hi guys welcome or welcome back thanks so
much for joining me today it's episode one of bryt diaries
so as you guys know we have bryt with us she is nine weeks old when you guys will be watching
this but she's just at the end of her eight weeks now she is a absolutely adorable working cocker
spaniel and she is cool as now i want to share with you guys the basic training for her because
everybody is always asking me like why is alfie so well behaved and my dog would never do that and
it's like he doesn't come like that magically already trained that is hours of training
that has gone into him so i wanted to record whilst we have this little puppy in the little
puppy stages all of my training sessions so i've actually recorded nearly every single one and some
bits in between and we usually train here two to three times a day with a young puppy and we use
their meals for training now that sounds like it's really heavy work and they're in some form of a
harsh boarding school but actually it's not because all of the training is a game and
they absolutely adore it so few ground rules to get in place before we kick off before we hit
the ground rules if you haven't already please do press the subscribe button and hit the bell icon
the bell icon will help you out because it gives you a notification every single time i
upload a video i usually upload once a week but it's december and december is different
and usually it's about dog photography and i guess this kind of is but also kind of isn't
so ground rules number one positive reinforcement only you will never find me with a prong collar a
shock collar a choke collar any form of aversive behaviour spray bottles anything like that is just
not how i personally work or train my dogs my dogs are trained with positive reinforcement
and therefore that means that it is basically just a big game we use food rewards we use toy rewards
we use praise rewards we use intrinsically satisfying rewards like the dog sniffing
and that is just how i do things so that's kind of first things first number two is very
short sessions so in those two to three training sessions a day usually they don't last any longer
than five minutes but absolutely maximum of 10 minutes depending on the behavior being worked
if it's a new introduction to a new skill then usually it's a shorter session than that
but yeah that's really important to note is that it's super short sessions point number three is
that we use high value rewards i personally actually tend to use my puppy's meals to
train with so they're training with their food and that works fine for me but if you've got an older
dog or a dog that's less interested in food then shredded chicken cut up cheese things like that
is absolutely perfect just remember that you're feeding them extra food and therefore they might
get a bit chubby or have big poops so bear that in mind number four on the ground rules is to train
new behaviors in a boring normal environment for me that has bizarrely always been a living room so
always in my lounge in the living room usually on a non-slip floor which in my case is carpet
but yes all of my basic training for all of my dogs has always been in the living room first
and then we moved to different locations so any new behavior usually is learned in that specific
place number five is that you need to have the basics in place so the first things that i do when
i bring a puppy home for those first few training sessions is basically just make sure that they're
happy in their environment and get a sense of how confident they are try to work out where their
mental threshold limits are so when do they go crazy when are they too tired just getting to know
really the puppy and once you've got that down then you can start with your basics which for me
are charging the clicker so that basically means that the i use clicker training so the clicker
needs to have a meaning so charging the clicker gives the clicker a meaning and the clicker means
that there is going to be a food delivery because they did the right thing so charging the clicker
is quite early on name training also is usually quite early on but in this case she already
knew her name before she came home and then the next one usually is crate training so going in and
out happily of a crate again she was pretty good with this when she first arrived so that's fine
then hand follows so making sure that the pup will happily follow the hand and not sort of like
stubbornly sit back off of it so getting them to follow their hand is really useful for any
behaviors that involve luring or maneuvering the puppy around so just basically moving your hand
and giving them a treat moving your hand giving them a treat gets them used to following the
hand and then you can start to do faster and more varied motions and when you've got that down and
the puppy is following it then you can commence the next ground rule to have in place is to make
sure that you know your criteria so we're going to look at two different things two different terms
criteria and behaviours so criteria is basically what you want the dog to do so that's what you're
looking for to reward and the behaviour is what the dog gives you so you need to
be very clear on your criteria first so that you can reward any behaviours that are offered
so essentially you break your end criteria say it's sit down into numerous little mini criteria
and then you reward for those little bits as you go along when you put it all together you
have essentially shaped your behaviour and it becomes a fun game for the dog it's very clear
and you build your relationship and you both start to problem-solve really nicely together which is
a beautiful thing to see so there's two ways to do training there is actually three because there is
capture too but there's two main ways which are shaping and luring usually i will shape but
most of the time with a young puppy it's actually really quite easy to lure a puppy into particular
behaviours and then you wait to see whether they can get it and then you shape it further on
so luring is just as it sounds you lure the dog into a particular position and reward it
shaping is different shaping you wait for the dog to offer a behaviour and then you reward
it in line with your criteria eventually all of your tricks will usually be shaping rather than
luring so more complex behaviours are shaping not learning being aware of both types of training
is really important capture is a different one so that's if the dog offers the behaviour as it's
doing something else you can capture that moment and reward it but we're not going to cover that
off in bryt diaries at all so hopefully i'll remember to let you know which method i'm
going to use for each behaviour because that would probably be quite useful and yeah okay so the
final thing to mention is basically to only add your verbal cue that's what you say to get the
behaviour only at it after the dog is offering the behaviour reliably so if you just wait and the dog
offers the behaviour at that point they know what gets the reward and therefore then you can add the
verbal at that point your behaviour is pretty solid and then you can start to proof it so by proofing
um to be fair different locations is a good place to start with your proofing so you've done it in
