Dog training tips - March Madness

As some of you know I was creating a dog training video a day for the month of march.
It was a whole load of fun and really had me thinking. Subjects from behavioral terms like explaining the quadrants of learning, to what I feed and other random ramblings - I hope you enjoy

I hope you enjoy these, thank you so much for all your support. I dont know if I will do a video a day again :D but it was well worth it 

If you are interested in more (better) information then check out this book (Im not selling it, its just an affiliate link - which dosent cost you anything) I really enjoyed it

Dog training tips, march madness, Punishments in dog training

Todays March dog training tips video

Do you punish your dog? Should you be offended if someone says you punish your dog? What does it mean?

Dog training. March Madness, 10 positive things

Ever been stressed with your dog?
Feel they are naughty ALL the time?
Feel you spend your day telling them off?

Check out my video for a simple solution and a wee challenge

Find out why if you actually look for the good things your dogs are doing you can feel better about your dog, and they can actually be better behaved with no training

If you are interested in training for your difficult dogs I really recommend Control Unleashed 

Living the reactive life

A few months ago I remember a lady commenting on a forum that she had never owned a reactive dog but she had been to enough seminars and read enough books that she was confident that in no time any dog of hers would no longer be reactive.

The science can make it sound nice and easy

But one thing that tends to be glossed over is the effect on the human of living with a reactive dog.

For a while at least its not just your dog who is reactive, your stress levels become sky high.
When you are out and about you need 6 pairs of eyes.
Gone are the happy chilled walks in the country, now you are scanning the horizon in all directions looking for 'triggers'
Is that fallen log over there actually a dog waiting to pounce?
Does that person have a dog with them or is it just a carrier bag?
and at the same time you are constantly scanning your dog and trying to see what they are spotting, trying to get your plans into motion when they spot a trigger
And freaking out that even that giant empty field you have drove out into the middle of the country to find might have a random person suddenly appear from behind a hedge with no warning - and a barky GSD on a short lead (yup it happened)

You dont just HAVE a reactive dog, you feel like a reactive dog!

And other people are so helpful!
Some people seem to assume that a dog is reactive because you are not a strong enough leader (sheesh, I wonder which telly entertainer they got that gem of behavioural (non) science from), they either give you looks of scorn or (better yet) start yelling at you!
Suddenly everyone is an expert. When I first got Mia I was inundated by people offering me help from teaching me to time my corrections properly to some kind (!) person offering to lock Mia in their garden with their dog so they could 'sort out who was the boss'!!

And there is the other wonderful well meaning advice that at the moment you just cant follow - like when you have messed up and your dog isnt coping with something and has charged to the end of the lead on their back legs screaming at something and someone tells you you should keep the lead loose

Or you turn a corner to get away from an oncoming dog and find a horse and rider - and someone tells you you shouldnt pick up a dog

Sometimes you have to break the rules to get out of a situation.

Sometimes I forget how far I have come with Mia, when we are walking in the park, playing, having fun and I realise I am not scanning the horizon. I am not horribly stressed

I try and not forget what it was like tho so I can try and not judge people who are living with it just now.
All the theory in the world is all well and good, and there are some great methods out there that can and do help dogs all the time. As you can see from the photographs, Mia is a pretty happy dog most of the time, she has canine friends and can play offlead. It is possible to improve things (she will always be reactive, but she wont always be reacting)
Nothing can actually prepare you for what it is actually like to really live it at the time.
I hope I will never judge someone or condemn them if they realise they cant cope with a reactive dog. If you can in the long run it is really rewarding, but no shame if you own up that you cannot cope.

Why dosent the dog just move away?

