How to teach the dog to work with her/his owner?

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#1
My friend thought we would create this thread because she would need advice in two things:

1) When Lotta notices that my friend is going to start training her she gets very excited about it. Lotta has different ideas of what she should do than my friend does. Lotta behaves like she would like to play with my friend also after she has been playing with her toys. Then she wags her tail happily and also barks playfully. My friend usually does get Lotta to do things quite well. However, Lotta apparenlty doesn't know how to distinguish training sessions and play times from each other. How would my friend get Lotta to know when it's time to work? What kind of cues and signals would you give to the dog so that s/he would know that it's time to work?

2) Lotta is a young dog that isn't always able to concentrate on things she should be doing in training sessions when there are toys around. When my friend is teaching Lotta something new, she might do what she should be doing for some time but after few times she goes to play with her toys. Of course my friend would like to use play as a reward. We had discussed about them in our thread about take and drop. She had found a good tutorial of them. We can tell you later how well does it work with Lotta.

My friend would like to know how to get/teach Lotta to work with her although there are toys in the room. My friend lives in a small appartment alone with Lotta and her toys are/gets carried to the room where there is room to train her. In case someone suggests it, Lotta gets more excited about toys if my friend starts picking them up because Lotta thinks she is going to start playing with those toys with her. So, that gets her to behave by opposite ways than my friend would want her to. Lotta often follows my friend and she is often in the same room than my friend is. It's also so that Lotta may already be in the room where there's room to train her. So it would be difficult to start with no toys around. My friend would like to know how to get Lotta to concentrate on what she should be doing in training.

My friend has seen tutorials on how to teach the dog to work although there are distractions around. However, in many of those tutorials they talk only about how to teach the dog to work although there are people and/or animals around. One would imagine that it would be easier to teach the dog to work although there are toys around instead of people and/or animals.

My friend already knows that it probably takes a lot of time to teach this and that there are probably a lot of different kind of stages in this. This is not only about dog training, my friend is going to start doing something that consists of several stages and she would like to know what they are and what is the end result. So, this is what my friend would like to teach to Lotta:

Stage 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiMGJBxRtBw
My friend is already in the stage 1, since Lotta is naturally the kind of dog that often looks at his/her owner.

Stage 2: In the following tutorial Pamela Johnson says that she started the training inside the house but not how she started training. How should it be started?

Stage 3:
[YOUTUBE]VWEgD27sSN4[/YOUTUBE]
When my friend has gotten into the stage 3 in training, how should she continue? How many and what kind of following stages there are before the end behavior?

The end behavior:

There are toys lying around and Lotta is ignoring them. She is doing a trick and is concentrating on what my friend is asking her to do. She is able to work although there are toys around.
It probably takes a lot of time before my friend gets there.:rofl1:
 

Elrohwen

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#2
When beginning training, or training a new behavior, you need to start in a low distraction environment. If Lotta's toys being out is too distracting, they should be picked up. Once she understands the behavior being asked for, you can introduce toys slowly. I would start with leaving out one toy, not her favorite, then asking for a behavior she knows. When she does it, tell her to go get the toy and then play with her for a little bit. Teach her that ignoring the toy and doing what you ask will ultimately get her released to go play with the toy. Eventually she will be able to train with all of her toys out.

I approach training time as play time. If my dog isn't having fun training with me, I'm not doing it right. So I'll go back and forth between playing with a toy, then asking for some obedience behaviors, then back to playing. I control what we do and when he can play with toys, but it all seems like play to him.
 
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#3
So, this is the first thing we tried to ask about:
1) When Lotta notices that my friend is going to start training her she gets very excited about it. Lotta has different ideas of what she should do than my friend does. Lotta behaves like she would like to play with my friend also after she has been playing with her toys. Then she wags her tail happily and also barks playfully. My friend usually does get Lotta to do things quite well. However, Lotta apparenlty doesn't know how to distinguish training sessions and play times from each other. How would my friend get Lotta to know when it's time to work? What kind of cues and signals would you give to the dog so that s/he would know that it's time to work?

