spain dog training

Posts Tagged ‘dog training’

HOW CAN WE BREAK SOMATIC MEMORY?

Thursday, May 13th, 2010

FOUR PROPERLY TIMED INTERRUPTIONS!
WITH PRAISE!
SURVIVAL INSTINCT: The oral desire.

Your dog is programmed to do what it must to insure the survival of itself and its species.
That’s one powerful tool that is often overlooked as a training aid. Most trainers utilize this with food bribes.
To get results at any price is their motivation.
Other aspects of survival instinct can be more successfully employed. At some point bribery will cause trouble, as with each treat, survival instinct comes into play.
Soon your dogs appreciation level of you is lowered from a mind appreciation to the gut level. When your dog would rather go to his food than you, look out!

Pack mentality is one manifestation of survival instinct.
Your dog looks upon his family as his “pack”. We can manipulate this instinct, or be victimized by it.
“Checking back,” a familiar term with hunters, is a side ways glance to keep from straying too far from the hunter, or in our case, the pack or family.
Praise when you see your dog “checking back,” and he will move in closer.
If he forges on ahead, turn and he will “check back” on you.

If you keep moving away he will turn to follow. Praise him and he will continue.
Just don’t get caught checking back on him, or he will expect you to follow. This principle will be used effectively in our program latter.
Symptoms of behavior, good as well as bad, may be attributed to survival instinct.
These symptoms may be manifest outwardly or inwardly. Over protectiveness or cowering could be examples of very closely related but opposite ways of dealing with circumstances of the environment.
They are often interchangeable within the same individual. Other symptoms of a self-concerned rigid nature could be compulsive scratching, paw licking side or leg sucking, hiding, balking, withdrawal, cowering, and submissive urination.

EXAMPLE: Fear biters can be made to be aggressive biters. “My dog bites/shies out of fear when strangers try to pat him.”

SOLUTION:
Don’t try this without our professional guidance
(This graphic solution is just one of several possibilities.)
Teach the dog to bite on command, thus building confidence, overcoming shyness or fear.

Dog training and dominance

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

Unacceptable Demonstrations of Dominance
Your dog needs to totally control, or be totally controlled.
In the big scheme of things, barring any unusual tendencies, outward appearances should look and feel like you are expressing proper control.

Even in the best of situations, most of us try to get as much as we think we can get, or at least as much as we feel we deserve. For the most part, your dog doesn’t want to get your job, your possessions, or any thing else, except you.
All things being equal, you are the ultimate challenge. You might be considered kind of like a doggy version of Mt. Everest.
When climbing a mountain, one rule of thumb is to obtain a good purchase, before aiming for another handhold or foothold.
Just about every interaction with your dog might be considered a purchase on your summit.
We don’t want him to fall, but there’s no room at the top. You might look at the intricacies of the relationship with your dog kind of like a chess game.
Every interaction is a strategic assault that has to be analyzed, assessed, and at some point countered.

Most canine interactions center on control issues.
These power plays go on all the time, and usually take place without our even being aware, that we are the pawn in a power play. Although most of these ploys are harmless and laughable, they do add up and scores are kept.
You don’t have to play well, but like it or not, your in the game.
Being consistent means you get extra points.

Let’s look at an example of how we innocently participate, and the ramifications that occur as a result.
Your dog jumps up on your couch. You look over and tell him to get off.
Being a good dog he jumps right off, and resumes his appropriate spot.
Being a dog, he’s going to try again.
So he does.
And, doing your best, you remind him that you had just asked him not to do that.
But, he ignores you, and you insist.
So he goes.
But, he tries again, and being human, you’ve got other things to do.
Besides, he’s just been groomed, and your getting another couch soon, and you’ve decided to put this couch in a good spot so can have it, and your tired, and it really doesn’t matter.
So ignore him.
This One Instance Of Inconsistency Just Fractured His Entire Concept Of The Infrastructure Of Your Home And His Role In It.
If you cannot make up your mind as to what is important, then he needs to make decisions so as to insure stability in his den.

Using sound to stop bad dog behavior

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009

The fastest, easiest, most effective approach is to recreate the bad behaviour in a controlled setting, and correctly use sound distractions with praise to stop it.
Dogs can learn or unlearn almost anything in four properly conducted repetitions.

Taken to it’s extreme, these four repetitions should be performed in four different places, or with different people, dogs, or whatever the “props” involved may be. Understanding how dogs think, learn, and process information is a stretch of the imagination for most of us. It is obvious that they know more about psychology than we do.
They think, have a sense of humor, communicate, tease, lie, steal, etc. just like any one else. But, they don’t think human.
Dogs are limited to thinking like dogs. It’s your responsibility to think things out from their perspective and try to use good judgement.
Be consistent. Dogs get confused if you’re not consistent.
Now that you are getting familiar with teaching a command through conditioned reflex, you can use similar techniques to stop or break any behavior whatsoever.

Using the cans, or any other source of sound, so long as it is brief, and so long as it can be presented from different directions on each consecutive instance, are all that you need to do to break any behavior.
Simply create the sound, and follow through with praise!
It’s that simple.
Any behavior can be stopped or broken, simply by creating a sound, and praising immediately.
The secret is, to allow the undesired behavior to begin again, and simply present the sound from another direction, and follow through with praise.
Of course you have to understand how your dog thinks and learns in order to successfully achieve this.

Each time you create a sound to stop or break a behavior, you must praise him for as long as he refrains from continuing such behavior (at least until he no longer thinks about that instance, usually ten or fifteen seconds), and be prepared to create your sound distraction and praise as soon as the behavior begins again.
This is the sticking point with so many trainers.
“Why should I praise this critter if he’s not even doing what I want?” Remember, dogs do not think in human terms.
Most behavior problems are simply a failure to clearly communicate.
Of course, you may continue correcting your dog forever, as most trainers do. We do not understand why a trained dog needs correction.
Seems that if he were trained, that would be the end of it.
That would imply that if a trained dog makes a mistake, that this mistake is probably not an accident, but rather, a challenge to your authority.

Perhaps this is why so many trainers seemingly enjoy correcting their dogs forever. I guess the real reason it is so difficult for us to share the Wits’ End Dog Training Method with other pet professionals, is because we take all the satisfaction out of “dealing with” and obstreperous dog.
The problem is, that corrections do not teach new behavior.