Kathy Sdao Seminar Notes: Consistency on Every Level

I am so quick to get frustrated with the dogs for not understanding me, or taking too long to learn some new skill. Well one thing that I really had to examine in myself after the Sdao seminar was the reality that the problem was all me. I really should know this by now but it's human nature to want to pass the blame.

Consistency on every level of training is key to being successful. That means being consistent with the way we cue and how often we are reinforcing for the behaviors that we want the dog to be using.


Frodo, Langley and Neah, all ready for some training fun

Sloppy cues can slow things way down. After all, your dog doesn't naturally "speak" cues and if you are changing up how you give your cues or using several cues for the same behavior, you're probably being pretty confusing to your dog. Kathy Sdao suggested creating a dictionary of the cues that your dog has been taught. Describe each cue in great detail: are you standing straight when giving the cue or leaning over? If it's a hand cue how is your thumb in relation to your fingers? Is there any motion involved in giving the cue? What is the rest of your body doing?  If the cue is verbal, what tone of voice do you typically use when giving it? Does your voice fall or rise at the end of the word?

If you are doing  a bunch of different things like sticking your other hand in the treat bag, leaning over, stepping forward, sighing, etc. you really don't know which part the dog is taking as the cue.

Langley, practicing some impulse control exercises

The other consistency that is important is making sure the behavior you are looking for gets reinforced every time it happens initially. That means if you are working on getting your dog not to sit on the back of the couch and bark at everything, you need to make that couch inaccessible so that the only time they have access is when you are doing training work. Letting the dog spend their day barking on the couch when you are at work and then doing training when you are at home just teaches the dog that they are not supposed to bark out the window when the humans are home. The more consistent the behavior/reinforcement sequence, the faster the learning will happen.

Classical conditioning only works if the reward happens every time.  Once you have the behavior you want taught, you can then switch to operant conditioning and vary rate of reward and strengthen the skill so it is more difficult to extenguish the behavior. Initially though you really need to be catching the behavior almost every time to get a strong response. Set your dog (and yourself) up to succeed. It takes more effort up front, that's for sure. However, the payoff to that effort is pretty great and comes quickly.