The Ultimate Guide to Dog Training. Teoti Anderson
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puppies huddle together for warmth. They have touch-sensitive hairs, called vibrissae, above the eyes, on the muzzle, and below the jaw. The vibrissae can detect air flow. A dog’s entire body, including his paws, has touch-sensitive nerve endings.
Just because a dog can feel touch doesn’t mean that he finds all petting pleasurable. Individual dogs can develop individual preferences. For example, one dog may love having you scratch behind his ears while another will maneuver himself so you scratch his rear. Some dogs don’t really enjoy petting at all. They may not have been conditioned to find it a positive experience as puppies, or it may just be a personal preference.
Try This! Training Independent-Minded Dogs
Dogs have different personalities, unique to themselves. Some are naturally more independent-minded than others. Some breeds were even developed to work independently from people. The Great Pyrenees, for example, is a flock-guarding dog. His job is to live with a flock of sheep night and day, protecting them from danger. He isn’t supposed to wait for a farmer to tell him what to do. A Border Collie, on the other hand, gets his directions from the shepherd to tell him which way to move the sheep. Border Collies are bred to work more closely with people than Great Pyrenees.
Just because a dog is independent doesn’t mean that he is stubborn or “blowing you off.” It also doesn’t mean that you can’t train him. Training is all about the motivation. You just need to find a reward that appeals to your independent dog. Up the ante on the treats, using small pieces of chicken or steak, and keep training sessions extremely short, with very few repetitions. Your dog will soon learn that working with you is a positive experience.
Chapter 4: Accentuate the Positive!
Positive training based in science is powerfully successful. It works with all types of dogs, even those considered “stubborn” or “challenging.” It works great with fearful and shy dogs. It also works with big dogs, little dogs, puppies, seniors, bouncy dogs, and couch potatoes—this is because it follows the fundamental laws of learning. You can train any species using positive training. Many wild animal trainers use positive training to get large, potentially dangerous animals to perform behaviors. If they can train elephants to willingly offer their feet for care, or if they can train tigers to sit patiently for blood draws, then you can train your dog without using force or intimidation.
Here are some benefits to using positive training:
•You don’t have to rely on physical strength to train your dog. It doesn’t require you to muscle your dog into position or push or pull him to do what you want. It opens up training to a much broader range of people with different physical capabilities and enables them to train bigger dogs, too. It also means that your kids can train your dog (with supervision).
•It’s efficient. With positive training, sessions are very short. A couple of minutes are all you need for one session. Short sessions work best for dogs, especially young puppies with short attention spans! It’s also great for anyone with a busy schedule. You can always squeeze a couple of minutes in, and if you do that a few times a day, you’ll see great progress.
•It gets fast results. Your dog will look forward to your training sessions and be more engaged with you, so you’ll be able to teach him faster.
•You’ll get your dog to want to work for you, rather than be afraid to disobey you. This forges a strong relationship.
•It’s fun! Training your dog doesn’t have to be a chore. By using positive methods, you and your dog will both enjoy the learning experience.
Just because you use positive methods to train does not mean that you let your dog get away with whatever he wants. “Positive” does not mean “permissive.” You should establish rules and boundaries for your dog. You should have realistic expectations for his behavior and train him to work within those guidelines. You can absolutely do this and still train positively. You don’t have to be mean to your dog to teach him what you want him to learn.
Did You Know? The Penalties of Punishment
The laws of learning state that a behavior that is punished reduces in frequency. Punishment in training can work. The catch is, it can come with a lot of baggage. By using harsh, physical techniques to train your dog, you could create more problems than you’re trying to solve. For example, if you spank your dog for chewing on your shoe, he could start taking your shoes and hiding from you to chew them. You still end up with chewed shoes, except now it’s harder to catch your dog in the act. Or, he could get really frightened and start growling at you. Now you have an aggression problem, which is much worse—and harder to fix—than a chewed shoe.
Another problem with punishment is that it doesn’t teach your dog what you want him to do—only that you don’t like what he’s doing. For example, spanking your dog for chewing on your shoe doesn’t teach him that you want him to chew on his chew toys. So how is he supposed to learn what to do? You have to train him. It would be more effective to use a Leave It cue to get him to drop the shoe, and then give him one of his toys and praise him for chewing on that instead. You still get him to do what you want, and you avoid the potential negative side effects!
Understanding the Scientific Principles of Training
The positive training methods in this guide are based in science. They are based on learning theory from the works of psychologists, behaviorists, and more. If you’ve ever taken a psychology class, these principles may be familiar to you. Because these methods are based in science, they have held up time and time again to scientific scrutiny. They work. They work on any animal with a nervous system.
Scientists have used these training methods with laboratory animals—if an animal performs a task correctly, he gets a piece of food. The animal begins to perform the task correctly more frequently.
Wild animal and marine mammal trainers use these techniques. They teach performance behaviors, but, more and more, they are also training animals to perform husbandry behaviors that make it easier to care for the animals and attend to their medical care. Examples include teaching a whale to roll to an upside-down position so a technician can perform an ultrasound, teaching a wolf to hold still to receive treatment on an infected ear, and teaching a gorilla to willingly hold out an arm for an insulin shot.
Pet owners use these techniques as well. They work on birds, horses, dogs … and even cats. While there is a lot of science related to canine behavior, you primarily need to understand classical and operant conditioning to train your dog.
Many marine-animal trainers use positive training methods.
Classical Conditioning
Classical conditioning is the process of associating a neutral stimulus with an involuntary response until the stimulus triggers the response. A neutral stimulus is something that doesn’t mean anything. The dog does not associate anything with it. An involuntary response is something that an animal does naturally, without thinking. For example, if a dog sees food, he will start to salivate. This is an involuntary response. The dog doesn’t think about salivating, he just does it.
Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist, was the first to note the phenomenon of classical conditioning. He was studying digestion in dogs when he discovered that the dogs would start to salivate when his assistant entered the room. The dogs hadn’t been given food at that point, but they were still salivating. He theorized that salivation had become a learned response rather than an involuntary one. The dogs were salivating when they saw the assistant, with whom they had come to be associate food.
Pavlov then experimented with other neutral stimuli. He would activate a metronome right before presenting food to the dogs. The metronome meant nothing to the dogs, but after several repetitions of sounding the metronome right before the dogs received food, the dogs began to salivate at the sound of the metronome. The dogs had learned that the sound of the metronome meant that food was coming. The stimulus was no longer neutral; it became what’s called a “conditioned stimulus.” The conditioned stimulus now produced a “conditioned response”—the