Some (more) dog training questions

In My Humble Opinion
1

As I mentioned before I have a recently adopted young (~1 yr?) collie mix. I’ve started on an obedience class so maybe I should ask the instructor next time, but until then…

  1. I’m still a little confused about leash training. Should I be teaching/forcing the dog to stay near the “heel” position all the time, or let her wander around, sniff stuff, etc. (within the limits of the leash) and teach her to return to this position on command?

  2. A couple of nights ago around midnight (when I usually go to sleep) she started barking for no apparent reason. Initially at the window, but then started walking around the room barking. I took her out for a short walk but barked a bit more after coming back. Any speculations as to the cause?

  3. What’s your opinion on the Gentle Leader headcollar? I bought one at the recommendation of the obedience class instructor and it does prevent pulling, but so far it seems to be working more as a restraining device than a training device. She seems to revert to the original behavior when I go back to a conventional collar.

2

I am far from a dog-training expert, but we adopted a dog about a year ago and went through all the same stuff you’re doing now, so I’ll tell you what we did.

We’ve always let ours wander around. Sniffing and peeing is the main reason for the walk, after all. (For him, anyway.) We do always make him heel when crossing the street, without exception, but otherwise he can roam. We also found he was much easier to manage when we got one of the retractable long leashes, although we did wait a few months so that he would first learn how to walk on a short leash which was probably a good idea.

Hard to say. Probably just a noise outside. I’d be careful about walking her or otherwise doing something interesting when she barks in the middle of the night, or it may become a habit.

We found it was very useful when we were first teaching ours the rules of walking. He doesn’t like the feel of it on his face, though, so he would spend large amounts of time flopping on people’s lawns rubbing his face against the grass, which is hilarious but does make for a more discontinuous walk. Once he seemed to get the rules of walking, we stopped using it. For the most part he’s a good walker, although we still have pulling problems. Our obedience instructor told us that while the Gentle Leader is good at preventing pulling while you’re using it, but it doesn’t really teach the dog not to pull.

3

Dogs, like all animals, learn by repitition and understand simple rules without exceptions most easily. They do not reason well nor understand your motivations in asking them to do things (A very very smart dog is supposedly about as smart as a 4 year old child in its understanding of its world.)

Keeping this in mind, you are not doing your dog any favors by having a lot of exceptions to desired behaviors (at first). Your dog will learn to heel infinitely faster if you direct her to heel all the time, with consistent appropriate corrections. Once the behavior is established firmly, you can consider adding exceptions to the rules.

Agreed with the previous poster re: how you addressed the abrking behavior. From the dog’s point of view, she barked, and got a reward (walkies!) Super! Let’s do that more!

I think it is excellent that you are taking an obedience class – it is not always an intuitive process to become a sucessful trainer of animals. :slight_smile:

4

  1. A dog can learn to do both. Use the command ‘heel’ as well as leash contact & body language to require a heel. Make up a completely different command & gesture (“walk out” is one I’ve heard) which means she’s allowed to roam around while you walk. You may want to start with just the heeling for a couple weeks, until she’s clear on that, and then add the other. FYI, “heel” is not a short-term command. She should heel until you release her from the command.

  2. That is a good way for your dog to train you to get up and play with her in the middle of every night. I wouldn’t make a habit of it. She probably heard something (could be a dog in your front yard or a dog barking a few houses over). Our dog is allowed to bark a few times at some things (e.g., dogs passing by that she can see, people coming to the door), but she knows to stop when told “that’s enough”.

  3. Never used it, but dogs are fairly smart. When you employ some sort of device instead of training, then you’re stuck using the device forever because they’ll go often go right back to the problem behaviour when you stop using it. The “invisible fences” are another example of this - after the dog is trained to the fence, you have to use a special weighted collar that mimics the training collar, or they’ll ignore the fence. It may be that your trainer wants to focus on other issues first, so the headcollar solves the pulling problem without fuss. Later, after you’ve mastered the basic commands and your dog has learned to pay attention, you may find it easier to break her of pulling on the collar than if you tried to do everything at once.

5

P.S.

Remember that the real (secret) purpose of dog obedience classes is to train you. Your dog wants to be happy and wants you to be happy. You need to learn how to communicate with her properly so you can both be happy. No amount of training will work on your dog unless you are consistent in following it.

