“But the dog does this perfectly at home… “

I believe you. I truly do believe you. - Let’s take an example of a pup and the sit command. You would like an obedient dog and you work and work on teaching pup to sit. You follow the instructions from the myriad of books you have read and you have listen to all the advice from your dog owner friends. You teach the dog to sit. You practice with your dog. You want to show off all your hours of hard work and show what a brilliant, Einstein-like pup you have. When you take your pup away from home, puppy amnesia seems to have struck. Pup acts like it has never heard this word before and looks at you with a quizzical expression.

Let me reassure you that pup does know the command. The problem is that pup has learned this in a specific location and has not generalized and learned that you want pup to obey in all locations. Furthermore, in the quiet of your family room, garage or back yard, there are few distractions and pup learns to give you its attention there. Pup has to learn that it has to obey, not only at home, but in all situations/locations. This is what obedience competitors call “proofing”.

Why this is important to you is that you cannot trust the pup’s reliability unless you have worked with him/her in a multitude of locations and with a vast and varying amount of distractions. It is only then that you can trust the dog. Certainly, this has implications on safety for the dog. It must be stressed that reliability at home does not mean you will have the same consistency elsewhere, unless you train for that dependability.

To borrow from the excellent dog obedience competitors, be creative. Practice with your dog in as many locations as possible. Set up distractions. Allow your dog as many experiences as possible. And to be fair to the dog, when you do this proofing, remember that you are in a teaching situation. As quickly as you can, when you are proofing, offer lavish praise. Be sincere. The dog will make errors and these errors are to be expected. However, you will protect your relationship with your dog if you look for chances to praise rather than wait for opportunities to scold.

In training and practicing in different locations and with different distractions, you are setting up a situation for the dog to learn. You are teaching. You are not trying to make it fail. That is a huge distinction. You want to look for opportunities to say “you’re right, you’re so smart, you’re doing soooo well, …” to the pup. Mistakes will happen but you will make it so much easier on both you and pup if you praise quickly and often. Wouldn’t you be annoyed at someone who sets you up to be scolded? Yes, you would be annoyed and so would pup.

Catherine Forsythe
Director of Operations
FlyingHamster:  http://flyinghamster.com/

[tag]dogs, dog training, locations, distractions, proofing, praise, teaching, attention, safety, reliability, errors[/tag]