TopDog Headquarters, LLC

ESTABLISH COMMUNICATION VEHICLE

·        Say an emphatic, YES, give a goodie

·        Say an emphatic, YES, give a goodie

·        Say an emphatic, YES, give a goodie

·        And so forth…

Feed his entire dinner this way.  Now the marker is loaded when you can go in the other room, say the cue and your little buddy comes to you lickity split to get his goodie. And now we are ready to train.

In my book, every command you teach needs an “on” and “off” button. This to me is the only way to truly be fair to your dog.  You are clearly communicating to your dog if you can tell him when he is on command and when he is off command (and can just be a dog).

TEACH "ON COMMAND-OFF COMMAND"

Okay, so how do we do this you ask.  Very easy. Again we make it very clear to the dog and very fun!  Lets assume your dog knows sit. And like most people, you have confused your dog just a little because you tell your dog sit, he sits and then 3 seconds later he gets up and you say sit or just ignore he has got up.  Now another time you say sit, your dog sits for 10 seconds and he gets up, the next time you say sit he does not sit and the next time you say sit your dog sits for a second.  Well, your dog has no clue if sit means put my bottom down, put my bottom on the ground for 2 seconds, 10 seconds a millisecond, and so forth. 

You have completely confused your dog on what sit means. Now what do we do! Lets fix this by using our marker with no cue at this point. Lure your dog into a sit with a goodie, when he places his bottom on the ground, say your marker (YES) and give a goodie. Repeat this many times. Now do this again and delay your marker 1 second. Then 3 seconds. Then 1 second. Then 10 seconds.  You want your dog waiting on his bottom until he hears the marker. Now when you say the marker he is free to get up.  If your dog gets up before you mark it, then no goodie but lure him back in a sit. Once we have this behavior established we now add a verbal cue “sit”. Give verbal command sit, lure him into a sit, bottom hit floor mark it. Once the dog has associated the cue (sit) with the behavior we are ready to move to the establishment of an on-off command cue.

The way I do this is to give the dog a sit command, place a very desirable goodie 10 feet in front of him. He is not allowed to get that goodie until I tap him on the chest and say free. Then he can run forward and get the goodie.  If he gets up ahead of time, place him back in a sit.  Once he connects that he can’t get up until you tap his chest and say free, he will begin to understand that he is on command until you free him.  Moving forward with all training and all commands, use this tapping on the chest and the verbal cue free.  Your dog will begin to understand when he is on command and when he is not. And thus, we are being fair to our best buddy.