Definitely ask these questions of your instructor as well. S/he’s the one who actually knows you and your dog, and is the only one who knows why the headcollar was suggested.

6

Agree with everything said above. Gentle leaders are designed to prevent dogs from pulling when they are worn. It may make it easier to train the dog to heel correctly, and you can then expect her to heel when it’s removed. Just like the traditional way that dogs learn to heel and do other things on-leash and then once they’ve got that down they can be trained off-leash to do the same.

A dog will not generalize experiences though. If you just use a gentle leader as a means of connecting yourself to the dog so that it won’t run away, it won’t walk on a regular leash any better. To do so would mean that it thinks to itself, “my owner must not want me to pull on my regular leash because she’s used a halter on me in the past and I ended up being close to her without pulling.” Dogs don’t do that. The reverse example of the fact dogs don’t generalize this way is seeing eye dogs. They know to pull against a harness, but when they’re on a regular collar they’re “off duty” and don’t pull.
The best training advice I ever received (for both dogs and children) is “Never give a command that you can not enforce.” Until your dog is really well trained, don’t yell “Come” when it’s off lead and you’re pretty sure it won’t be dropping everything to rush back to you. Every command given that does not result in the desired behavior is a step towards un-training.

7

It’s great that you are getting training to better communicate with Zoe–that’s what dog training is about, improving communication between the two of you.

The most important thing is consistency. Anytime you ask Zoe to do something, she had to do it until you tell her she’s done with the task, either by giving her another task or by releasing her. Do you have a release word? Our trainers uses “okay” but it’s a bad word to use when you are in public until your dog gets used to only releasing when you speak. I’ve previously used “all done” and am trying to talk mr.stretch into continuing with that (he wants to use “alright”).

You need to teach Zoe both to heel and to walk more casually on the lease–they are two separate commands. Our dog trainer emphasises get your dog to pay attention to you when on lease so they fall into a natural heel and then teaching a more formal long-term heel command. You need to discuss with your trainer the specifics of what is expected on that.

I agree that taking Zoe for a walk after she barks will only make her think it’s an excellent way to get you to take her for a walk. Instead you should acknowledge her bark, look for the cause, deal with the cause if you can figure it out, and tell her to stop. All of that can happen really quickly–she barks, you say, “Yes, I see the dust bunny, that’s enough.” When she stops barking in response to the command (that’s enough), praise her. Learn to tell the difference between her barks; it will give you a better idea of how to deal with them. We always praise our dogs for alerting us, then tell them “that’s enough” so they know their part is done. Unless our dogs start to play bark; then we usually tell them to take it outside before something gets broke.

I recommend some reading; I’ve enjoyed Stanley Coren’s How to Speak Dog. After reading this book, I have watched my dogs’ behaviour and noted lots of things that that my girls do that the seem to match the book’s observations and feel it’s a good source. It is also highly recommended by our dog trainer.

Our trainers recommend Gentle Leaders in a variety of situations. Without knowing why your trainer recommended the GL, I can’t guess if it’s a good thing for Zoe. I don’t think they help train the dog in anyway, rather they work around the problem. Sometimes that’s the only way to do it though; in one of the classes I went to, the trainer recommended the GL for an older woman with a Cocker–so that the Cocker would be sure to stay in a predictable spot and not trip the woman and cause an injury. She also recommended a GL for Joey, a 2-year old Boxer, because his owner was small and needed the extra implied authority. However, I believe it is preferable to train without a GL–Joey’s owner was encouraged to only use the GL when in she was in public or training. When she was at home and had good control of the environment, she was to work on her regular training so that eventually Joey wouldn’t need to the GL. Sometimes it’s used as a confindence booster for the owner so they feel they have better control.
And on preview:

Absolutely. We never use our recall word “come” unless we are sure we can make the dog so it. My Golden, Loki, has never heard the word “Come” except in the context of my having food in my hand and she has never missed a recall. This meant when we took her to the river this weekend for the first time, I could yell “come” while she was in the middle of the river and watch that dog swim her ass of to get back to the treat she knew was waiting. Recall is the command that may save your dog’s life someday–it has to be perfect. While you’re still training Zoe, don’t use your recall word if you don’t think you can enforce it. Use another command that usually works to get her to you (“Do you want a treat?” usually works around here).

