I have a new 3 year old Aussie Shepherd mix so he’s high energy. I’m looking for books/videos/websites etc. to help me train him.
I mainly want just basic stuff like sit , stay , stop pulling on leash , and so on.
My dogs in the past were pretty calm so they did not need much training.
I don’t want to take local classes , I would rather do the training at my own pace.
The classic clicker training recommendation is “Don’t Shoot the Dog” - terrible title, great insight. Clickers are a communication tool that lets a human mark the exact behavior we want. Overall, clicker training rewards the good behavior and ignores the bad.
Please avoid any training methods that focus on dominance training, it’s been thoroughly discredited by behaviorists in the past 10 years.
Why don’t you want to take classes? They’re cheap, fun, and invaluable in getting your dog to obey and calm down in the face of distractions. Besides which, you have a high energy working breed of dog. So if you want to train him to be “pretty calm” that’s not fair to the dog and expecting him to be a square peg in a round hole. Is your aim for him to be calm and laid-back like your previous dogs? Because if so, you’ve got the wrong dog on your hands and you should either give him to a more suitable home, or change the way you interact w9ith him and ramp up the energy level a bit.
Anyhow - Dog Whisperer, and the Dummies series of books are really good.
Take him for lots of walks. Bike rides are good too. Also, google NILIF.
I second araminty’s recommendation of clicker training. Alexandra Kurland has some great books (and a blog, I think) about clicker training and positve reinforcement.
I also encourage you to give your dog lots and lots of exercise and incorporate your training sessions into them. Training should be fun for both of you.
If you’re referring to Cesar Millan here, his “methods” are based on factually incorrect assumptions (dogs see people as members of their pack, dog behavior is based on wolf behavior, that physically dominating a dog is the best way to modify it’s behavior) and ineffectual tools (flooding, positive punishment).
The NILIF (Nothing in Life is Free) technique is based on positive reinforcement, just like clicker training. Dr Sophia Yin espouses a similar tool called Learn to Earn. It works great for some dogs and owners. It feels a bit mercenary to me 
I prefer a looser arrangement with my dogs.
My neighbor’s dog adopted me. He is three years old. He had never been touched or talked to. I learned a bunch from this site…
Taught him sit, down and stay. Very easy. Give verbal and treat rewards.
He is a good friend.
Get back to me when you have worked as a working partner with Rottweilers and attaining championship titles in obedience, tracking and agility, OK? Do you have any idea how much team work and practice is involved, here?
Because I have. I have drawers full of ribbons and most importantly I have the achingly close and intimate relationship of working as a team with my dogs. Hundreds of hours of work and training together. We love it.
And your interaction with your dogs is what, again? Teaching them not to pee on the carpet with PP methods and clickers? Ooh.
Easy, mate. We’re on the same side here. I know you’re a knowledgeable and experienced dog owner, which is why I was surprised to see you recommending Millan. I wasn’t attacking NILIF, I was just pointing out that it is one positive reinforcement technique among many.
I spent about 12 years seriously training bird dogs. I don’t train anymore but my dogs do mind and they know what is expected of them. I hate the idea of training with treats. A good trusting relationship and dominance is the most reliable as far as what works for me. Consistency cannot be understated.
We are indeed… I really like Millan and knew him before he got all trendy and popular. He’s amazing, and has the results to prove it, unlike many of the PP type trainers who only take on easy dogs.
Really I think there are many valuable training modalities and “balanced training” which recognises different styles for different dogs is cool. I have owned Rottweilers since 1985 and they can be very tough dogs that don’t give a crap if you’re waving hot dogs or frozen tripe in front of their noses. They need to know what you want and why you want it and they don’t give a shit about treats or rewards. They want to know if they are doing the job to your satisfaction. Are you happy? That’s it, that is what they want, and thinking such dogs are satisfied with treats being stuffed under their noses is demeaning and ignorant beyond belief and makes me really, really sad for all the great dogs owned by clueless idiots out there.
Dear Bijou Drains,
If you have never trained a dog, most training books of newer vintage will be helpful.
You may have noticed an antagonistic tendency in the responses to your innocent OP. This is because there is currently a difference of opinion among dog trainers (in some cases causing screaming in fury and worse) about methods and philosophies.
In a nutshell: it turns out that praise and dog treats when applied with correct timing go a very long way in teaching a dog concepts that are otherwise rather meaningless to the dog, like sitting on command, staying out of the kitchen, dancing on its hind legs, etc. “Correction” aka harsh words or forcible actions, inhibits learning these things. A clicker or other simple fast noise (like “yes!”) is just a way of marking the wanted behavior. There is no particular magic to it but it is helpful.
This method has become a kind of moral philosophy for some dog trainers, and called “Positive Reinforcement”, a misunderstanding of behavioral modification terminology.
