목줄 없이 야외에서 반려견의 말을 잘 듣게 하는 방법 (단계별 가이드)

that. We just need to change the vision of what educating a dog is because mastery is getting mastery of those skills. That's success in dog training. Mastery of those skills close up means you have a far better chance of getting mastery of those skills from a distance. So, in this first podcast, in this first episode where we're going to help you get mastery at a distance, we're going to talk about mastery close up and what does that look like? And there's a few elements that you just need to be clear about. Three of them, we need the dog to have clarity with. And the fourth, it's like a grouping, it's up to you. So, the first thing we really want our dog to understand are the cues, the verbal cues of the behaviors that we would love to see them to be able to master close up and at a distance. So, the obvious ones would be sit, down, and I would suggest one or two other cues. So, I use the cue stand, might be a little bit challenging, but I picked that because I'm going to put a link in the show notes for a quick and easy way to teach your dog how to stand the way that we teach our dogs how to stand. And already I've got a video on YouTube where I show you a super easy way to teach your dog to down. And so, there's two of the three behaviors. If you'd like to know how I teach my sit, you can just jump over to YouTube and leave me a comment and I can do a video on that as well. But I assume most people have a grasp on that one. Okay. So, what we need, a dog will respond the first time we ask. We don't have to re-cue. We don't have to do sit, sit, sit. We don't have to go sit and then get towering over the dog. We don't have to use a food lure or pretend lure that you, you know, pretend you've got something and you're putting it over your dog's head. The dog hears a cue, boom. They go, yeah, I know what that means. I'm going to do that. Okay. So, we're going to clean that up today. Right. That's the first thing. So, we have a dog who understands what the verbal cues mean and they're excited to do it. The second thing is they will hold that position. There is no longer sit, stay, stay, stay, stay, stay, stay, because the stay dance is gone. A cue means go into that position. And there is no time set for that. It is go in that position until number three element, I give you a release cue. So, our dog's responsibility that we are going to help them achieve mastery at is respond to my cue. And that goes back to guys, you have to train it in an engaging way where you have the, I've talked

about the five C's of training, where you have that connection, you create clarity for what you want, the sit down or the stand, then you build confidence. And then we throw challenge. And guess what one challenge could be? Working at a distance. But that is a university challenge. We've got to get the little challenges close up first. Okay. So, we've worked with the five C's on sit down, stand, or whatever behaviors you think would be helpful from a distance. Obviously, a recall would be helpful from a distance, but we're not focusing on that. We want our dog to be at a distance and do these behaviors. That's what our ultimate goal is. Okay. Because it's life-saving. It's actually life-saving. So, let's talk about the release cue. I have many and you probably do too, but you might not be intentional about them. So, let's clean that up. If I say to my dog, break, it means they can leave that position and find reinforcement in wherever they find ideally towards me, but it may not be because I've said break. If I said their name, it would mean come to me. So, break is one. Search means find the food I've thrown and get it means go to the dead retrieve. So, I might have like a bowl with a, I've put a cookie in and if they're in a sit and I say, get it, they can get out of the sit and get the food out of the bowl. If I say search and I've got food in the bowl, they get the cookies that I've thrown on the floor. They don't take the ones out of the bowl. Okay. So, another skill that your dogs have to have strongly encourage it is the skill of it's your choice. I'll put a link to the show notes. So, I will give you this step-by-step to how you can play that with your dog. And that is the foundation that all of my training is built on. So, but the three main ones that we need for teaching the foundations for getting away at a distance is getting that mastery up close, response to a cue, hold position to your release, and the understanding of a release word. So, that holding position includes with distractions. So, the distraction of the bicycle going by, the distraction of, you know, you might be walking into another room and you come back and we want our dog to hold that position. So, those are the three things that our dogs are really going to need to have mastery with. And I think it's your choice is the way to help get your dog mastery with the second one in particular. Now, I said there was one you were responsible for, and that is training mechanics. And that is number one, having an awareness. It's funny that I should say that. So,

