The trouble with animal training, is that they learn really, really fast. Whether we meant them to learn that thing or not, they will give us their interpretation of what we asked for pretty quickly.
The other thing animals do, is learn really, really fast, what it is they need to do to get what they want.
If we use that to our advantage, all we need to do is know what they want in any given moment, and training them will be super easy. When we forget that they are always learning how to control their environment, and we accidentally give them their food when they're barking in our face because we need them to shut the shut up before they wake the neighbours, the baby and the Queen in London......what we do, is accidentally teach them to bark in our face to get food. And the Queen is awake now, and cross.
If we give them food when they're barking once, we may get away with it if the next time we give them food, they happen to be distracted into silence. In which case, the dog has a tie breaker sitch in his head. To bark, or not to bark, that...is the question.
Here's the rub. He'll try whatever is most reliably successful, first. In all scenarios. He can learn and generalise, and it's up to us to provide him with socially acceptable ways of asking for stuff he wants. He's looking for reliable, repeatable behaviours that result in what he wants arriving quickly.
So all we need to do, is endlessly, tirelessly, never ever wane or lose focus and insist he sits to ask for stuff.
So how does a dog learn to jump up?
99 out of 100 dogs that jump up are looking for attention and we know from reading the above, that whatever is successful at reliably getting them what they want, they will trial first. It's pretty hard to ignore a dog that jumps up. It hurts, it's probably wet and muddy, or worse. It might be a bit teethy, licky or shaggy, all of which is crap. Especially if you're small or young.
The answer is, because it has worked before to get him what he wants.
We know this because if it didn't get him what he wanted, he wouldn't do it. The most reliable way to teach a dog not to jump up is to teach him to always sit for attention and only give him all the best things in the world - hands, smiles, voice and eyes, when he's calm. If there's a hint of bounce in there, it'll pop up and lick you on the nose.
So it's all in the repetition.
If jumping up has NEVER worked to get what he wants, he won't ever think to do it. The only real world way to achieve that is to teach a really young pup to sit for everything, and then they don't tend to think to jump up. Unless sit stops working. In excitable dogs, they'll probably give you a heartbeat to notice their polite sit before they try something more demanding.
So we need focus. Focus and repetition.
The more times you notice the dog sitting when you're not in a 'formal' training session, and reward him with what he was hoping for, the more he will quietly offer his sit.
This is the gold of training. If you never formally 'ask' for a sit, but quietly observe and quietly reward when it is freely offered, your dog will have a default setting of sit 'whenever I want anything', or 'whenever I'm unsure of something'. This is my preferred method of training dogs. Quiet observation in real world settings, rewarding the things I like, and making sure the things I don't like are prevented. That takes a lot of observation time though, which maybe we don't have....
So, if you need some formal training however, your patience for repetition and environmental proofing will need to be high. Especially when you use food as a lure or a motivator. So maybe the two roads to training ultimately arrive at Rome at a similar time - who knows!
The problem with formally asking for, generating and rewarding a simple behaviour like 'sit', is that the dog will automatically attach a million caveats to his 'sit'.
You'll find initially that he watches you so INTENTLY for clues that the rules he attaches look like this:
When Mary stands in front of me in the doorway after going to the kitchen and rustling the treat packet, wearing her brown shoes, holds her breath, leans forward slightly and to the left, with her left hand in her pocket and her right arm straight down by her side and I am in the sitting room with carpet under my feet in the morning before we go for a walk when I need a pee......I. Sit.
You will find after a couple of successful repetitions, that when all those stars align, pooch will sit like there was a firecracker telling him to. His arse will slide to the floor and he'll sit bullet still and wait for what he KNOWS is coming.
This is where it's confusing for people. If you take away all those things he's noticed and move to the garden, he won't have a single clue what SIT means in that context. He will simply look at you like "Quoi?"....So you'll have to re-teach him in the garden.
This is environmental proofing. It works really really well, but is totally unglamorous.
The proof is always always in the pudding - if you have a word your dog knows, but doesn't always respond to, he needs more repetitions in more of a variety of settings. He isn't being stubborn I promise. He doesn't understand without all his contextual clues.
If you manage to capture a couple of sits when he freely offers them, and you quietly reward them, he will much more quickly generalise to "Mary loves it when I sit, I'm going to sit LOADS!"
It's really important to know the above when teaching a dog to 'go to bed' - it takes time for them to realise that you mean the same thing to happen whether you ask quietly from near the bed, or scream it from the upstairs landing. They learn initially that you need to be standing by the bed, with your arm here and your feet here, looking at me like this, with food smell. If you move a bit, or ask from a different stance, the result will be different. Repetition is your very very best friend. Once they understand fully and generalise, they will be on it like a shot. If they're not, they haven't learned it well enough yet.
That's all! :)
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