Why dogs seem not listen to you when you want them to?
Have you ever had experiences that your dogs do what you asked them to do one time, but next time you asked the same thing to do, they cover their ears with paws and keep doing what they were doing?
Recently, Palette turned 5 years old. During the 5 years of life with her, she thought me so much. Since she is my first dog, everything we did were new to me and I enjoyed learning many things about her or about dogs in general.
Palette and one of her siblings first pause for camera..
When she was 3 months old, we have enrolled in puppy training class, and I think it helped Palette to meet other dogs,other people and helped for her socialization. Also, it helped making our bond stronger through training class. The class was to learn basic obedience training, but we had so much fun together.
Usually, we arrived at training class location 15 minutes or so early and walked around, and let her excitement level down, and we headed to the class. She loved sniffing the puppy training class floor and sniff out the doggy news from previous class students. This way, she was not a barker in the class and she was quiet calmer dog in the class and helped us learn things together better.
Palette's Graduation picture..
She sometimes surprised me with unexpected incident, and some chewing issues (She loved eating book edge,leg of stair pole, handle of wooden grooming brush etc) but she was not much of a trouble maker. Maybe daily training session (mental exercise) along with daily walkie (physical exercise) helped to keep her away from all the troubles. Dogs with pent up energy tend to find things on their own to get them into troubles.
Mom, how do I look? The Pal's custom-made Pee-pad dress!-Palette
This pee-pad dress incident was definitely unexpected. After the pee-pad dress incident, we tossed all the pee-pad in the house and, we tried being more observant and tried to catch the sign of "I need to go potty" and took her to outside for potty. Once she is trained doing potty outside, I trained her with potty bell.
Pee-pad is convenient for us human if/when we could not catch their sign of "I got to go to potty", but it is sort of sending confusing message to them because, pee-pad usually be in the house,which means, they would think that they can do potty in the house, but then, when they go potty in the house, they see you not being happy.
If you want them to go to potty outside, don't use the pee-pad in the house and if you happened to see the accident in process, catch them in the act and take them outside and let them do potty outside.That way, potty place is always being outside.
Feeding at set schedule until potty trained also makes you predict potty time easier too. I remember I wrote down what time I fed her,what time she went potty and tried to understand her pattern of potty time.It helped me a lot. And took her for potty at other predictable times such as soon after nap,play etc.
If you were interested to read how I trained her potty trained, you can read in the previous entry titled "Gottago gottago ring! ring! ring!; House training dogs ". You can see her ringing the potty bell also.
At puppy training class, I learned some of basic obedience training cues, how to teach dogs with clicker but, I think that spending time with your dogs a lot is most important thing/first thing before training itself.
Then, become an interesting people to follow for your dogs. If you could not get an attention from your dogs, you can teach nothing. When your dogs are looking at other family members to beg for something or staring through the window to woof to passersby, or looking at running squirrels, and giving no attention to you, they would not be responsive to your cue no matter how you say the cue repeatedly or loud.
If you were interested in reading how I became an interesting person to get Palette's attention, you can read in the previous entry titled "How to keep dogs attention to you ".
Ultimately, I think it would be best if you could win your dogs attention over squirrels in the yard. Squirrels in the yard is hard to beat for Palette's attention!
Catch me if you can!-Squirrel
Another thing that I learned through Palette is that, no matter what you would do; nail trimming,bathing,playing fetch,obedience training etc etc, I think you must be patient and be consistent on things that you do with them.
When your dogs seem not listening to you, sometimes, it is you that need to be reviewed. Maybe dogs get one word as cue, and other time, your dog gets another word that you expect them to act the same.
Good example being, lets say you try to teach your dog to sit. You got their attention and you start teaching them "sit". You try to lure with treats to teach "sit". But,they do not know what you want them to do, and they may just jumping up to the treats trying to get to the treats, jumping up and down.You get frustrated and goes "Sit,sit,sit" and the dogs finally sat down and you might give treats. What would happen next? The dogs would probably think "Sit,sit,sit" is jumping up and down and sit down.
What you may want to do is to make sure you say the word only once. If they did not seem to get it, say "Try again", and try to get the attention from them again and repeat from scratch. The dogs do not know the difference of sit-sit-sit and sit.
Another thing as example is that lets say you are eating dinner at the table. Your dogs come to you, and interested in what are on the table and they may put the paws on table to look over what you have.Without thinking much, you probably tend to say "Down" to your dogs. BUT, what is real "down" cue mean?
"Down" is where dogs lie down on the floor. Not paw off from table. We use the word "Off" to tell Palette to paws off from table when/if the food we have were so irresistible for her and she put the paws on the table.
Also, I think it important that every family members would use the same words for same behaviors and same timing to rewards the good behaviors and everyone in the family must be consistent.
If you like to give no food from table, everyone must not give food from table. Don't feed from table one day and expect them to understand that was special treatment and no food from table next day.Be consistent in what you do.
