If you’ve been training your dog very long, chances are you and your dog have gotten into a bit of a rhythm. You introduce a new cue, practice a bit, and then when it looks good give it a name. What happens though, when your dog starts off strong with a new cue, but suddenly starts flubbing it?
This happened to me recently working with my dog Sandy on a new cue. I was teaching her to do a low-five (You’ve probably seen it in our groom training course here.) The idea was to teach her to touch my hand on cue by first luring her onto a target, than gradually making the target smaller, than making the target my hand.
She did really well for the target training but really struggled to transfer the concept to my hand. Although she successfully touched my hand a few times during training, without the target she became confused and frustrated.
How to Tell If Your Dog is Confused
If your dog has been successfully offering the cue you want, it can be surprising when they suddenly won’t do it. You may think they are just being stubborn or are willfully disobeying you. Confused dogs often still want to please, so they’ll often offer a different behavior instead.
A common behavior is to offer sit or down instead. After all, you liked and rewarded these behaviors before, and they don’t know what you want! So—how about a sit then? Would you like that?
How to Fix It
When your dog starts flubbing a cue they seemed to be getting, the best solution is to back up a few steps in the training process and go forward more slowly. I started Sandy Pawz at the very beginning, starting with the foot on the target.
She was wildly glad to touch the target again and clearly understood this part, so we moved forward. I tested putting my hand on the target, and then finally just my hand.
Sandy didn’t have trouble with the hand if she had a warm up with touching the target first, but she struggled with touching the hand cold turkey.
With your training issue, you’ll likely be able to narrow down the exact cause of the problem by testing each section methodically.
Once you find the area they’re struggling with, you can then begin strengthening that area. As an example with Sandy, I faded the target slowly. In one session, I put my hand on the target 5 times and then asked for the behavior without the target once. The next lesson was every 3 times. Then every other time.
Eventually, Sandy had no problems touching my hand without the target for support. She showed good understanding of what was being asked, able to touch my hand even when it was raised, moved, or tilted.
Conclusion
While you’re probably not struggling to get your pup to do a low-five, many training issues can be solved in a similar way. Each time your pup struggles with something, especially if they are asking for help by offering different behaviors, you can follow the same pattern to fix it. As a summery, this includes:
- Taking a few steps back in training
- Testing to see which part is confusing
- Working on that area, starting a little before it gets confusing.
I hope you find this helpful. Happy training!
Similar Posts:
- Shaping: A Gentle Dog Training Method
- How to Teach Your Dog to Use a Scratch Board
- What is Luring in Dog Training?
- Dog Vocabulary: Capturing
- Training Vocabulary: Extinction