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10152936315227506
In a group I am in people are chatting about this video (sorry Im not sure how to put it up here so just click the link)

It is a confusing video, to start with it looks like the dog is really enjoying licking the baby, when the baby moves there are loads of signs from the dog that he is not wanting the baby there, leaning away, ears back, whale eye etc
But the argument most people use is that the dog must be happy because there is nothing stopping him moving away

This really got me thinking
I often say to Ben 'you can just move away' when a male dog gets a little over friendly with him, even if the other dog is on the lead Ben will not just move away, instead he will start giving out warnings. I try and step in before this point but sometimes Im not quick enough and he starts freezing, whale eye, lip wrinkles, growls and sometimes even a air snap

I actually dont think dogs see an option to move away - all their signs is to tell the other dog/animal to move away
The only time I can think of I have seen a dog move away is actually in fear (and even then only some dogs move away due to fear, many more try and make the other thing go away)
Its almost like moving away is an apology so the dog being 'wronged' is not going to say sorry, he is going to make the other dog (baby) do that

So please do not assume your dog is OK with something because they havent chose to move away - perhaps they dont see the option of actually moving away

Why I am pledging to try and stop supporting abusive dog training methods

Hopefully the title should be a little shocking to those of you who have been following me for a while as I am loud and proud about my stance as a force free trainer.

But sadly I have just realised that I also support abusive training methods without meaning to.

Today on a facebook page someone asked why there are no videos or advice out there to help people in a force free way to deal with real world problems like aggression, food guarding, jumping up etc.

I think most of us to start with were thinking 'of course there are, there are thousands of videos out there'

and there are

But if you dont know to search for 'force free' ' positive' or even 'clicker' then when you search the vast majority of things that you will find will be fairly abusive methods.

This is because of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) Something I have been looking at lots to try and improve my Etsy Shop
There are thousands and thousands of dog training articles and videos online, so when you search for one the search engine has to decide which are the most important and most relevant  to show you first.

Every search engine is different and they change their algorithms all the time but there are a several common things that are likely to make something rank higher.

(in no particular order)
1. How close the title matches the exact terms you searched for
2. How close the tags (metatags, labels) match the exact terms you searched for
3. How active the site is/how recently it was updated
4. How many people have viewed the page
5. How many inbound links are there to that page
6. How relevant to the subject is the website the inbound links come from
7. What terms are used on the inbound link
8. How many people 'liked' the page


1. - exact terms
If you just search for 'dog training' then there will be thousands of pages with that term in the title, most search engines will rate more highly a page that has the exact words in that order 'Dog Training' above another page that had them in a different order - for example 'Learn all about dog training' would rate way higher than 'Training for your dog'.  The position of where the words appear in the title can also make a difference 'Dog training advice' will rate differently than 'advice for dog training' not always higher tho

2. Tags
Very similar to the titles, the person making the page can add in tags for SEO, phrases tend to be better than single words - so 'Dog' and 'training' will be less effective than 'Dog training'

3. Activity - makes sense - you are less likely to want a site from 10 years ago that has not been updated since

4. People viewed - again this suggests an active popular place

5. Inbound links - this is you and me linking our friends to pages we like

6. Relevant inbound links - this means on some search engines they will rate more highly a dog trainers linking to a dog training page than a hairdresser

7. Terms on the inbound link. For me to link to my shop I can add the link to any word or group of words. Linking to the word Link would be less relevant than linking to a phrase like Needle Felted Custom Dog Sculptures   (yup shameless plugs)

8. In places like youtube and etsy things are rated higher the more people like them


So
We are all helping increase the SEO of abusive dog trainers every time we link to a video and go 'ewww this is so cruel and horrible'
and the more we have built up our profile and followers the 'better' our help will be in actually pushing that horrible page more to the top of a search

And very sadly it appears that every time we post something 'horrible' thousands of people click on it, comment on it and share it
But when something nice and positive is posted far far less people click on it or interact with it at all.

So we are giving extra help to the cruel training methods SEO.

I used to believe it was important to comment and share all these videos so the public could see it wasnt the only way to train.
Now I see by doing that I am making these things MORE into the public eye and pushing out all the wonderful positive things out there.

