Progress Report: One Month After Starting From Scratch With How To Train Dog Recall
When you call your dog to come in a variety of settings, how likely are they to immediately run to you? If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that I “started over” with my “hunty-sniffy” dog Sully’s recall about a month ago.
In my first article, I talked about what recall actually is, why I changed Sully’s recall cue, and how I started working with the new cue (among other things). In my second article, I talked about my effort to capture and build attention as a foundation for recall.
What changes have I seen in the past month (keep scrolling!)? What am I keeping an eye on? Let’s dig into my one-month update!
Recall Priorities: Build Behavior First
Before I started from scratch with working on recall with Sully, she used to routinely side step around me in the woods like I was an obstacle to avoid in her sniffing path.
While I introduced a new recall cue to Sully (you can learn more about that process here) a month ago, I’ve actually devoted very little of my time and energy to training with that recall cue. I’ve done two formal training sessions with it and paired it with human food she loves (as the opportunity arose) if I was planning to share with her anyway. That’s it.
The vast majority of my effort this month has gone towards building desired behavior on trails without any verbal cues.
There are three main behaviors I’ve been focused on:
Offering attention (i.e. voluntarily looking at me or orienting to me)
Coming all the way to me when I mark or drop a treat on the ground
Eating the treat I offer
I talked about this process more in my previous article, but as a refresher, here’s what I’ve been doing for the past month:
On our daily trail walks, we stop at least once to play a simple attention game (it’s quick - usually no more than 30 seconds). Sometimes it’s a stationary up-down game while other times it involves more movement. (You can see quick examples of stationary and moving games we play in this post we shared. I also shared how-to’s at the very bottom of this article. Plus, if you really wanna work on attention, check out our on-demand video e-course, Attention Unlocked!)
On our daily trail walks, we capture any and all attention that she offers. Literally. Every single instance. That means that if she stops and orients to us or looks at us, we give her a treat.
In Recall Training The Secret Sauce Is ‘Simple Is Sustainable’
Perhaps you noticed that nothing that I’m doing is earth shattering. Maybe you noticed that I’ve done almost no “formal training sessions.”. The bulk of my work is happening on our trail walks - an activity that is already a habit for me. This is intentional and here’s why:
Foundations first. If I can’t get some of the “simpler behaviors” to show up, I set us up for failure if I move past them. Plus, just because I know how to do “more complex” things doesn’t mean that is what I should be doing. Our progress has come from consistently working on simple foundations.
You want to see change? Then you generally need consistency. And I know that I do simple things more consistently than complex things. It’s harder for me to consistently carve out training sessions from my day than it is to pause for 30 seconds on a walk (especially with Sully – I have much less of an R+ history for training her than I do with my other dog, Otis). So I do what I know I can do consistently.
How To Make Magic: Collect Data
When I first started talking about our recall journey, I mentioned wanting to do this systematically – including taking data. Data are really important to the training process. They help us determine how to intervene and if our interventions are working as expected.
Given all the effort I am putting into building attention, how do I know “if it’s working”?
DATA!!!
I have been measuring the number of instances of “offered attention” per daily hour-long walk. I defined an instance of “offered attention” as Sully looking at us (eye contact), stopping and turning at least her head towards us (with or without eye contact), and/or walking up to us and pausing (with or without eye contact). Anecdotally, the majority of her instances include eye contact. (Some dogs don’t love eye contact, so I am fine with a general orienting behavior.)
Admittedly, I am not being as precise as I could be. I keep count in my head as we walk and jot down the total on my phone at the end of the walk. I undoubtedly screw up my counts, but ultimately, this isn’t a formal study. I am just looking to get a sense of the overall trend (I want to see the count trending upward).
When I first started this journey, this number was so low (between zero and three) that it was easy to count. It’s gone up so much over the past month (now she regularly offers around 30 instances of attention per daily hour-long trail walk) that I likely need to revise my data strategy.
If I wasn’t seeing her offer more attention on walks, I would have revised my strategy.
Behavior Update: A Quick Summary
Sometimes you gotta start slow to go fast in the end. My partner, Ben, and I have been getting such a kick out of the changes we are seeing in Sully after a month of work (remember: we didn’t do any fancy training; we just did simple stuff consistently).
Typical Number of Instances of Offered Attention Per Hour-Long Walk
One Month Ago: 0 to 3
Today: ~ 30
When we’re walking together, I have gone from an obstacle for Sully to avoid in her sniffing path to a signal for valued reinforcers in many contexts. I won’t lie: that feels nice 😂.
Many of the check-ins she offers happen when she is within 15 feet of us (she’s rarely farther than that because that’s the length of her dragline). However, the other day she was in pursuit of some poop to roll in and got a bit farther away from us. I knew I had no business trying to call her, so I just waited. And guess what she did after she rolled in the poop for 10 seconds? She SPRINTED the 30 yards to me. Everything about her behavior gave me the sense that she was certain she would get a treat when she showed up to me. This is what I want! It tells me that contingencies are clear and that my reinforcers are competing well enough in this environment. In an ideal world, I see this type of “recall behavior” show up more and more before I ever add a verbal cue.
Guess what else I am seeing?! When we verbally prompt her (with her name or a kissy noise), she is responding by orienting to or coming to us more often. Now to be fair, I am not measuring these data right now, so I am just going off what I think I have noticed (but given that she was basically unresponsive most of the time a month ago, it’s not hard to see the change). You can see a clear example of this at the end of this post we shared this week where I said her name to simply see if she could look at me (she chose to run all the way to me).
Will Your Treats Compete?
If you have a dog who doesn’t consistently eat outside, please know you are in good company. That used to be Sully. And it could be Sully again tomorrow if I don’t set her up for success (by that I mean arrange conditions in ways that I know make it likely for her to perform the eating behavior).
For the past month, we’ve been primarily using boiled shredded chicken breasts, baked chicken thighs, or ground beef as our treats, and she has consistently been eating them. We only use these as treats when we do our trail walks to try to reap some of the benefits of novelty when it comes to reinforcer value (without using food deprivation). The novelty can boost the value of reinforcers, which can help them compete with nature, increase the reinforcing strength of the treat, and make eating behavior more likely (as well as any behavior that produces the opportunity to eat).
I spent a number of months (a while ago) focused on building her eating behavior, but I still have to be careful. I am intentional in how I progress to make it more likely for my treats to compete. For example, when I first started working on attention pattern games (a while ago), we played indoors with very few distractions so that the desired behaviors were likely to show up. Then we slowly moved to more distracting settings (only as fast as I could keep the desired behavior stable). Now those patterns games are ones I can use in new environments to help get eating behavior to show up there (since the eating behavior already shows up in those pattern games under generalized conditions).
On a day when I only have string cheese (which is still high value but less novel), I am less likely to offer food early in the walk. Early in the walk, nature is more novel and therefore higher value, and cheese doesn’t compete as well. After about 15 to 20 minutes, I can count on her eating cheese.
The precursor to everything I have been talking about is having a reinforcer that your dog will reliably perform to access. In my case, that’s food, which means I need to count on Sully coming towards me to eat the food (that’s a behavior) when I offer it on trails before I can really use food as a reinforcer on trails. If you aren’t getting the eating behavior consistently when you just offer “free food,” you likely need to change your antecedents. Where will your dog consistently eat the food you offer? Start there and then bring the behavior into new environments. (Note: I am just thinking out loud here because this comes up so often. I am not giving specific advice. One of the first things you should check if your dog is not eating consistently is their health..)
Fringe Benefits
Historically, I haven’t always loved training Sully. She doesn’t opt into training as often around home (she prefers to sleep under an old poplar tree or patrol the yard) and tends to offer fewer behaviors that I find really reinforcing (like looking at me, coming to me, asking me for attention). I just have less of a reinforcement history for working with her than I do with Otis. One of the real benefits of focusing so much on capturing attention has been how much reinforcement I am getting from this for “training” her. I am seeing behaviors I love more (since I am looking for them and then reinforcing them). I now have a nice, recent R+ history as I approach the next phase.
What’s Next?
I will keep reinforcing the heck out of attention on our walks, but I am likely going to put a bit more effort into working on recall using our new verbal cue around home, where I can control the level of distraction. Stay tuned!
Reminder
I am very realistic when it comes to Sully. I don’t expect to turn her into Otis. I expect to make progress, but my goal is not to create a dog who stares at me all of the time. She is still my “wild child,” and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I anticipate that I will always be a bit choosy about where I drop her dragline and what criteria I have for that decision, and that is perfectly okay for us!
Addendum: My Go-to Simple Attention Games on Walks
I like to pause like this on hikes now to play attention games with Sully (Otis insists on joining in the fun too!) like the up-down pattern game seen above.
A number of people asked in an Instagram post this week what attention games I play on walks, so I am sharing the two most common ones here!
Simple Up-Down Pattern Game (popularized by Leslie McDevvit)
To play:
Place a treat down on the ground in front of your dog’s paws for them to eat.
When they eat it, they should naturally lift their head up. Mark (you can say “yes” or use a location specific marker like “find it”) and reinforce (place another treat down in the same spot in front of your dog’s paws.
Quietly wait for them to orient up towards you. (Many dogs will look up at you, but if that is uncomfortable for your dog, general orientation towards you works just as well!)
When they do look/orient to you, mark and reinforce with another treat in the same spot. Keep repeating.
Tips:
This game is about capturing offered attention, so you want to avoid prompting your dog by saying their name or pointing to your eyes.
Your dog is allowed to look around. Just wait for them to look up.
If they aren’t looking up at you consistently, you may need to start in a lower distraction environment.
Pattern Game with Movement
To play:
Place a couple treats down on the ground and then move away (if you’re just starting, take only a few steps, but if your dog knows this, you can move farther away).
After your dog eats the treats you put on the ground, they will look at you. Mark and reinforce by putting treats down on the ground where you’re standing and then move away again.
Repeat.
Keep it small or make it a bigger game with more running!
Tips:
Just like in the up-down pattern game, you are capturing offered behavior rather than verbally prompting your dog to come to you (though you could adapt the game to that end in the future!) In other words, do not say your dog’s name or their recall cue (for now).
How To Train a Dog To Recall Through Building Foundations
Do you dream of the day that your dog reliably comes (“recalls”) when you call them? Or maybe you’d just settle for an improvement relative to where you are right now. I recently decided that the best thing I could do to improve my little hunty-sniffy dog’s recall was to start over, and I’m bringing you along for the ride!
In my previous article, I talked about what recall actually is, why I changed Sully’s recall cue, and how I started working with the new cue (among other things). While I plan to systematically work on her response to that new cue (“Ewok”), today, I want to talk about the training that I’m doing simultaneously that doesn’t involve any verbal cues at all. We’re going back to foundations! (Pssst … I cannot emphasize enough how much the training in our on-demand video e-course, Attention Unlocked, can help with recall goals).
Forget the Recall Cue (For a Minute)! What Behavior Is My Dog Voluntarily Offering?
Let me start by painting a picture for you of my two dogs’, Otis and Sully, typically offered behaviors on trail walks (aka what they do voluntarily rather than in response to a verbal cue). As you read, consider which dog’s history may make them more likely to recall and why.
This is a pretty accurate depiction of the different behavioral tendencies of my two dogs. There is no good vs. bad or right vs. wrong here - just different. These dogs are individuals with vastly different learning histories. I love that Sully loves nature so much and my goal is not to turn her into Otis.
OTIS: Otis trots along trails sniffing specific spots or air scenting (aka throwing his nose in the air and following some invisible scent through space) and tends to stay in a roughly 15 yard radius from me. If he hits the edge of that radius, he either voluntarily stops and looks back at me or runs all the way to me, which I usually reinforce with a treat. As he trots along within that radius, he regularly looks back over his shoulder to see where I am or returns all the way to me to check-in, which I tend to reinforce with a small treat. If he sees another dog or person on the trail, he automatically stops and orients to me, which I tend to mark and reinforce. If I stop walking, he stops walking and looks at me. If I continue to stand still, he runs to me. If I change directions, so does he. If he hears a treat bag rustle or sees my hand move towards my treat bag, he sprints to me. If I give Sully a treat, Otis shows up.
SULLY: Sully moves with her nose glued to the ground for the vast majority of her walk. She has gone entire trail walks without ever once looking up at me (no joke). If I stop ahead of her in the middle of the trail, she will arc around my legs and carry on sniffing as if I am a rock and she is the river that just flows around it. She has been known to walk right past treats offered to her in open palms early on in walks. When I give Otis a treat, she appears oblivious by the way she carries on walking and sniffing right past the whole event. If she is not sniffing, she is likely staring at some prey she saw or heard.
Chances are you determined that Otis is likely better positioned (at least based on the limited info I gave you) to respond to recall cues on trails than Sully. How did you conclude that since I didn't talk at all about calling them to come? You probably picked up on the fact that Otis is already regularly offering components of the recall behavior on walks, which means those behaviors are getting regularly reinforced in that context. Plus, if my dog is behaving to access my reinforcers, I may have a bit more confidence in my ability to actually reinforce recall in the future (clearly, I needed to make adjustments with Sully).
What Are the Foundations for Recall?
This is a clip of my two dogs, Otis (gray and white) and Sully (blonde), and my neighbor's dog, Chance (white), on a hike. There were clearly some interesting smells in that area that they all picked up on, which thrills me! I want them to have the chance to move and explore without focusing on me. But notice how Otis voluntarily runs to me after he’s done sniffing? The environment cues those check-ins all the time with him. With Otis, I also feel confident saying that my treats compete easily with most of nature most of the time since he often behaves to access them. This type of history is really helpful when it comes to recall!
“Attention” (i.e. orienting to you) is one of the most important foundations for recall. I want to see a dog offering attention in the environments where I will use their recall cue in the future. Ultimately, it’s easier to recall a dog who is attuned to you to some degree (even if it’s just an occasional glance back) than one who has all of their senses fully tuned to the environment all the time. But perhaps more importantly, attention is the first behavior in the chain of behaviors that make up recall.
When you call your dog, they have to stop (if they are moving) and orient to you before they ever run to you (that is basically how we define “attention”).
I put a lot of weight (in the form of a positive reinforcement history) behind offered attention because I want that behavior to show up more often outdoors. By focusing on offered attention (aka no verbal prompt), I can reinforce part(s) of their recall behavior while mitigating the risk of using their recall cue when they’re not capable of responding, which would just weaken it. Plus, depending on when I mark and how/where I reinforce, I can actually produce more of the full recall behavior. For example, if my dog looks at me when they are 10 yards away from me on the trail, and I say “yes,” that marker cue essentially pulls my dog all the way into me. From the outside, it will look just like recall!
There is another foundation that is often overlooked. It’s easy to focus so much on the recall behavior that you take for granted the behaviors needed to actually access your reinforcers. Imagine you call your dog, and they run to you. When they get to you, you offer a treat in your palm. Your dog looks at it and decides to return to sniffing instead of eating it. You were hoping to reinforce their recall with a treat (we might say that “giving them a treat to take from your hand” was your “reinforcement strategy”), but they have to perform behaviors (approach hand, open mouth, grab treat, swallow treat) to actually “get the treat.” This leads to the other foundation I want to highlight in this article: Your dog needs to reliably (in a variety of environments) respond to the cues and perform the behaviors associated with the reinforcement strategies you plan to use with your dog’s recall. Put actionably, you likely want to practice your reinforcement strategies (in a variety of environments) before trying to use them to reinforce behaviors. Now put more plainly … think about how you plan to reinforce your dog’s recall – for example, dropped treats, tossed toy, etc. – and practice having your dog eat dropped treats or chase a dropped toy in various environments without those valuable events being contingent on some behavior like recall. If your dog doesn’t reliably eat food on trails, then you won’t really be able to use treats reliably to reinforce recall.
Markers are conditioned reinforcers, but they are also cues. That means if we plan to use markers, which I recommend as a general practice in training, we need to make sure our dogs can perform the behavior that the marker cues to actually access the reinforcer. In this video, I marked Sully’s offered attention by saying “yes,” which should tell her to come and get a treat from me. The first time I said “yes,” she started to move but then stopped. The second time I said “yes,” she flew to me to get the treat that “yes” told her was available. Ideally, I don’t ever want to use my marker without it being followed up by the associated primary reinforcer (this pairing needs to remain tight and consistent), so I want to be careful about only using it in conditions where I am confident that my dog can actually respond to get the treat (or whatever reinforcer my marker signals). I am way more careful about when I use my marker with Sully now.
Your reinforcement strategies may or may not include the use of markers like the word “yes” or a click from a clicker. Markers are a fairly complex topic that I am not going to dive into too deeply here, but feel free to check out this Instagram post I did talking about markers. I bring this up because strong markers allow you to capture offered attention from a greater distance. The marker serves as a secondary reinforcer for the offered attention (i.e. looking back at you) and a cue that brings your dog all the way back to you to access a primary reinforcer (i.e. a treat). However, in order to do this, not only does your dog need to be able to perform the eating behavior, they need to reliably respond to your markers. With some dogs, they’ll almost “automatically” respond to their known markers in just about every environment, but for many dogs, you have to train your markers in new environments to get your dog to respond to them there.
How Do I Get My Dog To Offer Me More Attention?
It’s easy to think that recall training is all about calling our dogs, them coming, and then reinforcing that behavior. But there are a lot of other things we can do that can improve their recall! For example, just about any training you do is going to up the level of reinforcement your dog has for working with you, being near you, responding to you, etc., and that history can absolutely help make it more likely for them to come to you when you call them.
I am using a few strategies right now to get Sully to offer me more attention on our trail walks, but I could boil them down to this: I’m reinforcing the heck out of it! Here’s a closer look at what I’ve been doing (you can see some of these in action in this IG post we shared):
1. We pause once on our daily walks to play the up-down pattern game (popularized by Leslie McDevvit) for 30 seconds or so. I love this game because it’s simple, sets the stage for her to offer attention (the pattern helps), and allows me to reinforce a lot of reps of offered attention pretty quickly!
To play:
Place a treat down on the ground in front of your dog’s paws for them to eat.
When they eat it, they should naturally lift their head up. Mark (you can say “yes” or use a location specific marker like “find it”) and reinforce (place another treat down in the same spot in front of your dog’s paws.
Quietly wait for them to orient up towards you. (Many dogs will look up at you, but if that is uncomfortable for your dog, general orientation towards you works just as well!)
When they do look/orient to you, mark and reinforce with another treat in the same spot. Keep repeating.
Tips:
This game is about capturing offered attention, so you want to avoid prompting your dog by saying their name or pointing to your eyes.
Your dog is allowed to look around. Just wait for them to look up.
If they aren’t looking up at you consistently, you may need to start in a lower distraction environment.
2. We pause on walks for 30 - 60 seconds to play moving pattern games. These games give Sully a chance to practice actually running to me.
To play:
Place a couple treats down on the ground and then move away (if you’re just starting, take only a few steps, but if your dog knows this, you can move farther away).
After your dog eats the treats you put on the ground, they will look at you. Mark and reinforce by putting treats down on the ground where you’re standing and then move away again.
Repeat.
Keep it small or make it a bigger game with more running!
Tips:
Just like in the up-down pattern game, you are capturing offered behavior rather than verbally prompting your dog to come to you (though you could adapt the game to that end in the future!) In other words, do not say your dog’s name or their recall cue (for now).
