Hi, I'm Joel Silverman, and on behalf of Petco, I'd like to welcome you to this simple
guide to training your dog.
You know, one of the things I love about dog training is that dogs, like people, have such
different personalities.
And the chemistry between each dog and each individual dog owner is really what makes
that relationship so special and unique.
So sit back and relax as we guide you through some basic dog training.
I found in the past that many dog owners like learning from dog training videos, and I hope
you find this video to be very informative.
But if you think you'd like to learn directly from a dog trainer, we'd like to remind you
that Petco does offer private group training classes.
If you're interested, just ask one of the associates.
I want to team up with Petco and provide you with a dog training video because there are
so many misconceptions about dog training.
Some people think that you can't teach an old dog new tricks, or some dogs just can't
be trained.
Why is this?
Well, for many years we've been told that dogs are hard to train, so we've been led
to believe this.
Well, today we hope to cure some of those misconceptions.
You have to remember there's something very special in working with dogs.
A dog is the one animal that wants to please you and wants to be your best friend.
And speaking of best friends, this is my best friend, Duke.
You might recognize Duke from commercials for Nissan, Budweiser, and Polaroid.
Now knowing that this is an animal that wants to please you and wants to be your best friend,
the most valuable thing that you could do is develop a relationship and a bond with
your dog.
One of the biggest mistakes that dog owners make is beginning to train their dogs before
they've actually had a chance to get to know their dog and their dog has gotten a chance
to know them.
By starting to train your dog before you've developed a relationship, you're taking away
the most valuable tool in training, and that's trust.
Before you bring your dog out to be trained, there are a few things you want to remember.
The first thing that I recommend you do is establish a relationship with your dog.
You do this by spending anywhere from three to five weeks of getting to know your dog.
The reason is that we want the dog to get to know us and like us, and that lays the
foundation for the dog wanting to please us and wanting to learn.
In essence, our goal is to teach a dog to perform a behavior not only because he has
to, most importantly, because he wants to.
What if you were to train your dog before you actually had a chance to get to know him?
Well, if you did this and he made a mistake and you corrected him, you could lose that
trust in you because he doesn't know you.
That relationship and that bond that is so valuable that we talked about earlier could
get diminished.
Remember that when you're teaching any behavior, you want to have a game plan.
You want to have a goal of what you want to accomplish each session.
When you achieve that goal, you want to end the session.
You always want to end each session on a positive note.
The mistake that many owners make is really not having a goal of what they want to accomplish.
Here's an example.
If you're going to train your dog to sit, you're not going to train your dog to sit
in one session.
You're going to train just a piece of the behavior.
It's very, very important you understand what part of the behavior and how much of it that
you want to teach.
Here's a way to make training easier to understand.
When you ask your dog to perform a behavior, there's three things that will happen.
The first thing that's going to happen is you're going to give a dog a cue, either a
visual cue or a verbal cue.
The second thing that's going to happen is your dog is going to respond either correctly
or incorrectly.
The third thing that's going to happen is you're going to reward your dog for responding
correctly or correct your dog for responding incorrectly.
All training really is is understanding these three steps.
I really want to teach you how to be selective so that you're rewarding good behavior instead
of bad behavior.
Most likely the reason your dog doesn't obey you is you have inadvertently rewarded a bad
behavior at one time or another.
There are six behaviors we're going to focus on today.
The first is sit, then it's stay, come, lie down, heel, and out.
Before we begin, I want to show you how to put a leash and a collar on your dog.
Come on, Duke.
Come on.
Now, this is one of the largest areas at Petco.
This is the leash and collar section.
Come on around here, big boy.
There you go.
You can sit.
Now, there's some leashes and collars on the opposite side, so there's a huge selection
here.
When you're working with your dog, my suggestion would be to use a leather leash, and the reason
is when you're correcting the dog, it's just a lot easier on your hand when it's a leather
leash.
This is a chain collar, or some people call it a choke chain, and there's a right way
and a wrong way to put this on your dog, and I want to show you the right way.
Come here.
That's a boy.
