fun4fido blog | clicker training 4 dogs

Teaching Bite Inhibition

2011-11-22T17:12:08Z

Whenever I visit a client for the first puppy socialisation consultation I am often asked what I think the most important behaviours to teach a puppy are. While it is of course important to teach your puppy some basic behaviours, and then progress to the Canine Good Citizen Scheme, by far the most important behaviour you should start teaching your puppy from day one is bite inhibition. Simply put, this is the ability of a dog to put his mouth gently on something without applying pressure. In other words, inhibiting the strength of his own bite.

Generally puppies taken from the litter before 8 weeks will need more training on bite inhibition, whereas a puppy that stays with its littermates for longer (the ideal is 10 weeks), will learn bite inhibition to a greater level because it will have had more opportunity to learn through play fighting with littermates.

Why Is Bite Inhibition Important?

Dogs are our companions, our sidekicks, best friends, but we mustn’t forget that all dogs are born with a formidable defence, their teeth. When a dog feels threatened, fearful, anxious, or is hurt, it can react by using its teeth. Teaching bite inhibition from a very early age creates a dog with a “soft mouth” this will greatly reduce the likelihood of any serious damage, if an unfortunate or unpredictable event should cause a dog to bite.

How Puppies Play & Learn

When a puppy wants to play with another puppy, his innate approach is either hit, pounce, bite, or otherwise start roughhousing with them. Often this includes growling in as deep a voice as a little puppy can muster. If the other puppy wants to play, she responds in kind: biting, pouncing, hitting, growling, etc., and the game is on.

On the other hand, if the second puppy is inadvertently bitten too hard by the first puppy, she will let out a high pitched “yelp” and jump away, which the first puppy correctly interprets to mean: “Oops, I bit too hard, and now she won’t play with me.” When this happens play will discontinue briefly while the second puppy “licks it wounds” then play will resume.

Through continued trials and errors in play fighting like this the first puppy will learn that biting with too much force ends play. However, he also soon discovers that when he plays gentle the other puppy doesn’t yelp and run away but instead responds in kind by hitting or biting back, thus rewarding the first puppy with the play time he wanted.

Human Canine Play

The most common question new puppy owners have is “My puppy won’t stop biting me during play, what should I do?”

My response is always the same. “Play more, but with rules.”

Puppies use their mouths to explore and learn about their environment. Just as your puppy was previously playing with his littermates exploring and learning, he is now exploring and learning with you.

Puppies love to play, so the best way to teach bite inhibition is through play. So let’s take a look at the steps involved.

Teaching Bite Inhibition

The best way to teach bite inhibition is to apply a systematic approach incorporating 3 steps. All this training will be done through short play sessions of three to five minutes. Always end each play/train session on a positive, when your puppy is playing nicely, and reward with a kong stuffed with a few treats.

To inhibit the force of bites
To eliminate the bite pressure
To reduce the frequency of mouthing

1. Inhibit force of bites

You are going to work on a “pain’ scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the most painful bite and 1 being the least painful bite. Initiate a play session with your puppy and actually give your puppy opportunity to nip and bite your flesh. When your puppy bites you at a pain scale of 10 immediately “yelp”, your puppy should release his bite, as soon as your puppy releases, remove your attention - no eye contact, no verbal contact, no physical contact - discontinue play briefly, walk off and have a 10 second “time out” with your back turned to your puppy and arms folded. After 10 seconds turn, call your puppy to you and resume play.

Next, when your puppy bites you at a pain scale of 9, repeat the above procedure, and so on, until you reach pain scale 1.

What do I do if my puppy doesn’t release when I yelp?

Some puppies are simply more tenacious in their desire to play, and get carried away through the excitement of play. If your puppy doesn’t release his bite when you yelp, then immediately but calmly extricate your flesh from his mouth, remove your attention, discontinue play, walk off to another room, close the door, and leave your puppy to think through the consequences of his actions. Don’t leave your puppy for more than 1 minute, return to the room, call your puppy over and resume play.

With some puppies you may have to take the leave the room approach several times before your puppy gets it. But if you are calm and consistent in your approach, your puppy will learn.

What do I do if my puppy follows me as I walk off?

If your puppy should follow you as you walk off for a 10 second “time out”, then you have two options you can use to ensure that your puppy is not able to follow. You can either tether your puppy to a steady item of furniture, or you can use a barrier. For example if you are playing with your puppy in the kitchen then you could have a baby gate on the kitchen door. In this scenario you would have to make sure you play close to the (open) gate so that when you “yelp” you can quickly walk off and close the gate behind you. If you tether your puppy you simply walk off to a distance that is well out of reach. Whichever option you choose, you will do the same as above, turn your back, fold your arms, and wait 10 seconds, the only difference is you won’t call your puppy to you, instead walk back over to your puppy and resume play.

2. Eliminate the bite pressure

Many of my clients query the difference between force of bite and bite pressure. When inhibiting force of bite you are allowing your puppy to bite you, so you are allowing pressure to some degree. When eliminating bite pressure, you will work toward zero pressure. When you reach zero pressure you will be able to offer your fingers to your puppy and he will hold your fingers in his jaw but apply no pressure, to the extent that you will be able to swiftly remove your fingers and have no scratches.

So, to eliminate bite pressure, you will work on a “pressure” scale, with 10 being the most pressure and zero being no pressure. Initiate a play session with your puppy and actually give your puppy opportunity to hold your flesh and apply pressure. When your puppy applies pressure at scale 10 immediately “yelp”, your puppy should release his pressure and mouth, as soon as your puppy releases, remove your attention - no eye contact, no verbal contact, no physical contact - discontinue play briefly, walk off and have a 10 second “sulk” with your back turned to your puppy and arms folded. After 10 seconds turn, call your puppy to you and resume play.

Next, continue with this approach in all your play sessions with your puppy and gradually move down the scale so that eventually you yelp at scale zero, no pressure. When you reach zero on the pressure scale your puppy will have learned that human flesh is just too sensitive, and if he wants rewarding play to continue he must not apply any pressure during play.