We need to stop giving these people free publicity.
Reward the positive videos and articles, share them, comment on them and create them ourselves
That way when someone looks for something on a particular problem they are more likely to find the positive solutions
Then if they try them they are less likely to have a problem dog and less likely to be tempted by the more abusive methods.

Lets be positive in getting rid of abusive training methods
Reward good articles and videos by helping peoples SEO, Watch, like, comment and share
Show alternatives to the abusive methods and ignore them, dont click on them, then slowly they will start to go away

Recall - can you see what they are thinking about?

Just for a bit of fun I thought I would shoot of a few photos right at the moment I called my dogs from a down stay

It seems pretty clear that the instant Ben is called all he thinks about is grub :D and Mia seems to be trying to check out what he is eating 

Goodbye 2013

I hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas. I am up north with mum and the dogs of course :) My plans for 2014 also include more blogging!! So keep watching this space

That dont impress me much!

Oh an earworm and a ranty post all at once - its a twofer Wednesday

Take a wee look at this video

Some of you will look at that and think 'Amazing' 'What control to have so many dogs under control offlead beside a busy road'
And I suppose in some respects if you are struggling with your dog pulling you all over the place and not listening to you this can look pretty impressive.
But
A few questions to ask yourself there.
Whos benefit is a walk for? Would you like to be those dogs? What is being gained by them being offlead there?
Have a look at the dogs body language, see how their bodies are all curled in on themselves - this is not just the conformation of the dogs, they are keeping their heads and tails down, making themselves look small and unimportant so as to not draw attention to themselves. Notice how they are doing their best not to look at anything as they walk about, their entire focus is making sure they stick to their position.
Dogs need mental and physical exercise every day - walking like this without looking and sniffing is only physical exercise, they might as well be on a treadmill
Notice how they dont want to look at their owner at all and he dosent want to look at them either, I love walking WITH my dogs, smiling at each other, spotting what they have seen, seeing their happy faces when we take the turn to the park, watching the different shapes their waggy tails make when they sniff different smells (I can even tell by the wag if one of their friends has just gone into the park)
Could I walk my dogs offlead to the park? Yes I am sure I could - BUT - it is risking my dogs for the sake of my ego - betting their lives on my training - and all for the time it takes to stick a lead on.

If you are having a bad day and stressed that your dog is pulling a bit - look down at them - smile and be rewarded with that waggy tail - a little bit naughty for me is 100 times better than a depressed robot

Myths about positive trainers - 1 Positive trainers just advise difficult dogs are put to sleep

I honestly dont know when this myth started. I know lots of followers of a certain TV celeb seem to strongly believe he is the last chance for many aggressive dogs because other trainers would just have the dogs put to sleep.

This is as far from the truth as is possible. But before I go into that lets look at the fact that yes, many dogs are put to sleep

In the world today we have more dogs than we have homes for and so it is a sad fact that in some rescues some people have to make the difficult decision to put dogs to sleep.
That is not a failing of the rescues - and it has nothing to do with any trainers - positive or otherwise. The blame there is firmly on the heads of the people producing too many dogs.

Yes often it will be aggressive dogs or dogs of a certain type who are put to sleep, there are two reasons for this, it is harder to find good homes for these dogs, there are plenty of homes for small fluffy puppies so it makes sense when you have to free up space to go for the dogs that are unlikely to find a home anyway. Also if a dog has bitten in the past many re-homing centres have policies of not rehoming these dogs incase they bite again, not only would the people in the centre feel responsible they also may end up being sued and that will have a cost impact on how many dogs they can help in the future.

Some trainers may refuse to work with aggressive dogs, that does not mean they are saying the dogs need to be put to sleep, just that they either do not have the experience to work with this type of dog or their insurance does not cover them for this type of work.
That is fair enough, there are specialists in every walk of life, you dont go to a pet dog trainer to teach your dog to be an obedience champ, dont expect all dog trainers to be aggression specialists.

Referring you to someone else is NOT  saying the dog needs put to sleep.