Now, have you had experience that you seem to get attention only if the dogs know you have tasty treats in your treat bag or hands?
I think dogs should not rely on treats to listen to you. After all, you cannot have treats all the time to reward them. For Palette, until she learns the behavior, I used treats. Start with click and treats on good behavior and it goes to reward at random pattern and sometimes she gets 2-3 small bits of treats after click, sometimes she gets treats after she could do the behavior couple of times. I varies the frequency and make her prediction hard.
That way, since dogs work for things that works, she tries hard hoping she gets click and treats and it enable you to fade the treats away gradually and at the end, you can tell your dogs to sit without treats with you and they "sit" on your cue. I also give cues in different order when training. I change the pattern each time what I ask her to do.That way, I know for sure whether she is learning behavior from pattern or really understand the behavior on its own.You must be unpredictable.
When I do not give treats for behavior, I give them nice scratch on the head or short petting or big happy praise to let her know she did good. Rewards do not have to be treats. It can be a short fetch ball game, Frisbee, whatever your dogs love.
That being said, at our house, for Palette, there is no free treats. Yes, she does taste testing every batch of biscuits or every batch of Jerky for other furry friends, but she does not get it for free. I let her do something and then, give her the taste testing treats. Although, for real training purpose, biscuits are not the good candidate as training treats because they need to chew, not swallow.
For training purpose, it is best for you to find treats easy to break into small pieces, preferably about lentil size and use those not biscuits that needs to be chewed. Chewing slow down the training speed.
Another thing during the training with Palette is that, I sometime just show the hand signal. She sees the signal and do what she was asked to.Then, I click the clicker and give her rewards. I think it helps for dogs to learn cue without voice because as they get older, they may have hearing problems and if you know they can see/understand signals, you can communicate well.
Also, different environment makes your dogs behave differently. Outside the house is full of distraction; squirrels,passersby,neighbor dogs, cats,cars...Even if your dog could do "sit" nicely, it does not mean they can do "sit" outside. Start from quiet place where you can get more attention/focus from your dogs in the house,then move on to a place with bit of distraction. Practicing same cue at many places with distraction.
Using the same word for same item outside the training time also helps your dogs to pick up your words by themselves. When Palette hear the word "shower", she trots to shower room and wait for me. When she hears "downstairs", she goes to downstairs and wait on me.When she hears "trash", she walks towards trash bin and I toss her poop she did on walk etc..
These are words I never taught her.She just picked up the words on her own.
What words your dogs picked up on their own?
Recently, Palette turned 5 years old. During the 5 years of life with her, she thought me so much. Since she is my first dog, everything we did were new to me and I enjoyed learning many things about her or about dogs in general.
Palette and one of her siblings first pause for camera..
When she was 3 months old, we have enrolled in puppy training class, and I think it helped Palette to meet other dogs,other people and helped for her socialization. Also, it helped making our bond stronger through training class. The class was to learn basic obedience training, but we had so much fun together.
Usually, we arrived at training class location 15 minutes or so early and walked around, and let her excitement level down, and we headed to the class. She loved sniffing the puppy training class floor and sniff out the doggy news from previous class students. This way, she was not a barker in the class and she was quiet calmer dog in the class and helped us learn things together better.
Palette's Graduation picture..
She sometimes surprised me with unexpected incident, and some chewing issues (She loved eating book edge,leg of stair pole, handle of wooden grooming brush etc) but she was not much of a trouble maker. Maybe daily training session (mental exercise) along with daily walkie (physical exercise) helped to keep her away from all the troubles. Dogs with pent up energy tend to find things on their own to get them into troubles.
Mom, how do I look? The Pal's custom-made Pee-pad dress!-Palette
This pee-pad dress incident was definitely unexpected. After the pee-pad dress incident, we tossed all the pee-pad in the house and, we tried being more observant and tried to catch the sign of "I need to go potty" and took her to outside for potty. Once she is trained doing potty outside, I trained her with potty bell.
Pee-pad is convenient for us human if/when we could not catch their sign of "I got to go to potty", but it is sort of sending confusing message to them because, pee-pad usually be in the house,which means, they would think that they can do potty in the house, but then, when they go potty in the house, they see you not being happy.
If you want them to go to potty outside, don't use the pee-pad in the house and if you happened to see the accident in process, catch them in the act and take them outside and let them do potty outside.That way, potty place is always being outside.
Feeding at set schedule until potty trained also makes you predict potty time easier too. I remember I wrote down what time I fed her,what time she went potty and tried to understand her pattern of potty time.It helped me a lot. And took her for potty at other predictable times such as soon after nap,play etc.
If you were interested to read how I trained her potty trained, you can read in the previous entry titled "Gottago gottago ring! ring! ring!; House training dogs ". You can see her ringing the potty bell also.
