Communication and K9 Training Part 1 of 2 Parts – The Basics

Written By Dondi Hydrick copyrighted 2011

Ok I hope this helps someone in understanding how to communicate to their dog and a manner in which to assist you in developing a thought process behind the training of your dog. This is by request and I hope I fill the need or desire of that request herein. Understand their meaning, UNTIL they pair a sound and or tone to an action. Also dogs or maybe I just missed the whole concept of what they wanted and asked for.

First let me start by letting you in on a secret that some of us know and accept; Dogs do not understand any of the human words that come out of our mouths, they do not do not have cognitive reasoning as we humans do. There for you cannot expect any dog to understand the sounds that you emit or can you expect them to perform all of the reasoning in what you are trying to accomplish. Nor can you expect that your dog will understand any gestures or hand signals that you may try. Sorry these are just facts!!!

Dogs learn by repetition, associations, what helps them survive or be more productive towards the things that they desire or need and the elimination of pain or discomfort.

That is what you basically have to use in order to; “train”, “condition” or “modify” any behavior. The work that you use in the process is meaningless if you can accomplish your desired effect, that is YOUR desired effect not the dog’s desire. You must also understand that when using any of the terms above, with dogs, mammals, or people it all comes down to there are consequences to any action.

Next you have to understand how can you get the things or behaviors that you want the animal or person to perform. You also have to know certain natural laws, these “laws” are just as concrete as the laws of gravity, the laws of sound, etc.

You need to understand these “laws” as they will either do one of two things for you. First they can GREATLY increase your training time as well as save a lot of frustration and mental and physical pain for you and the dog both. Or they will have the completely the different and opposite effect on you and your dog.

“Laws”

1.   For every action there is an opposite reaction, not an equal reaction but simply a reaction, either good or bad.

2.    For every action there are consequences, to and by both you and your dog.

3.   Consequences are both good and bad

4.   Dogs like people yield to lighter amounts of PRESSURE not pain!!!!!

5.   Physical/mental corrections (induced pain) will only retard or suppress unwanted behaviors. Or for that fact all behaviors, good or bad depending on when you induced the pain.

6.   Positive reinforcement is the only manner in which instills new behaviors, by causing them to likely be repeated.

7.   Any behavior presented to you by the dog is an ATTEMPT to meet your PRESENTED information to the dog as he understood it.

8.    During initial training the best time to either reinforce or retard a behavior is .5 (1/2) to 1.5 (1 ?) seconds. As this will leave the most lasting impression.

9.   Earlier training can either hinder or be used to assist in later training. They are also most often the longest lasting or all training.

10. Using all motivational training is a fool’s way; compulsion must be applied at the correct times and at the correct levels.

The conditioning models ( S = stimulus  R = dogs response (correct or incorrect) RF = reinforcement (positive reinforcement or negative) MUST be clearly understood by you well ahead of time as these present the clearest messages to our dogs and the associations are strongest when built using them. You must also fully understand your training path and your final goal or objective. If you do not or cannot write these out in a simple and logical manner how can you expect your dog to understand what you are wanting? A dog only has the mentality of a 4 to 7 year old human child. Try and explain something relatively complicated to one of them and see how far that gets you. Also remember that dogs do not understand the sounds, and tones coming from that hole in your face, nor do they understand you squatting as your translation of trying to get them to sit. You can wave your arms about as if you were a windmill and they dog will look at you like you are crazy, which in my book you would be.

So how do we “train”, “condition” or “modify” our dog’s behavior? Sounds like a lost cause doesn’t it? The answer and methods are so simple they elude most people and a lot of people that claim they are trainers. Remember paragraph #3? Dogs learn by repetition, associations, what helps them survive or be more productive towards the things that they desire or need and the elimination of pain or discomfort. Let’s add that to the “laws” of training. Now before we can even begin to put our hands on a dog any dog for that fact in an effort to TRY and conduct any sort or training or, lord help us behavior modification.

