Blog • Page 28 of 34 • Three Dogs Training

The Thieving Puppy, or How to Teach the Rules of Tug

Teaching your dog the rules of tug and setting up boundaries helps control their natural tugging behavior and gives you both what you want.

Ask Professor Boo is our recurring, positive reinforcement dog training and behavior question and answer column. If there’s a question that you would like to ask Professor Boo, please feel free to contact him.

Q: We’ve just got a new puppy and while he’s got all the rough-around-the-edges things that go along with being a puppy he does one thing that’s driving us crazy: everything becomes a game of tug. If he grabs a pillow off the couch – tug. If he grabs a towel in the bathroom – tug. If he grabs our pants – tug. How can we stop him?

A: First things first: tug is an innate behavior but you can shape and give it rules.

Just what is it tug? In short, you’re seeing a social manifestation of millions of years of their evolution.

As canids evolved and their hunting techniques developed to allow the hunting of larger prey. As a result, tug offered a solution to new issues:

Bigger prey require a collective effort to take them down
And, larger prey need to be divided up by the group

At some point one canine grabbed one end of a kill and another canine grabbed the other end and tug was born. What started as a solution to communal hunting and eating became what we see today in dogs as the game of tug.

Teaching your puppy how to tug appropriately is a great foundation skill that addresses:

Drop-it and leave-it skills
Self control skills
Trust and focus
Practice following rules and boundaries

Pax’e puppy practices tug and self control

The Rules of Tug

Ask your dog for a sit or down
Engage the game with a cue like “tug” or “take it”.
Use a toy large enough so that your hands will be clear of the dog’s mouth. I just love the Tennis Tug!
- I like to use only one or two designated tug toys because this reduces confusion and focuses their tug energies on their Super Special Tug Toy.
When the dog pulls or shakes side-to-side,
- You can relax your resistance or drop the toy completely.
- You can continue the game this way if your back and arm joints are strong enough but – if you’re like me – stick with the straight-on tug.
When the dog pulls front-to-back or straight-on
- Keep your resistance on the toy and play the game.
If the dog’s teeth hit your hand or clothing at any point
- Drop the toy, fold your arms, and look or even walk away from the dog.
If the dog’s paws briefly land on you
- You can choose to do the same look or walk away. If they are using you as a lever with the paws up against your body, drop the toy and look or walk away.
- The dog will probably come back to you with the toy after something like this.
- When they do, ask for a sit and restart the game using the cue you’ve chosen.
If the dog begins tugging any article of clothing
- Disengage from the dog and give them a time-out from you and the game.

If your dog is a tugger, you will be shocked to see how quickly he/she will learn the rules. Tug is of such high value to most dogs that the game itself becomes a reward for other great behaviors.

Good luck, let me know how it goes, and stay positive!

The Three Colors of Goldens

Recently I was able to wrangle three Golden Retriever puppies to compare and contrast their differing colors.

For some time, I have noticed Golden Retrievers are turning up in some very different colors.

Until now I have not had all three colors in the same class.

However, in a recent Basic class I was able to wrangle three Golden Retriever puppies to compare and contrast their differing colors.

Notice (from left to right) Tucker-the-Cream, Redgie-the-Red, and of course Willow-the-Golden.

My question is, in the future will we be looking at a true color split in this breed like we see with Labs? Will we be making similar designations for Goldens just like we do for Labs?

Chocolate Lab
Red Golden
Yellow (I prefer Vanilla) Lab
Cream Golden
Black Lab
Golden Golden

We will probably have to wait a decade or two before we know how this is going to turn out.

But in the meantime, here is some three-colored Golden-puppy play.

Enjoy!

The Three P’s of Dog Training over on Dogster!

Patience, persistence, and and accepting that perfect isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be are the bedrock of compassionate dog training.

As part of the festivities surrounding A Dog Named Boo, I put together a guest blog post for my friends over at Dogster.

It’s about what I call The Three P’s of Dog Training: patience, persistence, and perfect-is-not-all-it’s-cracked-up-to-be and how they can help in your training.

Head on over and check it out!

Here’s a link!

There is dog training magic!

Some trainers will tell you to make a specific sound like a dog growl or make a snake-like hiss as if these sounds are dog training magic.

