Zak George's Guide to a Well-Behaved Dog

by Zak George

  9. I know I sound like a broken record, but this point is the most critical of all: teaching your dog to listen to you around distractions takes a lot of practice. So keep trying to distract your dog as much as possible at home. And, as I discuss in depth in the next chapter, get out there! Go to pet supply stores and practice by the perimeter of a local dog park where you can easily manipulate the distance between your dog and other dogs. When it becomes commonplace for your dog to be around distractions, those things won’t be as distracting anymore.

  CHAPTER 20

  NOT LISTENING IN NEW ENVIRONMENTS

  Teaching your dog to listen to you in new environments is one of those things that may catch you off guard. Like distraction training, training in new places is a lot more difficult than you might think as dogs do not generalize well from new environment to new environment. When you change a variable, you need to take a few steps back in your training. In this case, that variable is the environment itself. So, if your dog acts crazy every time you go somewhere new in public—or seems to forget everything you’ve taught him and worked on at home—you’re not alone! Lots of dogs are like this.

  The only way to truly prepare a dog to listen in lots of places is to spend plenty of time in different places. Of course, this takes a lot of time and effort. As soon as you can take your dog in public—which for puppies is after your vet gives permission and for older dogs is usually right away—commit to taking him to lots of places often, on leash. If your dog is extra-hyper in new places and can’t seem to focus, make sure you exercise him before you leave the house.

  Always keep in mind that if you find your dog isn’t listening to you in new places, it’s because he simply hasn’t been adequately prepared yet. It’s not that your dog has forgotten how to listen to you; it’s that he is too overwhelmed by his surroundings to focus on doing what you are asking.

  This is normal, and you’ll get past it by following the advice in this chapter. There is a lot to see, hear, smell, and experience from your dog’s point of view, and it’s your responsibility to show him the world and teach him that he still needs to listen to you no matter where he is!

  WHY DON’T DOGS LISTEN IN NEW ENVIRONMENTS?

  Dogs really experience the world so differently than we do. Their olfactory system is far more sophisticated than ours. They can hear amazingly well, too. In other words, you are competing with distractions you don’t even realize are there! Imagine stepping from your front door into a festive carnival. Just like that, you are inundated with so many stimulating sights, smells, and sounds. Now, imagine being, say, four years old and trying to focus on reciting your ABC’s upon entering such an environment. You’d likely be more into everything going on around you than you would be on mundane things like basic preschool stuff, right? It’s the same way for dogs.

  WHAT TO DO TO MAKE SURE YOUR DOG LISTENS IN NEW ENVIRONMENTS

  It takes time to desensitize a dog to exciting environments (which may be all environments for some dogs!). The only way to truly satisfy a dog’s curiosity is to let him explore these places as often as you can early in your training. Even if your dog is older and has never benefited from training like this, it’s not too late! Now is the time to teach your dog about all the different types of places, like parks, stores, sidewalks, cars, friends’ and relatives’ houses, and so on. Here’s how:

  1. Budget at least two days a week where you go to one or more of these places for two to three hours at a time. So often when we are taking our dogs somewhere, it’s somewhere that they haven’t heavily explored before and we might be in a hurry, as in the case of getting pet food from the store or taking a walk down a different street than usual. Instead, you need to factor in time for serious, dedicated training. Whenever your dog lacks lots of time in a new place, he needs significant time to take it in and check it out.

  2. Your dog is most likely not going to listen to you in new places as well as he does at home. It’s as though training in new places lags a few weeks behind your at-home training. This is perfectly normal and expected. However, once you’ve given your dog ample opportunities to explore these places, you should find that he chills out a little. While he still may be interested in the new environment, after a few hours, he will probably be much more likely to adapt and perhaps even take some direction from you like “sit” or “stay.” This is exactly what you’ve been waiting for! Your dog is finally receptive, albeit not as reliable as at home. But now that your dog has adapted and has demonstrated a willingness to listen to you, you need to work on going over the basics and other things that you’ve taught him. Whereas before, your goal was to let your dog take in the environment, now you’re getting him to pay less attention to the environment and more attention to you.

