Category Archives: Training

Where have you been

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Abby displaying her ever growing commitment to me that i swear i do not deserve.

I ask myself many times a day, where have you been? Whether i’m questioning the students at school, the dogs and why they smell like dead road kill, myself when i realize 45 minutes have gone by and i’m still staring at the same spot on my kitchen wall. It makes no difference, the answer is always the same, checked out. If your not where you should be focusing on what will benefit you then you are checked out, plain and simple. For me checking out is a means of escape just like training my dogs but with little effort demonstrated. I don’t want my dogs to check out when they are working with me, why should i get to do the same? Every day i think they teach me a little bit more about myself then i know. All it really takes is an emotional situation, one glance down, and i get lost in their chocolate brown eyes that seem to only know 2 emotions, happiness, and extreme happiness. Happiness is of course you being their owner, but extreme happiness, well now thats you being their owner, coming home from work, and having a T-Bone steak for dinner with them!!!!!

Of course there is always that questions, where have you been, all my life?

Wordless Wednesday

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Our wordless wednesday post is all about search dogs doing disaster work, enjoy!

Max a Belgian Malinois working the bark barrel

 

Emeline indicating on the bark barrel

 

Abby a german shepherd working the rubble pile and alerting on the buried subject

Terrific Tip Tuesday

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Our focus for this week’s terrific tip Tuesday is how to work on the relax command.

Have you ever gotten a new puppy and been so thankful that he has finally fallen asleep on the doggie bed that you don’t dare want to pet him or speak to him and wake him up???? What is he just supposed to know through  telepathy that you think its good he is relaxing? Dogs do not know anything about living in the human world, it is our responsibility as their owner to teach them what we do and do not like them to do in our world.

The moment pup finally lays down and starts to relax we want to praise and pair a word with it. I usually use settle or relax as it isn’t generally used in normal conversation and it tends to be spoken in a calm manner which helps reinforce what we are training to teach anyway. Anytime you see the desired behaviour mark it and pair it with your cue or command. Now obviously we want to calmly praise the dog not pull a toy out and go crazy, but you can provide a few high value snack morsels in slow succession for a minute or so keeping the pup in the down position and calmly petting him. This reinforcement will help show him what it is that makes us his owner happy and what behaviors he should repeat in the future.

(let me tell you it was hard to find a picture of any of my dogs relaxing!! I must just take shots of the action times in their lives)

Focusing on Consistency- Part 1 The Agenda

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Abby and Eme- the consistency of a platz

*Note- this will be the first of many posts in a series dedicated to the consistency that must be displayed while performing obedience training with our dogs.

I have a lot of clients who just want to obedience train their dogs. Most just want a friend or a well behaved pet and some want to move on to trials and competitions. Whatever the eventual goal is a few factors should always remain the same.

~Always train on the dogs agenda, not ours.

Just because WE want him to learn how to lay down in the next ten minutes with the cherrios we have in our hand doesn’t mean HE is capable of learning that fast, and even likes the way cherrios taste!!!!!! My point is, would you be able to write a 10 page purposal on a new bussiness adventure in 15 minutes for the left over pocket change i have totaling 58 cents? NO and nor would you want to!!! The first key in a successful training relationship is to work on his agenda. This is not “giving him power” or making him “a dominant dog” that is a bunch of bull and is blown way out of context (sorry, off my soapbox now)

As a responsible dog owner, our dogs partner and trainer we have to take into consideration him as

A. An animal

B. A sub species of animal AKA Canis Familiaris

C. A breed of sub species example being Pug, or German Shepherd

Only once we fully grasp this concept can we adequately acknowledge the training needs of our friend. We have to work with what we have, and each dog is different. This is one of the reasons we do not have an one method for our training, its impossible to if you want to have a good positive working relationship with your canine. It’s easy to just be a bully and say “It’s my way or the highway” like many trainers do but why, this is your partner, your friend, and you brought him into your world and choose this job for him. The least you can do is do it on his agenda!

We train with our dogs so that we can build a better relationship with them, i particularly focus on communication, consistency, and respect. These words can be defined a number of ways but the way we define and apply them is what gives you and your dog the ultimate relationship. Our work needs to be clear and consistent, we must do the repetitions the same every time and we must communicate it to the dog in the language they understand. This combination is what leads to the mutual respect that is demanded in the training relationship.

While we strictly train on the DOGS agenda, we must have a PLAN as the trainer. Our next part will  be focusing on the plan.

Target stick- like giving candy to a baby………for some dogs anyway

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I’m always looking for something new to teach the dogs.

A. because i’m bored

B. because they are bored

C. because the students at the school get bored

D.  because i love to spend my money ( that one isn’t true but i DO end up spending all my money on my dogs, wouldn’t have it any other way!!!!!!)

So last week i purchased a target stick from amazon.  I gotta admit its pretty fun! My dogs have a “touch” and “target” command but shaping the behavior to target the end of the stick is amusing. We worked with both Abby and Raina for about 10 minutes each. Raina has intense focus on me, we worked a lot on eye contact when she was younger and it is one of the reasons she has stellar obedience in almost any setting. This is wonderful, its the way our training relationship is and i love it but boy it makes it hard to get her to notice the target stick or even care about it! I cannot complain, i cannot get frustrated, dogs are perfect at being themselves and this is who she is!! So our 10 minute sessions  are very different with each dog. Abby will now target the purple ball on the end of the stick within a few seconds of presenting it to her at any reasonable height around her, I or objects she is familiar with. We have not moved it to enough locations to generalize the behavior nor have we put it on cue yet to take her to more distracting environments.

