Some of the most popular behaviors people teach their dogs include sitting/staying until released to eat a meal and sitting before crossing a street when they’re out on a walk. What makes these behaviors so commonly used? What do dogs and dog parents gain from doing them? Do these behaviors matter to dogs?
How Obedience Behaviors Matter
Sitting and staying are holdovers from old-timey “obedience” training. Back in the day, the curricula for most dog training classes were based on the exercises in the AKC obedience ring. The Novice Class includes heeling on and off leash, coming when called, sit, down, and “stay” while the handler walks away and returns. These behaviors can be fun to train! They are easy for even new trainers to reinforce. They have a place in daily life as a way to pause what’s going on so a handler can reset and put a different plan of action in place.
Practicing Behaviors Between Classes
The first training classes I assisted with, back in the 1980s, simply followed the obedience show-ring pattern. Students and their dogs learned these skills and found ways to practice and use them at home. One way to fit training practice into daily life was to have the dog sit and stay while Mom or Dad put his food bowl down and then released him to eat. Another simple way to practice for class was to have the dog stop and sit at intersections before crossing the street. Many people take their dogs for walks almost daily, so this one fits right into the routine.
Real-World Skills in Today’s Classes
Training classes these days are commonly set up to mimic typical daily life with a dog, rather than connecting with the competition obedience ring. My courses are built to help students tackle real-world tasks that you encounter with your dog at home and when you go out for a walk. The behaviors we cover will help you and your dog have a great experience when you’re in a public place as well as when people come over to your house. The individual behaviors are not so different, but the applications add clarity to their value.
Learning New Things Takes Effort
Obedience training gets a bad rap these days because of the imagined association with force training. Many of us used science-based, positive reinforcement training without collar corrections or other nasty punishments to prepare our dogs for competition, however. Those old-timey behaviors are useful and they fit nicely into the newer courses. After all, you do need a way to have your dog wait for your next cue, a behavior to keep him in one place for a minute or two, and it’s “Oh, so nice” to walk with a dog at your side on a loose leash when you need to get through a crowd or other inopportune area. You can teach them with positive reinforcement, building a safe and reliable partnership at the same time.
The hardest thing about taking a class, whether a college class or a dog training class, is setting aside time to study and practice. Finding ways to fit the new things you’re learning into standard daily activities is one of the best ways to ensure you get some practice in every day.
As a teacher and coach, I offer plenty of ideas about how to get your homework done by practicing when you’re feeding your dog, walking him, playing with him, putting him in a crate or confinement area, or even while you’re having dinner or working at your desk. You can train your dog by working in short and simple training sessions throughout the day, if you take the time to plan.
How Sitting for Meals Matters
Having your dog sit and wait for his food helps you practice giving the right cues and reinforcers at the right times. It helps your dog practice waiting for your instructions and responding to your guidance. Your dog will also learn to relax and think about what he’s doing rather than react impulsively to changes in the environment. Where else can reacting impulsively to new things that come into your dog’s field of view cause a problem? So many areas – approaching dogs, visitors coming into the house, and more.
How Sitting at Intersections Matters
When you’re out for a walk, you must not only keep your eyes out for changes in the environment that might attract your dog’s attention but also have your walking positions and leash properly set up so you can use behaviors you’ve learned to control the situations that arise. I teach people to walk with their dogs on loose leashes, but also to have them close enough so that they can quickly u-turn if needed. You don’t have much control over the situation if your dog is 6 feet away from you. If you have taught a good recall, you can call him back and then turn around to walk away from a problem. But if he’s closer to you, you can get out of a problem situation much more quickly.
Chance to Re-connect
As you and your dog are learning to walk as partners and developing your routine of walking side-by-side while enjoying the scenery, your brain is working over-time to ensure you are paying attention to everything. Stopping at intersections or changes in terrain allows you to re-group, think about what might be coming up next on your path, and re-connect with your dog. That’s why stopping and having your dog sit at intersections can be helpful. You can stop anywhere and have him sit, but intersections can be a cue that helps remind you to do it every once in a while.
Behavior Matters to You AND Your Dog
Practicing this exercise is likely to build automatic stops at intersections into your routine. This behavior is common for guide dogs who help blind people. It’s not a bad idea to stop at an intersection and look for approaching vehicles. This behavior can help you keep your mind on walking with your dog instead of allowing your thoughts to wander too far so that you aren’t ready to help your dog if something unexpected pops up.
Learning How to Learn?