2) Lotta is a young dog that isn't always able to concentrate on things she should be doing in training sessions when there are toys around. When my friend is teaching Lotta something new, she might do what she should be doing for some time but after few times she goes to play with her toys......./

/.......My friend would like to know how to get/teach Lotta to work with her although there are toys in the room. My friend lives in a small appartment alone with Lotta and her toys are/gets carried to the room where there is room to train her. In case someone suggests it, Lotta gets more excited about toys if my friend starts picking them up because Lotta thinks she is going to start playing with those toys with her. So, that gets her to behave by opposite ways than my friend would want her to.
So, we told also about that. We have this video about that:


In that video my friend is also showing you how Lotta reacts if she ignores her.

Lotta often follows my friend and she is often in the same room than my friend is. It's also so that Lotta may already be in the room where there's room to train her. So it would be difficult to start with no toys around. My friend would like to know how to get Lotta to concentrate on what she should be doing in training.
My friend already knows that but as you can see it would be difficult with Lotta:
When beginning training, or training a new behavior, you need to start in a low distraction environment. If Lotta's toys being out is too distracting, they should be picked up. Once she understands the behavior being asked for, you can introduce toys slowly. I would start with leaving out one toy, not her favorite, then asking for a behavior she knows. When she does it, tell her to go get the toy and then play with her for a little bit. Teach her that ignoring the toy and doing what you ask will ultimately get her released to go play with the toy. Eventually she will be able to train with all of her toys out.

I approach training time as play time. If my dog isn't having fun training with me, I'm not doing it right. So I'll go back and forth between playing with a toy, then asking for some obedience behaviors, then back to playing. I control what we do and when he can play with toys, but it all seems like play to him.
We had told that of course my friend would like to use play as a reward. We had discussed about them in our thread about take and drop. She had found a good tutorial of them. We can tell you later how well does it work with Lotta. If my friend did what you told before she has teached Lotta to take and drop on cue, it would be difficult to get her to continue doing what she should. It's because she would concentrate too much on playing with the toy.

My friend knows that the breed affects on how well one can teach things to the dog. She had found this thread about that. We had just written there by ourselves. Some breeds just naturally know how to work with their owners whereas Lotta doesn't although she already knows how to look at my friend. That's why it may be difficult to teach her things although my friend often gets her to do something.

For example in the following video those dogs concentrate on doing what that trainer asks them to do no matter what is happening around them because they have been teached to do so:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwA1O1mApWQ

They don't break the eye contact or wander of even when that trainer throws toys on the floor. My friend knows that one of the reasons those dogs can do those things is that they have good impulse control. Does someone know what else that trainer might have done so that he had gotten them to work with him?

So, we asked also about this:
My friend already knows that it probably takes a lot of time to teach this and that there are probably a lot of different kind of stages in this.....//.....So, this is what my friend would like to teach to Lotta:

Stage 1:
My friend is already in the stage 1, since Lotta is naturally the kind of dog that often looks at his/her owner.

Stage 2: In the following tutorial Pamela Johnson says that she started the training inside the house but not how she started training. How should it be started?

Stage 3:
[YOUTUBE]VWEgD27sSN4[/YOUTUBE]
 
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#5
We told that:
My friend thought we would create this thread because she would need advice in two things:

1) When Lotta notices that my friend is going to start training her she gets very excited about it. Lotta has different ideas of what she should do than my friend does. Lotta behaves like she would like to play with my friend also after she has been playing with her toys. Then she wags her tail happily and also barks playfully. My friend usually does get Lotta to do things quite well. However, Lotta apparenlty doesn't know how to distinguish training sessions and play times from each other. How would my friend get Lotta to know when it's time to work? What kind of cues and signals would you give to the dog so that s/he would know that it's time to work?
"2) Lotta is a young dog that isn't always able to concentrate on things she should be doing in training sessions..."

