I have been thinking about how impatient a species we are and how little tolerance we have for the learning process which is sometimes slow and tedious. In my business, I think that this is especially true. Owners seem to have a really difficult time allowing their dog the opportunity to problem solve. It’s hard, I think, to watch dogs struggle with trying to figure out what we crazy human beings want from them this time.

Let me give you an example. Windsor is a Pointer pup about 6 months old. On a recent visit to their home, his owner asked me if we could work on teaching him how to lie down. Unfortunately for us, it was about halfway through our one hour visit. I knew that sometimes it takes a bit of time to get from a food lure (using food as a prompt) to a hand cue, to a verbal cue (command) but I went ahead anyway because he had learned the other skills that I had taught him so quickly.

With a piece of yummy treat in my hand, I asked him to sit. When he did, I took the treat and put it right in front of his nose so he could smell it. Then I slowly dragged the treat straight down his chest until it touched the floor between his legs, letting him nibble it as I did. The idea is that the dog’s nose will follow the treat and then his body will collapse into a down position because of the awkward placement of the treat. To do this though, the dog’s butt needs to remain glued to the ground otherwise the dog will end up standing.

Windsor wasn’t having any of this. He kept standing up to nibble the treat and because I felt obliged to give the owner what she wanted (she never pressured me, by the way, it was me pressuring me), I kept at it hoping that he would somehow “get it”. What I should have said at the outset was that perhaps we should leave this until the next visit so we would have plenty of time to work on it. I felt frustrated, he felt frustrated. At that moment, I took a deep breath and decided that I would slow down and give the pup ample opportunity to figure out what I wanted and that, if necessary, we would go over our allotted time, to give him the chance to do that.

Because one size doesn’t always fit all in the world of dog training, I have a couple of different ways that I teach “down”. I decided to try a different approach which involves luring the dog under my bent leg. The dog has to get on his belly to crawl under to get the food so there’s your “down”. You have to fade out the leg eventually, which is why I prefer the 1st approach but he really didn’t want to have much to do with that approach either so it didn’t matter. I know it was painful for the owner to watch; her smart little pup having such a hard time of it. At one point she said that she was tempted to push him into a down. I have to admit that I was too but I resisted the urge to get the behavior much more quickly by using coercion. I know that teaching “down” this way is a technique that many owners and trainers have used and still continue to use but to me, it’s a bit invasive. I mean, how would you like it if some giant came along and pushed you down onto your belly? Not much, I suspect.

At this moment, Windsor decided that he had had enough and went over to the rug to lie down. Sensing my opportunity to teach him this behavior by “capturing it”, I told him he was a good dog and gave him his treat. Excited but puzzled he stood there looking at me wagging his tail. I got up off of the floor and sat in a chair just out of his reach and ignored him. Bored, he walked over to the rug and lay down again. Immediately I said “good dog” and tossed him a treat so that he would get up to get it (in order to get another repetition). He grabbed the treat and came back over to me wagging his tail expectantly. Again I ignored him, again he lay down. We did this over and over until the light bulb went off and he started to deliberately lie down as opposed to lying down out of sheer boredom. He was absolutely thrilled with himself and so was the owner and so was I. A good example, I think of the importance of patience and how being patient in the end can have such a huge payoff.