Dog Vs Dog Training

I admit it. I've been slacking. Obedience training has been infrequent apart from daily routines like Sit-Wait before feeding, Wait when I open the crates instead of charging out, and Sit when riding in the car. Denali listens automatically which I take for granted but I do continue to randomly reinforce her for listening so well. Diesel I'm still focusing on other things like personal space, sitting for attention, not jumping up uninvited, and other manners. Knowing how to give me his paw is nowhere near as important as teaching him to keep his nose out of the trash. Kaytu never really misbehaves apart from her occasional ninja skills appearing when she attempts to steal the cats' food but she has been getting sloppy and non-responsive when told to Sit, Down, or Come. From the very beginning it's been difficult to get her attention as she is very husky-like in terms of her "Why should I listen to you? I like what I'm doing so I don't care what you're doing!" attitude, but she's very food motivated and responds well with consistent training. She had to be taught to pay attention which was a major challenge in itself and I've noticed her falling back into those bad habits of ignoring me the last week or so. I'm not about to let that happen! With 3 dogs in the house (and two beggar cats) training can be a challenge. Individual training doesn't happen too much right now as it involves putting the other two dogs in their crates and also keeping the cats out of the way. Instead I decided put the dogs against each other.

The basics are that when I give a command the dog that completes the behavior first is the winner and gets two treats, and the next dog gets one treat, and the last dog also gets a treat. I go through the motions and mix up a bunch of commands and cues. Sit. Down. Stand. Down. Sit. Wait. Up. Stand. Focus (make eye contact). Down. Wait. Stand. Up. Focus. Sit. Paw (for us "shake" is "shake off your fur" not "give me your paw"). Diesel doesn't know Paw so I'll cue him to stick out his tongue, which the girls don't know. I ask the cats for Sit too, and also Down for Zebulon and Up for Everest. The little beggars are always hovering during treat time.

They all come running over when they hear me get the treat bag. I ask for a sit immediately to prevent Nali from bumping her nose against me and to prevent Kaytu and Diesel from jumping up. Timing is everything. Tip: Holding treats in your hand lower instead of up at chest level helps keep them from jumping up. The dog that sits first gets two treats fed one immediately after another. Treat-treat. Giving both at once is meaningless to a dog. A dog doesn't really care if the treat is the size of a pea or the size of a quarter, and eating two treats at the same time may as well be one big treat. Think of it like someone giving you mini M&Ms. Giving you one is pretty much the same as getting two at a time. But if you get one and then are given a bonus one after already eating the first one it's awesome! On a basic level, getting a bonus mini M&M would be better than having just one regular sized M&M too. Giving one treat after another is more rewarding, exciting, and motivating for a dog than giving one big treat or two treats simultaneously. Another variation is to give a highly desirable awesome treat like cheese or peanut butter or whatever the dogs love to the winner and to give a less valuable/less awesome treat to the other dogs. I'm not coordinated or fast enough to treat 3 dogs with different treats though.

When I first did this Kaytu was sloppy and slow. Her sit was good but she didn't lay down when I gave the command. What did I do? Repeating a command is not helpful to a dog or their training. Sit means sit your butt on the ground right now, and Down means lay down right now. The command is "Down," one time. Just once. It is not "Down.. Dooown.. DOWN..DOOOWWWNN!! I SAID DOWN!!!" She is smart enough to figure it out and she knows the command. So what to do? I continued to give Denali and Diesel treats for staying down. Guess who decided to lay down. No lure, no vocal encouragement, no pushing or touching her. She did it on her own. I jackpotted her by placing about 5 treats on the floor between her paws. I gave Denali and Diesel another treat for remaining down, and just as Kaytu was finishing her treats I gave her another few. Laying down is rewarding!

From there I continued and randomly mixed up the commands. Random mixing of the cues is important because dogs catch on to patterns. If for example you always do Sit, Paw, Down, Roll Over in that order then the dog is going to figure out the pattern and give you all four behaviors when you only ask for Sit. They can also start skipping behaviors so, still using that example, you could ask for Sit and they go straight to Down and Roll Over. Suddenly "sit" means "roll over." Don't let that happen. Mix it up!

We played the game for about 10 minutes the first time. Winner got two treats, second and third got one treat. There are no losers as they are all listening and doing the right thing. They all get rewarded every single time they do the right thing. This keeps them interested and motivated, and rewarding a behavior increases the dog's desire to perform that behavior. The only way the dog loses is by not performing the command. If the command was to be completely ignored (hasn't happened yet) I'd lure the dog into doing what they were told. They're getting pretty good at this game. If I give a command and more than one dog instantly responds creating a tie, they both get two treats. If they are slow and tie they get one treat. More effort = more treats.

Kaytu wised up pretty quick and was soon beating Diesel on laying down. For this first competition style training session I continued to give her an extra treat or two to encourage her even if she wasn't first.

Why does this work? The dogs motivated each other and themselves to do better. The winner not only got two treats but was rewarded first. They quickly figured out that they don't have to wait for their reward if they listen immediately. Dogs will always take the shortest path to the reward.

The next night we played again. Guess who was the first dog laying down. They were all much more attentive and quick to move. A little competition can go a long way in improving a dog's reaction time.