-
Practicing What We Preach
One of the things I loved about having a multi-dog household (5 to 8 dogs at once of various sizes and breeds) was that I could easily experiment with training ideas on a variety of dogs BEFORE I ever considered myself competent to share these ideas with clients. In theory, we often think we understand how to teach a particular behavior but, in practice, dogs can humble us quickly!
The other day, someone contacted me in desperation, saying their extremely well-bred dog was carrying his tail ???? too high in the show ring and they wanted help clicker training him to hold it lower before Nationals next month. In theory, I understand how to teach this, either by shaping or by anti-targeting (which means the dog moves a part of their body AWAY from something like a target stick rather than toward it). I decided to try anti-targeting with my two current dogs because it’s something I’ve trained in the past with dogs as well as horses, though it was for body movement away rather than tail movement.
Bond immediately showed me that I’d first need to reward non-wagging behavior which was not so easy at first because he gets so excited during training. Bean showed me upfront that I first needed to address her worry about my reaching over her body before I even thought about making contact with her tail.
The upshot of that first training session was that both my dogs were going to take a good deal of training time to learn how to adjust their tail position on cue. Sadly, my training opportunity with the breeder who contacted me ended quickly when I learned she was well out of my travel zone.
If you don’t have multiple dogs in your home who gladly volunteer to help you as you hone your skills, how else might you gain this hands-on experience?
-
6 Replies
-
Oh wow I could not imagine to train a dog to carry their tails a little lower. So many factors in play- like you said just a tail wag being excited. I love how you explained things. I do agree with so many dogs teach us different ways. When I first started at a daycare, it was amazing to see how different a certain dog or breed would need to be trained a different way. My first experience was the short dog breeds like dachshund or corgis. It was the one thing I loved working in daycare the most- you experienced so many different breeds in one day, much less a week.
-
@pawsup , what a FANTASTIC training ground a daycare can be. I bet you learned piles of good stuff there, not only about training, but also about body language.
My first 6 dogs as an adult were all biggish (50lb to 95lb), and it wasn’t until I got my first Papillon that I learned another whole subset of training skills. So different than working with a Dane mix!-
I absolutely agree!
-
-
-
I love this post. I agree, having a multi-dog household is incredibly helpful for developing different training techniques to match different canine personalities!
-
????
-
-
Anybody besides me wanna run out and get a dozen more dogs today? It will make us better trainers! ????
Bliss would LOVE it. She asks me daily for “mor dawgs pls.”
Log in to reply.