For a behavioural issue you need a behaviourist (try the APBC in the UK, these people have to be qualified to a high level with lots of experience in the field as well - remember anyone can call themselves a behaviourist but not everyone has any qualifications in the subject)
A GOOD behaviourist wont even see you till you have seen a vet to rule out any medical issues.

So do behaviourists tell people to get their dogs PTS?
Lets think about this - someone whos job is to help dogs with behavioural issues telling people to put the dogs to sleep - do you think these people would actually be in a job long if they killed off all their clients?
When talking about options they may well mention it as an option - IF the owners dont feel they are willing or able to do the work required to help their dog. Even using punishment methods to 'fix' a dog takes time, the TV celeb often takes 'difficult' cases away with him to work with them over weeks or even months.

Issues like seen on TV shows are bread and butter to good positive behaviourists, you dont see thousands of films of them helping because it is actually very dull to watch, no man v beast fight, the dogs are kept calm and taught how to not only act calm but to BE calm around the thing that they used to be aggressive about.

If you still doubt positive trainers help aggressive dogs then have a look at all the literature that is out there to help people with problem dogs - I will link a few below

Control Unleashed
Click to calm
Feisty Fido
Calming signals
Scaredy dog
Stress in dogs 

Thousands of  positive dog owners quietly rescue and help difficult dogs all over the world, just get chatting to people ringside at an agility show or have a look at the many forums and facebook pages for positive training and you will see what an amazing supportive community there is for people helping others with difficult dogs

Myth BUSTED
  

What is positive training to you - PDBAD

http://benmcfuzzylugs.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/pdbad-what-is-positive-training-to-you.html
Check out the link above for other posts in this day

So for the first post in the positive dog bloggers action day I thought we should talk about what positive actually means to us
There is a whole lot of confusion about what 'positive training' actually is

For me personally it does not mean I only use positive reinforcements in my training (see the post on quadrants below) Yes I try and focus on them, but I dont need to get involved in arguments about if witholding a click is punishment or not

For me positive training is more about a state of mind. Traditional training sets up a dog to do the wrong thing and punishes them for that.
In my mind that is very negative, it is negative in that you are always seeing the bad in your dog, it is negative for your dog as working with you becomes stressful, always waiting to see if they have done wrong, and it actually has a negative effect on your dogs mental development, they actually use their brains less because doing things is punished

In positive training you are looking for your dog doing the right thing and finding ways to teach him to do things that you want. If you look for the positive you see exactly how often your dogs are actually good. For the past couple of hours my dogs have been napping and quietly pottering around the house.
At one point they barked at a noise outside for about 30s
I could focus on that negative and think how bad it is my dogs were barking - but really in 120 min my dogs did something I didnt like for 30s of that. Thats pretty good odds

And here is the extra good thing - positive dosent mean that I let them away with things I dont like. If a behaviour is something that I dont like rather than punishing them for it I can see it as a training exercise, I could desensitise my dogs to noise outside the house, I could teach them something else to do to alert me to noises outside, or, I could manage the situation and have the radio on so they are less bothered by noises outside - or of course if I liked being warned of people outside I could leave the behaviour and just ignore it or even reward it.

At no point do I actually have to punish my dogs for a natural behaviour that I may not like.

So to me a positive trainer is one who
Looks for the good in their dog and rewards that to make it more likely to happen and who trains the dogs alternative behaviours when they do something they dont like.
They train focusing on positive reinforcement, minimise negative punishment and avoid positive punishment and negative reinforcement.

Please remember and support the other posts on todays PDBAD

PDBAD - What is positive training to you?

5th of July 2013 is the first Positive Dog Bloggers Action day. Please try and post on or around the 5th July to be guaranteed to be included, If you are later I will include your link when I get to it.

