The Dog Blog

In the dog training business EVERYTHING goes in cycles. Some months I’ll have tons of Viszlas to train and the next month it’ll be Yorkies, and the next it’ll be wolf hybrids, it just goes like that.

This month though it’s been the month of interesting dog names and interesting commands.

Let’s start with the commands.

I’ve got one client this month that wanted their dog to work with commands in French. It doesn’t matter to the dog really what language you use, they don’t innately speak English. The issue with this scenario is my French is TERRIBLE and my accent is even worse. We made a list of the commands and started teaching them (Assis=Sit, Ici=come, Coucher=down, Au Pied=heel…..) but after we got going it became clear that while the dog’s owner had impeccable diction in French mine was, how shall we say it, Off a bit. The little dog started having trouble understand what we were saying for a while until it clicked that she had to work with a trainer that didn’t have a lovely Parisian accent.

My other cool command story this month is from some clients that are clearly Star Trek enthusiasts. I loved this one. The pup’s name is Ryker, which you can probably figure out, but the best are the commands they use for Come and Go Potty. For them the come command is ENGAGE. I LOVE it and it works really well. It’s a clear command, and the pup responds well to it. The second is their command for Go Potty. They’ve chosen the best command swap I’ve ever heard, they use Make It So.

I think I’m going to have to pay them royalties on using that one from now on I love it so much. It can be my legacy to dog training if I leave behind legions of clients who train their dogs to potty on the command “Make it So.” Clients will be in the park and hear each other say “Make it So” to their dogs, then they can give each other a secret wink and say “Steve’s your trainer too huh?”

As for names, we’ll keep these short. I’ll give the profession of the owner and then the name.

Physicist….dog name…Collider

Rock star singer…dog name…Moth

Both of those fit the dogs perfectly and the owners even better.

I bring the name up because we’re searching for a name for our new puppy that’s coming soon. Unless the dog’s personality is totally different from what I expect this is what it’ll look like.

Dog trainer…dog name…Folly.

What do you think?

Steve Haynes
Austin Dog Trainer
Fidelio Dog Works

Well, It’s that time I guess. I got a call yesterday from a breeder I’ve been talking with for the past 8 years on and off. I’ve wanted one of her dogs forever, but every litter has been spoken for before I could get my name on the list and I never got organized enough to actually PUT my name on her list before she had a litter.

In any case, she called me yesterday out of the blue and told me that she had a pup that wasn’t going to be able to go to it’s original home due to personal issues. I thought long and hard about it overnight, and now is as good a time as any to bring in a new puppy.

Contrary to what most clients think, I just don’t get overly excited about having a new puppy. I, unfortunately, know exactly what I’m in for and am already bracing for it. Getting up at night, walks in the foul weather, bodily fluids and solids inappropriately dropped/left places when the pup’s not attended, constant attention, and TONS AND TONS of TRAINING REPETITIONS.

With all that said though, I’m looking forward to working with the little guy. I’m sure we’ll be wearing out several clickers with him over the next few weeks.

I’m going to try to get video of the training and pictures and get them posted so that you can watch things develop. Hope it proves interesting to everyone.

I had a client recently that got a new puppy. Not an unusual occurrence in what I do but the situation around this dog was VERY unusual. The puppy is going to live in New York City starting in June. Normally this wouldn’t be unusual either except that the goals were for this puppy to be “trained” by the time it left Austin.

This client is unusual in that they can take all the time and muster all the resources to accomplish training to a high level really quickly. So the question was first, “Where do we start?”

