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If you’re doing a good job of minimizing your own body language, it will help your dog achieve success in a shorter amount of time. I’ve seen dogs who can learn a new cue in as few as three or four clicks and others take longer. You’ll be excited so don’t forget to click and treat! Good job! You’ve just changed a cue.Įvery dog learns at a different rate, just as we each do. This gives the dog time to associate the new cue with the old cue.Īs you continue to repeat this exercise, before long, your dog will hear the new cue and move into the desired behavior before you have a chance to give the known cue. Next, give the new cue, pause a little bit longer, give the known cue, then click/treat the desired behavior. If you want to change a cue, use the “new” cue, pause, then give the “known” cue, and click/treat the correct response. I must continue to use and reinforce each cue periodically if I want Willow’s response to these cues to be reliable. I have three different cues for Willow’s sit: a verbal cue (an auditory cue I can use if my hands are busy) a hand signal (a visual cue I can use if I’m talking) and the sight of car keys (another visual cue I trained just for the fun of it). With each successive repetition, slowly fade out the lure, and voila!, your dog will respond to your verbal “Sit!” cue.ĭogs can learn multiple cues for a single behavior. By encouraging even her slightest movements, you can help increase her response to the verbal cue. Pay close attention to your dog when you say the cue if you see even the slightest movement that gives you an indication she’s about to sit, praise her (Good girl!) and lure her the rest of the way into the sit position, then click/treat. By pausing, you’re giving the dog an opportunity to associate the sound of your verbal cue, “Sit!,” with the behavior of sitting. Pause one second, and then lure the dog into the sit position.
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Example: Say “Sit!” (always in a happy tone of voice). Once the dog is reliably (at least 80 to 90 percent of the time) performing the behavior, you can begin to incorporate whatever cue you wish by using your desired cue as the dog performs the behavior.Īfter the dog is successful a few times, use the cue before the dog performs the behavior. To shape a sit, consider all the tiny parts of the entire sit position (looking up, rocking back, rear end begins to move closer to the floor), and reinforce each of those tiny parts toward the final behavior of sitting. When the dog happens to move into the sit position, click/treat. To capture a sit, merely wait patiently and observe the dog.
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When the dog’s bottom hits the floor, you’d mark the desired behavior with the click of a clicker (or a verbal marker, such as the word “Yes!”) and give the dog a yummy piece of food. This causes the dog to look up, rock back a bit, and as she does so, her bottom goes down. To lure the dog into a sit, hold a piece of food in your hand, place it at the dog’s nose and move it up and back over the dog’s head. Our dogs know how to sit, right? They just don’t know how to sit when we say “sit.” If you want to teach your dog a new behavior, you must first “show” the dog what to do and make sure the behavior is reliable before adding a cue.įor example, if I’m attempting to teach a dog to sit, I would help to elicit the behavior by first luring, capturing, or shaping the movement. If you like that specific behavior (the sit, down, etc.) and want your dog to do it again, reinforce the heck out of it! Reinforcement drives behavior. The consequence of the behavior is what makes the specific behavior more likely to increase or decrease. It’s important to understand that the cue (an antecedent) isn’t what causes the behavior to happen. In canine sports and service dog work, handlers may use a number of other types of cues, including olfactory cues. In the pet dog world, most people use verbal cues, with hand signals coming in a close second.
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Our dogs see, hear, smell, touch, and taste, just as we do, so anything a dog is able to perceive by one of her senses can be turned into a cue. It’s also a chance to earn reinforcement. In reality, a cue is anything your dog can perceive. If the dog succeeds, the dog earns reinforcement, and reinforcement makes the behavior more likely to happen again. In the dog-friendly and humane training I use (and hope you use, too), the word “cue” is used instead of “command.” Command implies “You do it or else!” In the world of positive training, if the dog doesn’t respond to my cue, it’s my job as the trainer to assess what just occurred and tweak my own actions to help the dog succeed. From the handler’s perspective, a cue is the word or action we attach to a specific behavior the animal has learned so that we can elicit that behavior again.