What you want to do is put it over the dog, and if you notice right here, there's this
free ring, and what I've done is I've hooked the leash on to this free ring.
Now, as I correct the dog, this is what happens.
Now, if you notice, the chain goes along the left side of the dog.
Now, if I'm working the dog on the left side like this, what's going to happen is I pull
the dog, all the pressure comes from the outside.
That's a lot easier for me.
The wrong way, which some people might do, and that is they actually put the chain on
this way, and what they do is now what ends up happening is it goes along the inside of
the dog, and when they pull the dog, they're actually lifting up on the dog.
It's a lot more difficult on the dog and a lot more difficult on them.
Again, right way is to take the chain, put it on this way, and you pull like that, and
again, the wrong way also would be to, some people might go and put it on like that, but
the right way is like this, and again, all dogs have different types of personalities.
Some dogs have more tough necks than others, and some dogs need a little more of a correction.
Obviously, with a Rottweiler that's out of control, it's going to be a lot more difficult
than a Chihuahua or a smaller dog, so just remember that all dogs do have different personalities.
The first behavior I want to show you is sit, and the reason I like to train sit first is
that once the dog's trained to sit and stay, it's very simple because the dog is actually
in one spot, and it makes training real easy for the dog.
First thing I want to show you are the two cues, okay?
You're going to give a visual cue, and you can also give a verbal cue.
The verbal cue is going to be the word sit, and the visual cue is going to be this with
your hand in this position, just like this, okay?
You're going to say sit, and you're going to walk in and reward him just like that.
This is Allie.
Allie's actually a black lab, about six months old, just full of all kinds of energy here.
What I want to do, my goal this session is just to have the dog under enough control
to where I manipulate the dog into a sitting position, I tell the dog to stay, she stays,
I'm standing right next to her, and that's all I really want to do this session, because
I know that she's going to want to lie down, I know she's going to want to jump around,
and again, we're going to use the food as a motivator.
Okay, good girl, very, very good.
What I've noticed with Allie is that if you just touch her rear end, she wants to sit,
which is a good thing, because a lot of times you kind of have to rock the dog back, a dog
that's high strung like this, okay?
So what we want to do is I want to, first of all, give her a little treat so she sees
me.
Here you go, Allie, there you go, very, very nice.
I want her to watch me, okay?
Sit, touch her rear end, stay, okay?
I'm holding her up with my leash in my left hand, so she can't lie down, because I know
she wants to, we have her stay.
I know she's got a lot of energy, okay, we're going to take her away from the position,
bring her right back again, and before she has a chance to do anything, again, we're
going to touch her rear end.
Okay, Allie, good girl, touch her rear end, we say sit, stay, very good, all right, good
job.
Just like that, stay.
So she sat, or she lied down, Allie, come here, sit, stay, very good.
We corrected her for lying down, brought her right back up to the sitting position, stay,
okay, stay, okay, good girl.
Now what I'm noticing with Allie here is that when you tell her to sit, she wants to lie
down in this position here.
So what I want to do, she's not having a problem really taking that cue, touching the rear
end and sitting and responding that way.
The big problem that she's having is wanting to lie down, so what I want to start doing
is I want to work with her on just sitting and staying, okay, once she sits, okay, good
girl.
So again, sit, she sits great, she lies down, bring her right back again, Allie, come here,
good, sit, stay.
Now watch what happens, I'm going to hold on to her so she can't lie down, okay, and
if she's going to lie down, she gets corrected, stay, and at the same time I'm also going
to reward her for staying, good girl, stay, let her know she's doing a great job, stay,
and if she goes and lies down, she gets corrected for it, stay, stay.
Again she's a high strung dog, we're using the word stay a lot because we want that control,
good girl, very, very nice, at the same time we're also being very positive, let her know
she's doing a great job, she wants to lick me, using that as a reward, stay, stay, no,
Allie, come here, stay, good girl, okay, bring her right back again.