3. We capture any and all offered attention as we walk. That means literally anytime Sully intentionally chooses to orient towards us, we mark and give a treat (or just give a treat). This isn’t a behavior that has been showing up much on walks, but we are hoping to see more of it after adding the three items on this list to our walking routine.
We actually made a whole on-demand video e-course called Attention Unlocked with Juliana DeWillems of JW Dog Training to teach you how to build attention from the ground up (you would start farther back than what I am talking about in this article). Attention may not sound that sexy, but it’s the foundation for so many other behaviors (including recall). You will often reap big rewards by spending time on foundations (even if it feels “easy”) - we truly cannot recommend it enough.
The three things I am doing right now are very low lift, which is key if I want to reliably do them. More broadly speaking, these activities have dramatically increased my reinforcement level with Sully. One of the indirect factors that often helps a dog’s recall is just a large R+ history for interacting with that person, being near that person, etc. I want being near me to predict GREAT things for Sully, and since dogs are always learning, even basically any training can improve recall (this is why so many people who did the TOC Challenge reported that their dog was coming when called so much better even though there is no recall in that course).
Right now, I am just trying to get SOME offered attention on walks. In the future, I may incorporate some stimulus-stimulus pairing procedures to help produce more offered attention at certain points on our walks. For example, I may drop treats anytime I stop walking (pairing my stopping with treats on the ground) to try to produce the operant behavior of her standing near me. Or maybe I’ll start dropping treats anytime she hears a squirrel moving to get squirrels to become a cue to orient to me. Or maybe I’ll pull a page from Attention Unlocked book and work on offered attention around specific distractions. We shall see … for now, we are starting nice and simple and just trying to get attention to show up in the context of the woods!
Do you have a dog who will wake up from a deep sleep and come over to you if you even open the treat drawer? This is very much related to recall! One day I realized that anytime I opened a certain type of Tupperware, both of my dogs showed up in front of me. This is a great example of operant behavior (walking to me) that was produced by stimulus-stimulus pairing. Now to be honest, I am not sure where the pairing actually started. Was it the smell of chicken that got paired with me handing them chicken? Was it the sound of the lid that got paired with the smell of food, which might have already had its own associated response? Was it the sound of the lid that got paired with me handing them food? At any rate, the sound of that lid became a cue that signaled to them that if they came to me, I would hand them food. This is a reminder that our dogs are always learning by consequence and by association. The way to build a recall cue that’s as strong as the sound of treats or Tupperware lids is to make our recall cues reliable predictors of GREAT things.
How Can I Make Desired Behaviors More Likely?
We know that dogs perform behaviors more often if they lead to valued reinforcers. But the challenge is that the value of a stimulus or event is not static.
Let’s look at a human example. Imagine you got lost hiking in the woods and walked eight miles without any food. How valuable might a giant burger be to you in that moment? Now imagine you just ate a huge brunch and had to unbutton your pants to give your belly some room. How valuable might that exact same burger be in this post-brunch moment? Is it as valuable as it was to you after your full day hike?
I’m talking about motivating operations (MOs). “Motivating operations influence the current value of a consequence and therefore the frequency of the behavior that would contact that consequence” (The Dog Behavior Institute). DBI has a great post on MOs and one on the difference between a motivating operation and a discriminative stimulus if you want to learn more.
A few people have asked me how I chose “Ewok” as Sully’s new recall cue. In terms of criteria, I wanted the cue to: 1) Delight me (listed as number 1 for a reason); 2) Be something distinct that didn’t get used regularly in everyday life (really didn’t want to dilute it); 3) Be easy to say (aka no words that I might trip over trying to say); 4) Avoid causing harm to people when yelled out loud (i.e. don’t want to be yelling something that makes other people uncomfortable). Plus, before we got Sully’s DNA results, we assumed she was part Ewok. We still kind of think she is.
With Sully, the value of my treats in a given moment influences how likely she is to orient to me (or recall in the future) since that’s the behavior that leads to treats. I want to do everything I can to up the value of those treats (well, not everything … I am not going to use deprivation and starve Sully before training).
I play with MOs a bit to help myself out (and to be kind and care for Sully’s needs). We’ve been doing most of our attention training on our morning trail walks, and I let her walk for at least 20 minutes without any interruption from me. If she happens to offer me attention, I may** reinforce with a treat, but I am not going to pause to play games until after that 20 minute mark. I want her to “get her fill” of nature first so my treats might go up in value a bit relative to nature.
Imagine you’ve been sick and trapped indoors on the same couch for five days, and you feel like you’re going to lose it if you don’t breathe some fresh air. Getting outside has become REALLY valuable. Now think about Sully who has been “trapped” indoors all night as we sleep and desperately wants some nature in the morning. She’s been “deprived” of nature for the night and it’s value is quite high first thing in the morning, which means my treats are likely lower value relative to it. The value of my treats go up as she spends some time in nature and isn’t feeling so deprived of time outdoors.
**The reason I said “may” is because Sully’s eating behavior is a bit more fragile than many other dogs I work with. I had to work hard to get her eating behavior to show up consistently outdoors, and a big part of our success stems from my not offering her food when she’s likely to refuse it (I don’t want her to rehearse that behavior). In the first part of a walk, the environment is so high value that it’s hit or miss whether she’ll eat. I make a decision whether to drop a treat or not based on what exact behavior I’m seeing in her offered attention and what’s going on in the environment. After we get about 15 minutes in, it’s usually pretty safe to assume she’ll eat.
How Will I Know If My Training Is Helping?
Data!!!!!
Sully’s baseline for offered attention or check-ins on walks was basically zero. If I am actually reinforcing attention, I should see more of it under similar conditions moving forward.
My dog Otis regularly comes up to me on walks “asking for treats.” I want to see some of that from Sully to feel more confident that I’ve got a reinforcer that can actually do some reinforcing!
Here’s the good news: She offered us (me or my partner, Ben) attention on this morning’s walks FIVE times. That’s a 5x increase given that we started at zero. (Note: This count does not include instances of attention that are a part of the structured games we play.) AND, she even turned away from something in the environment and voluntarily ran to me (this was at the end of the video I shared on Instagram). This could be a fluke, but I don’t hate what I’m seeing … !
A Brief Reminder: You Don’t Always Have to Be Your Dog’s Priority
I want to be clear that I am not trying to turn Sully into a dog who is always focused on me. I love Sully’s love of nature. I am constantly checking myself as I train to make sure I am not depriving her of what she needs to thrive (time to “independently” explore nature being a key part of that). She never has to “earn” the ability to sniff or move around, and I still want the bulk of the walk to be hers. I am just seeing if I can get a few more tiny moments where she connects with me and then returns to the rest of nature.
More to come!
Back To Basics: How To Train Your Dog to Recall
Have you ever felt like you're talking to a wall when you call your dog to come to you? I realized a while ago that my little dog, Sully’s, recall had gotten worse. After some thought, I decided to start completely over with recall training, and I’m inviting you along for the ride.
What Is Recall?
Recall is the term used to describe a dog coming to us when we call them. In reality, the “recall behavior” is actually multiple behaviors performed sequentially. Those behaviors may vary a bit depending on what the dog was doing, what you cued, and when/how you marked and reinforced.
Generally speaking, when you call your dog to come, your dog will: Stop moving (if they are moving away from you), turn towards you/orient to you, run to you, stop when they get to you, and station in front of you (aka sit or stand in front of you). I often simplify this to: 1) Orient to you; 2) Move towards you; 3) Station by you.
By thinking about individual behaviors that make up a dog’s recall, we can really hone in on strengthening those component parts, which can help us build a stronger overall recall.
Understanding the individual behaviors that make up the broader sequence of behaviors we label “recall” is incredibly helpful in training. We will loop back to this in the future!
How Do You Get Your Dog To Come When You Call Them?
For now, let’s start with the basics.
When you call your dog to come, are they coming just because you asked them to? Sorta ... But not exactly.
Have you heard people say that “reinforcement drives behavior”? Whether or not your dog comes when you call them is determined by what happened under similar conditions in the PAST after they came to you.
The most basic unit when talking about operant behavior, which is voluntary behavior that is increased or decreased as a function of its consequences, is the Antecedent - Behavior - Consequence (A-B-C) unit. You want to start by defining the behavior you are looking at. The antecedent and consequence are stimuli or events that happen in the behaver’s environment. The antecedent comes before the behavior, and the consequence comes after the behavior.
“Come” is an example of a cue (in this case, a verbal one). When you call your dog, it signals the opportunity for them to access reinforcers (like treats) if they come to you. In other words, your recall cue (e.g. “come”) tells your dog what behavior-consequence contingencies are in play.
Here’s a human example of how cues work: When your phone rings (cue), if you answer it (behavior), someone on the other end will talk to you (consequence). Your phone ringing signals to you that the behavior-consequence contingency of “if you answer the phone, someone on the other end will talk to you” is now in play. If you answer the phone when it’s not ringing, there won’t be anyone on the other end who will talk to you.
So … your dog isn’t recalling simply because you told them to or because “they know what the word come means.” How they respond to your recall cue in the present moment is determined by what outcomes their behavior produced in the past under similar conditions.
This gets more complicated. For example, there are a lot of factors that may change how motivating a particular consequence is. I talked about this using the same human example as above (phone calls) in a recent Instagram post if you want to check it out.
We’ll leave it here for now.
Is It Harder To Teach Some Dogs Recall?
It might help to know a little bit about Sully. She is my great humbler, and I probably don’t thank her enough for all that she has taught me. She is not an “easy dog” in many ways, but I can rest easy knowing that the same behavior principles that apply to every other living animal apply to her.
Someone once described her as a “bloodhound in a terrier-like agile body,” and I thought that was fairly accurate (though I don’t think it fully captures her “prey drive” behaviors … in quotes because there is far more to it than “drive,” but I am not going to get into it here). Long story short: she finds the environment SUPER reinforcing.
When I say I say Sully loves the outdoors, I mean she is literally one with nature. I am competing with the dirt we walk on. I’d like to tell you that it’s rare that she gets herself this dirty, but that would be a lie.
On top of how much sniffy-hunty behavior she does, I struggled at first to even find reinforcers I could reliably use. When I first adopted her, she wouldn’t eat treats outside (she would occasionally, but not consistently enough to do anything meaningful with them). Someone might have labeled her “not food motivated,” but it was more so that the relative value of food went down when outdoors and she didn’t have a big reinforcement history for eating outside. I had to spend a fair bit of time just working on eating outdoors in a range of environments before I could even consider using food as a reinforcer for other behaviors like recall, which I worked really hard to build with her.
So with all of that said, my very honest answer is this: Yes, I do think it’s harder to teach some dogs to reliably respond to your recall cues than others. Dogs have unique learning histories and may find different things reinforcing.
BUT, that doesn’t mean that it cannot be done or that “positive reinforcement won’t work because a dog is [insert whatever breed you want].” The strongest recalls are built by creating big reinforcement histories for coming when called. Did you know that discretionary effort is one of the unique side effects of R+?
![a marigold slide with the text "Discretionary effort is the level of effort [an individual] could give if they wanted to, but above and beyond the minimum required." - Aubrey C. Daniels, Ph.D.](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5cfec609958de40001253e1d/59fd7336-a0c6-463a-9471-db62b735ebf8/My+project-1+%2810%29.png)
The phrase discretionary effort comes from the work of Aubrey Daniels, a behavioral psychologist who specializes in applying behavior science principles in the workplace.
With some dogs, we may just have to be more aware of what the dog finds reinforcing, what antecedents are at play (i.e. motivating operations), and how we move the recall behavior into new settings. Some dogs may tend to find treats WAY more reinforcing than nature, and that can make it “easier” (perhaps more “forgiving”) to build solid recall.
I know how to train recall (I LOVE doing it), and I still find myself in a position where I have to start over … which is okay! So please know you are in good company if you find yourself there too.
Why Am I Starting Over With Sully’s Recall?
Put simply: I don’t want to fight the learning history she has with her current recall cue (“come”).
It has become hit or miss whether she’ll come when we call her, and if she does come, the latency of the behavior is often high and the speed is often slow … not what I’m aiming for 😅.
Here are the three main measures of recall I’ve been using:
1. Does she come when called (defined as coming all the way to me)? This is a Yes/No data point. I should be logging mostly “yesses” here, but she was not coming at all when called about 50% of the time.
2. How quickly does she START to come to me after I call her (this measure is called latency)? I measure this in seconds. I want her recall behavior to be LOW latency (aka very short time between me calling her and her starting to come). However, I was seeing pretty high latency behavior (i.e. when I called her, she would often take 4 to 7 seconds to start to move towards me).
3. How quickly does she complete her recall behavior (this is called speed)? The amount of time it takes for her to travel all the way to me is going to vary depending on how far away from me she is when I call her, so I am typically rating her speed as slow, medium, fast, or lightning fast. I was getting a lot of slow and medium recall speeds, which isn’t what I am aiming for.
Her recall used to be much better than it is right now, so what happened? A number of things could have happened.
We could have inadvertently punished her recall behavior by following it up with something aversive (which is defined as anything an individual behaves to escape or avoid). An example of this might be using your recall cue at a dog park and then leashing your dog to leave the park or calling your dog to come and then picking them up to put them in the bathtub. Those examples aren’t fitting for Sully, but punishment still could be at play.
Perhaps more easily done than punishing recall, we might not have actually been reinforcing her recall when we thought we were. Just because you deliver a treat does not mean you reinforced that recall – you only know you reinforced it if you see the behavior strengthened or maintained in the future under similar conditions … and we are not seeing that play out.
What I feel confident we did was use her recall cue in situations where she couldn’t perform the desired behavior (aka immediately and with speed run to me). To be clear, I know the rules here (only use the cue when confident the dog can respond), but Sully is harder for me to make predictions with (the value of food is a lot less static than it is with many dogs and the environment is just SO interesting), so plenty of these instances were just accidents (i.e. I thought she was gonna recall). Though to be clear, plenty of the instances were just me and my partner, Ben being sloppy (and maybe a bit greedy) by calling her when we had no business doing that 🤣.
To some degree, she’s likely learned that her recall cue is irrelevant under certain conditions (it’s basically just become background noise that doesn’t signal anything meaningful for her). We used the cue too many times without a response, so that means the cue didn’t lead to a reinforcer all those times … so it’s just weakening more and more.
She now has a huge history (that I don’t love) with the cue “come,” and I’d be fighting it if I wanted to use that cue in my training to try to change her recall behavior. I don’t want to fight her history, so I am creating a new recall cue, Ewok (because she looks like an adorable Ewok) and starting at square one. This allows me to get the desired behavior (immediate response and fast run to me) and slowly move it into new conditions (more on this in the future)!
How Do You Start Teaching Recall?
There are a lot of ways to start, so I am going to talk about how I started (or restarted) with Sully.
As a reminder, before I did any training, Ben and I agreed on Ewok as our new cue (because I didn’t want to fight the history with the old cue). A part of my criteria for picking a new cue was that it had to delight me 😅. Then we agreed not to use her recall cue in real life yet to avoid “ruining it” before it’s even ready to dazzle. In the meantime, we’re leveraging long lines, drag lines, and informal prompts like kissy noises and “pup pup pup.”
I chose to begin by doing something called a stimulus-stimulus pairing. Put simply, I’m creating an association between two stimuli: the word “Ewok” and treats. You may have heard this talked about in dog training as classical or pavlovian conditioning.
Ewok → Treats
In this session, I simply said “Ewok” and then delivered treats (I did this about 15 times). She wasn’t required to do any behavior to get the treats. I delivered treats after I said “Ewok” 100% of the time regardless of what she was doing.
In the Instagram post I shared on this session, someone asked a great question, “I noticed that [Sully] was constantly looking at you. If you [said] Ewok and she was looking some other way, would you still give her the treat??” The answer is YES. But this person’s keen observations hint at why this stimulus-stimulus pairing procedure can be a great place to start your recall training: BEHAVIOR IS HAPPENING. I am using this pairing procedure to help produce operant behavior (voluntary behavior that is increased or decreased as a function of its consequences). In future sessions, I will adjust how I am using the treats. Instead of treats being delivered every time after I say “Ewok,” they will be delivered after I say Ewok and she performs some aspect of the recall behavior. Because I hope to train errorlessly, it may not look all that different at first, but it will in time!
The Secret Ingredient
Sometimes you hear people talk about using lower value treats in less distracting environments, but I am actually using the best stuff I’ve got in our first session.
One of the things I do when I want something really high value is cook some ground beef in a skillet. That isn't a typical treat that we use, so the novelty adds some extra value!
Here’s why: Take away the idea of your recall cue for a moment, and just imagine how your dog might respond to you holding out the most delicious food for them to eat (maybe a nice big steak or piece of salmon). Are you envisioning your dog flying over to you with “enthusiasm” (aka more effort than needed since walking slowly would have worked too)? I want to bring THAT behavior and those emotions to our recall, and high value reinforcers help me with that.
I cooked specially seasoned chicken and ground beef, and I asked Ben not to pull from those treat containers right now in everyday life because I want the boost in value that novelty can give reinforcers. (To be clear: I train her with food in her belly, and she still gets plenty of other high value treats in everyday life. I am not a fan of using deprivation generally speaking. I am simply using a treat that I wouldn’t otherwise make for her to take advantage of novelty’s effect.)
Questions From Our Community
I’ll try to pick a question from Instagram to highlight and answer in this section (or at least respond more thoroughly to … not sure “answer” is a fair word). I am basically thinking out loud here, so consider yourself warned lol!
Question: “Thank you for another wonderful post! I'm struggling a little bit with the idea that you used the recall cue too many times when Sully couldn't perform the behavior - I understand how this could spoil the cue, but it also seems to me that the times when recall is most useful/important is in those difficult moments. My dog also finds the environment heavily reinforcing, with a high prey (or at least chase drive) and what appears to be an insatiable curiosity about everything! She has very good recall at the dog park, but I don't let her off-leash anywhere else, fearing that my recall cue might not work if she came across a wild animal that she wanted to investigate or chase. How do you determine if your recall cue is ready for these situations? Do you think it ever can be for a dog with such high interest in the environment?”
Answer: This is a GREAT question. Have you ever heard someone say that your dog needs to be able to recall 100% of the time (“have perfect recall”) before you let them off leash?
But here’s the plot twist: While that old advice is meant to keep dogs and people and wildlife safe (or that’s my interpretation), I actually think the bigger threat comes from believing that any dog’s recall is 100%. I almost do the opposite of that old advice when I make a decision to let my dogs off leash: I assume my dogs will not recall. By making this assumption (or at least playing it out in my head), I can assess how big of a problem it would be in a given area if my dog blew a recall. If the risk to my dog and/or others is too high (and people will have different ways to evaluate risk and different risk tolerances), I don’t let my dog off.
For example, my other dog, Otis, has GREAT recall. But I don’t let him off leash if we are near a busy road. That isn’t because I think he will fail a recall. It’s because I cannot predict the future with 100% certainty, and the consequences of a failed recall are way too dangerous in that setting. I’m flipping the lens a bit and instead of focusing first on how likely my dog is to recall, I’m first focusing on how problematic it would be in the area we occupy if my dog didn’t recall. This actually helps take a lot of the stress and uncertainty out of my decision because all of the weight isn’t on my dog to recall perfectly in that setting.
