Does your dog KNOW it?

What does "knowing" what something means mean anyhow?

Does your dog know to respond to a "command" (certain cue or set of cues)?

Do you know what that sign at the edge of the road with the numbers and the kph letters at the side of the road means?

You know that you should obey traffic laws but do you always abide by them? Sometimes you are distracted and may not have noticed the last sign you passed. You may be in a rush to get somewhere and "misbehave" because it is important to you at that moment. You may not really remember details such as what hours playground speed limits are in effect. Your speedometer may be out of adjustment or you may not have looked at it! Or you may simply choose to break some laws because (choose one) there are never police around anyhow, school is out today, everyone else is speeding, etc.... Even if there is a chance of "punishment" (speeding ticket) you are likely to risk it because it is important to you (getting to work faster and on time) and history has shown that most of the time it is worth continuing with your habits. You only slow down when you know there is a speed trap.

Your dog will continue to get on the couch because it is instantly comfortable and worth the risk ... he only gets off when you are around. What does he know? Different set of cues! Another dog may not find the couch so tempting because they are less motivated by soft and comfy ... not because they know they shouldn't be on there.

Does your dog know what "sit" means when you are holding a cookie? When you have no cookie? When you are standing in front of him? When you are sitting on a chair or lying down on the floor and asking for a sit? When he is in the middle of wrestling with a dog buddy? When he is lying down? When you are wearing your Halloween costume? When you have strong perfume on and are wearing odd high heeled shoes on that make you walk different than usual?

Humans consider themselves to be the intelligent species and yet we seem to expect our dogs to abide by standards stricter that those we set for ourselves! Interesting eh!?!

Whether a dog (or a human) responds to a cue (signal, command, painted line, etc) depends on many things. Cues are often a combination of verbal, visual and environmental signals. Your dog may know "sit" in the kitchen with you standing upright and holding the food bowl but to him it is a completely different cue than when you ask him to sit when he wants to greet your guests. Dogs don't generalize learning very well. If we want them to learn what "sit" means in different contexts we must train them.

Training. That's a whole book in itself but in brief ... repeatedly setting up situations in which your dog will perform a behaviour, reinforcing it and then rinse, lather and repeat. Then behind the ears. Then the backside. In the early stages of acquiring a behaviour use lots of reinforcements. Gradually move to intermittent reinforcements and then to a variable schedule of reinforcement. Always mix it up with praise, toys, games, and life rewards. Practice in different locations and situations until each behaviour is generalized. Slowly add duration and distraction and difficulty one at a time. Over time the dog will respond out of habit because is has proven to be beneficial in the past! It was worth gambling on. It has become a well trained behaviour and then we could say he knows it ... well, maybe in most situations anyhow.

So yes, you do have to put in some time if you want your dog to learn the things that you want him to learn.

And ponder this ... once you really do know something ... you can't "un-know" it. Like when you form a bad habit then it is very hard to change. So make sure your dog doesn't learn some of those undesirable habits that once you know the outcome of them, you can't unlearn or un-know them. Prevent incidental learning by management because once your dog has learned how to knock over the garbage to have a smorgasbord it will be hard to resist that temptation again! So having your garbage secured at ALL times, etc....... but that's for another blog entry...



We offer training workshops -- dogs or puppies!
http://pawinhand.blogspot.com/p/step-one.html

Here is a training chart that Katherine and I made up to help you plan your training in gradual steps (slowly increasing distraction, duration, and difficulty)
* sorry, link coming soon ... will be on my website under "Stuff to Sniff": www.pawinhand.com

Simple but good general training article:
http://www.sdhumane.org/site/DocServer/BT_K9-Secrets_of_Dog_Training.pdf?docID=600

The Other End Of The Leash - by Patricia B. McConnell Ph.D. (available at the Squamish Public Library or from www.dogwise.com