Cesar Milan is not a dog trainer per se. Copying what he does can be a big mistake if you don’t understand that dogs respond to him because of his centeredness, experience, awareness and personal power aura, not because he makes some specific move.
One thing he emphasizes which will be very important for your particular breed is that dogs have a hard time behaving well if they don’t get enough exercise. For an Aussie, that is a LOT of exercise. Today my 2 year old Aussie ran off leash for two and a half hours in the forest meanwhile fetching a thrown stick at a dead run, about every 3 minutes. The last throw was fetched at the same dead run as the first one. She was not tired out. At all. My 8 and 11 year old Aussies were happy to lounge about afterwards though.
Fact is, Aussies are one of the quicker-on-the-uptake breeds and also tend to want to work with you and please you. An important thing to remember is that whatever method you use, an Aussie will either make progress quite rapidly, or you are doing something wrong and need to change your approach.
Classes can be great or crappy, depending on the teacher, and on some degree, the other students and their dogs. After your dog knows how to heel, sit, lie down, and stay at home, that is a good time to take her to a class, to teach her to do those things with the distraction of a lot of dogs and in a strange place – it’s called ‘proofing’, an important part of training.
I prefer to work at my own schedule rather than a fixed schedule of a class. I live right near a dog park so I’m sure he will like going there. And I will take him on lots of walks too.
Look online for Kikopup, Zak George dog training, and Kristin Crestejo who all have great videos.
But at some point your dog will benefit from in-person dog training, which will help him to focus in the presence of lots of distractions (other dogs).
The classes we went to did put a lot of emphasis on treats. My border collie mix is definitely into treats but amenable to other rewards, such as play. Tug, ball, all that.
For some things, though, positive reinforcement is a lot slower than (ahem) things like prong collars and electronic collars. Clicker training is almost magic, but I’m not sure how you’d do it without lots of treats.
Er…don’t take dog treats to the dog park. You could get mobbed.
A side note: very few serious dog type people like dog parks, or frequent them. Dog parks are where many dogs learn to fear other dogs, or conversely, how fun it is to bully more submissive dogs. This is because it is full of loose dogs interacting with each other, with owners barely watching them, or if watching, unable to interpret what is happening, and how/when to intervene when things go south. It’s a fine place for good-natured, socially and physically insensitive dogs, like the classic Lab personality.
Aussies and other herding breeds tend to be on the other side of the personality graph – highly sensitive to dog etiquette, social boundaries, and subtle physical signals. Almost all the herding breed owners I know have stories about how their dog learned to recognize and loathe Labradors. A happy, body-slamming, clumsy goofy Lab will typically make a Border Collie or Aussie outraged and appalled.
Summary: sure, take your dog to the dog park, but never take your eyes off him while you are there. If your dog acts frightened or aggressive with another dog, give them five seconds to work it out by themselves, yes, FIVE seconds, and then calmly remove your dog from the scene while talking in an upbeat happy voice.
I’ve said it before,I’ll say it again – Never,ever,never punish your dog when it comes to you. I don’t care if it was playing hard to get,when it comes to you,it is a “GOOD DOG”!
This.
The last class I took my pup to (for socialization not training because I don’t need that part), I was impressed at how poorly people called their dogs. I mean, I wouldn’t come to that person either.
<imitation>Petunia. Oh Petunia come here. Here? No, not there, here. Oh I give up.</imitation>
The way I do it – at least early on when I want to set this habit permanently:
“Sheba!!! Wahooooo! Sheba! Wonder Dog! Let’s boogie!” And then I run as fast as I can in the other direction so Sheba has to run to catch me. When she does I am known to roll on the ground waving my arms and legs whooping with joy. Observers may find me strange, but I don’t have trouble with my dogs not coming to me. My dogs race to me and we do a happy dance and maybe a game of tug.
If a dog is reluctant to come (perhaps they know for a fact that it means something unpleasant, like a bath, or being shut up and left behind), I don’t call them. I go get them and put them on a leash. If they are wise to that, I tell them to lie down and stay, and then go get them. A dog that will drop and stay there at any distance is a dog you can do a lot with.
yes I plan to be careful at the dog park and keep an eye on him. I hope he does well there since it’s so close but if not that’s OK.
As I mentioned he’s not 100% Aussie, the vet said he may have some German shepherd in him too. I’ll probably do the DNA test to find out what other breeds he may have.
GSDs and Aussies have a lot in common. Both herding breeds, typically natural guardians, intensely loyal, highly intelligent, extremely trainable, need a lot of exercise, responsible, and can be a lot of dog. Whatever I said about Aussies goes for GSDs too.
This type of dog MUST have a job! If you don’t have a job for him to do,he will find one. You will not like the job he finds:eek:
If you have room for a few free ranging chickens your shephard X collie will quickly adapt to herding and protecting them. They need to be closely supervised until they realize what their job entails or they will kill a few chickens first.