I'm just going to throw it out here. I was at an Eckert Toll lecture last night. It was amazing. And so, being present to know what's going on is helpful in everything in life, but in particular, when you're working at educating your dog, when you're creating this kind of engagement. And what do I mean by that? If I ask my dog to sit, am I leaning forward? Am I stamping my foot? Am I reaching to my pocket before I say sit? Really, really important that you understand that you're cuing without any extra help from your body. That's number one. Number two is that you're marking without motion from your body. So, if I ask my dog to down, they down, I'll mark it with a good. And then that tells the dog, that's what I was looking for. I may now go in and reinforce. So, it's cue, mark, and reinforce. Be aware of what you are doing when you are cuing, marking, and reinforcing. And the next thing you need to be aware of is what is your dog doing when you deliver that reinforcement? So, if I go in to feed my dog and they get up out of this, the down that I've asked them to go in, even if they lift their elbows off of the ground, what did you just reinforce? You reinforce the dog for leaving the down, not staying in the down. Likewise, if you ask your dog to down, they down, you say good, and then they get up and come to you for the cookie. You've reinforced them for leaving position. You've reinforced the dog on top of you, which we're trying to eventually build the distance from that. And the dog doesn't get a chance to show you that they can do a duration, even if that duration is one second. So, we need you to be aware of your cueing, what your body is doing, marking, how you're marking. And you can use words other than good. I used to use the word yes, whatever you want. Saying things like good boy, good, that's praise rather than marking. You know, a mark like good boy, it's building along. A marker should be isolating, this is good. You lie down. Now, if you wanted to praise or mark duration, good boy is reinforcing them for staying in that down position. And then you've got to know what are you doing when you're releasing? Are you doing this okay and turning away from the dog? So, for those of you who are listening to this podcast, are you motioning with your body when you give the cue, okay, they can leave? We want the dog to not think part of what you're doing is important to what they're doing. That what you're doing with your body isn't built into the behavior, which is why so many people struggle getting

their dogs to work at a distance. Because the rewards with you, and if the dog's 40 feet away and you ask them to lie down, they are going to come close to you to lie down. Because, well, if I'm out there and the cookies are over here, then it's too far away. I can't do it. The bank's empty over here, the bank's full over here. I want to be lying down near the full bank. Okay. So, it's super important that you get these mechanics correct. All right. So, lots of engagement in your training. For those of you who have got a dog who doesn't respond on the first time you ask them to down, or they're really slow to get into that position, chances are it's not engaging for them. I would go back and retrain that and don't use your words right now. A lot of people have been taught to use the words right away. So, you have a dog who's a little distracted, you're learning this in class, and somebody may have instructed you to repeat the word over and over again as a dog is doing the behavior. Sit, sit, sit, sit, sit. Well, the dog is slow and distracted and that gets built into this cue. So, we want the dog to be fast and snappy and engaged on their toes. And so, that's what we want to rebuild. Go back and watch those videos on stand and down. And I promise you, you're going to have a snappy down and stand. And if you would like a snappy sit as well, leave me a comment and I'll tell you how you can go about to get that one. So, the goal is to know what does your dog's behaviors look like close up. And that really is dependent upon your engagement, the level of education that you've put in for the dog, and the layers of buy-in that you have from the dog. What that comes to is what is the transfer of value? If the dog has always done behaviors with a cookie in front of them or looking like, if there's no cookie on you, I'm going to be slower. You're not going to have the same buy-in. We need the transfer of value. I've talked about transfer of value so many times on this podcast. So, we've got those behaviors close. I'm going to share with you now a little experiment I did with some of my students. This was probably 20 years ago. I wanted to really make it super clear how behaviors from a distance happen because the mastery of the behaviors close. So, this is what I did. We had a camp here where we had 48 students. They were divided into four groups of 12 and they worked with a different instructor every day. So, when they worked with me, they worked with half days. Okay. So, when they worked with me on the first day, I gave them this

