Foundations Home Page

Scroll down and use the buttons below to access each of the training modules.
Unsure if your dog would benefit from Foundations training? Check out this checklist and see if they can do all the things on the list!

Think of the modules as your text books for the Academy, a master reference where you can get written & video instructions for each other the exercises.

The Academy Classroom blog will be where you can find my suggested path working through the modules. I will be taking us through the exercises, taking bits from each class and helping you meld them together. But if you prefer you can work any module at your own pace. You can post homework videos and ask questions on any of the Facebook groups at any time during the year. You can set your own syllabus if there is a class you prefer to work without waiting, but I suggest not doing so if your dog is young, new to you, or in need of a more solid foundation. This is why you might see some of the exercises repeated, because there are some that overlap in all courses and I want to make sure folks get those if they are working on their own.

People all have their own best ways of taking information in, so you will see that each exercise is explained in writing, shown in video demonstration, with verbal explanations and then if you learn by doing you can upload videos of you and your dog doing the exercises for me to provide you feedback.

See the page on filming, editing and uploading tips for help on making that process easier for you!

If you are not in the Academy FB discussion group monitor the Classroom Blog and Zoom Room so you don’t miss updates and meeting opportunities!

 Foundation Module 1

There are going to be 4 main focuses when we very first start training a puppy:

• Play & Engagement

• Developing an operant minded puppy

• Basic Positional Cues

• Socialization

PLAY & ENGAGEMENT

This is EVERYTHING when it comes to raising a puppy that is easy and fun to train. When you teach your puppy that YOU are their very best playmate it becomes so much easier to work past distractions, to build confidence, to redirect and to end up with a dog that LOVES to learn. But here’s the thing, puppies don’t just come knowing the rules and come with their own motivations and preferred ways to play, and often those preferred ways are painful to humans! So many people completely ruin a puppy’s desire to engage and play with people because they don’t know how to teach a puppy to play politely and that is going to be our first goal. To as quickly as we can move these games to being enjoyable for us both. Avoid the temptation to have so many rules when you start and prioritize your bond and connection over what you want this finished game to look like.

Game one: Tug of war. Most all puppies come with an extremely strong desire to chomp you and if you don’t have a game you can work this into your puppy is quickly going to be no fun at all to play with as they leave you riddled with tiny pin holes from their razor sharp teeth. Do NOT believe the BS that teaching a puppy to play tug of war makes them aggressive, it is simply not true. Also, if you don’t I promise you whether you want to or not you will end having to play tug of war with your pant legs, shoelaces, leashes, sweater sleeves, etc. You puppy will find a way to make you play this game and all those ways are far more problematic than just using a tug toy to teach this puppy how to channel that chainsaw mouth in a productive way.

GUIDELINES FOR TUGGING WITH A YOUNG PUPPY:

• Let the puppy tug against you, you just provide the resistance for them to tug against (think of that shoelace fun, it’s just because your foot and gravity create the toy) so do NOT yank your puppy around trying to win the toy back.

• Just give it gentle movement to make it a little lively (again think about your moving pant leg and how fun and easy that is to grab).

• Use a long toy so your hands are far away from their chompy teeth, I like long braided fleece tugs or fluffy toys with long handles, you want your hands at least 6 inches to a foot away from their chompers. (you can also tie some rope or a leash to a toy to give you that distance)

• When you tug your puppies neck should be parallel to the ground so NOT at a 45 degree angle, and their front feet should be on the ground. It might look cool to get a puppy to latch on and hang them from the toy but that is horrible for their developing neck, jaw and teeth. It’s ok if that happens for a moment as they jump up and grab on, but get that head down to normal position as quickly as you can.

• If the puppy let’s go of the toy and comes at your hands: say “ouch” and freeze. Do not scold, swat, grab their noses, or punish them in any way. They are trying to play, don’t shut this desire down. Just pause the game and show them you don’t play if their mouth is on you instead of the toy. You can let go of the toy or if it is long enough make sure their is no resistance to it so they don’t have anything to tug against. If this happens a lot I am willing to bet your toys are too small and you don’t have that foot distance I am suggesting. Nice long toys you are able to see those chomps coming and move your hands away.

• When your puppy is teething: usually starts around 18-22 weeks old, you might see them suddenly change how they play tug with you as their mouth is sensitive. Use very little pressure and let them win the toy rather than having their sore teeth pulled on, this is a good time to shift your focus to fetch. Some puppies you have to avoid tug altogether as it’s too uncomfortable and some are so driven you don’t notice until your tug toy turns red, even with these tough driven puppies gentle your play, as the discomfort itself can change the nature of the play and make it edgier and rougher and we don’t want that.

• Have two of the same toy! This is the easiest way to keep your play from becoming possessive and from the get go we want to make OUR engagement the most rewarding part of the play, rather than the toy itself being the goal.

ENGAGED PLAY GAME ONE:

Switching toys during play. Again the goal is that our interactive play is the reward rather than winning the object.

• Start playing with your puppy, for a very young puppy sit on the floor with them. An older pup you can sit in a chair or stand up.

• Once your puppy is following the tug toy and biting it and keeping a little hold of it, let go of the toy and let them win it.

• As soon as you let go, start moving your second toy around to entice them. You might have to keep wiggling it and making it fun, as long as the puppy is looking at your efforts keep trying. If the puppy doesn’t give up their toy, don’t take it from them. Just walk away and stop playing. Don’t set the tone this will be about control and you being all grabby from the get go.

• When they let go of the toy they won and grab onto your live toy give that gentle resistance and play with them until they are really into it and as you do so, pick up that original toy.

• After a little bit of play, again repeat that step where you make the other toy live again.

• If you use different kinds of toys your dog might have a preference and not be as quick to let go.

• Be sure during your play to talk to them in your happy voice, to touch them and to be engaging and fun.

• Don’t worry if you hear play growls and barks, many puppies are vocal players.

Here is a video of me playing with Nick when he first came home so you can see the two tug toy game in action.

DEVELOPING AN OPERANT MINDED DOG

Behavior shaping is one of the most powerful training tools available! It is a game changer for what you can teach dogs and how much easier it is to get a puppy working for and with you rather than chasing around things you don’t want them doing. When my puppies come home the majority of the early training I do is teaching them tricks using shaping so I can learn how they learn and get a sense of who they are before I work on cues I will really care about. Dogs that do a lot of shaping as a young dog grow into such flexible learners that you can teach them almost anything you want to. They also tend to be a lot more confident as they learn they can control their environment and problem solve through things rather than always needing you to show them how things work.

CONDITIONING A CLICKER

Yes a clicker, not a marker word. Why? Because I said so ;) Just kidding, because a clicker is such a valuable tool you want to be proficient at using it. The noise it makes helps your young puppy learn noises are fun not scary and your timing accuracy can be honed to be super efficient. I’m serious, this thing can be like teaching a puppy magic and I want you all to be good at it. We won’t be using it for everything in the class, but the tricks and body awareness exercises are so much better done using a clicker.

You want to do two to three days of simply pairing your clicks with food before you move on to the games.

Not sure if you are ready to move on? Post a video of your conditioning session to the FB group and ask me and I’ll let you know if I think it’s time you can use it.

CLICKER SHAPING GAME ONE:

The Box game. This is my favorite first shaping game because you do several things at once, not only are you teaching them how to learn but they gain physical awareness and better body control, they gain confidence from interacting with an object, plus it becomes a tool to create so many foundation behaviors.

• Get your box, you want to start with a box that is lower than your puppies elbows, unless they are hella bold ;) You might even have to cute one down. You want it also big enough for your puppy to stand in with all four feet.

• Do NOT put the box down around your puppy until you have EVERYTHING ready!

• Get your rewards ready, I just use their kibble I would normally feed them. And by get them ready I mean you have a whole stash ready for the entire session and you have a bunch in your hand ready to immediately give. Do NOT set the box down and then go fishing for rewards.

• Get your clicker in your hand in position ready to fire.

• Then set your box down and BE READY.

• So you have to grow an extra arm ;) How I do it, I put my clicker in one hand, treats in the other and I then pick up the box with the hand also holding the clicker.

• Most all puppies are super curious and will want to see what you just set down. Be ready to immediately click and then set the treat down into the box. At first they might not be sure about getting the treat out of the box so be ready to point it out to them or helping them get it. If they are acting real scared of the box you can also just set it down right outside of the box, but don't feed it our of your hand. We want them focused on the box not you.

• After they eat the treat wait for them to anything related to the box, if they sniff at it, look down in it for more treats, circle it, paw it, anything! As soon as they do, click again and drop another treat in.

• Keep the sessions super short! 2-3 minutes tops! Your only goal for session one is that your dog figures out this box has something to do with cookies showing up. That’s it, it’s not to get them all the way in, if they start doing that, great. But our goal is simply they make that connection.

• Be sure to video your attempts and share to the FB group so I can learn more about you and your puppy!

BASIC POSITIONAL CUES

TEACHING YOUR PUPPY TO SIT

You will see here that I teach my sit very differently than most trainers in that I do not lure over their head with a cookie, I just place it at a height slightly above their heads near my legs and I wait for them to offer the sit. This creates a sit much closer to you that is no dependent on a big visual lure.

TEACHING YOUR PUPPY TO DOWN

As with the sit I also don’t use the typical down lure for any young puppies I train, I instead use my body and hand position to create the behavior and then capture it. With bigger older pups sometimes you need to use a lure so you will see those examples of how use lures to teach a down in this video as well.

WHAT FOOD TREATS DO I USE?

Mostly I use their kibble for all the training I do at home where I am not competing for their attention. Try really really hard NOT to give your puppy tasty treats just because. Save them for when you need to get their focus in the big wide world. Use the food they are happy to work for and save those big guns for later. If you do, you will end up with dogs like mine that will happily work for any treat you hand them and it’s never about how valuable it is. If you feed raw, you can get sample bags of high quality kibble. Personally I feed a split of raw and kibble with my puppies so half of what they eat in a day is raw food fed at a meal time and the other half of the food is a high quality kibble that I have in a baggie that I use for that day’s training sessions. I don’t go to actual treats until I start distraction training or if I am shaping and my puppy is a little unsure about the thing I’m working on and I want to give a little extra. This way I don’t have to worry about upsetting my dog’s digestive system with a lot of rich treats, I don’t have to worry about upsetting the balance of nutrients, and I know they are eating a high quality diet still. DO NOT use things like real chicken, steak, cheese etc for normal training yet! If your puppy has never eaten roast chicken and the first time they taste it is when you are outside in a very distracting area working on come commands, guess how much more successful you will be!!!

