Hubby and I are having a difference of opinion. He thinks I shouldn’t need to give the dogs treats every time I ask them to do something.
Example:
When dinner is ready, we put the dogs on their mats and go into the kitchen to prepare our plates. Tonight I brought Delilah in and lured her down with a carrot. I waited a minute, told her to “Stay” and went into the kitchen.
We were having my new favorite dinner (Nachos) and it took a bit longer than normal. Apparently it was too long for Delilah; she got up very quietly and came to sit at the edge of the kitchen.
I heard the slightest jingle of her collar and turned around and noticed her.
“Oh, it was too long for you sweetie,” I murmured with a slight chuckle.
As I walked back to her place with her, hubby said just loud enough for me to hear, “No she just wants to do it her way.”
Does he know how to piss me off, or what?
After dinner I was telling him about my friend Ann and her frustration with her new puppy and trying to get him to “Stay.” Someone watching Ann with her puppy made the following observation, “How dare you put him in a down and walk away.” In the puppy’s eyes he doesn’t know what Ann wants from him.
Which is why I put Delilah in a down and waited a minute before walking away.
Hubby then said, “I noticed you used a carrot to put her in her down tonight, you know you have to stop using treats with her at some point.”
I tried explaining that I don’t usually give her a treat when I’m putting them on their places, but his attitude is really frustrating me.
He’s not a real firm believer of the positive reinforcement school of dog training. I haven’t had time to finish reading my clicker training book, so I wanted to throw this out to blog land and ask you all for your thoughts and advice.
Have you disagreed with your spouse/significant other about the best way to train your dog? If you’ve encountered resistance, how have you handled it? If you use the positive dog training method how do you work it with your dog? Do you train every day? For how long?
I KNOW this is the method that will work best for training Delilah, I just need to figure out the best way to do this.
I think both you and your husband are right. I would say that if you want Delilah to stay in long downs, you are going to have to watch her and correct her of she moves. By correct, I mean use whatever method you want to get her back to down and so she understands that you want her to stay down and not move. It also means that you probably won’t be able to do other things while you are “training”. Positive reinforcement training is great. I think it works well for obedience. However, the dog also needs to understand what behaviors you regard as being disobedient. I think maybe Delilah has figured out how to game the system (get treats and still do what she mostly wants), or she just is unsure what you really want from her. As the trainer it is our job to help our doggies understand what we expect from them and be consistent and fair with their training. (I am not saying your aren’t. This is just my general thinking on training.)
We did most of our obedience training with treats and phased them out as the behaviors became solid. Can’t always have a treat handy when I need the dawg to sit. 🙂 We try to train something everyday…even if it is just walk at heel on lead, (or off), even if it is just a few minutes and train it in a consistent way. However, we rarely use treats these days. Mostly they get “good dawgs” and lots of pets.
Kind of a muddled up answer, but those are my thoughts…
Absolutely not, I understand exactly what you are saying! I think she may be “gaming” the system as well, I mean we have been doing this for four years. She should have a basic clue by now!
Eventually I will phase out the treats, but I have really only started with the positive reinforcement and I really want this to work!
When we are walking I am not treating her as much if SHE runs up to me, but if I call her and she comes she gets praise and treats. I want her recall to be solid.
Thank you for your thoughts, as always they are well thought out and greatly appreciated.
My understanding is that eventually you need to move to intermittent praise. Just like with children, you start by giving praise (a treat, a “good boy”, or a stoke on the head, whatever you’re using) every time they do what you ask. Then you begin to drop the praise on occasion. I’ve never read a specific formula, but intermittent praise works best with children and dogs (and probably adults too I suppose, but no one is doing research in this area per se). Finally, you can move to no praise at all (although, what good dog owner doesn’t lavish praise on their dog just because they love them?), or at least the expectation that your command will be obeyed without the expectation of praise.
Good luck. It sure takes an awful lot of consistency, attention, and PATIENCE. Good gravy did has training my Oliver taken a lot of patience! *sigh*
As for training your husband (wink, lol), well, I often feel very fortunate to be the only human in our household. It’d be tough to negotiate the training of dogs or kids. Everyone has an opinion. Best of luck with that too.
Yes, that is true you must slowly wean them from the treats and I will. As for being the only human in your house, well you are lucky.
We have fought over raising all three of our kids and now are fighting over the dogs! LOL
There should be a questionnaire when you start dating asking how you handle certain situations. Then you would know from the start where your battles will lie. We never fight over money, we fight over the kids!
