Train Your Dog Like a Pro , livre ebook

Train Your Dog Like a Pro
Train Your Dog Like a Pro
Jean Donaldson
Copyright 2010 by Jean Donaldson, DVD content Perfect Paws Company, LLC. All rights reserved.
Howell Book House
Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Author photo on page vi courtesy of Ana Claudia Verissimo
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ISBN 978-0-470-61616-1
Printed in the United States of America
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Book design by Erin Zeltner
Cover design by Wendy Mount
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To the many dog owners to whom it is simply obvious that it s not okay to hurt and frighten their dogs in order to train them. You are your dogs guardian angels.
About the Author
Jean Donaldson is the award-winning author of the following selected books:
The Culture Clash: A Revolutionary New Way to Understanding the Relationship between Humans and Domestic Dogs
Mine!: A Practical Guide to Resource Guarding in Dogs
Fight!: A Practical Guide to the Treatment of Dog-Dog Aggression
Dogs Are from Neptune
Oh Behave!: Dogs From Pavlov to Premack to Pinker

A professional trainer since 1986, Jean holds degrees in Comparative Psychology and Music, and competed in numerous dog sports before transitioning to pet dog training.
In 1999 she founded The Academy for Dog Trainers at The San Francisco SPCA, which she directed and instructed in until 2009, when she and Janis Bradley departed to work on a re-invention. The Academy has over five hundred graduates practicing dog training and behavior counseling in most states in the US and 25 countries world-wide.
Jean lives in the San Francisco Bay area with her dog, Buffy, adopted from the San Francisco SPCA in 2002. When she is not working, she is an ardent baseball fan and student of evolutionary biology.
Contents
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Introduction
What Makes a Trainer?
My Agenda
My Perseverance Sell-Job
The Not-So-Awful Truth about Motivation
Basic Rewards for Installation
Upping the Degree of Difficulty Systematically
Outline of the Program
Part One: Fundamental Behaviors
Chapter 1
Sit and Watch
Sit
Watch
Chapter 2
Down
Down
Down from a Stand
Sit from a Down
Chapter 3
Come
Chapter 4
Some Help if You re Struggling
First Aid
Naughtiness (On Your Part)
Getting a Pro on Board
Part Two: Impulse-Control Behaviors
Chapter 5
Sit-Stay and Down-Stay
Sit-Stay
Down-Stay
Chapter 6
Wait and Leave It
Wait
Leave It
Chapter 7
Walking on Leash
Walking on Leash Exercises
Walking on Leash Outdoors
Part Three: Maintaining and Improving
Chapter 8
Mixing It Up
Position Discrimination
Fun Discrimination Exercises
Chapter 9
Taking It on the Road
Transfer Training Responsibilities
Change Training Locations
Chapter 10
Social Applications
Sit to Greet
Food and Items on Tables
What s a Toy and What s Off Limits
Management During Training
Begging and Attention Seeking
Chapter 11
Consolidation and Maintenance
Everyday Opportunities for Behavior Maintenance
Part Four: Advanced Behaviors
Chapter 12
Heeling
Training Heeling
Chapter 13
Mat Training
Down on Mat
Mat Training with the Clicker
Mat Targeting
Chapter 14
Retrieve
Shaping the Dead Retrieve
Dead Retrieve with Position Feeding
Presentation into Your Hand
Chapter 15
Sit Pretty and Roll Over
Sit Pretty
Roll Over
Appendix
How Training Works: An Overview
Get the Behavior!
Fade Your Prompts
Take It on the Road ( Generalization ) and Name It
Consolidate, Maintain, and Protect
Glossary of Animal Training Terms
Index
About the Video
Acknowledgments
I d like to thank Janis Bradley, who is the best of all possible teachers, the best of all possible writers, and the best of all possible friends. I am a better trainer and writer because of her.
My humble thanks also go to Suzanne Snyder, whose insightful questions and keen eye so helped the manuscript, and to Pamela Mourouzis for immeasurable patience through a Byzantine contract negotiation.
Introduction
WHAT MAKES A TRAINER?
What is the difference between a skilled professional dog trainer and a dog lover, someone besotted with their dog but who can t seem to get him to obey? Trainers know what they re doing is probably the answer that leapt into your mind. It s a skill-set difference, a knowledge gap. And that is indeed a piece of it. But not all.
In 1993 I videotaped two sets of people-dog trainers and nondog trainers-putting dogs through their paces, to see what they did differently. Unsurprisingly, there were numerous critical technical differences and the dogs performed much, much better in the hands of the trainers. The trainers were especially good at setting the level of difficulty; escalating so that progress was constant but easy enough that the dog won enough to stay in the game. No doubt about that knowledge gap-the trainers knew how to train. But there was another difference, something so basic it struck me only when I was rewinding and fast-forwarding the tape in the course of collecting data. I was amazed to find that I could identify whether the person on the screen was a trainer or not with just a one-second sample, or even a freeze-frame, based strictly on whether or not the person was attempting to train the dog at all.
The Perseverance Gap
The nontrainers would typically try something a few times-say, getting the dog to lie down-and then, whether they were successful or not, they would stop training. When the next activity was called for, they d do the same thing-try two or three repetitions, often with significant pauses in between, and then quit. They d chat with anybody nearby, check their watches, adjust their clothing, sometimes pat the dog. But no more training. Most of their training time consisted of this between-training dead air.
The trainers, by contrast, were relentless. Their eyes never left the dog, and they did repetition after repetition. It was hard to get them to break off at the end of the allotted time. This pattern was evident on all dogs: unruly novice animals ( green dogs in trainer lingo), dogs who were not great learners, dogs who caught on quickly, and dogs who were ringers : experienced, highly trained dogs thrown into the mix. The trainers trained like bats out of hell, and the nontrainers were mostly on break time.
Trainers Train
For the last decade, I ve instructed at the Academy for Dog Trainers, primarily in a six-week, full-time accelerated program designed to take keen amateurs-people who have titled their dogs in competitive sports, have done extensive dog rescue, or have worked in other dog professions and done a little training on the side-and turn them into professional-level trainers. Between the tuition, the loss of six weeks wages, travel, accommodations, and countless other expenses, it typically costs a student $10,000 or more to attend the academy. As you might imagine, this is a highly self-motivated bunch of people.
Each student is given a succession of shelter dogs to train. And here s the interesting part. We instructors are constantly trying to get the students to call it a day and stop training so much! If not reined in daily by