SOCIALIZATION

People really get stuck thinking this means letting every dog in the world and every person in the world steam roll your puppy until they love it. Nope! Socializing is about exposure to all the things they will encounter in life while their minds are still more flexible to social imprinting. I want you to think hard about this one: IMPRINTING is crucial, your puppies FIRST encounters with things are the most influential. So be selective!!! The first dogs my puppies meet are the ones I trust the most to be kind and gentle. The first people my puppies meet are the ones I know that will follow my suggestions on how to interact. Socializing doesn’t have to mean CONTACT. You're looking for vast numbers that are super low stress. So a dog that sees at a comfortable distance 100 dogs is going to be more socially sound than a dog that plays with twenty dogs and one of those bullies them and scares the crap out of them. For very young puppies I want you to think of if more like window shopping, you want to take your puppy our safely in your arms or vehicles and let them see the world they will live in. Protect them from idiots. Guide people and listen to what the puppy is telling you with their body. If your puppy is leaning towards someone they want to engage and be pet, if they are leaning into your body away from the person don’t let the person keep touching them. Have them stop and let them feed the puppy some tasty treats (while NOT petting them) Don’t let the petting resume unless the puppy is leaning towards them with a happy wagging tail. I’m serious people can be real idiots and set puppies back so far so advocate for your pup and don’t be afraid to be socially awkward and tell them to hands off your pup.

Do not let your young puppy meet dogs you do not know unless it is super apparent by looking at them that they are super chill and friendly. Look for loose soft body movements. Ask the person directly “are they experienced and friendly to puppies” not just “friendly” not all dogs have experience meeting puppies so don’t let yours be the one they experiment with.

If you take a puppy socializing class ensure the following:

• They are super specific age grouped. Puppies under 6 months old should NEVER be in a group with adolescent puppies who are the age group that make the worst choices. Ideally the group is further split to 2-4months and 4-6 months as they grow and change so fast! A 12 week old puppy hardly compares to a 6 month old.

• If free play is done it is expertly supervised by a trainer that knows when puppies are not appropriate for that group. I prefer puppy classes where the puppies are not directly interacting but are instead learning how to prioritize people in that setting. Not all puppies are capable of “just working it out” so a trainer that just lets dogs be wild bullies and ignores puppies hiding under chairs freaked out is showing how little they understand about canine behavior.

• If your class has free play and your puppy gets too excited and the trainer makes you put them on leash or behind a barrier as the other puppies continue to play, get the heck out of there, that is a recipe for complete disaster and should not ever be practiced and this is a sign of a very inexperienced trainer. That is a fast track to creating frustration reactive dogs, so just leave!

• The class is entirely positive motivation reward based. I don’t care what your feelings on balanced training is, NO PUPPY should be punished during learning. THEY DO NOT NEED IT AND IT IS NOT OK.

• All puppy groups are a little different as the puppies set the tone, so don’t be afraid to go find another class if the one you are in doesn’t feel productive.

There is SO much more than just getting your dog to play with other dogs when it comes to socializing! It’s about getting them confident about their world. You can do so much of this at home! One of the MOST important is sounds. With early exposure and regular sound desensitizing you can make a gigantic difference in whether or not your puppy grows into a sound sensitive dog. This has been proven by research that if this is a part of your puppy raising routine you can change the outcome for a dog who has all the genetic predisposition to be sound sensitive. So start right away with things like: play fireworks and thunderstorm videos or sound cds during feeding and play sessions. Start with the volume so low you barely hear it and each day just increase it a tiny bit so they don’t ever even seem to notice it. Play noisy games, like giving them empty milk jugs and soda bottles to crash around the kitchen with. With all things start low and build volume gradually. Any time your dog acts spooked don’t over do your reaction, just give them a moment and if they come back into the game resume, if they don’t lower the volume.

SOCIALIZING & helpful PDFS FOR YOU:

 Foundations Module 2

FOCUS AROUND FOOD GAME 1

So to use food as a reward in training it’s important that very early on we also work on teaching our puppies to have some self control around the food and to make the connection between our food rewards and a connection with US. We don’t want to become Pez dispensers, we want to create a relationship with engaged rewards from the beginning. So this is a simple game you can play to help your puppy learn how to offer eye contact in the presence of a reward.

• Have two treats, one in each hand.

• Bring your hands together to your dog’s nose and let them smell the treats.

• Stand up and put your hands, with the treats protected in a tight fist at your side (if you have a very small puppy you might want to kneel rather than stand so your eyes are closer for them to see at first)

• Keep your hands welded to your side, if they nose or nibble at your hands lock them and press them into your legs so the puppy can’t move your hands around

• Do not scold your puppy for bothering your hands, just keep them still.

• Wait until your puppy looks at your eyes (watch the first look might be very fast, try to catch it) when they make eye contact say “yes” and give them one of the treats.

• Put more food in that hand and start again, repeating the above steps.

• As they get the hang of it start to wait for more prolonged eye contact before releasing the treat.

• Play this game over the week until it becomes automatic for your puppy to look at your face when you are holding the treats.

• Make sure you are using two hands, this helps them as they will start by pestering one hand and when that doesn’t work they will look to the other and since you are in the middle, those eyes will flick up to yours as they try and sort it out.

TROUBLESHOOTING DEMAND BARKING

Sometimes when you are training games that introduce a bit of a possibility for frustration you can end up with some demand barking. personally I feel like it’s good to find easy controllable ways to address these things very early in a puppy’s life and training so I can address and fix these things before they become totally ingrained behaviors when a puppy wants something. I want them to extinguish this as a technique early on in our training together. Many trainers will just seek to avoid all frustration during training, but personally I want a puppy to know how to work through these things with me.

LEAVE IT METHOD 1

There are a few variations to how I teach leave it and I will show you both. How do I choose which one I will use? It depends on the puppies overall nature and their food drive. A soft puppy that tends more towards worrying, being anxious about things, that takes a cautious approach to life, I am going to use this first method that makes it nearly impossible for the puppy to get it wrong since you are doing all the work to prevent the mistake. When would I choose the second method then if I could always do this using a more positive option? Because some dogs have dangerous levels of eat first ask questions later approaches to life and for these puppies I want to bring in the aspect of avoidance that using a little carefully orchestrated negative punishment (taking away something good to decrease behavior) can create. As you know by now I am a trainer who uses the least amount of aversion in my training as I can, but there are situations where I feel the use of some is necessary to keep a dog safe. And living in an area where I know of 6 recent cases of puppies dying from mushroom poisoning from eating things on a walk or in the yard, it is worth it to me to use a very minimal level of low stress training to create some avoidance when hearing “leave it”. So I choose the second option if I have a puppy with a voracious appetite that hoovers up everything they see, if the puppy has a sound solid temperament and is not showing any indications of anxiety or fearful natures.

Also when choosing when I might use a less positive solution I can look at whether the concept is somewhat natural in a way the puppy is better set up for success because we are utilizing concepts the puppy is already familiar with. So when teaching leave it, we are already in possession of the food, puppies understand possession, so asserting possession over food already in your possession is not naturally fear inducing, puppies already come to us having learned from littermates what’s mine is mine. But for example using a punishment like a collar correction for a puppy diving for food on the ground, reaching for food you want is a completely natural behavior, so us adding the discomfort of a collar correction over food neither of us possesses now puts us in conflict, we are now fighting over the resource and our corrections are more aggressive and can cause fear. So much of puppy training is matching method to the learner to help them being the most successful with the least amount of stress and the highest likelihood of safety and survival.

• Have a treat in each hand

• Present a treat in an open hand about 1 foot away from the puppies nose

• immediately! deliver a treat to the puppy with the other hand before the puppy has a chance to go for the food in your open hand

• be FAST, if your puppy goes for the food just close your hand and try again and be faster, and you can move the open hand further away so it’s even easier for you to get the treat to them before they move for the food they see

• after a few reps the puppy should start to catch on and expect the other food to arrive when they see the food, if they are starting to wait for that second treat you can start adding in your “leave it” verbal cue as you open the hand to show the food

• gradually (so gradually the dog doesn’t notice it’s getting harder) delay just slightly the delivery of the second treat, if they make a mistake start again and make it easier again

• once the puppy is waiting patiently for the second treat when they see the first start moving the open treat hand closer to the ground and eventually putting it on the ground

“LEAVE IT” METHOD 2

We want our food rewards to be calmly taken and we want our dogs to understand how to think and problem solve to get food, not to push and party crash for it. So this game is to shape the dog how to offer leaving food alone as a way to earn the food. When you teach this how you hold your hands make a very big difference in your comfort with baby teeth and puppy nails digging at you. So, watch the video and see how I tuck my fingers and create a tight fist that is not easy to get a grip on to mouth, and see how I hold my hand at my feet so they can’t shove it around. Obviously if they are too rough on your hands with digging we can modify this and you can sit in a chair so your hands are off the ground. But if your timing is good and you catch that exact moment they stop trying, you quickly go from mouthing and digging at your hands to completely leaving your hands alone with no prompting on your part.

• With very small puppies as in the video, sit on the floor, older pups you can sit in a chair.

• Place a treat in your fist.

• Put your fist on the ground braced against your feet, or if sitting lay it on your lap.

• Use your muscles to keep your hand as still as possible as your puppy bashes it about (they will be better about this if you work on the above exercise first)

• The exact moment your puppy stops bothering your hand, open your hand and let them eat the treat.

• Repeat, expect the pestering of your hand the second time to be a bit worse as they have now eaten some of the food which will excite them, but hold strong (unless of course your dog is hurting you)

• As you keep repeating you should start to see little clues your puppy is about to give up, they might sigh, pull back, make eye contact, lay their heads down, etc. If you see a repeated pattern start to wait for that as your signal to give the food.

