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The key to successful dog training

1. Learning new behaviours
2. Generalisation of learned behaviours
3. Discrimination of cues
4. Reliability of learned behaviours
5. Fluency

Let’s take a closer look at these steps:

1. Learning New Behaviours

During this step your dog learns a new behaviour. The learning step is divided in two sub-steps: getting the behaviour and introducing the cue.

During the “get the behaviour” sub-step, your dog actually learns a new behaviour. However, no cue is associated with that particular behaviour. For instance, your dog learns to sit when you lure him in to a sit position with a treat in your hand. Initially the lure held in your hand is the cue for him to sit, but the lure is faded quickly, it is not the final cue you will use to request him to sit.

Once you get the behaviour - for instance, when your dog sits frequently, you introduce the verbal cue “sit”. In other words, you must teach the behaviour before the cue is added.

If you introduce the cue before your dog understands the behaviour you want, he could get confused and associate the cue with a different behaviour. This is why you have to introduce the cue after your dog has learned the new behaviour.

2. Generalisation of learned behaviours

Generalisation is the process that teaches your dog to respond in the same way to a particular stimulus under different circumstances. This means your dog will perform a particular behaviour on cue whether he is in your house, at the park, at the beach or wherever. Moreover, he will respond to your cues even if there are strong distractions, such as other dogs, food, squirrels running away, etc.

To generalise a behaviour, the behaviour must be trained before (of course!). Then, that particular behaviour must be practised in different environments and under several conditions. In broad terms, generalisation consists of retraining each learned behaviour in different environments and under different circumstances.

You must start the generalisation of behaviours in a setting that is familiar to your dog and with no distractions around. Then, still in a familiar setting, you gradually increase the distractions. Small distractions, such as moving your arms slowly, jumping up and down, are the best ones to start with at this step.

It is also a good idea to vary your body position when giving cues so that your dog does not inadvertently pick up on a particular body position as a cue (unless it is of course intentional). So for example, give your dog the cue to sit while you are turned sideways, while kneeling, while sitting, etc.

Then build in more distractions such as a person walking around, rolling toys along the floor, noises, and unusual sounds. Take care not to increase the level of distractions too quickly, make sure your dog is performing on cue frequently before adding more distractions. If you feel your dogs response has decreased, then simply go back a level with the distractions before moving forward again.

Once you have done this in a familiar setting, then start retraining in a new environment with a very low level of distractions, and again gradually build the level of distractions. You want to aim to repeat this process in as many different settings as possible, and under various conditions.

3. Discrimination of commands

Discrimination is the opposite of generalisation. In the discrimination step, your dog learns to perform the requested behaviour even when he knows many other behaviours. In other words, if you ask for a sit, your dog must sit instead of lie down.

If your dog gets confused with different requests then he has not achieved the discrimination step. So, if your dog sits when you ask him to lie down, then he has not yet discriminated between “Sit” and “Down”. Some trainers think this is disobedience. Don’t make that mistake, this situation is not caused by disobedient or stubborn dogs; it is caused by confused dogs.

4. Reliability of learned behaviours

As its name suggests, the reliability step consists in achieving reliable trained behaviours. So, to achieve this step, the behaviours you taught to your dog must become habits.

Reliability is just a result of repeating and reinforcing the trained behaviours. Therefore, if your dog has successfully passed the previous steps, reliability is just a matter of time, practice and consistency.

This step is the key to introduce trained behaviours in daily life situations, but it should not be rushed. Reliability of learned behaviours is a long term goal, so you should expect to train for some time before your dog is reliable off leash and under distractions.

To give you some idea of just how patient and consistent you need to be, service dogs such as guide dogs for the blind take a minimum of 2 years to train, first with informal training then formal training. Obviously you don’t need your companion dog to be trained to such a high standard, however getting reliability does required patience and consistency for long term benefits.

5. Fluency

Fluency consists of getting “perfect” behaviours. Thus, when your dog achieves this step, he responds to your cues with speed and precision.

The “perfection” of fluent behaviours depends on what you want from your dog. If you want fido to be an obedience champion he must perform all the obedience exercises with speed and precision. However, if you just want fido to sit on cue you may not need speed and precision. In this case, it would be enough that your dog sits when you ask him to.

Although fluency is fully achieved in the final step, it should be considered together with all the other steps of dog training.