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training tip

Michele’s Thursday Training Tip – Eye Contact

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When Communicating With Your Dog, Look Them In The Eye!

Eye ContactBefore asking your dog to do something, make sure they’re looking at you. If you’ve got they’re attention, your dog is more likely to follow through with what you want the first time.

We hope these weekly training tips assist you in your training adventure. Floofins & Company head trainer, Michele Hatley, is available to create a customized training program for your dog. Visit us at www.floofinsandco.com/our-services/dog-training/ to learn about training options with Floofins & Company.

Michele’s Thursday Training Tip – Training Treats

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High and Low Value Training Treats

High Value Treats For TrainingYou don’t have to go out and buy treats all the time to train your dog. Instead of feeding them a full meal from their bowl, take their dry dog food and use it as a reward to train new things! This way, you can save the extra good treats for more challenging training or situations.

We hope these weekly training tips assist you in your training adventure. Floofins & Company head trainer, Michele Hatley, is available to create a customized training program for your dog. Visit us at www.floofinsandco.com/our-services/dog-training/ to learn about training options with Floofins & Company.

Michele’s Tuesday Training Tip – Stimulus Control

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Stimulus Control? That Sounds Complicated!

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Hopefully I didn’t just frighten anyone away by the title of today’s blog, but don’t be afraid of the term, it really isn’t that complicated! A stimulus can be anything that we have a response to, which can be learned or not learned. The sound of the doorbell is a stimulus which has a specific meaning to it; we learn that the bell means that someone is at the door. In training, we refer to our cues as a discriminative stimulus because the cue is a stimulus that has been learned and has a specific meaning. My dogs have learned that my hand spinning in a clockwise motion means that they should spin. That hand motion only means spin to them because it is different than any of their other cues and they are able to discriminate it from other hand cues. [Read more…] about Michele’s Tuesday Training Tip – Stimulus Control

Michele’s Tuesday Training Tip – It’s a No No to say it Twice Twice

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Don’t Repeat When Working on Training Cues

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There’s a dog trainer out there by the name of Gary Wilkes and he writes interesting to read articles about training. One of them in particular has left me with a phrase that I will never forget. This article titled, “What you teach is what you get”, is about over cueing and what happens over time; it concludes by stating, “It’s a no-no to say it twice twice”. If you’re a training nut like me, you probably laughed out loud just like I did!
Once a dog knows a verbal cue for a behavior such as sit, we should only have to say it once in order for the dog to perform that behavior. If we say “sit sit” or “sit sit sit (take a breath) sit sit” because the dog hasn’t performed after the first time you said it, overtime that conditions the dog to ignore you and respond to your cue on the second, third or fourth time. Obviously we want our dog to respond to the cue the first time we say it.
The best thing to do if your dog doesn’t respond to the cue right away is to pause and wait a couple seconds before asking again. Just remember, “It’s a no no to say it twice twice!” Can you imagine how I’d be able to run agility with my dogs if they didn’t listen the first time I said something? It wouldn’t work out very well! Check out this video of Gino from our most recent agility trial and check out how in tune he is with what I’m saying.

Michele’s Tuesday Training Tip – Maintenance

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Wash, Rinse And Repeat for Optimal and Consistent Behaviors

Sometimes the wheels fall off the bus and some work has to be done to get it back to its full working order. Even solid, well known behaviors can deteriorate over time, which is why maintenance is needed in order to maintain these behaviors. An easy way to try and get the behavior back, is to regress or go back to a stage of the learning process of that behavior in which the animal can successfully complete. From here, you can work the behavior back up. [Read more…] about Michele’s Tuesday Training Tip – Maintenance