your boring environment then you've got to move to your more exciting environment which could be
the garden then you're going to move into a new environment and just keep going to different
places and doing that same behaviour really fun and sometimes you have to go back a
few steps and that's fine but yeah proofing in locations is important and then you add the three
d's i love the 3ds 3ds are great so the 3ds are distance duration and distractions locations
give you some distractions but distractions can also be in the form of a dog so other dogs are
distractions dogs playing other animals wildlife people all of those are distractions so one of the
d's is distractions you then obviously also got duration so that's asking for a longer duration in
the behaviour and then you've also got distance so can that dog do the behaviour from a further
distance and do each one of those three things separately so don't expect a dog to add distance
duration in a new environment which is the biggest problem that most people have especially when it
comes to their dogs with photography the dog may be able to offer a beautiful head down flat
on the floor in the living room then you take the dog to the woods put it on a log ask for the
head down go back get your camera sort yourself out get ready to take a picture and then you're
like why is the dog not remaining in that position you've just thrown at it three d's and on a log
so on an object which is another differentiation that you've not proofed so you're setting yourself
and your dog up for failure which is never a good thing to do so with that out of the way we'll jump
into the first bryt diaries i'm not going to go through all of that again for every single one
but it's the same for every single one so if you join later on in the bryt diaries i will refer
you back to this particular video and at this point you can stop and go and watch whatever you
were watching at the time but for today let's move in to number one the sit so this it starts with
just a lure so we've just literally lured it up into a sit and given her a reward and that was
pretty much it for that particular session so it's just an introduction to do that lured behaviour
and then we start with a another session here and we just sort of get her into a sit position and as
soon as she sits her bum on the floor there is an immediate click and a treat and in this case she
dropped the treat but in this case we were using cheese because a cheese is super high value and
then it's just a case of repeating and repeating until the behavior is understood so as soon as her
bum hits the floor that's my criteria for a reward it doesn't matter if she holds it there it's just
the bum going down and i need her to not have her paws up on me so as soon as she's in that sit
position that she gets the reward so you can see that she tries to sort of clamber over my hands a
lot she tries to climb on me a lot she's only a little baby and that is fine to do but she does
not get a click and reward when she does that she only gets the click and reward when both
of those front feet are on the floor and her bum hits the floor at that point she gets the reward
because she's so little you have to be careful with how much you feed so just being really
careful because at this stage she was only just eight weeks old so this is a really big brain game
for her and she's like give me the snacks and i'm like no bum on the floor and she starts to get it
so i'm not looking for a perfect sit in terms of leg placement i'm just looking for that behavior
and you can see that she starts to be quicker and quicker going into the criteria that i set
out so she offers that bum down behaviour really easily now and she's starting to jump up a lot
less so at this stage we can kind of see that she understands what i'm asking her to do and i wanted
to test it just a few more times to make sure that she was really really happy which she was
and then i will begin to add a verbal cue so i would just start to say sit as
she's sitting and that's the addition of the verbal to the behaviour so she already
knows what she's doing what gets the snacks before i add that verbal in there
so at this stage we've broken we are on a new session now and i start to say the words so
i'm saying sit and then rewarding which is super straightforward she's just done this a few hours
before so it's nothing particularly new to her but you notice that she's not jumping up so much
at all she's really not on my hands a lot she's offering the behaviour really really nicely so
we start adding the verbal and the verbal becomes actually quite easy for her to understand
if you're getting jumping up just wait hold it there and she will stop
so then we're changing things up a bit i've changed where i am so i'm kneeling at this
stage and i want to make sure she's happy before i then change the height once more so
i'm just making sure that she offers two good sits and then i change my height again
so from a standing position now it's just the same thing over again so literally i'm just moving her
away and asking her to sit and as soon as that bum hits the floor with the front paws down we get a
click and a reward so it's really clear for her what i want her to do it's quite straightforward
it's bum down paws on the floor then we added a distraction so one of the d's so we added finn
in the room finn's absolutely fine he just sits there and wants more snacks for himself and so
i was treating finn whilst puppy was going okay hang on who are you and then she offered
me a great sit with the distraction present so at this point we then start to move outside so
i'm happy that she understands the verbal the next few days is spent um differentiating in different
environments so she did super this was the first time she'd ever been asked to do anything outside
and she got it really well she didn't like to sit on the grass because it was cold on her bum but
other than that she did a super we changed the person so dan's asking her to behave now and she
did great and then we tried it without any food at all so no food is a really good way of testing
so she's literally doing it just for praise which she did fab so at this stage really it's fine just
move out different locations increase the duration increase the distance increase the distractions
nice and slowly and they'll come along beautifully thanks so much for watching that is the sit it
works so beautifully and she reliably offers that behaviour now she's not even nine weeks old and she
is solid so that is a cool result one thing to note about the sit is that i wouldn't usually
train it so early on unless the dog naturally offers the behavior themselves bryt does so
when she's just watching something she is in a sit position so therefore we will use it and
moving it further the reason for that is because sit is actually quite difficult for the dogs
for puppies specifically because of the effort that it takes to get up and into a sit and the
hinging on the joints in the rear end but if the dog naturally offers it then that's fine
if your dog doesn't naturally sit in a sit and they would prefer to lie down or stand
just leave sit until they're a bit older it's usually the best way to go
that's it for bryt diaries today i will see you all again really really really soon