• Do not say leave it yet! We don’t bring that in until later.

• As they get the idea start to delay just a little before opening your hand to create a little duration of them leaving it alone.

RECALL FOUNDATION GAME

Before we start heading out to teach our puppies how to come when called there are a lot of games we can play to create a very strong association with coming being a super fun thing! There are also a lot of common pitfalls we want to avoid!

• Create a very strong positive association with their names! Use it before all the fun things, say their names as you give them their food bowl, as you pick up their leash for a walk, as you open the cookie jar, as you pick up their favorite toy. Let them associate their names with all the good things.

• Try very hard NOT to use their names when you are upset. Don’t shout their names and scold because they are chewing on something or doing something wrong.

• Don’t use a come command before it is trained!!!!! This is probably the number one mistake people make with puppies and recalls.

• Don’t use a come command for something a puppy doesn’t like: for example don’t call them over so you can shut them in their crate!

• Don’t call the puppy away from doing something fun: for example don’t call them away from playing with another puppy, or barking at a squirrel, or digging in the yard.

• Don’t use a come command as a stop doing something cue, it should be a blast to come to you, not a drag that means the fun is over.

• Understand that most all puppies when they come home are naturally more sticky since they don’t know how safe the world is or isn’t. Don’t mistake this to mean they know what it means when you call them over. Their natural independence and confidence is going to kick in and when it does, they are not being disobedient because they stop coming, it just means they don’t yet thoroughly understand the behavior and you need to TRAIN IT.

Here is a video of a simple game you can play inside or in your yard to start laying a foundation that responding to their names and come is great fun!

• Have lots of treats ready (you can use their kibble)

• Give one treat a nice clear toss (with young pups you have to really make sure they are focused on the treat and slowly toss as their tracking skills are not always very good)

• Once you see the pup has eaten the thrown food, say their name and call them.

• When your pups comes back to you, don’t worry about a sit, just focus on getting them to come all the way into your reward and pet them as you give the reward.

• From day one we want our hands on our pups during training to mean good things and to be expected and enjoyed.

ADVANCING OUR SITS & DOWNS

Once our dogs are easily getting into the sits and downs as we worked on in Module One, I want to work on generalizing this behavior by practicing it in many different areas. If your pup is still too young to have out in public locations then just work in various places around your home and property, or with more distractions by training around family members or other pets.

• You can start adding in your verbal cues once your dog is easily offering each behavior when you put yourself into the starting position for each.

• If your pup gets distracted, don’t scold them or fight it, just wait for the moment they reengage with you and be fun to train with! They will learn you keep bringing the good stuff.

• If you are moving to a much higher distraction area you can bring in a higher value reward.

• Use toys to reward sits if your pup loves to play, tuck the toy under your armpit and hold your hand like you have food, when they sit “yes” and bring out the fun toy and start playing.

• Keep getting your hands on your pups during rewarding.

STAY FOUNDATION PREPARATIONS

First of all so we can begin working on a stay in a down we need to make sure our dog is laying down in a comfortable hip rolled position.

• Have your dog down

• When they are down bring a treat near their nose and then slowly move it towards their side, like you are going to take it to their belly

• Feed when they roll the hip

• If they won’t flop that way try the other side, sometimes some dogs prefer a hip roll on one side

To prepare a dog to be able to stay as we move around them we first want to get the comfortable with our motion while they are still

• Have your dog sit

• As you go to give them a treat, step back and forth in front of them

• When they are successful with that try walking all the way around them as you give a treat

• See if you can lure them into a sit facing away from you

• Lean back and forth behind them and reward each time they switch their head to follow you without breaking their stay

HEELING INTRODUCTION

Our very first moments of focused engaged heeling at our side should be done hands off and leash free! You can do this in your house or yard, somewhere safe where you don’t have to worry about holding onto your dog.

• Have your dog sit at your side

• Show them a treat in the hand next to them

• Take off and after that initial take off step immediately reward them before they can get out of position

• Repeat until they are happily stepping off with you

• Then add your verbal cue and signal to walk next to you

• You can do this with very young puppies, just get that treat all the way down close so they stay focused on it as you step off

FOLLOW ME

To get ready for teaching our puppies how to walk on a loose leash we want to play some games to make following us fun and not about physical control. So let’s see what things you can come up with in your house or around your yard that you can use to have your dog’s follow you.

• Reward when your dog is walking nicely at your side

• Use your voice and engaging emotions to make walking with you fun

• If they don’t stay with you and run off ahead, stop and use a treat to bring them back to your side before trying again

• Reward frequently until your dog starts to get the idea

• No scolding or saying no or physically making your dog stay with you, this is all about them wanting to be with you

MORE FUN THINGS YOU CAN SHAPE WITH A BOX AND YOUR CLICKER!

This is a video showing a typical training session with Emily when she was a puppy that shows you a collection of things you can work on once your puppy knows how to offer getting in the box. Using tricks to teach a puppy body awareness and confidence is so important. Not only is it fun exercise, the interaction with the box helps build confidence and is an important part of the socialization process as it’s giving your dog tools on how to overcome obstacles and control their environment and reinforcement.

  Foundations Module 3

TEACHING A RELEASE COMMAND

Before we can teach a rock solid stay we first need to teach our puppies what ends the stay. Your dog’s understanding of what stay means relies heavily on them understanding what they are waiting for, what tells them they don’t have to be still anymore, so we want to teach them this before we start teaching the stay. So you need to select a verbal cue that means they are free to move (for a deaf dog you can use a visual cue). I use “ok” but you can choose any word you would like to use.

So the first bit of teaching this well is to not have the release tied to a visual thing you do (unless teaching a deaf pup) because dog’s prioritize visual cues and will be slow to tie the verbal cue if they are seeing a cue too. We don’t want a stay being tied to a visual cue if possible so we can do any physical things we need to and not have our dog’s mistake this for a release. This is a funny explanation of an example but when I hike with other people’s dogs I’ve not trained I can tell how well the dog’s stay release is if I need to pee 😂 . As soon as I squat boom, dog in my face.

So if you want to be able to tie your shoes, take a pee outside, pick up things you drop, do yoga in your house, etc then make sure your dog’s don’t think you moving means they are done staying.

• Have three treats in your hand

• Place your other hand in your puppy’s collar, with your palm facing the back of their head. This bit is important as it sets the difference between using a slight push vs using a slight pull which will engage a dog’s opposition reflex and work against your goal here.

• Place your hand with the treats out about a foot away from your pup’s nose, level with their muzzle. If they don’t stand up, give them a treat and put your hand back out a foot away, if they stay give them another and again put the hand out a foot away, for the third treat instead of bringing it to the puppy say your release cue and with the hand still in the collar give the slightest push forward to help the pup move to the treat.

• If the pup gets up at any point during the above, just help them sit again before resuming, do not reprimand them or jerk on their collar, the hand is only there to keep them from moving forward to it until you give the ok.

• Keep your hand in the pup’s collar for this exercise until they are no longer needing that push forward and are popping forward as soon as they hear the release.

BUILDING A STRONG STAY FOUNDATION

In this game we are going to start working on our pups impulse control with food at the same time as setting a foundation for a stay which is essentially a dog learning how to control themselves and be patient when they want something.

• Have a treat in your hand and have your puppy sit

• Bring a treat down in your open hand about a foot away from their nose (same position as for the above release exercise)

• If the puppy moves towards the treat, quickly close your hand and draw your hand straight up until the pup sits again, then drop your hand back to the same position and try again.

• Keep repeating until your pup no longer jumps towards the treat, as soon as they stay still for even just a moment, bring the treat to them where they are sitting and give it to them.

• If they get up as you are bringing the treat to them, pull it back up, do not give them the treat unless their bottom is on the ground.

• Do this exercise maybe 3-5 times in a session, no need to drill it.

• Once you can see they will not budge when you drop the treat down into position you can start saying “stay” as you drop your hand into that position. Be sure if you say “stay” that you then always say your release after you give the treat for the stay.

BUILDING PATIENCE WITH PLAY

I am so big into using play and toys as rewards in training! You can get so much more engagement and energy from our dogs for things like come commands and walking nicely with us if we use play in our training. But some dogs can also get very easily over aroused and out of control with play so it’s also important we teach our puppies how to stay in their reasoning connected brain with us during play so our toys don’t work against us. So we want to from the beginning shape in some natural training into our play that will help our puppies stay level headed.

In this video you can see me using a game of tug with a puppy to work on teaching some pauses in the action.

• Get your puppy playing tug, when tugging with puppies long toys work best so you can safely tug without them missing and getting your hands and fingers with their needle sharp teeth.

• Have treats ready in your other hand. If your pup won’t tug with the treats that close, put them in an easy to reach in pocket that you can grab fast.

• When your pup is really latched onto the tug, relax your tugging arm and immediately bring a treat right to their nose, when you see them smell the treat and let go ask them to sit and give the treat, releasing them to go back to tugging as soon as they eat the treat.

• If they don’t want the treat and stay tugging make sure that tugging arm is not giving resistance to the toy to tug against. Just let it move with the pup so they don’t have anything to pull against and keep trying. If they still won’t let go, let go of the toy and walk away from the game. Then try again using something of higher value that smells yummier.

• Once they are readily and easily sitting and letting go you can add tiny little stays and releases in.

• Play is the goal here more than the control so make sure it is far more tugging and play than it is obedience. The training should be snuck in so the dog is seeing it as part of the play.

LEASHING ASSOCIATIONS

Before we really dive into leash walking we want to make sure we are setting up healthy associations with our pups leashes. Some common issues people create with leashes is this idea that a leash is all about control, and taking it off represents a release from control. I want to set up the association the leash is really just background and that control is really more about cooperation and good teaching helping a dog stay with you because they want to, not because they have to. I also want to make sure my puppies don’t see a leash coming off as a release from connection, I want the opposite, I want a puppy being more connected to me once I take that leash off. The follow videos show some of the training I do around the leash to make sure putting it on and off is easy and cooperative and that having it come off represents and opportunity for engagement.

LOOSE LEASH WALKING

You will see by this video how I introduce leash walking. I actually use a long line so there is very little leash control and it’s more about my engagement and rewards than it is about physical control.