Keep asking questions! It’s great to see your enthusiasm about Zoe.

8

Thanks for the replies!

That makes a lot of sense. But it’s still hard for me to know what’s an effective enforcement and what isn’t. For example, if I say “sit” when she’s distracted, and it takes me 10 seconds to get her attention with a treat so I can coerce her to sit, is that still “enforcing”?

So what’s the normal discipline/freedome for “walking casually”? I can/should slow down for her when she wants to sniff around, pee, etc., right? Should I still keep her on the left side of my path? Should I also give a command to start walking casually (from a standstill), and what’s the usual command for this?

I get that, and I won’t do it again because I know that particular bark does not mean “I need to go to the bathroom”. I’ll try to teach her to be quiet, but it’s tough to make a distinction between rewarding the quiet and rewarding the bark.

By the way, should she be able to tell me when she needs to go potty? She hasn’t had an accident since the first week she came, but it still makes me nervous sometimes.

9

Polaris, my puppy, sits by the door sometimes, and I don’t even notice her asking to go out.

A good idea is to put a bell on the doorknob. Train your dog to ring it by bumping it with her nose. The way to do this is to put a treat in your hand near the bell, and give it to her when she bumps the bell. Immediately open the door. Repeat. Every time you go outside, ring the bell before you open the door. Soon she will learn that the bell “commands” the door to open.

10

Well, it is except in an advanced obedience sense were you want the dog to respond within milliseconds. You might consider getting her attention first, perhaps by saying “want a treat?” and then when she’s focused on you tell her to sit.

You might consider using 2 collars - a regular one for casual time and a choke for training time. During casual time let her sniff and wander etc. as long as you are comfortable with it. If she’s darting around and pulling hard, she should be corrected no matter what.

11

We use a regular snap-lock collar for our dogs while they are out in the yard. It has an ID tag, rabies tag, and license. When we go out for a walk, they wear training/choke collars. When they have the training collars on, they are more on their toes and know that we are not playing around. It’s like getting dressed for work.

At this point, hearing the collar jingle is enough to remind our Goldens not to go beyond the end of the leash; if they feel it tighten at all, they “check” our location and make sure they are not going to pull; they are praised for checking–“Good check, Loki.” Check is a ‘look at Mom/Dad’ command and we use it walking; if they get too far out for our comfort we have them check, reminding them of the boundary.

For just walking around without heeling, we just start out with a “Let’s go.” We really don’t need to heel our dogs too often, but we use the “heel” command when we do. We try to keep our dogs to the left both for consistency and as a safety factor–I like to know which direction the tripping is going to come from.

We have three dogs and they are let out frequently because we have a fenced yard so we don’t have to go for a walk to potty. If one of them needs to go out NOW, she’ll come find one of us and just pester us until we ask her if she needs to go out. If she does, she’ll beat feet it for the downstairs door, if not, she’ll give us further clues to figure out what she really wants. You learn to pick up your dogs’ signals from being around them.

As Lissa suggested, you can train Zoe to ring a bell or use some other signal. The only problem is that she may also use it no matter what she wants to go outside for rather than just when she needs to potty. Dogs are individuals and some dogs are better communicators than others, just like people.

As far as timely enforcement goes, first things first–get her attention on you before giving the command. Preface the command with her name to “turn on her brain”–so she knows you are talking to her. Say, “Zoe, sit.” Also use any hand signal you are trying to teach her at the same time. If she sits, reward her*, “Good sit, Zoe, what a good girl, oh you’re so smart.” If she doesn’t, put her in a sit and then reward her.

A “sit” is different than a “sit-stay” where you expect her to keep sitting for a longer period. If you want her to stay a long time, put her in a “down-stay”. “Down” is a hard command to teach some dogs because they are vunerable in that position and they don’t always like that, so don’t get discouraged if you have trouble with that one.

Also, when you notice Zoe doing something, praise her. If she’s laying down at your feet, calm and cozy, give that a name and praise her for doing it. It can be “Good down, Zoe” or “Good settle, Zoe” or whatever. Reinforcement and consistency is everything.

*I hope that you are doing a praise-based reward system rather than food treats all the time, otherwise training your dog can make her fat. :slight_smile: