January is Train Your Dog Month

The Association of Professional Dog Trainers began the National Train Your Dog Month in 2010 to bring more awareness to the importance of training and socialization. I like sharing dog training tips on ‘Taco Tuesday’ and several other blogs have also been sharing training tips on Tuesdays. But training and socializing aren’t limited to one month or one day of the week.

Training should begin when your dog is a puppy and should be a regular part of your relationship with your dog their entire life, starting with the early puppy months when they are primed for socialization and eager to learn new things. Studies have shown the importance of modern puppy socialization classes for preventing future problems and helping you to build a stronger relationship with your dog. Best of all, a modern, positive reinforcement-based puppy socialization class is FUN!

Training and socialization aren’t just for puppies though; it’s important for older dogs too! A fun, fast paced, highly rewarding training session with your dog can be a great experience no matter how old they are. Even senior dogs with mobility problems can benefit from training games that don’t require a lot of physical effort, like chin rests, eye contact, head turns, etc.

One of the first recommendations I give any new client is to spend five minutes training with your dog two or three times per day. This training should be fun and rewarding for you both. Keep it challenging enough to be interesting for the dog, but not a source of stress or anxiety. You can create a wonderful feeling of mutual understanding with your dog by using a marker (like a clicker, or a verbal marker like the word YES!) to “mark” the moment your dog did what you asked, and always follow that marker with a treat. If you are consistent and practice your timing, you will soon see your dog whip their head around excitedly in expectation of a treat as soon as they hear you click your clicker or say YES! When that happens, your dog knows that they just did something right and that you are going to reward them for it. They know what you asked, and they did it correctly, and you marked and rewarded their success. When any animal understands that they can engage in behaviours that reliably produce valuable rewards, it will improve their emotional state. When our dogs become happier and more confident, that improves our emotional state too!

There are a handful of behaviours I like teaching most of my clients because they have a wide variety of practical uses. I think my three favourite behaviours that I would recommend you teach your dog if you haven’t already are:

  • A positive interrupter sound
  • Nose targeting
  • Mat targeting

A positive interrupter is a way to get your dog’s attention when they are engaging in an inappropriate behaviour, like eating your shoes, playing too rough, or fixating on anything inappropriate. It’s also great when you just want them to give you eye contact because they’re adorable and you love them! This video from Kikopup can help you teach this valuable skill and also has lots of great advice for making the behaviour more reliable.

Nose targeting is another favourite of mine! This is where we teach a dog to touch a target (often a target stick or our hand) with their nose. If we add some distance to this behaviour, it can be a very reliable recall. We can also cue a nose target if we want to move our dog from one place to another without grabbing them. If your dog is in your chair when you come back from the kitchen, instead of grabbing them and pulling them off your chair, cue a nose target so they get up and touch your hand. If you want to encourage them to rest somewhere else, put the target hand or stick over your couch or the dog’s bed. Then they get a treat, you get your seat, everyone is happy. It’s also the foundation to a lot of fun tricks. If you can teach your dog to target a post it on your hand, you may eventually be able to get them targeting the post it on other items, like a soccer ball. It can be very rewarding and a great bonding experience for you and your dog to learn some tricks just for fun.

My former Karen Pryor Academy teacher Steve Benjamin demonstrates nose targeting in this video. You may also want to read this article from the Karen Pryor Academy describing how to teach a nose target.

Mat targeting can be a very helpful part of a training plan for a wide variety of issues you may be having with your dog. If your dog has separation anxiety, one part of the plan to help your dog relax can be to teach them that their mat or bed is the best place, a safe, rewarding place. If your dog tends to jump on guests when they first enter the door, you can teach them that running to their mat instead is the best way for them to get some affection and treats from guests. If your dog has impulse control or anxiety issues it can help them learn impulse control and promote calmness. This article can help you get started on mat work.

Once your dog has gotten good at mat targeting, you can try one of my favourite activities for dogs that have impulse control or anxiety issues, Dr. Karen Overall’s Relaxation Protocol. This is a 15-day program that helps your dog learn the value of relaxing and settling down, even when other things are going on. Your dog will also likely become very attached to their mat by the end of the 15 days.

The positive interrupter sound is probably the easiest one to get started with. Nose targeting is a little more challenging, but many dog/human teams can figure it out pretty quickly. Some people get mat targeting down pretty quickly as well, but a lot of people will probably need some help from a trainer. Even if your dog already knows all these behaviours and more, you still want to have regular training sessions with your dog. It’s a fun, rewarding, bonding experience. It’s also important to make sure you always make it clear to your dog what behaviour you like and want to see more of, and to reward desirable behaviours often so your dog continues to find behaviours that you find desirable rewarding.

My number one dog training rule for every pet parent at any stage of their dog’s life is “Reward behaviour you want repeated!”

–– Daniel