Stubborn dog???

By Chet Womach

Stubborn dog???

Do you ever ask your dog to do something, and he
just doesn’t seem to listen?

Have you ever asked a friend to watch your new puppy
shake, or lie down or sit on command, only to have
your puppy completely ignore your commands when you
try to give him the cue?

This type of seemingly stubborn behaviour really isn’t
stubbornness at all. Let me explain by telling you
a short story…

When I was trying to train my dog Bauer the “down”
command he seemed to catch on very quickly. I would
just sit in my living room, and every time my dog
laid down I’d just watch closely and give him the
cue for “down” right before he’d go to lay down and
in no time at all he was laying down on cue.

Most people make the mistake of thinking this is all
it takes to teach the down command. In reality,
even though I could sit in my living room, give my
dog the “down” command, and 99 times out of 100 he’d
lay down and wait for his reward, that didn’t mean
that he really knew how to obey the “down” command.

What I mean is that even though the dog knew how to
do the behaviour. My dog didn’t fully comprehend the
cue for when to do the behaviour.

I realized this when my in laws first came over to my
house to see our new puppy after we first brought him
home.

I was so excited, because I thought I’d taught him
the down command at 10 weeks old… after all he would
lay down every time I trained him in our living room.

But what I didn’t realize, was that even though I
was sitting in my living room and saying “down” as
the cue for my dog to lay down… my dog wasn’t paying
any attention to the words I was saying.

Instead, he was actually watching my head movement.

Because in addition to saying down as my cue, I was
also looking at my dog and giving him a quick little
nod of my head each time I gave the verbal cue.

And little did I realize that my dog wasn’t listening
to a word I said, he was just waiting for me to give
the little head movement.

So when I went to show my in laws how quickly I’d
trained my new puppy to lay down, I just gave the
down command without my little head nod, and the dog
wouldn’t obey me.

Some people would naively think that the dog is
being stubborn. These types of peoples say things
like “I know he knows how to do this, he’s just
being stubborn”…. WRONG!

He’s not being stubborn at all. You just don’t realize
that your dog is capable of noticing EXTREMELY small
cues, and you’re giving them off without even knowing it.

This is actually a HUGE problem in training animals.

The first people to really discover that animals could
pick up extremely tiny cues, were the people who first
trained chimpanzees sign language. These people swore
that they had taught chips to communicate via sign
language in a way where the chimps could convey wants,
needs and desires.

But when scientists were brought in to first analyze
this they discovered something AMAZING. The chimps
were not using sign language as a way to communicate.

But in fact the chimp trainers had accidentally trained
the chimps to sign using accidental cues with their
EYES!

That’s right, the chimps would see their trainers eyes
move up, down, left or right and depending on the
patterns of the eye movements of their trainers, would
sign the coordinating signs.

That’s how capable animals are of understanding TINY
cues.

And it’s a mistake that even veteran animal trainers
make. So if you catch yourself thinking that your dog
is being stubborn and not wanting to obey you, what’s
probably happened is you’ve accidentally trained your
dog in a way where he doesn’t really understand what
the cue to the behavior is.

How I ended up fixing this with my puppy, is I made
sure that I gave the verbal cue of “down” from dozens
of positions. I’d give it sitting, standing up, with
my back to my dog, from a distance, with my eyes
closed etc. etc.

Because as soon as I stopped offering my little nod
as a cue for my dog to lie down, my dog started to
think that the cue only worked if I was sitting in a
chair, cuz that’s where I’d been doing the training.

And if I was lying on the floor of my living room and
gave the cue for “down” it was like my dog never even
heard the cue.

Again, this isn’t that my dog was stubborn, but that I
was giving off cues that I still don’t even realize I
was giving off. And only by really forcing myself to
train the down command while I was personally in a LARGE
variety of situations was I able to get the dog to really
understand that he needs to listen to the verbal
command and not watch my body language for the cue.

When you think about it, it makes sense. Why would a
dog who’s trying to figure out what we’re trying to
teach it first think to look for clues in the English
language? That would be absurd.

Of course it makes sense that instead of listening to
words, the dog would look for physical cues like
posture head movements etc.

So next time you catch yourself thinking your dog is
acting stubborn, rethink through your training process,
and maybe, just maybe, you haven’t REALLY taught him to
understand the cue like you thought you did.

Chet Womach