I want you to meet one of our students.
Alison is an amazing trainer and she just got a new dog. He was re-homed.
He's still very young, but I'm gonna let her tell you all about it.
He was a lost dog and we had him for three nights until we found the owners.
And uh, we really liked him. Um, but uh,
upon returning 'em, we mentioned that we'd be interested in,
in keeping him if they had to rehome him. And they did.
They called three weeks later and asked to rehome him.
But there are lots of little trouble areas. I, I find.
I'm fine with dogs sniffing, but if it's, uh,
obsessive or if they're grabbing things, it could be very dangerous.
And some dogs are constantly picking things up. Now,
something Allison didn't tell you about Scout, he can't hear. He's totally deaf,
but this technique's gonna work anyhow.
Let me show you how I get started with that. This may seem strange,
but I'm gonna put a bowl of food down. You're gonna say,
well that's not gonna create his nose to come up,
but I'm gonna create something he really wants,
which means he's gonna problem solve How to get it right now he wants
everything. He's just sniffing everything in the room.
So by putting this one thing down that I think he's probably gonna want
mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm .
And then when I don't let him have it,
I'm thinking at some point he's gonna check in to say what the heck.
You can see he's problem solving. Yes. He's backing away. He's trying harder.
He's gonna try the other side. I'm gonna have food already. Yes.
Good boy, boy. So he's trying to figure out how to get that.
So remember I need to create more value for nose up.
The value is for looking away from the ground pulling. Yes.
Good boy. Now I rewarded Scout even though we barked,
some of you might have been saying, wait a minute, why would you? Yes.
And reward that behavior.
We get frustrated when things don't work that have always been rewarded.
Normally he goes for something on the ground, he gets it.
So there's a little frustration there.
That's okay because the bark was pretty minor. Um, if it was continuous,
yes I'd deal with it, but one little bark.
I'm right now more interested that he cannot keep his nose to the ground all of
the time.
So I wanna create that value for looking away from things on the
ground for the nose up. Yes.
So he's going for that food because normally what's immediate and certain
is I see something on the ground,
I put my nose down and I get rewarded by it. Yes.
But now the sure fire away to reward.
The more rewarding behavior is nose up. Ignore the thing on the ground.
And yes, I'm gonna use some food. Remember,
I need to create value for Scout that the more
valuable behavior is nose off the ground. Yes.
So I need to use something that's gonna create value, whether it's a toy food,
voice, praise, pet, but something that creates value.
And for Scout, um, food definitely creates value. Now he's sort of stuck here,
so I might, yes, he still looked,
but I could also just move him outta that position if he sort of gets stuck.
Now I'm thrilled with the result I got with Scout,
working with that dog bull. But I'm not ready to go outside.
I still need to create more value for the behavior of head up.
I'm not ready to combat all those smells and things on the ground outside.
I'm gonna do that. I might choose a toy, I might choose a bone.
I might just choose some weird objects that are gonna catch his attention.
Once I've got that and he's rehearsed this over and over again in different
spots in the house, different objects, I'm ready to go outside.
So we're changing a couple of things here. Uh,
in order to make it look like a real walk, one,
I need to move outside different, uh, scents and smells.
I could work at many rooms in my house, but eventually I need it outside.
The other thing I'm eventually gonna change is me not watching him like a hawk.
So much like an exercise. I want him to make those choices when I
appear to be not paying attention. But right now,
I probably need to pay a little more attention. Okay?
Okay buddy. So I'm just gonna be, again, my leash management,
making sure I don't inadvertently let him get that bowl of food.
So that nose to the ground pays off. So I'm gonna move along.
He's gonna of course go for it. Holding him back.
I'm gonna make, yes, good boy. What a good man. I wanna,
yes. That I'm gonna reward with him making eye contact.
Reinforcing, looking up. Let's try that again, buddy.
Let's walk towards that again. Good stuff.
Gonna walk to it. Yes. So my training inside paid off.
He said, I get that I shouldn't be nose to the ground. And again,
when I first came out here,
nose was to the ground constantly. But just working this little exercise in the
short term doesn't make my problem solved. This takes lots of repetition,
but right now I'm pretty happy with his nose up, right buddy?
Cause I'm gonna walk along. Oh, good boy.
He doesn't even care about that. Now, just like inside,
I could now switch my object or maybe I switch where it is or which direction
I'm coming. Cuz again, more realistic will be,
there'll be things all over the place. But it starts here.
My dog making the choice that says what's certain is looking
away from the ground head up is the rewarding behavior.
Not walking the hopes,
not walking the whole walk with nose on the ground or
grabbing everything in sight. Good work buddy.
Am I ready to go for a walk and ignore my dog? No,
because he is gonna find things,
again that old behavior will kick in. Carol's not paying attention. I grab it,
it's self-rewarding. Or I start sniffing.
So while I'm working this process and it takes a bit of time,
I'm gonna do one of two things.
I'm either not gonna walk my dog so they can't self reinforce and continue that
old behavior, or I'm gonna manage the walk. And how I'm gonna do that. Now,
one I might, if you know what a gentle leader is, use a gentle leader.
So I control the nose just so I can't get down.
But I think with Scout I could do that fine with that same leash technique.
So I'm gonna go for a little walk here. Anytime the head goes down,
I'm just going to prevent it. If he looked down and looked up again,
I could still reward that.
So I'm not going to let him rehearse that old behavior.
Nose to the ground is fun. Go for a walk Scout.
So nose goes down. I just stopped that from happening.
Good.
So he is not getting any reward when that nose goes down.
Good. Let's go over where there's stuff to smell.
And again, I'm not really pulling his head away. I'm not yanking him away. Um,
all I'm doing is stopping him. So his,
he's still making the choice to keep that head up. Head goes down.
All I do is put that tension in the leash.
I'm preventing the wrong behavior or the behavior I don't want.
And then I could also manage it by this. I bet you're wondering what this is.
If you're ready to take your walks outside to the next level,
click on this video right here. On that note, I'm Carol.
Happy training.