Let’s chat about this point from the original question: “ … it also seems to me that the times when recall is most useful/important is in those difficult moments.” PREACH. I hear you loud and clear. This is what makes it so tricky to build recall. It also allows us to dive into the next decision layer with unclipping a leash. We have to have a pretty good understanding of our dog’s behavior and be able to read the environment well in order to make predictions. I would be remiss if I didn’t call out here that I have clearly failed at this since I am starting over 🤣. It’s so easy to blurt out your recall cue in a difficult moment and just cross your fingers that it works.
As you are building the recall, you will butt up against this line a lot. I actually think it’s easier at the beginning of training because the line is a lot clearer - you can basically assume the dog is not ready for any real life tests yet. For right now with Sully, my rule is not to use her recall cue at all in real life. It gets harder the more training progresses because that line gets a bit blurrier. (I do think this is where my decision making process for unclipping a leash helps.)
Let’s chat about the next part of the question: “How do you determine if your recall cue is ready for these situations?”
This can be tricky, and there isn’t one right answer. To some degree, the human’s risk tolerance is a factor. I don’t think I have ever written this out before, so I don’t think this will be perfect … my confidence level stems from some combo of these things:
1) My dog’s experience recalling under similar conditions.
In the course of training, I will systematically work in a variety of environments and with a variety of distractions. I will collect data (often in my head, but this time I hope to do it on paper) to help me determine what Sully is ready for. For a good long while, I will only use my recall cue when we are out and I want to get a recall rep in. I won’t likely use it in random, tough moments (I’ll accept that she may dip for a second and breathe knowing that I dropped the leash because I was okay with this happening here). I will only use my recall cue in real life when I think she has the learning history needed to respond by coming to me. I won’t be able to work directly with every tough distraction in controlled ways (e.g. deer), but I can set up similar conditions that I can control to work on recalling out of chase (like recalling off chasing a ball or a prey-like-toy on a flirt pole). If my dog has been able to recall mid-chase in a variety of contexts that I controlled, I have more confidence than I would otherwise (still not perfect) about recalling out of chasing other things in real life. If my dog has no experience recalling when they are mid-chase, I am not going to use a recall cue when they are chasing a squirrel. (More generally, I might also think about how many successful reps of recall my dog has done in total to gauge their overall R+ history. This is more relevant early on in the training journey.)
2) My dog’s past behavior around this distraction while on a long line.
For certain tough distractions (like deer) that I can’t easily control, I may use real life moments when leashed to train and gauge my dog’s behavior. For example, I want to see a dog quickly and easily respond to me when they see a deer while leashed before I ever consider recalling them away from deer when off leash. I might even see a dog spot and deer and automatically orient to me, which is the first part of recall anyway! I might take a dog to a spot with squirrels where they can practice just watching them (rather than chasing). These types of experiences around tough distractions give me a lot more confidence about recalling away from them if/when the time comes.
3) My dog’s offered behaviors.
This may not seem as obvious, but how my dog typically behaves in a given environment can contribute to my overall sense of confidence. For example, if my dogs have learned (generally) to stay on the trail, I may feel more confident than if they hiked by zooming around 100 yards off the trail. If my dogs auto-check in (aka stop and wait, look at me, and/or run back to me) as soon as they hit a certain radius from me on the trail, I might feel more confident than if they just keep running ahead. Right now, Otis’s typical trail behaviors inspire far more confidence than Sully’s. As soon as Otis gets about 20 yards away from me, he automatically stops or runs back to me. He is checking in all the time. Sully may walk for 45 minutes before she even looks at me 😂. Otis is essentially already performing the recall behavior - I would just have to add a cue in front of it. Most of the time, Sully isn’t offering any recall behavior (not even the initial components of it). I want to see pieces of that behavior showing up in the context of the environment before I try to cue it verbally. I will be working on offered check-ins on trails with Sully before I use her recall cue. (This can also give me info about whether my reinforcers are strong enough or not.)
4) Response checks.
There are a range of simple behaviors I will use to gauge what’s going on with a dog on a given day and in a given environment. For example, I might cue a nose touch, sit, and paws up. If those are behaviors that my dog can reliably do in a range of environments, I would know something is up if suddenly they can’t do them or they perform them slower. With Sully, one of the behaviors I will always check is whether or not she can eat. If she isn’t enthusiastically taking a treat I drop for her (or isn’t then looking up at me to ask for another), that is not a good sign about how motivated she’s likely to be to recall. Data like this can help me feel more confident in my choices.
5) Distant antecedents.
What has or hasn’t happened lately in my dog’s life that could influence their behavior or the strength of reinforcers? Here is a good example: We live near the woods and have a fenced back yard that Sully is able to patrol all day. When we stay at my sister’s house in Atlanta, she loses that activity for a week. When we come home, the deprivation can make her sniffy-hunty behaviors WAY more likely since the value of the associated reinforcers went up (because of the deprivation). So when we first return home, I hold her long line for a while and don’t recall her until she has her fill of nature again so my reinforcers can compete better with nature.
I heard something from a conference a while back that may be helpful as a framework (I wish I could remember the speaker’s name and exactly what they said). Write out a list of environments that are easy, medium, and hard in terms of level of difficulty for a recall. For example, here are Sully’s: Living room (easy), empty field (medium), woods (hard). I have expanded on this a bit and actually have a list of easy’s, medium’s, and hard’s. Then write out a list of as many distractions that you might recall your dog away from as you can think of going from easy to hard. For example, at the bottom (easy) end of the list might be a jacket on the floor and at the top (hardest) of the list might be a screaming fox running away. There are a lot of distractions between those two. Then you can start working through the distractions somewhat systematically to build the learning history you want with them. This can give you some confidence you might not have otherwise and help you decide when to let your dog off leash.
Now to be fair, I only worked through certain distractions (like recalling away from wildlife, recalling away from food, etc.) super systematically with my dog, Otis. Otherwise, I got to be a bit loosey-goosey and focus on building a big R+ history in general while still being intentional about when I used my cue. With Sully, I am going to be WAY more systematic (hello data collection!) – in large part to set myself up for success since I have a history of inaccurately predicting whether or not she will recall (or just throwing out hail mary’s).
Now to the final part of the question: “Do you think [recall] ever can be [ready for difficult moments] for a dog with such high interest in the environment?” To be honest, I don’t know. I don’t think I will ever trust Sully’s recall the way I trust Otis’s recall. She finds different things reinforcing than he does, and I have a harder time beating the environment with Sully. And I think that’s okay! I am going to make very different decisions about where Sully vs. Otis can be off leash. I still have safe ways to get her off leash time in fenced spaces and can use long drag lines in areas that are not-populated and very far from roads. There are MANY ways that I can work with some of her predatory behaviors, so I’m sure we will make progress. How that progress translates to my decision making is yet to be seen, but I have a hard time believing that I will ever feel as confident in her recall as I am in Otis’s.
This leads me to a final closing thought. Sully is going to fail recalls during this training journey. While I am going to use an errorless teaching approach, failures and mistakes are a normal part of the process. As we progress and the recalls get harder, I am going to make mistakes in my predictions and call her in moments when she can’t recall. To some extent, those failed recalls give me really valuable data that inform my training and helps me sort out where our gaps are. I won’t be using her new recall in real life anytime soon, but when I do, I am going to have to give her a little bit of freedom in order to recall her (it’ll be freedom on a long drag line). It’s a tough thing to balance!
Stay tuned for more!
Training Diary: My Journey to Figure Out How To Put a Cone on My Dog (Intro)
Editor’s Note: Rather than a formal guide, this blog is very much in the vein of a journal entry. I may adapt the style a bit as we go, but for now, I went with providing a simple peek into my thinking.
Hi friends! I’d like to start by saying that I feel a funny mix of “let’s have some fun” and “please direct me to the nearest hole to crawl into” as I begin writing this. Why?! Well, in the process of trying to put a cone on my dog, Otis, after a surgery, I made a billion mistakes that forced me to have to do this work. And then I made a ton more mistakes. AND I am not done. So yep, that about covers it.
I’m going to do my best to share training videos and talk about what I was thinking about that led to some of my choices. Let me be clear: I didn’t always make the best choice first. I also needed help! While this journey happens to be cone related, I think a lot of the lessons can be generalized more broadly. My hope is that we can use my journey (it’s easier to pick at my own work) to help ground many of the concepts you hear us talk about in training. I REALLY want this series to be a conversation, so PLEASE ask questions, share stories, etc.
How My Journey Began to Figure Out How To Put a Cone on My Dog
Otis is the dog who turned me into a trainer. As you might suspect, I would like a re-do on a great many things. He’s a sensitive soul, and I didn’t condition a cone before he got neutered (and had a gastropexy) years ago. TIP: Absolutely condition whatever you plan to use post-surgery beforehand (don’t make my mistake)! When I picked him up from the vet, they told me they couldn’t keep a cone on him. I had no luck either (and risked him tearing all the new sutures). I tried a donut and couldn’t get within 15 feet of Otis.
Fast forward a couple of years: I started to condition the cone as a “just in case” measure. Relative to “I won’t be in the same room as a cone,” we made progress, but we always stalled out at the same point (and then I’d stop working on it). I had a “moment of clarity” last fall when I just knew I was going to regret it if I didn’t sort this out now. With much more knowledge than I had before (including the wisdom to bounce ideas off people), I got started!
Who Is This Training Diary Series For?
Anyone! While I am going to show you how I approached a specific problem/goal related to a cone, the concepts at play apply much more broadly. For example, one of the issues that led me to getting stuck at the same point every time was that I was doing something called “lumping criteria.” I had to break it down WAY more than what I was doing in order to make progress. This is a truth that applies in most every training endeavor.
Training Diary: My Journey to Figure Out How To Put a Cone on My Dog (Session One)
Editor’s Note: Rather than a formal guide, this blog is very much in the vein of a journal entry. I may adapt the style a bit as we go, but for now, I went with providing a simple peek into my thinking.
What do you do when you get stuck at the same point in your training every single time? Well, if you’re like me, you might avoid training for a while, but then you eventually go back to the drawing board. If you missed the context for this series, basically I need to get my dog Otis comfortable with wearing a cone just in case he needs to wear one in the future. You can read more background here. In this article, I am showing you footage from the very first session of my “re-imagined” cone training plan and walking you through some of my thinking and observations. This isn’t a “how-to” for getting a cone on your dog (in fact, my best tip is to work on this FAR before your dog develops an aversion). This is what I did for one dog in a specific situation, but I hope that by thinking out loud, it will give you some ideas (whether your challenge is a cone or something totally different).
My Process of Thinking About My Behavior While Trying To Put a Cone on My Dog
Here you can see my rudimentary setup, where my wire “cone” is suspended in my hallway over a blue yoga mat.
In previous training attempts, I spent so much time thinking about the behavior I wanted Otis to do (“put his head into a cone” and “wear a cone”) and very little time thinking about my own behavior. As a great mentor, Laura Monaco Torelli, taught me, very often the behavior we are asking of our dogs is simple. We are just asking them to perform that behavior in a huge range of conditions. Functionally speaking, the behaviors needed from Otis in order to wear a cone are pretty simple.* But what is going to happen around him in the environment is far more complex. So this go around, I focused on every little component piece of environmental events that Otis would experience as a part of “wearing a cone” (just not all at once!).
*At the most basic level, I needed Otis to be able to stand and to eat a treat. However, I did note all of the behaviors I wanted Otis to be able to do while wearing a cone (like walking outdoors, moving through the house, lying down, eating, drinking, etc.) because that would factor into future training.
My Approach to This Cone Training Session
Here’s a closer look at my makeshift “cone” with Otis resting on the couch in the background.
From my prior experience in working with my dog and cones, I identified two big problems that contributed to us getting stuck in our training: 1) Any movement of the cone around his head; 2) Taking my hands off of the cone once his head was in it.
I decided that I wanted to focus on breaking down the two big problems I identified. I knew I couldn’t start with a cone without lumping criteria, so I had to think of a way to break it down. A cone tends to move around a bit as the dog moves, so I wanted him to experience some subtle but unpredictable movements with a less intense object near his head. I decided I wanted my hands out of the equation to start because I wanted to give him as much control as possible (while I’ve tried hard not to force things on him throughout his life, he knew that my hands could move). Otis makes progress much much faster when he has as much control as possible (something that is not unique to just Otis 😉).
So I found an old wire hanger and bent it into a circle. I wrapped the metal circle I made in a towel to make it softer. I made the circle larger than the opening he would have if he were wearing a cone or donut to reduce the intensity he experienced when putting his head through it.
Then I had to come up with a way to hold this circle up in the air without using my hands. I wanted the circle to move a little bit but not a ton. The reason I didn’t want it to be perfectly still is that I wanted him to learn up front that the circle moves a bit and make choices based on that understanding. I attached four small ropes to the circle and rigged up a suspension system by attaching the rope to the inside of doors in the narrow hallway in my apartment. To start, I tried to have as much tension as I could on the ropes to limit movement (knowing that it would move no matter what because of my design).
There are a million ways I could have started the actual training session with him. Two more amazing trainers influenced how chose to start: Kiki Yablon and Hannah Brannigan. I sent Kiki a picture of the absurd setup that I had created and said I was a little nervous that I was going to mess this up from the get-go and have to come up with a totally new picture. She sent me one of Hannah’s videos where she starts a training session by teaching the dog (non-contingently) where the treats will show up for the session. Kiki said she often starts harness desensitization by first teaching the dog that treats show up through the harness. I remember telling her that I was worried about doing that because I didn’t want to create a conflict by making him do something “scary” to get food. As Kiki is apt to do, she reminded me that I could observe and adjust … and that I could stick my hand all the way through the ring to start rather than asking him to bring his head through the ring.
With a plan on how to start, I laid a yoga mat out (so he would have secure footing), set the camera up (so I could re-watch the session and see what to adjust next time), and began.
My Observations From This Training Session
Note: My bullets below that reference times in the video may be off by three seconds or so.
Apprehensive at first - When Otis first approached the circle, he stayed fairly far away. He was reaching/leaning forward rather than just approaching it, and in this context, I read his behavior as showing a bit of concern. I repeatedly clicked and then reached my arm through the circle to give him a treat. I reached far through the circle at first and gradually reached less (I tried not to force him to come closer too quickly).
Yoga mat - While I thought to put a yoga mat out, I didn’t align it correctly, so his back feet slipped on the wood floor. Imagine not being comfortable around something new in your environment. Are you going to feel more or less comfortable around it if you feel like you can’t control your movements? I would argue less.
It moves! – You can see him learn that the circle moves. He was really “jumpy” in response to the circle’s movements at first.
Nose boops - He tapped the circle with his nose a couple of times. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to gather info about the circle or if he was offering a behavior trying to get a treat. In the early stages, I was really trying to non-contingently give him treats through the circle to teach him where the treats showed up. I didn’t actually want him booping it too many times because I didn’t want this setup to cue booping when I knew that later I was going to shape him to put his head through it. I still gave him a treat for the nose boops, but I didn’t mark.
Rate of reinforcement - I chose to speed up my rate of reinforcement to try to prevent the nose booping altogether. Looking at the video now though, I probably fed him too quickly because I was marking before he even finished eating the previous treat. (Mechanics are hard 😅.)
Treat placement - I gradually delivered the treats closer to the circle. I still delivered treats non-contingently for quite a while (aka he didn’t have to do a specific behavior to “earn” the treat). (NOTE: I say this but there is always SOME behavior happening that I am reinforcing. I just wasn’t really selecting for anything yet … aside from maybe eating the preceding treat from my hand through the circle.)
Moved yoga mat - At about a minute, I got smart and scooted the yoga mat so his back feet would land on it too. I tossed a treat away while I moved the mat, and when he returned, he basically stuck his head through the circle!
Offering behavior - He started to offer some movement towards the circle on his own. I think he got a little startled (sharp backwards movement) by the circle moving and stopped offering forward movement towards the circle.
Treat placement - I switched back to non-contingently delivering treats, but this time, I started to deliver them ever so slightly on my side of the circle. This meant he had to stick his head in a little bit to get the treat.
Wonkiness - At around 1:30, the circle moves, he backs up and boops it a few times. I maybe asked too much of him before this. Maybe he was gathering info. I didn’t want to push him, so I delivered a treat on the ground a little closer to the circle. I probably could have just reset tossed away from him. I think in the moment I was worried about him deciding the game was to back up, but with hindsight now, I didn’t need to worry about that.
Adjusting to movement - At around 1:45 and later, he learns how the circle moves when he pulls his head out from it since I was now clearly delivering the treat on my side of the circle. He was super responsive to the circle’s movements – you’ll see his jumpy movements. He also seemed to really look at the circle. I really tried to notice where his attention was going – it gave me data about what cues in the environment mattered most to him. And for a good while, his eyes were locked on that circle (perhaps telling me that circle was a very relevant cue for him). I was non-contingently delivering treats for a bit after switching to delivering them on my side of the circle to avoid raising criteria in more than one dimension at a time.
Contingent reinforcement - At about 2:12, you will see him shift his weight forward towards the circle. I marked that. I started looking for him to offer me some movement towards the circle to mark & reinforce. He was now consistently doing this! At about 2:29, he got a little startled by the movement of the circle, and he pulled his head up and took a step back. Why? My best guess was so he could get a better look at the circle. After this, I marked the moment he chose to learn forward again even though he was farther away from the circle. To me, this was shaping “resilience” around a moving object! At around 2:33, he actually made the choice to stick his head into the circle even though it was moving quite a bit! This was cool! He took a few big steps back at 2:37, so I chose to give him a reset toss away (walking away is ALWAYS an option). After he came back, you will see him become a little less responsive to the movement of the circle, which was what I was looking for. He still had a few reps where he pulled his head out fast and watched the circle move, but more and more, he wasn’t attending to the circle as he moved his head in and out. He backed up one more time, and again, I tossed away to give him the choice to return or not (he returned).
Ending - By the end, he was rapidly sticking his head partway through the circle by choice and is not orienting to the circle every time it moved anymore. Earlier in the session, the circle’s movement was a very salient cue for him to back up and watch the circle move. Over the session, he seems to have learned something about that movement because his responses to it changed. And he recovered quickly if he did need to back away from the circle. From where we started, this was big progress!
What I Learned From Figuring Out How To Put a Cone on My Dog
Within four minutes, Otis went from staying far from the circle and leaning to get treats to sticking his head part way through the circle and not really responding to the circle’s movement around him. I was really happy with this! Because of the trend of his behavior during the session, I was comfortable sticking with the approach of showing him where the treats would appear (I think this sped up the session quite a bit). If his leaning/reaching had gone on for longer or he was not approaching the treats, I would have stopped this approach.
Did I maybe train for too long? Probably, but I don’t know. I will tell you that I thought about ending the session many times during these few minutes. A part of me thought I should end because I know that in general, shorter quality sessions are better. However, I thought that this was something that was going to require some time for him to adjust to the environment. I wanted to give him the space to do that. I worried if the sessions were too short, he wouldn’t have the time he needed to adjust. I honestly am not sure if I made the “right” call or not, but for us, it worked out.
