How a dog learns

[StGeorgeK9]

I have read a few posts recently that had me very concerned about making sure we are always fair to our animals and not expect things they cant understand. It seems that there is a need to give a quick overview of how the mind of a dog really works! I would love to get participation in this to help both new and older owners understand some basic principles in the mind of a dog!

Dogs live in the moment:
There is not retention after a mishap at all after a couple minutes. To correct a dog after the fact is a waste of time, and worse detrimental to the dogs learning. A dog doesnt know why they are being yelled at or punnished for a shredded shoe, a mess on the carpet or trash strewn all over. What they do learn is, if you are mad, bad things happen.

Dogs learn by conditioned response:
Read Pavlov's Dog! If you feed at a certain time, you already know this! They know at x time.........dinner will be put down and will go to their feeding spot to wait. (they will come looking for you if you are late!!) If they frequent the trash while the owner is gone, if the dog has been punished for this act, chances are they will ACT guilty when you come home even if they havent gotten in the trash, they do not associate getting in the trash with the punishment, only your comming home.

English is NOT a dogs first language:
Dogs learn specific words, but to expect a dog to understand English as their first language is setting up the dog to fail. If a dog hasnt been trained properly, chances are all they hear is "blah blah blah, bad dog, blah blah blah or blah blah blah, good dog, blah blah blah. They wont understand what got them the "good dog" or what got them the "bad dog". Do not assume a dog understands sit, down, or get off the couch. Commands should be one or two words that have clear meaning, and that meaning must be taught!

Dogs are experts at body language:
We speak to our dogs every minute we are with them. In the set of our jaw, if we stand up straight or slouch, hands on hips, hands in air........Everything thing we do means something to our dogs. They have learned this about us, we should return the favor!

[Zisso]

Excellent post!

Many times as an owner of two mischievious 2 yr olds I tend to forget these things!

Another that I tend to forget is consistency! I know that to get them properly trained I must be consistent but often allow how I feel (tired, cold, headache, etc) to dictate what I do or don't do with them, rather than making a habit to go out to train at a set hour each day. No wonder my results are lacking!!!

[Bama4us]

Wow, great post, Betsy!

[StGeorgeK9]

I'm just as guilty at being "human" as anyone. I love the saying "I wish I could be the person my dog thinks I am" LOL, I'm not, but I keep trying!!!

[Kaity]

I wish my dad would understand that dogs need to be taught! I just watched him try to teach Vida 'fetch' in english, and then in east indian. i dont think he understands that telling her once in english, then in another language will confuse her!

[Kaity]

I meant to add that I appreciate your post, I sometimes forget some things when dealing with my dog! your post is a good reminder

[Cassidy's Mom]

Great post Betsy!

Originally Posted By: BetsyDogs live in the moment:
There is not retention after a mishap at all after a couple minutes. To correct a dog after the fact is a waste of time, and worse detrimental to the dogs learning. A dog doesnt know why they are being yelled at or punnished for a shredded shoe, a mess on the carpet or trash strewn all over. What they do learn is, if you are mad, bad things happen.

Yep, unless you actually catch them in the act - forget it, they won't have any idea why you're mad. Suzanne Clothier talks about this - in a seminar I went to she suggested that people who think their dogs "know" that they've been bad in your absence because of the way they react when you come home, to try tossing a tissue on the floor and scolding the dog. They'll react exactly the same way, even though they've done absolutely nothing. When I was introduced to positive reinforcement training with Cassidy 9 years ago our trainer said you've got about a second and a half after they've done the right thing to mark and reward it. That may be a bit extreme, since then I've heard a couple of seconds, but I'd rather aim for perfect timing as much as possible. If you wait too long, you may be reinforcing something different, whatever they did AFTER what you meant to reinforce.

Quoteogs learn by conditioned response:
Read Pavlov's Dog! If you feed at a certain time, you already know this! They know at x time.........dinner will be put down and will go to their feeding spot to wait. (they will come looking for you if you are late!!) If they frequent the trash while the owner is gone, if the dog has been punished for this act, chances are they will ACT guilty when you come home even if they havent gotten in the trash, they do not associate getting in the trash with the punishment, only your comming home.

I think the best book I've ever read that talks about this is Jean Donaldson's Culture Clash. It really helped me learn to think of everything from the dog's perspective. *I* know what I want, what I mean, what I'm trying to get across, but does it really make sense to the dog? One thing she says early in the book is that her dogs are happy when she comes home in a good mood (paraphrasing here), but not because they care whether or not she had a good day, it's because they've learned that when she comes home in a good mood good things happen for dogs. Dogs are opportunists! They only know what works and what doesn't, it's really no more complicated than that. It's up to us to make what we want "work" for the dog, and what we don't want to not work. So often we end up working against ourselves by doing the exact opposite, such as paying attention to the dog when s/he's being bad ("no, no - bad dog!") and ignoring the dog when s/he's being good (NOT getting into stuff, laying on the floor calmly chewing a bone or playing with a toy, not barking at the kitty, etc.).

Quote:English is NOT a dogs first language:
Dogs learn specific words, but to expect a dog to understand English as their first language is setting up the dog to fail. If a dog hasnt been trained properly, chances are all they hear is "blah blah blah, bad dog, blah blah blah or blah blah blah, good dog, blah blah blah. They wont understand what got them the "good dog" or what got them the "bad dog". Do not assume a dog understands sit, down, or get off the couch. Commands should be one or two words that have clear meaning, and that meaning must be taught!

AND generalized to a variety of circumstances! Just because your dog understands sit in front of you, toe to toe, in your kitchen, doesn't mean he understands sit also means plant your butt when you're sitting in a chair, or the floor, or laying in bed, when he's next to you or you've got your back turned, or at the vet's office, or in the car.....

Quoteogs are experts at body language:
We speak to our dogs every minute we are with them. In the set of our jaw, if we stand up straight or slouch, hands on hips, hands in air........Everything thing we do means something to our dogs. They have learned this about us, we should return the favor!

Suzanne Clothier likes to talk about this too. She says every minute we spend with our dog we're teaching them something. If we're busy with something else and don't have the time to attend to them to make sure that we're not teaching them something we don't want we should put them away until we do have the time. Dogs are masters of body language, and we need to remember that we humans talk a lot - most of it has no relevance to the dog so they're paying much closer attention to what we're telling them with our bodies and tone of voice. They read us better than we read each other, and way better than most of us can read dogs.

[StGeorgeK9]

I actually "accidentally" taught my dog to sit by putting my hands on my hips.......that is my "frustrated with her" stance apparently. You should do some movements, and just see what the dogs response is.....I think you will be facinated by what body language commands each of us has already taught without knowing it!

[StGeorgeK9]

Thanks Cassidys mom for chiming in!!! Your examples really helped clarify what I was trying to say!!!

[Cassidy's Mom]

In one of Halo's classes the trainer was explaining about how dogs will often respond to hand signals over voice commands - give the "sit" cue but say anything else and the dog will still sit. She had us try it by throwing a bunch of other words at our dogs, and sure enough they pretty much always ignored what we said and did whatever we had cued non-verbally.

They tend to pick up on non-verbal cues first, so we really have to work on teaching the verbal command, especially without any extra movements that the dog may be relying on. In one of Cassidy's agility classes they said that we often make little movements, such as a head bob, when we use our release word, so they had us practice releasing them with our back turned, and also with us out of sight to make sure that the dog would actually respond to the word itself.