assignment. We're going to have a competition. Ooh, these are people at an agility camp. So, they love a little competition. And I said, I've put this group, the whole camp of 48 campers, I've divided them up as equal as I could into groups of 12. So, if there's two border collies in this group, there's two border collies in this group. But there's a German Shepherd in this group, there's a German Shepherd in that group. And I balanced them out if there's many dogs in this group, there's many dogs in this group. And so, what we're going to do is between your group of 12 now, we're going to divide you into six and you're going to have a partner. So, one member of the partner is going to be doing behavior distance. The other member of the partner is going to be doing behavior distraction. So, and your scores are going to add up and we're going to see who's the best team at the end of the weekend. Okay. So, here was the exercise that I had them do. Back then, this is telling you, if anybody's listening to this and knows a little bit about the history of agility, there was something called a pause box way back when. And what it was, was a PVC square on the ground that the dogs had to jump into and lie down. There used to be a pause table, the pause box quickly went away. And the pause table is all that we saw. And now we rarely see a pause table. So, here was the game. The team of team distance, what they had to do is to see how far away they could get with their dog. They could practice over the four days of, or three days of camp. They could practice as often as they want. And we would practice when they would get to work with me. So, team distance, it was how far away we were going to measure on one cue, you would tell your dog to go in that box. Now, team distractions, what they had to do is stay as close as they wanted to that pause box with their dog. And they had to do how many different positions or behaviors could you do and tell your dog to go from outside the box. And on one cue, they'd pop in the box and go into a down. That was their game. And so, they would be doing jumping jacks, they'd be lying on their back, they'd be sitting cross-legged, they'd be turning away from the dog. It was amazing the different things that these people came up with for team distraction. All right. So, they had to come up with a list. And these lists were incredible. They were well over 20 different body positions or distractions that they could be doing and telling their dog, get in the box. And the dog had to get

in the box and lie down. But they could stay as close to that box as they wanted. And most of them, you know, were within an arms distance away or closer. Okay. Now, final day, the big competition. I had team distance go from each pair. They went first. Team distance would go and the average dog could go 15 feet was the average. And their dog would go on one cue, go into the box and lie down. So, 15 feet, that's about 5 meters. Okay. After that dog would go, I then said, team distraction. I want you to go half the distance that your partner went and get your dog to go in the box. And they said, no, no, no, no, no. We were team distraction. We never did any distance. I said, that's okay. And so, they followed instructions. They went half the distance. And guess what? Their dogs blew one cue into the box, lie down. And then I said, all right, now I want you to go back to where your partner was. One cue, boom, the dog flew into the box. Now I want you to go further. And for most of these dogs, and I said, you just keep going back and how far will your dog go? Those dogs who were on team distraction, they went faster and they went further than their partners did. Every single dog. Why was that? Because what I was really doing was I was helping team distraction to value build for a position. What does it look like? It's not attached to me. It doesn't matter if I'm hovering over you. I'm doing all these crazy things because I'm team distraction. That's what they thought. So many people, especially in the sport of agility, if we say, get distance away, they do it way, way too fast. The dog never gets mastery. And so, that's what I'd like for you. Dog training happens in layers. Like really good dog training happens in layers of education. We start at kindergarten, go through grade school, go through high school, university, master's, PhD, postdoc. And that's what team distraction was doing without knowing it. That's how I set them up. You just thought of 20 or 30 different ways to add value to a behavior for your dog. So, your dog, the engagement went up. It was so much fun. This is so easy. The five C's, there was connection at first. It was super clear what you wanted your dog to do. The confidence was skyrocketing over the weekend. The dogs could do all these challenges. And the last challenge we added was distance. And it was a surprise challenge. And lo and behold, the dogs were amazing. And so, that's what I want for you. Focus on mastery close up. And then next time we get together, I'm going to share with you how you can

grow that distance. Okay. There are two ways for dog trainers to work distractions with their dogs. Unfortunately, most dog training schools all over the world will only teach you one way. And that is get the dog into a control behavior and then introduce temptations, competing reinforcement, to see if he understands he needs to maintain that behavior. So, distraction type number one, maintain behavior. That is not what we're talking about tonight. Because here's the deal. There aren't too many bunnies out in the country that are going to flag you down and go, Hey, can you get your dog to go into a sit? Because I'm about to blow their mind with a level of distraction I'm going to show them. So, we need to work level two. And that's the topic of today's podcast. Hi, I'm Susan Garrett. Welcome back to Shaped by Dog. Today is installment number two of the series, How to Get Your Dog to Listen at a Distance. And today it's all about the critical timing of distractions. There's two reasons why a dog would listen at a distance. Reason number one is there's a consequence if they don't. So, they have a history of knowing if you say something and they don't listen at a distance, they will feel physically uncomfortable. Potentially there's an electric collar on them or there's a long line or you chase them down or there's going to be some level of discomfort all the way up to flat out pain if they don't listen to what you say. Now, if you're a regular listening to this podcast, you know that's not an option of something that I'm going to teach you. We're going to go to reason number two why a dog might listen at a distance. And that is because of the level of massive reinforcement and engagement in the history that that dog has of making good decisions around you and the lack of history of that dog making poor decisions around you. Now, before you start pumping the brakes and say, Susan, you don't know I've got a field-bred dog and there is no cookie that can compete with them chasing a bird in the bush. I understand that entirely. And that's why I defer back to our Recallers students. You know, I started an online program called Recallers back in 2010. Now, just hold it a minute because I'm not trying to sell you something. You actually can't buy Recallers right now. I'm just going to share a little bit of history. Recallers, since 2010 we've had students from more than a hundred countries all around the world, everyday dog owners just like you. More than 10,000 students have been through our program

