How to Teach Your Dog To Do Anything in 4 Easy Steps

Want to teach your dog a neat new trick? Are you just starting to train puppies and want to teach your dog the basics? I’ll tell you the dog trainer’s secret – when it comes to teaching a dog a new skill, no matter how simple or complex the behavior we want to train, we all follow the same process. And once you learn the process, you can teach your dog anything!

This first step is essential. If you don’t know what you want, your dog will have a really hard time figuring it out! When deciding what to teach your dog, you need to shape it in a certain way – don’t think about what you want the dog to stop doing. We humans often fall into the trap of saying, “I want my dog ​​not to jump on me” or “My dog ​​needs to stop pulling on the leash.” You can’t train without something. You should give your dog clear criteria for behavior that does not correspond to any undesirable behavior.

Examples of well-defined Dog Training goals:

I want to teach my dog ​​to sit when greeting people.

I want to teach my dog ​​to turn a circle to the right.

I want to teach my dog ​​to walk at my speed within one foot of my left side when on a leash.

I want to train my dog ​​to open the fridge, grab a beer from the bottom shelf and bring it to me, making sure the fridge door is closed behind him.

These are all actions that your dog can perform and are well-defined, although some behaviors are more complex than others. No matter how complicated a new behavior may seem, you will treat it like a simple behavior. The only difference is that you train the entire behavior in small slides, linking the steps together as your dog learns – we’ll go deeper into this in the next step.

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Now is the time to get rid of some creative thinking. Certain behaviors, such as sitting or sitting, occur more often and more naturally than walking on a loose leash. To learn a new behavior, the dog must be reinforced for it. To reinforce behavior, it has to happen first! We have several different ways to “implement” the behavior:

Environment setting

Build an environment in which behavior is easier to perform naturally or with the help of temptation or shaping (described below). Have environmental guidelines to encourage certain movements or place deck stacks in your favor.

Example of using environment settings in training:

You teach your dog to spin in the right circle. Place the exercise pen in a large circle. Place a cone in the center for the dog to move around. The circle they create may be large at first, but with practice, it gets smaller and smaller, turning into a tight rotation to the right without the need for a cone or a pen disk to practice.

Using a long hallway and using the wall as a natural boundary will help your dog learn the correct heel position. This is especially helpful when you are doing heel training with the dog near your feet.

Set up a child gate that your dog will have behind whenever guests enter your home. This gives guests protection from a jumping dog and a chance to ask to be seated. They can then reward the sitter with a treat and/or attention. Sitting can also be the behavior that means the gate has opened for them.

tempting behavior

Guide the dog into position or through the motion of the behavior by leading. This can be most easily done with food, but can also be done with toys or nothing at hand once the dog has learned to follow hand instructions.

Lure is when you hold the food in a closed hand and that hand guides the dog to the desired location. Your dog is more likely to follow food lures because he can smell the food, and if you can control his head position, you can control how his body moves or position. its.

When first introducing a new behavior to your dog, it sometimes takes training to get the right attraction in terms of position and speed. For example, if you taught your dog to sit when greeting someone, you would place the cue right in front of his nose and slowly move him over his head (between the ears). The dog should follow the lure with his nose, making his back end touch the ground. However, sometimes we move the gift back too quickly or into a position too high, and the dog will jump towards it or move around trying to find it instead of sitting down. It takes practice to find the exact speed and position to tempt you. If your dog doesn’t follow the lure of food or manual instructions, try moving more slowly or keeping your hand close to his nose as you move him.

behavior formation

Shaping is an incredibly fun and effective Dog Training technique that takes full advantage of the power of tag training (click training). If you and your dog are familiar with percussion, you can teach more complex behaviors through shaping. Shaping means you take the behavior and break it down into smaller, more manageable actions.

For example, if you teach your dog to bring you drinks from the fridge, you can train the entire behavior in these seven steps:

1. Take a step towards the refrigerator
2- Take a wire attached to the handle of the refrigerator
3. Pull the rope or towel to open the door
4- Hold the drink (gently!)
5. Take the drink out of the fridge
6- Close the refrigerator
7- Bring you drinks

You can break these parts of the whole behavior into smaller parts. By focusing on each simple step, your dog will be more successful and learn the whole process faster because they understand each action in the sequence.

Capture behavior

Capturing a behavior means waiting for the action to happen naturally, allowing you to reinforce it. Recently, I used the hold with my dog ​​method to find the “stretching” trick. I was unable to successfully lure or induce this sign’s position, thanks to its long body and short legs. It tends to lie down without bending or straightening from the stand. When I see her naturally stretching, usually when the dog gets up from the bed, I will take the opportunity to call her name and reward her. Sometimes I just give compliments and foreplay, or more often, I say ‘yes’ or click and then reward it.

The more that behavior is reinforced (whether by a food reward or anything else the dog deems valuable), the more likely that behavior will be repeated. It’s up to us to make sure we reinforce the behaviors we want Dogs to learn so they choose to do them more often and when asked.

This is where the clicker (or word picker like saying “click” or “yes”) does all the heavy lifting for you. When your dog performs a new behavior, mark it with a click or a word, then reward it. Then repeat!

Your click or “Yes!” Talk specifically to your dog about the action that gives him a reward – he acts as a bridge, giving you time to reward him. If you don’t use markers during training, reinforcement (treatment) must be introduced immediately with the action you want to reinforce, which can be difficult! Your dog will learn faster if there is clear communication.

Once you’ve started with the steps above, it’s all about repetition and practice. In the beginning, you’ll want to practice behaviors around less distractions before slowly adding to the more hectic and therefore more challenging environment. Walking on a loose leash in the house is easier for your dog than walking on a loose leash in the garden – there are all those smells and squirrels to deal with!

Once your dog has learned the skill to have fewer distractions, make it a little harder. After wiring loosely around the house, take it out into the driveway of your car or the sidewalk in front of your house. Then around the block. This is called generalization, as your dog learns that this new behavior is rewarding no matter where he is! Once the behavior has been generalized, you can begin to gradually transition training methods to an environment where your dog reliably executes signals.

By following the general steps outlined above, you can teach your dog to do anything you can imagine (within their physical abilities, of course)! Training Dogs to do things they love means you can ask them for alternatives and incompatibilities to prevent undesirable behaviors, such as sitting in front of guests instead of jumping on them or Take a gentle walk instead of dragging you down the street. If you need help getting started, connecting with a certified dog trainer can help you and your dog work as a team and will give you the opportunity to learn training skills that will last a lifetime. .