How to Use the Dog Park to Train Your Dog
We love dog parks - just not for the reason you might think. Let us explain. Other dogs can be a huge distraction (or even a trigger) for your dog. Maybe you have a super social dog who pulls you on the leash toward other dogs. Or maybe your dog lunges and barks out of fear when they see other dogs. Or perhaps your dog simply has a hard time giving you any attention around dogs. In order to help your dog feel more neutral or be able to offer behaviors you want around them, it is really important to find opportunities to work around dogs where you can control the distance between your dog and the other dogs. And that is where dog parks can be helpful: the fence around the park becomes your teammate. Instead of going into the dog park, you and your dog can work outside of it -- adjusting your distance to meet your dog’s individual needs (or perhaps even staying in the car). It gives you the ability to work around distractions/triggers while keeping your dog under threshold. It is easy to focus on your dog engaging with other dogs, but what might happen if you shift that focus a bit to your dog engaging with you around other dogs? While this list is certainly not exhaustive, we wanted to share six ideas of simple activities you can try outside of your local dog park.
Play the Engage/Disengage Game Outside of the Dog Park
Engage/Disengage is a simple game that you can use in training sessions and in everyday life that will help change your dog’s emotional response to seeing other dogs. It will also teach your dog how to automatically look to you when they see a dog.
What: The game has two levels. In Level One, you mark the moment your dog notices/engages with the other dog. In Level Two, you wait for your dog to look away from the other dog and then mark and reward. Check out the infographic below for details.
Why: This “game” is simple and crazy powerful! This game will help your dog learn how to self-interrupt when they notice other dogs (or whatever stimuli you do this with) and will reduce the stressful feelings that come up. Engage/disengage will help make your dog’s new default response around other dogs be to disengage and look at you.
How to Practice U-Turns Away from Dogs Outside of the Dog Park
Sometimes you just need to be able to walk the other direction when you see a dog -- here is your chance to practice that!
What: Walk toward the dogs (aka toward the dog park). Say whatever cue you use to ask your dog to flip around and follow you (e.g. “let’s go”) and then turn around 180 degrees (avoid yanking your dog -- you want your dog to be responding to your cue and body language). Mark and reward your dog as soon as they flip around to face you. (Note: Practice this in a low distraction setting before you try it outside a dog park.)
Why: This builds a history of reinforcement for your dog for turning away from dogs and makes it more likely that they will be able to do this in everyday life settings.
Try the Cookie Toss Game Outside of the Dog Park
TOC co-founder, Christie Catan, plays the cookie toss game with Hana, the American Staffordshire Terrier Puppy, during a session for how to use the dog park to train your dog.
This may look simple, but the cookie toss game is powerful and can helps your dog choose to engage with you instead of with other dogs (or more broadly, the environment).
What: This engagement pattern game may look easy, but it can have a lot of impact! To play, say “get it” and then toss a treat to the side for your dog to chase. After they eat it, they are likely going to look back to you wondering if there are more treats. The moment the orient to you (aka as soon as they turn back toward you), say “get it” (which is your marker in this game) and toss a treat to the other side for your dog to chase. Keep repeating this pattern. Remember: This is not a recall game, so try not to say your dog’s name or use their recall cue. You want them to choose to turn back to you. If they need some help, try making a kissy noise. (Note: Teach your dog this game in a low distraction setting first.)
Why: This game helps your dog choose you! After they eat the cookie that you toss, they have to make the choice to turn away from whatever is “out there” (in this case, that’s the dogs in the dog park) and turn back to you. You reward that choice by tossing a treat for them to chase, and most dogs find chasing quite fun! This game gives your dog a lot of practice in looking away from dogs and toward you! The simple pattern also helps your dog make the choice to engage with you because it is familiar.
Play With Your Dog Outside of the Dog Park
If you want your dog to engage with you around other dogs, it certainly doesn’t hurt for them to think you are fun!
What: Have some fun with your dog! We are big fans of personal play for its ability to give you information about your dog’s threshold, but feel free to bring food and toys into the mix.
Why: Good play is super engaged! Fun play can help your dog see that you can actually be more fun than those dogs inside of the park (or at least a decent substitute - LOL!). Play can also help you gauge where your dog’s threshold is. If your dog is too concerned about the other dogs to play with you, create more distance. You can even combine play with some engage/disengage by waiting for your dog to look away from the dogs and orient to you and rewarding that choice with play!
Recall Away from Dogs Outside of the Dog Park
Just because your dog knows the word “come” doesn’t mean they can always respond to it; here is a chance to work through a distraction (other dogs) in a controlled setting!
What: Say “get it” and toss a cookie away from you toward the dog park. After they eat the cookie and right before they turn around, say “come” (or whatever recall cue you use). Mark and reward them the moment they turn back to you and give them a treat. Repeat.
Why: This builds a history of reinforcement for turning away from dogs in response to their recall cue. Practice makes progress!
Engaged Walking Just Outside of the Dog Park
City sidewalks can be tough if you have a dog with big feelings about other dogs. Walking outside of a dog park allows you to build up that walking behavior around dogs, without feeling afraid that your dog is getting too close.
What: Take your leash walking show on the road! Try some of the leash walking exercises you have been working on at home outside of the dog park. The goal is for your dog to choose to walk near you rather than you having to bribe or nag your dog. You can use your body language and voice to keep them engaged and then reinforce the behavior you like with treats or play. If they get distracted, just wait them out and come to life when they choose to re-engage with you (unless you think they are going to react -- in which chase, create distance ASAP).
Why: The dog park gives you an opportunity to reinforce your dog for walking near you around other dogs while controlling your distance between them to keep your dog successful. Practicing here should help set your dog up for success for walks in everyday life.
Please be cognizant of your dog’s individual needs before you pull up to a crowded dog park. That may be too much for your dog. When in doubt, find dog parks where you know you can start really far away (aka not one where there is almost no surrounding area for you to work in).
Have you tried training your dog outside of the dog park? If you try this (even if it’s around other dogs in a different setting), let us know how it goes! Don’t forget to tag @tailsofconnection on Facebook or Instagram and use the hashtag #tailsofconnection.
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How Do I Stop My Dog From Eating Dirt or Mud
Does your dog really enjoy snacking on a nice mud pit? Or maybe rolling in it? It can be so easy to focus on what you don’t want your dog to do in this situation (roll in or eat the mud), but what would happen if you focused on what you DO want your dog to do around the mud instead? Our co-founder, Christie Catan, thought it would be fun to show you some real-time problem solving using her dog, Otis, who happens to have a real taste for mud from the big old wet pits 😋. (Note: If your dog is obsessively eating mud or dirt, you may want to ask your vet about it.)
What to Think About Before You Can Start Training
Whether your dog enjoys eating or rolling in dirt (or even going toward something else tempting in their environment), the same training principals will apply here. For the purposes of this training session, I worked with Otis around mud because he finds particularly stinky patches of it extra tasty after a good rain. You can try the same steps below for any environmental distraction your dog wants to go toward when you would prefer for them not to!
But before you even start training, it’s important to do some observing. What’s happening when your dog is around their distraction (mud, dirt, sticks, etc.)? When Otis notices a nice mud pit (the antecedent), he eats the mud (his behavior) and seems to find it yummy since it leads to him eating more of it (the consequence).
Once you’ve got this worked out, decide what you want your dog to do instead of succumbing to their current behavior around the distraction. I asked, “What do I want Otis to do when he spots a stinky mud pit?” My answer: I want him to come to me, and I will give him something yummy.
Step By Step: How Do I Stop My Dog From Eating Dirt or Mud
TOC Co-Founder, Christie Catan’s dog, Otis, stand in front of a mud pit in the woods in Washington, DC during their training session for how do I stop my dog from eating dirt or mud.
That all sounds great but you’re probably wondering how is this ever going to be possible? The answer is simple: CAPTURE BEHAVIOR!! Believe it or not, even when Otis goes to eat mud, he is offering behavior I can use (it happens the exact moment he notices the mud but before he eats it), so I need to pay attention and be ready to mark the moment he notices mud but before he actually eats it (say ‘yes,’ use a click etc.). Keep reading for the basic gist.
STEP ONE: Mark the moment your dog notices mud (before they eat it!) and then give them a treat. Repeat (the number of reps will vary by dog and situation). You are creating an association that mud pits (or whatever distraction you are working with) predict a treat from you!
STEP TWO: When your dog notices mud (or whatever distraction you are working with), wait to see what they do (they have been getting treats from you every time they notice mud, so you are high on the list of places they will look when they don’t hear a marker). Mark and reward the moment they look toward you. Now you are reinforcing the desired behavior around mud: orienting away from the mud and toward you.
The Subtle Shift That Happens When You Train Your Dog to Stop Eating Mud
In the video, can you spot the shift between step one and step two? Did you notice it isn’t a linear progression? That means that even though your dog was able to look away from the mud (or whatever distraction) last time, it doesn’t necessarily mean they can this time. You have to make a judgment call based on a lot of factors (e.g. the value of the distraction, the distance from you, the value of your reinforcer, the environment, your dog’s state of mind, their training history, etc.).
Some behaviors almost beg us to focus on what we don’t want our dogs to do, but see if you can ask yourself what behavior you want instead. In the video, you can see just how quickly Otis starts CHOOSING to look to me instead of eating the mud. The shift in behavior was accomplished with a well-timed marker cue and some treats. That’s it!
(Note: Otis has discerning taste when it comes to mud. In other words, he doesn’t eat all mud and dirt. He is drawn to very specific mud pits, and having observed his choices and behavior, it is much easier for me to sort out when he is likely to want to eat it versus just the usual sniffing dogs do.)
Have you tried training your dog to stop eating mud or dirt? If you try this (even if it’s around a totally different distraction), let us know how it goes! Don’t forget to tag @tailsofconnection on Facebook or Instagram and use the hashtag #tailsofconnection.
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Cooperative Care: How to Desensitize a Dog to Wearing a Hat
‘Tis the season for putting a Santa hat on your dog! Before you force that hat on their head, have you considered getting your dog to opt into wearing a hat? Did you know it’s possible to desensitize them to wearing a hat through cooperative care? Actually in the Camp TOC scavenger hunt, we have a bingo square as a little mock cooperative care activity: desensitize your dog to a hat or sunglasses! While it’s just a silly hat, the basic idea of this exercise sets you up for things that matter a lot more (cooperative care for grooming, eye drops, ear cleaning etc. 🙌)! Our co-founder, Christie Catan, filmed this tutorial for someone in our #TOCFam who wanted help, and she figured, “why not just share it with everyone!?” While this is NOT a fancy video (in fact, in her words “it’s poorly lit and framed” 😂), we hope that it will give you some ideas that will be useful! Keep reading to see the written steps she followed to get her dog, Otis, to consent to wearing a hat.
Step by Step: How to Desensitize a Dog to Wearing a Hat
Christie Catan puts a hat on her dog, Otis's, head as part of the training session for how to desensitize your dog to wearing a hat.
Step One: Shape a behavior that will become your start button. I am going to use eye contact as Otis’s start button behavior, so I simply sit in front of him and mark and reward him (by saying yes and giving him a treat) when he looks at me. I do this a few times to make eye contact a behavior he wants to offer.
Step Two: Introduce the hat. You’ll notice that first I flash the hat in front of Otis and mark and reward each time that happens. This is so he starts to understand that the hat predicts a treat, and he feels good about the hat showing up. Now technically, what is happening here is that Otis looks at me and then I flash the hat and give him a treat (eye contact is already becoming a start button). It is not the end of the world if you just do some basic desensitization of the hat without thinking about start buttons for a few reps as long as you don’t reach the hat too close to your dog.
Step Three: Be intentional about eye contact as a start button for moving the hat toward your dog. Since we already shaped eye contact, that is a behavior Otis is likely to offer. I will only move the hat when he is looking at me. If Otis looks away from me and stops making eye contact, I stop moving the hat towards him and don’t move it any closer (you can still give a treat for this; just don’t mark). Make sure to go slowly! You will notice that I mark a lot even though I have only moved the hat a few inches. The trick here is not to push your dog too hard and to get them to consent to having the hat near them by continuing to look at you (or by doing another consent behavior that you select).
Step Four: Put the Hat on Your Dog. Since Otis continues to look at me the whole time, I can finally put the hat on him. If your dog continues to give consent through eye contact (or whatever start button behavior you chose), go ahead and try it! Remember if your dog looks away, pull that hat back (and give them a treat). They are allowed to say no. By letting them say no, they will say yes far more often (yay science!).
The Power of Choice Based Dog Training
One of the coolest parts about this is what happens when you give your dog the power of choice and control in dog training. By giving Otis the ability to opt in or out, I actually increase the frequency with which he opts in (COOL, right!?). Anyway, take this video or leave it (but know the actual camp videos are much much better than this 😂).
By the way, please don’t fret if you didn’t put a hat on your dog in this cooperative way in the past. Feel free to loop back if you’re interested. Also, your session may look different than mine. I chose a very simple behavior as my consent behavior (eye contact), but do what works for you (some other ideas include chin rest or when your dog looks at food in a bowl). The idea is to give your dog control over their environment, so they aren’t freaked out by a strange object coming toward them. The fun part of trying cooperative care with a hat is that it is low pressure. You don’t have to stress if your dog opts out or it takes many sessions to get the hat on since getting the hat on is not critical. Often times we think about cooperative care in moments when we don’t actually have the ability to give our dogs choice, and that isn’t the moment to try to work through this since “no” may not be something you can actually honor if it is medically necessary.
Have you tried putting a hat on your dog through cooperative care? If you try this, let us know how it goes! Don’t forget to tag @tailsofconnection on Facebook or Instagram and use the hashtag #tailsofconnection.
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Cooperative Care: How Choice Based Dog Training Can Help With Grooming
Editor’s Note: If your dog had two ways to get treats and only one of them involved enduring something that they don’t like (aka getting their hair brushed), why would they ever choose the option that involved something they didn’t particularly enjoy? Because giving your dog the gift of choice AND control is magical (it is actually a primary reinforcer)! We are big fans of start buttons when it comes to working with our dogs. Recently, we were having a conversation with one of our friends, Logan Buie, and she talked about adding a second behavior option (in addition to the standard start button) that doesn’t result in us doing anything to the dog to help ensure that your dog actually has full choice and control (R+ can be coercive if the only way for the dog to access reinforcement is by doing something they really don’t feel comfortable with). Our co-founder, Christie Catan, was very intrigued and thought she would try this out with her dog, Otis. Watch the video above to see their real life cooperative care/start button training session, and keep reading for all the steps she followed to see how choice based dog training can help with grooming your dog.
A Little Background On Cooperative Care and A “No” Behavior
Cooperative care is rooted in empowering animals to be willing participants in their own care. In practice, this means we give them a way to "say” yes or no. We give them a way to say yes by turning a behavior into a start button. Practically speaking, this means we only take our action after the dog offers the specific start button behavior. The dog learns that if they don’t give that behavior, the the thing we are doing to do to them doesn’t happen. Therefore, they are in control! As you may have guessed, cooperative care hinges on the ability for your dog to “say” no. As with human relationships, anything other than a clear yes is a no (and no’s get rewarded too!). Let’s say your start button behavior for brushing your dog is your dog lying down on a mat. When they lie down, you brush them. If they don’t go lie down on the mat, it is a no, and it is important that we honor and reward that no. Sometimes our hopes for a training session can lead us to push for yes even though our dog is saying no, so the experiment I tried was to give a definitive “no” behavior to compliment the “yes” (start button) behavior. You can find information about how I set this up below.
My Experiment to See How Choice Based Dog Training Can Help With Grooming
Step One (Pick Your Activity): I picked an activity that Otis isn’t super fond of: Combing. Prior to this session, Otis did not have a start button for combing.
Christie Catan combs her dog, Otis's, hair during a training session for how choice based dog training can help with grooming.
Step Two (Present Your Dog With Two Options for Reinforcement): We presented Otis with two options for accessing reinforcement (treats): A) Touching a target; and B) Lying down on a mat. (Note: This is a mat Otis has never seen before, so he doesn’t have a big history with it.)
Step Three (Shape and Reward Your Dog for Interaction With Both Objects): We shaped and rewarded him to interact with both the mat and the target right before we started filming to create a little history of reinforcement.
Step Four (Add the Start Button Element): Then we added the start button element: If he laid down on the mat, we combed him and then gave him a treat. If he touched the target, he just got a treat tossed away (did not get combed). We never once cued him to lie on the mat. We did cue him a couple of times to touch the target to ensure that he knew that he could access reinforcement without having to be combed. (You may also have spotted some reset tosses done to get him off the mat or if he hesitated.) We know the science, but watching it play out is still so thrilling. He picked the mat time and time again. This is also the best body language I have seen from him around a comb.
More Reflections on the Importance of Choice in Cooperative Care
Pretty cool, huh!? Control is a primary reinforcer, and sometimes we forget that. Give your dog a choice and reward them for saying no...and watch how much more they will say yes!
By the way, I tried very hard not to bias Otis toward one behavior with my own body language, but I very well could have shown more excitement over the mat knowing where I was going with this. It wouldn’t have been intentional but that doesn’t rule it out 😂. Otis definitely gets MORE treats on the mat since it’s a duration behavior (though I toss treats off a lot to make it clear that I’ll reward him even if he leaves), and that is intentional. This is a dog who really doesn’t like being combed, so to see this much more excitement for the mat given all the other ways I am reinforcing him off the mat is a big, big win!
I had fun adding this second behavior option and can see how it would be helpful. I think if you have good communication with your dog and established trust, you likely won’t need it, but if I am honest, I think I made more progress by adding the target as an option. You can play around and see what you think!
Have you tried adding a second behavior option to cooperative care? If you try this, let us know how it goes! Don’t forget to tag @tailsofconnection on Facebook or Instagram and use the hashtag #tailsofconnection.
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Make It Fun for Your Dog To Look Back at You Outside
The outdoors come with all sorts of sights, smells, and sounds, so it is helpful to teach your dog how to enjoy the world without totally forgetting that you exist. In this video above (and the written steps outlined below), we’ll show you some simple ways to build an automatic check in behavior (and even how to turn that into some recall practice). Your dog will learn that coming into you actually gets them access to fun things “out there,” and if you are able to move a bit, you can make yourself a really fun part of this game too (chasing YOU is fun!). Keep scrolling for those steps to work on this with your dog at home.
Step by Step: How to Make It Fun for Your Dog to Look Back at You Outside
Christie Catan looks at Hana, the American Staffordshire Terrier puppy, during a TOC training session for making it fun for your dog to look back at you outside.
Step One: To start to make it fun for your dog to look back at you outside. Begin by tossing some treats in the grass away from your dog and then back away from your dog. Simply wait while your dog sniffs to find the treats (try not to say "come" or use their name). You want them to make a choice to come to you
Step Two: When your dog comes to you (likely wondering if you have more treats), mark and reward (toss treats away from you).
Step Three: You can start to actually run away from your dog when they head toward you to build more speed and enthusiasm (chasing you is fun!).
Step Four: Once your dog has this down, you can add in a recall cue right before your dog turns if you want some recall practice.