over that time. And they've come with every breed and every walk of life and every level of understanding of dog training or not. And over this period of now 12 years, here's what I've learned. We're different. What we do is very different. So different that I decided I'm going to do a podcast dedicated entirely why we're different and what we do works. I can just tell you that it's a combination of me being a geek about science, wanting to be kind to my dogs, wanting to be congruent in the way I show up to the people in my life, and having this competitiveness to want to excel at the highest level of the sport of dog agility. All of that makes an urgency to what we do here. And so, yeah, we're science geeks. So, we figure out what can we do to increase the level of buy-in from every dog. And so, we do have dogs that will listen at a distance. But guess what? It doesn't happen overnight. And that's why in the first episode in this series, I talked about the importance of your dog understanding salient cues that pick three, sit down and stand are the ones that I recommend. That you go back and you get buy-in from the dog because of having immense value for them for doing those behaviors. So that they do them with enthusiasm and focus for you and for their work. The understanding of the cue, your understanding of the impact of the placement and the delivery of that reinforcement, how that can make or break a behavior for a dog. And then the dog's understanding of a release word. So, the cue, the reinforcement, and the release word. All of those things we really stressed in the first episode of this podcast. So, in the last episode, I talked about picking three behaviors. I suggested the sit down stand, creating amazing value for the dog to want to be part of this enthusiasm and focus for work because of the clarity that that dog got. We talked about the five C's that we're getting connection first, then building clarity and confidence, oozing with confidence on those three behaviors. But it was dependent upon your cueing and that the dog understood just a verbal cue separate from a physical cue. That you understood how your marking of the behavior and the placement and the delivery of the reinforcement had a massive impact on whether the dog learned what you intended them to learn and how well that dog understood their release word. So, those four elements were critical. Talked about them in the last episode. So, if you haven't listened to that, please go back and listen to it.

Because I also shared in that episode an experiment I did with 48 students who had came to a workshop here. Yeah, they became the topics of this scientific experiment and they were okay with it because it's not like I did anything unethical to them. Their big takeaway was they learned when you want a dog to listen at a distance. You need to focus on getting immense value for as many distractions as you can close up. Okay. So, that takes us full circle to where we are today. And so, we've got the two types of distractions. And guess what? They're both really, really important. The first is we need to teach our dogs to ignore any distractions while they're in a control position. So, you might go back and ask your dog to sit or stand or down and then work through them not moving when you bounce a ball or throw a cookie or run away or have somebody ring the doorbell or any other things that you could do when you're working on control behavior. But then what do you do when the dog makes a mistake? What is your normal right now? Just think about it. When you're working on your dog, sit, holding a sit position. Are you going to say, ah, ah, no? Are you going to say, oops, try again? Are you going to take them by the collar and gently pull them back? What are you going to do when the dog makes a mistake? That's where I love, love, love the results we get from our students who go through Crate Games. Crate Games is an online program and it is well worth your investment of your time. Because here's what happens. My young puppies, when I start playing Crate Games with them or rescue dogs, when I bring in a rescue dog, they get to see 30 to 50 different types of distractions. I'm going to give you a list. I'll put them in the show notes here. 30 to 50 different kinds of distractions. And if they make a mistake, all that I do is I gently close the crate door. I don't like slam it in their face because I don't introduce high level distractions unless they've got clarity and confidence at the lower level distractions. All of our training, if you don't know, everything that I do is in the form of a game. What does that do? We get buy-in. We get a dog that wants to keep going. Think about a lot of times in dog training, people either don't ever want the dog to fail. They prevent failure. Or when the dog does fail, they lose the dog. Oh, they're so deflated. Oh, I didn't get it right. But in the context of a game, here's what happens. We strategically build confidence and confidence until we introduce a distraction that possibly may be too much for the dog and they may fail.

