Chapter 1 The 21-Day Basic Obedience Course
The single most frequently asked question about dog training is "When can I start training him?" There's no dog too old to learn, for one answer, but that isn't what the question usually means. What people are asking is "How young can I start training him?"
There's no set answer to when a puppy can profitably begin obedience training. Certainly no dog is too young to learn things. Puppies start to learn about the world the moment they leave their mothers' wombs. But most trainers agree that the attention span of a young pup is just too short to allow for rigorous training sessions. Mostly, the results of very early obedience lessons of the classic type are frustration for both owner and dog. You can't figure out why nothing is getting across to him, and he can't figure out, can't even remember from one minute to the next, what it is you want him to do. The best advice is to hold off on formal training sessions until the puppy is from four to six months old. By that time, some of the newness of it all will have worn off, and the dog will be ready to concentrate just a wee bit on what you're telling him.
Of course, you're training the dog in basic household manners long before six months, and you're training him in lots of other things, too. You're showing him just what to expect from his association with you and with other human beings. You're teaching him the exact meaning of lots of words and phrases that will later be used as commands. And you're training yourself to be aware of who this pet of yours really is. By the time you're ready to begin formal obedience training, you should be well aware of what this dog likes -- what constitutes a genuine reward for him. Would he rather have his ears scratched with your knuckles than gnaw on a big knucklebone? Wonderful! Now you know just what to do to reward and praise him in training. And you'll be able to keep the butcher's bills down a bit, too.
In short, your dog's puppyhood is a time of the two of you getting to know each other. He's also getting to know the whole wide world at the same time, so it's clear why people who start advanced lessons early are usually disappointed. Like all other animals, immature dogs have certain periods when they are most open to new knowledge. Early development proceeds in such a way that puppies are more responsive to human handling when they're three weeks old than when they're two months. This is why home-raised puppies make much better pets than those raised in cages at the pet shop, or all alone with the mother out in the barn. It's simply that if puppies are handled early by people, they associate such handling with pleasure. If it never comes until they're much older, it's associated with threat.
Years and years and years of training experience have taught us that the period of openness to real obedience training never begins before the pup is four months old. Seeing Eye dogs aren't accepted for training until they're fourteen months old, and many trainers of circus dogs refuse to even look at a pooch until he passes his second birthday. So don't feel that the one-quarter-year mark is the moment of truth. It may be that a dog whose training starts at four months and a dog whose training is postponed until one year will both know exactly as much at eighteen months. Nobody has ever tested this one to be sure, but early learning may be much more for the sake of the master than for that of the dog. In any case, if it's very rapid progress you're after, wait until the dog is about two. But if you have the patience to work with the younger dog's shorter concentration, you'll find him a slower but willing pupil at about four to six months. When you start depends on what you hope to accomplish, how fast, and why.
Whatever your dog's disposition, you can be sure he loves praise. The only exception is the dog who isn't really on good terms with his master. But if you and your pet have established a normal relationship during his puppyhood, he has probably learned to value your approval over everything else, including snacks and tidbits. If you really pay attention, you'll soon discover exactly in what form Pluto likes his praise. Some dogs would rather be tickled; others want to be pounded on the back. Still others, the verbal types, would rather hear the approval than feel it. Whatever form it takes, positive reinforcement should always come in the form of praise or affection. A well-fed family dog has little need and even less desire for dog biscuits and bits of meat to encourage him to perform. And artificially starving your pet will only spoil his concentration and make him uncomfortable during every training session.
As for negative reinforcement, it's advisable only in cases in which you can convince the dog that the bad consequences came from the environment, not from you. The effects of old-fashioned punishment on any animal are to make him hate and fear you. True, he may perform in order to escape punishment, but only when you're around or when he thinks somebody else might come down on him. If he thinks that bad consequences are in the nature of the world -- like getting wet when you go out in the rain -- he will avoid the behavior that causes the uncomfortable feelings. If he thinks bad consequences come from you, he'll devise ways to avoid or sneak around you.
One of the best ways to distract a dog from undesirable behavior without getting him mad at you is to call him, then praise him for coming. Any command or sharp noise will turn him away from what he's doing momentarily. Call out, "Stop, Nestor!" When he looks up, call him over, and give him a pat for obeying you. Instead of making him resentful by punishing him, you'll make him more likely to come or stop, or whatever you want, the next time. Naturally, you'll have to use negative reinforcement sometimes, but tricks like this one will help keep it to a minimum.
Besides the emphasis on positive reinforcement, our training technique stresses operant conditioning. What this means to you is that to be effective, a trainer must wait until the behavior he wants to reinforce occurs naturally. Because this technique follows the natural behavior patterns of your pet, it requires perhaps a bit more patience in the beginning than other training methods. And it's quite true that you can teach Buster to "Sit" by just pushing down on his rear over and over while you repeat the command. Eventually he'll learn to associate the one thing with the other, and you'll have the feeling of having showed him how to do something he couldn't otherwise have figured out. What may surprise you is that this method actually takes longer than ours, and is less effective. An animal is really quicker and more willing to associate something he does all by himself -- and gets praise for -- with a command than he is to associate what you want from him with force. If you force him into a sitting position, he'll sit, all right, but he'll feel coerced, pushed around. If you just wait until he sits of his own accord -- and he will eventually -- you can accomplish more with a few words of praise than with ten dog-training classes.
The truth about those famous classes is that they train more owners than dogs. There's nothing wrong with that, of course. Lots of new dog owners don't know the first thing about dogs and their needs. A little training, or even a lot of training, can't hurt. But traditional training classes aren't the best way to build a working dog-master team. They make use of artificial military-type situations that have little or no resemblance to the dog's home environment. They offer the twin distractions of lots of people and lots of dogs to take your mind (and your dog's) off your work. And they substitute rote drill for the natural learning situation in which every other kind of learning takes place, for human and animal alike. It's no wonder that dogs trained this way are at their best in dog-show obedience trials and other formal occasions. These are the situations that most closely approximate the conditions under which the dogs learned obedience.
If you have ambitions for entering your dog in obedience trials, it might be a good idea to get him used to the hustle and hurry by taking him to a few old-style dog-training classes. But most of your training should be done on a one-to-one basis. Just you and the dog, and plenty of time to wait for the behavior you want to occur spontaneously. If you don't want to compete, there's no reason whatever for you to subject yourself or Wolf to any classes. If you want to engage in group activities, a cocktail party or a soccer game might be more to the point.
Here are some basic rules, distilled from years of working with dogs, to help you on your way to the well-trained pet. In fact, though the object is for the dog to be trained, these rules aren't about the dog. They're about you. If you conduct yourself properly, the dog will behave naturally and do just what you want. Though trainers sometimes speak of the limitations of the animal, the master really has to worry only about his own limitations. Your dog has, for example, infinitely more patience than you do. His whole life, after all, consists in learning how to get along with you and derive pleasure from your company. You are probably impatient to finish up with Ol' Spot and get back to The Wall Street Journal. A training session hardly ever has to be stopped because a dog loses his temper. The same cannot be said of trainers. Your dog will be more consistent than you are, and more attentive. The notion that dogs have short attention spans probably derives more from the impatience of owners than from any real failing on the part of the canines. These rules, in short, are to allow not for your dog's faults, but for yours.
1. Consistency pays. In training, always use the same words for the same ideas. For example, if you want to teach "down," don't say, "Lie down, Prince" one time and "Down, boy" the next. Keep the commands short, but most of all, make them the sam...
