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11 week old knows commands, but doesn't obey them. Why?

2K views 13 replies 12 participants last post by  TwoBigEars 
#1 ·
My 11 week old knows the following commands and how to perform them:

1. Sit
2. Stay (2-3 seconds)
3. Lay Down
4. Go in your crate.
5. Drop it
6. Come
7. Lets go (walk with me)

I know he knows these because when I am about to give him an extremely tasty treat he obeys them 100% willingly and will do ANYTHING for the treat.

however, when there is a less tasty treat involved or no treat at all and just praising (good boy) he 50/50 follows them, sometimes ignoring me completely.

I understand he is young, so I'm reaching out to the experience of the forum users. Is this just protest because he is young or does he have no respect? Is he challenging me as alpha? Will he grow out of this or do I need to do something different?

I try and make all training fun and short like an earlier thread mentioned I should do, so I am open to polite & constructive criticism.
 
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#2 ·
He's just an infant.When there's no fabulous reward involved everything in the world is more interesting and rewarding than obeying a command.Right now you are just laying a foundation as he slowly matures and his attention span slowly increases.
 
#3 ·
He doesn't know the commands. He is a baby. Lower the expectation. He has short attention span and the world is super interesting. Keep doing what you are doing. He will get it.
 
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#4 ·
I don't have any more puppies--this is like the first time in forever, but when training I used treats for the first year. They dwindled as they got older and then they stopped. Once they learn it, practice it. To this day I still do sits/stays/front/wait commands daily with mine, just to make sure they don't forget.
 
#6 ·
My 11 week old knows the following commands and how to perform them:

1. Sit
2. Stay (2-3 seconds)
3. Lay Down
4. Go in your crate.
5. Drop it
6. Come
7. Lets go (walk with me)

I know he knows these because when I am about to give him an extremely tasty treat he obeys them 100% willingly and will do ANYTHING for the treat.

however, when there is a less tasty treat involved or no treat at all and just praising (good boy) he 50/50 follows them, sometimes ignoring me completely.
At his age it's highly unlikely that he truly KNOWS all those commands. If he's not doing them all the time, no matter the circumstances, then he hasn't fully generalized them. Test your sit command - will he sit across the room from you? Will he sit if you tell him to while you're laying in bed, sitting in a chair or on the floor? With your back turned? When he's in the car, at the vets office, walking near a busy street? In every room in your house at any time of day? Even if he will do that, he may not be able to comply around heavy distractions, so you'd need to train under those conditions too. Any time you make it more challenging you should lower your criteria accordingly and work your way back up, and your rate of reinforcement should reflect that.

Is this just protest because he is young or does he have no respect?
Yes, it's because he's young, but no, it has nothing to do with protesting or lack of respect, any more than a 6 month old human baby is capable of protesting or not respecting it's parents. That's about the developmental level of an 11 week old puppy and neither is capable of such complex feelings or behavior.

Is he challenging me as alpha? Will he grow out of this or do I need to do something different?
No, he is not challenging you, nor is he trying to be alpha. Dogs really don't simply "grow out" of anything. Maturity will help, as his attention span increases, but training will still be necessary. One important thing that you can do differently is to just lower your expectations. Keeping them reasonable based on what a young puppy is actually capable of will leave you less frustrated and make training and life in general more fun for both of you.
 
#7 ·
Keep in mind two things.

1. Puppies are very distractible. It will take time for him to improve focus and follow through. Also, if he gets bored, he is that much more distractible.
2. Dogs do not generalize very well. So sit in the backyard where you do most of your training is not the same as sit in the middle of town, or in a park or at your friends house. To a dog it is all different. So you commit to work at it for 2 years at least.
 
#8 ·
I often train high reliability behaviors on puppies that age for clients pretty regularly but it's with tactful pressure not treats. With my own dogs I tend not to do it. I place high priority on things like recall,potty training, crate behavior, how to relax with me in the house, and also on teaching the dog games like tug and retrieve that I can use to motivate them later on.

All that position nonsense can start when they are older.
 
#11 ·
I've noticed a huge difference in attention span from 11 weeks (when we got our pup) to now 16 weeks. I've also noticed more consistency but he still will try to ignore me, I just "help" him remember what I asked him to do if he ignores me. I also try not to do more than 5-10 minute intervals because training isn't as exciting as everything else.

I've slowly decreased the treats I give, but I keep it variable as to how many things I ask per treat, maybe 1-3 commands before he is treated and I mix it up, give lots of verbal praise and pats at the end and use "yes!" in an excited pitch when he completes what I ask.

Leave it is a big one because he loves to harass the cat, and the cat is too stubborn to run off when he's annoyed. We are getting better incrementally. He used to leave it only if the treat was in my hand, but now I can place it on top of my foot and he will leave it. Place it on the floor and forget about it. I try to treat from a different source after (my hand with an alternative treat) because while he will leave the cat briefly now, a minute later he thinks he can have at him again. But so much more progress!

Be patient, it does get better!
 
#12 ·
Also, for anyone else reading this, the food can become part of the cue for the dog if they see it prior to the command.

Even the bait bag on your hip can be part of the visual cue to sit for instance.

For food to work properly, you need to be sure that the dog does not see food as the cue. So you can use a food lure and change that pretty quickly into a hand signal and make it so that the dog sees and gets no food until after the behavior is performed. Or, you can apply pressure to get the behavior and then give a bit of food as a reward.

But if every time you ask your dog to sit, you are holding a treat it isn't going to perform when you dont have a treat. That isnt because the dog is spoiled or stubborn, it is because the dog does not see the whole cue it has become accustomed to.
 
#13 ·
Smart money is on this. People often have a hard time transitioning from luring to fading the lure to fading the physical part of the cue for a behavior to transitioning through from fixed schedule to variable schedule to random schedule of reward and then struggle again with the layering pressure part.
 
#14 ·
Young puppies appear to know a lot more than they really do, because they do learn quickly and easily! But just like human children, they still need a lot of time and repetition before they really "know it". Lots of practice in different environments and scenarios.

Agreed with the recent comments re: treats and luring. If you're using the treat to lure a behavior, you want to switch to luring without the treat within a few repetitions. The longer the treat is in the lure hand, the harder it is to wean the puppy off it.

Also be aware of the difference between bribing and rewarding. Bribing is showing the dog a treat before asking for a behavior, rewarding is cueing the behavior first and then the treat appears. Small difference to us, huge difference to the dog and most people bribe without realizing it (it's a natural extension of luring with a treat), which is what leads to "he only listens when I have treats".
 
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