Most of the time when I get failure, it's intentional. I go, okay, we've had a lot of reinforcement. Why, Susan, why would you intentionally make a dog fail? Because I know the crate door is going to tell them that they are wrong. And if you've ever played a video game, video games are intentionally set up so level one is super easy. Yeah, kids might get through level one, they might get up to level two, and then, oh, you made a mistake, game over. Are they going to go, this is a stupid game and I don't want to play it anymore? No. They've had enough connection, clarity, and confidence that that failure makes them lean in a bit. They narrow their eyes. They go, come on, I got this. Now I can do it. I know I can do this one. I got it. I got it. Think of a little leaguer, right? They strike out. Does that mean, yeah, they might be frustrated, but they want to try again. And that's what I see in my students that go through crate games, that go through recallers, provided they are not trying to make the dog fail and fail and fail and fail. We create clarity and confidence. We get the dog up on their toes going, oh my gosh, what do you got for me? No, bring it on. Cause I can do it. Like you got me once, you're not getting me again. That's, come on, come on. That's when you can keep growing challenge. Now what I see sometimes with crate games is people might bounce a tennis ball and the dog goes, oh, and they close the door. Yeah, you were wrong. And then they open the door again and they bounce a tennis ball and the dog might go, okay, yeah, yeah, I know I shouldn't move. And then they don't then go, yeah, good choice and give reinforcement for that choice. They then go, oh, you didn't move for one. I'm going to go two. You didn't move for two. I'm going to go five. And the dog goes to move again. So then they got failure followed by failure. Crate door closes again. And now the dog isn't quite as keen. And if you keep doing this, you get a dog who will play your game, but with a lifeless expression. Oh yeah, I know I shouldn't be. It no longer is an engagement level. We need the engagement level. That's the success of our program is we get that dog buying in. Every time I challenge my dogs, it's like they're saying, yeah, oh yeah, I've seen that one. What else you got for me? Come on. You can do better than that. This is crazy. That's, you know, that's my, my voice that I hear in my head based on the look on my dog's faces, the ears on the top of the head, the way they whip around and come back again. All right. So, I've introduced so many distractions in

the crate that when I get them outside and they make a wrong choice, all that I have to do is control the distraction. I don't have to try to control the dog. Crate games has taught them, oh yeah, I was wrong. I'll go back in position. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The very most I would have to do is just say, what were you doing? And they would, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Control the distraction and that's something we can do. So, we go from all of the distractions in crate games. We get them outside of the crate. You might do it on a dog bed. You might do it on a hot zone. You might do it, you know, in a place where the dog feels comfortable introducing these different levels of distractions. Outside of the crate, I would suggest you have the dog on a leash. And again, keep them engaged. Short sessions, leave them wanting more. If your dog starts showing signs of stress, go back to our episode podcast number four where I'm talking about TEMP, T-E-M-P. The dog's going to show you if they're looking away, they're lip licking, they're going, yeah, I'm not really, you know, it's not like they show one sign of stress. Oh my gosh, we've got to stop. But your dog will tell you if they're really into this game, right? If they're not looking at you like you're their favorite video game, then you've gone too far. Okay. So, we've got our dog in a sit or a down or a stand. And I want you to work through all of those levels of distraction that are easy for the dog. Move to different rooms in your house, move outside, move to the backyard. Record keep. Guys, you've got to have 80% success on this. Now you might have a session where the dog fails a lot. Go back to the drawing board and go, well, did I change too many things at once? Some dogs will just get 100% deflated if you make them fail too much. Other dogs will start spinning out of control. They'll start maybe barking at you. They may, you know, get frenzied. We want our dogs to be buying in, but we don't want them spinning up. Okay. Short session, three to five distractions, release them. I do that in crate games. I might do, especially early on, I'll do like one or two distractions, release them. I play another engagement game at the end of the release. And then we go back and we try it again. I want you to practice this. Different positions, different rooms around the house. And then next week, I'm going to come back with part three where I teach you how to transition from the stationary time of behavior to the important one. I mean, they're both important, but we need our dogs before they can listen at a distance.