Well now what I want to do is I want to see if this dog will start taking a little bit
of a cue because from me, I want to give her some food, Allie, come here, good, give her
a little treat, I want her to watch me, very, very good, if I say sit, look at that, boy,
she sat right away, again I told you, the big thing, all dogs are different and some
dogs take the cues a little bit easier than others, her big problem is wanting to lie
down, stay, very, very good, stay, good job, and one more time, we're going to do this
one more time, again, my big concern is making sure this dog sits after she, stays after
she sits, okay, good girl, and doesn't lie down, that's my main concern, Allie, I'm going
to give her a little bit of a treat, Allie, good girl, Allie, come here, Allie, come on,
good, here you go, hey, Allie, good, stay, very nice, give her a little treat here, sit,
stay, that's great and that's exactly what I wanted, that was super, Allie, very, very
nice, good job, thank you, oh yes, what we just saw with Allie was a dog that didn't
have a problem sitting, we just had a problem staying, so I want to kind of walk you through
how we get this sit cue, okay, so the first thing we do, on your feet, on your feet, stay,
very good, get some food out just to get him a little motivated here, there you go, big
boy, all right, what we want to do, again, is we're going to push the dog's rear end
down, we're going to say sit, very good, have the dog stay, now Allie sat really well
as soon as we touched her, but chances are your dog's going to have to be pushed down
and we're going to say on your feet, again, we say sit, push the dog back, have the dog
stay and eventually what's going to happen is you're going to move your hand a little
bit further away, maybe two inches away, the dog's going to start taking this cue and you
can see by pushing the dog's rear end down over and over again, stepping back, how this
actually becomes the cue, so one more time, on your feet, good, and we say sit, just like
that, we say stay and reward him just like that.
You know, many dog owners think the longer time they spend training their dog, the smarter
their dog will be, well that couldn't be further from the truth, your training sessions don't
have to be long, anywhere between two and five minutes and as long as maybe ten minutes,
just make sure you end each session on a positive note, another mistake owners make is thinking
they have to put in many sessions a day, again, my suggestion is two to five sessions depending
on how much training your dog needs.
Training your dog to stay is a great behavior because what your dog understands how to stay,
it's a great form of control, what you're going to do is you're going to give the dog
a cue and this is going to be the cue, this hand, palm like that, okay, so what we do
is we just say the word stay and walk to our dog and reward him just like that, good boy,
very nice, that's very good.
This is Emmy, Emmy is actually about two years old, now when you're training your dog to
stay, okay, you want to make sure you don't take too big a step, you want to take real
real small steps, okay, and the last thing you want to do is stand up and all of a sudden
walk away from the dog because she's going to get up and we know that's going to happen,
so I'm going to take real real small steps and if the dog makes a mistake, okay, I'm
going to make darn sure that I bring her right back and make her repeat it again, okay, stay,
okay, now if I tell her to stay and if I step again, she's got up, we'll bring her right
back again, I don't say no, I don't scream and jump up and down, stay, I'm right about
maybe a foot away, I'm going to walk and reward her, it's really important when you're teaching
your dog to stay to walk to your dog and reward the dog, the most important part of that behavior
the mistake that people make when they're training your dog to stay is they tell their
dog to stay for about 10 or 15 seconds and then they call their dog to them, well if
you think about it from your dog's point of view, your dog really has no reason to stay
because the only time he's being rewarded is for going to the trainer, so you really
want to make sure you walk to the dog and reward the dog, again, tell the dog to stay,
yep, she got up, sit, stay, very good, and if you notice with my left hand what I'm kind
of doing is I'm kind of giving the dog a little bit of a crutch, I have a little bit of slack
in the leash but I have enough slack to where if the dog gets up she's corrected, stay,
still I'm only about two feet away, good girl, very very nice, again walking to her and rewarding
her, stay, great job, now since she's doing such a great job it's my decision now to release
her and say, Emmy you're doing a great job, so I'm going to say, okay good girl, okay
very very nice, now we'll bring her right back to the same spot, okay, bring her right
back to the same spot, good girl, stay, very very nice, stay, no, bring her right back
again, come here, good, Emmy, sit, stay, stay, so what I'm finding out with this dog is,
oh she's probably okay at two or three feet away but when I start getting six or seven
feet away that's when there's a problem, so the last thing I'm going to do is work the