Alas, there is no magic sound out there that will make a dog behave one way or the other.

However, there is magic in dog training. Eight-five percent of dog training is science, ten percent is gymnastic dance, and five percent is the dog training magic.

It feels magical when we see our dogs understand what we’ve said, and we feel like we understand what they’ve said. We build that magical connection on the simple and powerful premise of A-B-C. All of us learn behavior through this process:

A = Antecedent – the thing that requests or triggers a behavior

B = Behavior

C = Consequence – the result of the behavior (good, or not-so-good)

The (A) can be a sound that we make, a gesture, something in the environment (like a door bell), the actions of another animal in the home, a bicycle on the street, the funny look I give my dog when she is barking, etc.

No matter what our antecedent is – it only becomes magical when there are consistent consequences that follow the behavior and build understanding.

You can see Pinball looking at me trying to figure out what I’m asking for. When he gets it, he happily responds and I praise him – magic!

All of us repeat behaviors that are rewarded and not repeat behaviors that are not rewarding.

If a dog jumps on you and you respond with a subtle sound, look away, fold your arms tight to your chest, and continue no interaction until the dog stops jumping, you have offered clear immediate consequences. There is no reward and no attention for jumping.

Maybe the dog jumps again because jumping is a self reinforcing behavior. And you offer the same sequence of No Reward and No Attention. Dog will learn that the (B) behavior of jumping doesn’t get paid for – an unwanted (C) consequence.

So, the dog chooses another behavior – maybe sitting or standing next to you. This is dog training magic step one, the dog has chosen a different better behavior that we like. So, we move to step two.

Magic step two is the big one and it’s on you…

When dog chooses another behavior (B) besides jumping, like sitting or standing quietly, you MUST offer a consequence (C) that dog likes. This could be food, toys, butt scratches, etc.

This is where the magic happens and communication begins. The dog starts choosing something better and we reward that better and then ask for even better choices.

Some might suggest the dog is training you, but in reality it is a dialogue between two different species.

Magic!!!

Things Your Dog Will Love: Atomic Treat Ball

The Atomic Treat Ball is a great positive reinforcement tool to control speed eating in dogs as well as to keep them cognitively challenged.

Dogs and other canids are natural problem solvers: you can see it when wolves hunt, when the dogs in our Nose Work classes are tracking down the scent target, or when our own dogs are rooting for that single piece of kibble that fell behind their food bowls.

It’s what they’re wired to do, what they evolved to do, and it’s what they love to do, but the normal life of a dog living in a house doesn’t make for too many riddles to solve – except for the one we don’t want them to solve like how to open the garbage can lid, how to get into the closet, etc.

That’s where the Atomic Treat Ball comes in and why I’ve been using and recommending it to clients for years.

What initially drew me to the Atomic Treat Ball was Porthos had developed problems related to speed eating and I needed to find a way to allow him to get his full dinner in a measured, controlled way. It worked wonders to keep him from bloat and torsion, but after a while it became clear that although he loved the Atomic Treat Ball because it was filled with food he enjoyed it equally as much for the fun involved in getting the food out.

The trick behind the Atomic Treat Ball is in its design. If you take a look at the picture above you’ll see that it’s essentially shaped like four stacked hollow balls – in essence, a molecule – with a single loading hole in one of the balls. The pyramid shape allows dogs to easily roll the toy around without it going out of control under furniture and the single loading hole gives them a reasonably good chance of getting some food out with each go, but it’s an irregular enough reward schedule to neither bore them nor have them run out of kibble too quickly.

Also, unlike a lot of other puzzle toys the empty space inside the Atomic Treat Ball accommodates quite a bit of kibble or snacks. For Porthos we can actually fit about half of his kibble for each meal into his, which helps to slow down his eating greatly but is also really useful if you need to keep your dog busy for a while or if you want to give them a nice treat that will last if they need to spend extended time in their crates, playpens, taking a break from company or the fix-it person who doesn’t need your dog up their backside, etc.

The Atomic Treat Ball is cheap, easy, and – most importantly – it works. It’s a great tool to keep your dog cognitively challenged, which is as important to them as it is to humans as we grow older, and I believe that it’s an indispensable tool to have in our bag of positive reinforcement tricks.