Can We Make this Less Complicated: Training Dogs and Training Humans

Leo is a morning person. Athena is not.

We have two dogs: Athena and Leo. Absolutely perfect adorable little angels that are sometimes a giant pain in my ass.

We were able to do quite a bit of training with Athena. She responds so well to it and it really calms her anxiety when she knows we are in charge. Leo was adopted right before the pandemic as a 10-week old puppy, so he didn’t get very much training. He has easily learned all the basic commands and can learn new tricks in a few minutes. He also has a very different attitude to being bossed around. Leo is incredibly smart and stubborn and really doesn’t care what you want him to do if that is not what he wants to do.

As the humans of the house we have slacked off a bit on some basics. Like, listening to us when they’re in the backyard. I’ve decided to renew my effort to get some basics down so everyone is happier. In particular, getting Leo to come to me when he’s distracted by the neighbor dog. I’m particularly worried he’s going to climb our fence and get hurt falling in to the neighbors yard.

When I started reading up on training, I realized we had inadvertently been training both dogs to ignore us. Ask them to come inside? I can see their little brains calculating whether the treat they are going to get, or the rabbits they can chase, are more desirable.

Baby Leo

So I started working on “come” with Leo. He already knew the command, but I had set the expectation that he could ignore me and still get a treat when he eventually decided to come inside.

And of course, I made things way too complicated to start out. I started working on “come” when Leo was super distracted. He had to yell at the neighbor dog, or the Fedex man, or something. We had to walk it WAY back. He immediately understood the “come” command when there were no distractions and a treat pouch on my hip. So we moved on to “come” when he was distracted by sniffing. He got that one pretty quick too (with the help of high value treats). Now we are working on disengaging from the neighbor dogs.

This is a hard one, but we are making progress. He looks up at me with big eyes while his whole body trembles. Leo is really busy and needs to get back to telling the neighbors what’s up. But both of us are making progress. We had to dial it way back. Remove complicating factors, and then start adding elements back in. Something I have to remind myself whenever I’m frustrated by something new.

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Re-Think It: “Belly-Button to Your Spine”