dog from three feet and then make real large steps, so I'm going to take a little smaller
step, stay, stay, now about four feet away, stay, good girl, stay, move real firmly on
my voice, stay, stay, very good, alright, good job, doing a great job, we'll release
her, okay, very very nice, good job, Emmy, bring her right back again, come on, very
good, good, sit, and my goal this session is to get to the point where I'm about maybe
six feet away, I've got a little bit of extra slack in the leash here, stay, stay, and she's
scratching, hey, Emmy, sit, stay, so if you notice there what happened, she started scratching
a little bit, I want her attention, I want her to watch me, stay, stay, so you're looking
around, stay, very good, stay, no, stay, stay, stay, no, what I like is she's getting up
a little bit but she's taking upon herself to sit right away which is great, she's kind
of correcting herself, if you notice there, stay, I am about six feet away so that's very
very nice, stay, very very good, alright, good job, Emmy, very nice, Emmy was pretty
good with that stay behavior, the only problem she had was once we got past four feet she
wanted to get up, so if your dog has that problem, once you get past four feet, just
move in very very small increments, maybe go four feet, five feet, six feet, and so
on, we'd like to remind you that you can't have a well-trained dog unless you have a
healthy dog, that's why you want to start with a good premium dog food like science
diet, it has all the vitamins and minerals that most dogs need and deserve, you know
when you're training your dog to stay it's a lot easier with a dog that's calmer, there
are a lot of different types of personalities, what type of personality does your dog have,
well the reason I asked is because you really need to train your dog according to his or
her personality, you've got probably a calm dog and you've got the high-strung dog, you
need to work them differently, for example if you've got a high-strung dog you're going
to want to have a lot more control, be a lot more firm in your voice, saying the word stay
a lot because you want to have that control, on the other hand if you're working with a
calm dog or a shy dog, that dog's going to have to get into the training session, you
might have to do something a little bit different, different motivation in your voice, possibly
toys or something like that, so before you train your dog you really want to take the
time and think about what type of personality your dog has.
Training your dog to come is one of the easiest behaviors, the reason is most dogs naturally
want to be with us, here's what the behavior looks like, do, come, good boy, that's a good
boy, very nice.
This is Banzai and Banzai is only about a year and a half old, now when you're training
your dog to come to you, my suggestion is to have a long line like this and you can
actually pick this up at your closest Petco, now when you train your dog to come you can
do a number of things, you can call the dog's name, you can call him Banzai, you can say
come, now what I like doing is I like saying the animal's name and then I also like to
say I'll say like Banzai, Banzai will look at me and I'll say come and the dog will come
to me and it's really important that when you work with this behavior you understand
that there's no negotiations, this is not something we use food with, the animal has
got to come to you, if the dog's going to be running out the front door we don't want
to know that the dog's only going to come to us for a bite of food or for praise, the
dog's got to come to us because he knows that's just something he has to do.
So when you first set up the dog for this behavior what I like to do is let the dog
just kind of wander around a little bit and that's what we're going to let him do and
again I'm going to say Banzai come, okay, good, Banzai come, come and when he comes
to me he's going to sit, okay, Banzai come here, good, sit and he's going to look at
me, I want him to sit and I want him to watch me, it's very, very important, the mistake
that a lot of people make is their dogs come to them but kind of walk around them and sit
and they face the opposite direction, I want him to watch me, very, very important, good
boy, okay, good job, Banzai come, give him a little correction, he sat, looked at me,
that's very, very nice, good boy, alright, good job, good boy, very good, one more time,
over there, let him go, Banzai come, come, come, kind of reel him in here, have him sit,
stay, he watches me, that's great, good boy, very, very good, that's really great, that's
exactly what I want, that is super.
Now one thing I'm noticing with Banzai here, Banzai's got a very, very soft neck, what
I mean is when you give him a little correction with his choke chain it means something, you
don't have to give him very much of a correction, all dogs are different, we talk about them
having different personalities, and so if you notice here, when I'm going to do this
next time, I want you to watch real carefully, because when I give him a little correction
with that choke chain, I want to give him just a very, very small correction, a little
bit louder with my voice and let's see how he responds, okay, watch this, good.
