Little Pippa joined our happy home about a month ago (obligatory pics). We got her from a rescue organization, who told us she’s half terrier half , Shih-Tzu, and a little over a year old. She’s a very sweet dog, very good with the kids, maybe just a little rambunctious, but she’s still mostly a puppy so I figure whatever getting older doesn’t fix training will.
Now that we’ve got the house training thing down, I want to try for some other basic commands, like sit, stay, down, etc. Started with “sit” today, and have one little question.
The problem I’m running into is that she very quickly learned that when she sees a treat in my hand, she should sit. She’s sitting before I even get the command out. So do I just say “sit,” and if she stays down, give her the treat? Or should I make her stand up and only sit when I tell her to?
Take the opportunity to teach her a new trick. Maybe “doggie push-ups”? (A series of sit/down/sit/down/etc.) She’s clearly food-motivated, which is a very good thing.
It sounds to me like she’s learned to sit when seeing a treat, as opposed to listening to your command - so she probably has zero association with the word ‘sit’ with actually sitting down. I’d start building that association - you have a treat in your hand, she sits, you say ‘sit’ and then a moment later give her the treat.
Then after a couple weeks of daily association that way, surprise her with it. Have treats in your pocket that she can’t see, tell her to sit, and then when/if she does, pull the treat out of your pocket and give it to her.
I praise and reward my dogs for reading my mind. Why bother with words when you’ve got telepathy?
Actually dogs, who are after all incapable of language and are just associating a sound with a request, are in most cases picking up subtle body cues humans are unaware of.
Yesterday I was working on increasing the speed of my dogs’ down. In about three treats both dogs would flatten when I simply looked at them.
I got one of those nail aprons from Home Depot that are basically just a couple of pockets you tie on around your waist. I put the training treats in there. That way my pockets in my clothes don’t get icky and when we are done training for the time being, I just untie the apron and put it away instead of digging a bunch of unused treats out of my pants.
Hide the treat while you give the command. If she doesn’t sit, then show her the treat and repeat the command. She should make the association with the command word fairly quickly.
This is how I got my dog to associate the word “SIT” with the action of sitting, before giving the treat reinforcement. First I watched her and commanded “SIT” when she was already in the process of sitting, then giving her praise when she was seated. It took alot of close watching and correct timing on my part to get this right. Later when I commanded “SIT”, and she did sit, she was rewarded with a treat for the action of sitting and for knowing the meaning of the word.
I third it. Right now as far as she knows, the way to get a treat is to sit, and she doesn’t see any reason to waste time about it. Start teaching her to lay down, roll over, touch, etc. and she’ll start to learn to listen for directions before she can get her treat. If she continues to think that the mere presence of treats (with no further commands) means that she should sit politely and pay attention to you, I wouldn’t complain about that!
I don’t usually go for little dogs, but she is utterly adorable. Whooza smart fuzzball?!
Hide the treats so the dog can’t see it… LOL. You do realize their sniffers are like 100,000 more sensitive than ours, right? We can hide treats all day long but the dogs still know we have them 'cause they can smell 'em on us.
I use the pre-command sit as an exercise in other tricks. Stay is a good one, see how long the dog will sit there without moving. I also like leave it, where I’ll drop the treat on the floor and she still can’t have it until I give her the release command “Okay! Get it!” We’re still working on that one, but at least it gives me something else to do with her when she’s being a sit-stay overachiever.
When I trained my dogs, I would set aside about 20 minutes a day for the session. We would go through sit, stay, lay down, etc. and not in any particular order. While I was liberal with treats, I didn’t always give her one for each successful task, sometimes I would just praise the crap out of her. In general, training time was fun, quality time together.
Here’s one thing command I didn’t teach my dog right away, but wish I had: “trashcan!”
I use the trashcan! command when I have just bagged her poop and I want to walk in a direct line to a nearby trashcan to throw it away, I do not want to sniff that tree, or look for squirrels, I want to walk in a direct line to the can right now. When I say trashcan, she stops and walks with me directly to the nearest can, it’s a good command.
Thanks for the advice, all! Trying two tricks at once worked like a charm. I switched back and forth between sit and down, and although she was confused at first, (kept trying different combos of the commands like, "I’ll just keep trying different things until I’m doing what she wants!), she pretty quickly picked up on the different words. I think I’ve got a smarty on my hands.
I don’t know how to multi-quote, so just to address a few points:
Great idea about the carpenter’s apron! I need to run to Home Depot for some other stuff today, anyway, so I’ll pick one up while I’m there.
And of course I know she can smell the treats. I was following the advice of a couple of online dog-training tutorials, that said to hold the treat above her so she’d look up. That said, I did try hiding the treats, and it didn’t make any difference. As you say, she can smell them no matter what, so does it matter if she can see them?
And thank you, yes, I think she is quite the cute little fuzz-butt, myself.
You can also start to make her wait in that sit or down, just parking her butt isn’t enough anymore, now she’s got to wait 5 seconds, then 10 seconds etc… Also, make sure you tecah her a command to tell her that she can get up and move, either “break” or OK, or something like that. You can treat that command at 1st, but then just the release and big party-praise should be enough.
It’s been my understanding that it’s perfectly acceptable to give a dog a treat for doing something you didn’t command her to. If she’s behaving correctly, reward it!
The next step is to add “down” to your list of commands. The dog lies down and gets a treat. Then you can mix it up, make her lie down, sit up and lie down again to get the treat. Keep adding more as she learns the words.
ETA: And yes, clicker training is pretty effective.
It’s pretty common for dogs to run through their list of behaviors without being asked when they know a treat is available, just to see if one of them produces the reward. Adding other behaviors and switching them up is good, but you can also do something as simple as requesting a second sit – just move her sitting spot to a new position (it should always be in front of you, so just walk back bit and give the sit command again and reward only the sit that followed the verbal command.)
Concur. Intermittent reinforcement is better than reliable rewards; psychologists call this the “slot machine effect.”
Yeah, the clicker clarifies the timing so the dog comes to know the exact point in the behavior that made you happy
Lastly, I merely note that this thread should be titled “PeskiPiksi’s Puppy Pippi.”
