Foundations Week 7
Down - Duration
Adding duration to the Down behavior is done in the same way as we have done with other behaviors.The trainer does a nice job increasing the time between the behavior and the click in this video. Her hands are completely still until she gives a treat. They return to the same position each time after the treat. Watch what happens the first time the dog gets up before she clicks. The trainer does exactly nothing for a second and then gives the Down cue again. During that pause the dog looks around for his treat. There isn't one. You can almost see the light bulb go on in his head. After she cues the Down again, he goes straight down and waits intently for the click. He figured it out without any corrections whatsoever.
Leave It - Increase Distraction
With the Leave It cue it is important to realize that for a dog being physically closer to the toy or treat increases the difficulty or distraction level. If the dog starts having trouble with this cue try moving the treat or toy a little further away from them.
It is a good idea to start varying whether they get the treat on the floor or a different treat from your hand. The dog learns to look to you after the Leave It cue to see which goodie he will get. This will help when you are walking and don't want the dog to eat that yucky thing on the ground. Or maybe you just dropped your bag of M & M's. You don't want to lose your M&M's AND make your dog sick!
It is a good idea to start varying whether they get the treat on the floor or a different treat from your hand. The dog learns to look to you after the Leave It cue to see which goodie he will get. This will help when you are walking and don't want the dog to eat that yucky thing on the ground. Or maybe you just dropped your bag of M & M's. You don't want to lose your M&M's AND make your dog sick!
Recall - Hand Target
Oh, so many times we have heard people say they wished their dog would come when called! We begin this training with the hand target in a quiet place. We don't use any words we have previously used to call the dog to us. When we add a verbal cue to this behavior we want to be sure we don't poison it. Poisoning a cue occurs when a dog associates something bad with a cue. An example of this could be when we call the dog with their name or 'Come' and then yell at the dog for something it did previously or because he didn't come quick enough. We don't want the dog to associate coming toward us with something bad happening.