We need to get them involved in another competing behavior and get them to listen then. Because that's what's going to happen in real life. And we can't do it from a distance unless we get it close up. There's so many behaviors that people go, they immediately think that they're going to try it at a distance. Like a recall, we get a puppy, they get 20 feet away from us and we start, come on, come on, come on, come on. We start begging them to come. You need to practice that stuff close up before you can expect it at a distance. And there's so many layers to put in before you should have the expectation that that puppy or dog is going to listen at a distance. Do not try it at a distance. Don't take your dog to the bunny farm if we're just working this stuff at home right now. All right. People get a new dog or a puppy and they get them playing and they throw a toy for them to retrieve. Why on earth are you working distance when you haven't worked close in? So many times people don't think. What's the value for the dog doing this close up? There hasn't been one established. So, why the heck are you expecting it far away? Be on team distraction. Always be on team distraction, which works super close. And that gives you team distance as a bonus. You don't have to work it. It just is there. And not only that, team distraction gets behaviors that are faster, more engaged, and the dog is far more focused. If you just look at people in the sport of a dog agility, I can tell the ones who've been focused on working distance work because their dogs often are looking back at their shoulder when they're trying to get them to go out and do something. The dog slows down and looks like, really, do I have to? Team distraction will give you team distance. Okay. So, I want you to practice those three behaviors, simple distractions, growing to more complex, but only do it in the three behaviors that we talked about in any, or three behaviors that you picked. Different rooms in your house, inside, outside, do it with you sitting down, lying down. See if you can do it lying on the ground, ask your dog or hold that position while somebody else walks in the room eating potato chips. Like add different layers of distraction, but we're doing it stationary, a la traditional dog training. And then next week, I'm going to give you some time to work on this. I'm going to come back and we are then because you've worked team distraction, we're going to go up to level two distractions. And that is we want a dog to make a choice when they're in the midst of a

different behavior. Control behavior. Yeah. Okay. I can tolerate you bouncing balls in front of me. In the midst of engaging in a different behavior that probably has other reinforcement value. And you want me to now stop engaging in that behavior and do something else. That's a different game altogether. I'm going to teach you how to play that game next. If you spend any time on YouTube, you may have seen the video of Fenton in Richmond Park. Fenton! That is where a, looks like a Labrador Retriever is not listening to his owner call him nine times. And in between he's calling for help from our Lord and Savior. And Fenton still doesn't listen, ending up chasing all of this wildlife in the park. That is an extreme example of a dog who is not listening at a distance. And today I'm going to help you make sure that never happens to you and your dog. Hi, I'm Susan Garrett. Welcome to Shaped by Dog. While getting a dog that recalls off of livestock is a level, you know, 100 challenge at working at a distance, it all begins with your dog just listening at a distance. Yes, there's a lot of games. It's where our Recallers program comes in that will help a dog like Fenton always listen when there's livestock in the area. But it starts with the dog just listening. So, if you've been following along with this series, you'll remember that I shared that mastery is just mastering the fundamentals. That we need the dog really understanding behaviors super close before we ever try them further away. And so, I suggested we pick three behaviors. I thought, sit down and stand. I provided videos to teach two of those. I will give you an upcoming video on teaching the third as well. And I asked you to just practice those close up. And here's what I observed because a lot of you posted videos on social media. Some of you nailed it. Amazing, amazing work. But some of you were helping and I bet it was unconscious help. So, you would ask your dog to sit and you would repeat the cue more than once or down and they wouldn't down or maybe the elbows weren't quite down. And then you'd put your hands on your hip and you'd finger snap and you'd point down. You'd change the tone. All of that is not taking your dog's feedback. Your dog is saying, there isn't enough value for me to lie down. Now I'm not saying get a bigger meatball. I'm saying teach better understanding. So, the dog doesn't evaluate, is this what's in it for me? The dog just, boom, responds. That's what we want. That when the dog hears the cue, boom, they just go into the position you ask. All right. So, practicing up nice and close

