Making progress with clicker training! :)

[K9soul]

The book I'm reading right now, Click for Joy, emphasizes a lot that you need to work on lessons gradually in several different areas. The author says, basically, that if your dog learns how to roll over in the living room, he may connect the behavior with that place only. She suggests on each behavior that you are really working for, to 'start from scratch' training it in many different areas until in the dog's mind it is very generalized.

The other problem she talks about is when training, whatever your dog finds the most rewarding at that moment, that's what he will go for. So sometimes suddenly chasing a squirrel is more rewarding to him than the treat you are holding. She talks about different ways to handle situations like this too.

I think it has been a very eye-opening book for me and a whole new look into the way dogs think and react. I'm just hoping I can get my husband to read it when I'm done. He can be stubborn about things like that, figuring he already knows what's best in handling the dogs. I'm gradually working the ideas into his head though, like pointing out little things about their behavior and how it is reinforced to them, and how this or that thing Tommy has just started doing is a result of the new training style.

The most frustrating part is too often, when the dogs do something 'wrong' he thinks they are being deliberately defiant, and that's just not the case. I try to explain it to him, and he thinks I'm just making excuses for their 'bad' behavior. Like if he tells Tommy to go lay down while he's trying to cook dinner in the kitchen, and Tommy wanders right back in the kitchen underfoot sniffing for crumbs, he thinks Tommy is deliberately disobeying. I'm trying to explain though, that to Tommy, it is more rewarding to him to sniff for crumbs than to go lay down. Using positive reinforcement, going to lay down needs to be made into the more rewarding thing to do. Sure he can be scolded and get results, but the other way he becomes happier and willing to comply, and much less likely to be "defiant."