Many trainers don’t take much about the dog itself when training them, they see a problem and try to fix it. Dogs are incredible in more ways than many realize, so it breaks my heart to see owners and trainers treat their dogs like some sort of automaton that needs to be trained for everything. We need to understand that our dogs are wonderful animals fully capable of thought, feelings and emotions, understanding. They don’t need all this reward and punishment to learn. Their senses are amazing and still yet not understood.
Dogs can read us like a book. You can’t lie to them, you can’t hide your emotions from them and your energy is everything. If you get scared, you emit a pheromone response that the dog will pick up on. If you’re proud of them, they know. If you’re angry, they know it. If you’re screaming at the TV watching sports, where is your dog?
The main thing you are to a dog is a catalogue of smells – so when your smell changes for any reason, the dog knows. Their memory of these smells is incredible. Dogs know a woman is pregnant long before the woman. Dogs have detected cancers, impending heart attacks and strokes etc. Ask yourself, how do they do it?
Surprisingly, their vision isn’t great, it’s less than half of ours – but they can be great visual learners. Dogs retain alot more visual details than we do. If you look at a picture, you likely won’t retain the background and unimportant information in the picture – you will like remember faces. Dogs have more of a photographic memory of sorts which I’ll get into later. I use Monty as a mentor to help other dogs, they watch him and learn from him. He’s assisted dogs that were so shut down, so fragile that females actually learn to lift their leg to pee. Which brings me to another point further down – dogs need dogs to learn how to be dogs and that’s why a mentor can make changes happen so fast.
Their hearing is some 4X better than ours, which is incredible when you think about it. If you hear your spouses vehicle from 500 feet away, your dog hears it 2000 feet away – that’s over half a kilometre.
Dogs see greyscale and the colors blue and yellow. When buying toys, or using anything for training, keep that in mind. If you’re at a dog park, wear something blue or yellow or a combo thereof. Makes it easier for the dog to keep tabs on you.
Understand, dogs don’t speak human spoken language, they simply don’t define words. They will however take the sound of the word you use and associate it with something. When you train “sit”, they eventually take that sound and know it means plant your bum. If a wife calls her husbands name enough times, the dog will associate that sound of the name with the husband. So when trying to teach commands, use single words and keep consistent tone of voice. If you get upset, the sound of the word changes, and the dog won’t know what you’re saying. This is also why using the word NO so much will work against you – it loses meaning, there is no association.
Gregory Berns is doing some amazing work with The Dog Project – training dogs to lay still in an MRI machine and evoking different emotions and such. He’s learned many cool things. Dogs brains work very similar to ours. They have the same emotions and feelings as us. You can read up on it here: http://gregoryberns.com/dog-project.html
Dogs made us human. Dogs were our protectors in a time when we were literally prey. Our hunters, our herders, our companions etc. Now many sit on the couch with no purpose in life.
Dogs needs dogs to learn “dog”. When wolf pups crawl out of the den, they still have alot of learning to do to become “wolf”. To that end, the pack teaches the pup everything they need to be “wolf”. So why are dogs not treated the same? If a dog is raised like a housecat, then expect all the issues to go with it.
Dogs are carnivores. Their teeth are designed for shredding meat and swallowing – not chewing. Dogs cannot produce amylase – which is needed to break down starch. So why are we feeding them such a starchy diet in dog food when they can’t utilize it. Dogs also have no metabolic need for carbs and sugars, so same question, why are we feeding it?
Using hand signals or other vs words. Dogs have an incredible memory which I’ll get to further down. And they learn visually very well (even though their vision isn’t great) – so a hand signal is something they learn quickly and won’t forget. He also realizes that praise is much more effective than treats.
Temple Grandin paints a very interesting picture with dogs and “thinking in pictures.” I believe she is correct in this – I see it in dogs all the time. We used to live in a quiet building and rarely saw people around the condo complex. If Monty and I get on the elevator, 1 time in 20 there is someone on it. The picture in Montys head would be an empty elevator – when that picture changes, he reacts. He’s not attacking anyone, just startled. When I work with dogs, I want to turn every negative into a positive. I don’t want to leave things on a negative note. Why? Think about your dogs memory like a photo album – they retain more details than we do. If something scares them, it creates a negative picture in that album. This is why it’s so important to gain trust of an animal – they need to use their trust in you to change that picture from bad to good.
For example, the first night I had Monty, he reacted badly at a rabbit in a cage on the floor. That creates a negative picture/memory that I don’t want. He won’t forget that rabbit in a cage, so I need to change that memory. I left him where he was, I sat by the cage and relaxed – didn’t say anything, no encouragement. I’m waiting for him to calm down, get the brain engaged and choose to come join me. I’m showing him that I’m not getting hurt, you can trust me. He came to me after a couple of minutes and it’s important to be calm and wait them out. The picture changed, and now it’s not a big deal. He doesn’t react to rabbits in a cage anymore. He needs confidence in me and my abilities – to keep him safe, to show him that the world isn’t some scary place.