How This Game Can Also Help Your Dog Make Good Choices
Turn distractions into cues for your dog to check in with you: This game relies on a simple out and back pattern where your dog is always returning to you. If your dog notices something before they turn to you (a person, another dog, etc.), it can become an environmental cue to check in with you as you repeatedly reinforce them for noticing that distraction and coming back to you. Want to know how this works?! Just look at what trainers call the ABC’s (antecedent, behavior, and consequence). The behavior is what the dog actually does (in this case, turn around and run to you). The consequence is what gets added or removed after the behavior (in this case, you are tossing a treat). The antecedent is everything that happens right before the behavior that leads to the behavior. If your dog finishes eating a treat and looks up and sees a person before they decide to turn around and run to you, seeing that person is part of the antecedent and can become a cue that actually will tell your dog to check in with you in the future without you having to ask for this behavior. So if your dog is off leash somewhere and spots someone and you have practiced this game a fair bit with people as distractions, your dog may very well see that person and choose to check in with you rather than darting over to the person. Cool, right? If this is a behavior you really want, know that there are ways you can be super intentional about teaching this within the context of this game and many other ways (maybe that’s an article for another time!).
Plus, it would be hard for us to oversell how valuable it is to reinforce your dog for turning back to you. If you make looking back at you and choosing to come to you behaviors that pay, you will see more and more of them without having to nag your dog. So if you are out on a walk and find yourself thinking, “Why does my dog look back at me on walks,” you can remind yourself it is from all the little times you reinforced them for flipping around to you!
How Focus Games for Dogs Can Help With Attention Outside
It is pretty hard to get your dog to do anything if you don’t actually have their attention. In the Tails of Connection Challenge we have a whole day devoted to attention games, where you teach your dog that it is awesome to focus on you and remind them that they should look at you when you call their name (plus it’s always good to show them that their name is a positive thing). We play these games inside to start and also include a bonus video on how to start to capture your dog’s attention on walks outside. To sign up for the Tails of Connection Challenge, click here.
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How to Teach Your Dog Recall With Distractions
Have you ever recalled your dog to come to you outside and never felt so ignored? Good news: That "failure" or slow recall simply tells you where your gaps are, and lucky for you, recall training is a lot of fun! We thought it would be fun to show you a session TOC Co-Founder, Christie Catan, did with her dog, Otis, to work through a gap she recently found in their recall training. Keep reading for some behind the scenes context from Christie and Otis’s training session and all of the steps written out for how to teach your dog recall with distractions.
Are there any gaps in your dog’s recall that you are currently working through? If you did the TOC Challenge or Camp TOC, you probably know by now that Otis is one of those dogs who could convince a stranger that I never feed him. He LOVES to eat. Recently, I saw him going for something on the ground and tried recalling him when he was almost to the food. Instead of flipping around to me, he moved even faster to get to the thing he wanted to eat 😜. While I wasn't thrilled, I also wasn't mad. It is my responsibility to teach Otis how to recall, and by not giving me the behavior when I cued it there, Otis simply showed me an area where he wasn't able to do what I was asking. Then comes the fun part: How do I create some training sessions that mimic my real life "failed" recall, so I can start showing Otis how to recall in that situation?
Step by Step: How to Teach Your Dog Recall With Distractions
Above, Christie and Otis train in front of an x-pen that has a bowl of chicken inside of it as part of a training session for how to teach your dog to recall distractions.
Step One (Figure Out Your Gap): I knew my gap was in recalling Otis away from something he wanted to eat when he was close to it (let’s say less than eight feet away from it for now) and off leash.
Step Two (Select Your Distraction): For our training session, I decided to use chicken as the distraction (it is high value but not the highest value possible) and chose to work in a relatively small and clear space (I wanted to be close enough to him to make this recall feasible to start). I also used chicken I had on me as my reinforcer.
Step Three (Make the Distraction Easier For Your Dog to Recall From): I put some chicken into a bowl and then put that bowl inside of an x-pen (Otis knew the chicken was there but had no way to get it). This allowed me to build up a bit of a reinforcement history with Otis for recalling away from that chicken while off leash without having to worry about him failing a recall (management for the win!).
Step Four (Start to Take Off the Training Wheels): This started to look too easy in a hurry, so I removed the x-pen. Now, I could have put a leash on Otis at this point, but I chose not to (mostly because I knew it would force me to really think through my training and how to progress without lumping criteria - aka asking for too much from Otis before he is ready). I knew this would be hard, so I focused on recalling him early in his approach to the chicken (aka not waiting for him to be two inches away from it), marking behavior quickly (I was marking him the moment he turned instead of waiting for him to get all the way to me), and using some of my own body movement after the recall cue to help him out. At some point, I want him to recall off chicken when he is about to eat it, but I know that day is not today. So I am starting where we are and will work up to that.
Step Five (Release to that Reward): At the very end of the clip, you will notice that I release him to go eat the distraction chicken as his reward. I ran out of chicken, but if I were a betting gal, I would bet that that release as a reward will be an even greater reinforcer of recall here, so I may try that more in the next session we do (remember, the dog's behavior tells us what is reinforcing). You can play around with your rewards to see what is most reinforcing! For example, a treat tossed away that your dog gets to chase may be much more motivating than simply handing your dog a treat.
How to Improve Your Dog’s Recall (It Takes More Than This!)
Recall has to be fun! Think about it for a second. There are emotions tied to everything your dog does. What type of emotion will work in your favor with a recall behavior? In our experience, it tends to be enthusiastic, happy, and optimistic. So if you are viewing recall training as a chore, ask yourself what kind of emotions you might be bringing.
Recall involves relationship. It just does. There is more to it than that, but it is so important not to forget or downplay this piece. Simply doing fun things with your dog will improve your recall — especially playing with them! I can do a lot to strengthen a recall using food, but I have found that I actually need toys and play to really really build that crazy speed with recall (it makes sense when you think about prey drive).
There is a lot that goes into recall and building it up looks different for different dogs. The video and steps in this article are certainly not a recall protocol. This is just an example of how I started working through a gap I found. Hopefully this can give you some ideas on how to work through areas where your dog is not able to recall.
That is all for now! We would love to know if you’re working on how to improve your dog’s recall and what distractions you are working through or want to work through. Tag us on Instagram or Facebook (@Tailsofconnection) and use the hashtag #tailsofconnection.
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How to Train Your Dog to Enjoy a Collar Grab
It is so important that your dog enjoys or tolerates a collar grab as a safety measure. At some point in your puppy or dog's life, they might need to be caught while they are loose, and we want them to feel comfortable with this. Grabbing a collar can arouse some dogs who may start nipping at your hand and intimidate other dogs who may back away to try to prevent you from being able to grab their collar. You can teach them to enjoy having their collar grabbed by making the collar grab predict something they like (food). In this video above, Gwen Podulka, CPDT-ka and founder of Dog Trained, is working on collar grabs with elkhound puppy, Nova. Keep scrolling for the written steps to help train your dog to enjoy a collar grab.
Step by Step: Collar Grab Dog Training
Gwen kneels with Nova, the Elkhound puppy, during a training session for collar grabs.
Step One: If you can't grab the collar without your dog getting mouthy or frightened, you can show them what you are going to do first (the physical gesture of reaching toward them) but then give them a treat WHILE you reach for that collar (you will see Gwen do this in the first rep in the video above).
Step Two: Once your dog is comfortable, you can move to reaching and grabbing your dog’s collar FIRST and THEN giving them a treat (this is what Gwen does in the later reps in the video). That is ultimately the order we want: one reach and grab collar THEN two deliver a treat (we need that collar grab to be the predictor of good things in order for your dog to build up good feelings about it).
Step Three: You can then practice these grabs from various positions: to the side of your dog, in front of your dog, behind your dog, sitting down, standing up, etc. (As a note, you could add a step and present your hand without fully grabbing the collar followed by a treat to start making the act of reaching more pleasant for your dog before you ever work up to grabbing the collar.).
Behind the Scenes: A Special Filming Note from Gwen
I had someone ask a really great question about the mask. They said “Why wear one since the likelihood that dogs transmit Covid is extremely low?” It gave me the great excuse to mention that we train in masks in my studio in Washington, DC a) because there is still another person in studio and we can’t always maintain distance but more importantly we REALLY want puppies to learn that masks = fun and they don’t need to worry about someone wearing one around them.
To learn more about Gwen and her training business, click here. For more TOC training tutorials, keep learning and training here.
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Training Tutorial: How to Train Your Dog to Focus on You
Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could make the things that really distract your dog become the cues that tell them to look at you?! Good news! You can begin to train your dog to focus on you by simply capturing behavior - aka rewarding your dog for what they’re already offering! This can make walks (among so many other activities) much more enjoyable! In the video above, Juliana Willems, CPDT-KA, and owner and head trainer at JW Dog Training & Behavior, explains how to find the smallest possible behavior to reward your dog for at first. Then she says to build on that until you have a dog who will happily and easily give you attention. Be sure to watch the whole video for a more thorough explanation and a great demo, and keep scrolling for the written steps for how to train your dog to focus on you.
Step by Step: How to Train Your Dog to Focus on You
✏️Pre-Reqs:
- A conditioned marker (aka yes, good, or clicker). If you’re interested in all things markers, check out the Tails of Connection Challenge.
📍 Setup:
- Line up some distractions on the ground, put your dog’s leash on, and have your treats ready. Start far enough away from distractions to keep your dog successful.
Trainer Juliana Wilems walks Austin the dog past cones as part of a training session for “how to train your dog to focus on you.”
✅Basic Steps:
Step One: Begin walking parallel to the distractions. The moment your dog looks at the distraction, mark and give them a treat. (Yes, you read that right! You want your dog to actually look at the distraction to start because you are going to teach them how to cope in real life when they notice things.)
Step Two: Slowly move closer to distractions (may take multiple sessions). Continue to mark and reward when your dog first notices the distraction.
Step Three: In time, you will be able to increase your criteria around distractions by asking for a behavior like eye contact. This means instead of marking the distraction, you will let your dog notice the distraction and wait for your dog to look back at you. You will then mark and reward that eye contact. (You may pick a different behavior for certain distractions). At this point, you are marking and rewarding your dog for noticing the distraction and disengaging from it on their own.
Why This Is a Great Strategy for How To Teach a Dog To Focus
Editor’s Note from TOC co-founder, Christie Catan: This is one of my absolute favorite things to do with puppies and dogs. It might feel counterintuitive to you at first to mark your dog for looking away from you, but remember, your dog hasn’t left to go engage with that distraction yet if they have only just noticed it. Simply marking the distractions starts to create beautiful behavior and takes so little effort on your part -- you just have to pay attention to your environment and your dog and have some treats on you.
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Training Tutorial: How to Teach Your Dog to Drop It
When you visualize "drop it,” do you picture your dog letting go of something? What would happen if we started teaching drop it so that our dogs (at first) think it means something awesome is going to be given to them!? We learned this method from Chirag Patel, and it is our absolute favorite (for puppies and dogs). Keep scrolling for our step by step breakdown of how to teach your dog to drop it (which leads to a great enthusiastic drop behavior):
Step by Step: How to Teach Your Dog to Drop It
Step One: "Condition your drop cue" by saying your cue and then scattering treats on the ground (wave your hand in the treats for a second when you do this to draw their attention there and continue to make your hands near food a good thing). This may feel silly because your dog won't have anything in their mouth to drop! But remember, we just want them to think that "something awesome is coming" when they hear "drop," so we are making it predict food. Think about it - what do they have to do in order to eat food? OPEN THEIR MOUTH! Ta-da -- that is the foundation for drop! (Tip: Make sure you say “drop” before you show or reach for the treats. “Drop” must predict incoming treats, so they need to be two separate events.)
Step Two: Once you are seeing anticipation in your dog's body after saying the drop cue, start adding in some objects for them to actually bite onto. Start with more neutral objects and work up to higher value objects. At first, you may still have to almost immediately scatter those treats on the ground after saying your drop cue.
Step Three: Start to build a pause in after you say your drop cue to see if they drop the object on their own (because if they think great food is coming, they have to open their mouth to eat it ... so you will get an out if the cue is conditioned enough). If they do drop the object on their own after they hear the cue, mark the behavior (say "yes" or click) and then scatter treats on the ground! If they don't drop it right away, no problem - just scatter the treats without marking.
Step Four: Keep working through various objects (building in that pause) until you very consistently get an out behavior as soon as you cue it and are then able to mark and reinforce it with treat scatters (or whatever you choose). When you are ready, practice in new settings (try outdoors if you have been working on this indoors the whole time).
Why Reinforcing Drop It Pays Off Over Time
I also reinforce this drop behavior almost every single time. Because of how we teach it, dogs will drop things FAST even without a reward, but I want to keep "money in the bank" on this behavior since the city has a strange supply of chicken wings on the sidewalks. However, my reinforcement certainly changes over time as my dog gets good at this (aka I am not doing treat scatters forever, but hey, you totally could!). Here are some of the things I now use to reinforce a drop: my dog drops a chicken wing and I reward by finding a stick from the ground to toss or play tug with; my dog drops another dog's ball at the field and I reinforce that by tossing my ball to them; my dog drops a stick they carried outside before we go inside and I reward by running away and letting him chase me (and with lots of praise and scratches when they arrive). To be honest, I have even rewarded some harder "real life" drops indoors with "let's go get a treat" and I walk over to the cabinet with my dog to give them one (sometimes I am just not feeling inspired and this is easy). I still use treats plenty because they are fast and efficient! But I am offering the other examples because some people get hung up on not wanting to use treats for some reason. I can get away with just using praise and pets because I have built those up as good rewards over time, but I try to find some way to make the reward even higher value if I can since this behavior can be life-saving.
Pro Tip: Your Voice Matters When Training a Dog to Drop
Fun fact: I try to keep "drop" incredibly positive and happy. I actually teach it to dogs in a higher pitch because I can't angrily say "drop" in that tone (setting myself up for success!). If you are someone who is likely going to panic and scream this at your dog, you can actually condition your dog to that tone, so it is positive instead of scary. We don't want our dogs to think this is a scary or threatening cue. Because if dogs feel threatened or scared, you are more likely to get a dog who does the exact opposite thing you want and actually runs away with the object (and since this is a behavior that can save their life - we definitely don't want to accidentally teach that).
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Training Tutorial: How to Teach Your Dog to Leave It
Isn’t “Leave It” one of those phrases that seems to just fly out of your mouth as soon as a new puppy or dog comes home? That’s often before your dog has learned what those words actually mean. We thought it would be fun to quickly show you our favorite way to teach “leave it!” Keep scrolling for our step by step process on how to teach your dog to leave it, which we also breakdown in the video above. We’ll show you how you can teach either an implied leave it (that means you teach your dog you want them to ignore that thing by default) and a cued leave it (where your dog understands how to respond when you say “leave it”).
What is “Leave It” in Dog Training?
The way we teach “leave it” will initially tell your dog to look at you immediately. Teaching them what to do provides way more clarity up front than trying to teach them what NOT to do. Leave it is a cue you would use before your dog actually puts something in their mouth whereas the “drop it” cue is something you would use if your dog already has something in their mouth. There are other moments you can use “leave it,” but we will keep it simple for now (fun fact: there are also a million other awesome cues you can use instead of leave it -- like your recall cue!).
✅ Step by Step: How to Teach Your Dog to Leave It
1️⃣ STEP ONE: Reward your dog for Eye Contact
TOC co-founder, Christie Catan, rewards Colby, the golden retriever puppy, for eye contact during their training session for how to teach your dog to leave it.
In this step, you are simply telling your dog up front how they will win this entire “Leave It” game: Eye Contact. To start, sit in front of your dog and wait. The moment your dog looks at you, mark and give them a treat. Keep repeating this until your dog is constantly looking at you (aka they know how to win the game). Eye contact is going to be what “leave it” means for your dog when you teach it initially to make it super clear for them.
2️⃣ STEP TWO: Fade In your Treat Hands
With food in your hands, make closed fists behind your back. Slowly creep them around your hips and down your legs toward your knees through various repetitions. Still mark and reward your dog everytime they make eye contact (the way to win the game is still the same). If your dog is stuck staring at the treats, you may need to back your hands up a bit and work up the “line” more slowly. Do not say “leave it” yet (we want the behavior consistent first). You want your dog to win -- so move at the pace that makes that possible. Keep doing this until your closed fist treat hands are in your lap right in front of your dog. You are actually building a calm default behavior for your dog when you have food in your hands (and it isn’t one where your dog mugs your hands trying to get the food).
3️⃣ STEP THREE: Open your Palms
With some food in both of your hands behind your back, flash one hand out (with food in it) with your palm open (if you need to start with it closed, that is fine too). Your dog will likely look at your open hand, and if you wait a second, your dog is likely going to look at you since that is how they have won every other variation of this game! When they look at you, mark and reward. (Looking away from the food in that outstretched hand to look at you looks a whole lot like a leave it, doesn’t it?!)
4️⃣ STEP FOUR: put Food on Floor
Slowly progress to putting the food on the floor. Perhaps start by flashing your food hand out and resting your other hand on the floor. Take baby steps with lots of reinforcement along the way to help your dog understand that eye contact is still the way to win this game. You are still not saying “leave it.”
5️⃣ STEP FIVE: Reward with “Take IT”(Optional)
Once your dog is consistently looking at you in the presence of food on the ground, you can mark and reward with “take it” (say “take it” and then point to the food to let your dog know they can have it).
6️⃣ STEP SIX: Add the Verbal Cue Leave It (Optional)
Once your dog consistently looks away from your food hand when you flash it out, you can add a verbal cue (aka say “leave it” when you flash your hand). Since your dog already knows how to win this game without that cue, you just need to mark and reward when they look at you when you do say the cue to associate the behavior they are already giving you with the verbal cue you choose.
📝 Additional Notes on How to Train Leave It
This is such an effective way to start to teach “leave it” because you are showing your dog the behavior you want (“look at me”) rather than trying to teach the more abstract behavior of “don’t do what you are doing.” Having clear criteria (aka rules for how to win) creates a super strong foundation for this behavior! You can then start to practice this with more and more objects and in more and more settings (aka start to proof and generalize the behavior).
Note, if you want your dog to always leave something as their default, we recommend teaching an “implied leave it” (this means you practice the behavior of leaving it but never use the verbal cue). I tend to teach an implied leave it for things I just always want my dog to leave as a general rule, so I don’t have to constantly say “leave it” (for example, I never really want my pup to eat rocks, so if they tend to want to eat those, I teach an implied leave it). You can bring in nature from outside and practice this exact game using a pinecone! And as far as verbal cues go, you may find some of your other cues work just as well (for example, I use my dog’s name, a quick kissy noise, or my recall cue in situations where people might say “leave it” since those cues have super strong responses and very clear criteria).
Follow @Tailsofconnection on Instagram for more training tutorials.
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Christie sits on the ground with Colby the golden retriever during a leave it training session.
Management: The Fastest Way to Train Your Dog to Stop Jumping, Counter Surfing, and More
While we get so excited when we see people share awesome behavior changes in their dogs, we know that changing behavior can take time. Have you ever noticed that you don’t often see posts of a cute dog behind a baby gate with a caption like this:
“Check it out! I put Fido behind a baby gate with a Kong when my friends came over, and voila, no barking or jumping on them! I am a genius - I solved the problem in under two minutes!”