Don’t rush these steps, be patient, calm, consistent, and progress slowly.

3. Reduce frequency of mouthing

Once you have reached zero pressure the next step is to reduce the frequency of mouthing. To do this you will teach your puppy the cues “leave” and “take it”.

Teaching “leave” helps your puppy to acquire doggie zen; learning impulse control… to receive I first have to “leave”.

You can start teaching the cues “leave” and “take it” before completing step 2, but initially teach these cues separately from bite inhibition play sessions.

Use feeding times to teach the cues “leave” and “take it”, you will be feeding your puppy four times a day, so at each mealtime hand feed your puppy with half of the kibble. Give your puppy a few pieces of kibble to get some motivation going, then take a piece of kibble and close your hand in to a fist and hold your closed hand face down within reach of your puppy’s mouth. Ignore any attempts your puppy makes to get the kibble, just wait for him to back off slightly, as soon as your puppy backs off mark the behaviour with a “click” and reinforce the behaviour by rolling the piece of kibble to between your thumb and index finger and giving it to your puppy.

Keep repeating this at each feed time, and when your puppy is offering the backing off behaviour reliably (80% of the time), add the cues. So take a piece of kibble and close your hand to make a fist, hold your hand out to your puppy and as your puppy backs off, add the cue “leave”, then “click” and reinforce the behaviour; say “take it” as you give your puppy the piece of kibble.

After 5 repetitions, switch from giving the cues as the behaviours occur, to giving the cues before you want the behaviours to occur.

Once you have repeated this successfully; giving the cues before the desired behaviour, with 80% reliability, during three separate feeds, you can start to incorporate these cues in step 3 to reduce the frequency of mouthing.

Initiate a play session with your puppy and whenever your puppy mouths your flesh, give the cue “leave”, as soon as your puppy backs off “click” and reinforce the desired behaviour by offering a toy and say “take it”. Keep repeating this during play sessions and gradually increase the criteria - so whether your puppy mouths your flesh, or your clothes, give the cue “leave”, when your puppy backs off “click” and reinforce by offering a toy or a treat (mix up your rewards to keep your puppy guessing), saying “take it”.

Keep repeating this during play sessions, over time you will shape your puppy’s behaviour so that he no longer mouths you during play.

As with all training, be patient, calm, and consistent, teaching bite inhibition will ensure your puppy grows in to a safer adult dog.

A few notes:

Whichever method you use to give your puppy a “time out” during play, whether walking off, or walking off and leaving the room, take care to make sure you only return to your puppy to resume play when your puppy is not barking, whining, or acting over-excited.

If your puppy does bark, whine, etc., then wait for a brief pause in this behaviour (this can be seconds), before you give any attention, and then quickly resume play.

If during any play session you feel your puppy is just too excited, then apply a “time out” and when you return, redirect your puppy’s attention to a favourite toy and leave him to play in a safe area by himself.

As you progress and your puppy starts to release with reliability when you “yelp” you can begin to train the “sit”, “wait” before you call your puppy to resume play.

When you are not able to play with your puppy, supervise explorations around the home, or you simply need to get on with chores, then it is much safer to crate your puppy. This gives your peace of mind, but more importantly it teaches your puppy to either safely entertain himself - stuffed kongs are great for this, or settle down and rest. Crate training is a great management tool for toilet training, house training, and prevention of separation anxiety.

Why Use Food In Training?

2011-10-20T18:15:04Z

Occasionally I encounter clients who are uneasy with the idea of using food for training their dog. They somehow see it as cheating, or a bribe. Instead, they ask why it is not sufficient to use only praise and petting as rewards, and corrections when the dog gets it wrong?

Modern trainers no longer use punishment based training because it is out-of-date, unkind to the dog, and much less effective than reward based training. Traditional training is about making a dog do what you want, modern training is about motivating a dog to want to do what you want.

Dogs don’t do good or bad behaviours, right or wrong behaviours, they just do behaviours that work, meaning that their behaviour has resulted in some pleasant consequence; a positive reinforcer. Therefore if we humans would like to teach our dogs what works, then it naturally follows that we should train using a positive reinforcer.

All animals (including humans) learn to repeat behaviours that have had pleasant consequences. Modern reward based training is about getting a dog to want to do what you want by providing an immediate positive reinforcer so the dog learns to do that behaviour again in the future.

The most practical and easy to use primary positive reinforcer is food, food is a primary reinforcer because it is something all animals are born needing to survive, they don’t need praise and petting to survive. Therefore as a reward, food holds a much higher value as a positive reinforcer than does praise or petting. Meaning food is a better motivator for learning, a better motivator for working, and a better motivator for your dog to pay attention to you! Attention is everything, it is the prerequisite for all learning and training. Praise and petting alone cannot compete with environmental distractions for your dog’s attention!

During the early stages of learning food is simply the easiest positive reinforcer to use, but it’s important to note that you will not always need to use food. Once your dog has learned a repertoire of behaviours to a certain level of reliability, then there are many other reinforcers you can use; play, attention, throw of a ball, toss of a frisbee, game of tug, as well as going for a walk, greeting other dogs, sniffing a tree, leash going on, leash coming off, door being opened, and countless other life rewards. Life rewards are anything a dog likes doing: going for a walk, likes attaining: attention, or likes gaining access to: the sofa.

So do yourself and your dog a huge favour, throw away your dog’s food bowl now. Use the same amount of food he would be given for free everyday in his bowl and feed it piece by piece, contingent upon desired behaviour. This dispels with the notion of spoiling your dog with treats, instead your dog is doing as nature intended, working for his food. In addition he is learning that it pays to please you and give you attention.

Note: Eating has a calming effect on dogs, dogs that are anxious or reactive tend to calm down when food is used for training. Using harsh corrective methods will only increase the stress level of anxious or reactive dogs in training.

