Hello everyone. In this video i'm going to show you how to add a verbal cue to a behavior and give
you some tips for adding a verbal cue, where you say a word that means to do the behavior
instead of using a hand signal to do the behavior. So actually i haven't really worked on offering
a down from a stand, “oh good job of course he's going to prove me wrong” but mainly
i have practiced having him down from a sit um offering it on just a verbal cue
while i'm sitting down on the ground i have actually been asking him to
down from a stand but while i'm standing up and he's just standing i haven't got him to
down from a stand so i'm going to use that as an example and also spinning
Clockwise which i call spin he's already started to offer spinning in the opposite direction
but i haven't yet properly worked on getting him to spin clockwise. You ready okay. So
we'll begin with down so what i'm just gonna do is warm him up by luring him into the position,
good, marking and reinforcing multiple times because it's a duration behavior
and then saying free and marking him for getting up. And i'm also going to mark him
and feed him for staying standing because the problem was he kept sitting so he always learned
down from sit but stand he didn't understand because he was always sitting when i asked
for down. So now i'm going to say down and if he doesn't think to lie down, i'm going to lure him
into the position and i'm not going to worry about how sloppy it looks right now. Free. I can work on
him moving nicely and smoothly into the position by doing training games where i'm just lowering
him like this and getting that nice smooth position changes but when i first start teaching
offering down from a stand where i'm not helping him out i'm going to take anything, any thinking
to go down so if he wants to flop his legs around or if he has to step around that's fine i'm going
to mark his offering even though it doesn't look precise and then i can always go back and lure him
to get that nice precision if that's something that you're interested in.
I am you know interested in it for tricks but also see how he's flipped his hips like that
if your dog always lays down in an asymmetrical kind of way especially if they're a puppy and
you're marking and reinforcing it free you might be inadvertently building muscles
inequally on their sides so if you're going to ask your dog to sit free sit with offering
then what you can do is if they're sitting crooked as you go to feed them the treat
you can straighten them up a bit. So if they were rolled back sitting on their butt bone you can
lure them forwards so they're actively sitting rather than you know just letting their legs
flop so i like to feed like that to get that nice sit. Free. And then also continue to lure the dog
into the sitting position. And you can use like a slightly uneven surface to like a fitness pad
or doing these exercises on the couch to get your dog looking nice and symmetrical and using all
their muscles properly rather than what's going to happen when you ask them to do something when
they're first learning to offer. So sorry for the long tip. So now i'm going to ask him to down
and if he doesn't, lure him. Free. And because i've been talking a lot
he forgot. So i'm going to go back to luring down so basically i'm going to say the cue
down and then if he doesn't i'm going to wait a little bit and then lure him. So
the word down predicts the visual signal. So what you're doing is teaching the dog that
the word that you say predicts the cue and then after repetition it becomes the new cue. “down
Good”. So there he sat and then laid down which is fine to click him offering it but
i can always go back and cue down and then lure him with the movement that i want
for going from stand to down. “free good down”.
He's like “how about sit?” Another thing i can do is reset him and then say down and then lure
him into the down position. Another technique you can use if your dog isn't offering yet is changing
your cue very slightly to be less and less obvious to make it easier for the dog to offer later.
Because if you're luring your dog like this the treat is right near their nose the whole time so
that's part of the cue so if you try to just stand up like this and see if your dog might
think to lay down they might not. So what you can do instead to make it easier for the dog to
understand is make it so that the dog can operate even though the treat is further away from them.
So you can also use no treat and teach them to lay down with no treat. So he seen there's no treat
we were working on paw stuff earlier and he's laying down even though there's no
treat and he's getting marked and reinforced. So he's starting to understand that concept
and then i can start to hold the treat further and further away so i've got him laying down without
having to put my hand here. I can put my hand here. Free. This is how i originally trained him
is first i lured down like that. Good. Marked and reinforced multiple times. Free. Always remembered
to release him. And then held my hand here and just kept cueing the same movement from higher up
and now i'm going to hold my hand even higher. There you go. Here on my leg
and just keep doing that little gesture and then mark can reinforce when he went down. So that
would be the first step getting your dog to offer with a little bit more distance from the food
because sometimes if the food is way up here it's a completely different picture and they're never
going to think to lay down and they might get frustrated, give up, bark at you, whine or just
do a hundred other behaviors and that can
be very frustrating for the trainer as well. So it's basically breaking the steps up smaller.