As a dog community, we seem to spend more time sharing and cheering on behavior modification than we do management. We totally get it - behavior modification has more wow-factor (and can take a lot of work that is very much worth celebrating), but management is kind of the unsung hero of it all. You can’t get the behavior changes without it, and in many cases, you can simply eliminate the need for behavior modification altogether with it. We thought it would be fun to sing management’s praises and invite all of you to do the same (you can tag us on social media). We have teamed up with some amazing professional dog trainers to talk about what management is, why it is awesome, and how they use it in real life (we will be sharing many of their stories on our Instagram and Facebook pages).
What is management?
Management is changing the environment to decrease the likelihood a behavior occurs. Put simply: you set the environment up to avoid the issue altogether. With “training,” you are working to change or build a behavior (aka the dog is learning something), but with management, you are simply setting up the environment to prevent a specific behavior in the first place. For example, if your dog is afraid of people coming into your yard and barks at them, you can manage this by putting your dog away in a room where they will be calm before people arrive -- in doing this, you simply take away the trigger that causes the problem behavior. Looking at the same scenario, training (behavior modification) would be working to change your dog’s association with people coming into their yard until they aren’t afraid and therefore don’t bark. In real life, management is always a part of training plans, but there are plenty of situations where people simply decide to manage forever (and that is fine!). While management and “training” are different, it can be helpful to practice management scenarios or prep ahead of time, but remember, this practice and prep is not aimed at teaching a different behavior (just preventing one from happening).
When and how should you use management?
You can think about how and when you will use management in two buckets:
Any good training plan includes management. One of the most important steps to changing unwanted behavior is preventing the rehearsal of the behavior. Every time your dog practices the behavior you're trying to change, progress is being delayed. (As our friends at Smart Bitch Dog Training point out, management can also be incredibly important in making sure all of the training work you did sticks - we don’t need to make life harder for our dogs!).
Sometimes management solves the problem more quickly and easily than training would. Some people simply do not have the time, energy, resources etc. to train away a problem. Management can provide an effective solution that works for everyone (you, your dog, your family, etc.).
There are some important things to remember with management:
Your desire to use management involves some personal preference. Some people manage very strictly. Some people think it is a cop out (note: other people don’t get to define this for you!). You get to decide how much you want to focus on it. We think good management is worth celebrating!
Management can be temporary while you're working on a problem, or it can be permanent if everyone is living happily with it.
Not all management solutions will work for every dog. You need to find what works for your individual dog.
You don’t want management to be stressful or aversive to your dog (then it becomes training, and not good training at that). For example, if you put your dog away in a room when a repair person comes over and they just go nuts barking in there for 30 minutes, that is actually teaching your dog more problem behaviors (because remember, management is preventing the problem behavior to begin with).
If you're removing the opportunity for a behavior that served a purpose for your dog -- like entertainment, exercise, etc. -- make sure they get that need met in another way (e.g. restrict access to furniture to avoid chewing and give appropriate chewing outlets to fill that need).
Keep reading below for ideas about how to incorporate management into your training routine with your dog. You can share how management is a part of your life by tagging @tailsofconnection and using the hashtag #TOCmanagementseries on Instagram and Facebook.
Here are some real-life ways to problem solve using management
Management and training are both great and necessary (and often complementary) options in living with dogs. Management should always be a part of any behavior modification plan, but you don't always have to change behavior if management is doing a good job at preventing it and isn't causing you or your dog stress. It is also important to factor in your dog’s nature when thinking about how to use management in your life with your dog. There are certain things that are part of who that dog is and would be incredibly difficult to train away completely without any risks (for example, many dogs make amazing progress with resource guarding but will always have to be managed to avoid any issues -- and that is normal and okay!). Below, we have listed some common problems people face with dogs along with some potential ways you could manage and/or train the problem. Remember, this is not an exhaustive list; it is simply here to help paint a picture of how to think about both management and behavior modification when faced with a problem.
How do I stop my dog from incessantly barking out the window?
Management (immediate solution):
Close the blinds so your dog cannot see the things that make them bark
Put window film on the windows so your dog cannot see the things that make them bark
Training (longer term solution):
Potential rephrasing of the problem: How do I help my dog feel neutral about the triggers outside the window? How do I teach my dog to run to their bed when they see the mailperson appear?
Ideas:
Desensitize and countercondition triggers outside the window so that your dog is no longer triggered when seeing things outside the window
Work on cue transfer so that certain triggers actually tell your dog to go to bed. They may still let out a little bark, but then they will disengage and go to bed.
How do I stop my dog from counter surfing?
Management (immediate solution):
Block off the kitchen with a gate to prevent your dog from being able to access the counters
Don’t ever leave any food out on the counters or tables.
Training (longer term solution):
Potential rephrasing of the problem: How do I teach my dog to stay out of the kitchen? How do I teach my dog to go to their bed if they find food on the counter?
Ideas:
Teach your dog a “boundary” (aka teach them to stay out of the kitchen)
Put food on the counter on a stimulus control, so your dog defaults to a different behavior (like going to find you or going to their bed) when they find food on the counter.
How do I stop my dog from jumping?
Management (immediate solution):
Put your dog behind a baby gate if you have guests over until they calm down enough to greet the person.
Supervise all greetings closely and coach visitors on what to do.
Training (longer term solution):
Potential rephrasing of the problem: How do I teach my dog to greet people with all paws on the floor?
Ideas:
Train them to greet people with all paws on the floor by practicing controlled setups where you consistently and rapidly reward the dog for paws on the floor. You can start to make your setups more exciting (and therefore more difficult), but remember, you want your dog to succeed.
How do I prevent my dog from running away from me?
Management (immediate solution):
Use long lines to give your dog the ability to move around freely in nature while also keeping them safe.
Training (longer term solution):
Potential rephrasing of the problem: How do I teach my dog to stay relatively near me and check back in automatically? How do I teach my dog to come when called?
Ideas:
Capture offered attention to help build an auto check-in behavior.
Train a solid recall.
How do I get my dog to stop barking at skateboarders?
Management (immediate solution):
Avoid areas where skateboarders are likely to be.
Distract your dog the moment you notice a skateboarder until they are gone.
Have a rehearsed u-turn move you can do with your dog the moment you see one.
Training (longer term solution):
Potential rephrasing of the problem: How do I get my dog to feel calm around skateboarders? How do I get my dog to look at me after seeing a skateboarder?
Ideas:
Work under your dog’s threshold to counter condition your dog to skateboards.
How do I prevent my puppy from going potty inside the house?
Management (immediate solution):
Proactively take your puppy outside to go potty frequently.
Supervise your puppy, so you can scoop them up and take them out if they look like they are searching for a spot to potty inside.
Use crates, pens, and tethers (only use tethers if you are home) if you cannot closely supervise your puppy.
Training (longer term solution):
Potential rephrasing of the problem: How do I teach my dog to go to the bathroom outside?
Ideas:
Create a potty training program for your house where you take the dog out regularly and reward him for going potty.
How do I stop my dog from chewing my shoes?
Management (immediate solution):
Don’t leave shoes in a spot that is accessible to your dog.
Training (longer term solution):
Potential rephrasing of the problem: How do I teach my dog to chew on their own things instead of shoes?
Ideas:
Play a “this or that” game with a toy and shoes. Only reward the dog for choosing the toy.
Teach an implied leave it with shoes.
To learn more management strategies from five professional trainers, check out our @tailsofconnection Instagram account all this week.
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Training Tutorial: Learn a More Painless Way to Give Your Dog Eye Drops
Editor’s Note: Not long after I adopted my dog Sully, I had to give her eye drops, and I was nearly in tears. She was so afraid that she was snarling and snapping, and I wished I’d had the time to make the experience more pleasant for her before actually needing to give her eye drops. This week we’re so excited to bring you a special training tutorial focused on desensitizing your dog to eye drops from our friend Lisette Rossman, who lives with her eight month old red and white parti goldendoodle, Lucy, in Washington, DC (she is currently an apprentice trainer under our friend and owner of DogTrained, Gwen Podulka, CPDT-KA). We hope that after watching and reading Lisette’s work, you can partner with your dog to make the whole eye drop process more painless well before they would ever actually need the drops.
✅Step by Step: How to Desensitize Your Dog to Eye Drops
When people get a new dog, have you noticed that cooperative care is rarely at the top of the list of things they are excited to do? It tends to be something they save for later, but there are so many reasons why it is something worth prioritizing! Spending time working on cooperative care can save you and your dog so much heartache and stress if and when your dog needs a medical procedure in the future.
Step One: Work on Consent Behavior With Your Dog
Lucy, Lisette’s Goldendoodle, offers her eye contact at their apartment in Washington, DC.
When Lucy was a puppy, the first thing that we worked on was consent behavior. For Lucy, that meant giving me eye contact, so I knew that she was ready to engage with me. You can go with whatever consent behavior makes sense for you and your dog, but if you want to use eye contact too, simply wait until your dog gives your eye contact and then mark and reward them with a treat. We will turn this behavior into a “start button” in the next step.
Step Two: Introduce Your Hand Coming Toward Their Face Using a Start Button
This first step is simply getting them used to your hand coming toward their face. Wait for your dog to look at you (this is the “start button” your dog will use to tell you they are ready) and then start moving your hand in your dog’s directions and mark and reward them (go nice and slowly here if you need to). If at any time your dog looks away or gets up and leaves, let them do that because that means that they 1) aren’t ready to engage; 2) it is too much for them; or 3) they just want a break. (Pssst...You can toss a treat when they opt out too!). Here is the order: Your dog looks at you → you present your hand (possibly move it toward their face) → mark and treat. You should also give them some treats for not looking at you to make sure they know they have a choice.
In step two, after Lucy looks at Lisette, Lisette shows her hands and then gives Lucy a treat.
Step Three: Work On Getting Your dog Comfortable with General Face Handling
In step three, Lucy rests her head on Lisette’s hand as a way to tell her that she is ready for more face handling. Then Lisette begins touching her face and rewarding her.
As soon as they are comfortable with your hand coming toward their face, move onto actually touching their face. For Lucy, the main areas that I worked on were her muzzle, her eyes and then the top of her head. You can still use eye contact as a start button behavior. If your dog has a chin rest, that can be an awesome constant behavior or start button for face handling. Either way, wait for consent and then touch your dog’s face gently, mark, and feed. Note: Lucy is used to this but your dog might not immediately put their head in your hand. This takes time.
Step Four: Select and Present the Eyedropper Tool to Your Dog
Next, find the object that you are going to work with. When Lucy was a puppy, I used a close-capped pen because that is what I had around, but you could also use a cotton ball or any object that you think would be helpful for this exercise. Because Lucy did get conjunctivitis, I do have an empty eye-dropper bottle here, which I will use, but again choose whatever object you want to for this exercise. You want to do some basic classical conditioning to create a positive association with the object, so present the object and then give them a treat. Ultimately, your dog should have a positive or neutral response to the presented object as it is part of their normal routine (we don’t want this bottle to turn into something crazy exciting).
In step four, Lisette shows Lucy the eye dropper and then gives her a treat to create a positive and calm association with the object.
💡Tip: One thing to note is that when I was working with Lucy as a puppy, we worked really hard to capture calmness. Whenever you are doing a medical procedure, calmness is really important. For example, if Lucy was super excited to see this eye-dropper bottle and was moving everywhere, that would ultimately make it really hard for me to put in her eye drops. So calmness, in conjunction with having a positive association with whatever object you are using, is crucial.
Step Five: Work on Moving the Eyedropper Object Toward Your Dog’s Face
Once your dog is comfortable with seeing the object, work on moving it towards their face. Move it a couple of inches and give them a treat. Again, Lucy is used to this, but look for your dog to give you eye contact to let you know that they are still comfortable with what you are doing (you could also use a chin rest as you consent behavior, which will give you a very clear indication of how your dog is doing). The order you want here is: your dog offers you consent/start button behavior → you move the object toward your dog’s face → mark and give your dog a treat. Remember, if they pick their head up or look away, stop (and still give a treat because opting out is a fine choice and actually makes it more likely for them to opt in).
Step Six: Simulate Using the Eyedropper Object on Your Dog
In step six, Lisette’s hard work with Lucy culminates with her simulating administering an eye drop to prepare Lucy for the future.
Once they are comfortable with the object coming toward them, work on simulating putting in the eye drops. In the beginning, when Lucy was a puppy, her consent behavior was giving me eye contact. As she got older, we transitioned that consent behavior to a chin rest. If your dog doesn’t have that behavior yet, it is fine (you can stick with eye contact/looking at you). Simply wait for the start button, begin your simulation, and then give your dog a treat. When you are simulating eye drops, it is really important that you work on both eyes. You don’t want your dog to just get comfortable with doing their left eye for example, and then be funky about their right. I made sure when Lucy was little that we did both sides to prepare her for what I would need to do in the future.
To follow Lucy’s adventures with Lisette, click here.
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Training Tutorial: How to Teach Your Dog to Orbit Around Your Body
Editor’s Note: This week we’re so excited to bring you a special training tutorial from our friend Emily Anderson, who has been training professionally for seven years. She lives with her two dogs Ripley (a Border Collie and Terrier mix) and Nova (a cattle dog and hound mix).
✅Step by Step: How to Teach Your Dog the Orbit Trick
Orbit is a fun, impressive looking trick where your dog rotates around, or “orbits,” your body, while walking backwards. It requires a lot of patience from you, as well as some really good rear end awareness from your dog. This trick is great to build into your next freestyle training routine if that is your thing!
Step One: Make sure your dog has good rear end awareness, which is critical for mastering this trick.
There are a couple of activities that you can do to build more rear end awareness:
Work on getting your dog to move backwards (try teaching them to back up and target something behind them).
Work on getting them to pivot - aka taking steps in a circle (try having them pivot while standing on top of a food bowl or a book).
Focusing on building solid rear end awareness is going to benefit your dog in so many ways and will ultimately play a big role in how easily you can teach this trick to your dog!
Step Two: With food in both of your hands, work to lure your dog backwards around your body in a circle (reward multiples times along the way).
To start, focus heavily on luring your dog with food through the motions. You’ll want to start to introduce your dog to the feeling of walking backwards around your body and maintaining a somewhat tight circle in the process. To do this:
Start with a treat in both hands. A medium value treat is probably best, but you know your dog! Just make sure it’s interesting enough to follow for a lure, but not so exciting that your dog gets frustrated.
Line your dog up on the side of your body where you’d like them to begin the orbit (I start on my left side).
With the treat at their nose, you’re going to bring your hand from their nose back towards their outside ear (so the treat would travel from their nose to their left ear, in this case).
Make sure they are following the treat lure, and as you move your hand toward their ear and out away from your hip, they should be stepping backwards.
The number of times you reward is really going to be dependent on your dog’s comfort with walking backwards; but, you want to make sure your rate of reinforcement is high to help them understand what you’re looking for and reduce any confusion or frustration! I would recommend rewarding your dog as they line up at your side and take their first step backwards, behind your body, and on your opposite side.
Always try to finish the orbit back on the original side where you started. Don’t forget to use your marker when they get there (I use a YES instead of a click from a clicker because of the treat luring) and give your dog a treat.
Keep working on this, so your dog builds confidence and becomes more fluid following the lures around your body.
As your dog begins to gain confidence with this step, add your verbal cue before you begin luring (I say “orbit”). Some people may prefer to use a hand cue rather than a verbal cue.
You can begin adding in multiple rotations and incorporating some speed (still using lures). When you add in multiple rotations, still reward at each necessary step! I like to use a “good!” or “go!” to encourage my dog to continue doing what they’re doing, and a “yes!” on the final rotation.
As I work on adding rotations, I also look for my dog to begin to take independent steps. While still keeping treats in both of my hands, I start to move the lure away from their nose and see if they can follow the lure from more of a distance.
💡 Tip: Starting with some type of barrier behind you or beside you (like a wall or a chair) can help with creating a tighter circle if your dog is backing away.
Step Three: Once your dog can confidently orbit around your body following treat lures in both of your hands, move to using only one lure to get them to complete the rotation.
Begin by getting your dog to start orbiting around you using a treat lure.
When your dog gets behind your back, instead of switching to a treat lure in your other hand, just use your hand (with no food) as a lure to get your dog back around to where they started.
When your dog is ready, try to get them to complete two or three orbits around your body. You can use a continuation marker like good or simply some praise along the way, but when they complete the two or three orbits, use your final marker followed by a treat to let them know they are done (I use “yes!”).
Our goal here is the same as above - look for independent steps where you don’t need to lure as heavily. As you add rotations, remember not to push your dog too quickly!
Step Four: The final step - no need to use treats!
When I fade away from using a treat lure, I still lure with my hands pretty heavily. You may even need to go back to using both hands to complete the rotation here. That is totally okay!
Go back to rewarding on your side after a single rotation, really building your dog’s confidence and understanding.
And then repeat the steps above, but with no treats!
Again, I like to use verbal praise or “good” and then “yes!” and reward when they complete the final orbit and have returned to the starting side.
As they gain that understanding, start to make your hand luring less obvious and work towards using a verbal cue only (trainer preference!).
🔧 How to Troubleshoot Teaching Your Dog to Orbit
This can be a difficult trick, and can take time! It took my dog, Nova, two years, on and off, for it to really click and I have still not completely faded her from one treat lure. You may need to bounce back and forth from two treats, to one, to hand luring, back to two treats, especially as you increase the difficulty here! Don’t rush your dog - and most importantly, have fun!
To learn more about Emily (who is launching her own professional training business soon) and her life with Ripley and Nova, follow her on instagram here.
What to Do for a Dog With Separation Anxiety
In this video you’ll see a time-lapse of Logan Buie, a dog trainer from Raleigh, N.C., working with her dog, JJ, in a real life separation anxiety training session.
Editor’s Note: We were so blown away by your responses to Logan Buie’s piece on our site “Dogs and Coronavirus: Will My Dog Get Separation Anxiety After the Quarantine,” that we decided to sit down with her for a follow up. As a dog trainer from Raleigh, N.C, Logan graciously offered a realistic plan for you to help your dog tackle separation anxiety. Even if you may have thought it wouldn’t be possible, she tells us in her guide below (keep scrolling) that there is definitely hope.
If you are like me and have a dog with separation anxiety (SA), being able to run an errand without your dog panicking is a big deal. The good news is that over time you can help your dog with SA feel calm when left alone by using a process called desensitization, where you gradually expose your dog to the scary stimulus (in this case, your absence), so that it ultimately becomes boring to her. Desensitization is the most effective method for training dogs with separation anxiety to be left alone because the process actually changes your dog’s emotional response to your departure. The key to this process (which we’ll breakdown for you) is to keep your dog below threshold, which means that you’ll practice leaving your dog for small increments in special training sessions and return before she starts showing signs of of stress like lip licking, pacing, panting, scratching, salivating, and digging.
My Guide for Separation Anxiety Training Sessions that You Can Do at Home
Through a series of structured SA training sessions, your dog is going to learn that it is no big deal when you leave. The time it will take for your dog to feel this way varies widely depending on the dog, but if you do this work, SA dogs have a great prognosis. In order to get started with the actual separation anxiety training sessions, you’ll need to pick a location to leave your dog where 1) your dog feels comfortable while you’re home; 2) you think your dog will be safe; and 3) you limit your dog’s exposure to avoidable departure cues (more below). For my SA training sessions with my dog JJ, I train in my bedroom. Once you’ve picked your location, you’re ready to begin!