and evaluating your mechanics. I saw some of you who did things like ask your dog to sit and then you walked away saying stay or wait, and sometimes repeating it over and over again. That is helping. And it's not really helping. It's probably just superstitious behavior on your part. Because my hallucination is your dog would be just as good or just as bad without that. If you did 100 of those sits that your dog would stay just as often or break just as often with or without you saying sit or stay. So, we want to get rid of that. And the worst thing that I saw, people ask the dog to sit, they'd walk away. The dog would, they might get like 10 feet away and the dog would stand. And they would turn back and repeat the cue, sit. And hey, great, you got sit at a distance. But if you listen to podcast episode number 151, where I was sharing about location-specific reinforcement markers, you actually reinforce the dog for getting out of position by giving him a cue to go back into another position, hence creating a behavior chain. So, we want to not get too far ahead. We just want to work really, really good understanding close up, which means jumping jacks and you know, sitting down or lying on the floor and asking your dog to do these behavior cues, sit down and stand with your back turn or getting your dog in a stand and pretending to lure them to the down and say, sit or all kinds of things that tests if the dog is listening. Are they listening? Are they just guessing? Are they in their back brain or are they in their thinking brain? Because that's where we want our dogs to be, to be thoughtful, even when they're in a high state of arousal, because maybe they get excited about work or maybe you've got some really, really cool cookies. So, don't jump ahead with this. Really, it's such a valuable investment of your time. Sit on the floor and just practice these cues. Maybe just pick one for a week and then pick another one for a week. Really get your dog understanding and wanting to jump into those positions. Okay. A few other things that need to be in place. It's your choice. I gave you the link in the show notes, but I'm going to do it again in this episode. We want your dog to understand some location-specific reinforcement markers. We want them to understand search, which means you can leave position to find food. We want them to understand how they can get food out of a bowl. You can say bucket. I like bucket. Or you can say, get it for out of a bowl and search for on the floor. You can also use a toy. So, a dog that understands

a specific, if they love toys, let's use toys. Let's bring toys in because we want things that the dog wants. Okay. So, those are the fundamentals. Remember, we want to be on team distraction. Team distraction is all about building understanding through all those layers of distractions that you can come up with to create clarity and confidence in your dog. Five C's is what gets the job done. All right. Now, I spoke in the second episode of this series that a lot of people spend time teaching dog to hold position from a distance while distractions are going on. But that's not real life because real life is things like Fenton and Richmond Park with a herd of elk or whatever kind of wildlife they were. That we need a dog to listen when they are otherwise preoccupied. They're not holding position, waiting for a distraction to happen upon them. And that's where we're heading today. But first what we need is we need a dog to be able to change positions at a distance. And so, we're going to work that up slowly. And it starts by getting your dog used to you being far away and you asking for a position change. Now that far away might be one step away. If your dog is like most dogs, you leave them in a sit, a down a stand, and you ask for a position change with you one stride away, very likely that dog's going to creep towards you. Why? Because you represent the value. The value is over here. They are over there. They want to help you give them their reinforcement. They want to get close to the value. So, here's where them understanding that the reinforcement will come to them. Super important. So, what we're going to do is something easy. You can put your dog in an X-pen. You can put them behind a gate. You can even tether them with a leash ideally to a harness so that you can get a distance away and they can't creep forward. Practice doing your three behaviors. Sit, go in and reinforce, go back out a stride or two. Down, go in and reinforce, go back out a stride or two. Eventually you can add two position changes. But we want the dog to be keen to do it and the dog to understand that the reinforcement comes to them. If your dog really understands search, then what you're going to do is the dog goes into the position. You say, search and toss them the cookie. Now, ideally you got to be a good throw because if the dog's tethered, we don't want them lunging and getting caught up. And if the cookie bounces outside of the X-pen, obviously you're going to have to go in and get that cookie. This is level one, but here's the kick in the pants with this one.

Most of the time with this exercise, what the dog is learning is not what you're teaching. And that's happens sometimes in dog training. And that's when you get the V8 palm to the head. Instead of, I could have had a V8. That's not what I thought I was teaching you. Because here's what happens. You think, look at me, I could get across the room now and he's in that X-pen and he's doing all these position changes and aren't I amazing? And then you take him out of that barrier and you try it from the distance and he does the same old creep towards the reinforcement. What's going on? What you were teaching wasn't what the dog was learning. Because potentially what the dog was learning is get as close as you can to the barrier and do the position changes when you're close to the barrier. So, there's a couple of things we can do here. We can gradually decrease the barrier. If you have a lower barrier, that's grand. I don't happen to have that, but maybe go out, get the little fencing from Home Depot that you can put around that the dog could easily step over, but it represents the barrier. Get all the way down to maybe just take your broom handle on the ground. That could be the barrier. If you can do that, that's great. You can get at a distance. But if you can't, here's a few other suggestions that work really well. Teach your dog a paw target. Now, it just so happens I have a great video on YouTube that teaches the dogs. It's called Perchwork, Pivots, and Spins. It's all about teaching the dog how to put their paws on a target and then you can grow their behaviors. You don't even have to get to that point. It's just getting the dog to put their paws on a target. You can use anything for a target, even a book, and you're going to get your dog with their paws on the target and you're going to start beside the dog, ask for position change, gradually get further away. If the dog's paws come off the target, which they may end down and that's okay. But if they are creeping forward, then you've got to go back in. We want them to understand you have to be in contact with this target for reinforcement to happen. Throw the reinforcement back. We want the dog to get used to. Reinforcement will come to you. You don't have to come close to me because the reinforcement isn't coming from me anymore. Okay. Another thing that you can do, you can do this with a paw target or without. You might need to start with, take your bowl and you can put a cookie in the bowl, put it down. I would put it say in front of you and