He was raised, “Children should be seen and not heard.” Therefore anyone smaller than him, has no voice. ;-(
It sounds like you are doing a great job. I don’t think Gwynn would last even halfway through making dinner! I agree with the brown dawgs, though – it’s easier to correct a down-stay if you are there to correct it before she fully finishes moving. Gwynn tends to try to lie down partway through a sit-stay if it’s too long (and by too long, i’m talking, ‘oh, you’re making me sit on a comfy surface for more than 30 seconds? Nooo…..’), but if I move forward and put my hand at his collar under his chin, (almost like if i were scratching his chin, kind of…) when he’s in the middle of starting to consider to move, he’ll sit-stay for more than 30 seconds after that… just getting past the initial urge to break position that requires a bit of watching.
You could also try getting them to down-stay while waiting for their food (or before going outside, or… whatever else works – that way, the reward only comes after you’ve given them the release word.
As to training-opinion-differences, I have no idea. Your dogs are doing really well with the type of training you are doing, so it would be counterproductive to change the style of training now. You read my ‘training conundrum’ post – Gwynn reacted very badly to the change of training, and I wasn’t even doing the snaps and sharp corrections the trainer wanted us to be doing.
Lexy, she doesn’t make it through dinner! LOL most days she will stay in close proximity to where we put her, but as soon as we sit down she stands up and stretches! Then she will attempt to approach us, but we are very quick to correct her.
I will try making her do a down for her food though, that is an excellent idea!
As for Gwynn if you worked with him on this, you just might be surprised. 😉
I start weaning off the treats by only rewarding the best/fastest responses. I love using luring, but once they know the behavior, I fade the lure immediately, and only use the food as a reward. They should be able to respond with a hand signal.
Asking her to wait on her mat might actually be too hard for her, even though you’ve taught her the behavior. Take a step back, and work on the behavior each day when you are NOT cooking. While you are taking this step back, you can try just managing the behavior while you are cooking, so she doesn’t have a chance to make a mistake. (Tethering, baby gates, or crating comes to mind). When using positive reinforcement, you want to always set them up to succeed.
Key things to remember with positive reinforcement. (1) It does not mean permissive – never allow your dog to do the wrong thing. You should either be actively training, or managing to prevent. Each time they get to make a mistake, it makes them more likely to repeat the behavior. (2) Lures should be faded immediately after a dog understands the command. You’d be surprised, you might think your dog needs to be lured – but try saying the command one time and just waiting. Often we repeat the commands too quickly, and then give up and just lure them, when they might have just been slow to respond. (Later, you can fix slow responses by only rewarding fast ones.) (3) Give jackpot rewards for great/fast responses / give only intermittent or even no rewards for slow ones (you can still use verbal praise though) (4) Practice makes perfect, and you should train for the hardest behaviors, (staying in place, leave-it, and heel), repeatedly in low distraction environments when you can really work on it, before trying to do harder situations. Don’t move up until your dog is responding correctly nearly all of the time. (5) Once you do move up to harder situations, make it worth your dogs while. Think good treats – chicken, beef, pork. Not carrots, even if they love them, meat makes a real difference in a dogs mind.
Hope all of that helps! If not, ask!! Happy to help!! 🙂
I need to come to your house with Delilah so you can show me the proper technique! 😉
I think you are right in that I need to set some training time aside, where she can practice what is required from her.
I fully believe she is capable of this, I’m just not sure if I am sending the wrong signals or not!
As for treats, well mostly in the house I use green beans or carrots, sometimes cheese. Cheese is a high value treat for them and when we are outside I have roast beef which they both love. When we go to obedience class I have lamb lungs in my pocket. Since they are labs they have the tendency to get “portly” so I try to minimize the treat calories whenever possible.
Thank you for your comment, I truly appreciate it!
About 87 years ago… when my mom was working on her Special Ed degree… she leaned about the Diminishing Rewards thingy. She used it on ME when I was taking MY classes at PetSmart University and Stuffie Distributatorship. It WORKS!! And it will work with you. You are doing it just Right. I’m just sayin.
PeeS… I have an Advanced Degree now… I am Frankie Furter, CGC
Thanks Frankie, it sounds like your mom is really on top of things! You are CGC? I think I am going to see about getting those special letters after my dog’s names. 😉
I have the same disagreements with my husband too! He thinks I treat the dogs entirely too much and I will admit weaning them off treats for behaviors is something I’m constantly struggling with. I think the advice that other commenters have given you is great and I’ll try some of it myself. But back to the husband thing – while mine grumbles about the amount of treats I give, he’s also the first to complain that the dogs listen to me better, want to hang out with me over him and that I have a stronger bond with them. Ever the diplomat, I’m just waiting for him to connect the dots that the way I train them is what creates this special bond. He is starting to do more training sessions with treats and toys so I know he’s coming around – he just doesn’t want to admit it yet!