"My friend would like to know how to get/teach Lotta to work with her" AND "My friend would like to know how to get Lotta to concentrate on what she should be doing in training."

"My friend knows that the breed affects on how well one can teach things to the dog. She had found this thread about that. We had just written there by ourselves. Some breeds just naturally know how to work with their owners whereas Lotta doesn't although she already knows how to look at my friend. That's why it may be difficult to teach her things although my friend often gets her to do something."

That's because Lotta just acts silly when my friend tries to train her. Since Lotta acts that way and doesn't know how to work with my friend, it makes her hard to be trained. When my friend is trying to train Lotta, it doesn't always work out since she has different ideas of what she should do than my friend does. Lotta behaves like she would like to play with my friend. When it doesn't work out, my friend doesn't always know what she could try next. It would help, if my friend had some kind of plan what she could teach to Lotta, in which order and how. However, there are times when my friend doesn't have any kind of plan in it.

If you could suggest something, my friend could at least try it and we could tell you about it.>> If the thing what you suggested worked, my friend could learn to train her dog better.>> Eventually my friend might be able to help/guide others.

This is what my friend would like to accomplish:
"For example in the following video those dogs concentrate on doing what that trainer asks them to do no matter what is happening around them because they have been teached to do so:"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwA1O1mApWQ

"They don't break the eye contact or wander of even when that trainer throws toys on the floor. My friend knows that one of the reasons those dogs can do those things is that they have good impulse control. Does someone know what else that trainer might have done so that he had gotten them to work with him?"

My friend only knows what doesn't work. We have a video of it. (We should have linked it already in the first message):


In that video my friend is also showing you how Lotta reacts if she ignores her.

"We had told that of course my friend would like to use play as a reward. We had discussed about them in our thread about take and drop. She had found a good tutorial of them. We can tell you later how well does it work with Lotta."

We told that my friend is already in the stage 1, since Lotta is naturally the kind of dog that often looks at his/her owner.

Stage 2: In the following tutorial Pamela Johnson says that she started the training inside the house but not how she started training. How should it be started?

Stage 3:
[YOUTUBE]VWEgD27sSN4[/YOUTUBE]

In that tutorial the trainer is teaching the dog to be calm around toys and to look at her first although those toys are on the ground. So, how would you teach the dog to look at you although there are toys around?
 

Dekka

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#6
Maybe take some classes? I don't personally find this issue that complicated but in endeavors that are challenging for me I find real one on one instruction invaluable.
 

BostonBanker

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#7
I agree that finding one-on-one instruction or a good class might be the best answer if it is available in your area. And if it isn't, there are a ton of good online training classes now, where you can submit videos to the instructor, get their feedback, and video again to show how things are going.

For impulse control, try looking for information online for teaching Crate Games and It's Yer Choice. Both are fabulous for teaching impulse control, and have a long history of people using those methods, which means you should be able to find lots of information on how to use it for different types of dogs. Without a doubt, whatever issue you are having (if you work on either skill), someone else has had it and worked through it.
 
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#8
My friend has taken Lotta to courses. She would still like to discuss about dog training also in this forum.
I agree that finding one-on-one instruction or a good class might be the best answer if it is available in your area......./

/........For impulse control, try looking for information online for teaching Crate Games and It's Yer Choice...
We had written about impulse control and It's Yer Choice in one of your threads...

So, the subject of this thread is: How to teach the dog to work with her/his owner? My friend only knows what doesn't work but not what could work. We told that it doesn't work if my friend starts picking the toys up. We have a video of it. (We should have linked it already in the first message):


In that video my friend is also showing you how Lotta reacts if she ignores her.

In other thread one of you told that my friend should try your suggestions and tell you about it. However, we had not recently discussed about actual tricks and behaviors where you could have suggested something my friend could have tried. Could you at least try advising her and answering the questions? So those questions are (by the way, we thought that it wouldn't matter if we bolded only the questions):

How would my friend get Lotta to know when it's time to work? What kind of cues and signals would you give to the dog so that s/he would know that it's time to work?

