Category: Training Games+Exercises

Finding the time to train your dog can be difficult and frustrating. Consistency and deliberate practice are the largest predictors of success in training, but sometimes it can be a challenge to find that quality one on one time to work with your dog on behavioural goals. We hear you!

Although classrooms are great places for dog’s to learn (such as puppy class), the real practice for everything taught in class is found in your home and neighbourhood. One hour of practice a week, crammed into a busy Saturday will do little for your dog, therefore breaking up your training into small bits throughout the week is the best course of action if improvement is your goal.

Training sessions should be short, successful and productive. Your dog should enjoy the session and you should keep the ‘momentum’ of their success relatively high. In other words, the session should be all about the dog ‘winning’ or succeeding at the desired skill you are training. For example, if you are practicing Sits in your home, your dog should be enjoying the session, fully engaged and performing the behaviour at least 8 times out of 10 repititions.

Training sessions should also be frequent, since your dog is essentially learning a new ‘skill’ that will be used in your day to day life. In order for the behaviour to stick and to be ‘proofed’, repetitions are going to be an unavoidable part of your routine with your dog. This is where people tend to struggle. Like any skill (even the ones humans need to learn), if it is not integrated properly into our routine and it is not fun, following through with a training plan can be a big challenge….so we have created a little tip and training game just for you to try!

A simple way to implement training into your daily routine is to use your dog’s meal times as training times. This rule is called Work to Eat, but it doesn’t necessarily mean your dog has to work for their entire meal or at a specific time – do what works best for your schedule. Some options for your training sessions could be:

• Train early in the morning around breakfast for 5 minutes, and at dinner time for 5 minutes before feeding your dog the rest of their meal
• Use the entire meal for training, followed by some play time
• Feed half of your dog’s meal through training, the other half through a treat dispensing puzzle or mental stimulation toy (need ideas? check out our post here)
• Practice training games that are fun and keep learning interesting for you and your dog

By switching your dog’s meal times to training times (even if it is just for 5 minutes) you will create a dog who is eager, motivated and interested in working with you consistently, making your training schedule a breeze!

The Game

The Set Up

This game involves rewarding focus and direct eye contact, in addition to impulse control. It also involves rewarding the dog at a distance from you (from the bowl to be exact). If your dog loves and recognizes their food bowls (most do) this one will be great for you to try as it requires offering a behaviour before being allowed to feed from their bowl!

• For Novice dogs, keep a leash on them for this game. For intermediate dogs or more advanced options, try having your dog off leash.
• Set up your food bowl about 2 feet in front of you, and get your dog to sit next to you in heel position (close to your left leg or right leg).
• Grab a piece or two of kibble from your pocket, and toss the food into the bowl ahead of you. Your dog will naturally stare, or pull towards the food. This is where your leash comes in handy (if your dog is a Novice) or your impulse control is tested (if your dog is advanced)
• The goal is to have your dog look at you for 5 seconds. Despite the temptation of the reward in front of them, they are focusing on YOU. Once your dog has performed the desired skill, mark the behaviour and release them to take their food from their bowl!
• Repeat this for 5 minutes and see how quickly your dog catches on!

Extra Tips

New dogs or young puppies will naturally spend more time staring at the food in front of them than you – this is ok! Try not to coax them to look at you; we want them to problem solve. If they are on leash, hold the leash back and wait for them to become bored with staring and glance at you. Mark and reward this and build the skill!

Meal times can be great training opportunities if we get creative and enjoy the process of learning rather than dreading it!

Happy Training

Putting It All Together!

Once you have started training your dog to engage and focus on you during your walks, you can really start to tackle the moments in which your dog pulls!

Up until now we have encouraged you to work on engagement and capturing your dog’s focus during specific and short ‘training walks’. The premise of this is to introduce an incompatible behaviour to pulling. Instead of waiting for them to pull and becoming frustrated with their inattention, we advocated for a proactive training plan that works on gaining their focus and engagement quickly.

To be successful in these training sessions, structuring your walk in a specific way is helpful so that your dog does not become reinforced by their environment – which can be in the form of any smells, sights and other dogs that they may pull towards. This means that some walks during this process may solely be focused on teaching behaviours and rewarding your dog’s good choices.

An example?

If you are walking your dog and they pull you towards a tree, gaining their focus by saying their name, and moving in the other direction for a few steps will help your dog ‘snap out of it’ and redirect their focus upon you. This momentum gives your dog the opportunity to re-engage with you and offer you a behaviour you find more appealing such as eye contact, and a loose lead. Once they offer it to you, you can easily facilitate a reward through ‘sniffing’ the area they were curious of in the first place (such as a fire hydrant or a tree).

