| MyRottie writes:
"She is fine and will willingly go into a down for a treat but if I do not have one in my hand she will not do it at all. I mostly give her treats for this but am trying to give her them less often..."
I hate to be the dissenting vote on this. It is true that you have a long-term process to fully train the behavior, but I do not agree with the crowd who seem to say, "Yes, feed her treat after treat, and don't worry yet about withdrawing the treats."
I think your instinct to begin eliminating some of the rewards is a good one. If you give any dog a food treat 100% of the time, for weeks, months, years... the dog will learn to pay attention and focus on the treat, and not on you. Your commands will not invoke loyal obedience, but an increasing demand for the food treat. Eventually, if you don't have a treat and the dog knows it, it won't even bother to obey.
The usual first step is what you tried to do: You tried giving the command, and even faking the hand movement (visual cue) without the food. You found it doesn't work. This could be because the pup does not give a darn about your command or the visual hand motions, but only about the food. It has already been "spoiled."
Since you had trouble getting the pup to perform the behavior without the treat in your hand, I would not give up and just keep treating. Clearly the dog is then dominating the training session, dictating the rules, and winning the game. You must win, ALWAYS, in one way or another.
Here are a few suggestions:
1) Try repeating the Down repeatedly, as quickly as you can. Sit, Down, Treat, get the dog back up, Sit, Down, Treat, get the dog back up, etc. Work on going as fast as you can. Then after maybe ten treats, go through the same steps, same tone of voice, same hand motions, but with no treat. Make this Down the LAST one. The idea to get the dog into such a quick and repeated mode of behavior that when you do the last one without the treat, the dog will be Down before it realizes you have no treat, or even it it does know there is no treat, it will drop down out of habit.
Play with how many repeated Downs you need to accomplish this. 5? 10? 15? Work with it. If you can get the dog to go Down on the last of several fast repeated Downs, then work with that for a while, but eventually, switch the no-treat Down to a different position besides the last Down. Maybe 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 (no treat), 8, 9, 10.
If you can get ONE correct response going, and then start shifting its position randomly, it is like making a new deal with the dog. "You'll get a treat every time except one." From there, you start working on getting 2 downs with no treat out of ten. Then 3, randomly placed. Atc.
I come from a traing approach that deemphasizes food treats or any consistant reward. Many people reward the dog 100% of the time for a behavior that the dog has down pat. One reason the dog is resistent to performing without the promised reward is that it is used to ALWAYS getting it. It doesn't NEED the treat to perform the behavior. It is perfectly capable, just not willing!
You can do a couple other exercises that will help deemphasize food treats.
A. Simply try skipping the reward once or twice in a different behavior that your dog is very compliant and confident about. Maybe with Sit, which is probably the easiest command to teach any dog since they are going to do it any minute anyway. If you can get the variable reward schedule going on a Sit or a Come or whatever, then train it hard and often, and then try it with a different easy activity. Come back to the Down later after the dog has gotten the idea of variably scheduled rewards.
B. Put the dog in a Sit Stay, and sit on a chair or kneel right in front of it. Hold a treat, visibly and obviously, in one hand, but hold that hand out to your side. Stretch your arm straight out sideways as far as it will go. The idea is to get the dog to look at you, right in the eyes, and if it does, say "Good," and give it the treat. But as long as it looks at the treat, or maybe even gets up and goes after the far away hand, it gets nothing. And nothing means NOTHING. Not a word. No reprimand. Don't say, "No!" Don't move--unless you need to to keep the treat out of reach. The dog may go for the treat, look at the treat, or do flips in the air while passing gas, but you DO NOTHING because you don't care about what the dog is doing unless it looks at you.
Now you can proceed in two ways. A. To start, especially, you can give the dog a little help or a cue to look at you. Just say its name. Or say its name and point at your eyes with your other hand. The second the dog looks at you, give it the treat as fast as you can and say, "Good."
The other method, for patient trainers, is to just sit and wait. Eventually, the dog will probably look at you in confusion to say in effect, "What's going on?" Immediately give it the treat and say, "Good." The more you work on it, the easier it gets. The dog will sooner or later start off immediately by looking at you. Treat. "Good." You are teaching the pup to pay attention to YOU and not the TREAT. YOU are the key to the treat. Eventually, when you give a command to a well-trained dog, its attention should be on you and the command, not a treat.
C. A third method to get the dog to start going Down when you do not have a treat takes a little more time and patience, but it will work if you stick to it.
Start the training session with Sit, then Down with a treat. Second time, Sit, Down without a treat. (Use the same hand motions, but empty hand.) If the dog does not do something that resembles a Down the second time, pick up all your treats immediately, pack up, and leave. Session over. Ignore the pup for a few minutes. Then make believe nothing ever happened.
Maybe an hour or two later, repeat. Sit, Down, Treat. Sit, Down, No Treat. Dog doesn't do the Down without the treat? Pack up. Session over. Ignore dog for a few minutes. Then forget all about it. Go outside for a walk. Cuddle up and watch some TV with the pup. Life goes on. Later, or the next day, repeat again. Sit. Down. Treat. Sit. Down without the treat. No compliance again. Session over. Goodbye pup. Leave. Ignore.
When you get that second down, and you will eventually, without a treat, make a big fuss and pet the dog and tell it how good it is. (You are actually subsituting one reward for another at this point. Eventually, you will drop the praise, or just say a quiet, "Good.")
From there, you can add Down #3, and treat. Now you'll have 1) Down-treat. 2) Down-no treat. 3) Down-treat. You can add to it from there.
Now you can still have other training sessions in between in which you work on other behaviors as you usually would, but do not work on Down during these sessions. Message to dog: "We have fun training and get treats. When we do Down, the second time you must do it without the treat or I pack up and we're done."
In many dogs, you will cause a stubborn counter-reaction, and the dog will make a point of not going down on that second command. It may perform worse! It may stop going Down on the first command with the treat! It's called a temper tantrum! Teen-age rebellion. You don't care! No down on the second try, session over. Bye-bye doggy.
Just some suggestions to deemphasize the treat and get the dog moving toward a variable schedule of rewards--sometimes a reward, sometimes not--which I think is extremely important to establish as soon as possible!
Barry |