January is a month where almost all of us begin by setting resolutions, and then (hopefully) work hard to keep them! When we set our resolutions, we are usually looking to the future and making lifestyle changes so we can better enjoy ourselves. What kind of resolutions did you set this year? To exercise more, eat better, work on a monthly budget, or to train your dog?
Now, I can’t help you with most lifestyle goals, but I can definitely help you with dog training goals! One of the first things people ask me isn’t usually how to get their dog to start doing something, it’s usually what do they do when they want to STOP their dog from doing something.
As a Rewards Based trainer, I don’t punish dogs for doing the wrong thing, and my goal is to always prevent problem behaviors by setting them up for success, managing the environment and my dog so they can’t accidentally get in trouble, and training alternate behaviors to replace ‘bad’ behaviors.
However, even the best-laid plans sometimes fail! I don’t always know when the UPS guy is going to show up, when a cat might dash across our path, or if Knox is going to be distracted by any number of other things in the environment. That is when we need our Positive Interrupter.
The positive interrupter is a way we can stop or prevent problem behaviors as they occur, bring our dogs back to us, and give them more instruction on what they SHOULD do instead.
When training your dog, you should never say ‘no’. No is not a cue or a behavior. It doesn’t tell your dog anything other than “don’t to do that”. And… it will only tell your dog “don’t do that” if you have first trained it to mean that! Most of our dogs are probably ignoring our “No”. Am I right? How often does your dog *actually* stop when you tell them no? Yeah, that’s what I thought 🙂 So if you’re going to have to teach them… you might as well do it right the first time with the positive interrupter.
The other reason I don’t like to tell a dog no is that it simply is not enough information! If I tell my dog just to stop jumping on me, I leave a vacuum for him to fill with a million other behaviors. Next thing you know, he’s humping your legs, eating your shoelaces, or peeing on the door jam.
With a Positive Interrupter, we stop the problem behavior, call our dog to us, and get their attention, all with one simple cue!
Once your dog is running back to you from distractions or problem areas, don’t just reward them. Give them a good treat for coming to you, then *tell* them what to do. Redirect them to an appropriate behavior: resting on their bed, chewing a bully stick, playing with dog toy (not your shoe!), etc. Don’t forget you have to REPLACE the problem behavior with a correct behavior, or else your dog will probably go right back to what he was doing before!
To Train the Positive Interrupter:
1) Toss a treat and tell your dog to “get it!”
2) As soon as he eats it, cheerfully say “Pup, pup, pup!”
3) As soon as he turns an ear to you, turns his head, looks at you… any attention towards you CLICK!
4) As your dog is running back to you for the next goodie, cheer him on! “Good boy, good boy, good boy!” This helps build his excitement and makes him come RUNNING back.
5) Give him a tasty treat!