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Important Points About Your Dog and Learning
Dogs are very individual in their response to learning. Just like people, some dogs learn very quickly, others need lots of patience and repetition. A
dog may excel in one behavior and "out to lunch" on another. This is normal and is NOT a measure of intelligence
of any particular dog.
Do not compare
you and your dog’s progress with that of others in class. Training your
dog is NOT a competitive sport. Every person and every dog has its own rate
of learning. Slower or faster is not right, wrong, better, or worse. Always proceed at the dog’s ability to understand.
Generalizations about breeds are just generalizations. All dogs, irrespective of breed and background, have the ability to learn and become
dogs that are a joy to have in the family.
Dogs do not learn in an organized, orderly fashion. Your dog may understand something one day and be totally out to lunch the next. At other times, you will be at wits end trying to train a particular behavior and
at about the time you are ready to give up, your dog will finally get it. NEVER
give up on your dog. Learning never occurs in a nice straight line, there are
always stops, starts and even some going backwards that occurs as the learning process unfolds.
Most important of all, have patience. Always keep
in mind that we are goal oriented and we often set huge goals for ourselfs that we hardly ever attain. Our dogs, on
the other hand, have no clue what the goal of the exercise your are working on is, nor do they much care. The goal is
always the same for the dog: "what silly thing do I have to do next to get another treat out of my human's hand?"
Keep this in mind and it will help you develop the patience you'll need to train your dog.
Never call your dog “stupid,” or “stubborn.” There is no such thing. Your training
skills will not be well developed at first and you will make mistakes that you don't realize your are making. What
you think you are training may be quite different than what your dog perceives he is trying to learn. Your dog cannot make a mistake. Any dog can only respond according to its interpretation of what you are trying
to communicate. As you become more skilled, your ability to communicate with your dog will increase and training
will go much faster.
CONSEQUENCES DETERMINE BEHAVIOR
The most important concept to keep in mind when training your dog is that the consequences
of the dog's action determines behavior. This is the same with any species, including humans. Telling our dog
to "sit" does not make sit happen. What makes it happen is what took place immediately after the last time the dog sat,
and the time before that, and the time before that, etc. If the dog perceived a reward for sitting each and every time
it does so, then it is highly probable that the dog will sit again. If some type of punishment occured after the sit,
whether it was intended or not, then it is much less probable that the dog will sit the next time.
The best real life example of this occurs frequently in the fall and early winter
when the weather turns rough and limits the amount of time owners spend with their dogs taking them out to go potty.
Before bad weather, the owner would take a walk with their dog after it does its business and before going back inside.
Then it gets snowy and cold. As soon as the dog does its business, the owner wisks the dog inside.
After a few days of this, the owner starts to notice that it is taking Fido
longer and longer to do his business. A five minute wait becomes a fifteen minute wait. Then on one particularly
nasty weather night, the owner becomes frustrated after waiting with the dog for 20 minutes and comes inside with the dog,
figuring it doesn't have to go. Then, to the dismay of the owner, the dog immediately does his business on the living
room rug.
What has happened? Has the dog forgot its housetraining? No!
Instead, COSEQUENCES DETERMINE BEHAVIOR... The dog has been taught, albeit unwittingly, by the owner that the CONSEQUENCE
of going potty outside is: THE END OF OUTSIDE ACTIVITY. So the dog modified its behavior and waited longer and
longer before going potty. Then, once inside, the dog said: "Gee I've got to go to the bathroom awfully bad,"
and an "accident" occurs. But it really wasn't an accident. The dog was taught to hold its bladder in order to
gain the reward of being outside. Very clever, these dogs!!!
This is an important concept of learning that you should try and remind yourself
of each day when you are interacting and training your dog.
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