So here my hand is here and he's going into the down position. Free. I'm going to do it again.
Good boy. And now i'm going to say my cue. Free awesome ready. So i'm going to say down and if
he doesn't i can do this little hand gesture on the side of my body. Free good job down .oh i did
the hand gesture at the same time out of habit. Free. I like to give my dogs little signals so
unless you're practicing for obedience the more information you give to your dog the better. So
if you're if you just have a pet dog, you have guests over instead of standing here sitting down
you could just say down and give the hand signal as well
to make the communication as clear as possible for your dog. So again unless you're doing obedience
where you're not allowed to use a verbal cue and a visual cue at the same time there's no harm in
doing it unless you want to impress people as a dog trainer. Okay now we're going to learn to
spin clockwise. If you're going to be teaching your dog to offer different behaviors on only
a verbal cue in the same training session, it can be a little bit confusing if you stay in
the same area because what you've been doing has been standing still and that cues the dog to do
the behavior that they were offering before. So because we've been working on the down here
if i stand still he might think to that it's to lay down because he hasn't learned the new verbal
cue yet where it's like a green light and he hears the word and it makes him do the behavior,
where it's created a stimulus response association for the dog. So what i suggest is if you're going
to work on multiple tricks or behaviors where they're offering after just a verbal cue, do them
in different locations of your house. So here i might work on the down, he already knows what i'm
going to ask for next and here i want to teach him actually to spin in the opposite direction.
We worked on spinning anti-clockwise with just offering but we haven't worked on the
other direction, so i am gonna do it here but you can see he's already offering a down so
it would be smarter for my training to do it somewhere else. So here we go i'm going to refresh
him with the behavior so i'm going to cue him spin and show him the hand signal and i'm luring
him too .so i'm luring him in a big circle like that. So if you were going to first work on the
dog following less and less of an obvious gesture, you're just going to make the circle smaller,
have no treats in your hand, do a nice big gesture. He said “where'd the treat go?”
Ready there we go. He was a little confused. I have not actually done that before with him
i usually just make the treat go further and further away. There we go good job.
Make the treat a little bit higher up and the circle smaller. So i'm just going to be able to
do a little finger flick before he can turn. As you can see if i do a little finger flick
now he doesn't know what that means. So this means nothing to him, i have to do a bigger gesture and
i'm leaning my body forward as i'm doing it to get him to spin like that. So what i'm doing is slowly
in approximations making my gesture smaller for the same behavior. Now you don't have to make it
harder and harder so if you actually did respond to a little finger flick like that… he's like “are
you throwing a treat? What's going on here?” If he did respond like to a little teeny finger flick
then the next trial i can do a really easy one, so that what happens is he doesn't then
try something else and get frustrated or just think it's really hard because he's just trying
to figure out what you want. So you're giving him a clue again after he offers. Now i'm going to say
spin and then lure him. Good job ready spin good. And if they do half the behavior you can finish it
off by luring them. So even if he turns his head just a little bit to the right… spin,
he's like “i really want to go the other direction!”
Spin yes. Another thing i can do is because i taught spin in front of me i mean twirl
the other direction in front of me like this i could teach spin initially on my right side
so that it looks different so he's not
more likely to think about doing the other behavior which is twirl. Ready spin good.
Now i'm going to just be quiet and work on the q spin where i'm not blabbing in between. Ready spin
Spin
Spin yes good job spin
Good boy. There we go. I'm making my gestures less and less. Spin.
See if you might think ,yeah there we go! Good boy ready spin.
He really wants to go the other way!
Spin good boy. And we'll stop there because i'm very pleased with what i've got. You want
to do high five good job. And you can end on something fun if you want. Spin good.
Here's footage from much later in the day when i did a 40 second training session with him
and you can see he really catches on to the verbal cue. Good boy spin good
Spin good boy spin good job spin well done good boy sit good wait good
Bye good good job. I hope you found that information helpful for your training.
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