Classical Conditioning Simply Explained

2011-09-21T15:02:00Z

Classical conditioning is an association between two stimuli. Of these two stimuli, one is neutral and in the beginning has no meaning. The other stimulus is one that does already have meaning for the dog (or human). The stimulus can be pleasant, or it can be unpleasant.

The two main events that humans or dogs don’t need to learn to react to without training are food and pain. Almost everything else is a learned association.

Let’s go back (just for a minute) to Pavlov and the metronome and the dog and the saliva. When Pavlov first started pairing the sound of the metronome just before food was presented, the dogs did not drool. However, over time, with consistent pairing (metronome and then food), the dogs began to salivate at the sound of the metronome. As far as their automatic reactions were concerned, the metronome meant food.

Why Is Classical Conditioning Used?

Classical conditioning is used for two reasons:

To create an association between a stimulus that would not normally have any meaning along with a stimulus that would have meaning

To train automatic responses (e.g., drooling, blinking, or even emotions can be considered automatic responses)

Of course, we don’t really need to teach our dogs to blink or drool, but the emotion part is important to us. The recess bell has no meaning until it’s paired with playtime; the word “Sit” has no meaning unless paired with sitting; and the smoke alarm has no meaning until you see the fire.

Let’s say you hear a song you’ve never heard before, playing on the radio at the dentist’s office while you’re getting a particularly painful root canal. The next time you hear that song, you may switch radio stations; in fact, you may never listen to that radio station again. Next you hear a different song when you meet “your true love.” Whenever you hear this song, loving, misty feelings come over you.

Beware of “negative” associative learning. Your dog runs away and comes back an hour later. You punish him for running away, only, he understands it as punishment for returning. The next time you say “Come,” he will stay away because that word was paired with unpleasant results.

Hobnobbing with the Wrong Crowd: Bad Associations

Setting up a dog to be fearful or aggressive is easy to do. Here’s how: make sure all her associations are bad ones. For example, let your dog meet someone who will knee her in the chest or yell if she jumps. The next time she meets that person, your dog won’t be happy to see him or her. Do this enough times and your dog will be fearful of people.

Here are some other ways to set up bad associations: introduce your young puppy to an older dog who isn’t good around puppies, and watch your dog grow fearful or aggressive toward strange dogs. Yell at your dog for myriad “bad” behaviors and she’ll learn to either ignore you or be afraid of you. Call your dog to come and then punish her for something she did an hour ago, and the word “Come” will now take on a negative connotation. Hit your dog for growling at a child and watch your dog learn to hate children (and probably progress from growling to biting). Punish your dog for making a mistake during training and she will then associate training with pain, which certainly does nothing to help her love learning.

Keeping Those Good Associations Happening

So what can you do? Make sure the associations are good ones! Have your puppy play with friendly dogs and meet nice, dog-friendly people. Use positive reinforcement as your training philosophy. Get rid of punishments from people, dogs, and (as much as possible) the environment.

Yes, even the environment can be punishing. Inanimate objects can be dangerous! Lamps can fall, baby gates can get stuck on doggies’ necks, doors can slam in faces, and paws can get stuck in crate doors. Honk-ing horns and wailing sirens can send many a dog under the table in fear.

Whenever you run across something potentially scary that you want your dog not to be neurotic about, just add some positive stimuli and it will turn out all right. Let’s say your dog is afraid of other dogs barking. The next time you hear a dog barking, start feeding the heck out of your dog, before he becomes afraid. If your dog is afraid of people approaching, pair food with a person approaching.

Use associations properly and just be cognizant that Pavlov is always sitting on your shoulder - 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Become Ronald McDonald, Bozo the Clown, and Howdy Doody all rolled up in one. It’s a jungle out there - don’t become one of the “bad guys.”

This is an excerpt from Pamela Dennison’s book “Positive Dog Training” Positive Dog Training, Second Edition, replaces the standard punishment-based training methods that have potential consequences for puppies and limited effectiveness with older dogs. This guide demonstrates positive training methods, based on a system of rewards and encouragement, to teach basic commands and housetraining, and correct a host of problem behaviours. Readers will also learn loose-leash walking games and how to train for the American Kennel Club’s increasingly popular Canine Good Citizen test.

Top 10 Puppy Training Tips

2011-08-17T14:59:00Z

Reinforce The Good, Ignore The Bad: Dogs are learning 24/7 from the second you get them home. It is all too easy to inadvertently train your puppy to do the wrong thing: this is called accidental reinforcement. A typical example of this is your puppy jumping up. One minute all is quiet, your puppy jumps up at you and immediately you start interacting with him. Eye contact, voice, touch: all of this is reinforcement to your puppy. Now your puppy knows that to get your attention, all he has to do is jump up. The best way is to totally ignore attention seeking or undesirable behaviour and to reward desirable behaviours: it is much better to focus on what you want your dog to do and always remember to reinforce the right behaviours.

Practice Little & Often: Puppies have a short attention span and can only take so much training in one go. They can get tired and therefore distracted and restless. Short sessions (5 to 10 minutes at a time, depending on age, 3 times a day works well as a guide) will get the message across successfully.

Consistency Is Key: Make decisions about what you expect of your puppy, as well as house and social rules, and stick to them. Dogs are very black and white creatures and if you change your mind about what is acceptable and what isn’t, it will be very difficult for your puppy to understand what behaviour you expect of him. Make sure all members of the family are following the same rules and use the same cue words/signals to achieve the same results. This also applies to visitors.

Be Crystal Clear: Puppies are not born speaking fluent English or programmed to do a sit on cue! Initially, puppies have to be guided in what to do, not told what to do.

Less Is More: Dogs do not find strings of words easy to understand. The more words we say, the trickier it is for the dog to work out what we mean. “Fido, sit!” is more effective than “Now Fido, will you please sit for me”. Also, repeating a verbal cue louder does not mean your puppy will comply. Puppies have very good sharp hearing, your puppy heard you the first time round, the likelihood is, he just doesn’t know what you mean; he doesn’t yet understand the behaviour you’re asking for.