Puppies don’t innately know how to pay attention to us. Sometimes they look like they do but in most cases we have to train them to do this the way we want. That’s where we start with puppies, teaching them to pay attention when we say their name.

clicker
With young pups, I love using a clicker. It takes time and attention but it’s one of the fastest ways to teach young pups provided you lay the appropriate groundwork.

load the clicker
With clickers you have to teach the pup that the noise means something. Generally we teach the pup that when they hear the clicker something good is going to happen. We start this by doing what we call “loading the clicker”. As soon as we get the puppy home we start feeding it meals by sitting on the floor and clicking the clicker and then giving the pup a piece of food. I do this over and over and over until we’ve gone through about 1,000 (yep, you read that right one thousand) repetitions. Once you go through that with a pup they are pretty conditioned to the clicker and you can start your real work.

train the name with the clicker
At this point I’ll start saying the pups name and if/when it turns it’s head in my direction I’ll “click” and reward the pup. Pretty soon the pup will start responding to their name and at least turning in your direction. The next step is to get the pup to actually “look” right at me when I say it’s name. To do this you begin to shape the initial behavior and hold off on the “click” and reward until the pup looks right at your face. Getting a pup to look right at you is a basic building block of training but it’s one that most people just do not spend enough time with.

train a turn around to the name with a clicker
Once you teach the pup to “look” at you when you say it’s name this next step is pretty simple. When you call a dog you generally want to give it another command as well and it helps if you can get the dog to turn all the way around and look at you when you say its name. At this point in the training I’ll start moving around the house and yard with the pup and whenever it starts to take off away from me I’ll call it and “click” when it turns toward me and reward that behavior.

So if you’re getting a puppy, you could do much worse than starting out by teaching the pup to look at you. It’s a skill that is out of favor a bit in dog training but it’s a requirement in my opinion and needs to be practiced quite a bit early on so the pup learns that you’re not just a chew toy for their entertainment.

So, back to the beginning of this post, what happened with that puppy? The puppy has now been in the home for one month and we have all of the basic commands done, sit, down, come, heel, go to your bed, stay, and a couple of others, but the real kicker is that the puppy is riding a skateboard already. All of this can be done this quickly if you just teach the pup to pay attention to you first.

Steve Haynes
Austin Dog Trainer

One of the basic techniques in training a dog to come is the use of a Long Line. Long Lines aren’t sexy, cool, cutting edge, or anything else. In fact long lines are probably one of the oldest training tools for working with dogs and, believe it or not, they are still one of the best.

When I get clients that want their dogs to have a good reliable Recall or “Come” command we spend a LOT of time with a long line. Strange, but most people find it incredibly difficult to work with a piece of rope 20 feet long. The dogs usually do fine, but the clients get tangled, wrapped up, and tripped up with long lines. The things are one of my favorite tools though. You simple can’t accomplish some things in dog training properly without the use of a piece of rope.

So, with all that said and done, here is a picture of one of my clients named Zimba working hard with his people in the park this morning on the long line. Good work Zimba and family. Thank you for doing your homework for me.

What you do with dogs is simply amazing – great service and great training.

Thanks so much for all that you do. I couldn’t agree with the below more.

BMH

This is the type of testimonial I love to see.

Steve,

Just had to tell you that we took Callie trick or treating last night and she did GREAT. That is something we never have been able to do with our older dog. The kids just loved it that she could go with us. She was perfect as she could be and got many compliments from other families.

Ben and I both send our thanks to you for all your help in training Callie so that she truly could be part of the family. Can’t thank you enough.

I did a post a couple of weeks ago about getting the dog to pay attention to you.

I’ve been lamenting the lack of comment on that post from my clients, but today I got this fantastic picture with the subject line “keeping an eye on the treats” which is how we went about teaching this pup to walk next to the person and watch. Needless to say, Zimba picked up on the lesson very well. Very well indeed from the looks of this picture.

Enjoy the photo and don’t you wish your dog had this level of concentration on you when out for a walk.

Zimba watching closely

Steve Haynes
Austin Dog Trainer
Fidelio Dog Works

Ahh the sweet smell of success. Kat Wilson and Tucker just passed the Canine Good Citizen Test today. The great news is that Kat is not actually Tucker’s owner but his daily dog walker and she did all the training with him! I can’t say how happy this makes me that Tucker has been getting not only walked on his daily outings but also trained quite well by Kat.