  3. When you train in new places, make sure that you bring high-value currencies for the first several months of training. You are competing with so many distractions in new environments that having something amazing with you (such as chicken or a favorite toy that your dog loves) is critical. Once your dog sits for the first time in a new place, reward enthusiastically, as though he just sat for the first time in his life. While “sit” might not be breaking new ground, sitting while in a new place is a new behavior, and that warrants optimal reinforcement! The more enjoyable the outcome to a given behavior, the more likely your dog is to repeat it in the future.

  4. In short, your goal is to make various environments so familiar that your dog actually begins to pay attention to you at those places as he does at home. If your dog is extremely unresponsive in the places where you want him to listen, then up to a year of steady exposure and gradual training is probably necessary. On the other hand, some dogs catch on a lot faster. There are no quick fixes to this, but through lots of practice, you can do it!

  I want to share a personal story that really conveys exactly how to teach a dog to listen to you in a new environment. When I first got my dog, Venus, I made a commitment to train her to be a competition Frisbee dog and planned to participate in an annual, high-profile Frisbee dog competition in Atlanta’s Piedmont Park. For those of you not familiar with competition Frisbee dogs, it’s about a lot more than teaching a dog to chase and catch a Frisbee. In the challenging freestyle portion, dogs are taught to do stunning vaults off of their handler’s body and backflips. They’ll catch several Frisbees in rapid succession and even catch two separate Frisbees in a single throw. (As far as I know, Venus is the only dog to have caught three separate Frisbees in a single throw as of the writing of this book.) What I love about it is that you can be as creative as you’d like with your routine.

  In terms of audience size, this particular competition is one of the most attended Frisbee dog competitions around. As teams compete throughout the day, there are thousands of people gathered around the competition field at any given moment. Talk about distractions!

  Since I was planning to do my first freestyle routine with Venus at this competition, I made it a point to practice with her in super-busy areas with lots of pedestrians. Most of these practices were at fields near my house—we’d get out there bright and early about four days a week. However, at least once a week, I’d make the twenty-minute drive down to Piedmont Park to practice on the exact patch of grass where the competition would be held several months later. If the weather was nice, you could count on tons of people being at Piedmont Park all weekend long. The way I saw it, the competition was in our hometown and I was going to get every advantage I could by setting up conditions that mirrored those of the competition day as closely as possible.

  Along with the location, I also tried to prepare Venus by proactively replicating other competition conditions as best as I could. I went as far as bringing a portable CD player playing the music that we’d perform to. Of course, there would still be even more distractions at the competition, like a much bigger audience, louder music, other dogs, and lots of smells. So, I couldn’t do everything.

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sp; But I could focus on creating distractions and training her to always look to me no matter what caught her attention. For instance, she had a weakness for soccer balls, so if people were kicking a ball back and forth, I knew she might bolt. And she did so twice on those first two visits. In the following weeks, I’d bring my own soccer ball and have Venus on a long lead so that I could practice getting her attention off the soccer ball and back on our routine. I’d do a Frisbee sequence and kick a ball unexpectedly, asking her for a “stay” and a “look at me” while going on with the routine. If I could call Venus off of a soccer ball, then I could get her to focus under just about any other condition. Since I had already built solid communication with her, it was a pretty easy task to get her to stop getting distracted by the ball. She quickly learned that she still had to pay attention to me.

