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Life Skills Class week 1

Eye Contact

Eye contact:

Eye contact is the building block to so many other important behaviours such as recall, loose lead walking, learning to pay attention to you.

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  1. Grab a handful of food rewards and make a fist

  2. Put your hand out to the side

  3. Wait for your dog to look away from your treat hand and towards your face.

  4. Say the word "YES" then reward your dog with one of the treats in your hand.

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repeat steps 1-4 till all treats are finished. Start your training in a quite room of the house then slowly start moving your training sessions to other rooms of the house, then the garden then after a few weeks start taking your training out into the real world ( on road walks, in parks etc)

Recall

Hand Touch:

Teaching a hand touch is the first stage to teaching a reliable recall. It is also a very handy behaviour to have to interrupt your dog when they are doing something naughty or if you want to get them off the furniture.

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  1. Stand in front of your dog

  2. Place your hand flat out close to your dogs nose

  3. Say the word "YES" as soon as your dog touches her nose to your hand.

  4. Once your dog is touching your hand reliably you then add a cue. I like to say "come"

Sit Stay

Sit, Stay:

Once your dog can sit on cue every time. They are now ready to learn a sit, stay. The criteria for a sit, stay is that your dog needs to stay in a sitting position until they hear their release cue. Your release cue can be done, finished, go, release etc. I would avoid using the word "OKAY" as we tend to use that word regally in conversation and what you don't want is to cue your dog to stay, stay while you answer the front door and during your conversation you say "okay" then suddenly your dog runs out the front door! Also note that the release cue is not a recall. It is purely a signal to stay you can move from that sitting position.

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  1. Cue your dog to sit, then reward

  2. Say the word "stay" or "wait" 

  3. Take a step back wards.

  4. As long as your dog is still sitting, go back to your dog and reward them.

  5. Repeat step 2 and 3

  6. This time say your release cue "done"

  7. Then throw a treat on the floor slightly away from your dog so that they need to get up and eat the food reward.

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Trouble shoot:

If your dog keeps getting up every time you try to take a step backwards, make it easier for your dog and lean back rather than taking a step back or stay in position and just move your body side to side. Once you can practice this a few times with your dog stay in the sit position then stay to take a step backwards. Always go at your dogs pace. don't rush and make it too hard too quickly.

Loose lead

Loose lead walking -  stage one:

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  1. Place a treat onto your dogs nose and the lure your dog into your heel position. ( Make sure your dog is facing the same direction as you and is inline with your shoes.

  2. Feed your dog for staying in position. If your dog moves out of position just lure them back into position.

  3. Give your dog 5 food rewards then throw the 6th food reward out to the side so that your dog has to move out of potion to get the food.

  4. Lure your dog back into position and repeat steps 1-3.

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If you feed your dog a dry food mix then use their most of their meal to do this training, If you feed a raw diet and are happy to handle the raw meat then you can use your dogs breakfast/dinner or use tiny high value food rewards like chicken, ham, cheese etc

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