- Now we all lead pretty busy lives,
and if you have a puppy or a new dog
in your household, it can be really tough
to set aside time to train them.
In today's video,
Instructor Steve's gonna show you five exercises
that you can do in five minutes or less,
and in only five feet of space,
that are gonna teach your puppy to listen.
So these exercises, you can do them anywhere.
I'm Ken Steepe, and welcome back to McCann Dogs.
(guitar strums)
(puppy barks)
- Now I see hundreds of dogs and handlers a week,
and one of the most common comments I get,
is how hard it is for people to find the time
to actually train their dogs.
We have busy lives.
The kids have soccer and dance.
You have work to deal with.
This video, I'm gonna give you lots of things
that you can do in five minutes in five feet of space
to teach your dog to listen to you.
Now the exercises that we're gonna do today,
can be done with any dog,
dogs that have lots of training or no training at all,
and in fact, this little dog here, little Hippy Shake,
I've never actually worked with her before,
but it's important that we take those things in mind
and help build a little bit more focus with these dogs.
Now you'll notice already, Hippy Shake
is really focused on me, and I've chosen a motivator
that's really important to her,
and that's some great treats.
I've got some chicken wieners here,
and the idea behind all of these drills,
is that your dog starts to give you that engagement,
starts to give you that focus,
and that translate when you move out into the real world.
Exercise number one.
Simply building value for my market word.
Now Hippy knows the word "yes."
You can use "good" or whatever it is your word is
that you're using.
Just be consistent with it.
I'm simply gonna say yes, and immediately give her a treat.
She starts to build value for the word "yes"
and understand that good things come the moment
she hears it.
So, quickly, yes.
Yes.
Three quick repetitions, she starts to understand
that really good things come from me,
and I can continue to build that focus.
So Hippy starts to understand that yes is the marker,
and I can apply that now,
to any of the commands that I give her.
Once she understands them, I can give her the command,
I can market with my yes.
That's gonna tell her she's right,
and then I'm backing it up with my reward.
Yes.
And again, this is an exercise I can do
sitting on my couch during a commercial break.
She's here, I got some great food.
I can spend 30, 40 seconds doing just this exercise.
So now that I've spent a little bit of time
rewarding my marker and loading that word,
I can now build on that quite quickly.
So let's the say the first commercial,
I load my word yes, but then the second commercial,
I start to call her name and build more value with it.
And so I'm gonna say her name,
I'm gonna immediately say yes,
and then I'm gonna reward her,
and again, she starts to build value for the name,
every time she hears it.
Even if she's looking at me, that's quite all right.
What I'm encouraging is more focus
on the all the time.
So it looks like this.
Hippy, yes, good girl.
Hippy, yes, good girl. She thinks this is a great game,
and she associates this positive engagement with her name.
So translating that out into the real world,
once I've loaded this,
my dog is much more apt to respond to me
when she knows good things happen
when she hears her name.
Now the exercise I'm gonna do with this dog,
is teach her to look at me or focus.
Now you can already see that she's looking at me,
but I also got some really great treats in my hand.
That's okay.
What I'm gonna start to do is put a command to it first,
and through some short repetitions,
start to build the duration that she can look at me.
Now, when we do this, how we reward our dogs
is really, really important,
'cause one of the common things is,
people ask their dogs to look at them,
but when they say, they actually just take the treat
out of their bait poacher,
they divert the focus somewhere else.
I'm gonna show you how to do it
that not only maintains the focus,
but also keeps the focus after you've rewarded your dog.
So I've got some food in my hand.
It's gonna go to her nose first,
and I'm just gonna turn her little head away from me
so she's not looking at me already.
I'm gonna say, "Look at me,"
draw the food straight up to my face.
The moment her little eyes meet mine,
I'm gonna deliver the food straight back down to her,
maintaining that eye contact.
I'm not looking for any duration right now.
This is just eye contact.
So, look at me.
Yes.
Deliver straight back down.
So you notice the food goes from her face,
straight up to mine,
and it delivers straight back down that line.
Look at me.
Yes.
Good girly.
Look at me.
Yes.
Good girl, excellent job.
So you'll notice I still haven't left this mat,
and this little exercise can be done
in 30 seconds, and the value of it, is my dog starts to
again, start to look to me for direction
instead of looking elsewhere in the world.
If she knows things come from me,
I can continue to build on that.
And that's what helps teach my dog
to listen everywhere in their life.
So, I've done a few little "look at me's,"
where I had food in my hand.
I'm gonna make it harder for Hippy this time.
I'm gonna ask her to look,
and I'm still gonna draw my hand up,
pretend to have a little food in there,
but I'm not actually have the food there.
When I feel she's maintained focus
for two or three seconds, not too terribly long,
I'm going to say yes, take a treat out of my bait poach,
but bring it up to my face first,
to reinforce the focus on me.
So it looks like this, now she's already looking.
