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Posts from the ‘Dog Training Basics’ Category

Jul 25

Door Manners – Clicker training


This is a great video outlining the steps to improve your dog’s door manners. I have to admit my dogs are weak in this department. If the doorbell would ring right now…there would be chaos. Because we have a side door entrance we don’t get a lot of unplanned visitors. But the other day street pavers knocked on my door to ask me to move my car. It was early in the morning and I wasn’t thrilled with the mayhem that followed. Delilah needs the most work. She definitely has doorbell anxiety and a piercing bark that goes well with surprise visits. The good news is we are partway there -I have done a lot of work teaching her to go to her crate from a distance. Now I need to work on pairing the sound (doorbell) with the action of going to her crate. The best part is that with the Manners Minder, she can be rewarded right in her crate without me having to walk over there.

Jul 12

Resource Guarding between Dogs

Toby Beagle freezes, he shifts his eyes back and forth while hovering over his prize. Right now it’s a water bowl. Later it may be a discovered half eaten tennis ball. Toby Beagle does not like to share. I want Emma (my new employee) to see these signs. They are subtle to an untrained eye.  First I must clarify that Toby beagle does not guard from humans. He relinquishes objects easily when I place my hand near him. But he makes it clear that he’s not sharing with his furry playmates, especially puppies – his prime target. So when Toby beagle is out for a walk I’m on puppy patrol – the last thing I want for is for Toby to teach any puppy a lesson. Prevention and management are your best friends when dealing with this type of problem behaviour. I’m never going to teach Toby to feel comfortable giving up his toy to puppies, but I can manage the situation so he doesn’t feel threatened that it’s going to get stolen. For some dogs, toy objects have the same value as a food object. We wouldn’t expect dogs to happily share their cookies so we shouldn’t be surprised when dogs guard objects as well.
At a recent holiday in a boarding facility Toby gave a puppy a puncture wound. It didn’t require vet attention. Situations like these put me in a bad spot. It didn’t happen in my care, but it did happen. Should Toby beagle be walked in a group if he is capable of injuring a puppy? I have to trust in my handling skills that I can prevent this. And for those cases when a 100 lb toy-stealing lab comes by, I will have a muzzle ready. I wish I could say one strike and he’s out, but in matters of dog walking giving chances isn’t something you can afford to do. So if at any point I feel like management is too hard, I will find him a walker that keeps his crew on leash and steers clear of the park.

Jun 25

Scadding Court Community Centre

This community centre opened its doors to dogs for 3 days this week. The pool had been turned into a place for kids to learn about fishing (they put salmon in it) and before they emptied it they decided to give dogs a chance to swim. My friend Christine brought Utah and I brought Delilah and we decided to test it out. Fun! It took a while but D figured out how to jump in and use the ramp. As expected, Utah, the golden retriever had no trouble!

May 19

2 Comments

Karen Pryor comes to town….

Trainers at When Hounds Fly posing with Karen Pryor. From left to right: myself, Mirkka Koivusalo, Karen Pryor, Andre Yeu and Emily Fisher

After Karen Pryor presented at the PABA conference she made her way over to Andre’s school, When Hounds Fly where 10 of us had the good fortune of having dinner with her. To sit down with a pioneer of force-free training is seriously an honor. Even though dinner was delicious, I was so focused on listening to every word Karen was saying it was hard to eat. And when one of the other 10 guests chimed in, and I learned about how that person is making a difference in animals lives -it was very inspiring.

Some of the guests were local KPA (Karen Pryor Academy) graduates. Others, like Emily and I, came to clicker training on our own path and are now teaching classes. But whether it’s working with horses, running chicken camps, studying canine cognition, teaching group classes or competing in dog sports – all of us are committed to training animals based on the science of learning.

Of course the conversation kept going back to the struggles we face as positive trainers up against those that subscribe to dominating dogs, and inducing pain through shock collars and prong collars. It’s so frustrating!!!

Around 50 years ago Karen Pryor discovered that the best way to train dolphins was with operant conditioning. Nothing has changed since then. Her most famous book, Don’t Shoot The Dog was intended to so people could learn to apply the science-based literature to train humans and animals. Now Karen Pryor Academy is teaching students all across North America the principles of clicker training.

Dinner with Karen was a huge success. Thanks to Andre we were all brought together to continue Karen’s mission – to change the world one click at a time.

Apr 26

5 Comments

I ordered a Manners Minder


A Manners Minder is a device that spits out cookies by remote control. I’m looking forward to trying it out to solve one of Delilah’s problem behaviours. When my husband (B) unlocks the door and comes in, Delilah gets extremely anxious. Not sure why. It’s been going on for a really long time. I’ve tried desensitizing her to the sound of the open door. I’ve tried counterconditioning her to B coming home. I’ve tried teaching her an appropriate alternative behaviour -running to her crate. Nothing seems to work. If I’m home, B sends me a text that he’s home and as when she hears the door open, she gets a kong with a cookie -this works well. But the prob is when I’m not home or when I’m sleeping. Now I happen to have one of those husbands, that enjoys staying out really late. So when he comes home at 3:30 am and I get woken up by a piercing bark, it’s really hard to fall back asleep. This is where the manners minder comes in. So just as B opens the door he needs to activate the manners minder. Hopefully this will divert Delilah’s attention to cookies and let me sleep peacefully. I will keep you posted how it works. I actually think it will work well for Delilah. Now if I can count on B to activate the remote after a night of drinking…that’s another story!