Start Simple & Build Progressively: Don’t expect too much too soon. It is infinitely better to get a simple behaviour right 100% of the time rather than to get a difficult behaviour right only 50% of the time. Repetition and reinforcement of successful behaviours is how your puppy learns best. So keep it simple to begin with and give your puppy plenty of opportunities for success. Don’t jump steps either: if your puppy does a perfect “stay” with you in sight for one minute, it doesn’t mean that he will do a perfect stay with you out of sight. Take your time, don’t run before you can walk and consolidate on the basics.

Train Here There & Everywhere: If you want your dog to behave everywhere, then you need to train everywhere… dogs don’t generalise very well. Of course you don’t need to literally train everywhere, but think about your lifestyle and places that you will frequently encounter with your canine companion. Dogs learn by cues associated with particular situations, signals, and locations. This means that if you only practice in one place, in the house/garden for instance, your puppy will associate compliance to trained behaviours with that particular location. When you change the location, you have to re-train the behaviour again in that (and every) new location. As time goes on, your puppy will learn more quickly every time a new place is added.

Set Up For Success: Although your training must be done in a realistic location, there is no point in starting in a place where there are too many distractions for your puppy to concentrate. Start off by training all behaviours at home inside, then in the garden, then re-train in realistic locations, gradually adding distractions.

Attention Please!: If your puppy is distracted by something, the likelihood is that he will not comply with your request. To say “Fido sit” to a dog busy following a scent is doomed to failure. If you repeat the request again and the dog still doesn’t comply, all you are teaching your dog is to ignore you. Instead call his name cheerfully when you know he is listening then say your request, and of course reward for compliance.

Know Your Breed: What makes your dog tick and what job was he bred for? Most of our dogs are working breeds, bred for a specific job and purpose. Some behaviours are very much hard wired and will be almost impossible to eradicate. Understanding this and using your dog’s strengths in training will be much more effective than trying to make him what he is not.

And finally have fun and make training enjoyable, keep him wagging for more!

Hand Targeting For Fearful Dogs

2011-07-14T13:26:00Z

There is no doubt that owning and working with a fearful dog can be a challenge. If you own a fearful dog is it very important for you to educate yourself and learn as much as you can so that you can help your dog become less afraid and a more confident companion.

Certain breeds such as working and herding breeds have a natural predisposition to be more suspicious or cautious of new people, objects, events, etc. Therefore if you own such a breed you should make an extra effort to spend a lot of time on quality socialisation, quantity is important too, but by quality I mean that the early experiences your dog has should be positive. It is far more productive for your dog to meet 50 new people in a week and have each experience be good, than meet 100 new people in a week, but 50 of these meetings go bad.

Fear in dogs is often a mixture of unfortunate experiences coupled with a lack of early socialisation appropriate to the dogs temperament. Retraining will of course be a challenge, but fearful dogs don’t have to stay fearful forever.

Right from the outset you will have to have the right attitude and approach. It goes without saying that patience is a must, as is quick thinking, flexibility, as well as sensitive training. In addition setting clear, consistent, achievable goals is vital. Pre-train and pre-plan; be specific about how you want your dog to react in a given situation, and have a fallback.

Building confidence in a fearful dog is time consuming, so be prepared for the long journey. Your approach will need to be flexible, allow for and expect regression, learn form it, re assess, adapt, and move on. Don’t panic when things go wrong, mistakes will happen, but if you panic this will only confuse your dog. As your dog’s guide and handler you need to remain confident (act if necessary), shift plans, and continue, this approach will assure your dog.

Be flexible enough to know when you’ve tried to progress too quickly, and insightful enough to know what changes you need to make for your dog to be successful. These two qualities alone go a long way to making a good trainer.

Routine and predictability is very important when working with a fearful dog. Knowing that A leads to B, which leads to C, gives your dog confidence and a sense of control in the environment. This is key, especially if your dog not only reacts to events/cues etc, but is also apprehensive before the event.

Routine and structure around the home is important for all dogs, but even more so for fearful dogs. So again, be consistent in your rules and expectations, and where possible set a daily schedule for all activities such as feeding, walking, training, rest, play, etc. You can be more relaxed and flexible with house rules once your dog has gained a lot of confidence, but make quick judgement calls, if you think your dog’s confidence is slipping, re-apply some rules.

To see improvement in a relatively short period of time, break your goals down in to manageable steps.

For example let’s say your dog is afraid of strange men:

Clicker train your dog to play hand targeting games with a familiar male that he/she is not afraid of. Making a game out of what your dog is afraid of is a great way to build confidence. If you practise hand targeting enough it will become second nature to your dog.

So to start have a familiar male sit sideways on a chair at a distance from your dog. Have him throw really high value tasty treats in various directions, allowing your dog to keep a comfortable distance.
Then gradually change the variables so that eventually your dog is able to target the hand of the male for a click and treat.
Then gradually add more variables; have the male standing, lying down, moving around, approaching. Each time you add a new variable be prepared to go back several steps, or right back to the beginning with the new variable.
Don’t jump straight in and play the hand targeting game with strange males. You will have more success if you first work extensively teaching your dog to hand target your hands, and the hands of people he/she likes.
Once your dog is readily in the game of hand targeting with familiar people/males, you will need to start over from the beginning with unfamiliar males.

Working steadily like this will really let you see improvements, which will in turn motivate both you and your dog.

If at any time your dog reacts in a way that you know means he/she is stressed, or if he/she is not able to take treats, or is unable to focus on you/respond to any cues, then simply take a break. Stay confident, don’t sweat it. Think about any changes you might need to make, make them, and move on.

Taking the time to teach your fearful dog hand targeting will be time well spent, and probably one of the most important training tools you will always have to hand (no pun intended), to help your dog overcome his/her fears. Over time you will find that because hand targeting creates such a positive association for your dog, he/she will be more willing to extend himself/herself, and be open to new experiences.