Your post it to be on 'What is positive training to you?' (or force free, reward based or whatever you call your training :) )

Include this line to this page on your blog and comment underneath with your link to your post and if it is approved then your link will appear below here from the 5th July
http://benmcfuzzylugs.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/pdbad-what-is-positive-training-to-you.html

Please visit as many of the blogs here, comment on them and support the positive community

BenMcfuzzylugs : What is positive training to you?

Return to PDBAD main page

Positive dog bloggers action day

As you will have seen before I have joined the agility blog action day, a few of us were looking for ways to popularise positive training methods as there are way too much punishment based information out there.
So we have decided to create the positive dog bloggers action day.
This is for anyone to join who uses force free modern scientific methods based mainly on positive reward based training.
No choke chains, e collars, prong collars or setting the dog up to fail and punishing them for it.

If you fit the criteria take a look for one of the upcoming action days and write a post for that - or write a post on one of the old topics with a link to the topic page and a comment with the link to your blog and if approved your link will be added.

Also try and visit the other blogs on here and comment and share their work

Friday 5th July - What is positive training to you?

Dog training 101 - The quadrants

In the last post I discussed Reinforcements and Punishments, today we are going to learn
the four quadrants of operant conditioning.

For this we need to define positive and negative

Positive - something is ADDED
Negative - something is REMOVED

So this leads us to the four quadrants

Positive reinforcement - Something is ADDED to makes the dogs behaviour MORE likely to happen
Positive punishment - Something is ADDED to make the dogs behaviour LESS likely to happen
Negative reinforcement - something is REMOVED to make the dogs behaviour MORE likely to happen
Negative punishment - Something is REMOVED to make the dogs behaviour LESS likely to happen

So what does that really mean?

Positive reinforcement
If the dog does something we like we give them something they like - for example when the dog sits nicely we give them a treat and that makes them more likely to want to do that again.

Positive punishment
For example when a dog moves out of the heel position a jerk on a prong collar makes them less likely to want to move out of heel position again

Negative reinforcement
When a dog starts to recal back to you you the e-collar stops zapping the dog so he is more likely to want to recal to you

Negative punishment
When a dog jumps all over you for attention when you come into the house so you ignore them while they are bouncing - he is less likely to want to jump over you for attention in the future.

One other thing to consider
Reinforcing behaviours makes dogs not only repeat the behaviour you reinforced but it also makes them more confident to try new things and use their brains to problem solve so actually helps make your dog smarter, more confident and happier

Punishing makes a dog not only less likely to repeat the behaviour you punished but also makes them less confident to try new things, less likely to try and use their brians to solve problems and can actually make them less smart, less confident and less happy

Of course in the real world punishments happen but when your dog presents you with a training challenge it is always best to try and fix it using as much positive reinforcement  as possible, a limited use of negative punishment where needed and to try and avoid positive punishment and negative reward

Dog training 101 - reinforcements and punishments

I did something like this a little while ago but things drop off the bottom of blogger so I though I would update it.
For the next few weeks I am going to post some articles on basic dog training. The good news is dog training is actually dead easy, there is no special woo-woo to learn, no mystical energy you need and you dont have to have been raised by a pack of wolves in Mongolia to know how to train dogs.
Just a couple of really simple scientific facts to learn.

Dogs (and all other animals including us) learn by doing something and the consequences dictate whether they are more likely to do it again in the future.

If something bad happens they are less likely to do it again
If something good happens they are more likely to do it again

In dog training we call something that makes the behaviour less likely to happen in the future a PUNISHMENT

We call something that makes the behaviour more likely to happen in the future a REINFORCEMENT

Most people would consider the term 'punishment' to mean something harsh like hitting the dog, but it dosent have to be - look at the definition - it just means something that makes the dogs behaviour less likely to happen.
The dogs behaviour shows you if something is reinforcing or punishing, you may think a pat on the head is enough 'pay' for your dog to work for, it will be for some dogs, but if you are finding no increase in the behaviour you wanted then at that time for that dog in that situation the pat on the head just isnt reinforcing enough

