Help, My Doodle is Smarter than ME!

[Sherri, Sophie, Winston, & Kitty]

Hey everyone, last week Sophie graduated top of her obedience class. She's awesome at obedience, IN Class! Outside of class is a different story.

 

Last night I had them running around inside the tennis court because she would not settle down and I didn't want to go to the dog park in the dark (it was like 10pm). She was playing and jumping really agressively with winston and I could tell he was getting frustrated even though he didn't really react, he never does. So I tried to grab her and she bolted...story of our lives.

 

There was neighbour walking by with her dog and we were chatting a bit and it started up again with the aggressive play. I sheepishly told the neighbour that this is somewhat new behaviour and I'm working on it. Then I tried to leash them up to go but Sophie wouldn't come anywhere near me. I kept calling her and she just stood there looking at me. I told my neighbour she graduated from obedience class with near perfect marks but you'd never know it. She said she totoally believes it, Sophie is a smart girl and knows exactly what she is doing! I guess that's true. My doodle is outsmarting me!

 

Sometimes I feel like I'm begging her to come. It's so frustrating. If I pull out a treat, she's there instantly, but otherwise, forget it! I have to get someone else in the dog park to grab her for me because if she senses I want to leave she won't come near me. She's such a brat! Sometimes I just pretend to walk off with Winston, and go out the gate to the leashing area where the water fountain is. So far that has worked, she follows us thinking she's getting some water, which she does, but as she's drinking I make my move and grab her harness.

 

So yea, I need to nip this in the bud. I've started doing more training at home, like down stays and such, but she's even defying me on those. Winston sets a perfect example, and goes straight down, getting his treat instantly, and then waits patiencly as I have to repeat the cammand like 5 or 6 times and she just sits there looking at me like "what the heck lady??, hand over that treat now". I then have to lure her down with the treat, which is something I never needed to do in our obedience classes.

 

Did I meantion she's 10 months? *sigh*.

 

So I need some tricks and tips for improving recall, and generally reminding my puppy that she is not in charge here (even if she is *slightly* smarter than me).

 

 

[Adina P]

Sherri, I think when you are in a situation as the park or whatever and for whatever reason Sophie is NOT 100% reliable on recall and she's not leashed, etc....just SKIP the recall word and use other non-trained words, dance, run, wave a piece of steak...whatever it takes to get her to come to you.  But just don't weaken her recall word at that time.  She MIGHT obey it...but she also might NOT which just weakens her recall word further.

[Carol Brand]

I just wanted to say that re-directing a dog through work is an excellent training philosophy that has many real world applications.  I do this all the time with my dogs.

[Jaime and Barley Barker]

Actually, "redirection" is a much better word and the word my trainer uses. I think of it as "distraction" but it's really redirecting the dog from a negative behavior to a positive one.

[Jennifer and "Cooper"]

I too don't mean to be harsh but Sophie has you trained not the other way around.  We've always trained our dogs in the same manner that Carol describes.  Our trainer always said that it is called a command not a request.  You are telling the dog what it is supposed to do not asking it if it would like to do it.  We were always told to give the command once and then a leash pop correction immediately if the dog did not respond to the command.  The leash pop does not hurt the dog (whether with flat collar, choke chain or prong collar).  It just gets their attention and gives them the cue to pay attention to what you are telling them.  By giving the command over and over and then giving a reward when Sophie finally does what she is supposed to do, she has learned that she doesn't have to do what you tell her until she is ready to do it---and then she still gets a treat for ignoring you initinally.

We were also told to give priase 100% of the time but not to give treats every time,  If you give treats every time the dog begins to expect them and he's not doing the command because he is supposed to but rather because he is getting a treat.  This becomes a problem when you give the command but don't have any treats and then the dog is like "Well if you aren't going to give me a treat, then I'm not going to do what you tell me."

[Adina P]

I'm with Carol.  She has started obedience but hasn't finished because she has only learned HOW TO perform commands, she is not done being trained so she knows that everywhere, all the time, each command is a non-negotiable thing.Where, besides home, have you done training with her?  It has to take place every where (generally) you expect her to behave and under all types of situations with all sorts of distractions before she will be truly 'obedience trained.'  Up until now she's learned how to perform in class.  But she's young and most dogs aren't 'done' by 10 months.  So just expand her training and DO NOT give her opportunities to ignore your commands without a consequence and a retry till she gets it right a few times under the same conditions.