So, if you want your dog trained to pass the Canine Good Citizen test and you’ve got some business travel to do, I would suggest you contact Kat at Over the Top Pet Care.

Congratulations to you both!!

Steve Haynes
Austin Dog Trainer and certified Canine Good Citizen tester.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been getting to do more and more agility training. Now, I’m no agility specialist by any means but I do enjoy doing all of the basic work for it. Often times I’ll get clients to a very good base level of training by teaching the dog directions, target command, working on the “come command” (which is an absolute necessity in agility). After the dog masters these basics, I’ll usually send the clients off to an agility specialist if they want to compete or off to something like the Zoom Room here in Austin if they want to play around and have fun teaching their dog new things.

In all cases though, working with a dog by teaching them the basics of agility is a great way to engage their mind and get them to think about things in a new way. Anything that help a pup pay attention to their owner and gets them to anticipate what’s coming next is a plus in my book.

Steve Haynes
Austin Dog Trainer

Well, Since I’m on a dog photography jag at the moment, here is another of the Border Terrier pup downtown this week.

Well, Just a shot of a client’s dog at Zilker Park yesterday with the dew. Loved the way this one makes the park look like it’s in the middle of nowhere.

Steve Haynes
Austin Dog Trainer and part time dog photographer

Over the last couple of years I’ve gotten more and more requests from clients to do photography work with their dogs. It works out well for me and my clients, as one of my serious hobbies is photography. The easy part is that the dogs I’m working with and photographing already know me and respond well to the direction and are generally comfortable with the shoot scenario. The combination of the two works quite well and I always enjoy when I get a photo request from clients.

One of the by products of doing this is that I’m always looking out for interesting photographs of pets. Yesterday I ran across Stephanie Rausser who does just absolutely wonderful work. She’s a professional photographer working primarily in the advertising space but I loved how she captured the pets. I’ve clipped one of my favorites from her website to post here but this is all Ms. Rausser’s work.

Now, believe it or not it’s astonishing how many times I get clients that want me to help them stop the dog from running around the house/yard/neighborhood…while carrying “intimates”. It’s a pretty common request and that’s why I loved this picture. So Kudos to Ms. Rausser for her fine pet photo work. She has a level of intimacy with her subjects that I admire greatly.

Steve Haynes
Austin Dog Trainer and sometimes pet photographer.

One of the basic tenants of dog training is that the dog needs to pay attention to you before you can actually do any formal training. In my day to day work, it’s actually quite rare to find a dog that knows how to pay attention at a high level. This is a skill most trainers have to work on quite a bit before we can really start moving toward the goals most clients have for their dog.

What does “paying attention” actually mean in the dog world? Well, to keep it simple let’s just say that if your dog is looking at you it’s paying attention. Yes, that an over simplification and I admit it, but for the average client if we can teach the dog to look at them we’re well on our path to success.

So, when you think about your dog, does it watch and change directions with you when you alter your path with the pup on leash? Does it turn around and look at you when it gets a certain distance away when off leash, waiting for you to give it a direction? Does it swing by and check in on a regular basis when you are running around out in the woods? Most dogs don’t.

This attention issue is one of the reasons that most trainers start work with a leash in hand and start working on a skill called “loose leash walking”. It’s not complicated but it does take most dogs a while to actually get the hang of watching where the owner is in space when on the leash.

Now getting to this holy land of attention can be done in lots and lots of different ways. This is where real dog training differs significantly from Google dog training in that it’s impossible to figure out what technique will work best with any dog until we meet it and actually have the leash in hand. Those trainers that say you can solve every lack of attention issue with the same technique are nuts. But I will venture that every trainer would agree that to accomplish any meaningful training work with a dog, it will have to pay attention.

Up to this point I’ve talked a lot about attention but not how to improve it with your dog. Well, there is one small, simple technique that works with the vast majority of dogs from puppies to grown dogs. When you get home from work, throw a number of treats into your pocket and then start going about your normal activities. When you notice the dog watching you or moving around the house with you in a purposeful manner give it piece of kibble. Doing this very very simple exercise over and over will help train ‘attentiveness’ and will only improve how the dog performs in more distracting situations.