Hand targeting is wonderful, because it gives your dog something constructive to do, instead of being afraid.

Remember that owning and working with a fearful dog is a journey of learning and self discovery for both you and your canine companion. It can be frustrating at times, but with the right attitude it should be mostly rewarding, fun, and a great experience to be cherished.

Variable Ratio Reinforcement

2011-05-10T09:27:00Z

If you are new to clicker training you may well have a concern that you will always have to click and treat your dog for every cued behaviour he performs, this is however not the case.

Generally, when you are training a new behaviour, your dog will acquire the behaviour very quickly if you C/T for every correct response. This is called a fixed ratio reinforcement schedule of 1:1 or continuous reinforcement schedule; meaning that you will reinforce your dog for every response.

Once your dog knows the behaviour and it’s on cue, it’s time to introduce an intermittent reinforcement schedule. There are quite a few different schedules of reinforcement, but the most powerful schedule for strengthening a behaviour and preventing extinction is the the variable ratio reinforcement schedule.

As an example, let’s suppose you’ve taught your dog to sit on cue, and you now want to put the behaviour on a variable ratio reinforcement schedule.

The ratio is the percentage of sits which are rewarded and the variable is the number of sits in between reinforcements. First you decide what ratio, or percentage of sits you want to reinforce. This means that you reinforce 1 in 5 sits, or 1 in 10 sits, or 1 in 20 sits, whatever ratio you decide on. So let’s say you decide to reinforce 1 out of every 5 sits.

You then make sure that you average 1 reinforcement to every 5 sits, but that you vary the number of sits in between reinforcements (hence variable ratio - these names do make sense, sort of). It is very important not to reinforce the dog on every 5th sit, as he will see a pattern emerging. However, after a large number of sits he should have been reinforced on average once for every 5 sits.

So in 20 sits you would reinforce 4 times, but NOT on the 1st, 6th, 11th and 16th sits! You might reinforce the 2nd sit, reinforce the 9^th sit, reinforce the 12^th sit and then the 17^th sit, in other words, the number of sits which don’t get reinforcement is different each time (variable), and the dog has no way of working out in advance which sit is going to be reinforced.

It would go like this:

SIT	SIT + R	SIT	SIT	SIT
SIT	SIT	SIT	SIT + R	SIT
SIT	SIT + R	SIT	SIT	SIT
SIT	SIT + R	SIT	SIT	SIT

A reinforcement schedule like this has the effect of making the behaviour really persistent. For example let’s say your dog is a jumper, loves jumping to greet people, sometimes this behaviour is reinforced through attention and petting, and sometimes it is ignored and not reinforced. Because this behaviour is intermittently reinforced it stays strong and does not become extinct.

It works with people too. People who love to gamble or play slot machines, keep doing so because they have won in the past, or on a few occasions. Las Vegas is the city of variable reinforcement schedule. this is the power of variable ratio reinforcement!

Basic Clicker Training in 6 Steps

2011-04-11T09:15:00Z

Charging the clicker
Getting the behaviour
Marking the behaviour
Reinforcing the behaviour
Adding the cue/phase out the clicker
Adding praise/phase out the treats

1. Charging the clicker is classical conditioning, like Pavlov’s bell, and his drooling dogs. You are going to take a clicker and pair it with a food reward Primary Reinforcer until the click itself gets your dog all happy.

Once your dog catches on to this type of training the presence of a clicker will be enough to get him excited and in “training mode.” To charge the clicker go to a quiet room with your dog and have a bowl of really tasty human food such as hot dog, chicken, liver, etc. cut up into very small treat size pieces. (Treats are best soft, crunchy ones take too long to eat).

Click your clicker once and then treat (click and treat, or the short version C/T) that’s all, then C/T again. At this point you are just charging the clicker so you are not asking for a behaviour (such as sit) here at all. What you are doing is creating a positive association between the sound of the clicker and a primary reinforcer; food. Try not to C/T while your dog is doing the same thing like sitting and watching you, so keep changing your position slightly and move around a little.

Take your time with charging the clicker, on day one aim for 5 sessions, and at each session just C/T 10 times. Before long you will notice that when your dog hears the click sound he actually starts to look for his treat. When this happens you are ready to move on to the next step.

What do I do if I am working with a fearful, shy, or sound sensitive dog?

You can do as above, but muffle the sound of the clicker but putting it in your pocket, or covering it with tape to mute the tone slightly. You can also stand a little distance from your dog and C/T by throwing the treat on the floor near to your dog. If your dog is food motivated then he will soon associate the sound of the clicker as being a good thing. Work at your dog’s pace, and be patient, you may need to do several days of 5 sessions each day, but again, as soon as your dog visibly looks for his treat on hearing the click, but is not startled or anxious, you can progress to the next step.

2. Getting the behaviour. There are three main ways of getting behaviours, luring, capturing, and shaping. I have covered these in detail in a previous post, so you can go here to read and then return to this post.

3. Marking the behaviour. The fundamental difference between clicker training and other reward-based training is that you can effectively communicate with your dog, let him know exactly which behaviour earned him a reward. The sound of the click marks the exact desired behaviour as it occurs. This is why your timing is very important, you don’t want to click too soon or too late, just like taking action shots in sports photography, you want to capture the precise moment of the behaviour.

A great way to hone your timing is to have a friend drop a ball to the floor, the precise moment the ball touches the floor, you click. Have your friend score you for timing from zero to two, with zero being too soon, and one being exact, and two being too late. Repeat until you get ten consecutive one’s. Another fun way to practise is to have your friend sit on a chair, as soon as his/her bottom touches the seat of the chair, you click, again have your friend score you.

4. Reinforcing the behaviour. When your dog offers a behaviour, and the behaviour is then reinforced with something that your dog wants, he is more likely to repeat the behaviour in the future.

Your dog’s learning is really about the increased probability of a behaviour based on reinforcement which has taken place in the past, so that the antecedents of the new behaviour include the consequences of previous behaviour.

Why use food?