[Sherri, Sophie, Winston, & Kitty]

I think the problem is that I haven't been doing enough training with her period. I need to do it out on our walks, in the park, at other people's homes, in the store, etc. I'm going to come up with a plan for each of those scenarios. In the dog park park I always make her come in close and sit before throwing the ball and this really works. As I mentioned to Carol, I'm going to step this up a bit and do downs and grab her collar before I throw it. this might help when I'm calling her to leash her up to leave.

 

I never let her 'win' when it comes to her ignoring my commands, I will not end the exercise until she succeeds, but as far as not repeating myself I'm not sure how 'corrections' will help. If I pop the leash or something wouldn't she still need me to repeat the command? I'm wondering if I should just feed Winston his treat (he always gets it right), and then turn my back on Sophie and not give it another try. Perhpaps she will eventually get the message that if she wants the treat she needs to do it right the first time...

[Jennifer and "Cooper"]

You said, "I think the problem is that I haven't been doing enough training with her period. I need to do it out on our walks, in the park, at other people's homes, in the store, etc."  I think that is part of the reason she did so well at obedience class but doesn't do so well elsewhere.  She knows she is expected to obey during class but it sounds like you haven't extended the training outside of the class.

[Carol Brand]

Yes, training should always end on a positive note with the dog successfully completing an exercise.  However, I remember that you said that you had to repeat your SIT command 5-6 times and eventually lure her into her sit with a treat.  I would not call that a successful completion of the SIT command.  She did not follow your direction.  You basically had to bribe her into doing what you needed her to do.  What would happen if you didn't have a treat?

 

I try super hard to never repeat a command.  Repeating a command is the kiss of death in dog training.  When you repeat commands, the dog will learn to  wait for the 2nd or 3rd or God forbid 4th command before they get around to doing what you asked them to do.   How many times have you been out in public and seen this interaction:  Fluffy come.  Fluffffffy come. Fluf! NOW!  Flufffffffffy cooooommmmmmeeeeee. As you said, it is like the owner is begging the dog to come.  Think about this.  Someday, somewhere, responding immediately to a command the first time, might be the difference between life and death for your dog. 

 

Re the collar pop...Assuming the dog has already been trained to sit (and your dog knows very well what she should be doing)...  I say SIT and if my dog doesn't do it, then I take the collar and I pull it up and backward.  This is usually enough to get the dog to drop its rear.  Some dogs may have to be physically placed in to a sit.  I'm not mean.  I don't do it in a nasty way.  It is almost a Uh Oh... you forgot to sit so I'm going to have to fix that for you.  If you have a dog who is really oppositional, then your collar corrections and placement may have to get firmer as you repeat them.  Your dog is ultimately going to have to decide which side its bread is buttered one. Hummm.... I can sit right away and be treated like a queen or I can refuse and have my body arranged rather abruptly for me.  Every dog I've ever trained has had the light bulb go on really fast!

[Jennifer and "Cooper"]

Carol, I think you and I are long lost dog training twins!  This is exactly how we learned to train our Boxer and our Choc. Lab 14 years ago when we lived in Cincinnati.  And this is how I've been training Cooper since the day I brought him home when he was 7 weeks old.  People have always commented on how well behaved and trained our dogs are and we've always explained that they didn't come like that.  We spent a ton of time to get them to that point.

[Sherri, Sophie, Winston, & Kitty]

you guys are really raising some good points here. Definitely food for thought.

[Adina P]

Corrections are supposed to both help the dog get it right and be unpleasant enough to make the dog want to skip them and go straight to 'correct' on her own. So you say 'Sit' and if sit doesn't happen in 1-2 seconds the collar pop MAKES/HELPS her sit. Once she is sitting she gets praise and told how fabulous she is but she learns that if she doesn't sit on her own it is less comfortable to get to that sitting position. SHE gets to choose between comfort and praise or discmfort once she learns the rules. It DOES become her God-given choice. But consistency is KEY otherwise corrections will be unfair and confusing. It has to be kept black/white so she can make an educated choice.

[Jennifer and "Cooper"]

Well said Adina.