#fanny gott

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Always check to make sure your dog is engaged before starting your session, and before moving on to a new repetition. Is your dog excited by the reward? Does he focus on working as soon as the reward is finished? If not – you have to address that first. All other training has to stop while you figure out why the dog isn’t engaged. Is he scared? In pain or discomfort? Is something too distracting? Is the reward not reinforcing enough? Are you putting pressure on the dog without realizing it? Fix the problem or change the environment before doing any other training.

Fanny Gott, “Better Dog Training Sessions in 2018″. Reward Based Dog Training (25 January 2018).

Martin was really into training ready to work rituals with Bosco. Bosco clearly signals to me that he’s ready to work at the beginning of a session and I love that.

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How to fix slow reactions to cues – Fanny Gott

Squid was showing some distance control to the group when I found that her “up” cue really wasn’t working the way it should. She was slow to react, sometimes didn’t react at all and didn’t go all the way up in a nice sit. I quickly realised that this was because I have used the “up” cue a lot in her agility starts, trying to get her so sit up better before releasing her in a trial. And we haven’t done formal obedience in a long time. When I started competing in agility, I would wait for her to offer the nice sit up before releasing, but for the past years I have used the cue. Often many times before I’m happy with her sit.

There’s a video where Fanny shows how she “fixed” Squid’s slow sit from the down by allowing the dog to offer the sit position. Super interesting.

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I videotaped a session today (I actually video most of my sessions, it helps me with structure and evaluation) for you to see. I should probably have kept the session a bit shorter. She starts to disengage at about 1:20 into the session, and she takes off from me at 3 minutes. I’m not sure if it’s best to keep her sessions really short so that she never disengages, or if it’s actually a good thing for her to check out and then come back to work. I lean towards now stressing about the checking out, because she got better after a few repetitions where I had to wait a little. I definitely should have ended before she took off, because 3 minutes is more than enough for any dog. Notice that I am calling her back once she’s left, but only as she has turned around and is headed back to me. I reinforce that decision with a game of chase and play, and also build value for her name/recall in a situation where I know she’ll be successful.

Fanny Gott working with Spy, a dog that is easily distracted and quickly disengages. For Bosco, it’s waaayyy too much straight tugging but there are still tips for me in the video. (Bosco doesn’t find tugging rewarding; it’s work.)

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Teaching Heel – Fanny Gott

When teaching the dog to heel with me, I start by walking backwards and have the dog follow me. Doing this has many benefits, like:

It’s easier for a puppy to follow me when I walk backwards and I can get more rewards to the dog.

It’s easier for me to see what the dog is doing without having to turn and bend towards the dog.

Since it’s not the final setting for the behavior, I’m not worried about shaping one aspect at a time. I would not like to reward the dog for good attention but bad position if I was walking forward. By walking backwards, I can shape a good behavior and be pretty sure that I will get good behavior to reward once I start walking the right way.

I use the walking backwards-heeling for teaching stand, sit and down from heel.

It’s very good to have when training in a distracting environment, as the young or inexperienced dog has better chances of success.

Walking backwards (not backwards heeling) to teach heeling is a concept that I don’t understand. In Fanny’s post and Shade’s lecture on the topic, there is always a moment in the video where the dog seamlessly transitions from walking backwards to perfect heeling. Bosco did not conceptualize backwards walking to heeling at all. It was a hard nope for him so clearly, Martin is missing a vital piece of information. A friend is taking a course with Fanny so hopefully, my friend will enlighten me in the future.

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I’ve also been reminded of the importance of letting the dog direct the pace of training. If something is not working, it’s often a good idea to not push it, but rather work on other things for a while. There are so many things that just didn’t feel right – he didn’t like them, or he didn’t understand. So I waited for a while and when I came back to it a few weeks later he could just do it, and he wanted to do it.

Fanny Gott, “Let the Dog Tell You When He’s Ready”. Reward Based Dog Training (2 August 2016).

This training tip helped Martin when he was working on Bosco’s retrieve. It’s hard to follow this advice sometimes - particularly, when you’ve paid for a course at Gold or you want to move on to the next step.

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Have fun – base training on rewards and make sure that your dog is asking you to work and not the other way around. Be humble and realize that there is so much more to learn. Take care of your dog physically and mentally. Be patient and work with the dog you’ve got. Train in short sessions and always evaluate your training. Never blame the dog.

Fanny Gott in response to the question, “What advice could you give for obtaining a good working dog?”.

“Fanny Gott, The Interview.” Dog Training Journal (2018).

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Training should be fun – not you. A common advice given to owners with dogs that are not focused, is that the trainer needs to be more “fun”. I think this is the reason why many try to lure the dog back by being “fun”. You should not be “fun”. Rewards should be fun (and of course, you are a part of the reward), and training should be fun. Fun happens with good sessions and good rewards, not with an owner that tries to look like a clown all the time. I think a lot of dogs get nervous when the owner suddenly tries to be “fun”. They will try to calm their owner down by sniffing, looking away and moving slowly (and then the trainer tries to be even more fun…).

Fanny Gott, “How to Get Your Dog to Love Training”. Reward Based Dog Training (22 March 2016).

This is a terrific article that contains many practical tips.