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Dog training actually has some similarities to athletic training. As a softball coach, skill acquisition depended on many factors, including the developmental stage that the players were in. For example, some skills could be too complex for an 8 year old who just began the sport, but are easier to learn for a 16 year old player that has more cognitive and coordination skills.
There are also developmental stages for dogs. The difference is, that the stages are broken down into weeks and months rather than years. For example, a 5 month old puppy, is entering the teen age stage where they are checking out their boundaries, and checking to see if the rules that applied yesterday, are still in effect. This isn’t when they “blow us off”. It’s actually the start of when they are establishing their place in the world.
What’s important to remember in dog training, is that a dog can be trained and acquire behaviors at any age. Older dogs might not be as easy, but only because they have so much experience at the target behavior we’re working on. This is why consistency is so important. An older dog that has practiced jumping up for the first 3 years of his or her life, is going to take more work to undo the behavior, than one that is 3 months old who is just learning social skills.
Dog Training and Age
Puppies begin learning right away. Some believe that once dogs become adults they can’t learn new behaviors, because of their age. However, it’s not because of their age that can make it difficult. Again, it’s because of the number of times they have rehearsed the behavior through their experience. That’s why it’s a good idea to prevent our dogs, from rehearsing what we consider bad behavior sooner than later, by training new alternative behaviors.
For example, if we let our dog jump up on our guests every time they visit, it will be their go to response. When I was coaching softball players, If they always swung the bat a certain way through their youth, and they are now 17, it will be their go to way to swing the bat if there is any stress while they are at the plate due to muscle memory. This is the same for dogs. Only in this case, in simple terms, it’s a behavior memory. So the less times our dogs rehearse a response, the easier it will be to teach them to respond the way we want them to.
One of the ways we can do this for example, is when our dog greets someone at the door, instead of them jumping up, we can give them an alternative behavior, something like have them sit in front of the guest, and offer a nice calm behavior, that might still be really excited inside. This will give them a way to achieve the result that they want, which is an amazing greeting.
Dog Training and Environment
For our dogs to have success, they need to have success in familiar environments consistently, before we can expect them to achieve it in new or different environments. While introducing new skills, the best place to practice is at home, in a very predictable environment. Then when we are ready, we can add distractions. It’s not that much different than with coaching athletes. This is what practices are for. We can even use video analysis with our dog just like in coaching which I have done with our dog. We video the activity and then we can look at it, and see what their reactions are more closely, such as what the initial stimulus is that evoked the response and what the reward is that they wanting to achieve. With our mobile phones now we can capture videos any time.
An example, is working on arousal or loose leash walking, we want to avoid putting our dog in a challenging situation where they continue the undesirable behaviors that they have been regularly practicing. An off leash trail is not the best place to take a young dog with high arousal that doesn’t have good recall yet. That wouldn’t be the place to ensure success for the dog or us. With dogs running around, our dog would of course want to be part of the fun. But if they are not ready for that, it will have an effect on the learning process.
Dog Training and The Unknown
There are always going to be situations that we don’t expect. Some are going to go well and some are not. If we can be prepared for them during our dog’s behavior acquisition to some degree than we should be able to refrain from having them rehearse too much unwanted behavior. For example, when we are walking in our neighborhood, if we come across another dog and our dog is not ready to walk by them on the same side of the street calmly, we can simply cross the street and take him or her further away from the other dog. This is where distance is our friend and will decrease the stress that our dog might feel.
Sometimes it’s hard to remember what to do though, when we encounter situations out in the real world, that are perfect training opportunities. For example, when we meet a neighbor, sometimes our dog might want to say hi, for this we have to remember to have our dog first sit and be calm, then allow the dog to go and say hi. Once they have said hi, then if we continue talking, they can actually be learning or choosing to sit beside us until we are ready to continue on. Our dog may even choose to lay down and relax. We will sometimes get home though and think about what we should have had her do. That;s when we just write it down so we remember next time.
Here are 10 Essential Skills for Dogs From the American Kennel Club
