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Cue Definitions and Overlap
I’ve been thinking more and more about what constitutes an essential skill, i.e., something I think is really important for my dogs to learn. I like to say that COME and OFF (leave it) and the ability to orient to me when I say their name are the most important skills. But when I look more closely at each of those skills, my definitions of them seem to end up meaning about the same thing in real life. For instance:
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When I say COME, the dog turns to me and runs right up to me, anticipating a treat (which they often do receive, especially in distracting environments).
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When I say OFF, the dog turns to me (away from a temptation) and gives me eye contact, but they almost always come right over to me, too, because they’re anticipating a treat.
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When I say their name, they give me eye contact but also regularly come right over to me in the hopes of earning a treat.
So, while I may define the skills in slightly nuanced ways, in reality, these skills pretty much all look about the same.
In the video, you’ll see my dogs disengaging from a tempting squirrel when I say OFF. But if I had said COME instead, it would’ve yielded the same results. (And as an aside, Bean used to be quite the menace with small wildlife, but I’ve been working with her over time, including doing ‘predation substitute training,’ so her intensity has dropped sharply.)
Do some of the cues you teach your dogs have a lot of overlap? Do we really need all these separate cues?
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20 Replies
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WOW!!! That’s a super impressive video, @virginiad !!
I may need to get lessons from you! Or maybe even practice with my dogs? haha.
I agree, when we are working with positive reinforcement, everything changes. We are no longer “micromanaging obedience” but we are building a relationship which has the natural outcome of our dogs wanting to be closer when we speak to them.
You have done this so beautifully here. Made my morning!
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Oooh, I like your reasoning behind this, @catherine !
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I smell a blog article coming…. or a newsletter! I call dibs! Haha
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I LOVE the video! OMD, your pups really are incredible! And so aDORGable!!
I love also that you broke down the skills for each cued behavior and found consistencies within the lot.
As an aside, I’d like to mention that some of my clients have found consistencies between the first few steps of the way I teach Stays and Leave It. To the point that I always start teaching either behavior (never at the same time, which might also confuse the dog) with starting the similarities, but that the outcomes are much different and what each behavior actually means.
Funnily enough, I look at how the behaviors are taught now and I don’t think they are that similar. For instance:
Leave It: the dog is at liberty, I have the treat in my closed fist, she can nose it or paw it as she likes, but the fist remains closed until she gives up, then gets the treat and praise.
Stay: the dog is asked for a position, I dangle the treat in my pinched fingers (I think this would be VERY different TO THE DOG) and if she remains in that position, she gets praised and treat.
The clients have often asked me to differentiate the two, and it’s funny that me looking at the two behaviors in just the first step, that I don’t think they are very alike EXCEPT that the dog needs to use their brain to sort that they need to use impulse control and not go for the treat, in order to get it.
Also, as soon as the treat is put on the floor in the second step of Stay (this goes along with how Jean Donaldson teaches it), then we stop using that treat dangle and it diverges dramatically from Leave It.
Anyway, I have also started using a different methodology to teach beginning Stays, since there other one confused some clients.
I’d love to know more about what parameters and meaning you attach to Off, @virginiad . I always used Off to mean, get off of the couch, get off of the other dog…but the trainer who originally taught my old Berner and I said Off could mean anything the dog was standing on. This was useful during those hikes when it was between inclement weather in Illinois and we wanted him to stay off of the melting ice/water, for safety reasons. It looks like you use it to mean, Don’t chase that squirrel, too.
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@bernerlabreclectus , I use OFF to mean the same as LEAVE IT. I just studied under Ian Dunbar many moons ago and OFF was his word, so I’ve been using it for eons.
I define OFF to mean: disengage from the distraction or temptation and give me eye contact instead.
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Love Love Love this. The happy steps towards you are just delightful.
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Bean and Bond thank you for noticing!
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My neighborhood has been offering lots of great training opportunities for practicing Bean and Bond’s OFF cue. We’ve seen mama deer 3 times this week, and tonight she upped the ante by having her twin fawns in tow. In just 3 exposures, the dogs went from super-jazzed to what you see in this video.
This deer is the queen of our neighborhood — as cool as a cucumber around people and dogs! She once jumped my fence into the dog’s yard and then lounged, lying down, in my grass, only to get up reluctantly and mosey off as I approached with a guest dog on leash. ????
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Well done, well done! Such a cooperative distraction too. When you say this was your 3rd round, what do you mean in terms of breaking this down for the dogs’ success? What did you do in the other sessions? How will future sessions change? What’s the ultimate goal here?
I love watching you work with your adorable dogs. Thanks for posting this.