He knows, Banzai come, that was good, he sits, that's a good boy, very good, now that time
I gave him no correction at all, just said it with my voice and it meant something, so
this is really, really important for you to understand, that is that all dogs do have
different personalities, we talk a lot about that, and notice that if the dog is responding
well to you, without you correcting the dog with the choke chain, that's great, I mean
if, and you want to use the choke chain only as a form of, as almost like a last resort,
okay, one more time, there you go, Banzai come, bring it right to me, he sits, and we
reward him, that was a good job, alright, good job buddy.
When you're training your dog to come, as we saw with Banzai, it really depends upon
the personality of your dog, now Banzai has a very, very soft neck, we didn't have to
correct Banzai very much, you're probably going to have to correct your dog a little
bit more, but here are the steps in the behavior.
First thing you want to do is put the long line on the dog like, like you saw, and let
the dog wander.
You're going to say come, and you're going to correct the dog, and the dog's going
to come to you.
When your dog is consistent with that, then you're going to drop the long line, just let
the leash, just let the long line drag, let the dog wander, say the word come, have the
dog come to you, when your dog is consistent with that, the next step is to take off the
long line, put a leash on the ground, put a leash hooked up to the dog, let the dog
drag the leash, say the word come.
comes to you. When that dog is coming consistently, the next step is taking a leash off the dog.
You're going to find that different dogs like working for different rewards. Now a reward
is anything your dog likes. For example, if you have a Lab or Golden Retriever, they might
just work for a ball. Now I've found that dogs like working for treats or food rewards,
especially these treats made by Science Diet. Now when you go to train your dog, what's
going to happen is you're going to give your dog a food reward each time the dog does something
correctly. And once the behavior is nearly completed, what I like to do is I combine
a tactile reward with the food reward, which is petting your dog. I'm going to do this
over and over again and eventually get to the point where we fade out the food and the
dog is only working for a tactile reward. A behavior that every dog should know is the
heel behavior. And here's how it works. We're going to say the word heel. We're going to
take off. Start walking. Ready? Heel. Walk over here. Stop. Dog stops right next to us.
And we reward him just like that. That was very, very nice. Good. Thank you. Now this
is Ellis. Ellis is a St. Bernard mix. She's about a year old. And the mistake that a lot
of people make when they're training their dog to heel is just giving their dogs a lot
of leash. And I'm going to show you a mistake that people make. They just take the dog in
the leash and the dog just kind of goes in front of them in this direction and all over
the place. And when they correct the dog, the dog doesn't really know why it's being
corrected. So what I want to do is I want to show you how I train the behavior. I'm
going to take you right back to the spot that I was going to start at. And the first thing
we want to do is get the dog in a position. Sit. In a position that we want, that we expect
the dog to stay at, which is right about here. And what I'm going to do is when I start to
walk, I'm going to say the word heel. But what I'm going to do is when I first start
with the behaviors, I want to take a very, very small step. And watch what happens here.
And watch my hand. Watch her nose. And if she goes in front of me just a little bit,
I'm going to correct her. Watch. Heel. We stop here. I correct her. She sits and I reward
her. Now if she sits or she stands, I don't care. As long as her nose is here, that's
all I care about. Okay. That's very, very nice. Good girl. Heel. Good. Very, very nice.
Very good, Ellis. Excellent job. And when that dog stops next to your leg, just like
this, take the time to reward the dog. Let the dog know she's doing a great job. Okay?
Now the next step we're going to make is we're going to start possibly walking a little
bit faster. Okay? Okay? We're going to say heel. See how she just went in front of me?
Just like that. We're going to bring her right back again. Heel. That was great. I did correct
her. That was okay. But of course, you know, dogs don't understand they did it right unless
they do it wrong, unless you actually correct them. So again, we're going to bring her back.
But this time when I come back, I'm going to make a move. I want you to watch what I
do here. I'm going to say heel. I'm going to make a turn. Now as I make this turn away
from her, I'm going to take a very, again, a very small step because I've kind of laid
a foundation that I'm making small steps. But I'm going to teach her to watch this leg.
