hello everybody this video is on the topic of teaching your puppy
to go to his bed and lay on it. the first step of teaching this behavior is simply
showing your puppy that you've put some treats in the bed, marking and reinforcing multiple
times while the pup is on the bed. choosing the appropriate bed is going to set you up for success
and it doesn't matter if the puppy is laying down on the bed at first. you can just mark the puppy
standing with first the front feet and all four feet on the bed. so the bigger the bed the easier
this is. if you have a very small bed they might come on with just the front feet and and not the
back feet. so another really beneficial behavior to teach along with teaching go to the bed,
is also working on a calm settle and teaching the dog to lay down with a lure. so i'll link videos
in the to in the description below on how to train those two behaviors and that will really help with
this behavior because as you can see my puppy's already thinking to settle on the bed like this.
this is bliss my 11 week old border collie puppy and he's had some prior training to
learning to go to a mat and also the settle and teaching the down. so another thing is i taught
him to settle while i talk so he doesn't get frustrated when i make video tutorials like this.
another thing that i really think is important to tell is a lot of people will get their puppy a bed
put it in their pen and then without any training the puppy thinks it's a toy and chews on it
so if you get a new bed and work on this exercise where you're reinforcing the dog
for going to the bed eating treats on the bed and laying on the bed it's gonna highly reduce the
(he's already figured it out)... it's gonna highly reduce the tendency of the puppy to
chew on the bed. so if you have the chewing on the bed problem already you can get a different
bed that looks different, a different texture, bring it out in training sessions and work on
this exercise and training sessions put that bed away and after maybe five training sessions see if
you can use the bed in different rooms and see if the puppy thinks not to chew on that specific bed.
and then you can leave the old bed in the pen that's already been chewed up.
okay. or no bed if the puppy is eating parts of the bed. are you ready? so here we go
so i'm going to use a release cue because he's on the bed already so i'm going to say "free"
mark and reinforce him for getting off the bed because for this cue i want him to stay on the bed
until released, so for example i might be wanting to make a youtube video and they settle in their
beds and i can (he keeps waving at me because i worked on the trick of wave yesterday)... okay
the next step is pretending to toss a treat into the bed and marking and reinforcing the puppy
for going to look for the treats in the bed. now we've repeated this game multiple times with a mat
so most likely he's going to figure out the game very quickly and i can show you all the steps of
how to train this behavior with this guy because we worked on it. but it might take a couple of
training sessions of just getting the dog going to the bed to look for the treats where they're
going to offer going to the bed when you pretend to throw a treat. some dogs are super smart and
they'll think oh she didn't throw one. so when you first start pretending to throw a treat
the first time you do it then after you've pretended to throw a treat the next time you
send the dog to the bed actually throw a treat so they don't start to think that you're never gonna
throw a treat there anymore. good job. and you don't have to mark and reinforce
you can simply toss treats into the bed like that. but i like to mark
and reinforce just when i initially train this behavior. good job. okay. so "free"
once the dog is once you've repeated this exercise multiple times you can release the dog and then
see if the dog might think to go into the bed on his own and you can mark and reinforce and you can
even lure the puppy into a down like that and mark and reinforce the puppy for staying in the down.
"free, awesome" so you want to make sure that you stay free before you then encourage the puppy out
so free is the release cue from the bed/ okay another way to get the puppy to offer going in
the bed, is see i have this wall back here and the bed is right there so if i move this way and
the puppy's following me i can mark the puppy when the puppy goes onto the bed if it's large enough
if your puppy is walking around the bed and not going on to it that tells you that you
still need to work on reinforcing the puppy for wanting to be on the bed and because the puppy's
avoiding going on it. "free awesome" so now i'm going to approach the bed from this angle
and mark the moment that the puppy heads onto the bed mark and reinforce. "awesome
free". i can start to add the cue of go to the bed when the puppy is reliably
following a treat into the bed when i toss it. you can add the cue later when the puppy
is reliably offering the behavior but because it's really easy to get the puppy on the bed
you can add it as soon as you start training. "free" for example i can say "go to your bed"
and then toss the treat on and then the puppy is going to start to associate go to the bed
means the treats are going to go onto the bed. if your puppy's not going onto the bed when you toss
the treats yet don't add the cue. they might not have figured out to follow a tossed treat
yet and you need to do that first. "hello you keep waving at me free awesome". so i'm going
to say "go to the bed" and if he didn't think to go there i could then toss the treat to get him to
go there within a second or two of him hesitating and then wait and see if he might offer going to
the bed without saying the cue before i then start adding that verbal cue of going to the bed. "free"
so i can say "go to the bed" and then when he's doing really well
lure him into the down before then marking and reinforcing the behavior like that. "good job
free". so i'm only giving him one treat when he comes out at the moment because i really want
him to go back to offering going into the bed and what i'm waiting for now is for when he lays down.
