Dog Training: Molding

Molding

"Molding is a form of modeling in which we use props to manipulate the dog" (Sundance 48).  Using molding to teach your dog certain tricks that otherwise may be difficult to.  This method can be seen in tactics such as using guide wires to teach a dog to weave through poles or simply to cover their eyes with their paw using a piece of tape.

I wanted to try the molding method because it looked interesting and helpful for a trick I had no idea how to teach.  The book also mentions that this technique uses props to urge the behavior of the trick, (Sundance 48).  I took a liking to the approach when reading it because I thought my dog would click best with molding over the other ways I have tried so far.

Using this method, I tried to teach my dog the "Cover Your Eyes" trick. At first it was difficult for my dog to let me touch her paws, so I had to associate the action with a treat or reward.  However, once I tackled that obstacle, she, (my dog), repeatedly refused to keep her paw in the position.  She only kept her paw on her face a few times and for only a few seconds.  It was difficult for her to realize what the trick was and the method just seemed distracting.

To conclude my experience with the Molding method, I would like to say that out of a lot of the tricks I tried and used during these trials, I was most unsuccessful with this one.  My dog wasn't the most comfortable with me touching her paws and didn't understand the connection of the method and the trick.

Overall, this experience with trying different methods to train my dog helped me find out what methods my dog learns best with. I think she worked well with the clicker method and the luring method.  I will definitely try implementing these two techniques into her training from now on.  I'm really glad I chose to share and document my experience with this because I felt that it helped better my understanding about training my dog and helped me practice my patience.
Thank you for reading!

To end, my question is What method do you think would work best with your dog?

Sundance, Kyra. The Dog Tricks and Training Workbook: a Step-by-Step Interactive Curriculum to Engage, Challenge, and Bond with Your Dog. Quayside Pub. Group, 2009.

Dog Training: Repetition and Consistency

Repetition and Maintaining Consistency 

"Dog training is all about consistency.  The more consistent you can make your requests, feedback, and consequences, the quicker your dog will learn," (Sundance, 50).  As with many things, consistency is one of the key things in training and teaching your dog.  Having a uniformity with your commands results in a better understanding from your dog, (Sundance, 51).  Within the theme of consistency, the book recommends that a dog have 100 repetitions to fully learn the trick.  I decided to put this advice to the test with a new trick.

Over the course of two days I practiced a new trick, (shaking with a paw), 50 times each day.  This totaled for 100 repetitions total with the trick.  As I look back, I see the improvement from the 50th repetition to the 100th.  During the two days, I kept everything I did consistent, keeping the treat size and amount, motions, and phrases I said, consistent and the same throughout.  I felt as though this aspect of the training helped familiarize my dog with the trick faster. As I repeated the same phrases or rewards for completion, it was more clear to my dog that she would get the treat only after completing the specific action.  In addition, each repetition became slightly better as we went along, and there was an obvious improvement from the first to the last.

In conclusion, I would say that reading about implementing consistency and repetition within my training with my dog helped tremendously.  This is not to say that I did not know that these two aspects were important.  However, reading about them in this book helped identify the specifics of how to channel these ideas into training.  Repetition and consistency definitely helped my dog training skills.

Doing 100 repetitions of a trick at one time can be boring and frustrating, how would you divide up the repetitions? (doing it in one day vs doing it over the course of four days)

Sundance, Kyra. The Dog Tricks and Training Workbook: a Step-by-Step Interactive Curriculum to Engage, Challenge, and Bond with Your Dog. Quayside Pub. Group, 2009.

Dog Training: Luring

Luring

Luring is a technique used to lead the dog to get the treat to get into the correct position. By definition, luring is "the process of encouraging the dog to follow a treat to get into the correct position," (Sundance, 44). Before reading about this, I unintentionally used the technique to teach my dog to do many tricks.  However, although luring can be used to teach majority of tricks, it cannot be used to teach tricks such as fetch.  

I used luring to make my dog sit and spin in circles.  When I used this technique I found that it was the easiest way to teach the trick.  Luring is easy to learn for both trainer and dog.  In addition, all I had to hold was the treat, unlike when I used a clicker.  The clicker tended to get in the way and I struggled to hold everything and multitask efficiently. 

Today I used luring to teach my dog to roll over. I was surprised how quickly she picked it up and that she picked up the whole trick right away.  Usually, she'll halfheartedly do the trick when I first teach her.  However, when teaching her to roll over, she easily understood where I was luring her with the treat.  In addition, I think the luring technique was more useful than other techniques such as molding her body to do the trick. 

To conclude, I believe that luring was by far the most simple, clear, and efficient approach to training my dog.  However, it has limitations and cannot be used for some of the tricks I want to teach my dog, so I will have to find other methods for these.  Overall, my dog reacted well when I used this procedure and I think that luring can be effective for other dogs too.