The little technique above absolutely will not solve all issues but it is a very very good start and is something any trainer worth their leash would ask you to do in the beginning of formal training.

Hope this helps but if you get the chance do whatever you can to help your pup learn attentiveness and all the training you do going forward will move much more smoothly.

Steve Haynes
Austin dog trainer
Fidelio Dog Works

People call me a pragmatic dog trainer. I’m flattered actually, but in some circles it’s meant as a slur. That’s ok, because what it really comes down to with me is helping people and their dogs have a better quality of life. Notice there that I said “people AND their dogs” not just the dogs and not just the people, that is a very important distinction about how we at Fidelio approach things.

Sometimes in my profession I run across situations that just amaze and confound me. This recent story is one of those.

I’ve got a client, a new client that called me a few weeks ago desperate because she was unable to walk her dog. She’d been working with another trainer for a number of sessions, and after 5, yep that’s right five, lessons she was still unable to walk her dog across the street without it yanking her injured shoulder to the point that it hurt. That’s a very bad situation with a high energy dog. This dog needed walking and it needed walking a LOT.

Well when I met with the client we talked for a few minutes about her health issues and the history of the dog, then it was time to go to work. Straight away when we clipped the leash onto the dog and it charged out the door and yanked hard on her owner. From what the owner told me, this was how every walk had been since she adopted the dog, and it’s also how the walks were with the previous trainer. Not a pretty site for the dog or the owner.

Now, I’m all for other trainers having a philosophy about dog training. That’s fine, but here is where the ‘pragmatic’ part of what I do comes into play. If that philosophy isn’t helping the dog, the owner, or the situation, it might be the wrong philosophy and it probably is time to change it. Unfortunately some trainers don’t or can’t look at things that way.

Once I touched this dog’s leash it took me exactly 20 seconds to get the dog walking properly without pulling, lunging, forging, or cutting in front of me. Within less than a minute the dog was managing a pretty decent heel position. I was flabbergasted about how another trainer had taken 5 HOURS thus far and hundreds and hundreds of dollars of lessons and not been able to get the dog to walk across the street peacefully with the owner? I didn’t really have to do anything special with this dog and certainly nothing that a first year trainer wouldn’t be able to do in their sleep. Also, I didn’t even have to use any special equipment or training collars with the dog to get it to perform.

By the end of the session the owner was walking the dog around the park in front of her house in a heel position passing other dogs with no issues and managing to move past the pesky squirrels that always elicited a strong lunge on the leash before. Now that, is improving someone’s quality of life and I’ll take my pragmatic approach any day over wasting hours and hours of time and hundreds of dollars on a failed philosophy of training.

Now, I don’t put myself or my company forward as some Super Trainer organization or anything like that. What I do believe is that we at Fidelio have the ability, skill, and training to look at the whole situation and do what is best for the dog AND the owner and get them to a better place in their lives in a pragmatic way.

Steve Haynes
Austin dog trainer
fideliodogs.com

The way I do dog training is a driving intensive endeavor. For the past few years I’ve driven around in a large Volvo wagon that I needed for hauling client dogs here and there but that part of the business has not been that important of late so it was time for a change.

On the average day I’ll drive about 100 miles between client meetings. Yep, I’m busy, and that’s a lot of drive time. To try to mitigate how much pollution I create doing my thing it was time to change vehicles. The new official vehicle of Fidelio Dog Works is not a not very sexy but super efficient Prius. We are saving many gallons of gas a day with this thing and it just makes us feel better about out not adding as many degrees of heat to the summer here in Austin. Just think of it as our way of keeping the dog’s feet just a bit cooler on the pavement during August.

Here’s to greener dog training.

Steve Haynes
Austin Dog Trainer
Fidelio Dog Works