sound vicious or look dominant, and no need to get soaked when the weather is not nice on you. If I was a dog, I would thank you for taking the time to learn to be fun and stimulating and for finding a nice and gentle way to get me out of whatever problem I got myself into to start with.

Have fun! Lots of it!

D.Y.