As I said before, I have used luring to teach my dog tricks without realizing it. Have you unintentionally used luring to teach your dog a trick?  If not, what trick would you like to use this method to teach?

Sundance, Kyra. The Dog Tricks and Training Workbook: a Step-by-Step Interactive Curriculum to Engage, Challenge, and Bond with Your Dog. Quayside Pub. Group, 2009.

Dog Training: Hand Signals

Using Hand Signals

Training your dog to complete certain tasks can be difficult without certain methods.  An important and key part of instructing your dog is consistency.  Without this key, your dog can get confused easily.  Hand signals can maintain this consistency.  A clear, concise, hand movement can be useful for dogs to perform in places that are quiet, among other benefits, (Sundance, 59).

You can make up your own signals for tricks but keep in mind that hand signals correspond with the trick you want them to complete.  "A downward hand motion is used to signal "down" and parallels your initial luring of the dog near the floor," (Sundance, 59).  The hand signal coincides with how you initially lead them to complete the trick.

Today, I worked on moving from leading my dog to complete the "spin circles" trick.  I attempted to move from leading her with a treat to complete a circle to simply using a hand signal.  I found that this process took some time, but tricks were easier and better executed when the hand signal was used. The picture below demonstrates the different movements thoroughly and carefully.

(Sundance, 59)

The left side of the image shows the woman leading her dog. The right side is the hand signal suggested.  First, I lead her to complete the trick.  This made it easy for her to complete the maneuver, but made her chase after the treat recklessly. I tried the trick this way 10 times, where the results are mostly that she succeeded. 
Second, I tried using just the hand signal.  This was difficult for her to understand because although the signal was based off of the movement, she struggled to make this connection at first.  Therefore, completing the trick this way took many more tries and was scarcely successful.  However, I think that this may be partly because of my dog's unfamiliarity with the trick.
Therefore, I draw the conclusion that the hand signals can be more convenient but take time and familiarity to use.  The signals can be used in place of verbal commands and sometimes work best.

As stated earlier, you can make up your own hand signals for the tricks you wish to teach your dog.  What kind of hand signals have you made up for your dog, or what signals do you wish to use?


Sundance, Kyra. The Dog Tricks and Training Workbook: a Step-by-Step Interactive Curriculum to 
               Engage, Challenge, and Bond with Your Dog. Quayside Pub. Group, 2009.

Dog Training: Clickers

Using Clickers 

Training your pet to do tricks requires many things.  Some of these aspects include strategy, rewards, and copious amounts of patience.  Strategies vary and require some testing to determine which ones your dog responds best to.  However, they can be vital in teaching your dog to complete tricks.
My dog, Sadie, is very hyper and her attention can only be held for small amounts of time at once.  She gets excited very easily, but is very smart, making teaching of tricks complicated.  Methods can be used to channel her focus into learning the tricks, and I wanted to try a new one.

One of these many methods is using a clicker.  Clickers are devices that fit within your hand and when pressed makes a click-click sound (Sundance 32). Often, clickers can be used to train dogs instead of trainers' using their voices because it's a more clear and consistent sound. 

For this post I chose to use the clicker method to teach my dog a trick, in addition to treats.  The clicker definitely helped tell my dog when she had completed the trick, therefore creating more clear instruction on my part.  Even though I got frustrated the clicker helped maintain my dogs focus and kept it from being clouded by my emotions.  This is mentioned in the book: "A clicker separates the reward marker from any frustration, anger or other emotion in your voice.  It allows the dog to focus on what he is doing, rather than worrying about how your mood is changing," (Sundance 32)  This piece of evidence is what made me pick this method to try out. I think this is one of the best advantages of using a clicker because it keeps my dog from thinking I'm mad at her when I get frustrated.  However, I did notice that although she responded well to this method, it still took a long time and multiple tries for her to understand what she was doing.  Therefore I think this isn't truly the best method in for her. At first she was confused on what the clicker was, but I introduced what it meant, and after a little while, she started to understand.

Overall, I think this method is useful, but not by itself.  It's a difficult strategy to navigate and although it helped my dog, it needed a good amount of help from verbal commands and treats. In addition, the clicker was hard to hold when I was trying to demonstrate the trick. This experience helped my dog improve her listening skills and learn a skill faster than if we tried the trick without the clicker.  This section of reading in my book showed me how to appropriately and effectively use the clicker and how it would help me and my training with my dog.

The trick I used for this was spinning, where my dog would spin around and sit on command.  What tricks have you taught, or tried to teach your dog?  Did you get frustrated while teaching?

Sundance, Kyra. The Dog Tricks and Training Workbook: a Step-by-Step Interactive Curriculum to Engage, Challenge, and Bond with Your Dog. Quayside Pub. Group, 2009.