So I'm just have her look away.
Hey Hip, what's over there?
Go on.
Look.
Good, look at me, excellent girly.
Good job.
Yes.
I can take out that treat.
It's gonna come up to my face,
and reward straight down.
So we've spent time loading the marker.
Yes, says she's done something right.
My reinforcement, then still comes from my face.
Now you'll notice, the first few exercises I did,
I didn't even leave my chair.
Our lives are so busy sometimes,
this is a great thing to practice,
at your desk chair, at the dining room chair,
the kitchen table.
Heck, you can even try it on the toilet.
I'm not that busy.
So maybe not the toilet,
but in this small space, I can even do
a little foundation game to practice my recall.
The come command is such a valuable, life-saving skill
for our dogs, and I can play this kind of game
in this space. I'm gonna do it right now.
Again, you can choose any motivator for your dog.
Food is a great one for this particular dog,
but you can use toys if that's what your dog enjoys most.
You can use yourself,
if that's what your dog enjoys most.
The important thing is I'm gonna spend some time,
building value for the command.
So here's what I'm gonna do with Hippy.
We know she likes food.
So I'm gonna take this great food.
I'm gonna show her the food and put it on her nose,
but I'm actually gonna hold her back from me.
I'm gonna take a hold of her collar
and just put my hand on her chest and push her back.
Remember that game your older brother or sister
used to do where they put their hand on your forehead,
and you couldn't move.
Well we're gonna do a little game here,
except for, dog's not gonna fall on her face.
Here's what it's gonna look like.
I've got some food on her nose. I'm gonna talk to her.
I'm gonna hold her back from me,
and build a little bit of that anticipation.
When I feel she's pushing towards me,
I'm simply gonna say, "Come,"
and I'm gonna back away and praise her,
and reward her for moving in nice and close.
So it looks likes this.
Are you ready?
Are you set?
Come, yes, good girly.
What a good girl.
Excellent job, yes.
And reward. And then I can bring her back and try it again.
Come on over here, yep.
Are you ready?
Are you set?
Do you want this thing?
Come, yes, good girly.
Excellent job.
Hooray.
And again, in 30 seconds, she thinks this is a great game,
and she's starting to build value for that come command.
So one of the other really good exercises
to spend a minute or two practicing with your dog,
in five minutes, in five feet of space,
is the idea of a rule-out.
Giving my dog the opportunity to make a choice
and only rewarding the good choice.
A couple of great things happen with this.
It really helps them develop a little bit
of emotional control.
It helps them understand the idea of leadership,
that all the rewards to do come from me,
but there's a choice that they have to make,
and I'm gonna help them make that.
It also really tires their brain out,
and I can tell you with a busy puppy,
a lot of people wanna run the dogs,
but if you spend some time using their brains,
they become a lot more calm.
Now again, I've chosen some great treats
to use with Hippy, because again,
she's very motivated by that.
I've got some treats in my hand right now,
and she's actually really trying to get at them,
which is pretty common for a lot of young dogs,
but all I'm gonna do is help her make a choice.
What I want for her to realize,
is that the food's there, but she needs
to simply hold position and wait for me to give it to her.
So I've got some treats here.
I'm gonna actually hold my hand open and let her see them.
If she decides to move for them,
I'm simply gonna close my hand and take them away.
The moment she pauses though,
and either sits or just hangs back a little bit,
I'm immediately gonna say yes and reward her.
And she's gonna figure out pretty quickly
that the sitting back is what actually gets her the treat.
So here's what it looks like.
She's gonna be a little crazy now,
'cause these are great treats for her,
so I'm simply gonna hold my hand out here,
so she's going for them, good girl.
Yes, good girly.
Excellent job.
Yes, good girl.
So you notice she's looking to me,
and that's a really interesting thing
to highlight right now.
I just spent the first minutes
of my five minutes of training,
teaching her to look at me.
She already understands that good things come
from that, and she's offering that now,
which really helps with her understanding,
listening to me, and she's making some great choices.
So I'm gonna make it harder for her.
I'm gonna put this food a little bit lower,
and see if I can help her really use her brain.
Yes, good girl.
Oh she got it.
Oh, you got it, you naughty thing.
And that's gonna happen.
Don't worry about that.
You know these things happen.
The dogs get the treats.
It's simply part of the training process.
Okay, we have to have a sense of humor
when we train our dogs.
So I'm gonna try it again.
Now that was obviously too hard,
so I'm gonna make it a little bit easier.
Yes, good girl.
Yes, good girly, good job.
Yes, good girl.
Excellent job.
Get that.
Whoops.
Yes, good girl.
So we've just spent five minutes doing five exercises
in five feet of space.
And if you wanna check out our next video,
in your five-minute training in five feet of space,
click that card right there.
Now if this is your first time on the channel,
make sure you click that Subscribe button.
With that, I'm Steve, this is Hippy Shake.
We'll see ya soon.