And when I make the turn, if she doesn't watch me, I'm going to give her a little correction.
Watch this. Heel. Just like that. We do it again. We say heel. Just like that. All right.
Very, very nice. Pretty good, huh? And we can do the same thing in the opposite direction.
Okay? Again, very small steps. Heel. Heel. Very good. Heel. And when you make the turn
into her, just take your left foot and just move it into her. Heel. Just like that. Very
nice. Again, everything we're doing, very, very small steps. I'm going to take her right
back to this position again. Okay. Okay. That's very, very good. Now you're going to get to
the point where you're working with the dog, the dog starts catching on. Okay? And Ellis
is actually a pretty smart dog. Heel. Let's see how she can. Heel. She's a pretty smart
dog, isn't she? Heel. Ellis. Come here. Heel. Very, very good. So we'll take a few more
steps. Heel. Again, I'm walking really slowly and it's taking, it's, she's thinking about,
see now she's just, give her a little correction. Heel. Bring her right back. Heel. Heel. Heel.
Just like that. And I'm going to make a turn away from her. Heel. Great. And as you can
see, come here. Ellis, come here. Ellis, come here. Good. Sit. Stay. Again, don't want her
lying down. She can sit. She can stay on her feet on all fours. She can't lie down. Okay?
That's very, very nice. You're doing a very, very good job. Good job, sweetheart. So the
next step that, you know, as you start progressing, of course you're going to start going a little
bit faster, you're going to start making more moves, and you're going to start speeding
up and slowing down. But this is, this is kind of the first steps of the behavior. What
I like about this type of training is the fact that we're, we're laying a really, really
good foundation. We're making it real black and white. We're telling the dog what is and
what is not expected of her. All we want her to do is stay next to our leg. And when she
goes in front of our leg, she's corrected for it. But from day one, that's what she
understands. That's a good girl. Remember, at the beginning we want to take very small
steps. We want to walk very, very slowly. Every time the dog stops next to our leg,
we're going to reward the dog so that the dog gets conditioned to being rewarded for
staying next to our leg. We're going to start speeding up eventually. Again, we're going
to stay in a line. When our dog is consistent with us, maybe going a little bit faster and
slowing down in that straight line, then we can start making turns to the left or turns
to the right. Again, just take it real slow. Training your dog to heal, as with any behavior,
takes practice and patience. If you need additional training advice or hands-on training experience,
Petco offers quality obedience training classes to teach these very commands. If you're interested,
just ask a Petco associate or call the number listed on your screen. The biggest reason
dogs don't understand what we want is that we've sent a mixed message. Now, if you have
a problem with your dog jumping up on people and one person's correcting the dog and two
people are not correcting the dog, we've sent a mixed message. The two people have told
the dog that it's okay to jump up on people. It's really important that everybody communicate
with each other and let each other know where the dog is in his training. It's also really
important that everybody is consistent so the dog knows what is and what is not expected.
When you're training your dog to lie down, there are two verbal cues that people use,
either the word down or the word lie down. The visual cue they use is probably the same
with everybody, and that's this. What I like to do is say the word lie down, and I'll give
you this cue, so I'll show you. We say lie down, very big, just like that. Stay, walk
in and reward him just like that. Now, this is Max. Max is a black hawker spaniel, about
eight years old, and there's a couple ways you can train the lie down behavior. You can
either use food in which you guide the animal down with a piece of food, or you can use
just the chain collar and leash in which you guide the dog down with a leash and chain
collar. Now, Max has a great personality and loves food, so we're going to use food, okay?
Now, again, we talk about having a goal of what we want to accomplish each training session,
and in this session, what I want to accomplish is all I want to do is Max is very, very high
strung. I just want to make sure that he understands that when I say lie down, you're going to
be in a sitting position. You're going to lie down, go to the treat, and you're going
to stay there. That's all I want to do this session, okay? That's a good boy. Ready? Take
him right back out of this position real quick. That's a boy, Max. Bring him right back again.
