I often work with dog owners who are trying really hard to train their dog, but it just doesn’t seem to be working. These are some common reasons why and what you can do to get better results.
1. Expecting your dog to respond the same outside as at home
“I promise she can do it at home!” is something I hear at puppy classes all the time.
As humans, once we learn how to do something, we can pretty easily and quickly do it in different locations with different levels of distraction. Dogs find this much more difficult.
Asking a dog to ‘sit’ or ‘come’ in your house and then expecting them to ‘sit’ or ‘come’ in the busy park is like jumping from level 1 to level 10 in difficulty.
We need to teach our dogs that ‘sit’ means ‘sit’ and ‘come’ means ‘come’ wherever they are, no matter what else is going on in their environment.
What you can do: Build up your training in different environments, slowly and individually increasing the 3 Ds: distance, duration and distraction. Make sure you are getting consistent results before moving to the next level of difficulty.
2. Accidentally reinforcing unwanted behaviour
Reinforcement is in the eye of the beholder! Dogs only do things that work for them, so the chances are if your dog continues to do something, it’s being reinforced somehow.
For example, people often think they’re punishing or discouraging their dog from jumping up by saying ‘off’ or gently pushing their dog down. But think about it from the dog’s point of view. Often, dogs jump up to get our attention! They don’t necessarily distinguish between a pet and praise and a gentle push down accompanied by an ‘off’: they are both forms of us giving the dog the attention it wants.
If your dog pulls you on the lead to get to that interesting smell or to another dog, and you allow them to get there, they’re learning that pulling works.
If your dog barks in class and you give him a treat or a stroke to try to quiet him, guess what? Your dog will learn to bark even more!
What you can do: Ask yourself if you are accidentally reinforcing unwanted behaviours and focus instead on ignoring unwanted behavours and rewarding alternative more acceptable ones. So if your dog pulls, stop and wait for them to look back at you before rewarding. If they jump up, ignore them, and wait until they stop, then ask for a sit and reward that etc.
3. Not practicing enough and expecting results too soon
As we all know, practice makes perfect. I wish there were a ‘dog training magic wand’ but unfortunately there isn’t, and I’d be very suspicious of any trainer that promises quick fixes or instant results.
We’re dealing with learning, emotions and behaviour change here, so of course it’s going to take some time if we want to create effective results that will last.
Not putting the time into training your dog and expecting results is like not changing your diet and expecting to lose lots of weight. It takes time, practice and dedication, but it’s so rewarding when you start to see your hard work pay off.
What you can do: Aim to do 2-3 training sessions with your dog each day, but remember they only need to be 5-10 minutes each. This is the most effective way to achieve real results.
4. ‘Overtraining’ your dog
How can you overtrain a dog? As we just said, practice makes perfect, so surely the more training you do the better right? Wrong!
Like all good things in life, we need moderation. Remember that successfully training a dog involves giving them all the life skills they’ll need to cope in their environment. Importantly, this includes teaching them to do nothing!
If you train your dog most of the time they’re awake, they’ll come to expect this from you and may find it hard to entertain themselves, or to switch off and just relax. This can lead to attention-seeking behaviours like barking, pawing, and nipping, which can be challenging to stop.
What you can do: Keep your training sessions short (5-10 mins, 2-3 times per day is ideal) Remember, for most of their day your dog should be relaxing! So make sure you give them plenty of time and space to chill out.
I hope you found this helpful! For more training ideas, follow me on Facebook here or visit theindividualdog.co.uk
If you have any questions or would like to discuss how I can help you, just get in touch!