20/01/2021
📢 NEW article from Steve! 📢
If you are your dogs feeder, does that make you your dogs leader?
I am all for using food when training some things, using the dogs meal or even better, removing bowl feeds and getting the dog working for his or her food, but I certainly don’t rely on food to teach and train everything. I have, over the past 20 years, watched people try and do more and more of their training using food and avoiding interacting with their dog in any other way or more accurately, any other quadrant than positive reinforcement. Again, positive reinforcement is a vital part of training dogs for me, but not the only part.
Working with many dogs every day at K9 Pro HQ, there are five big problems we see in behaviour consults every day:
1️⃣ The dogs are not being obedience trained
2️⃣ Most dogs have a more stimulating relationship with other dogs, than their owners
3️⃣ The dogs that are food motivated, are in a relationship with food, not the person holding it.
4️⃣ Dogs are over indulged, entitled and do not know how to accept direction from their owner.
5️⃣ The owner or trainer is relying on food when the dog is a working breed with little interest in food.
I want to go into a little more detail on each of the above.
1️⃣ Luring, bribing, baiting your dog with food or dragging him or her around by the leash and head halter is not obedience training. Obedience means compliance with a given instruction. Yes we all love our dogs, and no one is suggesting being mean or cruel to them, but if my dog is running towards a busy road and I recall him, obedience could save his life. Training for life or training tricks, which are you doing?
2️⃣ If your dogs most valued reward is playing with other dogs, you have a multiple level problem, starting with a misunderstand of what socialisation is. Socialisation is not about playing with other dogs, but playing with other dogs may be a small part of socialisation.
As soon as your dog values other dogs more than you, your relationship will be in the decline because all you can do is delay, end and avoid your dog playing with other dogs.
This is sort of like letting your kid become addicted to something then being the person to take it away, you become the fun police – a taker, not a giver - and this creates conflict in your relationship with your dog.
3️⃣ Is your dog in a relationship with you, or the food? Does your dog only respond when you have food? If you answered yes, I would bet that your dog has had many thousands of food rewards too, right? And yet, he or she still will not do anything unless you have food. If this is your dog, it has a lot to do with the technique and concept in which you are using food. If you have been told that at some point you will be able to “fade” the food, good luck, it will probably never happen. To get results you will need to research better training programs and develop a better communication system with your dog.
4️⃣ Over indulged and entitled dogs - we see a lot of these! This is not the fault of your dog, just like kids are not born brats, but it has everything to do with the rules and boundaries you set for your dog.
I read an article recently that was talking about how people these days regard their dogs as family, often like a surrogate child. I have actually always felt dogs are family, so this is nothing new to me, but many people are just simply letting their dogs do anything they like in order to get their dogs to like them. Well I guess that is the individuals choice, but I ask those that do over indulge, spoil and give into their dogs every desire, what are you actually getting in return? Will your dog choose to walk down the street with you, no leash? Will your dog recall in every circumstance and situation? Does your dog respect you, your friends, your home and belongings? In fact I can ask 1000 people those same questions and get very few YES answers if they are being honest. So whilst people will go out of their way to ensure their dog is always happy, you will learn that much of the time, the dog will not reciprocate this in your relationship.
5️⃣ Are you using the wrong training system for your dog?
We have hundreds of dogs that come to us every year that have been training with other trainers who have been pushing the dog to work for food only. Each time a distraction such as another dog shows up, their dog ignores the food and tries to get to the other dog, cat, or displays undesirable behaviour like aggression. More distance is added, owners told to work on timing, getting more tasty food, starve their dogs and other things that, read this carefully, WILL NEVER WORK!
I have met owners that have put YEARS into training their German Shepherd that was reactive to other dogs, and actually got zero improvement. They cannot be within 50 metres of another dog without an array of vocalisations such as screaming, barking or growling. It is not unusual that in that first lesson with us, with around 20-30 minutes training, their dog is sitting calmly two metres from another dog. Their dog isn’t untrainable, it has just been working in the wrong training system.
Training means “teaching a particular skill”. If you are still trying to train that one particular skill to a dog after two years, there is something very wrong.
Are you being a good leader? Over the years, people have perpetrated the “leader” to mean being a tyrant and a bully, a person who dominates their dogs every move and creates a shadow for the dog to cower in. Maybe some leaders are like that, but I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to be. You can be affectionate with your dog, play with him or her, have them in your home and even sleep with them in your bed! But you must find the best way to teach them rules and boundaries, how to earn rewards, how to respond to direction so they can enjoy off leash freedom with little to no risk.
Running around with a treat pouch strapped to you giving your dog lots of treats may make you a feeder, but it won’t make you a leader. Keeping your dog on leash forever for their own safety may be preventing things from going wrong, but it is also a life of restriction and without freedom. I’m not suggesting everyone let their dogs off leash, but I am suggesting that you find the training / trainer that will produce a dog that can be trusted off leash.
If you don’t care about that, think about this. Your dog is probably that dog that barks at everyone, or jumps on them demanding attention, drags you to every dog because “he just HAS to say hello!” The dog that is off leash racing up to people with dogs (who do not want to be approached by your dog) with you calling out “he’s friendly” from behind because even if you called your dog, he would not come anyway, so you have to create the “he’s friendly” excuse to cover up his unreliable obedience.
Don’t have the dog that you love, but no one else does! People don’t really dislike your dog, they dislike the dog you are allowing him or her to be. As they say, “Kids aren’t born brats”. Taking on a dog is taking on responsibility, or at least it should be. It is a fact that more dogs are put to sleep due to behaviour problems than any other reason, behaviour problems that I can solve or improve in over 99% of cases. This is a reflection of the way the dogs are trained, socialised and managed - in short, problems created by people.
Are you training your dog to be better, or worse?
If you are not sure, come and see us and we can help you!
ANY dog, ANY problem, ANY age, ANY breed – we will take the guesswork out.
Steve Courtney
Head Trainer and Behaviourist
K9 Pro www.k9pro.com.au