Food is a primary reinforcer; something that your dog is born needing. When clicker training a new behaviour you will be using a high rate of reinforcement. Food in the form of small treats enable you to click “mark the behaviour”, and then treat “reinforce the behaviour”, at a high rate. Your dog will be motivated to repeat the new behaviour you are training many times, as he is quite happy working for food, his pay cheque.

Food is not however the only reinforcer you can use, but in the early steps of clicker training it is the most practical. Anything your dog will work for can be used as a reinforcer, a few examples: a quick game of tug, a throw of a ball, freedom to “go play”, attention and petting.

5. Adding the cue/phase out the clicker. In clicker training, you add the cue after your dog is offering the behaviour frequently, not while your dog is learning it. Why?

When you are teaching your dog a new behaviour, you want him to concentrate on the behaviour. At this step, adding a cue would be meaningless, just another bit of “noise” to sort through. Make learning something new easy for your dog by minimizing distractions, including meaningless cue words. You want the cue to be associated with the final form of the behaviour, and for the behaviour to be offered frequently. If you add the cue in the early stages you run the risk of having an unfinished version of the behaviour and/or your dog could get confused and associate the cue with a different behaviour. So first get the behaviour you want in the form you want and then add the cue, for simple behaviours this can happen in a day.

As a general rule you want your dog offering the behaviour to a frequency of at least 80% before adding the cue, so you see it doesn’t have to be perfect

Phase out the clicker

Let’s say you have a cute puppy and you are going to teach him to sit. On day one you have 3 training sessions of five minutes each, and during each session you are able to “mark the behaviour” with a “click”, then “reinforce” your puppy with a “treat”, for getting the sit behaviour right 8 times out of 10. At the end of day one you would add the verbal cue “sit” during the last session.

On day two you have 3 training sessions of five minutes each, and during each session you are able to give the cue “sit” mark the behaviour with a click, and then reinforce your puppy with a treat, for offering the sit behaviour 8 times out of 10 during each session.

You then repeat this procedure in many different places building distractions, for example: outside your home, a quiet street, a busier street, near traffic, quiet park, busier park, supermarket car park etc. When you reach 80% frequency in all these places you can start to phase out the click

6. Adding praise/phase out the treats. As you start to phase out the click you can add praise, petting, etc. Try to make this as seamless as possible for your dog. You also want to start phasing out the treats, so you will start to vary your schedule of reinforcement. This is the last step in clicker training and is complex so I will cover this in a different post

I don’t advise phasing out treats completely, the best behaviours should still earn treats as rewards. However once your dog is reliable or fluent in an behaviour then food treats are not the only reward that your dog will happily work for.

Dog training in 5 steps

Getting Behaviours

How Dogs Learn

2011-03-10T10:45:00Z

Learning theory

Understanding how dogs learn is vital to dog training as you will be able to effectively communicate with your dog and guide him in learning what works and what doesn’t work for us humans. It is well worth taking the time to acquire this fundamental knowledge, as doing so will prevent you from making potentially serious mistakes when training your dog.

So how do dogs learn? Dogs learn primarily through a process of association. They learn very early in life that their behaviour causes consequences they like and those they don’t like. In this respect, the behaviour of dogs will reflect what they’ve experienced.

Operant Conditioning: can be summarized in this way; behaviours are likely to increase when a pleasant consequence happens, and are likely to decrease when an unpleasant consequence happens.

Putting theory to work

Clicker training applies the principles of operant conditioning, you reward desired behaviours you want and you ignore undesired behaviours. You’ll be surprised at how quickly your dogs learns how to earn rewards from you.

Some people have concerns that this kind of training uses bribery to get a dog to do what you want. However this is not what happens. If you gave your dog a food reward first and then expected a desired behaviour to occur, this would be bribery. With operant conditioning your dog is only rewarded after a desirable behaviour occurs. The same applies when using a food treat as a lure to jump start a new behaviour, your dog knows the food is in your closed hand, but he will only be given his reward after he performs a desired behaviour, and the food lure is phased out within a couple of repetitions. With reward based training you are simply paying your dog for a job well done!

Repetition

Repetition is a key factor in successful dog training, repeating behaviours, coupled with reinforcement, helps establish a pattern of learning in a dog. Every new behaviour you train will need to be repeated, re-trained and reinforced (rewarded), in lots of different environments, with different levels of distraction. You should not expect your dog to be reliable or fluent in a behaviour in many environments with varying distractions within a couple of weeks, this would be unrealistic. Dogs typically need many repetitions before a behaviour is reliable, especially when working around distractions. To be realistic you should be looking at 24 months of committed, consistent training, you can then relax and simply maintain good behaviours.

What about unwanted behaviours?

Unwanted behaviour in dogs is either instinctual based or is learned. To a dog there is no such thing as “right” or “wrong” behaviour. Everything they do is just behaviour. An example of an instinctual based behaviour is puppy biting. Pups use their mouths in an instinctual way to learn about their environment. However, for most people puppy biting is an unwanted behaviour. Another example of unwanted behaviour is begging at a table. In this example a dog may learn that sitting near the table when people are eating will gain them food. Once established, this becomes a learned behaviour and will be repeated. The behaviour of begging has been reinforced.

In both cases we can change the behaviour of the dog by removing any source of reinforcement the dog has been receiving as a result of their behaviour. By removing reinforcement, behaviours will diminish. Eventually the dog will learn that reinforcement no longer happens as a result of the unwanted behaviour. This process is called extinction.

What about Punishment?

Some trainers don’t use the term punishment, but rather, the term “correction” to describe how they attempt to reduce unwanted behaviours. They say, “we are correcting” the animal. Correction is a euphemism for punishment. Punishment is the opposite of reinforcement. Simply stated: Behaviours are likely to decrease when an unpleasant consequence happens.

Should punishment be considered when training? After all, aren’t we just “correcting” unwanted behaviour? Before this question can be answered, let’s discuss two terms often misunderstood in today’s world of dog training - the terms are Positive and Negative.