1. Figure out your dog’s baseline.
In order to know where to start with your SA training, you’ll want to get a baseline for how long your dog can be left alone without getting stressed. To determine this, set up a doggy camera (if you have two people in your home you could even leave one person’s phone pointed at your dog, FaceTime that phone, and then leave the house). As soon as you see even the slightest sign of stress (for some dogs this is as small as just staring really intently at the door, so pay attention!) come back inside. Take note of the exact number of minutes/seconds that you were out before your dog got stressed. Don’t panic if this number is zero seconds or very tiny; some dogs may even panic before you leave the room. If this is the case, you may not even get a baseline number since you’ll be able to tell that your dog is panicking before you get out the door. In this situation, you’ll want to work on door desensitization (more on this below) so that the door is no longer scary.
2. Create a training plan for your session.
You will want to have a plan for each training session that maps out how many departure reps you plan to do and how long each rep will be. For your first SA training session, you will use your baseline to help you build that plan. We will explain what you should write out ahead of time in step five below.
3. If possible, eliminate or desensitize your dog to departure cues that could stress him out during your training sessions.
Logan, seen above with JJ, says some dogs who have never shown symptoms of separation anxiety can develop it after a big life change like moving or a large shift in routine, like self-quarantining.
Departure cues are any of the little things that we do before we leave the house (think picking up the keys, putting your shoes on, taking a shower, packing your bag, brushing your teeth, changing your clothes, turning on the radio/TV, etc). My recommendation is that you eliminate as many of these avoidable departure cues from your training sessions as possible to make your practice more manageable. For example, I leave JJ in our bedroom so that she doesn’t see me getting my keys or putting shoes on. If I have to change clothes, I try to do that at least an hour before I train, or I throw my clothes downstairs and change out of sight.
However, some cues are unavoidable, like closing the baby gate, turning the car on, and setting up the doggy cam for training. If you can’t remove a cue and that cue stresses your dog out, you will need to desensitize her to the cue before you begin training. For example, your dog might become anxious at the sight of the camera being set up. You’ll have to use the camera to train, so do a training session where you practice setting the camera up a few dozen times without leaving the room. Once your dog becomes bored and uninterested in the camera, move onto leaving after setting the camera up. Or as another example, if your dog gets stressed before you’ve even left the room, work on door desensitization before you try leaving. This just means opening and closing the door several times until your dog is no longer bothered. Then try opening the door, stepping out, closing the door, and immediately returning. You may need to go through this process with the front door as well as an internal door if you are leaving your dog in your bedroom or another room with a door.
While treats are commonly used in other types of desensitization work, you don’t need to use treats for these SA desensitization sessions; we don’t necessarily want our dogs getting excited when they see you opening the door, we just want them to be calm (I want to see a dog who is uninterested, so I just watch my dog’s response as I open and close the door). The process for desensitizing to other departure cues is the same. It’s a bit tedious, which is why I like to only desensitize to those cues that we absolutely must incorporate into the training sessions.
4. Put your dog in the room, prep the space, and make sure you have everything you need for your session.
Here’s a quick checklist to run through before you start your training session.
About ten minutes before my SA training sessions, I head up to my bedroom with JJ to get ready. To get the room ready for training, I make the bed, shut the bathroom door, close the baby gate, turn white noise on, and close the blinds. The actions you take will depend on your own room and your dog’s preferences. All these little preparatory steps will also eventually turn into cues that tell your dog that you are doing separation training and that all of your departures will be safe and not scary. If your dog begins to show anxiety toward any of these actions, you will need to desensitize your dog to the cue through the process above. This could also be a sign that your training has become too stressful, and that you should take a step back. More on this later.
I also make sure I have my camera set up (so I can observe JJ during each departure), along with a stopwatch to track how long I have been gone, my training plan that lists out my reps and durations (more to come!), and a notebook or laptop to take notes on each departure.
5. Once everything is set up, you can start executing your training plan.
Your training session is basically a series of repetitions which consists of you leaving your dog and returning to your dog before she gets stressed.
A typical SA training session has three main phases: warm up, goal duration, and cool down. Whether you do a warm up and/or cool down and how many reps you do depends entirely on your dog. It will definitely require some trial and error and paying attention to how your dog responds.
The Warm Up (2 - 7 reps):
Warm up reps are much shorter than our goal duration rep and should feel a bit random (your duration should fluctuate up and down randomly to prevent your dog from thinking that each rep is going to be longer than the one before it). The warm up has two main purposes. The first is to add many short, easy repetitions to the “bucket” of positive experiences that your dog has with your departures. The second is that the warm up reps serve as a cue for your dog that tells her that we are doing the strange thing where we just come in and go out again and there is nothing to worry about.
Goal Duration (1 rep):
The goal duration rep for a single session is the longest duration that we will leave our dogs for. We will only do one of these reps per session. Your starting goal duration should be a few seconds shorter than your baseline number. For example, if my dog’s baseline was 45 seconds, I would want my goal duration rep for my first session to be 35 seconds. Remember: we want to end training reps and sessions before our dogs get stressed, not right as they are getting stressed.
Cool Down (1 - 2 reps):
If you find it helpful for your dog, you could add one to two short departures after your target duration rep so that the session doesn’t always end with the hardest repetition.
Pictured Above: A sample Separation Anxiety Training Plan for a single session with your dog.
When I do separation anxiety training, it basically looks like several repetitions of this:
I leave the room, telling JJ “be right back!”, and shutting the door behind me.
I walk down the stairs, exit the front door, and stand on the front steps for the duration of the rep in the plan that I am working on. While I stand on the porch, I watch JJ closely on the camera.
After the duration of that rep is up (e.g. seven seconds, 35 seconds, three minutes), I open the front door, walk back upstairs, and enter the room JJ is in.
When I enter the room, I have a habit of giving JJ two gentle ear scratches if she is laying on the floor by the baby gate. If she’s lying far away from the gate, I don’t bother greeting her, since it sometimes makes her too excited. (Note: You don’t need to totally ignore your dog, but don’t give them the zoomies, either! The exact greeting you do will depend on your own dog).
Then I sit down and enter my notes from that repetition in my spreadsheet and check my duration for the next departure. After about 30 seconds to 45 seconds (or however long it takes JJ to settle back down) of sitting at my desk, I stand up and leave again for my next departure rep.
Repeat this for all the reps in the training plan!
After the session is over, I take a look at how JJ did that day and then I construct my training plan for the next session (either later that day or the next day).
As a note, I don’t recommend that you use treats, chews, or food puzzles when initially doing this work. For many dogs, the food only serves as a bit of a distraction, and then the dog resumes being anxious about your absence once the food is gone. My own dog, JJ, would eat the contents of a frozen food toy then scratch at the door and scream until we came home. So my goal with training is to get her to relax when we leave without the presence of a food toy. Once you’ve reached a good duration of a few hours, you can try adding food toys back into your departures if you want.
6. What if something doesn’t go right during my training session (aka my dog looks frustrated or my neighbor interrupts us)?
When I wait outside during a departure rep, I watch JJ on my phone and keep an eye on the time on my watch.
Your plan is simply that: a plan. Don’t panic if you have to adjust or stop your session altogether. The most important thing here is to be prepared to respond if your dog becomes stressed. I’m not necessarily talking about your dog having a full blown panic attack here; I’m referring more to the small signs that the duration is too long. For JJ, this means small vocalizations like grumbles, excessive yawning, pawing even just once at the baby gate, staring too hard at the baby gate, or tucking her ears back against her head. When I see these things, I immediately come back into the house and return to the room where I left JJ. If my dog is too amped up when I come back into the room, I see if I can wait a few minutes for her to calm down before trying another (shorter) repetition. If she’s still stressed out when I try to leave the room again after a few minutes, then that’s a sign that I should end the session and try again tomorrow. I would most definitely make tomorrow’s session easier (i.e. the target duration and warm up reps will be shorter durations).
If something in your external world interrupts your training (like a neighbor showing up), just end your session. If your dog also struggles with reactivity like my dog, you have to be extra careful about not doing SA training when their triggers appear (for JJ, I have to stop an SA session if the lawn crew arrives).
7. How often should I do SA training sessions?
I wouldn’t do more than two training sessions per day, five days a week. If your SA sessions are over 15 minutes in length, I recommend only doing one session per day instead of two. Our dogs need breaks - and we do too!
I usually aim for one session per day, four to five times per week.
8. How do I know when to increase duration for the next training session?
If your dog is super chilled out and bored-looking during training (relaxed eyes, neutral ears, maybe laying down, etc.), then you can progress to the next step. Don’t jump in duration too quickly though! When you are under a few minutes, your goal duration increases from one session to the next should be only 10-30 second increments. Once you start acing longer durations (several minutes) then you can start jumping by a minute or so. Once you reach about thirty minutes or so, you can try increasing the goal duration by about five minutes, and so on. I know this seems like such small steps, but progress will be faster if we go slow and respect our dogs’ pace.
9. How do I track our progress?
During an SA training session, when I return after a departure rep, I sit down at my desk to enter my notes on that rep into my spreadsheet. Then I look at how long my next departure should be. After about 30 to 45 seconds (or however long it takes JJ to settle back down) of sitting at my desk, I stand up and leave again.
I am a spreadsheet geek, so I suggest that you use a basic spreadsheet where you can plot your progress. At the very least, I would have one that tracks: date, time, and the longest duration achieved for that session (this would be your goal duration, unless your dog only achieves a portion of that time). I also like to track how many reps I do in each session (usually 6-7 for us) and the total length of that session, from start to finish. Then you can plot your duration versus your date for a nice plot of your progress! Check out this sample spreadsheet I created!
10. Reminder: Start where you are. It is okay if you can’t even make it out of the house.
We all have to move at our dog’s pace. If you have to shut an internal (i.e. bedroom, office) door before you shut your front door, you may want to get a few minutes of duration with just the internal door before you move onto leaving the front door. Lots of people think,“will this be helpful if I’m not even leaving the house?” The answer is yes! It’s a great confidence builder for both you and your dog. Plus, some dogs can’t handle you making it all the way to the front door yet. Baby steps!
11. Something is better than nothing.
And sometimes, even with our best intentions, our time just slips away and we don’t have enough hours in the day to sneak in a full SA training session. This is an opportunity to do something easy for both you and your dog; how about two minutes of door desensitization?! Or maybe you do three warm up reps but no goal duration rep. There’s no harm in a few minutes of super, super easy practice!
12. Management
The scariest part of separation anxiety training for most people is the fact that you can’t leave your dog over threshold. This means that if I’m working on leaving my dog for three minutes during our practice sessions, I can’t leave her for an hour to go to the store. Yes, really. I know. This is scary and hard. But you’ll never make the progress you need to while you’re still leaving your dog to panic. This is because every time we do departure training, we are essentially telling our dog, “Hey, you can trust me. I’ll be back soon, and I’ll be back before you need to panic.” If we add in departures where our dogs go over threshold and panic, how can they trust that those training departures are safe?
So if you are going to commit to separation anxiety training, you have to make a promise to your dog that you will always do your best to never leave them over threshold. This means ordering groceries online for delivery and getting a sitter for date nights. This means taking your dog to daycare during the day instead of leaving them at home alone while you work. Some people have even found college kids or retired folks in their neighborhood to watch their dog a few days a week. You might have to get creative with your support system -- you’ll need one. It requires a lot of management and a lot of scheduling to make sure that you’re never leaving your dog to panic alone. But I promise that it’s worth it. Management in real life gives your training the space it needs to actually work.
13. Finding a qualified trainer
I highly recommend finding a certified separation anxiety trainer (CSAT) if you can swing it. I recommend CSATs in particular because they undergo an intensive training program that focuses on treating separation anxiety using the methods that I’ve discussed here. I also recommend working with SA Pro Trainers™. They have to complete an in depth-course and are assessed by CSAT Julie Naismith before they are granted the SA Pro Trainer™ certificate.
If you have a positive reinforcement trainer that you’d like to work with, I suggest asking them how they address separation anxiety cases. You’ll want someone who uses systematic desensitization to departures (everything I’ve talked about here!) and never trains with aversive tools like a bark collar. I have found that the hardest aspects of separation anxiety training are reading body language (our dogs can be subtle!) and staying motivated. A CSAT or an SA Pro Trainer™ are a second pair of eyes to make sure your dog isn’t stressed, and they can help you stay on track!
There are also a few programs that are self-guided (and more affordable) to help you get started with training on your own. The ones I know about are Mission Possible, Home Alone: Treating Separation Anxiety, and Subthreshold Training.
I also recommend Julie Naismith’s book, “Be Right Back.” It’s a great starting place for owners who have dogs with separation anxiety. She provides some sample training plans, as well!
You can follow Logan’s work and her adventures with her dog, JJ, on Instagram.
PS: Pin this article for later!
Why Teaching Your Dog to ‘Read the Room’ Can Help Simplify Your Life
Imagine if you could get your dog to read the inside and outside world and make smart decisions that make both of your lives easier? It’s definitely possible and we’re going to break down how to do this. In the how-to video above you’ll see me teach Otis to lie down (without any human instructions) when I open the dishwasher. If you keep scrolling down below we have even more quick and fun examples from our friend and professional trainer, Juliana Willems. Once you learn this concept, you can apply it in so many ways to prevent or solve problems or even just create a more harmonious life with your dog.
How to Be the Translator that Helps Your Dog Read the Room
For more on cue transferring, check out this IG live we did with Juliana on April 20.
Do you remember what it was like to start a new job? Imagine that it’s your first week at a new company, and when you show up to your first morning meeting, your boss Johnny walks in. Sarah, your peer who has been at the company for several years, turns to you and says, “Close your laptop.” Sarah translated what Johnny entering the room indicated, so that you would know how to behave (she knows from her years of experience working for him that Johnny’s pet peeve is when his employees are distracted and looking at their computers during meetings). Now, when Johnny walks into your morning meetings, you automatically close your laptop without Sarah having to translate for you. From a behavioral perspective, Johnny walking into the meeting became an environmental cue for you to close your laptop.
If we want our dogs to behave in certain ways around environmental cues, we will have to channel your hypothetical colleague Sarah and translate for our dogs until their new learned behaviors become automatic. In dog trainer speak, we are doing something called a “cue transfer.”
How a Simple Acronym Will Help You Be an Effective Translator for Your Dog
OOO. SMART. SHIT Sandwich. Don’t you just cringe at all of those weird corporate acronyms that people love to throw around at work?! Well we figured we’d keep the party going here and give you one for this context! LOL!!
In this graphic, I break down NOB with the example of teaching my dog, Otis, to lie down when I open the dishwasher.
Here is the acronym you need to remember when you serve as a translator for your dog (a.k.a. when you want to transfer a cue): NOB
New Cue - This is the new environmental cue that your dog doesn’t really know yet. In our office example, the new cue was Johnny walking into the morning meeting.
Old Cue - This is a cue that your dog already knows. In our office example, the old cue was Sarah saying “close your laptop.”
Behavior - This is the behavior your dog does based on the cue you give him. In our office example, the behavior was closing your laptop.
This order matters, which is why we’ve given you the NOB acronym to remember the sequence!
Here are some basic steps for your NOB (a.k.a. cue transfer) training sessions:
Make sure you clearly define your desired behavior and what specific thing in the environment you want to serve as the cue. (Hot tip: “Not barking” is not a specific behavior. Focus on the behavior you want rather than on the one you don’t want.)
Present your dog with the new cue (the environmental cue).
Wait a second and then present your dog with the old cue (the cue they already know).
When they offer the behavior you want, reward them.
Repeat.
Then pause for a longer period of time after presenting the new cue to see if your dog will automatically offer the behavior without you having to give the old cue. If they don’t, no problem - just present the old cue.
Reward when they offer the behavior.
Repeat these steps until your dog automatically and consistently offers the behavior when presented with the new cue.
Three Amazing Examples of How Dogs Learned to Read the Room
When Opening the Back Door Becomes a Cue to Go to Bed
Open your back door.
About one second later, say “go to bed” (Note: This must be a known cue for your dog).
Reward your dog when he gets into the bed.
Reset (release or do a reset toss) and repeat.
When you think your dog is ready, open the back door and wait a bit longer silently to see if your dog will go to his bed on his own. If he does not, simply say your old cue “go to bed.”
Either way, reward your dog when he gets in bed.
Repeat until your dog consistently and automatically goes to bed when you open the back door (without you having to say “go to bed.”)
When Opening the Dishwasher Becomes a Cue to “Go to Your Crate”
Open the dishwasher door.
About one second later, say “crate” (Note: This must be a known cue for your dog.).
Reward your dog when he gets into his crate.
Reset (release your dog or do a reset toss by tossing a treat away) and repeat.
When you think your dog is ready, open the dishwasher door and silently wait a bit longer silently to see if your dog will go to his crate on his own. If he does not, simply say your old cue “crate.”
Either way, reward your dog when he gets into the crate.
Repeat until your dog consistently and automatically goes into the crate when you open the dishwasher door (without you having to say “crate.”)
When Ringing the Doorbell Becomes a Cue to Come Sit in Front of You
Ring the doorbell.
About one second later, say “come.”
Reward your dog when he comes to sit in front of you.
Reset (toss a treat away) and repeat steps one through four.
When you think your dog is ready, ring the doorbell and wait silently for a bit longer to see if your dog will come and sit in front of you on his own. If he does not, simply say your old cue “come.”
Either way, reward your dog when he sits in front of you.
Repeat until your dog consistently and automatically comes and sits in front of you when he hears the doorbell (without you having to say “come.”)
Why Reading the Room is the Gateway to Problem Solving with Your Dog
If you hate nagging your dog then you’ll love cue transferring. Eventually you’ll be able to remove yourself from the equation and let the environment tell your dog what to do. This concept can be used in so many situations! Here are just a few of the ways we’ve seen it used to help:
Reduce problematic barking
Reduce the risk of a dog running out of an open door
Stop annoying behaviors like sock stealing or getting onto an open dishwasher
Teach your dog to automatically look at you when he sees a [insert cue...dog, person, squirrel, deer, car, etc.]
Teach your dog to automatically sit and wait before crossing the street
So What Happens in Real Life When We’re Outside of Our Training Sessions?