The idea is to begin building connection rather than using physical control to keep your dog walking with you.

• Don’t start until you have your pup’s focus.

• Start with your pup at your side.

• Let most of the long line drag as you hold it loosely around the half way point, if your pup starts to run quickly at something do quick grab and releases as the second half of the line feeds out to gently break so they don’t hit the end of the line at a dead run.

• Stop and turn around the MOMENT you see you have lost your dog’s connection, don’t wait for them to be pulling. If you watch you can see when they are no longer paying attention to you, that is the moment to turn.

• As soon as the dog starts moving towards you start praising and cheering for them.

• Reward when they reach your side.

• Continue to chat and engage sweetly with them as long as they are connected to you.

GIVE YOUR PAW TRICK

I am a big fan of using tricks to help teach your dog some things they might find worrisome later on as a fun thing to do. Since many dogs can develop a deep dislike of having their feet handled after getting their toenails trimmed a few times or people trying to wipe their paws dry with a towel, it’s good to get in front of that and make giving you their paws a good thing.

The key to teaching this trick is hand position when you offer the treat.

• Present the treat in a closed hand near the dog’s nose, no lower than their chest.

• Watch their front feet and the first moment you see a paw move at all, give the treat.

• Once they are lifting the paw start to gradually keep requiring it to come higher before you reward until they are making contact with your hand.

• Once they are doing so you can name your trick, at this point you can alter this trick to teach a few different things: shake hands, high fives, wave.

• For shake hands at the point where the dog is hitting the treat hand, you now pull your treat hand further back towards you as you put an empty hand out between you and the pup, as they paw at the treat hand, put your shake hand under their paw so they hit it and reward as soon as they make contact with that empty hand.

• For wave keep moving your treat hand further away so it’s staying just out of reach and gradually keep getting further away as you continue to reward that paw waving action.

• For high fives follow instructions for the shake hands but keep gradually moving your hand higher until it’s in the right position.

Below are several demonstrations of teaching puppies to wave and shake hands.

RESOURCE GUARDING PREVENTION

Resource guarding is a very common behavior problem we can see developing in puppies. It’s important to understand resource guarding is not about dominance or hierarchy, it is about possession is the law. Even the most naturally submissive puppies can be resource guarders. While it is not ok to leave unchecked it is important to understand this is a 100% normal canine behavior, it’s natural survival instinct at play. So don’t take this behavior personally, it’s not because they don’t like you or don’t respect you, it’s because they came with an inherited strong instinct to not go without and to fix it you teach them not to worry because there is ALWAYS more than enough.

Many people make these issues worse by insisting on taking things away from puppies to show them the people are in charge and this can lead to disastrous results! You can take a normal puppy showing normal behaviors and create a defensive aggressive pup that feels even more insecure around resources and even more possessive. Do not make a habit of taking your puppy’s stuff just to prove you can. Instead we focus on teaching them sharing creates more resources, that letting somewhere near their stuff equals getting more stuff. Having so many resources there is simply no reason to guard.

We want to teach our puppies we are excellent providers and they have zero reason to worry. So don’t be offended by growling, make a note of what they are worried about and then we show them how that is nothing to worry about. If they are nervous when you approach their food bowl, make a habit of dropping some tasty chicken beside their bowl each time you walk by if they are eating. If they are chewing on a bully stick and growl as you walk by, drop some tasty chicken as you walk by and don’t stare at them, just ignore them and be the person who makes it rain good stuff. Give them more of what they value, if they are only guarding with a bone, give them more at once.

Teach children and other family pets not to bother puppies when they eat or chew, and have them also be the bringers of good stuff as they walk by. If you have very young children feed your pup or give them chews in a safe secure quiet location until they are more comfortable and you have taught them how to be relaxed around resources. If you have multiple pets have each one lay on their bed or in their crate when they get special treats or chews.

Giving a puppy a quiet safe space to enjoy things, while having lots of resources readily available creates an atmosphere of abundance and prevents conflict. But don’t just avoid the work. If your puppy does growl over resources the answer is not to just always feed them in a crate, you want to address that feeling so they can learn to be relaxed around food. But you can use crates and safe spaces when you are still working through it for the times you just want to know you can just feed and walk away because you don’t have the time right then to work it.

In this video I show you how I introduce the idea of sharing food toys. This puppy was like many puppies initially showing guarding behavior with food and tasty chews. In just a couple minutes he is happily letting me handle his food to help him. We only had to do this a few times and his resource guarding stopped. It can be that quick if you act immediately when you see guard behaviors start.

ADDING VERBALS TO YOUR SIT & DOWNS

After a couple weeks of practicing your sits & downs your puppies should be readily offering those positions. Below is a video demonstrating how to start shifting your puppy’s focus from the visual aids to a verbal cue. This is all about timing! A cue should become a predictor to the puppy that you are going to ask for the sit or down using the visual they already understand. Many people do not realize how poor puppies can be at learning verbal cues, as they are masters of reading the most subtle body language cues, so the trick is be very diligent with your timing and body control so it is only your voice that is predicting.

So when your puppy is 100% following your hand positions into the sit or down. Have your treats in you hand ready, without moving at all say the verbal cue, and then immediately move into the known position to help them. Don’t wait and see if they do it, just follow that same pattern. Verbal followed by visual aid. Puppies are ultimate anticipators, so they will simply start beating you to your movements as soon as they make the connection and then you can drop your visual aids once they know the verbal.

RESTRAINED RECALLS

Restrained recalls should be the cornerstone of your come command training! This one exercise can jump start your come command far better than anything else you do. This is all about making racing to you when they hear “come” the most fun game ever. You do need a helper, but the job is super easy, all someone needs to do for you is hold your puppy until they hear you say “come”.

• Show your puppy their favorite reward (can be food or toy, but needs to be their favorite reward)

• Have someone hold your puppy as you then run away (run!)

• As soon as you say your pup’s name and “come” they let go

• As your puppy is approaching show them the reward by holding it straight out towards them, and draw that hand holding the reward towards you as the pup races in

• Do NOT reach out at your puppy! If you are worried about them running off have them wear a long line as you do not want to bring any kind of avoiding your hands as part of this game

• Once they are there and taking the reward you can pet them and have a super fun party

• Keep this game to no more than three calls per session as often they will get too excited by this game and start jumping and nipping, so quit before they get too aroused

• Be fun! Make this their favorite game

• After they are starting to get the idea start to run out of sight before you call (providing you are working in a safe area)

• Take your long line and puppy and work on this in as many different locations as you can

• After a few sessions of practice (like maybe 4 or so different sessions) see if you can reverse the pattern and have your helper run away with the puppy as you stand still and call. If they don’t come back to you have your helper stand still as you convince your pup to race back to you

• Only the person calling rewards the puppy, so if you have a family and others want to play, take turns who holds the pup and who gets to be the one running away and calling

Below is a video demonstrating restrained recalls with three different types and ages of puppies

Ok! Let’s see where you are at! Check out this checklist to see what progress you have made so far. If you can check all the boxes and want to earn a certificate for the Foundations first level you can send me a video for evaluation!

  Foundations Module 4

STAY WORK

Once we have taught our puppies their release command and we have worked on impulse control it’s time to make our stays a more formal exercise where we start to push everything we can do right next to our dog. Don’t worry about getting far away from your puppy! Work close so your reward timing can catch them for being correct! Duration is far more important in stay work than distance, most real life stays are used very close to you and are about wanting a dog to be patient.

• Always start with just one foot moving, and have the foot closest to the dog move last.

• Try to make sure your dog is successful at least 80% of the time or you are pushing too much.

• Always reward in the stay position rather than just for the release.

• Move confidently, don’t creep away or move as if you are expecting a mistake, creeping stalking hesitant movements make dogs move because your body is subtly inviting it. Strong postures hold positions much better.

• You can see in the video towards the end how I handle a mistake, allowing a dog to self correct so the rewards can resume. You can always use this technique if the dog breaks because they want to follow you or want your rewards, this won’t work if they are breaking to move away from you. But if they come to you, let them see the position is what keeps the reward game going.

HOMEWORK:

TRY TO MOVE YOUR OUTSIDE LEG ONE STEP AWAY FROM YOUR DOG, FORWARD AND LATERALLY WHILE THEY STAY SITTING.

SEE IF YOU CAN WALK ALL THE WAY AROUND THEM USING A TREAT TO HELP THEM STAY

CHIN REST FOR COOPERATIVE CARE

Teaching a puppy to lay it’s chin in your hand or on other things is such a powerful and effective way to help teach a puppy how to do an alternative behavior during things like grooming, vaccinations, etc. This puppy in the videos was attacking his brush when they wanted to groom him and we fixed it in two weeks by just teaching him to do a chin rest.

Watch the video below for how to teach your puppy to do a chin rest!

• The subtle timing and hand positions is what makes this exercise easier, if you are reaching out for your pups chin they will reflexively withdraw from your reach, so you need to keep your hands still and let them bring the chin in so you can gently cradle the chin once it’s already there. You can see in the video the difference between when this is done correctly and when reaching causes issues.

HOMEWORK: SEE IF YOU CAN GET YOUR PUP TO GENTLY REST THEIR CHINS IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND FOR 3-5 SECONDS

LONG LINE RECALL WORK

Long line work is essential in teaching a great come command, it’s a tool all dog trainers and owners should own. As you saw with the leash walking exercise of last module I use long lines to teach so many things so I can mostly use my movements to train my puppy rather than using a short leash to control all their movements. Ideal length is 15-25ft and you want a material that is gentle on your hands.

Watch the video below to see how I use a long line to work on calling my puppy when they are distracted.

• Have a gentle touch with your long line if you do need to use it to stop a puppy.

• a long line should not be used to pull a dog into you, use your motion and engagement to encourage them in, pressure should only be used to stop them from moving away from you or to give them a gentle nudge in your direction if they are unable to let go of a distraction.

• If your puppy is older and weighs more you might want to wear gloves the first time you use a long line to protect your hands, most young pups don’t race off with enough pressure or have enough weight to do too much damage to your hands with a long line but gauge your pup’s enthusiasm for racing away to determine if you should wear gloves.