  Over the next several months, we became staples at Piedmont Park every weekend. It was great! Then, in spring 2004, we entered our first Frisbee freestyle competition. I was terrified, but I trusted that we did everything we could to prepare. The music started, our routine was under way, and the rumble of those first “oohs” and “ahhs” as I warmed Venus up with figure eights between my legs was something that wasn’t there before in practice! I was highly aware that thousands of people were watching us. Talk about nerve-racking! The first throw was a twenty-yard throw. Venus didn’t miss a beat. She caught it, and I’ll never forget how proud I was of her at that moment. With each catch, the crowd cheered. We ended our routine with a “back stall.” That’s where you hunch over, making your back horizontal with the ground, and your dog jumps up and balances on your back. Venus sat up into the best “sit pretty.” The crowd erupted louder for her than any other dog of the day and gave us a standing ovation. They loved it! And so did the judges, as we took first place in the competition. Some might call it beginner’s luck, and they might be right—but I think preparation had a lot to do with it, too!

  As fun as it is to relive this story, I detail it here only to underscore how important it is to give your dog the opportunity to succeed in training. While you may not be so interested in competing with your dog in such activities, the same concepts I addressed with Venus apply when you want to take your dog to new environments. You must still work with him and prepare him so that he knows exactly what to do.

  CHAPTER 21

  NOT LISTENING OFF LEASH

  Sure, it would be great to have your dog listen to you perfectly whether or not she’s on leash. However, people are generally way too quick to give their dog such privileges. I see this most with new dogs, especially puppies. Puppies, by nature, tend to stay near people off leash. We are, after all, a great resource for food, play, and attention. It also seems as though puppies haven’t yet realized that there is so much of the world to explore, so they stay close. And what do their people then often assume? “Wow, looks like my dog is good off leash, and I don’t have to have her on one anymore!” I promise you, that’s not the case. Regardless of age, most dogs need to be on leash for a long time, if not indefinitely, unless you properly train them to be off leash.

  If your dog is getting away or bolting out the front door and you are looking for an answer as to how to get her back, you must take a massive step backward on your training and tightly control the environment. The leash is the most valuable tool to help you do just that. There are absolutely no excuses when it comes to keeping your dog safe, so make sure your dog is never in a position to get away from you and put herself in a potentially dangerous situation. And until your dog is reliable on leash, she has no business being off leash, unless in a perfectly safe environment such as your house or fenced-in yard. However, you can get your dog to listen to you off leash. In this chapter, I explain how.

  WHY DON’T DOGS LISTEN WHILE OFF LEASH?

  Most dogs are free spirits and live in the moment. If they see something interesting or exciting, they’ll often investigate those things without regard to what you want. They don’t understand that a car can hit them if they run toward another dog across the street, nor do they contemplate that they could get lost if they focus on a scent trail taking them halfway across town. Off-leash training takes months and months, and, again, you shouldn’t even place an emphasis on it until your dog listens to you very reliably while on leash. For instance, if your dog won’t easily sit or stay in any particular environment, you’re not yet ready to begin off-leash training in that environment.

  WHAT TO DO TO MAKE SURE YOUR DOG LISTENS WHILE OFF LEASH

  A huge part of phasing in off-leash training is having perfect control of the environment, which is why I recommend getting a twenty-foot lead leash. The lead allows you to simulate off-leash conditions because you’re able to interact with your dog at a greater distance. It also eliminates risk—think of it as a safety net in the event your dog does not listen to you. Here’s what you can do:

  1. Do tons of training in lots of different places while your dog is on the longer lead. Practice all of the skills you’ve taught at home in these places. Have your dog sit, stay, and lie down (see chapter 3 for a refresher on basic skills), and maybe do a trick or two if your dog knows any.

  2. Place a strong emphasis on distance training. For example, ask your dog to sit and stay from one foot away, then five feet away, and then up to twenty feet over the course of a few weeks. Go gradually and only increase difficulty with distance training as your dog becomes very reliable.