you can start near your dog. Ask for a position change. And when the dog does it, you're going to give them their cue, get it or bucket, which tells them they can leave position and get that bowl. Eventually we want to get that bowl closer to the dog and you're going to get further away. So, they can do their position changes. Now they've got to have great, it's your choice for this to work. And if you've got great, it's your choice. It's never a challenge. They know they don't steal until they hear the cue, bucket. All right. Now we want to transition from that to an empty bowl. And it's a promise of reinforcement to come. Get those position changes from a distance in your house. And when the dog does, you're going to say, search, toss it in the direction of the bucket, but you know, or the bowl, it's going to bounce all over and that's okay. Search is the permission for the dog to go and get it. Now you can do the same thing with a toy. If you have a dog that loves toys, do exactly the same thing. The only challenge with that is you're going to do one position change, tell them, get it, or the name of your toy or bring me or whatever it is. And eventually go to two position changes, go back to one and then three. It's a little easier with food, but you can do it exactly the same way. Building ping-ponging between one, two, three, or five position changes before you give them the release of bucket or get it or search. Okay. All of this is happening inside the house. Now, if you're using your Q search guys, I want you to be really, really intentional. Get the reinforcement behind the dog. I'm going to say that one more time. Where do we want it? Behind the dog. Why do we want it there? Because we're building value for reinforcement not happening in the direction of us. We want the dog to listen at a distance, not creep towards us. So, don't give them any reason to come anywhere near you. All the reinforcement is going to happen behind them. How are you going to throw a cookie from a long distance? Well, they either use heavy cookies or maybe put the cookie in a food toy so that you can throw it back there and tell them they could rip it open and get the food toy or get the cookie out of the food toy. All right. All of this has happened in the house. And now we need to transition to outside because the big distractions don't happen in the house. I like to do a gradual transition. So, if you have like a porch, a front porch, a back porch, that's a great place to start building that transition. Then you go to the grass and then you move around to maybe the neighbor's

grass, maybe to a park. You want to build distance and get these position changes so that our dog always knows when I ask you to do something, you just do it. Now we want to work to remember the bunnies aren't going to wait with the dog in position. We need to get our dogs moving. And so, now you're going to be walking with your dog and ask for a position change and keep moving. Again, if the dog keeps moving, build in a target. Maybe ask them to stop near an empty bowl. Maybe ask them to start near a perch for their feet. And eventually you're going to get that quick response when you ask on a walk. Now, build that up even further. Ask a friend to maybe drag a favorite toy. Slowly release the dog and then ask for a position change. If they go for the toy, the friend just gathers up the toy. Too much, too soon. Maybe go back to the dog stationary. The toy's just in front. Ask for a few position change and then tell them they can get it. You could do this with a flirt pole. If you're by yourself, you could do this eventually working up to like throwing a favorite toy, a frizzer, or tell them they can go for a swim and on the way there ask for a position change. All of this is challenging the dog. But remember the five C's. You're not going to jump to university because you're going to get too much failures. And that's not what we want. We want the dog to stay confident. We want the dog to stay happy. We don't want the dog to become worried. And we absolutely don't want to get you in a frame of mind where you feel the need to raise your voice. It can happen. It will happen if you work through the strategic layers of learning that I've laid out for you in this program. I'd love to get your feedback. If you're watching this on YouTube, please leave me a comment. Let me know how it went for you and your dog. I'll see you next time with you doing amazing distance work with your dog right here. Shaped by Dog. Tater hit the target. Now it's your turn. If you're not a subscriber to this page, go ahead and hit the subscribe button now and be sure to turn on the notification bell so you won't miss another video. And if you are already a subscriber, that's for you. Go ahead and get yourself a cookie. Bye.