• As you can see in all the video clips with the puppy pressure is never needed as I am moving away very early in losing her focus so she is responding before we are even near the end of the line and this is what you want. Generally it is only with older pups or adults that really challenge that kind of distance.

• Always get your hands on your puppy while giving rewards, a puppy should always view being touched as a positive during a recall.

• Give a nice clear target with that food as you call the dog in.

• I highly recommend using a clicker to mark the exact moment a puppy makes eye contact with you when you call.

• Don’t over do it, call 3-5 times and call it good, you can over train recalls and have dogs then start choosing the environment over your rewards so keep them on the long line and let them safely explore rather than needing to rely on constantly calling them. When your pup is super distracted you can then walk yourself up the long line to them rather than calling.

• Training is accomplished in the cumulative sessions not in one go of it! If you have endless time and energy ideal would be 3-5 sessions in a week of 3-5 calls

HOMEWORK: HEAD OUT TO A PARKING LOT OR PARK AND PRACTICE 3-5 RECALLS ON YOUR LONG LINE

LOOSE LEASH WALKING

You want to start this exercise inside your house, or in your backyard or drive way before taking it on the road. The goal here is to get a few steps of completely focused walking at your side. You want your puppy to know how to walk closely to you so when you need to walk in busy vet waiting rooms, stores or busy sidewalks your pup knows how to stay close and walk with you through those areas.

• Give your pup your total focus

• don’t start unless they are focused on you

• give frequent rewards

• the more distractions the higher the value of reward

• keep this engaging and fun

Once you get nice walking inside take your practice out to a known safe area, like your driveway or the sidewalk in front of your house. When you need to keep a leash on for safety still try to only use your rewards and voice to hold your puppy’s focus with you. You can clip the leash to your belt, you can tie it around your waist, try very hard to keep your hands from using the leash to control them.

TEACHING A PUPPY TO FETCH A BALL

The key to teaching fetch with a pup that doesn’t naturally retrieve is two things:

• you make it fun to chase things.

• you make it fun to share things.

Notice the “you” in that! If you love playing fetch with dogs you can make it fun for a dog that doesn’t naturally fetch. But it requires you pump out some energy and fun.

• Have two of the exact same ball, I promise if they are different the pup will prefer one over the other which will slow down the share part of the game.

• First bring the ball to life, toss it up and down in your hand, bounce it on the ground, make it fun.

• Give the ball a very short toss. With a baby pup they don’t track well so if you toss fast they might not even see where it goes so make it a slow dramatic little toss they can see.

• If they don’t chase it, you chase it. Run and grab it yourself and play with it again. I promise your puppy will not be able to keep resisting seeing you run and they will want to beat you once they see what you keep chasing.

• Once your puppy grabs the ball, do NOT try to take the ball away. This is what kills so many pups desire to retrieve.

• When they start playing with the ball, you then start playing with the second ball. See in the video how I make the second ball fun and wait out when she wants to keep her ball.

• The moment the pup lets go, they very moment they lock onto wanting the second ball, give it a toss, and again if they don’t immediately go for it, you run for it.

• Always use two of the same ball to play fetch until your pup is easily running for the ball and racing back to you for the game.

LEAVE IT WITH THINGS ON THE GROUND

Teaching puppies how to leave things alone that are on the ground is an essential life skill. It’s an exercise I put a lot of early work on so I know I can safely hike with my dogs in the world and not have them grabbing everything they see to eat.

So after I have done the leave it work with the food in my hand like we worked on in the last module I then start to work on the pup leaving food on the ground. You will notice in these videos once I have said leave it with food on the ground they do not get to then later eat it off the ground. Leave it means permanently! Instead I will reward from my hands.

It is basically almost the same as the last exercise except the food is on the ground and I am protecting it with my other hand. This is not a good exercise to do with an older dog already exhibiting resource guarding! If you have that going on let me know so we can look at other ways to address this for you. This is actually a good exercise for preventing it if it has not yet started so I do recommend that all puppies learn a very good leave it. Now this is not a “positive” method in that I am asserting myself over this situation, however it is all done with me asserting myself over the food, not the puppy so the puppy has no reason to feel worried or threatened. And actually most puppies come understanding possession and can very quickly learn a fast leave it with anything when you invoke the canine rule of “that’s already mine” and it can actually be far less confusing than how many people teach leave it by pulling a dog away from something they want which just causes frustration and makes them try to just be faster. This method teaches a pup to look to a person as to whether something is fair game or claimed.

• When you place the food on the ground the pup does not have to be in a sit, down or any particular position.

• Have your hand over the food as you set it down, if they go for it, just drop your hand over the food and don’t let the pup steal any.

• Don’t say anything, don’t scold if they go for it, just don’t let them have it.

• When they give up trying to steal it, quickly reward with a different treat (but the same kind of food) using your other hand leaving the food on the ground.

• Be ready, after they get the first treat they will likely then go after that food on the ground again so be ready to defend it.

• Play this 3-4 times in a session or until you see the pup gets it and is no longer moving to the food on the ground.

• You can add the “leave it” cue in once you see the pup gets it, that the food on the ground is off limits.

HOMEWORK: SEE IF YOU CAN GET YOUR PUPPY TO LEAVE FOOD ALONE ON THE GROUND WITH YOUR HAND NO LONGER COVERING THE FOOD FOR 3-5 SECONDS.

ROLL OVER

Another good trick to teach a puppy! Why? Because it’s very good to have a pup comfortable getting into weird positions. If you need to check their tummies for ticks, cuts, burrs you want them being comfortable rolling over for you. Getting stitches out after a spay surgery. Getting procedures like ultrasounds and other veterinary care. The more comfortable a puppy is with following your guidance into weird positions the easier cooperative care will be for them when they are older!

Roll over is so much easier with a young puppy. When they are still floppy and flexible they turn so much easier! This is all about finding the perfect lure position for the puppy to follow over.

Below are a few videos demonstrating how to teach a puppy to roll over.

It may take your several sessions to get your puppy to roll over and that’s ok! First just try to get them laying on their sides and twisting their heads following your treat.

 Foundations Module 5

FADING YOUR DOWN LURES

If you worked your adding verbal commands you might not need this step at all as most puppies will start beating your lures and will just start offering the position when you say the down cue. If not, if you still need to help them down with a treat this a video to show you how to work on fading that lure away.

SET YOUR REWARDS DOWN

As we move to teaching our puppies how to further understand all of our foundation behaviors we want to be very conscious of how we start to change up how our rewards happen so that we don’t end up with puppies that only listen when you have a cookie in your hands. We want to have a systematic approach to how we are going to move our behaviors forward and keep them consistent and prevent problems from arising for when we start to fade rewards or maybe we simply run out of them or forget and leave home without them. If you have a way of changing up what the reward process looks like and keep it changing and evolving this helps to prevent your dog from being able to predict the process which helps keep them doing behaviors even if you don’t have them in your hands or pockets.

You may have noticed by now that in none of the videos do you see me wearing a bait bag. Guess what? I don’t even own one. Why? Because I move so quickly to the concept of delayed rewards, to using play and affection for rewards, to using bridges and markers so that I don’t have to have the food on me all of the time. This helps to create a training atmosphere that has the pups focusing on my eyes and hands, not my rewards. This is one of the BIGGEST steps in that process. Getting the rewards out of your pockets and hands and where the dog can see them. This offers you both great impulse control practice and leave it work, as well as setting the foundation for delayed rewards.

So watch the video and then try this game with your puppies while they are laying down. Laying down is the easiest position for them to be successful as they have to get up to reach the reward and this allows you the easy timing of picking up the rewards before they reach them.

• with your puppy in a down position lay down 3-4 treats on the ground a foot or so away from their nose

• if they get up to get the treats, pick up the treats and hold them in your hand with your hand in the lay down position

• once your pup lays back down resume the game

• keep rewarding in slightly increasing intervals as your pup stays down, picking up the treats anytime they stand up to get the treats

• if you are bringing your hand to reward your puppy and they get up before you get the treat to them, don’t give it, wait for them to lay back down, only ever give the reward if they are still laying down

TAKING YOUR STAYS FURTHER

As your dog is getting more solid in their understanding of how to stay in a position once you put them there you want to keep expanding their understanding of how to stay no matter what the handler is doing so their stay is not dependent on you standing there still staring at them. You want to be able to do anything, move in all directions and have your dog stay still. I teach this exercise so that the dog understands the position itself is what opens up the rewards toy build a high value for the position you left them in. I emphasize the position pays rather than waiting for mistakes and correcting them, I wait for the position and reinforce that and ignore mistakes until they resume the correct behavior, this teaches puppies to self correct and to value that place.

LOOSE LEASH WALKING

Once your dog is able to walk on a long line and they are staying close to you because they realize this is where all the good stuff happens, then it’s time to move to a regular 4-6ft leash.

Ok here is where the real work happens. Here is the thing about leash walking, it’s all about reinforcement history and so much of the time the dog is being reinforced by the environment more for pulling then they are from you for walking nicely.

• People vastly under reinforce polite leash walking.

• At the same time people often start slipping into their own heads when they walk and disconnect from their dogs, and don’t even realize the moment they have disconnected until the dog is dragging them down the street on leash.

• So stay present!!!

• Don’t put headphones in and play music.

• Don’t scroll on your phone as you walk.

• Don’t walk with other people while you are training, your dog needs your full attention!

• Every single time you take your dog out on leash you are training them! Be ready!

• Have a plan on what you are going to do if they pull!

  • stop and wait until they reconnect with you

  • turn around and go the other way, rewarding when they reconnect

• Don’t ever start walking if your dog is already disconnected.

• Give your dog a set length of leash, don’t keep changing how much leash slack you give, otherwise they can’t learn how much room they have to work with.

REINFORCE WHAT YOU WANT, WHERE YOU WANT IT

• Always reward at your side, right next to your leg for a small, med dog and right near your hip for a large dog.

• Always reward with your palm facing the dog’s nose, if your palm faces forward or out the dog needs to turn their head to reach it and this will spin them out more in front of you to reach the reward.

• Reward when the dog is doing what you want, not as a way to get them back! This is often a huge problem, people ignore great walking, then the dog pulls and the handler uses a treat to get the dog back, which reinforces the pulling. If they are pulling use one of the methods you use to stop pulling, then get the dog back to walking nicely and THEN REWARD.

