You can teach everything using positive methods, but at some time they all have to learn that a command is an order, not a request. This is absolutley essential for safety. Imaging the dog who only obeys when there is nothing more interesing to do who suddenly starts running towards a busy main road!! A situation which does not bear thinking about.
Remember, you cannot tell a dog off for not complying if it does not know what you want, But if it it just thumbing it's nose at you then. . . . . . . . . .
thanks John yes she is TOTALLY aware of what is needed when she is told to down and has been doing it for months and months so i think I need to get a bit stricter with her.
Yes Carroll I did think of your trials and tribulations with Majic hehehe
They do sometimes get confused. Something which we have taught and which we think is cast iron in their mind, then because we, relax a bit, or maybe start to chain it with another command, or maybe train something else which gets confused with this in the dog's mind, it all goes to pot!
Never loose sight of the fact that our words mean nothing to our dogs. That our actions must convey everything. So when training something different, could our actions be mistaken for the actions we use for something else? Amy has just gone through a phase of believing that the recall whistle command is a stop command, even though the recall whistle was learned way way before starting on the stop. All because the stop started getting a bit woolly so I enforced it a couple of times. Nothing hard, just firm.
oh yes JOhn that makes sense maybe as I have been working hard on Rubys 'wait' and 'heel' which is always always given after the sit or down maybe she is confused with the down - hmmmm food for thought. So is the best thing to do just pratise downs with no link to anything else every day?
We've always done this too, and I'm completely convinced it's why we never had any drastic kevin moments!
The boy has never ever had a single treat, ball thrown, anything at all without doing something for it. Even when I do 'naughty' stuff like letting him lick a yoghurt pot he has to down/sit/give paw/touch hand/roll over etc etc. Everyone else has very strict instructions to do this too!
I'm sure she'll come around, I bet you'll be surprised at how quick it kicks in when you start, she's a clever girl!
I think Vicky, one of the things which devalues commands is the way we use them. In gundog work for example, a dog learns that obeying a command will help him/her achieve what he/she wants to do. As an example, if a dog finds when hunting for a dummy, that by stopping when the whistle is blown and going in the direction indicated by the handler, that he finds the dummy then two things are learned. 1/ That the handler knows best, and 2/ The commands are a positive thing rather than a negative. Look at it like this. Blowing the stop whistle could be seen by your dog as being a negative command, something which stops him from doing what he wants. But when he starts to realise that by obeying the whistle it actually helps him in his aim then it fast becomes a positive thing. So often though, a command has no positive. What positive can a dog find in a down stay for example? We see training books recommending calling the puppy at meal times so the reward for coming is the dinner, and OK, we start by doing just that. But later we say, "OK, Fido knows the command now!" so we don’t bother any more. But what if the dog, rather than knowing that the recall command means "Come to me." but thinks it means, "Dinner time!!!", but when he comes there is no dinner. . . . . . . . .
Do you see where I'm coming from? Dogs learn, but often we do not realise what we have been teaching!
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