My friend would like to know how to get/teach Lotta to work with her" AND "My friend would like to know how to get Lotta to concentrate on what she should be doing in training.

So, in the tutorial we had linked the trainer is teaching the dog to be calm around toys and to look at her first although those toys are on the ground. So, the name of that tutorial is "Working on eye contact and handler focus around toy's"

Lotta already knows how to look at my friend. So one of the questions is: How to teach the dog to look at you although there are toys around? Let's put it this way: you take one toy and you put it somewhere where the dog can't get it. The question is how do you get/teach the dog to look at you although the toy is there?
 

Oko

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#9
Go in the bathroom with the door closed with the dog to train.

Impulse control is not a separate issue from what you're asking about working together. Your dog needs impulse control in order to ignore toys. Train it's yer choice. That video you posted, I have no idea what you're trying to get lotta to do and I'd be just as frustrated if I were her.
 
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#10
Ok, I watched the video.

Lola offers a ton of time when you could have marked and rewarded her for calming down. She sat, she looked you, she didn't bark, she stopped moving. Those are ALL steps in the process of teaching self control and working with you.

You are not being clear with her and you're not rewarding her for TINY small steps. You can't expect her to just magically not be frantic for the toy but you can break it down so that all you are asking for is a moment of stillness, maybe a glance at your face. Then you mark and reward her for that. You throw a party! Then you start again and ask for the SAME thing and you keep working until she's offering you more eye contact, or less movement.

Once you're there, come back and show us how it looks and we can build on it.
 

DJEtzel

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#11
Ok, I watched the video.

Lola offers a ton of time when you could have marked and rewarded her for calming down. She sat, she looked you, she didn't bark, she stopped moving. Those are ALL steps in the process of teaching self control and working with you.

You are not being clear with her and you're not rewarding her for TINY small steps. You can't expect her to just magically not be frantic for the toy but you can break it down so that all you are asking for is a moment of stillness, maybe a glance at your face. Then you mark and reward her for that. You throw a party! Then you start again and ask for the SAME thing and you keep working until she's offering you more eye contact, or less movement.

Once you're there, come back and show us how it looks and we can build on it.
All of this! Great wording, Linds!
 
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#12
Go in the bathroom with the door closed with the dog to train.

Impulse control is not a separate issue from what you're asking about working together. Your dog needs impulse control in order to ignore toys. Train it's yer choice. That video you posted, I have no idea what you're trying to get lotta to do and I'd be just as frustrated if I were her.
My friend knows that it helps if she teaches impulse control to Lotta. She also knows that there are also other things that helps with what we have written about in this thread.

My friend thought that she would tell you what she was doing in that video we had linked. We hadn't linked that until s/he made the following comment but she was doing what was suggested here:
When beginning training, or training a new behavior, you need to start in a low distraction environment. If Lotta's toys being out is too distracting, they should be picked up. Once she understands the behavior being asked for, you can introduce toys slowly...
In that video my friend was only pretending she was going to start training Lotta although she could have been starting to train her as well. At the beginning of that video my friend is trying to pick the toys up. As you can see Lotta gets more excited about toys if my friend starts picking them up because Lotta thinks she is going to start playing with those toys with her. So, that gets her to behave by opposite ways than my friend would want her to.

My friend lives in a small apartment alone with Lotta and her toys are/gets carried to the room where there is room to train her. Lotta often follows my friend and she is often in the same room than my friend is. It's also so that Lotta may already be in the room where there's room to train her. It would be difficult for my friend to pick those toys up when Lotta wouldn't be seeing her doing it. She doesn't have an extra room where to train Lotta and her bathroom is too small for it. If we lived in a perfect world, my friend would have a big house where she would have an extra room where to train Lotta and she would have own yard. :rofl1: However, we don't live in a perfect world. :rolleyes:

At some point in our video my friend took a clicker in her hand in order to get Lotta to think she was going to start training her so that she could show you how does Lotta behave if my friend ignores her. As you can see, she just goes to the other side.

