How well does your dog generalize commands?

Does your dog do most commands in most situations? Can you say your command in slightly different ways and your dog still get the jist? Or is your dog very specific about the way you deliver the command?

This is typical border collie, but Leo is very very specific. Not so much in the location of performing a trick or command, but extremely specific in the delivery. For instance, when teaching a hand signal, I have to consciously switch up the hand I am using, otherwise he will only do a command if I use the "right" hand. For a while in the very beginning, he would only go to his crate if I gestured with my left hand, and only lay down if I gestured with my right hand. It took me a while of frustration to figure this out.

Right now when playing disc, I can't think about what I am doing, otherwise I will mess up what he does. If I am standing with feet together, and then widen my legs by stepping out with my right foot, that means go through the leg. If I am standing with feet together and step out with my left foot, that means rebound. I have not intentionally taught this. These are the rules that Leo has decided upon based on how I unintentionally acted while teaching these tricks in the beginning.

He is also very specific about tone of voice.

This just happened:

I got Leo's food ready while eating something. I said his release word "Ok" with my mouth full. Leo didn't budge. I said it again, and he looked very sad but did not budge. I swallowed my food and told him again, and he immediately jumped on his food and started wolfing it down.

He is particular specific for "Ok" and that is mostly my fault because I used to play that game with him, where I would say things like "Octopus" in an excited voice to see if he would go for it. Now I am regretting that because I sometimes I have to try out Ok in different pitches before he will release.


So, how well does your dog generalize or how specific are they?

With Caleb it depends on the situation. Sometimes he needs a specific tone or hand signal. Example- a couple of weeks ago I was talking on the phone about some of the stuff Caleb does. He heard me say, He gets my slippers", and the next thing I knew, Caleb took off out of the room to get my slippers. There are times, tho, that I have to use my "trainer" voice and or specific signals.

That's not really a bad thing- "OK" is Caleb's release word, but I also use it in conversation a lot. I like that he can tell the difference between a release and conversation.

I think they're all kind of a mixture, but Squash generalizes the most and Maisy the least.

It takes some work to generalize it to the first new situation, but after that he seems to have no trouble generalizing to every other situation. He also looks at cues as more of a big picture context, rather than specifics like right hand vs left hand.

Like his "circus" trick, where he stands up on his hind legs. I captured it when he would naturally stand up to look for our bunnies. He got the idea quickly, but only understood the trick specifically as standing-up-to-look-at-bunnies-over-the-xpen-in-the-living-room. It took a little work to generalize to standing-up-to-look- at-bunnies-from-the-kitchen, but from there he knew it in other rooms, at training classes, outside, etc.

Payton was taught generalizing as a skill when he was pretty young so he's great at it.

Auggie is pretty good at it, I think for Auggie it's more "Auggie is really good at following directions." I don't think he is "generalizing" exactly the way I feel Payton does, he's just always wanting to be a good boy and very good at doing exactly what I have asked.

Pepper is horrible at it, but considering she doesn't really go out and about anyway, it's not surprising - not something we get to work on often, nor is it necessary.

Summer does this thing where she will arbitrarily pick her release word for the day. It is so funny and also annoying. I cannot figure out why but she will put herself in a stay then wait for me to say the right word the right way. She'll be grinning and wagging her tail like she knows I'm trying to trick her into breaking her stay with words but I'm really just trying to get her to come. It's the weirdest thing.

Mia generalizes very well.

Hank doesn't seem to as much in some ways. Like yesterday he learned one tunnel and had to learn it again across the room. It was much shorter time-wise for him to learn it but we still went through it all again.

I have NQed in obedience for using the wrong tone (according to Elsie) a couple times.

Leo does this sometimes when playing Frisbee.

I used to sometimes practice impulse control by putting him in a down stay and then throwing the Frisbee. I stopped doing this because he started to randomly put himself in a down stay when I didn't even say anything and just let the Frisbee fall to the ground.

Like...he would be sprinting after a frisbee, and then all of a sudden slam into a down and grin at me, waiting for me to release him, as the Frisbee just floats to the ground. Then he waits for a very specific "Ok" that I haven't quite figured out. He'll just twitch in his stay until I "say it right"

I don't trial with him very often, but that could be super annoying in that kind of a setting, so I completely stopped the impulse control practice with a frisbee, and he hasn't done it in a while.

Brisbane generalizes fabulously and will also sit/down if someone in the vicinity is loudly and repeatedly shouting those words. He is great at figuring out what people want him to do, and a lot of my hand signals are vague and similar because he just knows what I want him to do.

Uly is absolutely positive that an open palm is a request for a nose touch, anytime, anywhere. The rest of his commands apparently only apply in the house.

I'm not entirely convinced Ru even knows any commands. Is he sitting because I told him to, or because he happened to feel like it?

It's always fun to get to play the 'how the hell do I get my dog to un-stay' game.

Some of the leaps Lily makes I just can't even... she is really good at generalizing and stringing things together. Something I need to be really aware of when training so I don't accidentally chain in undesirable behaviors lol.

Scout is pretty good at generalizing because she is a good shaper dog and willing to offer me things, which whatever we've worked on last is usually first up. She can be weird about perceiving changes in criteria as way more pressure than she should (yay nerve issues coming out in training!), so it has definitely made me be more conscious of how I work on generalizing behaviors and it is definitely making me more goal oriented and more fair in how I work on these things.

Right now I'm taking Creative Cue Concepts at bronze level. It is some pretty epic and awesome information that I feel is going to really benefit us as I work through it. And I'm planning to take the Fluency class next time it is offered to further work on this.
It is really interesting how they are more solid on some things than I thought and vice versa and how each of them has different strengths.

Cynder is horrible. She doesn't really know many commands anyway, but the ones she does know you have to say in a certain way and gesture just the right way and be doing it in a setting she's familiar with or she won't do them. Which is okay, because she is so well behaved and responsive to tone that it doesn't really matter if she doesn't sit.

Abrams is so-so. Hand signals are more important to him than the verbal command, and he's able to understand changes in hand signals (a slight downward movement for down vs. a broad one, etc.), but he's not the brightest of the bunch, so he doesn't make crazy logic leaps to figure out exactly what I want (or thinks I want).

Artimis generalizes pretty well.

Talon......he's a border collie. He looks at me and goes "That is NOT the right cue for that word!" if I fumble things up. lol He is very specific about how things are said/done. As far as where he is it doesn't matter, it's more if I say one thing and make the wrong hand signal he just flat out refuses to do it. Until I give him the correct signal, then he will do it happily.