Raina is another story, her focus on me has lead me to  have to try alternate “attention getters” for her to find positive association with the target stick. Coating the end in peanut butter of course 🙂    For Raina we will break this down into very short training sessions with clicking as she touches her nose to the peanut butter covered ball on the end of the target stick. 3 minutes 4 times a day, as well as a few sessions with her sister Abby so she can gain some social learning (watching Abby, seeing what she does and what she gets rewarded for)

Abby and her 2nd session

Raina and her 3rd session.

Much less progress if compared to Abby but what you must remember is they are 2 totally different dogs (even though genetically they are exactly the same, 2 litters, Raina was a repeat breeding of Abby’s litter.) As a handler of multiple dogs you must always make sure you do not compare them to each other or their progress. Each dog learns differently and thats what makes training multiple dogs so much fun!

Terrific Tip Tuesday

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This weeks tip- How to get your dog to acknoweldge your existence in public.

Do you love walking your dog at the park, or taking him to your friends house to swim in their lake, or want a more peaceful trip to the pet store or vet office?

Contrary to popular belief you actually have to “train” your dog to realize that YOU are important anywhere he goes, and that he should not just “default” to the environment. The  best way to do this is work on a good “look” or “eyes” command. Start someplace easy where you always have your dogs attention like your kitchen before he eats dinner. As soon as he looks up at you and makes eye contact mark the behavior (say yes or click) and give him his food. (For more about marker training or clicker training visit our website http://www.EliteInstinctCanine.com or email me EliteInstinctCanine@gmail.com)

Repeat this exercise every time you feed him and intermittently in all places you go (with just a food tidbit) so he will generalize looking at you is good! Once he is reliably offering you the behavior you can put it on command. We use “eyes” because it is not a word commonly used in conversation around our dogs.

Good luck, keep training and check back next week for another tip!! If there is something you would like to see please email me EliteInstinctCanine@gmail.com

Raina performing “eyes” in a park in the finger lakes.

The importance of a solid relationship

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Raina and I working her in drive with the photography class getting some action shots.

The single most important part of training with your dog is the relationship. What is the whole reason you got a dog in the first place? Most people its for a companion, a friend, someone who can experience life with them. Why wouldn’t you want the ultimate relationship with your best friend?

Part of having the best relationship is that if done correctly it builds in the respect factor, which is a two way street. In order for your dog to respect you as both his friend and trusted pack leader you must respect him as a dog. Anthropomorphism or the act of treating a dog like a human being has gone wildly out of control in the last few decades. People do not understand the implications of doing this, which can range greatly depending on the dog and where the relationship stands. My advice is to only use intense emotion with your dog while you guys are training or having a play session. You can take the necessary emotional release and put it to use! Praise, energy, and body posture are three big secondary reinforces (for more on this please see our website for a list of recommended reading.) that we use when training our dogs. Not only does it benefit our training session but it also allows us as humans to provide some of that never ending emotional release we like to inflict (smother) on our dogs.

For more information or to sign up for our obedience classes and begin the journey of achieving the ultimate relationship with your canines visit http://www.EliteInstinctCanine.com

The summers first water training

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Well the end of May brought us our first water training for the search dogs. A nice calm quite private lake, a boat, multiple handlers and K9’s and a few of my students. The kids loved swimming and driving the boat, the dogs loved swimming and riding on the boat……..i swear there are not many differences between them!

Water trainings are great BUT BOY does it take a lot of pre-planning, set up, and specific execution plans to make happen. The dogs obviously get no water work during winter and colder months, lending to just a short time we can get them on a boat ever year. We have 2 water seminars later this year, one in August in Mawah NJ, and one in September in Binghamton NY with Amigo Search Dogs. Both will be excellent opportunities to get some good training in.

Anywho back to our water training.

First off was Abby- Shes a certified HR water dog meaning that per NYS Federation of Search and Rescue she is certified to search for lost people and human remains on or near water. She is excellent at “driving” the boat with her nose pointed in the correct direction. My focus for water training was to work a blank area with no scent and see how it differed from when she worked scent. BOY WAS IT OBVIOUS!!! She was just out for a cute boat ride!!! She knew her sensitive little nose had nothing and she was calm and quite just hunting around a bit checking to see if she got any scent as we went around the lake. Zach was our boat driver and he was impressed by how different her body language was.

Abby on the boat

Our next order of bussiness was to get Abby comfortable in the water. Last summer i was able to enlighten her to the benefit of “wading” in the water and how much fun it was to splash around but she didnt have the confidence necessary to dive out swim across the pond and get her toy. This summer the boys know its fun time in the pond for Abby!!!! The goal is to desensitize her to swimming in all environments and build her confidence around the water. In the lake she was already swimming out into deep water to get her ball!!!

Abby swimming in deep water on her own

Moving on, Ms. Raina is working on her water skills, i’m in turmoil over how much to push water work on her. She loves it and seems to excel at it so i have no reason not to pursue it with her but I’ve held back mostly due to her “crazy drive”  She seems calm when in the boat and we practiced that with running her on a nice blank boat ride, then following up with some short HR boat work. I was impressed with her behavior change during the work and will defiantly be continuing it to see what the outcome is.

Raina and I with Jimmy the driver.

Lastly we have little miss Eme to report on. This training was a huge step for us as a trailing team as i was able to run her on one of her blind training problems.  It was a hot trail, about a mile long and the last .3 miles was double blind with no idea where the trail layer went. The joy and exhilaration that came with the successful completion of the trail and then comparison of how well she had run it (no more then 20 feet off) was insane!

Eme’s hot trail approximately .8o miles long.

Eme is red the subject light blue. She gave me a good negative immediately but after resting her and re casting she went on a bit more before giving me another negative.

Us running the road portion of the trail.

All in all it was a great training, and with a few airscent problems in the mix as well a tiring day for all. So thankful for my team mates and my girls who share this great experience with me.