When Pigs Fly_ Training Success With Impossible Dogs - Jane Killion [25]
Here is an example of how small approximations can create a more durable behavior. You could teach your dog to lie down with his head resting on his feet by luring him down with a cookie and not reinforcing any approximations. You could click only when his nose touched his feet, and he would eventually learn the behavior that way. However, if you take your dog to the pet supply store and it is very exciting for him, chances are he won’t lie down at all; the entire behavior was learned as one piece, and it will fall as one piece. Let’s say instead of luring, you taught him to lie down and rest his head on his feet by shaping each tiny approximation of the behavior, from dipping his head slightly as he is standing all the way through resting his chin on his feet. When you take your dog to the exciting pet supply store, the “lie down and rest your head on your feet” behavior might only break down to the last couple of approximations you trained; maybe he will lie down with his head lowered, but not on his feet, or maybe his head will be up, but he will still lie down.
“Be a splitter, not a lumper” is the wise advice of the great animal trainer and behaviorist, Bob Bailey. Even if you think you might be able to “get” the behavior using fewer approximations, every approximation you reinforce will make your dog understand, remember, and perform the behavior better. You may find it hard, at first, to see and reinforce small approximations. However, as you get more experienced and your dog gets more hip to the game, you will see that you can run through a series of approximations in a matter of seconds.
5
If a Tree Falls in the Forest and
Your Dog is Not Listening…
Teaching Attention as a Behavior
Automatic attention is the mother of all behaviors and one of the first things you should teach your dog. There is no point in teaching your dog how to do things if he is going to ignore you when you ask him to do them. If your dog is off in a mentally distant land and you repeatedly call his name, you are just like static in the background to him. The only thing you will have accomplished is to devalue his name. Even if you got yourself one of the excellent dog training books out there and followed the instructions in it exactly, you would probably find that your Pigs Fly dog still doesn’t perform when you want him to. That is often because he is not paying attention to you.
Lack of attention is often, sadly, the issue that causes owners to give up on their “impossible” dogs. Take heart! Training a dog to have attention is absolutely no different than training a dog to sit or come when called. You are not going to get a “gimme” when it comes to attention. You are going to have to train it like any other behavior and that means more work for you. The good news is that it can be trained and, once you have your dog’s attention, anything is possible.
Attention is the foundation for any training program.
You are not going to teach an “attention” cue or command. Attention is going to become your dog’s default behavior, and you will not have to ask for it with nagging commands. Teaching a dog a verbal cue to pay attention implies that it is OK for him not to pay attention unless he gets the verbal cue. Instead, if your dog is with you, he should be conditioned to watch you like a hawk all the time because he never knows when you might do something interesting or fun. If you call your dog to you, or take him out on a leash, you should become the center of his universe and his eyes should be pretty much glued to you whenever you are together. How will you get that great attention? By free shaping it, of course. You have already