The following post and video are by Ciarán Williamson, who owns and trains an amazing Old English Sheepdog, Clover. Ciarán shared this on Facebook and what he said really resonated with me. When I was training my first puppy, I remember my first dog trainer, Susan Greenbaum of Barking Hills Country Club, telling us to give a command once and make sure it's followed. I was eight years old, and don't remember whatever reasoning she shared, but what Ciarán explains in his piece makes so much sense to me. I am probably guilty of not giving my dogs enough credit, and this was a gentle reminder that they are more intelligent and complex than I may at times give them credit for.
I really like this video as an example of the way my dog and I intuit each other. Read this whole textbook if my thoughts about dog training interest you, otherwise it’s just a cute video.
I wanted to video my first attempt at getting her to back up the stairs after one cue, so this is the past couple of weeks of slowly reinforcing striving more steps together with some rest periods in between (because I have read a lot of research about how different increments of long rest periods and shorter training sessions help long term memory.) I want to say this about 12 or 13 training sessions, starting with marking and rewarding for one step because she already knew “back up” (and I eventually changed this to “step back” so I can send her to the stairs to do this even if she isn’t at them.)
There are several points in the video where she stops and stares at me and she is waiting for her marker and reward. I know that she knows I want her to continue backing up, but she is not yet clear on how long I want her to do it. At this point I want her to know that I want her to keep going until she is at the top of a flight of stairs (and doesn’t feel the next step against her back legs, she actually tried stepping up onto air at the top of the stairs a couple of times at first hahaha, very cute wish it was on video.)
I could have repeated my command, but she had heard it the first time and she was still engaged. She was staring at me and waiting for an indication about what was coming next. I kept my posture and facial expression consistent the entire time to help her realize that she was still in the middle of performing the same action I asked her to perform and she had not finished yet.
I see a lot of folks get impatient or doubt their dog understands and they will repeat themselves or otherwise send out a bunch of extraneous information that can be really confusing. Dogs can understand our implicit forms of communication and they are capable of making inferences and are complex, social animals.
If your dog without a doubt knows what the command you gave means and they are still focused on you, but have not followed through with the action yet, please give them some time to process what you asked and the situation. It’s good for them emotionally, it’s good for your relationship with them, and it’s very very good for their long term learning.
Building up a fast response time should come after you and the dog have already established that you understand each other and understand that you expect them to follow through with what is asked the first time you say it. Getting frustrated and yelling and/or repeating yourself does not actually help your dog take you seriously. That’s just my opinion about it, and while there are not a lot of studies about how dogs learn frankly, there are a lot about human learning and the overlap that already exists from the dog studies we do have on learning and social/emotional development (I think often about attachment studies in dogs and get very weird emotional feelings about parenting lol) makes me feel like I am not doing wrong by my dog by applying some of those concepts while raising and training her, even though she is not a human.
I’m inexperienced for sure in the grand scheme of things but also the results speak for themselves tbh. The places we continue to struggle with some behaviors and tricks and whatnot are because I haven’t yet learned how to implement some of these things in all areas, but that’s okay, it’s a process we’re working on together.
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