Training Dogs and their People!

September 24, 2014 by

Over two years ago, I took my miniature poodle, Harley, for puppy kindergarten at Puppy Love Training. Dr. Kay Stephens is a veterinarian who worked full time in private practice until deciding to devote her time to dog behavior and training. The puppy kindergarten class was filled with socialization, basic obedience, and tips to solve behavioral problems. Kay noticed that I was very interested in dog training and got me involved by training her puppies during class, improving my skills as a trainer. I am now teaching an Intro Agility class, private obedience lessons, as well as substituting for Kay in her puppy kinder classes.

Harley's First Day at Puppy Kindergarten

Harley’s First Day at Puppy Kindergarten

One of the most important lessons that Kay taught me was in order to be a great dog trainer you not only had to be able to teach dogs, but their people too! When you are teaching classes, you get to spend time with the handler and dog for one hour a week usually. In order for a dog to really learn something, they should be practicing those behaviors every day. To do this, we have to teach the training skills to the handlers so that they can be successful at home.

At Puppy Love we use positive reinforcement to train dogs, and specifically use a clicker. A clicker is a fast, effective way to communicate to your dog that the behavior was correct. One difficulty that people encounter is bad timing. We want to capture the moment in which the dog is performing the correct behavior—almost like taking a picture. Sometimes we can click too early or too late and miss the behavior entirely. Using positive reinforcement means that nothing bad will happen to your dog due to poor timing, although they may become confused! We try to help our handlers improve their timing so that they are capturing the great behaviors of their dog.

Harley (middle) and Duke (right) practicing their sit-stay while the other puppies play

Harley (middle) and Duke (right) practicing their sit-stay while the other puppies play

One of the hardest parts while training is breaking down behaviors into small pieces, or approximations of the goal behavior. Let’s apply this to a down stay. Your goal is to have your dog stay down for 1 minute. You can’t go from asking the dog to stay for 10 seconds to the entire minute. Chances are that you are not going to be successful, and the dog will get up. Increasing the time in smaller increments (3-5 seconds) will make your training sessions more effective and actually improve the behavior faster.

You don’t have to be a professional to have fun with your dog; training in short, five minute sessions a couple of times a day will work wonders! So get out there and train your dog!

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Harley doing the weaves!

Filed Under: Positive Reinforcement, Training Tips Tagged With: ,

Why?

November 8, 2011 by

People often ask me why a veterinarian would become involved in dog training.

I practiced veterinary medicine full time for years and trained my own dogs as my hobby. As I became more serious about training my dogs, I studied and learned more and more about animal behavior, learning theory, and science based behavior modification.

What I learned both excited and depressed me. It was exciting to study the elegant and precise methods available to train animals. It was depressing because I saw the local “training classes” using rough and ineffective methods and then blaming the dogs when those methods failed.

As a veterinarian, I would see those dogs come into the veterinary clinic either out of control or slinking around in fear. The owners were angry and frustrated because they had “tried everything”, and the dogs were still misbehaving.

I finally decided that someone had to help these people and these dogs. So, in 1992 , we started Puppy Love training. In those days, we were really considered radical because almost no one in this area was using positive reinforcement or clicker training. But the methods worked and dogs learned how to behave, and people learned how to communicate with and train their own dogs.

Now, nearly 20 year and thousands of dogs later, I still get a thrill out of helping someone learn to communicate with their dog. I love seeing the “lightbulb” moment when the dog understands what we are telling him.

Today, there are quite a few trainers in town, many of whom learned to train here at Puppy Love. I think that is great. The more people we can educate about the science of animal training and the more people we can get to use positive reinforcement, the better for the dogs.

Filed Under: Positive Reinforcement Tagged With: , ,