You must first and foremost establish your training guidelines and what each aspect will encompass. Ok so what do you think needs to be on this list? Maybe what you want the dog to do would be a good start, humm, maybe how you want the dog to do it, when you want to do it. What else can YOU come up with, thank just a minute and think about it before you read on, it will make a difference in your mind I promise. Seriously, take at least 60 seconds or 120 would be better and think about it. ……………………

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OK, well I hope you at least got the basics of report writing, who, what, when, where and how. Is there anything else that you might want to use as a base for your training outline? Why not add into the mix – how well, as you will want to know how well you want your dog to perform the task, unless you don’t care if he only does it on a random base and only when he thinks he should.

So we should have the following;

1.   Who

2.   What

3.   When

4.   Where

5.   How

6.   How well

In addition to thinking just on the dog’s perspective we must also include ourselves and any other person or thing that will be assisting either us or the dog. The who can not only mean the dog himself, but you and maybe a decoy or some device? This also covers the what, what you want each person or thing to do as well as what you want the dog to do. When do you want the dog to perform his task? When do you want the decoy or something or someone to do their thing? Where do you want each person, dog or thing to not only do it but under what environment? Do you only want the dog to bite in an open field, or maybe inside a building, inside a car, on top of a car, under a car, etc. How do you want each to perform their given tasks? And of course you must have How Well you require these things to happen. Now hopefully you can begin to design learning or training path for you and your dog.

Ok let me give you a clear example of what happens with this is not done and the basic laws are not adhered to. Remember when you did your basic course and finished it, how many of the dogs (those that started out green anyway) finished with most of their hair missing off the right side of their necks and still could not perform adequate obedience and still forged (pulled or walked ahead of you = forging)? That is a clear example of how first the laws were not applied correctly nor was there a clear and concise training that that was clearly laid out and executed. How did it fail, we many reasons but let’s look at just a few;  Laws not applied – compulsion was the main stay, positive reinforcement was applied to little (force only suppresses behaviors temporarily – positive reinforcement was seldom used) , there was no adequate pairing of verbal and physical corrections (which increased any possible learning), commands given with corrections (adverse learning- retards the desired effect of wanting or encouraging the wanted behavior by use of praise), lack of any significant timed corrections or praise, thus mixed signals were given to the dog, etc.

Now let’s examine the training plan used during that time period and you determine which ones were used and which ones were not along with ones that were ineffective. And to simplify the process just examine one aspect of the obedience training; heeling.

1.   Who – who was suppose to do what? Was this clear in your minds?

2.   What – what were they suppose to do, you and the dog?

3.   When – when were you to give corrections vs praise? Was this clear to you?

4.   Where – where were you suppose to perform the training and where were suppose to enforce the heel?

5.   How – how were you and the dog to accomplish this? How were you supposed to issue corrections and how were you supposed to issue praise? Was that clear to you?

6.   How well – how well was it expected that the dog perform this task of heeling during just obedience training and how well was he suppose to do it prior to training problems? How clear was this to you in your mind?

Again if the basic plan is not clear to you how then can you ever expect the dog to perform it. This is just a very simple training item used as an example. So hopefully you see how much more complex or additionally important other task were also not made clear to the dog. Here is an example of how even when the training tasks are not made clear to the handler how that effects the overall training progress. To the person that I use for this example knows who he is and please forgive me, I will not use any names to protect their innocence, lol.

A simple training problem was set up inside a building, the person “trainer” running the problem was standing outside the door and giving last minute instruction and or watching, I am not sure which, as in one scenario it was a camera clear in the other one it was clearing for man. The handler comes up to the doorway to start the problem with his dog. He gets there and he is simply told to “send your dog”, so the dog rushes in and the “trainer” starts ranting and raving wanting to know what the handler is doing. Of course this handler being a very calm individual does what we would NOT expect and he hits the roof and starts cussing and raising all kinds of hell. Why simple because he was not nor did he have a clear understanding of the training event., the only thing he knows is that the “trainer”, his most favorite person not only made him look like an ass (actually the “trainer” made himself look like an ass) and the dog was so confused he did not know what was going on other than apparently what he did was all wrong. Just this ever so simple event turned to shit because no one, I mean no one was clear as to what they were suppose to do or what was required namely the dog and the handler, so now they both are not only confused but overly frustrated.