Practicing this can be tricky, which is why we have created a little drill for you to try below in our video! If you are missing pylons feel free to use any visual landmark for your dog. Trees, flowerpots, chairs or benches in parks are great options and you can make the drill as easy or as challenging as you like!

For beginners, a straight line may be best to start with and for more advanced dogs you may want a zig-zag or attempt a similar pattern in the video.

If you have practiced focus and engagement with your dog, they should find this exercise fun, and not overly challenging in a semi-familiar environment. If you have not practiced and find this very challenging, we would recommend you go back to those previous drills for capturing focus and engagement and build up your dog’s capacity to look at you on a walk.

The premise is simple: If your dog is capable of looking at you and checking in with you, then you should have a fail safe mechanism to get your dog away from pulling you left right and centre on a walk!

By practicing this set up on your outings, you set your dog and yourself up for success in multiple ways. Firstly, you start to teach your dog that pulling you towards things no longer works for them. They must ‘check in with you’ first. Second, you begin to ask for a series of behaviours consistently – focus, check ins and eye contact are helpful tools in training and the more you practice, the more your dog will understand they are a requirement of ‘outdoor’ time rather than an option. Finally, you start to change your own behaviour so that your dog succeeds. You start to bring hot dogs in your pockets, or a small treat pouch. You start to be consistent about walking and perhaps you start to enjoy it more because your dog is a little bit more manageable than a week ago, and you can see steady progress.

Ultimately, we want them to have access to the world through calm behaviours, and we want to enjoy our walks – but the only way to get there is to be consistent, realistic and follow a solid training plan.

Happy Training!

Socialization is an important aspect of raising a puppy. We all want well rounded, social dogs…but is it just the process of socializing that creates a well rounded dog, or can we do more to ensure we are creating positive associations with our dogs and how they feel about the world?

To begin, we think it is important to be clear on what socialization is. Socialization is the process by which we expose our dogs to stimulus in various environments. The purpose of this exposure is to create a positive association with the world and in doing so hopefully avoid behavioural issues. The most misunderstood part of socialization, however, is that simply exposing our dogs to things such as other dogs,  people, children or cats doesn’t always lead to a confident, well adjusted dog. For example, a puppy could be well socialized to dogs when young, and later in life develop aggression or fear reactive tendencies towards other dogs. Likewise, a dog that has been around people all of its young adult life could develop fearfulness towards strangers. The point these illustrations make is that socialization does not always mean behavior will change for the better. Rather, it is the way that we go about making positive associations for our dogs that has the greatest impacts on behaviour.

THE DOWNSIDE TO SOCIALIZATION

Rather than just exposing your dog to environments and people, you want socializing your dog to be a training process. You want your dog to learn to be confident in new environments and not overwhelmed by them. A good example? If you bring your dog to the local pet store for a treat, your dog will likely be very excited and less focused on you, and although you are socializing her to the sights and smells and sounds of the store, if you are not doing anything to mitigate her behavior you are also allowing poor associations to be made with the store in general. This is the downside to socializing without a plan – excitement, over stimulation and over arousal all impede learning and too much exposure to new stimuli can actually cause more damage than good – in the form of flooding.

WHAT IS FLOODING AND HOW DOES IT IMPACT TRAINING?

Flooding is a behavioural term that describes ‘information overload’ in our dogs. Flooding happens  when we expose dogs to a stimulus at a very high intensity for a period of time, often causing the dog to cease responding to the stimulus (68, Barlow-Tick). In our previous example of your dog in a pet store, this would mean we would bring her into the store and keep her there until she was bored with it – which could take a while for most dogs! In between that span of time, your dog could easily urinate in the store, lunge at others, bark nonstop and steal a few treats. This is a problem!

Not only because your dog is misbehaving, but we have set up a poor environment for learning. How can she learn with all of that excitement, and even more importantly – is she enjoying and learning anything from this experience that will promote good behavior later on in life?

Flooding causes bad coping skills, which is the exact opposite of what we want. It causes poor responses because the dog is so overwhelmed that they can’t make good choices – including those that say “this is a good experience”. Often times, dogs simply ‘shut down’ and stop responding to the stimulus altogether. This may appear to some as a ‘well behaved dog’ but it is not; it is simply a dog who is overwhelmed. Alternatively you could have a dog that is fearful and shy around these environments and that would be creating an equally stressful scenario. Humans are also susceptible to flooding! Ever scroll through Netflix for an hour, trying to decide what to watch? Have you been on a vacation to Disney World and just felt overwhelmed rather than excited?