If the dogs listened to me better I would have a good arguement, but Sampson listens to hubby better. 🙁
I am trying to fit a positive reinforcement training into my budget, in the meantime I am trying to do this on my own by reading a book. I admit I am mostly a visual person so seeing it really works best for me.
I’m sure he will connect the dots and then you will both be on the same page!
It sounds to me like you are doing a great job. I agree, like the other comments have stated, you are going to want to be able to keep her in eye view, so the minute she moves you correct her. My trainer at work said that you also have to try the command at random parts of the day and a good 15-30 minute exercise every day is good for them, even if it’s not the same command every day. What I’ve learned from Aladdin is we started out small for stay. If he stayed for 2 seconds, treat. Then we went to 10 seconds, treat. Eventually he understood, okay I have to stay here. Hope that helps a little. As for the men in our lives… mine just loves giving him table scraps and sneaking into the treat jar. I’m surprised Aladdin isn’t fat with all the food he gets from dad. While infuriating, just stand your ground. You’ll ween treats when they know and understand the commands. 😉
Thanks for the support Nicole. It sounds at least like you and Julio are on the same page with training Aladdin; it’s just the treat part that dad has to work on.
I like the idea of spacing out the treats! great idea!
First off I have dog training envy. I need to get Haylie to do a long down stay… she gets bored and gets up and walks away half of the time if I am not hovering over her watching her every move to stop her before she gets up. I cant use treats with her because she will be so obsessed over the treat she forgets to listen and watch my cues. Haylie and Fred have only been trained with praise as their reward. Fred went through pet therapy class as the only dog who didnt have treats (he spits them out) but his reward was petting. In my house we argue over training – esp when it comes to walking the dogs and how and what they should do on a walk. I think you have to choose your battles. He walks fred and i let him proceed with how he wants to train fred. Now on the door training we disagree and we are still working on how to meet in the middle. sigh. best of luck 🙂
Delilah is treat obsessed too and don’t envy me! LOL I can’t get my dog to stay in a down!
That’s awesome that they have been trained with praise, I do praise my dogs a lot.
The way their trained is a good battle in my mind. 😉 The other stuff can slide, like leaving dirty things laying around……:-)
We had to hire a professional trainer before my husband gave in and started doing things “my way” – er – the trainers way 😉
Our permanent foster Kiba is leash reactive, so it was so important that we were consistent in his behavior modification. I always brought treats to distract/redirect him… hubby never did so Kiba was 60% focused on treats. Finally the trainer reinforced what I had been doing and hubby was on board. Kiba is 99% now! Huge difference!
We do train him every day, every single walk we redirect. In our house, we work on targeting (touch) and use treats for both. I think we’ll use treats for a very long time, I have no plans to stop. Even when he is 100% (proofed) I’ll still want to reward him – food is his preferred reward – so why not continue?
I want to go the professional route too.
I’m glad that you have helped Kiba with his leash reactivity. Delilah went through that last year and it was really tough, but I think (know on wood) she is past it.
I need to work on redirecting too!
Oh yeah, I recognized some of your conversations. I sometimes feel like my husband takes it as a personal affront of the dog doesn’t do what he wants her to do. I think he’s changing but it’s a slow process.
The interesting thing would be to see if you could find a way to use positive reinforcement to move your husband farther along the +R continuum. He’d probably wonder what you were up to if you started clicking and stuffing treats into his mouth. But there is probably something that would work.
While I can’t say I’m ‘glad’ your going through this with your hubby, it helps to know I am not the only one facing this obstacle.
I wish I could find a way to use PR with him, can you imagine what could get done around the house? LOL
eHey Jodi…i have totally experienced a diference in opinion with my husband about positive reinforcement training and how powerful it can be…he resisted and didn’t agree at first but ultimately came around and totally supports this method of training now. Our issues were not for basic obedience training but to get my dogs to llike him. I owned both my dogs before we got together and they were so scared of him when he moved in. It was really horrible, my dogs would cower, hide and shake violently. I actually had to get a veterinary behaviourist to be involved in helping get through to my husband. Now my dogs are so in love with my husband and he totally supports the power of the treat. You can slowly phase out the food reward with a cuddle or pat. I would not ever totally phase out the treats..hope my advised was helpful…
All advice is welcome here Dr. Rayya! It sounds like you had a rough road, but I’m sure it was all worth it now when you see your pups reaction to hubby!
I will get through someday, in the meantime, I’m going to do what I do!