Good manners and understanding human rules are hard for dogs. Your dog might be listen very well at home alone, but not so well when you go out or have company over. That’s why we like to add distractions incrementally. When your dog can perform around a few dogs or mild distractions it’s time to up the ante – but just a little. Let’s use learning to swim as an analogy to our training. First you learn to swim in the shallow end of the pool where the water is calm and you can touch the bottom, then you move to the deep end, you can’t touch the bottom but still calm water, and finally you can give it a try in a lake or ocean. In the ocean you have no control over the environment and yet you can still swim. What we’ve done in this analogy is gradually surrendered control of our environment as skill and awareness have increased.
We do the same thing when training dogs. You might start off with a little training at home, then go to some private lessons with a trainer, then complete group training with other people and dogs, and finally, you might join a training club where dozens of people and their dogs all train together somewhere outside. This is a very general outline for the process of incremental surrender of environment, but if you properly apply these steps you will have a much greater chance to end up with a very well trained and well behaved dog.
Despite its importance, a lot of dog owners skip the incremental addition of distractions and will often skip levels in training. This happens because we want to believe our dogs are ready for anything once they are doing a really good job at home, in small class, or wherever. Lack of a solid foundation of the basics leads to breakdowns in your commands. I see examples of this all the time. Someone will be commanding their dog, “Sit… Sit! … SIT. Come on, Sit… I know you know this – SIT,” and then they will say “Oh, he knows this, he’s just being stubborn.” Chances are your dog does know “Sit,” but he is probably not being stubborn. You probably just haven’t done enough practice with Sit at even a moderate level of distraction. Think about how many times you have asked your dog to sit at home with little to no distraction – make sure you count every last time you’ve asked for a sit, not just during times you set aside for training. Now how many times have you asked for Sit outside at the park? How many times have you asked for Sit when your at the pet store? How many times have you asked for Sit when your out for a walk? How many times have you asked for Sit when visiting a neighbor? If you want your dog to perform a command under all these circumstances, then you need to practice under circumstances that are less, equal, and finally, more distracting than each one.
Happy Training,
Debi