Positive and Negative: Good vs. Bad?

What does Positive and Negative mean in regards to training a dog? I like to ask this question of other trainers just to hear their response. So many misunderstand and misuse them. Many people will say, “Positive means good, and Negative means bad.” In other contexts, good and bad are synonyms for positive and negative. Is this true when we talk about Negative Reinforcement and Positive Punishment? Are we saying there is Bad Reinforcement and Good Punishment?! No, not at all.

When we use these terms in a training context, Positive and Negative are really mathematical terms. Positive means addition and Negative means subtraction. Better stated, Positive means Give To (the dog) and Negative means Take From (the dog). What does all this mean? It can best be understood by looking at the contingency chart below:

	Give To Positive = Addition	Take Away Negative = Subtraction
Good	Positive Reinforcement Present something good; behaviour is more likely.	Negative Punishment Take away something good; behaviour is less likely.
Bad	Positive Punishment Present something bad; behaviour is less likely.	Negative Reinforcement Take away something bad; behaviour is more likely.

So, back to the question about using punishment. As you can see from the chart above, there are two forms of punishment - positive and negative. Positive punishment involves giving a dog something they don’t like. Yanking the leash applies force on your dogs neck they don’t like. This is positive punishment. Turning your back to your dog when they jump on you is negative punishment. You are taking away your attention to get them to stop jumping on you. Positive punishment is risky because you could potentially injure or even frighten your dog, as well as make your dog anxious. Also physically punitive training methods have been shown to make certain dogs react aggressively. Negative punishment is benign in terms of risks to your dog. Therefore, avoid using positive punishment and use negative punishment to reduce behaviours.

Be consistent

Being consistent is critical when training. This is probably one of the toughest aspects of training. Don’t allow a behaviour one day and then not allow the same behaviour the next day, don’t change the rules! Be consistent with what you expect of your dog. Work with them everyday. Everyone in your home should be included in some way in the training process, even older children (supervised), should be involved. Use the same cue words. If one person uses “off” and another is using “down” your dog will get confused.

Keep training fun!

Try and keep training fun by rewarding your dog for behaviours you want. Problem behaviours can be solved through better management of your dog in their environment, and by removing things that reinforce behaviours you don’t want. Over time, your dog will give up behaviours that don’t bring consequences they like.

Keep your training sessions short. Train for 3-5 minutes in most cases. Use play to try and teach your dog such things as wait, stay, come, and others. Don’t over do your training sessions or you and your dog will burn out.

Training a dog may seem like a difficult task, but if you learn some key points, training can be very fun and interesting for you and your dog. You don’t have to dominate your dog and you certainly don’t have to use force. Train your dog from the moment you bring them home. Training is a life long pursuit.

Puppy Socialisation

2011-02-10T10:11:00Z

Puppy socialisation has been a popular phrase for some time now. Is it really as important as people make it out to be, if so, why, and what should you be doing with your puppy to socialise him correctly?

Early puppyhood is thought of as one of the most critical periods in a dog’s life. Just like little children, young puppies absorb impressions like a sponge, and sometimes they retain things we would rather they forgot.

The brain of a dog (and of a human) is both specific and plastic. Specificity refers to those brain characteristics which are absolutely hard-wired and unchangeable. Plasticity refers to those aspects of brain structure which are pliable and subject to environmental influences. Generally speaking, the higher up the evolutionary tree an animal is, the higher its brain plasticity will be.

Although the temperament of a dog is partly genetic, puppies come into the world with highly plastic brains; in other words, they are extremely susceptible to environmental influences. This window of susceptibility closes at around 16 weeks (although it may take until 5 months to close completely), by which time the brain has more or less completed its development. After this, although the dog can still learn, he will not be as adaptable and susceptible as in those early weeks. The impressions created in those first few weeks literally affect the way the brain develops, and are extremely difficult to eradicate later.

Negative impressions in those early weeks can affect the puppy for the rest of its life; similarly, positive impressions bear fruit for years to come.

Puppies at this stage are said to be imprintable; the first encounter with a particular stimulus will be difficult to eradicate. So, for example, if a puppy is bitten by an adult Siberian the first time he meets one, he may develop a lifelong fear and dislike of Siberians, or of furry dogs in general, even if his subsequent encounters with them are positive.

Maternal imprinting takes place within the first 24 hours of life. The puppy bonds with his mother and learns to recognise her by smell. The mother accepts and recognises her puppies; breeders have plenty of anecdotes about bitches who can count and know when even one puppy is missing from the litter.

Fraternal imprinting takes place between 3 and about 8 weeks. This is the period during which the puppy learns to interact with other members of its species. Older puppies will teach one another bite inhibition, play behaviour and the beginnings of sexual imprinting (learning the behaviour appropriate to one’s own and the opposite sex.) For this reason, it is important not to remove a puppy from the litter too early, otherwise it may have lifelong difficulty in getting along with other dogs. Around 7 or 8 weeks is usually a good time, but if the puppy is left with the litter for longer, then the breeder needs to begin socialisation to people, strange dogs, cats etc. so that further social imprinting can take place.

Puppies bred specifically for service work, such as guide dogs for the blind will also commence social and environmental imprinting from as early as 5 weeks.

Between about 8 and 10 weeks of age, a puppy is especially susceptible to fear-producing experiences, which may have a lasting effect.

What should you be doing as a new puppy owner to ensure that the puppy’s socialisation continues on a positive note?

Join a puppy class

Good dog training schools usually operate a puppy class for puppies of 10 weeks and older. The most important thing the puppies do here is play. They spend time with other puppies, have a ball, overcome their shyness, get told off by other puppies if they get too boisterous, and generally learn the basics of dog manners. They also learn that meeting other dogs is fun, and this does wonders for preventing dog aggression in later life.