I want you to watch my hands. Always watch my hands. Watch the leash. Max, good. And
as I said, he's very high strung. Stay. He's a little out of control, but I like this type
of personality. My left hand is going to be on the leash and the collar, okay? My right
hand has a piece of food. He's in a sitting position already. We say lie down, okay? We
gently tug on him. He lies down. He stays there, okay? He wants to pop back up, so we're
going to say lie down, okay? Feed him. We're going to say stay. Stay. There you go, and
hold him down in that position, okay? Stay. Stay. Okay. Okay. Right back again. Back to
the position. Sit. Stay. Max, good. You're a happy guy. Stay. For an older dog, he really
is. Stay. He's got a great personality. Stay. Again. Stay. Stay. Stay. Lie down. Great.
Much better. Stay. Very good. Again, we're working with these dogs that are high strung.
You've got to be a little bit firmer with your voice. With Max, I'm very loud. Stay.
And again, I know he wants to get up, so watch where my hand is. So if he does make a move
to get up, he's going to get corrected. Okay? Stay. Just like that. Stay. Again, he got
corrected there. See? He wanted to get up. Stay. No. Stay. Good. Stay. Now, he wants
to get up right now. What we're going to do is we're not going to let him dictate when
he gets up. We're going to dictate when he gets up. Stay. When he's comfortable, when
I'm happy with the way he is, stay. Lie down. Stay. When I'm happy with everything, stay.
Okay. Okay. Good boy. Very, very good. And we'll bring him right back again. And as you
can see, Max is having a great time. This is awesome. Good. Again, start in the sitting
position. Stay. Stay. Look at that tail. Stay. Lie down. Great. Stay. Stay. Stay. Stay. Lie
down. Stay. Stay. Stay. See? He wants to get up. Stay. Now, if you notice with Max here,
the problem that he has... Okay. Very, very good. The problem that Max is having right
now is he's lying down actually pretty darn good. His problem is staying. Okay? Every
dog is different. Every session is different. And I was going to start this session off
a certain way. Now I'm going to change it a little bit. And what I'm going to say to
myself is, no, I know he's going to lie down and he's going to follow my hand. That's
fine. But what I want to do right now in the next two minutes is I want to teach this dog
to stay there after he lies down. Lying down and following my hand is not a problem. Okay?
One more time. Here. That's a boy. So again, the problem that we have is having him stay.
Stay. He's a high strung dog. I'm going to be a little bit louder with my voice. Stay.
Lie down. Stay. Stay. We might have to correct him a little bit more as well. Stay. Stay.
Stay. Stay. Stay. Stay. Stay. Stay. Stay. And there's not really any food involved in this
situation here because all it is is you have to stay. And if you get up, you're going to
get corrected. We still love you. Everything is great. Stay. Stay. Stay. Stay. Stay. Stay.
Stay. Stay. Stay. Okay. Very, very good. We're going to do this one more time. And again,
all I want to do is have him lie down and stay there. Stay. Stay. Down. Stay. Stay.
Much better. I want to show you how we get this cue, the hand cue, for the lie down because
working with Max who's very, very high strung and everything was very, very close. Okay?
So you saw us actually guiding Max down with the food to the ground. But what's going to
happen is we're going to take the food, okay, and we're going to guide the dog down like
we did with Max. We say lie down. Just like that. Okay? And the dog takes a treat, right?
We got Doug back up in a sitting position. Okay. Okay. Back in sitting position. Now
what you're going to do, the next step you're going to do is take the food and turn your
hand over with the food in it. Say lie down. Okay? Reward him. Okay? Now that cue that
we just gave him is very much like my cue. The only thing is there's food in my hand.
Okay? On your feet. On your feet. One more time. Sit. Stay. Now, before we had food,
now there's no food. Same cue we just gave. Lie down. Walk in and reward him just like
that. Good boy. All right. We know that a dog will do a behavior correctly or incorrectly.