STAY EMOTIONALLY CONNECTED THE WHOLE TIME YOU WALK TOGETHER WHILE TRAINING!

Great training places to look for:

• Empty parking lots for malls, cinemas, shops.

• Vacant parking areas

Big boring paved wide open areas- parks and walking paths are being overrun now as so many look to places they can go, but these vacant concrete jungles can be totally empty and make amazing training areas! You have lines painted for parking spots that you can use to walk straight on. You can see for big distances if any distractions are coming.

CHANGING SIDES

It’s very important to teach your puppy how to be able to walk on both sides of you. Maybe you need to walk down a busy road and have them on the side away from traffic, maybe you are walking and a dog that worries your puppy is approaching so you want to swing them around to your other side. Having a pup know how to walk closely and connected to you on both sides can make your life so much easier when negotiating life’s obstacles.

Also of you ever want to play at the sport of dog agility, or nosework, being able to guide your dog on both sides of your body is an essential foundation skill for these skills.

So to turn your dog and switch them to the other side turning towards you:

• Start walking with your engaged connected puppy

• Have a treat in the hand on the opposite side of the puppy, so if starting with my puppy walking on my left, I would have the treat in my right hand

• When you want to turn, bring the treat to your puppy’s nose as you stop and turn in towards them, with them turning towards you following the treat.

• Once you complete the turn and they are now on your new side, feed the treat.

To turn your dog away from you and change sides:

• Start walking with your engaged connected puppy

• Have a treat in the hand next to the puppy

• When you want to turn, bring the treat to the pup’s nose and lure their nose away from you in a 180 degree circle until you have turned around

• Once you complete the turn and they are now on your new side, feed the treat

One of the secret weapons on teaching loose leash walking is always being able to switch things up to keep your dog’s attention and to keep them from going into automatic disconnected walking. So having a lot of different ways to keep things changing is going to help you master loose leash walking. Be unpredictable, but communicate clearly.

TRAINING WITH TOYS

As you can see I do the same exercises I do with food using my pups favorite toys. Teaching your puppies to love playing with you, to play tug and fetch is one of the very best ways to keep your pups motivated and focused around distractions. Play can rise above distractions for longer than food can hold your pup’s attention in highly distracting areas, because the choice to engage with you is them deciding your games matter more than the competing environment and this really is the key to long lasting reliable behaviors.

Play also puts your puppies into that excitable state where behaviors like nipping, jumping and barking can rise up with their arousal so this gives you the ability to work through these things in a controlled environment since you are controlling the trigger to their arousal. Teaching a puppy to play with me is always the number one most important task I focus on when I get a puppy or work hands on with a puppy.

So let’s see you use those toys to both distract and proof behaviors and then reward them!

COOPERATIVE CARE - NAIL DREMMEL

You can use very careful desensitizing to help puppies learn to both tolerate and even enjoy having their nails trimmed. Here is a video showing how to introduce a puppy to nail dremmeling. This puppy was already desensitized to the noise and the Dremel itself by the owner just turning it on and feeding treats for the week before we moved forward to this.

STEPS TO DESENSITIZING NAIL CLIPPERS, BRUSHES, DREMMELS OR OTHER GROOMING TOOLS

• Have tasty treats, lots of them in an easy to grab out of bowl

• Get the objects you are working with handy

• Select an area you will make a grooming safe zone, meaning this area is a place where you will only do this cooperative work and not force any treatment until you have properly taken the exercise all the way to completion. So if you have to give your dog eye drops or have to trim their nails and they are not yet comfortable with this process don’t use the same area, go to another place, we want this to always feel safe. So maybe you use a mat or dog bed that means this is our safe training zone, or maybe it’s the area you will eventually use as their grooming area

• Keep sessions short and frequent vs long and sporadic

• We start with classical conditioning: show the pup the clippers, feed a treat, show the clippers, feed a treat, and repeat for 2-5 minutes. Repeat this step until your puppy looks happy to see your clippers and wants to happily be in the training area before moving to the next step.

• Now we move from classical conditioning to operant conditioning, which means now we will be having an exchange for that treat which will look like this:

  • I hold the clippers, pick up the dog’s paw, feed a treat, set the paw down. repeat until comfortable

  • Same as above but now I pick up the paw, touch the clippers to the nail (without clipping), feed treat, set paw down. Repeat until comfortable.

  • Now if I have a dremmel I am doing the first step with it turned on, then the second step with it turned on, or with regular clippers I am making them move, then feeding a treat.

  • With all of the steps I am only moving forward if my dog is comfortable, I step back a step if they are nervous.

  • If possible once I am going to actually trim nails or brush the first times I have a helper so that they can feed the treats as I work so the pup is getting immediate and frequent rewards.

  • When grooming the first times, do so with a well exercised puppy during their normal quiet times (so like midday when it’s warm out and they are snoozy is a good time)

It sounds like a lot of work, but if you do it correctly before a puppy ever has a bad experience they can move through the steps very quickly. And if you move slowly with the introductions you end up with a dog that is very relaxed and chill about grooming. It is soooo much harder to wait until they hate having their feet handled to begin trying to make them cooperative about nail trimming.

PLACE TRAINING

Place training is different than a down stay. Place training is about teaching your dog that a spot can be a very high paying valuable place to hang out. The freedom of choice can make the use of place training very helpful when addressing anxiety if they should arise for your pup. Place means if you stay on this spot rewards will come to you here, you are free to sit, stand, lay down or change positions but if you stay here, you will be rewarded. You can use a place to teach your dog where to go and wait when people come to the door. You can use place to teach your dogs to settle down and relax when you dine at an outdoor cafe that allows dogs. You can use place when you are camping and want your dog to settle in a spot.

TROUBLESHOOTING ROUGH TREAT TAKING

Is your dog super rough taking treats from you? It’s important to fix that so they don’t chomp people who offer your dog’s treats or hurt kids by bring hard mouthed.

NAUGHTY STUFF

COUNTER SURFING:

Most all puppies will try this at some point and it is on you to keep this from becoming a problem. Dogs are opportunistic eaters, if they find unattended food they are going to eat it! If they find yummy smelling dish towels they are going to steal them. So during their puppyhood and adolescence you need to puppy proof and prevent them from scoring things! Once they know they can it is much harder to stop than it is to prevent. So when you cannot supervise you need to either keep everything off the counters and tables or you need to prevent your puppy from having access to your kitchen. EVERY TIME YOU CANNOT SUPERVISE. If they are successful one time they will try again for a very long time.

When you can supervise set things that may draw them in, if they ignore it and move away on their own, reward them by tossing kibbles AWAY from the kitchen area. If they are very naughty about it because they have already been successful because you let them win goods, then you might want to have them wear a leash in the kitchen when you train so if they do not move away you can use the leash to help them move away (do not jerk the leash, just use it to stop them from reaching forward and then instruct them to “off” as you gently move them away) if they are small and they put their paws up on the counter next to you, say “off” and slide your body gently towards them along the counter so your hips push into their physical space (again this is not about slamming them off, it’s about applying soft spacial pressure.)

If during their experimental phase they are not able to score any food and you are always there guiding them to stay off the behavior will extinguish. Supervise!!!! Don’t give a puppy unsupervised access to counters and tables until they are not showing any interest in them when you are there.

DESTRUCTIVE CHEWING:

Puppies go through a couple of big super mouthy phases that can turn into destructive chewing habits. First is during teething. Most puppies start teething around 4 and half months old and it lasts around a month. They usually lose their incisors (the little front teefs) first and their canines last with all the molars and premolars between. Many times you don’t see it until you see a bloody toy after they chew on it, or you might find some teeth laying around.

But behaviorally you can often notice right away. First they generally start chewing on weird stuff they didn’t target before: like corners of your molding, chair & table legs, corners of concrete stairs, drywall, metal. They seek out hard things to work the teeth out. They might suddenly stop playing with you or your other dog as their mouthes get sensitive (some don’t and will play like maniacs and let you accidentally rip their teeth out) if they are 4.5-6 months old and stop wanting to play tug with you, don’t try to, let them finish teething. Some puppies get extra cranky and nippy during that bewitching hour we walked about earlier.

During teething make sure you provide your puppy with lots of different textures of chews, hard stuff, and you can freeze some of their soft fabric toys to sooth their sore mouthes. Do not leave teething puppies unsupervised with anything you don’t mind being chewed on, anything!

The next phase of destructive chewing usually creeps back up during adolescence (7-9 months depending on breed/size) this is usually caused by not enough physical and mental exercise. Adolescence dogs basically have almost adult bodies with baby brains that get bored very easily. You will often see this present as chewed up crate pads and beds left with them in confinement. Or chewed up books, trash, magazines and other items if you leave them alone. Or they might lay down quietly (while super bored) and chew up a shoe in the other room or behind you.

Address this by: making sure physical exercise is sufficient. Give your dog brain games (food puzzles, trick training, nose work, mental enrichment games). Keep toys novel, instead of giving your dog a toy box of all the same toys, rotate the toys, place a third of them in a toy box, then randomly during the week leave a new one in a new place for them to happen upon, and keep swapping the toys out so they are always different toys coming and going. Have some toys that are only for playing with you and play WITH your dog with that special toy at least once a day. (this is in addition to regular walks). Continue to supervise and limit access if your dog is showing destructive chewing. When they are chewing redirect them onto an appropriate chew toy. Take crate pads and beds away until they stop chewing, it’s not going to hurt a dog to crate on a simple towel or just the crate pan if you are crating for appropriate durations in fact many dogs will push beds and blankets aside anyway. (pay attention to where your dog lays when out of the crate and you will see many prefer the hard floor to a bed anyway) Supervise! Be there to let them know to chew on something else and limit their access to things until they show you they are making good chew choices.

One last note, many dogs will chew when they are nervous, so if they are only destructive when you leave, or when there is a storm or when the neighbors are loud or when you have visitors it could be anxiety displacing onto chewing. In this case look at how you can ease and address the anxiety and provide them with a lot of good things they can chew to relieve those nerves.