When I was a young trainer, those with more experience used to talk about how dogs needed to “learn how to learn.” That’s not exactly true. Animals are built knowing how to learn, both through the evolution of their species and as individuals through embryo and fetal development. If they weren’t, they would not survive. However, what these experienced trainers were trying to say was that dogs need to learn how their owners, handlers, parents, and others will teach them.
YOU Have to Teach Your Dog
Learning from one person can make it easier for your dog to learn from another, but each new person that trains a dog has to build a communication partnership in order to succeed. Your dog needs to learn how you will be teaching him, how you will respond to his choices, and whether there’s anything he needs to watch out for. This last part is why it’s so important to teach in ways that make your dog feel safe to try things and not in a way that punishes his attempts.
Having your dog perform behaviors around the house, either ones that you ask for or ones that you provide opportunities for, teaches him one more concept. That is, his behavior choices make a difference. The behaviors he chooses can produce things he likes.
Dogs are Learning All the Time
We know that dogs make choices that the environment punishes, and those behavior choices are minimized in their behavioral repertoire. He walks on a hot surface and his paws burn. He sticks his face in a cactus and gets spines in his muzzle. Pet dogs are not typically exposed to big dangers like this because we protect them. But their brains catalog the consequences of every behavior they try and that’s why we try to set them up so that they only try the ones we want to see more of! For instance, putting paws on countertops and digging in garbage cans can produce some pretty great reinforcers. It’s best not to give your dog opportunities to learn that because those behaviors will be repeated!
Puzzles Teach Puppies that Behavior Matters
Providing dogs with puzzles is valuable beyond just “giving them something to do.” I will never forget when Dr. Ian Dunbar told me, so many years ago, that providing puppies with meals in Kongs is one of the most important early lessons they can learn from. Dr. Dunbar encouraged us to stuff kibble into Kongs after putting a string through the small hole and tying a knot so the Kongs could hang from the side of the puppy pen. As a puppy tries different ways to access the food in the Kongs, his behaviors are either reinforced by getting a piece of kibble in his hungry belly or not reinforced when he doesn’t get one. There are multiple levels of reinforcement available. The puppy can sometimes get a lick or a taste of the food and sometimes get a whole piece of kibble in his mouth!
What Puppies Learn from Kongs
Puppies working food out of Kongs are learning that their behavior choices matter. Some behaviors are reinforced and others, not so much. They also learn that a change in the environment provides an opportunity for reinforcement of behavior choices. When the Kongs are hung from the side of their pen, reinforcement is available for the correct behaviors. When the Kongs are not there, there’s no reason to hang around that area. They can use their energy in other ways. They learn to watch and listen for cues, which prepares them to respond to the cues you offer in more formal training sessions. But hanging Kongs for puppies IS a training session: a simple but very valuable one.
Puzzles Teach Dogs that Behavior Matters
There are so many puzzles available to buy for your dog these days! The ones designed by Nina Ottosson are among the best for providing predictable levels of difficulty and a variety of opportunities to use different skills. Pushing, pulling, flipping, and sliding different pieces of the apparatus produces treats for your dog.
Just like puppies learning from their behavior choices with Kongs, your dog learns that his behavior matters. Some behavior choices get him things he likes and others don’t. This is exactly what you want him to understand when you’re teaching him a trick, to climb into the bathtub, or to retrieve something and put it in your hand.
Training is Simple. . . .
Who knew that training your dog was so simple? It is. In the words of Dr. Bob Bailey, “Training is simple, but not easy.” It may be hard to believe that your dog is learning all the time, but he is. He doesn’t zone out just because you’re not in the room. He’s doing stuff and learning from it. That’s the simple part.
. . . . but Not Easy!
The part that is not easy for us is paying attention to what behaviors we see more often and understanding that we have the option to change the environment, to offer our dogs different things to do than we are right now, so that they learn different behaviors. It’s not easy. But it’s most likely quite beneficial for our own brains, making plans and thinking of new ways to stimulate dogs to try new things.
Teach at Simple Levels
Addressing learning at the simplest levels is the best way to teach new behaviors. You don’t start teaching a dog to retrieve something 100 yards away. You start by having him pick up something nearby, in a quiet and controlled environment, and build from there. If he’s been conditioned to explore behavior choices from puppyhood, he’s primed to learn new things. Even if he didn’t get that great start during puppyhood, you can help your dog build his learning muscles so he gets better and better at learning from you while you get better at teaching him.
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