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The first exposure was just to mama (though the babies must’ve been hidden somewhere nearby in the woods), and the dogs were a bit more excited. I kept more distance at first, practiced and rewarded their OFF cue, then reduced distance and finally walked by. Once well away, mama began snorting (not at us) so I stopped walking as that provided exposure difficulty #2 for some OFF practice. In that case, treat delivery was tossed strategically to add more distance. Last night was exposure #3 with mama and fawns in a different location. Thanks to them being calm and quiet, 3 instead of 1 animal didn’t really raise the difficulty level.
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Love it, love it, especially your points about being aware of the difficulty for the dogs and capturing opportunities to reward them, and the strategic reward placement is brilliant. Thanks for breaking this down.
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WAYYY impressive, On both dogs parts and yours, @virginiad . I’m always impressed by your videos. This one is especially awesome that they aren’t vocal at all, you just see their tails high and waving and then you say, “OFF!” And they totally disengage from deer altogether, giving you lots of attention and of course, happy to get treats!
I love all the loose leash!!! So very special!
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Awww, thanks, @bernerlabreclectus . I hardly teach my dogs anything nowadays, but off, come, and drop are indispensable. ????
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This is a very impressive video!
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Thank you, @lis !
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I love this topic of overlapping cues and struggle with it myself. I love the idea of having less cues. It is so easy to say what makes sense at the time and situation and then realize that the dog knows that as something else. For instance OUT is used for my dog to drop a tug toy, but I catch myself saying it sometimes when they come out of the car after WAIT, I usually just say OK to release.
My main issue that I’m currently trying to figure out is BED and CRATE. When I first got my AmStaff, 2 years ago, at the age of 2, I worked on BED (go to your bed) which at the time was her crate. We shortly thereafter got her her own bed and transferred the meaning of the cue to go to her new bed. While we’re cooking, we ask her to go to her bed. We have been pretty consistent with that although most times need to walk her over to it before she lies down in it. She has to pass her crate to get to her bed and sometimes looks at it. If the door is open she’ll occasionally even go in it. I’ve done training back and forth from her bed to her crate so she learns the difference. The majority of the time she is crated is when we’re at work. She occasionally is put there when she’s being a little too much with guests or the grandkids. She calmly lays in it and takes her break.
I can’t imagine that in the last 2 years she hasn’t differentiated the two. Is it possible that she sees her bed as somewhere she chooses to go to relax and her crate is somewhere where we put her?
FYI, we don’t give her food from the kitchen, but I do reward her for staying in her bed by letting her come “clean” the floor of food scraps after cooking, sometimes. My thought here is that if she doesn’t run for the food when it drops and stays in her bed she will be able to come get it when I cue her. While I’m trying to use that as a reward for staying in her bed, it seems to have the opposite effect of making her sit outside the kitchen and stare. She stays a good distance and doesn’t drool or beg, but I’d rather her just be in her bed while we’re cooking and eating. I have also tried walking a piece of food over to her in her bed while she’s lying calmly and not staring.
Sorry that was long, but I wanted to cover all bases.
I would appreciate any thoughts on why this is still such a struggle for us.
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Hi @laurel316 , you might end up with a more settled/relaxed behavior on the bed when you’re cooking in the kitchen if you always go to the dog to reward her while she’s on the bed (or lob the treat to her at the bed), rather than releasing her to clean up stuff on the floor.
If you want to tackle her ability to discriminate between the bed and the crate, you could try the following:
- Work on sending her to each location (bed or crate) singly, without the other prop present at first. Make sure you put in the training steps so she can ultimately move on her own and with confidence to the specified site AND lie down there — all on one verbal cue. (Watch out for body language cues that may be more salient to the dog than your verbal cue.)
- Be sure to send her to that prop from different distances and angles, and even when your body is positioned differently, like in a stand vs sit vs face on vs side turned, etc.
- Next, intersperse other cues into the sequence to be sure she’s learning to listen carefully to each word, i.e., practicing cues in random order like: go to your bed, sit, spin, down, go to your bed, leave it, touch, go to your bed, etc. (Do the same when working on sending her to the crate.)
- Then, place the two props in the same training area, with sufficient space between them. Give the cue for her to go to one specific location. If she gets it right, mark and reward. If she gets it wrong, you might try simply releasing her, taking a little pause, asking for some other easy cues, then try again.
- The trick is to try to filter out the dog simply guessing which one to go to.
- Humans also have a hard time issuing cues in a random order, so you may want to reach into a bowl that’s filled with little slips of paper that have an equal number of “bed” and “crate” cues listed on them. Then pick one slip of paper at a time and give the cue shown on that. (Hope that makes sense.)
I’m looking forward to reading other members’ input.
Let us know how things go!
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Thank you for these great tips, I will work on it and report back.
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