JUMPING UP:

This is actually much more about training people! teach people not to greet your puppy until they have greeted you first, teach people to greet calmly and only when they puppy has calmed down, teach the people to stop touching and stop interacting when the puppy’s feet leave the ground, be positive and proactive in this: say things like “please give our puppy a moment to calmly collect themselves before saying hello” and then ask them questions that engage them with you (we want dogs to learn they are not the first priority when someone walks in the door - obviously they are but we don’t want them to know that too soon ;) then you can say “we are teaching our puppy to be a very polite greeter so they are safe with very young children and the elderly so if you don’t mind helping us here is the deal: please only pet as long as all 4 feet stay on the ground and please speak calmly, if the puppy starts jumping you don’t have to do anything, just ignore them and I’ll take care of it”.

If they say they don’t mind just politely let them know it matters to you and not everyone feels the same way. If the people want to play and be energetic give them a toy and show them how to play with a puppy properly rather than just teaching them to jump up. If they are young people who really won’t listen to you then at least insist they sit down on the dog’s level so the pup is learning standing people are off limits for jumping. Or better yet don’t leave it up to these folks, put your puppy on a leash and use treats and toys to get your pup’s focus on you as people arrive.

You can use sit stays and place training to teach your puppy a spot to wait while people enter and now you have a specific behavior you can reinforce and reward and your pup is learning what to do instead of what not to do.

POOP EATING:

Don’t be mortified. This can be very normal in puppies. Especially if they came from a busy breeder, shelter or pet store (anywhere where there was poop laying around long enough with a bunch of hungry puppies). This is actually a completely normal canine behavior, dogs eat poop. So to fix it, prevention is best. Go outside with your puppy every time they go during potty training and when they go poop, reward them and then immediately pick it up before you go back inside so there is no available poop for them to find when they come out. Be super diligent about cleaning up after your puppy until they are older. If you can keep them from doing it the habit will fade out in most cases. If it does not then the next step is to use a supplement you add to their food that makes their poop taste awful (forbid, etc) for this to work you HAVE to give it with EVERY MEAL and to EVERY DOG in your house for at least 6-8 weeks so every poop in your yard tastes super nasty for long enough they give up trying.

MARKING:

Approaching adolescence many male dogs will suddenly start leg lifting to mark with urine inside. They might do it when you visit new places, when new dogs visit your home, when new people visit, when new animals move into the neighborhood, when a female in the area goes into her heat cycle, if they live with another male dog and feel competitive, etc. So be on the lookout! I like to set this up by taking my teenage boys into pet stores and by places I know another male dog has marked and as soon as I see them sniff and side up I’m ready to say “no” and I quickly race outside with them and let them find a bush to mark and then I praise them and go back inside and try again. You have to be watching only them and ready as it happens fast, but if you can catch those first attempts you can teach them it’s not ok to mark inside and show them it’s totally cool outside.

When traveling to new places or having people stay with you, you might want to use what’s called a belly band the first couple times incase they decide to try. Again like counter surfing this is so hard to fix once it’s established but fairly easy to prevent if you completely supervise those first attempts and stop them immediately. Obviously neutering before a dog reaches adolescence will prevent this, but don’t think not neutering means this is a behavior you cannot prevent or fix, you can if you are on it. I’ve lived with three high drive intense intact male dogs and have never had a dog that marks inside, and yes each one of them tried it at least once and I caught those first ones and that was it.

Ok, let’s see how those foundation behaviors are coming along! Check out the list to see how far you have come together.

 Foundations Module 6

GENERALIZING STAYS

• take your stay work on the road!

• practice in as many new locations as you can

• start short and successful with each new location gradually building your times in each new spot

• be adaptable, if you are working on stays and a person wants to pet your dog, decide if maybe the socializing needs to take precedence and then release and do that before getting back to it, or the same if a nice dog is walking by and you want to take advantage of that. On the flip side if your pup is super social it’s ok to say no when someone asks if they can say hi if you are working, just say “sorry not right now, we are in training” in a sweet friendly voice.

• read the situation, somethings might be too much for your puppy to be able to stay, loud noises, lots of people, kids, skateboards, etc. If these things happen support your pup through the process, let them know it’s ok to move if they are scared, then help them move further away and try again. The more calm and cool you act about it all the more likely your dog is to follow your focus and stay connected to your training.

PROOFING STAYS

After you have generalized stays and your dog has a good understanding of what the game is it’s time to start proofing, which means testing it, seeing what you can do to challenge and test under what circumstances does the behavior break down. During dog training you want to be the one testing and breaking your dog’s performance if it’s going to break.

Now here’s the thing, our goal is NOT to break the behavior, it’s to systematically make things more challenging and keep bringing in more variables and catching our dog’s being successful. This is how you raise and train confident reliable dogs. If you test TOO much and are constantly breaking the behavior you can take a happy confident learner and create frustration, confusion and a dog that wants to avoid training.

Many people do not recognize how some dogs display confusion. I so often meet with people who call their dog’s stubborn, when the dog has not been able to be successful enough to figure out what you are trying to communicate. Many dog’s who run away from training and seem distracted are doing so because you are making it too hard and they don’t know what to do so they go into avoidance behavior. Some dogs get more hyper when they can’t figure something out and start pacing and whining or even just trying to climb into your lap, they are trying to change the channel because they don’t get it. Some dogs try ten times harder when they don’t understand and it seems like they are trying to frustrate you, when they are just trying to hard they are doing it ten times harder the wrong way, but they are trying, they just don’t understand.

For a dog to understand what you are trying to train, they have to be successful more than they are not! So in general when proofing you are ensuring you are getting at least a 75-80% success rate. This is during proofing. During the teaching and generalizing stage you are looking for more like 95%. So if you practice ten down stays with throwing proofing distraction challenges at your dogs they should be able to be successful and not break the stay 8 out of the ten times. If they are breaking 6 out of 10 times they are not going to easily learn without bringing a lot of stress and confusion into your learning game. You do not need failures, again our goal is not to break the behavior, only see what tests might break it so you know what areas still need more work before the world throws challenges at your dog they are not ready for. But you also don’t need to be afraid of a few mistakes, it’s ok to sometimes push a little harder and see if they are ready for more. Just back up and help if you see they cannot.

When proofing and you find a challenge that breaks the behavior you want to have a three and out plan, remember we want that 80% success rate. If I push and my dog makes a mistake, I simply reset and try again (I don’t scold or correct, just don’t reward) if my dog makes the same mistake again, then for the next attempt I need to try something different so my dog doesn’t fail the next attempt. The first mistakes are sometimes just honest mistakes, they don’t understand and when you don’t reward they get it and then are successful, if they make a mistake the second time right away it means they don’t understand and the first reset did not convey your information and what you are asking is likely too big of a jump, so back up and make the next attempt easier. You can stay closer, do whatever you were doing slower, or softer. You can reward sooner. But change something to make it easier for your third try if they have not earned the reward the first two attempts.

BUILDING DURATION FOR STAYS AND PLACES

Building duration is often the thing people struggle with the most! This is a dance. This is about being able to read your dance partner and see if they are calm and settled or about to move. When you really know a dog you can usually see they are going to break if you are paying attention. They generally all have certain tells, they might drop their heads every time right before standing, or shift their hips right before breaking a down stay, or they might start whining. Sometimes you can even see changes of breathing patterns and see muscle tension vs relaxation. We are looking for all these little tells so we can push right up to those limits without going over them.

When building duration we want an intermittent variable schedule the dog cannot predict but feels satisfied with. So for example, I don’t want to reward on a fixed schedule like give a treat every 10 seconds. Because if the dog sorts out this pattern, then when suddenly 10 seconds go by and he doesn’t get a reward you can get a sudden breakdown of behavior, because the dog thinks the reward won’t happen now because it’s not the pattern. So we want to constantly be changing the timing so it’s not predictable. So sometimes it’s 10 seconds or 15 or 12 or 8, but it’s always different, but it’s all close to the dog’s current tolerance.

So generally what I am doing is pushing up against but staying right around their current duration. So if I know my dog is great for 30 seconds but after that it all falls apart my schedule will look something like this: I reward at: 28 secs, then 31 secs later, then 27 seconds, then 30 seconds, then 33 seconds, then 26 seconds. So i’m going to be within that bubble near 30 seconds but i’m dancing between pushing for more and making it easier. And with each session those pushes get more as I’m building success. And my schedule is always also adjusted to the environment and my dog’s mood and what I am currently observing. So if distractions move in I might reward quicker, if the dog is calm and the environment is calm I might push longer.

One big piece of advice, use a timer or watch! People SUCK at gauging time when training a dog. You can feel like you’ve done a two minute stay when it’s really only been 45 seconds. So often people don’t realize they have not built as much duration as they believe, so time it! Most dogs have a tipping point, and once you get it duration after doesn’t matter, and it’s surprisingly not much for some dogs. So a dog that can do a ten minute down stay can often do and hour easily, but a dog that can’t do a two minute stay yet can take a long time to get to a 5 minute stay. Those first ten minutes are the hardest!

USING TOYS FOR HEEL AND LOOSE LEASH WALKING

To really effectively use toys to work on loose leash walking and heeling we want to first create a framework so the dog knows when to play and when to focus. We first teach our dogs a signal that says ok switch to play, this way I can hold the toy in my hands as I walk and not have it be a distraction and have my dog focusing on ME and not the toy.

We start by teaching our pups a nose touch to our hand is the gateway to the toy. This allows us to use our hand touch to shape the heel position we want and builds in focus to that hand target as we move.

So first start with just teaching the hand touch.

• Tuck a treat between your thumb and palm of your hand

• present your hand, as the dog’s nose touches your hand looking for the treat, click and move your thumb to release the treat

• Repeat 3-4 times

• then very quickly present your hand that same way without a treat, click and then feed a treat from your other hand

• add your verbal touch cue once your dog is readily nosing your hand whether there is a treat in it or not.

• once hand touch is solid you can switch to using toys to reward the touch (ideally you want to use what motivates your dog the most, if you have built both then you can use them interchangeably to keep up the motivation)

• you can use toys to reward both precision heeling or loose leash walking, you can see in the videos how I hold the toys while working: tucked under an arm pit for fast delivery for heel work, a ball in my opposite hand, or a tug toy tucked in a back pocket.

