- In today's video, we're gonna take
a little deeper dive into Puppy Training 101,
and we're gonna talk about some dog training theory.
Now if you've seen just a couple of videos
from our McCann Dogs channel,
I think you're ready for this.
We do a lot of how-to content,
and in this video we're gonna talk about the why.
The reason that's so important is that
once you understand the reason for teaching
a certain behavior, a certain way,
you can really cater it to your dog
and to your specific training scenario.
So in this video, we're gonna talk to Instructor Shannon,
who's our Director of Online Training,
and she's gonna spell out the three steps
that you need to be successful with your dog,
with any kind of skill.
I'm Ken Steepe, and welcome back to McCann Dogs.
(guitar music)
(dog barking)
We help more than 500 dog owners every single week
here in our training facility,
to overcome the same dog training challenges
that you have, so if this is your first time
on our YouTube channel, make sure you hit
that Subscribe button, so that I can help you
to have a well-behaved four-legged family member.
Shannon, you and I often talk about
the why behind dog training in our podcast,
and I thought it would be a great opportunity
when I saw that piece of content that you created,
to talk to our YouTube audience a little bit
about the why behind their dog training.
And as I mentioned in our opening before I came in here,
understanding the why behind what you're doing
with your dog really makes you a more versatile trainer.
It also allows you to cater what you're doing
to your specific dog.
You talked about three steps to being successful
with your dog, and let's talk about the first step.
What is the first step that our audience
needs to be aware of.
- Yeah, you bet.
The first step would actually be teaching a skill,
so if for example I'm teaching a sit exercise,
I need to spend some time helping my dog understand
how to get into the sit,
what my communication methods are to get him into the sit.
For example, if I wanted to teach him a signal
or if I wanted to teach him a verbal,
I'm gonna have to make sure that I spend some time
helping to have him interpret those things,
because of course we don't speak the same language.
So I like to do that in a quiet environment.
I like to make sure that there's not a lot
of outside distractions going on
so that there's optimal learning taking place.
And I will spend enough time getting repetitions of that
that I've got the behavior fairly proficient
on whatever I'd like.
So whether it's a signal or whether it's a verbal,
I'll make sure that I solidify that
in that quiet environment before I start
adding anything in.
- And what is step two in the general training theory?
- Yeah, well I would say that the second thing
that you need to be very very aware of
is management of the cue while you're
still in the teaching mode.
So chances are I'm not gonna be able
to teach a finished product in one session.
You know, it would be very few skills
or it would be a very very well-learned dog
that would be able to complete a skill in one session.
So presuming that we're talking about puppies,
if I'm teaching the sit,
I don't wanna contradict that.
So I don't wanna now take my dog into environments
and start asking for the sit
or start assuming that he's going to know.
There's a certain amount of management
that needs to come into play,
so that I can create a skill that is
really really solid from that first step.
So management is what I'm gonna do
to make sure that my dog doesn't get it wrong
while he's still in the teaching phase.
- Yeah.
- So I need to make sure that if I am
in a new environment, for example,
and my dog is looking to me for information,
that I give him good clear information,
and that means probably taking a step back
to the beginning of my training set,
and in this new environment now starting
with that first stage that I would get through.
- To avoid the risk of getting too abstract,
let's talk about some specifics for management.
You know, fixing problem behaviors
or teaching your puppy to be right.
What are some specifics for management?
- Yeah, you bet.
So great management tools are leashes, crates,
you know, all the things that allow you
to keep the puppy from making the wrong decisions
in the interim.
So for example if I'm house training my puppy
and now I need to go and have a shower,
I'm not gonna leave my puppy loose in the house
and just hope he doesn't have an accident.
Chances are, he might make a mistake,
so I'm gonna put him in a crate
and use that as a management tool,
so that while I'm in the teaching phase
of house training, I'm not having my dog
rehearse having accidents in the house.
- For sure, and a couple other examples
that I think of, I know we get a lot of questions
on the channel about our using things like a House Line,
being able to manage your dog
if they get wild and excited,
or if they grab something or they're
jumping up and nipping, whatever it is,
having that management tool of a House Line.
And also, eliminating their opportunity
to do something like that, to jump up,
because you're proactively training them.
You're working on some of those skills.
I also, just struck me thinking about
walking on a loose leash.
It's something that you and I talked about
earlier today, but when you're in the teaching phase,
you're in a very quiet area.
You're managing the environment as much as you can
to allow your dog to be successful
and you're not spending five minutes on training
and then 25 minutes allowing your dog to pull on leash.
- Exactly, we don't wanna end up in a scenario
where our dogs learn the exact opposite
of what we want them to learn,
because we're not in the teaching stage,
or we're not in training mode, let's say.
So as an example, you were using walking on leads.