Apr 13

1 Comment

Nanny 911 for dog training?

My neice Lotus sharing some quality time with her pug Olive

When I watch Nanny 911 my husband scowls. “We don’t have kids, why are you watching that? Explaining to my him that I watch Nanny 911 because I’m fascinated by behavior modification seems far fetched. But the truth of the matter is, there’s nothing to learn from watching the dog training shows as they are typically about bullying dogs through punishment which is not a strategy I practice.
When I turn the channel to Nanny 911 – no choke chains allowed, these nannies have to resort to using their brain to help modify children’s bad behavior – what a concept! The strategies they use to improved they dynamics in the house include providing exercise, mental stimulation, reinforcing good behaviours, and setting a healthy routine – just to name a few. Now this is a show I can relate to.

But my husbands words resonated in me and I always felt like the nanny shows were some sort of guilty pleasure, until I read Gillian Ridgeway’s excellent article As seen on TV . In reference to dog training shows on tv, Gillian remarks, “You don’t see pop up windows on Super Nanny, which would be a better show to watch for lessons on modifying behaviors in general.”
Thanks Gillian. My thoughts exactly. Time to go PVR my show. I can now watch Nanny 911 guilt-free because I’m learning.

Apr 8

Go to your Mat

This video is an excellent demonstration of  teaching your dog to go to his or her mat. ‘Go To Your Mat’ is a fundamental dog training skill and should be one of the first skills every puppy learns. Get a mat for your dog, grab a chair, some treats and your clicker. Start training. This one is fun, easy and so useful!!!

Mar 14

Putting a Dog’s Unwanted Behavior on Cue

In Karen Pryor’s book, Don’t Shoot The Dog, she describes how by putting an unwanted behavior on cue, you can get rid of that behavior. This video is an excellent demonstration of this principle.

Mar 12

1 Comment

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in a Puppy

Delilah loves when her boyfriends sleep over.

I’ve often thought that bad training is better than no training. If owners took a correction style group class, I figured – oh well, they didn’t know better, but at least they tried. I stand corrected. No training is better than correction training.Today I got a chance to see a puppy suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder caused by a severe correction. The owner had called in a trainer to help with his resource guarding. The trainer that they called had, as the owner put it,  ’a real alpha grab-by-the-scruff-of-the-neck approach.’ So how did she deal with the dog guarding this bone? He got a severe correction. Really severe.

Today we had our first lesson. Fortunately, the owner was wise enough to realize that severe corrections weren’t a necessary part of training for any dog, never mind a 6-month puppy. We worked with the bone. I sat down next to him, let him lick the bone and then exchanged for a treat. We worked for a while, building up to the point where he could eat the bone for 10-20 seconds and then exchange. At some points he had a stiff body and a tight mouth, but it didn’t take long to convince him that if he gave up his bone, he was going to get something better. As his final reward, I recommended we put the bone in his crate and let him finish it. Well that stimulated fear in this little guy like you wouldn’t believe. Being left alone with this bone stirred up some intense emotions. He backed up as far away from the bone as possible, wouldn’t eat it and looked like he had was completely frustrated -scratching at his bed, whimpering, and doing everything to avoid the bone. The owner explained to me that left alone with the bone he’s terrified to eat it. This little guy was so confused and stressed. Well I guess the trainer did her job, never mind the resource guarding, she stopped the dog from eating bones altogether. Good job lady.

Sadly, I know this trainer. When I was 16 I took my malamute to a group class in a secondary school and she was the instructor. Even after all these years she’s still set in her evil ways and infecting other people with her abusive techniques, like a bad virus. I wonder how long it’s going to take for us to convince the little guy that bones are safe and build up his confidence. The only comfort is that now he’s in better hands.

Feb 24

2 Comments

Learning and being humbled all in the same breath

I was telling another trainer the other day that I believe all professional dog trainers stumble through a series of phases in their training career ranging from highly confident inexperienced trainer (they have no idea how little they know), to highly experienced trainer that’s not very confident (they realize they have a lot to learn), and then reaching the category of experienced trainer, moderately confident, that gets humbled daily by challenging dogs. So what is this about? After I took my first 3 month dog training course – I adopted the ‘we can train any dog’ slogan to sell my business. That’s now changed to “I can probably train your dog if you practice and do enough sessions” – not the best sales pitch but I’ve never been very business minded. This theory stems from the philosophy the more you know, the more your realize the less you know. When you open your mind to the science of animal learning you can get lost in the complexity. I had a few aha moments this week when I listened to the Behaviour chains online telecourse with Kathy Sdao offered by the Animal Behavior Associates and realized that I had a few bad behaviour chains working against me in dogs I walk and my own dogs . Then I ordered an ebook on targeting and realized damn! I shouldn’t have thrown out my reebok step – it would of made a great training platform. I signed up for another tele-course with Kathy Sdao on Cueing because why not, I love her. So now that I’ve been training for 8 years and spent more money books and education than I’ve probably made, I think I’m in that experience trainer, mildly confident and humbled category which means I’m never again going to say, “we can train any dog!” Just don’t tell my clients.

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