so i could stand closer to the bed so that he's less likely to get up to come and find me,
which will make him get out of the down position. so i can stand right next to the bed in order to
reinforce him offering laying down. now i suggest choosing a nice cushy bed the dog enjoys laying
on if you have a little chihuahua or italian greyhound, you can use some luxurious blanket nest
and that might make them more likely to want to lay on the bed. you want to make sure that
you're putting the treat down between the paws on the ground, so the dog is anticipating getting
the reinforcement from below, rather than up here because what can happen is they can start to lean
upwards as you come in with the treat like that. so if they constantly anticipating the food coming
from the ground that's gonna keep them in a nice relaxed down like that.
so as i've said previously in some of my videos
"get it" some ways of teaching the down are just holding a treat down on the ground and marking
when the puppy thinks to lay down, it might take them a little longer to think to lay down,
and another way to get a puppy to lay down is when they're standing up,
you push the treat at a diagonal towards them and first you can just mark a little shoulder fold.
after a few training sessions once your puppy is doing really well with this behavior you can then
add distance distractions and duration with this behavior .so you want to add those the same way
you do with a stay one at a time and then when you add them together you make it a lot easier.
so if you can walk 20 feet away from your puppy and your puppy can stay there while another dog
is doing stuff, you're not going to then have the other dog do stuff at 20 feet away. you could have
just the other dog doing stuff a few feet away to begin with. also as i said earlier teaching the
dog to relax and settle around food is going to greatly increase your chances of the dog
seeing this behavior as a calm behavior where they just relax for duration rather than get frustrated
if they didn't get a treat so the settle is really going to help with adding duration. so i suggest
you work on that along with teaching go to the bed. so what i'm going to do here is work on
walking around him at first. so i'm just going to drop a treat there and walk around him. good
good. and if he's doing really well i can add more exciting movement while i'm nearby
squatting down and standing up.
while i'm nearby.
add some distance over here.
he moved a little bit so i'm going to put the treat back where he was before
so he doesn't think he needs to get closer.
and the goal is for the puppy not to get up but if the puppy gets up you lure the puppy back and wait
till the puppy lays down or lure them back into the down and then make it easier again.
so the goal is for the puppy not to get up because the way they're going to learn this behavior is by
reinforcing them when you do the distractions at first and then when they get really good,
you start to delay when you reinforce. so at first you're going to mark as you do the step
and that's going to reinforce them for staying and then you're going to mark after you do a couple
of distractions. "good job". so if i was going to use food as a distraction and drop food down here
at first i'm marking as i'm going to place the food on the floor like this
and then i'm going to delay when i click, 'good job'
so he's getting reinforced AFTER the distraction happens
he said "that was hard it looks like you're going to give me the treat"
"good
good awesome" so if the dog were to think to get up it's not going to help them learn
the behavior of staying what you're doing is you're reinforcing the behavior you want so i
suggest if your puppy gets up three times within a minute. that means that your criteria is too high.
so one thing you can try is asking for less or trying a less valuable treat because sometimes
if your treats are too high value the puppy might just want to keep coming towards you
to get the treats if they haven't learned that they can do stuff away from very exciting treats.
so i'm actually using his kibble for this exercise and he's finding it really reinforcing.
so if you notice that you're working with a lower value treat and then the puppy starts
to check out and look around the room then that's telling you that the treat is too low value for
the the behavior to be re reinforced. so you really want where your puppy's paying
100 attention but isn't looking frantic or stressed by the fact that you have stuff on you
when they're further away from you. you can also work on handling exercises while the puppy relaxes
in the bed like this and i have a video on how to teach handling in the description below and then
you can just add the two together where you're teaching your puppy to relax and accept calm
handling and petting or grooming good while relaxing in the bed. i hope this video was helpful
for your training. thank you so much for watching if you'd like to support my work don't forget to
like comment and subscribe to my channel. you can also become a supporting member of channel Kikopup
by clicking the JOIN button see you later! "are you ready free" so now that he's had a training
session he most likely will need to go out to the bathroom free so that's where we're headed.