Most of our dogs will encounter "new environmental cues" outside of training sessions before we have fully completed our work as their translators. In some cases, you may even have an environmental cue that you find difficult to replicate in a training session. So what do you do then? You have two options:
1. Try to get the ideal behavior as quickly as possible after your dog perceives the "new cue." Let's use a real life example from my own experience working with my dog, Sully. She is completely fine with our vacuum cleaner, but she cannot stand the one that the caretaker uses to vacuum our apartment building hallways every single day (that hallway vacuum is a completely separate environmental cue for her). At first, when she heard the hallway vacuum, she would go nuts barking at the door. I decided I wanted that scenario to tell Sully to run to her bed instead of barking at the door, so I had to translate the environment for her. While I never knew exactly when the vacuum would show up, I could predict it was generally in the afternoon. I made sure to have some very high value treats that I could grab in a moment’s notice. The second Sully noticed the vacuum, I would cue her to go to her bed. At first, I often had to stick a smelly treat in front of her nose and lure her away from the door and to her bed, where I made treats rain from the sky for as long as that vacuum was in our hallway. Over time, I no longer had to lure her away from the door when she heard the vacuum. Instead, I could redirect her pretty easily with a verbal cue asking her to go to her bed (aka the "old cue"). And eventually, I no longer needed to lift a finger. Now when Sully hears the vacuum she will walk away from the door and to her bed and I don’t have to say anything! (Side note: Because the hallway vacuum only appears once a day and it is a real life situation that involved some reactivity, my progress was much slower initially than it would have been if I was able to do actual training sessions on a more neutral cue. But it still worked!)
2. Manage the situation by keeping your dog from being able to practice the behavior you don't like around the new cue. Let's use my same hallway vacuum example from above. Some days I had important calls in the afternoon that I couldn't easily step away from to work with Sully if the vacuum appeared. On those days, I would put Sully into the bedroom (farther away from the hallway) and play a little white noise or music to reduce the chance that she would actually hear the vacuum. I wasn't making progress with her by doing this, but I also wasn't allowing the situation to get any worse.
We can’t wait to see you start to translate the environment for your dog and help him read the room. Be sure to tag @tailsofconneciton on Facebook and Instagram.
A big thank you to Juliana for chatting with us about this fun topic! If you want to learn more about Juliana, you can visit her website.
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How Can I Get My Dog to Stop Barking During a Zoom Conference Call?
“Can the person with the barking dog please go on mute?” These days what used to make for a funny story over drinks with friends, has become a near constant headache for many dog parents who simply can’t figure out how to get their dogs to stop barking during their marathon of Zoom meetings. For help we sat down with Gwen Podulka, a certified professional dog trainer - knowledge assessed (CPDT-KA), who recently joined us for a special Instagram Live devoted to all things reactivity. During the Live she told us in passing that reducing barking during Zoom meetings is the number one topic on her clients’ minds these days, so we knew we just had to follow up with this special Q&A.
Let’s start from the beginning, Gwen, because barking is actually really fascinating. Why do dogs bark in general?
Because they can! It is totally normal for dogs to bark and not all barking is bad. Barking is also an amazing form of communication. If you take it away and tell them never to do it, you have to be incredible at reading dog body language, and typically humans are not great at that. If our goal is a quiet conference call, we have to first understand what kind of barking our dog is practicing before we come up with a plan to help.
I like to break down barking into nine different categories. In training, we try our best to stick to describing behavior rather than interpreting for our dogs, but for the sake of simplicity, I am going to insert a bit of human thinking here to make it easier for people to get the basic gist. Here’s what our dogs are trying to tell us:
So why do dogs bark during Zoom conference calls?
This is a loaded question, and there isn’t one simple answer. I do think it is an important question for people to think about with their own dogs because it helps them to understand what is driving that barking behavior if they want to teach a different one. For the purposes of this article, let’s talk about some of the factors that could be at play.
Gwen, seen here with her dogs, Lemon and Bug, has over 20 years of experience as a certified professional dog trainer.
Your dog may be excited or frustrated and want your attention. In video conference calls, we tend to be fairly engaged. Your dog might be responding to your tone and energy on the call and could be getting excited or frustrated that you are engaging with a silly screen instead of them. Your dog may have initially made more subtle plays for your attention that went unnoticed and now is amping up to barking. And if you think about it, when your dog barks while you are on an important call, it tends to immediately get your attention as you attempt to prevent a giant racket. Barking quickly increases as soon as your dog realizes he has the power to shift your attention from the screen in front of you.
Your dog may be noticing and reacting to things on the video conference call. If you are on speaker, your dog may hear another dog bark on the call and start responding to that. Your dog may even be responding to the tones of other voices on the call. Some dogs even pay attention to what they are seeing on the screen, and that could lead to barking.
Your dog may be reacting to triggers totally separate from the call. Some dogs are very sensitive to noise and motion outside of your windows and doors and will bark when they see or hear things. This type of barking may have been happening long before today, but it is only becoming something you notice as an issue now that you are home all day.
Your dog may be sensitive to your complete change in routine. The world likely feels quite different to your dog -- both inside and outside of your home. If you’ve never been home 24/7 like this, you’ve never really engaged with the world in this way in front of your dog, so it is a completely new “picture” for him that he is trying to sort out. Depending on how your routine has changed, your dog may also be feeling a bit uneasy or may not have the same mental, physical, and social outlets that he used to have.
So how can I get my dog to stop barking while I am on my video conference calls?
Like most everything that we work on with our dogs, we want to think about both training and management. Training is where you will proactively teach the behavior you want, but since that can take some time and we are realists here, you also need some management tactics to help you get through your calls in the interim.
What should I do in the moment if my dog starts barking during a call and I haven’t had the opportunity to train around this scenario? If possible, mute yourself and then quickly and calmly find a way to redirect your dog to something that is not barking (for example, you could give them a chew or pull them up into your lap to love on them). You could also put your dog in his crate or in a separate room as long as that is not something that will increase the level of barking when it comes to your dog. If your dog has a strong “go to mat’ behavior that is associated with calm, you could also cue that. You are human and doing the best you can in this bizarre new situation, so just pick the least aversive option to manage your dog’s behavior in that moment and keep yourself sane.
Now think of this call as a test that you and your dog took. Your dog barked a whole lot, so you failed. But that is totally okay! This is the kind of test you get to take again. You now get to use what you learned from this failed test to prepare for your next test (aka your next call).
But If I give my dog attention or a chew to manage his barking during a meeting like this will this behavior from me reward his barking? Probably. But in the moment, you just need to get through your important call, and that is okay. However, let’s clarify one thing: If the barking is fear-based reactivity, giving your dog attention or a chew will not “reward your dog for barking” (that is a false premise since fear is an emotion, not a behavior, and therefore cannot be reinforced).
What kind of training can I do to prevent my dog from barking during my calls?
Training is your chance to be proactive and really teach your dog the behavior you want from them when you are on these calls. Let’s talk about just a few of the things we can do to try to create more peaceful calls.
Train during pretend Zoom calls. Have you ever done a training session while you are on a Zoom call? If not, that “picture,” meaning what your dog sees and experiences while you are on a call, feels new to him, and dogs are not good at generalizing behaviors. You can try to replicate the picture of a Zoom call in a training session and teach your dog the behavior you want. This may mean going into the room where you work, turning on the computer, putting down your coffee, and starting to talk and gesture at the computer screen while you reward your dog for the desired behavior. You may want your dog to lie down calmly on a mat while you are on calls, so practice that. Start talking to your computer and drop treats on your dog's mat pretty frequently as long as he is calm. As you practice more, you won’t need to give as many treats. Then when it comes time for a real Zoom call, your dog will recognize this picture and likely make a choice that works better for you. (Tip: Have some treats ready to reward him for calm on a real call when you are first working on this.)
Proactively teach with an element of management. You may want to include a leash, crate, or baby gate into your practice training sessions in case you need to put your dog behind a gate on a real call. This way, if you have to use management, you and your dog already feel good about it.
Start working toward a settle on practice calls. Grab a good amount of food or treats and walk with your dog over to where you work (it may be good to have them on a leash here too). Say “settle” once as a way of letting your dog know that you plan to be here for a while. Then start capturing all of the behavior you like as you work toward a dog who is lying down and relaxed. To be clear, this is not a moment to be stingy. Find anything to reward. Is your dog standing up quietly? Give him a treat. Did your dog just sit down? Give him a treat. Did your dog lie down? Give him a treat. Is your dog still lying down? Keep giving treats. Then you can start talking at the screen like you would on a call. Did your dog stay quiet? Give him a treat. Tell your dog all the things you love by giving him treats during these moments.
Think about how you can pay your dog. If your dog is calmly lying on his bed, you can give a chew as a big reward (this also tends to keep dogs quiet since it gives them something to do). Don’t be afraid to also drop some treats in front of your dog to reward him for quietly chewing. Think about it: that is an awesome behavior to reward! No matter what, make sure you have lots of food or treats available for practice on real calls. We don’t want to miss the opportunity to reward our dog for something we like -- especially as we are first working on this.
Set up a Zoom happy hour with friends to create a more realistic practice for your dog. Just remember to bring your treats and reward your dog.
Keep your dog successful. If you are doing a practice call and your dog starts barking, I would probably just end the game. This tells you that you are not paying him at the level he needs. You need to shift how frequently you give paychecks (treats) and/or what you are paying them with (maybe they like a different type of treat more).
I've also noticed that my dog is barking a lot more out the window during the quarantine. Is there any way to help reduce this too?
For more on reactivity in general, check out this IG Live we did with Gwen on April 6.
This is a good question because this type of barking can require a different approach.
First, if your dog is barking out the window, you can try calling him over to you or asking him to go to his bed. If he responds to you and leaves the window, reward him since he did the behavior you asked.
If your dog is barking out your window a lot, I would look to do some management since we don’t want our dogs practicing a behavior we don’t like. You can add a white noise machine so he doesn’t hear as much noise outside or use a cover to block his view out of the window. You can buy film on Amazon that still lets some of the light in but obstructs your dog’s view outside. As a more DIY option, you could use tin foil, wax paper, etc. to cover the part of the window your dog can see out of.
It’s also important for you to see if you can identify why your dog is barking in order to find the right resource to help. Can you try to study his body language to see if he is offering you physical cues? Would some desensitization and counter conditioning help?
You can find out more about Gwen by visiting her website here.
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Dogs and Coronavirus: Will My Dog Get Separation Anxiety After the Quarantine
In this video you’ll see a time-lapse of Logan Buie, an assistant dog trainer from Raleigh, N.C., working with her dog, JJ, in a real life separation anxiety training session.
Editor’s Note: Over the last couple of weeks we’ve received questions from members of our community wondering if their dogs can develop separation anxiety from spending too much time with them during self-quarantine. For answers, we sat down with Logan Buie, an assistant dog trainer from Raleigh, N.C, who is especially passionate about separation anxiety education. She is also a co-host of our recent Tails of Connection Training Party.
Can my dog get separation anxiety from spending too much time with me during the quarantine?
The answer is a definitive … maybe. Some dogs who have never shown symptoms of separation anxiety can develop it after a big life change like moving or a large shift in routine, like self-quarantining. But some dogs are able to seamlessly return to their old routine after a big change. I don’t know that there’s any way to predict which dogs will struggle with a life change, and it is likely related to a set of genetic factors, the same way that certain puppies are predisposed to separation anxiety very early in life.
Please do not panic about this, though! We can’t control everything about our dogs, and we certainly can’t control how long we are under social distancing precautions in our communities. We can just do the best we can, right now.
When my partner and I adopted JJ, (pictured above), in October of 2017, it soon became clear that she had some behavioral problems. She is reactive to almost all dogs and has separation anxiety.
What are the steps to reduce the possibility of that happening? Is there something I should do with my dog for a few minutes every day?
The good news about my answer to the first question is that we can practice departures with our dogs to maintain a sense of normalcy. You can practice short departures around the time of day that you would normally leave for work, driving around the block if you can, or just sitting on your front porch. You can also practice these short departures at different times of day, so that your non-separation anxiety dog is reminded that sometimes you just randomly “pop-out” and it’s absolutely no big deal. This could be a great time to work on a project in the garage, mow your lawn, or take a walk around your neighborhood without your dog.
Even if you don’t have a dog with separation anxiety, I would suggest monitoring your dog on camera for these departures. You can use a laptop webcam or an old phone; it doesn’t have to be fancy. The change in routine can be hard for our dogs, so even if your dog has never shown signs of anxiety during previous absences, it’s a good idea to check on them via camera to make sure that they are still comfortable with you leaving. If they show any signs of discomfort, like whining, barking, crying, scratching/digging at the door, pacing, etc., they need to be left for a shorter period of time the next time you leave. And don’t forget to use the camera to check on your dogs when you go back to work, too. If they do end up showing any signs of separation anxiety, you’ll want to know immediately, so that it can be treated!
What if my dog already had separation anxiety prior to the quarantine, and we’d been making strides to reduce his anxiety? How do I make sure he is not set back by this? What should we be working on every day?
I won’t lie, this was the first thing I thought about when my partner and I both moved to working remotely. I know I had bigger problems to worry about, but instead I was focused on this: “What if my dog, JJ, can’t handle us going to work after all this is over?” Since then, my worry has decreased a bit, for a few reasons. One is that I just can’t control how long we’re stuck at home or how JJ will respond to going back to her old routine. So I try not to dwell on that stuff.
Another reason my worry is a little lower now is that I am trying to get back into the swing of separation anxiety training! If you can, keep training exactly the way you were training before self-quarantining started. If you aren’t able to get in your car and go out (your city doesn’t allow it, you are avoiding the grocery store for safety reasons, etc.) you can practice leaving your dog while you hang out on the front porch with a cup of tea or a book.
And like I mentioned above, the change in routine has been hard on most of our dogs. So even if you are training at the same time of day as usual and following the same training plan, you might see a bit of a setback from where you were two weeks ago - that’s okay! Go at your dog’s pace. Focus less on the duration you’re getting, and try to focus more on the number of good, safe departures that you are giving your dog each time you practice. It can be easy to aim for departures that are longer than our dogs are comfortable with, so have some flexibility. It’s always important, but especially now.
This might also be an awesome opportunity to train your dog to be left alone at times that you normally can’t train. During normal life, I can only get in about one separation anxiety session a day (aiming for five days a week.) I’m hoping to use this time working at home to do one practice session in the morning and one practice session in the evening.
I just brought a puppy home. We are working from home right now, so my puppy only knows what it's like for us to be around all of the time. Is there anything I can do to help prepare my puppy for a more “normal” routine? Any advice for small things we can work on together?
YES! You can work on the exact same thing that I mentioned above - practice departures. You can do a pared down “getting ready for work routine,” and then leave your dog while you take a walk or sit on the front porch and get some fresh air, which we all need right now. Or maybe you need to go (safely!) pick up groceries from your local market - try to fit this in here, like you’re “going to work.” This won’t be the same as getting them ready for the entire workday, because we can’t be out of our homes all day long right now, but it is a great chance to prepare them for the fact that you’ll leave at a particular time each day.
Many people also don’t have enough time to gradually ease their puppies into being left for several hours at a time, due to the limitations of going to work. So the silver lining of this is that you probably have more time to train your puppy to be okay with your absence than you normally would!
JJ has taught me immense amounts of patience and compassion, and it is safe to say that without her, I would not have discovered my passion for animal behavior and dog training.
If you’re planning to crate train your puppy, you can work on that now, as well as training them to be okay with being in a separate room from you. Again, we all know that this isn’t the same as the training that happens when you actually go to work, but it’s important to add all this into the “trust bank” that you have with your puppy. And when you do go back to your normal routine, don’t expect them to be okay with you being gone for six hours immediately. You’ll want to slowly work up to the full amount of time, to set them up for success and avoid panic. When you do go back to work, be sure to check on your puppy periodically via camera, so that you can identify any possible signs of stress, if needed.
Is it possible to “cure” separation anxiety?
I love this question. No good dog trainer will ever promise you a cure that’s 100% guaranteed. But there’s also an outdated myth that a dog with separation anxiety will always panic, for the rest of his life, end of sentence. This just isn’t true! There’s a good prognosis for most dogs with separation anxiety if it’s treated properly: with a desensitization plan that makes the owner’s absences “No Big Deal” instead of “Super Scary All The Time.” This means always practicing departures that keep your dog under threshold (i.e. returning to the room before they panic). Many dogs with separation anxiety can eventually be left alone for a few hours, like a “normal” dog. It just takes dedication.
A Special Note From Logan
I want to add a little author’s note on taking care of ourselves. If you are feeling tired, overwhelmed, and anxious, and you can’t picture fitting training into your life right now, that’s okay. The maximum we can train for separation anxiety is generally two times a day, for five days a week (but that can vary by dog.) And oh boy - that feels like way too much for me, as a human, right now. Aim for something easy. Maybe just once a day, a couple times a week! Maybe it’s just once a week right now, or you just pop out for a few minutes to check the mail every couple of days. Maybe you work it into your morning routine, right before you start working from home. Or maybe you sleep in a little instead, because we’re all trying to cope. Please do not feel like you have to pressure yourself to be the perfect trainer or dog parent right now. We are all just trying to survive. Now is not the time for perfectionism. We should all be considering how we can set our dogs up for success when we get back to normal, but we also need to be taking care of ourselves. Take a few deep breaths, do what you can, and give your dog a big hug for me.
You can follow Logan’s work and her adventures with her dog, JJ, on Instagram and on her website here.
Help: How Do I Get My Dog to Stop Biting Things Around the House?
Editor’s Note: We get a lot of questions from dog parents in our Slack community about how to get their dogs to stop biting and playing with household items like toilet paper and paper towel rolls. In order to get help, we turned to our friend and professional dog trainer, Juliana Willems, to write the special guest blog below.
It’s very common for dogs to steal, destroy, chew on, and play with household items like paper towel rolls and toilet paper. Though this behavior can be hilarious at first, it eventually becomes incredibly frustrating. I’m going to help you with an easy way to tackle it.
Step One: Restrict Your Dog’s Access to the Household Items in Question
Focus on restricting your dog’s access to the items in your house that you don’t want him to steal. Every time he steals, plays with, chews on, or even destroys a paper towel roll, he’s getting something out of it and becoming really good at doing that bad behavior. This step is all about management, which often goes hand in hand with training.
Step Two: Search for the ‘Why’
The second thing you need to think about here is why your dog is stealing this stuff in the first place. Why is he chewing these items? What is he getting out of them? Does he have a need to chew that you may not be fulfilling? Does he have a need to play that you might not be satisfying? Think about why your dog is stealing these items and how you can help fulfill his needs in other more appropriate ways that work for both of you.
Step Three: Train Your Dog to Stop Stealing and Biting Household Items
While step one was focused on managing the situation in real-time, step three is all about teaching your dog a new, better behavior. In order to train your dog to stop stealing and biting these items, first think about what you want him to do around them and reinforce that behavior in a series of short training sessions. While teaching the “leave it cue” is definitely worthwhile, you’re not going to use a cue in these sessions. Instead capture the behavior you like (e.g. ignoring the paper towel roll), since you want that to become your dog’s default behavior. In this way you are teaching your dog to make the choice you like around the paper towel roll, even if you are not there to say “leave it.”
Follow these steps below to practice training this with your dog in a fun, game setting:
Start your dog in a sit.
Hold the paper towel roll behind your back and then bring it out in front of your dog so he can see it. Mark and reward the moment he notices the paper towel roll and doesn’t try going for it.
You can make this game more challenging by bringing the paper towel roll increasingly closer to your dog or moving it around when you present it.
Remember to take baby steps here, so your dog enjoys the game and is successful.
If your dog starts going for the item, simply don’t mark and reward. Take a step back to make the game a little easier before progressing again (in other words, make that item less tempting by holding the paper towel roll further away or by moving it less).
Keep these sessions nice and short (just a few minutes at a time). Feel free to play multiple times a day!
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