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Mary Mazzeri

Carpentersville, IL

847-426-5089

Serving the Chicago region in the Fox Valley area since 1970

Group Classes

Private instruction

Behavior Modification

Board & Train 

  IACP Certified Dog Trainer/Instructor CDT

The On & Off Switch by Mary Mazzeri

Diane Bauman talks about the ‘Attention switch’ in her book Beyond Basic Dog Training. I think most of us use “Ready” as an on switch. A dog’s name might also be used as an ‘on’ switch.

The on switch is a signal to a dog that you are focused on the dog, and you want reciprocal focus from your dog until further notice. In reward-based training, the dog eventually associates the on switch with increased possibility of reward. In compulsion training, the dog learns that corrections for attention loss are more likely to follow that word. Ideally, there should be a balance of those two contingencies. Even if you’re trying to avoid punishment, at some point in a performance dog’s career, there will be penalties for disobedience and non-cooperation that the dog learns to respect.

The off switch is less clear. Should it signal the end of an exercise, or tell the dog it is free to do what it pleases? One problem I see in obedience competition is lack of good interaction between exercises, and a lot of struggling  to get a dog back into working mode after it has been praised. Some people have inadvertently taught their dogs that praise is an off switch. This is not a good thing.

The pattern inadvertently starts in beginning classes for most people. It’s part of the dynamic in which an instructor gives directions to people, who then execute them on dogs, and then, at the end of the task, the people have to shift their attention back to the instructor. This tends to happen right after praise for the exercise in training. The dogs find themselves with a few moments of time in which they get no input from their owners, so they find other ways to amuse themselves. The owners, trying to be attentive students, ignore the lapses of focus as long as their dogs don’t do anything disruptive. But that ends up being a lot of time for dogs to practice not being focused following the end of individual exercises.

I’m working on a way to fix this class dynamic. Students need to teach their dogs that praise is approval for a given behavior. When learning a new behavior, the praise occurs during the behavior. Praise ought to be a signal to the dog that it is right, and should continue trying to be right. Praise should strengthen the dog’s desire to continue working, rather than signal the end of a session or a release from responsibility. Praise should mean that more possibilities of good things exist for the dog in the immediate future.

In some older books, sitting and learning to accept praise was an exercise taught early on. I think it’s still an important exercise in early training because it conveys to the dog that praise is not a release or permission to become goofy or inattentive. It teaches young dogs to accept greetings and affection without pouncing on the person greeting. (This is taught with the calming sit in the puppy class and is one of our objectives of the ‘Sit for Exam’ in our Beginners Class.) It strengthens a dog’s desire to hold a position, so it forms a strong foundation for stays. And it makes people more  willing to praise their dogs because they won’t associate praising with an immediate loss of control, or  wrestling match with an overly-exuberant dog. For the purposes of advanced training where more complex behaviors are chained together, this concept conveys the message that praise means. “That’s it! Keep on doing it.”

Back in the obedience ring, this is a very important concept for control between exercises. In training and showing, I think it’s a good idea not to totally release a dog between exercises. Quietly praising and keeping a dog focused on what’s coming next is essential to success. The best dogs and handlers perform one very long chain of behaviors as a continuous exercise starting outside the ring, and ending at some point after they have left the ring. The dog accepts and enjoys praise at certain points during the performance, but at no time are they left to snuffle and wander at their own discretion. The handlers are able to remain calm and keep their voices quiet and gentle because they don’t have to fight to regain attention for the next exercise. The transitions between the official exercises are performed with as much control as the exercises themselves.

First of all, this kind of long chaining requires some specific training outside of practicing the individual exercises. First and foremost, the praise and petting that you’re allowed to take into the ring with you has to happen very frequently during training, and not just during a show performance.

Secondly, primary reinforcers need to be delivered much more randomly. In addition to being delivered at the end of a heel pattern, or the stand, or the recall and finish, they need to appear with reasonable frequency during heeling between the stand and the recall set-up (and other places, too). The dog should not know that the reward always occurs after hearing the words “exercise finished” (and that, if it doesn’t happen then, it probably won’t happen at all. The dog should believe that good stuff could happen at any time, for just about any reason, if it keeps its attention on you.

Thirdly, back chaining can really help a lot of dogs learn to endure the ring procedure with increasing excitement, rather than with decreases in focus as the routine wears on. But back chaining does require that the elements you’re trying to add to your chain should already be well-trained individually to the point of confidence from the dog in its own abilities. Back chaining efforts don’t work well if you have to interrupt the flow of the chain to fix small links along the way. You must also beware of getting so focused on back chaining that you abandon isolation and reinforcement of all of the precision steps that form the links of your chain. Back chaining is not what you want to do for every one of your training sessions.

For those new to training, back chaining in this context means doing the last element in the routine and then rewarding. Next, you do the second to last plus the last and then reward. Each repetition, you add the preceding element to the chain and then reward. For more detailed information on this and its uses in  training complex exercises, read “Excellerated Learning”  by Pam Reid; “Smart “Dogs, Brilliant Trainers’ by Janet Lewis and, for hard-core enthusiasts, :”Learning & Behavior” by Paul Chance. (Excerpts from L. Drouin F & F 9/99)

Keep learning, keep training and keep thinking.J