  3. Now it’s time to add distractions. Since you’re adding a new variable—the distractions—start close to your dog (later you’ll gradually increase the distance). Get super-creative with the distractions you implement in your training now. Be sure to bring along your dog’s absolute favorite things to use as distractions. For example, if your dog loves a squeaky toy, make it a goal to teach her to stay while you heavily animate and squeak the toy. Work up to throwing the toy as your dog demonstrates she can hold a stay. Reward with the same toy, a different toy, or treats, accordingly. By the way, if you’re wondering about using the favorite toy as a distraction and a reward, it’s fine. The bottom line is that your dog can play with the toy when you give permission, but she must leave it alone when you ask.

  4. If you’ve got it in you, jump up and down and wave your arms while squeaking the toy and vocalizing in a high-pitched voice! Yes, onlookers will think you’re insane, but that just goes with the territory. The point I’m making is that you need to use your imagination and do your absolute best to simulate highly enticing distractions so that when your dog is presented with something she views as exciting in the real world, she’ll have the training to know what to do: listen to you. This is the time to go for it and give your dog everything you’ve got. If your dog “fails” two times in a row and goes for the distractions, you’re not there yet, so go slower and practice more.

  5. Make these training exercises more challenging by focusing on gradually increasing your training bubble. No next step should be difficult for your dog. You are working toward being able to throw all kinds of distractions at your dog while farther away from her. Yes, you are now combining the distance training with the distraction training. The reason we’re focusing so heavily on extending the distance is because it’s a higher level of communication. If your dog listens to you at twenty feet away—and when distracted—then she’s on her way to listening when you’re playing fetch at the park off leash and something unexpected happens (like she sees a rabbit in the distance!).

  6. Assuming the above training is going well, set up some surprise primary sessions. See if you can get friends or kids at the park to run around in front of your dog a few feet away while you ask your dog to stay. Even have them toss treats near your dog. At the same time, practice “leave it” and “look at me.” By having real strangers do things that are highly distracting in practice, you are truly preparing your dog. The fact is that your set-up training drills should be more distracting than anything you are likely to e
ncounter in real life. See, in these set-up moments, your attention is on your dog in a way that’s hard to duplicate if you wait for both you and your dog to be surprised. Your results will only be as good as the training, so be thorough over a course of many months on this type of advanced training and prioritize being more and more unpredictable as your dog improves.

  7. One of the toughest parts of off-leash training is finding truly new, unfamiliar places to rehearse in. Once your dog is doing really well at your regular training spots, your challenge will be to seek out fenced-in areas that your dog is unfamiliar with, like ball fields first thing in the morning on a weekday (you’ll be less likely to encounter other events going on during these times). Still, keep your dog on a lead as you must be able to prevent relapses. Ideally, your dog shouldn’t realize the area is completely fenced as she likely won’t if you don’t frequent the location. Now you have a double-controlled environment, the leash and the fence, so you’ll have more flexibility to practice more lifelike training drills like “come” from farther distances or “stay” while you stand twenty feet away and launch a Frisbee, for example. This is how you test your off-leash training.

  8. During these specific types of training sessions, your dog must be held to the standard of listening unwaveringly. Once your dog is consistently listening to you at significant distances of ten feet or more, you can drop the leash and practice as normal. If your dog does have a relapse, it’s far easier to catch her when she has a twenty-foot lead attached to her. When you are able to flawlessly communicate with your dog while the leash is attached, but without your having to hold it, you are then ready to take the lead off. But remember, you still have the added protection of a fenced area. Be careful here though. Avoid making the assumption that, since your dog is doing well with the long lead dangling from her collar harness, she’ll now listen when you detach it. It doesn’t work that way. Dogs are smart and they will notice the difference. In other words, your dog is likely to notice she’s no longer attached to the leash. For this reason, start from the beginning when entering this new off-leash phase of training. Work on basic training while your dog is off leash at close range. Next, start with smaller distractions only and work up to greater distractions over the next several sessions. If at any point your dog becomes less cooperative, that’s your cue to put that long lead right back on. You’ll also need to be more thorough with your training and try again once your dog has advanced. However, if you’ve gotten to this point in your training, you are most likely going to succeed, so stay the course!