• if you have done the work from previous modules on having toys on the ground then it should be very easy to work with them in your hands or pocket as you train, if you skipped that step and are having issues with your pup trying to steal the toys from your hands or jumping all over you then you want to go back and work on that more before this training.

PLAY TRAINING SESSIONS

Ideally I want most of my training sessions to look like play. I want my puppies to think of training as fun engaged cooperative communication. I want enthusiastic responses to my cues. I want the impulse control and ability to think while in drive that comes with training using high energy play. Play training is one of the most powerful ways to overcome outside distractions as it makes you and your games the most valuable thing happening. It teaches your pup to stay focused and engaged. It teaches your puppy to control themselves around their toys.

OK, let’s see where you are at! Ready to graduate from Foundations and move onto Intermediate and advanced training????

If you can check at least 10 of the training exercises off the list submit a video for graduation assessment!!!

Keep going to work on intermediate and advancing foundation behaviors!!!

3 ENGAGEMENT POSITIONS

It’s a great idea to build a high value association with three most used positions we would need our dogs to be in when we engage and interact with them out in the world.

Position 1: Tucking between our legs, Middle. Why would you use this position? Maybe your dog is worried about their surroundings, being able to tuck into you is a way for them to feel more secure. It is a position a dog maybe put in for Veterinary Care, this exact position is how a Vet would draw blood from your pup’s neck. This is the position I put my dogs in when I towel their muddy feet. Having a dog be comfortable with being snugged in close to you helps them better handle restraint when it is needed.

Position 2: Lined up at your side, Heel. Having a dog find being at your side is the position you will use the most in life with them. You want this spot to be seen as a super valuable fun place to be. Your pup’s should LOVE lining up to your side.

Position 3: Facing you toe to toe, Front. Having your dog love coming in nice and close to your feet makes it far easier to put on leashes and to regain control if you find yourself calling them to you in the world. You want your pup to think being close to you and being touched is super valuable. This is how you prevent keep away issues.

You start this game by using that treat tossing game we played with the first puppy recall game and then as you work on these positions you use those treat tosses to move the pup away so you can keep practicing the various positions.

TROUBLESHOOTING

When things don’t go as planned, how to handle when your dog barks or gets distracted by things during training

The number one take away is create more space!!! Then try to get your puppy focused on your rewards again.

• Move back

• Try to get their focus on a reward

• If they cannot focus on the reward, move back more and try again, keep moving until you find the distance where they can think again

• Once they are taking the rewards, try to then reengage them into doing things for the treats

• Once your puppy is reconnected to you gradually move back closer to where you lost their focus

• If they react again by barking repeat the above steps

PEDESTAL TRAINING

This is one of the most important foundation behaviors you can teach a dog! It helps a dog learn how to confidently use their back legs independently of their front feet. It teaches them how to line up at your side. It can teach them to chase your side.

It is a foundation step for:

• Heel work

• Orbit trick

• Freestyle tricks

• Body awareness and conditioning exercises

When choosing a pedestal at first pick something very solid and sturdy that will not shift or move under your dog’s feet, later on you can use things less stable but we want the first work to feel super solid beneath their feet. Pick something a bit elevated, the more elevated the more weight it puts on their back feet and the more it physically works their rear end (a dog with bad hips or weak legs you would choose a very low pedestal) The more elevated the tighter spins you get. I use an upside down ceramic crock pot liner for mine, also big heavy water bowls work, 5 gallon buckets that are weighted work. Round is best, but you can use big books.

When shaping pedestal work my first step is basically like the box game:

• click and reward any interactions with your pedestal

• use where you reward to help your next steps, reward from your hand over the center of the pedestal

• shape until your pup knows the deal is to get their front paws on (again you can lure, but if you shape you will have a much more independent confident pedestal if you shape it)

• once they are 100% putting the front feet on, watch the back feet, if they move AT ALL, even the slightest weight shift, click and reward using the hand position I demonstrate in the video.

• the goal is to turn the dog’s head away from you as you reward so they are moving towards you with their rear legs.

• resist the temptation to step into them to make them move! We want movement towards us, not away!

• the way you shape this spin is entirely about reward placement and hand position!!! So plant your feet and don’t move your body into them.

• Once your dog is purposely moving towards you with back feet steps build up the number of steps before rewards.

• Once you have a half dozen steps between steps, be very aware of your hand and shoulder position, drop the shoulder of the side you want them to come to, place both hands near that side’s hip.

• Work BOTH sides from the very beginning. Expect it to be challenging going the new direction and remember, click the smallest movement even if it’s in the wrong direction, and use your reward placement and hand position to turn their heads so they are moving their rears towards the new side. REWARD PLACEMENT IS EVERYTHING.

• Once your dog can rotate both directions from the middle facing you to your side, make the new criteria their shoulders making gentle contact with your leg, teach them to target your leg as the click point.

• Once your dog knows they need to touch your leg for the click, start moving away from them as they are nearing your side so they need to chase you a couple steps to get the contact and click.

• Work up until you can circle the pedestal with them chasing you, in either direction.

• You can add a verbal to differentiate which side (I use here & side).

• Fade down the size of your pedestal gradually.

PUT YOUR TOYS AWAY

If you did the earlier clicker training with the box games and target training this is a fun way to get your dog building towards more cooperative training and tricks to help them learn how to target moving their toys in a deliberate way. Teaching retrieves and games like this really helps to prevent resource guarding and keep away, teaching puppies games like this with you creates a atmosphere of sharing rather than guarding.

Let’s talk a little about moving forward

This class is a starting point. The exercises shared here can bring you and your dog into a connected relationship based on positive reinforcement trained specific behaviors to help you both negotiate the world together. But it’s important to know training is never really “done”, behavior is fluid and relational, so if you suddenly stop practicing and sudden stop reinforcing good behavior you will see their responses start to fade and become inconsistent. So your behaviors have to be maintained, this means, occasionally you have to step back and remind your pup that these things are fun. You have to build to a schedule of random reinforcement so you don’t just stop rewarding, you start randomly doing so at a level that maintains your hard earned behaviors.

We will talk briefly about reward schedules as they are the secret to maintaining great manners and willing canine partners. Once you have taught a behavior you have to have a process of weaning treats that keeps your dog still engaged. If you simply stop rewarding because your dog “knows it” the behavior will decline, because knowing something and being motivated to do so are two entirely different things! You dog needs to know it and want to do it. When we first start training our puppies we begin with a CRF - continuous reinforcement, we reward every desired response, once our dogs understand we went through the generalizing stage and the proofing stage where we offered challenges and tests to see if our dog understands under any circumstance, during these stages we keep with a fairly high level of reinforcement to keep our dogs motivated as we pushed for more. Once we see that our dog can perform the behavior under any circumstances we then can begin the process of weaning treats, we do this employing the use of an Intermittent/random reinforcement schedule.

Intermittent random reward is like a lottery slot machine, we keep pulling that lever hoping this is the time it pays out vs CRF is like a vending machine, we put money in and expect something in return and if we don’t get it we get upset. We want our dogs thinking of rewards for behaviors like the slot machine, not the vending machine. We want to move their rewards to not a sure thing, but a I sure hope so thing. So we start to not reward every response, and when doing so we want to keep our emotional engagement high so our connection makes up for the drop in rewards. We want to still use our rewards but ask for more, better, faster, etc. Ideally you have done the suggested exercises where you have your food not always on you. Dogs learn patterns fast so when weaning you don’t want to be patterned about it, they will figure that out. So if you start rewarding every other response, then you will see they will do every other one well, and not so well the other.

They can learn what you look like when you plan to reward and not, thereby setting up the “he only listens when I have food” effect. Your puppy should not be able to tell if you plan to reward or not if you are doing things like having the food on the ground, or if you are good about petting and playing with them as part of rewarding. Stop yourself from reaching for that food before you ask for a behavior once you past that initial capturing phase when you first start training a behavior. Use your markers like “yes” and “good dog” to mark before you reach for the food. If your pup can’t read you when you intend to reward or not, then it is easy to maintain behaviors. And the single most important aspect to weaning treats is that when doing so, you are still reinforcing with your engagement and emotions. If you are great about keeping your hands involved in rewards, your voice is your most powerful tool, you can convey how happy you are and make those pups wiggle, if your voice can make your dog wiggle weaning treats it easy.

DEVELOPMENTAL STAGES AND CHANGES

It’s important to know your puppy is going to go through a few phases that will challenge your training and you want to keep working through them or all this hard work you have done can unravel. As your puppies approach adolescence it is natural to expect some push back. This is NOT your puppies being disobedient and defiant, this is not about you. This is about them discovering more of the world and wanting to explore those things more. They already know how you work, they want to learn more about the world around them. Leash pulling and recalls can suffer a LOT during adolescence so you need to be prepared to take a step back in your training when it does, resist the urge to be pissed off and take it personal. Instead, be MORE fun, reward more, give your dog MORE motivation to choose you.

Adolescence is a phase and is temporary but you can create relationship issues that last a lifetime during this phase if you decide to take things personally, or you can take a lot of dee breaths and come out the other side of this with that same sweet puppy you headed into adolescence with. They come back. But things like bringing punishment and harsh treatment into your relationship because of your frustration causes shifts that alter trust and create dynamics that can take a very long time undo. It’s natural and normal to sometimes lose your temper and maybe do something you wish you hadn't, we can both recover from that, but a systematic change where you start routinely bringing punishment into your relationship takes away trust and can lead to fallout that can completely change the course of the way your dog views you. So trust the process, trust they will find their heads again as their bodies sort out what to do with all those new hormones and abilities. Provide a lot of clear communication and lots of motivation. And it’s a great time for a new sport like Nosework, agility, rally obedience, trick training, fun active things you can learn together.

Adolescence is also a terrible time to let other teenage dogs raise your dog. I do not recommend a lot of dog parks or daycare for teenage dogs. They don’t make great choices during this age and can push other dogs into lashing out against them. So do keep them social with other dogs, but try to have that be with dogs they know, it’s so much better to take a walk or hike with other dog friends rather than just setting them loose in a mosh pit of dogs. This is a great time for taking group training classes for socializing instead of dog parks.