So we were telling above what my friend was doing in our video. She now has some questions about your suggestions:
Can you break that down in smaller parts?
Which are the steps and where should my friend begin?

You told that: "you can break it down so that all you are asking for is a moment of stillness, maybe a glance at your face." Does it relate somehow to the tutorial we had linked? In it the trainer is teaching the dog to be calm around toys and to look at her first although there are toys on the ground. However, she didn't say how did she start the training.

Maybe you could answer to those questions and we can tell you how well does it work.

Ok, I watched the video.

Lola offers a ton of time when you could have marked and rewarded her for calming down. She sat, she looked you, she didn't bark, she stopped moving. Those are ALL steps in the process of teaching self control and working with you.

You are not being clear with her and you're not rewarding her for TINY small steps. You can't expect her to just magically not be frantic for the toy but you can break it down so that all you are asking for is a moment of stillness, maybe a glance at your face. Then you mark and reward her for that. You throw a party! Then you start again and ask for the SAME thing and you keep working until she's offering you more eye contact, or less movement.

Once you're there, come back and show us how it looks and we can build on it.
 
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#13
So we were telling above what my friend was doing in our video. She now has some questions about your suggestions:
Can you break that down in smaller parts?
Which are the steps and where should my friend begin?
I'm not sure how I can break it into smaller parts. I know that it was her just showing how Lotta behaves when being ignored or around toys but it also was able to show that Lola does offer multiple behaviors that can be rewarded and are good places to start.

If I was training Lotta I would hold a low value toy in my hand and wait for her stop moving for a second or look in my eyes. I would then mark that moment and reward. I would keep building on that while slowing increasing what I'm asking for.

So look for eye contact, sitting, stillness and reward for that. You can reward with the toy or food. That is how you start, just by using SMALL tiny behaviors and build on those.

Look at it this way, when I train a dog to go to it's mat I first click for the dog glancing at it for even a second. Then when they are doing that for moving towards it, then for putting a paw on it, then for two paws, then for three, then for four. Then for staying on the mat, then for sitting or laying down.

You take things and break them down into as small of pieces as you need to. How small that is depends on your dog.
 
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#14
If I was training Lotta I would hold a low value toy in my hand and wait for her stop moving for a second or look in my eyes. I would then mark that moment and reward. I would keep building on that while slowing increasing what I'm asking for.

So look for eye contact, sitting, stillness and reward for that. You can reward with the toy or food. That is how you start, just by using SMALL tiny behaviors and build on those...
Thank you for you quick answer. My friend can try that.:)
 
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#15
Linds had once suggested this:
If I was training Lotta I would hold a low value toy in my hand and wait for her stop moving for a second or look in my eyes. I would then mark that moment and reward. I would keep building on that while slowing increasing what I'm asking for.

So look for eye contact, sitting, stillness and reward for that. You can reward with the toy or food. That is how you start, just by using SMALL tiny behaviors and build on those...
My friend has tried that couple times. We now have a video of it:


So, what do you think about that?
 
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#16
Linds had once suggested this:


My friend has tried that couple times. We now have a video of it:


So, what do you think about that?
That looks fantastic! A huge improvement over your last video!

If you think she's ready for it you can now maybe play a bit with her with that toy then reward her with food (or the toy) for giving you attention. The other thing you might be ready to do is add a toy that is maybe higher value and work on it the same way you did this.

Seriously though, you are doing great! I'm really impressed with the change!
 

Oko

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#17
Linds had once suggested this:


My friend has tried that couple times. We now have a video of it:


So, what do you think about that?
That looks great, your timing in the click is perfect and she looks like she's enjoying herself, well done! I wouldn't even know it was the same dog as your earlier video. :)
 

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