Teaching Dog Commands

A word about dog commands and obedience... Dog commands can lead to obedience, but commands are a very small part of dog training. Your dog is watching you all the time (not just outside while you have a long lead and a few treats) reading your body language and WIIFM (What's In It For Me). If what you are doing is of no interest to your dog, he is not going to be interested. It's that simple.

If you ask for the dog command SIT, which has no relevence for your dog, he is not going to be interested in sitting. If you offer your dog payment (a treat) for sitting, he is going to be interested. In fact, if you pay him each time he sits he will sit over and over again because sitting has acquired WIIFM value. Any dog command you want your dog to perform must offer him wonderful WIIFM value.

Shouldn't dog commands be done because he was bred to please me? I know this seems logical, but in reality no one (not even us humans) do things without WIIFM value. Humans are more complicated about WIIFM than dogs. We do things like volunteer at the animal shelter because it makes us look good to other people. It's not wrong, it's just how humans are motivated. Dogs never make good volunteers because they always want to be paid. Hey, you got food? Cool. Can I have it? Sit. Okay, I'll sit. Can I have another one?

How about the word NO. No means stop doing that. If I say NO to one of my dogs and they stop doing whatever it is I wanted them to stop, that works for me. At my house, NO is a natural reaction for me so I turned it into the cue to stop. NO is not a dog command I use very often. It's an emergency word for me because I would say it naturally in certain situations.

The other half to the word NO is...Whatever you want it to be, but make it fun and positive for your dog. You have to give your dog something positive (chew toy, treat, tennis ball) to do after you use the word NO or NO can turn into punishment. You don't want your dog to look at the word NO as punishment, you want him to stop what he's doing and look at your for that really fun thing he gets to do afterwards.

What about the dog command DOWN. I rarely use it because it necessary in the whole scheme of training sled dogs. You can teach it as a trick of course! When training DOWN, lure your dog into a down position by putting a treat in your hand. Take your hand with the treat and lower your hand to the floor directly between your dogs front legs. If you put the treat too far out front your dog will have to walk to the treat and he won't give a DOWN. The moment your dogs elbows touch the ground give him the treat. Do this so your dog can go down 5 times in a row.

Stay is what I use when I need to walk away from my dogs and I want them to STAY where they are. For me, STAY as important as COME.

Teaching STAY.

Stand just a few inches from your dog and offer him a treat. BEFORE he moves a single foot give him the treat. Now hold the treat for ONE SECOND (no longer at this point). If your dog doesn't move for one second, give him the treat. When your dog can hold his position for one second 5 times in a row, ask for 3 seconds (rewarding every time he keeps all 4 feet in one spot for three seconds). When your dog can stand still for 3 seconds 5 times in a row. Most people get the STAY wrong because they ask their dog to STAY for much longer than the dog is ready. You would train for a marathon by running 26.2 miles in one day. Don't ask your dog to hold his position for more than a few seconds at a time in the beginning.

If you're a visual learner like I am, you'll get all these concepts from this excellent DVD.

Teaching COME

COME is easy - as long as you make it worth your dogs while! Get a bag of tasty treats (I mean THE GOOD STUFF). Keep your long line on your dog. Start slowly running the opposite way of your dog (not so fast that you have to tug on the leash - go in a circle if you have to). Your dog should naturally follow you (if he's a properly socialized dog - scared dogs are not ready for this). When he reaches you offer him several of those tasty treats.

The reason COME seems so difficult for people is because of distractions. Distractions are things that take your dogs attention from you - and distractions are perfectly normal to your dog! Always practice the dog command COME in an enclosed environment at first. Don't move from one environment (such as your backyard to the dog park) until your dog has a rock solid COME in your backyard first. If your dog doesn't really get it in the back yard and you take hime to the park you will have set him up to fail.

What Not To Do If you chase your dog, yell at your dog, hit your dog, jerk on the collar, jerk on the leash, push your dog to the ground, or throw things at him you will teach your dog to fear you. A dog that fears you will not COME to you, especially when you really need him to COME. Occassionally, by sheer coincidence your dog may COME to you under one of the circumstances I mentioned. The problem is that coincidence does not turn into reliable behavior. Reliable behavior means just that - you say the dog command COM and he comes.

Training Tip Try a training session using only hand signals. Dogs do not inherently understand our voice. Remember the teacher in Charlie Brown? That's what we sound like to dogs. Dogs become conditioned to our voice and inflections. If we reward our dogs when they dog something right, they will understand that when our voice sounds a certain way, good things happen for them. BUT, dogs learn to read all our body signals. In fact we are communicating withour body signals much more than we realize. If you pair your voice with a body signal your dog might be paying attention to a body signal much more than your voice.

You would be surprised at how much clearer you can communicate to your dog without your yapper...yappin'! You will also be surprised how repeating words does NOT get the behavior any faster. If you want a fast dog command response you have to do several repetitions, you must reward your dog with indelible treats, and you must move ahead in slow predictable steps.

Approach dog training in the same way you would teach your Grandfather how to use email. Your Grandfather is a smart guy, he's an engineer, but he grew up in a time before computers and they are foreign new to him. You have to show him every single step. He must understand how to turn on the computer, connect to the internet, open a browser, and navigate to his email server. Then he has to learn how to type in the login and password or he won't be able to learn to use email. If you skip any steps he will be lost and he won't be able to email. Dog training is the same way. When you skip steps, your dog gets lost and can't do what you are asking.

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