So again you see how and why clarity is a must in laying out your training path and final objective.

Here is yet another wrinkle to serve to you on a plate. What basic drives or desires can you use to either motivate or stimulate the dog to do what you want him to do? AND what consequences may result in using that particular drive or desire for a particular dog?

Do you think that using the dog’s ball drive (desire to play with a ball) can be used to motivate the dog to come and sit in front of you when called?....................................... Some dogs yes others no. We have to not only look at will it motivate the dog but again what will be the consequences of using the ball with a certain dog? Chico for example loves to play with a ball and willing does so. Mitcho also loves to play with a ball and willing does so, both have good ball drive. So what is the difference and why could or would there be a problem in using the ball in this simple case with either dog? First yes there will be a problem as Mitcho is so highly driven and more than willing jumps up for the ball but he also more than willingly jumps on his handler whenever he wants to. Chico on the other hand being the old man and the more reserved of the two does not.

So if we used the ball as a motivator for Mitcho, we will get the desired effect of a very fast recall but we are just as likely to have an additional problem in that we will later need to teach him not to run and jump into our chest as well. So let’s examine the overall training path we had set up, it sounded well didn’t it or did it? So we want both dogs to run very fast to us when we call his name only and whenever and where ever we are no matter what is going on and he is to sit when he gets to us, for the dog doing what we ask we are going to reward him with the ball and if he does not we will withhold the ball (reward). Rather simple and straight forward and we covered most of all the items. But we neglected to consider that else will happen when conducting this training with Mitcho, the jumping up on the handler. Now we must consider this aspect as well because will our training encourage it or will it discourage it:? And how can we avoid a possible and more than likely problem? First we could use successive approximation in the training of Mitcho. Remember that is when we break training down into simpler and easier steps and then only when each step is 100% do we put them together to reinforce a more complicated event or task. We could use this method to stop the unwanted behavior before beginning the recall. As the unwanted behavior will have to be made clear to the dog first - that it is not acceptable behavior by using negative punishment. I.e. when he jumps on the handler there is a negative event that happens each and every time he does that, only when he does not does he get a reward. Now why would we want to do this separate, why because if we used negative reinforcement during the recall especially when he ran very fast to us then we would retard the speed or coming to us at all. So we first teach the dog the negative aspect of jumping on us/the handler and once that is completed then and only then can we begin to start the fast running recall to us right? Wrong, because we know this dog has had a known condition to jump on us/the handler we must now not do anything to entice him to try that behavior again or we will be setting ourselves up and the dog for failure. So instead of holding the ball up high (this was NOT mentioned in the plan was it?) we must now hold the ball much lower and only when he clearing demonstrates that everything is clear in HIS mind can we even begin to move it up towards our face so that the end result (also not covered in the plan) is the dog will not only run very fast and time or place or under any circumstance, but in doing so he must stop and sit calmly (not mentioned) in front of us and look into our face or that area of our body.

So you see there are small things that must be considered all the way around and you have to determine if you can live with the results that YOU have taught your dog, or can they be allowed to happen and can be removed later without adverse effects on the overall behavior/requirement? Or do they need to be addressed early and or separately?

I have presented this information to you only to help you understand what is involved in training a dog also to assist you in learning how to identify problems that you may have had or are experiencing with your dog. This information is all on a very basic level and in no way qualifies you to be a trainer. Although I would have to admit that if you understand and able to grasp all of the topics that we have and will continue to cover you will be more knowledgeable that a lot of people that call themselves trainers. But again it does NOT qualify you as a trainer!!!! Trust me if you will but there is a WHOLE lot more in my mind that makes a trainer or someone worthy of having that title. So please don’t get that idea in your head, if you want to try something new by all means lay it out and and proceed from there.