How to untrain the recall

A great recall is something that just makes me smile - when your dogs drops everything and races to be beside you with a great big happy grin.
Unfortunately it is way too easy to untrain that recall - just about every day I see people untraining their recal.
4 favourite ways to untrain a dogs recall
1. Call them back to you when they are in a situation you haven't fully trained for so you know full well they will not come back
2. Call them then then chase after them to try and catch them
3. Punish them when you finally catch up with them
4. Only call them back when you want to stick them on the lead and go home

So what could we do different in each situation?
1. If you know they wont come back don't call them, accept they are running off at that point and then work on training their recall more. Remember dogs learn to associate words with what they are doing at the time - if they are running away then they may even learn that 'Bracken CO-OME' means run away as fast as possible

2. Dogs LOVE LOVE LOVE chase games - what great fun they can start a chase game by running away when you are calling. Running away is a better option (if its safe) and you can train a really solid chase recall (I will go over it in a later post) or if you feel you need to go after them better to walk slowly and walk round them rather than directly at them

3. So common because people thing the dogs were running away to be bad. This is simply not the case, if a dog doesn't do something it is because you haven't trained it properly. You want your dog to REALLY want to be around you, if you punish them when you reach them what you are actually doing is making your dog LESS likely to want to be around you - better to make a fuss of them when you catch up with them - make yourself fun to be around

4. Taking away a dogs freedom is actually punishing, if a walk consists of you letting them off the lead and pretty much ignoring them till its time to get them on the lead again then your recall isn't going to be all that interesting. Much better that on a walk you call them back several times, sometimes to give them a nice treat, to play a game, to show them something interesting you have found. You can even call them too you, clip the lead on, give them a few treats then unclip them again.

Cesar and Allan

When I heard Cesar Millan was to be on the Allan Titchmarsh show I was initally worried
I was actually so worried I was amongst the many many people who wrote to his production team complaining and sending loads of videos and quotes from people about the cruelty in Cesar Millans methods.
I wasnt hopefull thinking this would just be a interview about how great CM is
But I was very very surprised! A hard hitting interview that really had Cesar on the back foot
Enjoy

Cesar Millan - Gizmo

Another clip from Cesar Millans new show - and another bite for him

Granted this owner has made quite a few mistakes but Gizmo is actually really tolerant of what for him is a pretty confusing thing
Cesar is just looking for confrontation - Gizmo even backs off and sits, which would be a perfect time to let him get the food - but it seems that Cesar just wants to push the dog until he bites to make things look 'good' for the TV

Dogs guard food because they dont trust that they are safe to eat unmolested
Teach them that you are a trustworthy person and your hands bring them nice things
Teach children to leave dogs alone when they are eating
Noone needs to be bitten

LoLaBuLand Drumming challange

If you havent been over there already you should really check out http://www.lolabuland.com/ for some amazing agility and tricks training.

She is running a competition just now so we decided to try entering

For it I had to teach the dogs to drum and then post a video and the one with the most likes wins one of her amazing training videos

So please please please go over here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDlwh0NLPT8

and if you like it 'like' it for me :)

Mia quite likes this trick - it involves her stamping her feet and being rude!!

Ben - hmm well we are working on it - he is so polite :)

Mias new trick

Just started a new trick for the dogs

Mia is really getting the hang of it - wrapping her paws around the pole. She can do left paw, right paw or even both paws

I haven't got any of it on verbal command yet but it is very cute

Bless Ben!!

He hasn't quite got it yet!

It took quite a while of getting him used to the pole for me to even get him to be anywhere close to the pole - which is interesting because if we are weaving or circling the pole Ben gets overexcited and headbuts the thing

So far he has got the idea that I want something to do with his paws, but it just makes no sense to him (check the face out)

I know I know - dogs should not play with sticks

But I didn't have the heart to tell Mia

I had a whole sackful of toys with me, even a ball with REAL rabbit skin stitched onto the end like a tail

But no the lady doesn't like any of them

and she was so happy with her stick!