Clean Run - October 2017 - 41

Our real goal
is to teach the dog
that a specific
sound predicts
reinforcement for
a specific behavior.

with my mouth. But she is still responding to the other cues and lying down reliably, so
I think I am teaching her the verbal cue.
Even if I have done 40 or 60 repetitions of this over the course of a few sessions, I will
likely get a blank look from the dog if I subsequently say "down" in a completely new
situation or with my back turned.
There are two ways the curse of knowledge affects us about verbal cues. First, it's all
too easy to assume that the dog has learned the verbal cue much earlier than she has.
She is probably responding to some physical cue we haven't removed or varied enough.
Second, and this one is more insidious, we tend to assume she understands the cue as
language, rather than a specific noise.
Both of these assumptions promote big misunderstandings in training our dogs.

But my little human mind thinks I am
teaching her the word. While it's true
that recent research has shown that dogs
have an area in their brains parallel to the
language center in humans (Andics et al,
2014), this is not the same as understanding language, syntax, and words. Assuming that we are giving a vocabulary
lesson can lead us-and the dog-to a
world of hurt. Our real goal is to teach
the dog that a specific sound predicts
reinforcement for a specific behavior.
While I may think the dog "understands" the cue down, the dog has actually learned that when I am sitting in a
certain chair looking at her with a bowl
of duck treats behind me (and probably
breathing a certain way with my head
held a certain way and doing six other
things I am unaware of), she can get one
of those treats when she performs some
version of lying down. All those physical
and environmental cues can block the
dog from noticing the noise I am making

As diligent trainers, when we teach a verbal cue we try to weed out all the physical and
environmental elements that the dog has been using as cues. Sometimes we can succeed
in doing that, but I don't think we can ever quite succeed in weeding the meaning of the
word out of our own heads.

Agility
Agility training is prime territory for overestimating a dog's understanding of verbal
cues. As a hobby trainer, I was lucky to find a great teacher early on who focused on
teaching me how the dog read my physical cues. The dogs learn the language of agility
so much faster than we do. In my small yard, my "power steering" dog has run into a
flowerbed at times rather than toward the obstacle I verbally cued and thought I was
signaling. On reviewing the video, of course she was right. The flowerbed was exactly
where I had sent her with my body signals. The verbal cue was background noise.
That same dog is my weakest learner of verbal cues. I generally assume that when my
dogs are slow to pick something up, I'm the problem, and that's almost always true.
But besides my failings, Zani has some special challenges with regard to discriminating words. Or, I could say instead, she is incredibly astute at reading situations. I often
can't make the verbal cue salient because there is always one last body language thing
I am unconsciously doing that she is reading.
Trends come and go in agility and there are some fantastic handling systems out there
now. But I always go back to Greg Derrett's comment about teaching right and left
cues. His "tug" method for teaching right and left turns is methodical and includes
many repetitions. He says that the verbal cue has to be strong enough to overpower
whatever signals you are giving with your body, because that's when you need it.

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