Clean Run - April 2017 - 25

How do you teach a whippet to walk nicely on a lead next to a baby carriage? Go for a
walk with Whippet and carriage, and say "good girl" occasionally. How do you teach a
baby Beardie to go for a walk next to a pushchair? Go for walk with Beardie and carriage,
stop Beardie from running in front and herding, reward dog when next to carriage. Stop
said Beardie from biting the wheels, reward next to carriage. Stop said Beardie from emptying the contents of the storage under the carriage, reward next to carriage and gather up
strewn contents. Give carriage back to daughter and work on loose-lead walking instead!

tant. Punishment inhibits. In the olden
days, there were throw chains to scare
dogs and rattly discs for them to associate with worry, and I've heard some
surprising trainers recommend shock
collars. Punishment inhibits. It may well
be successful and fast, but if you take a
step back, all behaviors become inhibited. Dogs shut down and anxiety rears
its head. Do you really want to punish
your dog's desire to go and explore the
world? I don't, so I generally choose to
train an alternate behavior to reward,
but in the situation above there was
little or nothing I could do. Re-cuing is
a slippery slope, and leaving him out
there by himself wasn't safe. Make no
mistake, this isn't reward-based training,
this is R- or, in other words, "I'll stop doing what is making you uncomfortable
when you do what I want."

recall, stay needs to be a trained response. He can sit-stay for five seconds
and I can move two paces away, but
other than that he's not really interested. There are two things here: firstly,
having been lured, he's not actively
working for food. Secondly, I don't think
he has an intellectual understanding of
the exercise. I'm going to leave it a little
while until I've addressed food refusal.
In the meantime, I'm going to keep
working for only five seconds or so.

If you venture into the clicker forums,
this is a heinous crime! In my opinion, it
falls into the category of making what
I want him to do rewarding. Be very
careful of restricting dogs with strong
instincts-that instinctive itch needs to
be scratched and instinct falls outside
of and often overrides operant conditioning. Google "The Misbehavior of
Organisms" by Keller Breland and Marian Breland (1961) for further reading.

The Beardies walk ahead of me until
we hear a car, then scramble onto
the edge and practice our stays
until it has passed.

More on Stay Training
Like his sire, Shade isn't a fan of stay
training. I don't think it's because he
wants to move, move, move like his
sire, it's just that staying is not interesting. Wherever we train, there's always
something more interesting. He's not
that desperate for food so, as with his

ness to keep him safe. I like my dogs
in front of me unless I cue differently
and he's picked that up quite quickly.
Mental maturity needs to be considered here, self-control seems to come
later to some dogs. At this age my Koda
could stay for a good five minutes, but
Boogie was much older! Again it's important that you train the dog you have
and don't compare him to others. They
all get there in their own time.

How Long to Train?

When we're out walking, a lot of the
footpaths are connected by country
lanes, which are single track. When a
car comes along we have to get on the
edge to allow it to pass. This is a really
good opportunity to work on stays.
Tyzer has this training down pat, so the
pup gets rewarded randomly, whilst
the lead attached to his harness keeps
him safe. I don't like pups pulling on
collars, nor do I like front-fastening harnesses as I worry about a growing pup
being continuously pulled off balance.
Head collars I occasionally use, as long
as they fasten by the neck, not under
the chin. So Shady has a soft fleece har-

At this stage, Shade's training sessions
were perhaps 10 minutes long. I deliberately kept them short as I wanted to
finish before he decided I was boring. I
kept repetitions to five, done perhaps
twice with a rate of reward of about one
in three seconds. Even at four months
old, this is a very young pup and I need
to keep myself interesting.
Keep notes! With today's technology,
there really is no excuse. I still use a
paper notebook, which I keep in my
training bag, but these days every
smart phone has apps that allow you to
note-keep. If you are pushed for time
note keeping means that your training
time is maximized. You can see exactly
where you were with each exercise and
if, like Shady, you have a dog that needs
variety in his training, you can make
sure he receives it. I write my list of cues
at the beginning of each month, just
as I'm doing here, and then I evaluate.
It's important to make sure that each
cue you're teaching is well understood.
There's little point adding complexity if
the basics aren't well understood. D

I started agility training and competition in the late 1980's and around about that time I started clicker training. I've competed in both working trials and obedience.
I still think agility is the best of all sports for both dogs and handlers and clicker training the best way to teach it. I thoroughly enjoy training my dogs and teaching
others. Across the years I've been privileged to teach all over the world, from Australia to Japan, all across North America and Europe. I've worked with many talented
handlers and trainers and thoroughly enjoyed every moment. I remain a positive trainer; reward builds behavior so much faster and better than any other method. If
the solution to a problem is going to upset my dog, it clearly isn't the right solution. Contact me via my website: www.agility-training.co.uk, or via my Facebook page:
Jo's agility-training.co.uk.
April 17 | Clean Run

http://www.agility-training.co.uk http://www.agility-training.co.uk

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Clean Run - April 2017