At puppy training class, I learned some of basic obedience training cues, how to teach dogs with clicker but, I think that spending time with your dogs a lot is most important thing/first thing before training itself.
Then, become an interesting people to follow for your dogs. If you could not get an attention from your dogs, you can teach nothing. When your dogs are looking at other family members to beg for something or staring through the window to woof to passersby, or looking at running squirrels, and giving no attention to you, they would not be responsive to your cue no matter how you say the cue repeatedly or loud.
If you were interested in reading how I became an interesting person to get Palette's attention, you can read in the previous entry titled "How to keep dogs attention to you ".
Ultimately, I think it would be best if you could win your dogs attention over squirrels in the yard. Squirrels in the yard is hard to beat for Palette's attention!
Catch me if you can!-Squirrel
Another thing that I learned through Palette is that, no matter what you would do; nail trimming,bathing,playing fetch,obedience training etc etc, I think you must be patient and be consistent on things that you do with them.
When your dogs seem not listening to you, sometimes, it is you that need to be reviewed. Maybe dogs get one word as cue, and other time, your dog gets another word that you expect them to act the same.
Good example being, lets say you try to teach your dog to sit. You got their attention and you start teaching them "sit". You try to lure with treats to teach "sit". But,they do not know what you want them to do, and they may just jumping up to the treats trying to get to the treats, jumping up and down.You get frustrated and goes "Sit,sit,sit" and the dogs finally sat down and you might give treats. What would happen next? The dogs would probably think "Sit,sit,sit" is jumping up and down and sit down.
What you may want to do is to make sure you say the word only once. If they did not seem to get it, say "Try again", and try to get the attention from them again and repeat from scratch. The dogs do not know the difference of sit-sit-sit and sit.
Another thing as example is that lets say you are eating dinner at the table. Your dogs come to you, and interested in what are on the table and they may put the paws on table to look over what you have.Without thinking much, you probably tend to say "Down" to your dogs. BUT, what is real "down" cue mean?
"Down" is where dogs lie down on the floor. Not paw off from table. We use the word "Off" to tell Palette to paws off from table when/if the food we have were so irresistible for her and she put the paws on the table.
Also, I think it important that every family members would use the same words for same behaviors and same timing to rewards the good behaviors and everyone in the family must be consistent.
If you like to give no food from table, everyone must not give food from table. Don't feed from table one day and expect them to understand that was special treatment and no food from table next day.Be consistent in what you do.
Now, have you had experience that you seem to get attention only if the dogs know you have tasty treats in your treat bag or hands?
I think dogs should not rely on treats to listen to you. After all, you cannot have treats all the time to reward them. For Palette, until she learns the behavior, I used treats. Start with click and treats on good behavior and it goes to reward at random pattern and sometimes she gets 2-3 small bits of treats after click, sometimes she gets treats after she could do the behavior couple of times. I varies the frequency and make her prediction hard.
That way, since dogs work for things that works, she tries hard hoping she gets click and treats and it enable you to fade the treats away gradually and at the end, you can tell your dogs to sit without treats with you and they "sit" on your cue. I also give cues in different order when training. I change the pattern each time what I ask her to do.That way, I know for sure whether she is learning behavior from pattern or really understand the behavior on its own.You must be unpredictable.
When I do not give treats for behavior, I give them nice scratch on the head or short petting or big happy praise to let her know she did good. Rewards do not have to be treats. It can be a short fetch ball game, Frisbee, whatever your dogs love.
That being said, at our house, for Palette, there is no free treats. Yes, she does taste testing every batch of biscuits or every batch of Jerky for other furry friends, but she does not get it for free. I let her do something and then, give her the taste testing treats. Although, for real training purpose, biscuits are not the good candidate as training treats because they need to chew, not swallow.
For training purpose, it is best for you to find treats easy to break into small pieces, preferably about lentil size and use those not biscuits that needs to be chewed. Chewing slow down the training speed.
Another thing during the training with Palette is that, I sometime just show the hand signal. She sees the signal and do what she was asked to.Then, I click the clicker and give her rewards. I think it helps for dogs to learn cue without voice because as they get older, they may have hearing problems and if you know they can see/understand signals, you can communicate well.
Also, different environment makes your dogs behave differently. Outside the house is full of distraction; squirrels,passersby,neighbor dogs, cats,cars...Even if your dog could do "sit" nicely, it does not mean they can do "sit" outside. Start from quiet place where you can get more attention/focus from your dogs in the house,then move on to a place with bit of distraction. Practicing same cue at many places with distraction.
Using the same word for same item outside the training time also helps your dogs to pick up your words by themselves. When Palette hear the word "shower", she trots to shower room and wait for me. When she hears "downstairs", she goes to downstairs and wait on me.When she hears "trash", she walks towards trash bin and I toss her poop she did on walk etc..
These are words I never taught her.She just picked up the words on her own.
What words your dogs picked up on their own?
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