Instead of frantic excitement or uncertainty, we want to teach our dogs to be as neutral as possible – we call this trait ‘stable’. A stable dog in a new environment is curious but controlled. Not a whole lot should spook them or surprise them, and they should be confident in their environments. A good example is if you have ever seen a dog who hangs out at your local vet office, or your groomers parlor. They are likely calm and confident in the environment and don’t rush to greet every person who walks through the door.

HOW CAN WE SOCIALIZE WITH TRAINING?

Socialization should be carried out with the intention of rewarding good behavior and with boundaries in place. This means that the process shouldn’t always involve the dog interacting with every person, dog or animal they meet. There should be clear training expectations such as:

-Are they allowed to pull towards people or jump on them?

-Are they allowed to greet other animals without waiting politely first?

If not, then be prepared to manage your dog appropriately or train alternate behaviours.

We also want the dog to be confident and curious of his or her surroundings – but not so excited that they can’t think, learn or focus on us so choose your environments wisely. Start easy, such as your street or local park before building it up to the pet store or vet office.

We have created a little exercise for you to follow to make this as easy as possible!

EXERCISE

In your chosen environment, have your dog on a leash and allow her to explore the area on her own.

• Let her sniff and walk where she wishes and allow her to look around. Your dog should be at a distance from people or other dogs but still able to view them. Your dog should exhibit curiosity and interest but should not be so overwhelmed they are barking, whining or pulling you, or jumping at others. They should also not continuously stare at distractions without breaks.

• There is no obedience expectation in this exercise but you will reward your dog for remaining calm, and for offering you small glances or instances of focus on you. This is what you want more of later on as she grows, so you want to be sure to capture this behaviour as it happens.

• When time permits and you have practiced the above exercise in locations that are close to home and quiet, take your dog to a location that is more challenging but that can still give you space to move around; an open field is a good option.  

• Put your dog on leash and have higher value rewards with you. Take your dog and allow her to explore the area with her senses (nose and eyesight). Once again our only goal is to ensure she does not react or freeze at sounds, and that she can return to you to receive her food reward. If she is checking in with you frequently by offering glances and eye contact, awesome! Reward that. The goal here is to have her enjoy exploring and increase her confidence in her surroundings – which will be incrementally more difficult as you practice.

WHAT TO WATCH OUT FOR

– If your dog is stressed out, panting, whining or trying to climb up your leg, end the training session and leave the scenario. Consider contacting a reputable trainer (or message us!) for help. Do not force a fearful dog into a scenario they are rejecting.

– If your dog is excited, over stimulated and uncontrollable, remove them from the scenario and gain some distance. For example, if you are at a pet store or a busy park and your dog is too close to others; move back to a more quiet location and practice this drill there.

– Keep your sessions of exposure short but frequent. The goal is to have a good response to novel objects and scenarios. Not to continue to expose the same things to the dog.

Does this mean no one can pet your dog, or your dog can’t meet another dog? Of course not. These are good experiences too, but the exercise laid out above gives your dog structure in the way they interact with the world and helps build their confidence too!

Happy Training

Looking for a fun and quick way to get some training done in your busy day? Try this little game!

Pick three behaviours your dog needs to improve on – for example, sit, down, and a leave it.

Choose a quiet area to train, such as your home or your yard. Don’t pick heavily distracting environments unless your dog is advanced and you are proofing behaviours in a specific area (if you don’t know what this means – practice at home!)

Use three pylons or visual markers in your chosen training zone and use these markers as ‘stations’ to practice 3 repititons of each behaviour noted above.

Repeat the Circuit 3 times – if you are a gym junkie, you know how this works! If you aren’t simply repeat the pattern (which will follow a triangle!)

Example : Practice 3 Sits, move along to your second pylon/visual marker, and practice 3 Downs, move along to the third marker and practice 3 Leave It’s. Repeat this pattern three times, following the shape of a triangle.

Need a visual to help you out? We have you covered

Before you know it, you are done! This training exercise is easy, simple and requires minimal time and effort. It allows you to narrow down the behaviours you are working on and gets your dog interested and excited to work with you – which is our ultimate goal.

Some tips to ensure success:

– Make sure you are working in an environment your dog can succeed in (so if this means starting at home, so be it!)

– Make sure you are working at the level your dog can succeed at  (so if this means you are luring a SIT, then do it! Do not spoil your verbal cues by repeating them or using them too early – it creates more work for you so don’t do it. If you have a second person watching you train, have them call you out when you repeat yourself. We do it without thinking and this will help you clean up your training naturally)

– This game is meant to be fast to benefit you and to get your dog engaged with you – don’t fail them by not having treats or your clicker and appropriate gear ready. A large part of the success of training is ensuring the environment is set for learning.

Give it a go and let us know how it went!

Happy Training