Now if your dog does a behavior incorrectly, it's for one of two reasons. Either your dog
is testing you, meaning that he knows how to do the behavior, he's just trying to get
away with something, or he's confused. He doesn't really know what you want. Now, the
way you correct your dog for testing you is to make him repeat the behavior again. Be
a little bit more firm in your voice. The way you correct your dog for being confused
is to regress. Make it a little bit easy for him. So you really want to make sure you understand
why your dog did the behavior incorrectly. Training your dog to spit something out of
his mouth or take something from him really depends upon the personality of the dog. I
want to show you how this works. Out. Good. Very nice. This is Jack, and Jack is a Jack
Russell. And as you can see, he loves holding things in his mouth. So when you're working
with this behavior, the first thing you want to do is you want to get fairly close to the
dog. And there's got to be some sort of communication here, right? Which there obviously is not.
So what I want to do, the first thing I want to do is I want to hold onto the leash. OK?
Now when I hold onto the leash, watch what happens with the mouth. The mouth kind of
opens up a little bit. Stay. And I'm going to say the word out. OK? Out. Out. Out. No.
No. Out. Out. Stay. That's great. Took a little while. So there's a lot of communication
here. You've got to say, you're saying no. You're saying, you might be saying stay. Whatever
it is what you want to do is you want to really make sure that there's some sort of communication
going on and the dog understands really what you want. OK? And he thinks a little bit.
So again, the dog's going to pick it up. Now obviously when he's holding onto the object
and he's pulling on it, it gets kind of an attitude going. It's a lot more difficult.
OK? This is OK. Because this is what I want. Now again, I'm going to hold the leash with
one hand. And I'm going to say the word out. Watch what happens here. OK? No. Out. Good.
Very, very good. Much better. So what happened was when the dog starts tugging, when the
dog's tugging on the object and you try to pull it, it becomes a tug of war. And if you
hold onto the leash, what is happening is the dog is not tugging on the object. OK?
It's a lot easier. Good. Let's get him into it again. Good. This is an extreme here, obviously.
You know? Now watch what happens here. I'm holding the leash with my left hand. He already
is thinking about letting you go out. Great. OK. Good boy. And you also want to look at
what's the reward here. OK? The reward is him playing with the object. So he's going
to learn that every time he gives me the object, when I say out, then I'm going to give it
right back to him. Sometimes. Maybe sometimes I won't. It's my decision. Good. Very, very
good. Now watch what happens here. I'm going to reach in with my left hand and watch him.
As I reach in with my left hand, I want you to watch his mouth here and watch him start
to let go. And I'm going to start saying the word out. OK? Stay. Out. Out. No. Out. Out.
Good. OK. Good boy. Very, very good. That's a good boy. All right. One more time. We'll
do it again. OK. This is stuff you really have to watch. You know, this is one of those
things where we talk about training being black and white. This is one of those things
you really kind of have to feel out the dog and see kind of the way the dog is. But in
this particular situation, I notice that I'm reaching with my left hand and the dog's starting
to understand what I want. Out. Out. Good. Very good. OK. Good boy. Very, very good.
Good job. We'll do it one more time here. He's really progressing well. I'm very happy
with him. That's a good boy. Again, I'm going to reach in with my left hand. Out. Out. Out.
OK. Good boy. Very, very good. Not too bad. Good job. All right. Here you go, buddy. OK.
When you're training your dog to out behavior, it really depends upon the dog. Now, in Duke's
situation or other dog's situation, what you're probably going to want to do is pry the dog's
mouth open, basically taking your thumb and taking one of your fingers and just prying
the mouth open. But in Jack's situation, he was a little different. I noticed if I reached
in and grabbed the leash, he wanted to release the object. So it really, really depends upon
the dog. Most important thing of all, don't play the dog's game. Don't get into tug-of-war.
Today I hope we've given you a better insight into dog training. And most importantly, I
hope we've made it easier to understand. Remember that dogs make mistakes because we have inadvertently
rewarded a bad behavior at one time or another. Now, just a few things to remember as you
go to train your dog. First, have a goal of what you want to accomplish each session.
And when you achieve the goal, end the session on a positive note. Second, keep the session
short, maybe two to five minutes, putting in two to five a day. And most importantly,
make training fun for both you and your dog. On behalf of all of us at Petco, good luck.