I meant to post this in the group last night but it ended up on my home page. Ooops. Any behavior we want a dog to perform, whether its getting out of a crate or standing quietly while dogs or people go by is taught by splitting the behavior up into its component pieces, training them and building on them, according to the dogs ability. A trainer needs to be able to ascertain all the pieces of the puzzle in order to come up with set-ups in which the dog feels safe enough to be able to start learning the desired behavior. Fear and reactivity make it more challenging for trainers to do this, but its what good trainers strive to do. Set the dog up so they are not likely to perform the unwanted behavior and then start training. Food is not used as a distraction or lure. It is used to help the dog change their interpretation of an aversive stimulus by changing the association the dog has with it. We can accomplish this more efficiently when we eliminate the immediate response triggered by the amygdala and give them the opportunity to think and learn the new behaviors we are teaching. Good training skills provide us with the only short cut we need to help our dogs.
Posted on: Wed, 17 Dec 2014 13:14:07 +0000
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