I would avoid taking my dog for just general long walks
while I was doing the teaching phase
of walking on leash, because I know
that I can maybe walk around the block
or just stay on my street in front of my house,
back and forth in front of my house,
and I can get in the perfect training that I need,
rather than trying to take my dog
for a big long walk and having him pull me
the entire way, and then rehearsing
exactly what I don't want him to do.
- Yeah, and we talk about dogs will do
what's rewarding, and I know we've mentioned that
on the channel, a fair amount.
If we eliminate their opportunity to be
self-rewarded by jumping up on the counter, for example.
That's a real good one, managing your dog
so that they don't have the opportunity
to reward themselves.
Leading up to that, you'd be training your dog
to sit nicely when you're beside the countertop,
with maybe something delicious on there.
But after that, you need to really manage them
and make sure that they can't reward themselves
whenever they want to, because then
you have a much greater challenge at hand.
- Exactly, absolutely, and dogs being dogs,
curious, inquisitive, they're going to
investigate the environment.
They're gonna make mistakes,
so what we need to do until they understand
the rules of the house is we need
to manage them so they can't make those mistakes,
and they can't get reinforced
for making the wrong choices.
- For sure.
The last step in this flow,
in the three steps to successful training,
is maybe the one that's the most rushed,
the most overlooked, and it's something
that I think our viewers at home
really need to take seriously
when they're teaching their dog to
have a reliable recall, come when they're called,
to have a reliable response to name.
What is that third step that is so crucial?
And it's a very fluid process.
- It really is, and this is usually the big disconnect,
when somebody says, my dog's not doing
what he's supposed to be doing,
but he does it at home.
- Right.
- You know, we hear that a lot.
He does it at home, and people are frustrated
because their dogs do these great things at home,
and not, maybe not here in class one day.
And it's because the dogs need proofing.
They need, they don't generalize like we do,
so we can,
you know, I can get into a Honda Civic and drive it,
and then get into a Ford Escape and drive it.
We can generalize well, but dogs are different than us.
They will go into a new environment,
and it's a completely new scenario for them.
So we need to make sure that we expose them
to all sorts of distractions,
whether it's environmental,
whether it is, it's distractions of food
or other dogs or just a new location
that you're working in.
Proofing through is the step that's
gonna take much more time, usually,
than the actual training itself,
and it's so much more important.
So if you find yourself saying, why is my dog
not doing this here, he does it at home,
it's probably because you haven't
taken enough time to help them generalize,
to proof through, to acclimate them
to different distractions, and to make sure
that my dog can sit in the kitchen at home.
When I go out on the road, I wanna make sure
that my dog can also sit there,
but I need to be fair and I need to
give him enough repetition and enough exposure
to different distractions, et cetera,
in the environment that he is going
to be able to perform it,
and ignore the bikes, and ignore the other dogs,
and you know, just give you full attention
and absolutely give you what you want.
- For sure, and I'm thinking about this
from our new puppy owners,
or maybe you're about to get a puppy.
I mean you can apply this idea.
Yeah, it's a
pretty amazing process. - Get the puppy (laughs).
You can apply these ideas to the sit.
You can apply these ideas to walking on a loose leash
as we've talked about a lot.
Maybe you've got an adolescent dog,
and you feel like you've got a nuisance behavior,
and you've come to YouTube looking for an answer.
I mean, whatever it is, you can take these
chunks of information, training, management,
and then proofing, and apply it
to whatever you're working on at home.
Now for proofing, you talked about distractions,
and the three, we talked about the three D's
when it comes to proofing some of these behaviors.
And maybe explain to our viewers really quickly
the three D's when it comes to proofing
these skills with your dog.
- You bet, and these are a big deal.
So it's gonna be distance, duration and distraction.
So with distance, we wanna make sure that
for things like stays, I'm not going from
a foot out in front to 20 feet out in front
all at once.
Duration, I need to make sure that
I'm not asking my dog for longer than he is capable
of giving me, and then adding in everything
and using those distractions to not only
help my dog understand that listening to me is preferable,
but also to help him become confident in those skills,
to help him understand how to sit, for example,
when there's another dog in the vicinity
that he's interested in saying hello to,
for example, or a bike driving by
that he might wanna chase.
I need to make sure that that exposure
is what I spend a lot of my training time on,
so that he has no problem understanding
what I'm asking for.
- Now I wanna thank Instructor Shannon
for joining us here today,
and if you'd like to work with Instructor Shannon,
our Director of Online Training,
in our free monthly workshop,
check out the link in the description below.
And if this is your first time on the channel,
make sure you hit that Subscribe button.
We publish new videos every single week
to help you to have a well-behaved
four-legged family member.
On that note, I am Ken.
- I'm Shannon.
- Happy training, bye for now.
- Bye, everybody.