Meet people

Expose your puppy to people of all shapes, sizes, genders and nationalities from an early age. Dogs discriminate extremely well, and many dogs are under-socialised to certain groups; for example, dogs belonging to single women are often wary of or aggressive toward men. It’s particularly important to introduce your puppy to children - but supervise the situation and don’t allow the puppy to be mauled or bullied. Get people to feed him high-quality treats; remember the power of classical conditioning and try to make his socialisation positive rather than neutral. Older children can also feed the puppy.

Go for walks

Take your puppy into all sorts of neighbourhoods. Get him used to traffic, short car journeys, sudden noises, trains, buses, the underground, crowds, shopping centres. Two words of warning here: your puppy is not fully immunised until he has had his third vaccination, so try to avoid places where he might be exposed to disease. Also, make sure that your puppy is not becoming stressed by his surroundings. If he seems to be struggling, take him out for shorter periods and feed him treats while he’s out and about. Remember, you want to create a positive experience, not a negative one.

Go to the vet

Take your puppy to the vet a few times just for a visit. (It’s a good idea to wait until after the 2nd shot to do this.) Ask if you can take the puppy into the surgery for a few moments, and ask the vet to feed him a couple of treats. This will make your life much easier later on, when those visits may mean injections or other painful treatments.

Handle the puppy

Go through a grooming routine with your puppy every day. Examine his ears, teeth and feet. Trim his toenails if you can. Feed him treats while you do this. Ask other people to do the same.

Visit a farm

When your puppy has received all necessary vaccinations (normally around 12 weeks), take him to a farm to see and smell other animals.

Practise object exchanges

Teach your puppy to give up toys and other objects easily by giving another toy or a treat in exchange. Do this with his food as well; pick up the bowl while he’s eating, add a couple of treats to it and give it back. If your puppy objects to you removing his food, feed him from your hand for a couple of days. This will go a long way toward establishing trust and preventing resource guarding in the adult dog.

Carry on teaching bite inhibition

Puppies who have been left with the litter for long enough usually have quite good bite inhibition, but you can help. Whenever the puppy’s teeth close down too hard on your hand, yelp in a high-pitched voice until the puppy lets go, and then withdraw your attention for a moment. You can gradually shape the puppy’s bite to a point where he barely touches you.

Introduce your puppy to adult dogs

Your pup needs to meet older dogs, and needs to learn to treat them with respect. Find out how the older dog usually behaves with puppies before attempting an introduction; you don’t want your puppy to be bullied or even injured. Most adult dogs are very tolerant of puppies, but will sometimes discipline them by giving them a growl if they get out of line; this is not a cause for alarm and is in fact often beneficial, particularly with a boisterous puppy who may otherwise get himself into some nasty fights as an adolescent.

Make sure that the bulk of the puppy’s experiences are positive, however, and avoid the occasional adult who is really ugly with puppies. In particular, if you have other dogs of your own, try to intervene as little as possible if they decide to discipline the puppy. You should take action only if there is serious bullying going on. If you incessantly defend the puppy, he may decide to challenge your older dog when he reaches adolescence. The older dog’s response to a puppy will usually be nothing more severe than a growl or a nip, but in the case of an adolescent this may develop into a full-scale fight with severe injuries to one or both dogs.

Reward recalls

Call the puppy over and over again and give him a treat or a cuddle every time he comes to you, no matter what he’s been up to. Never, ever, ever call him and then punish him (this is the Number One Mistake New Dog Owners Make). He will associate the punishment with coming when called, and not with whatever he was doing before you called him, and you will end up with a dog who is resistant to coming on command. You want to condition your puppy to believe that coming to you is the best thing in the whole world; this will stand you in good stead when you start doing serious obedience work later on.

Keep the volume high

The more positive experiences your puppy has and the greater the variety of situations you can introduce him to, the better. Ten good experiences are better than one, and fifty are better than ten.

What happens if your puppy does have a bad experience? Suppose your neighbour comes to visit with two small children who bully the puppy and frighten it badly?

All is not lost, as your pup is still highly imprintable. What matters now is that you try to create a large number of positive experiences with children. One good experience won’t undo the damage; twenty or thirty might well. Find a doggy friend who has a child who is well-behaved around dogs. Introduce the child to your puppy and ask him or her just to feed treats at first. If the puppy won’t go near the child, don’t force the issue. Try feeding the puppy some really high-quality treats yourself while the child is in the same room. Gradually bring the child nearer and nearer while you feed, until the puppy will tolerate him or her quite close by. After a while, the child should be able to feed the puppy, and then to stroke it while he feeds it, and eventually to cuddle it and handle it. It is extremely important to go at the puppy’s pace; at the first sign of nervousness the child should back off, but as soon as he or she has left the room you should also stop feeding the treat. The puppy will learn that the treat is associated with the child, and that good things happen when children are around.

If you can find a child who can sit still for long enough, another very useful technique is to lay a trail of treats up to the child and scatter a few on the child’s body. Let the puppy find the treats and approach at his own pace; this helps him to overcome his fear. This is also useful with older dogs who are afraid of people.

Repeat this with as many different children as possible, as many times as possible. If your puppy has a nervous temperament, it may take some time and patience on your part. If he’s a more confident, resilient puppy he will probably bounce back without too much trouble.

The objective of puppy socialisation is not to stress your puppy out by flooding him with too many stimuli to handle at once, but neither is it to cushion him to the point where he never has to deal with any fear. A puppy who is startled by something but then plucks up his courage and approaches it with positive results is developing what Jean Donaldson calls bounce-back. Multiple opportunities to overcome spookiness develop resilience and a better temperament overall; and at this age, even supposedly genetic characteristics such as social dominance are remarkably plastic. Assessing your puppy’s inherited temperament and then working hard to correct any nervousness will reap benefits for years to come.

Puppy socialisation, properly done, is an investment in your future - and your dog’s. Don’t leave it to chance.

Dog training in 5 steps

2011-01-20T12:00:04Z

The key to successful dog training

Learning new behaviours
Generalisation of learned behaviours
Discrimination of cues
Reliability of learned behaviours
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.