It’s a little-known fact that dogs will naturally migrate to where food or rewards occur. Many trainers don’t take advantage of this tendency, which is unusual, especially considering it’s so simple and easy to achieve quick results with appropriate food placement.
Taking advantage of food placement is particularly relevant when teaching distance behaviours. If you want your dog to perform behaviours at a distance, then your rewards should also take place at a distance.
While I plan to blog in more detail about food placement in training at a later date, I have created a video which illustrates the process in teaching a distance drop with the food placement method alone, using my girl Myrtle.
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Kamal Fernandez is arguably one of the world’s finest obedience performers and trainers, much sought after to conduct classes in the UK and Europe. His name is synonymous with heelwork but he is competent in training all aspects of obedience, and his motivational reward-based methods apply to all dog sport disciplines including obedience, agility, protection sports and canine freestyle/DWD. His specialty training revolves around using play and games to create motivation and control. Kamal is an engaging presenter with a fantastic sense of humour and a knack for solving problems. If you are interested in positive, motivational training and getting precision and drive from your dog, no matter what canine activity you do, then Kamal is inspirational and definitely a “must see”!
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For those who have read my about me page, you won’t be surprised to learn that I have always been into dogs and their training. As a student at school, I always tried to make my assignments about dogs where possible.
I remember doing Stage 2 Psychology in school, and how immensely easy learning theory was. I was doing this already when I was training dogs! We had an oral presentation on three aspects of learning (classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and modelling), and I chose to base mine on dogs.
While classical conditinoinng and operant conditioning was easy to talk about, I had difficulty finding examples of modelling in dogs. To this day, I still struggle to find examples.
That’s probably why I was so excited to find this video (shared by PuppyTales – thanks!). It shows a young puppy who is hesitant to go down a small flight of steps. An adult dog walks past a number of times and the puppy eventually follows suit and descends the steps himself:
This video is getting a lot of publicity for the cute factor, but I am more interested in how the puppy demonstrates an understanding of the adult dog’s behaviour, and how it relates to their own. Obviously, there are other factors in play for this puppy descending the steps, as well, but at least part of the puppy’s success is related to the adult dog’s descent.
So, I want to ask, when have you seen a dog model behaviour of another dog? Do you use modelling to train dogs? I look forward to your responses!
Puppy biting and mouthing is a natural and normal way for puppies to explore their world. However, using their mouths on people is inappropriate, and something we need to train puppies out of. This especially important for households with young children.
Puppy biting is an issue that needs to be addressed through training. It cannot be left and hope the puppy ‘grows out of it’. You need to provide training and guidance.
Here’s a few pointers to help you begin to decrease mouthing behaviour in your puppy and train appropriate interactions for adulthood.
