“Can You Hear Me Now?”

Esther has served as the National Breeding and Puppy Program Manager for CCI for past six years.  We were lucky enough to receive some great blog posts from her!

If you think your puppy is a pretty good listener, you might be surprised to realize that he is really just guessing. How can you tell if this is the case? Try one or more of the following:

• Go through a doorway with the puppy and tell the puppy Down instead of Sit

• Open your car door and tell the puppy Shake instead of Car

• When greeting someone, instead of having the puppy Sit and Shake, ask the puppy to do a Back, Heel or Side

• Place the puppy’s bed next to the crate, and alternate sending him to each one.

How many tries does it take for the puppy to do the right behavior?

Dogs are very good at picking up predictable patterns of behavior, and once they do, they tend to assume things rather than listen closely  (don’t we all?). For example, we often see puppies automatically offer a Shake when meeting someone in public, without waiting for the command to be given. They have learned that Shake usually follows the Sit when greeting a person, and feel that they no longer need to listen to you in that situation- they already know what you are going to say.

So what should you do to make sure the puppy is really listening to what you say? Break the patterns! Use different commands at different times, as in the exercise above. Try to surprise the puppy often, and make him guess wrong so that he learns to listen to you closely.

And if the puppy offers a command (such as Shake) before being told to do so, correct him and make him wait until told.

The Pickle Test

Another way to see if the puppy is truly listening is to try some complete fake-outs!

Here’s an example: Every time I go up to a certain table in the training room, I do an Up on it with the dog. Over time, the dog becomes focused simply on the item and the command that it has grown to associate with it rather than the actual word coming out of my mouth! One way we test listening skills is by throwing in a word that means nothing to the dogs. A traditional choice is the word “pickle”. If I go up to the table and say “pickle” and the dog tries to “Up”, they have made a wrong choice, and it is fair to correct them. The next time I walk up and say “pickle”, if the dog chooses to stay put and listen, I praise the heck out of them! Try it yourself with commands the puppy knows well, and feel free to try different words (“orange”, “banana”, “purple”). Try to pick words that sound very different than the command until they know the listening game, to avoid a confused puppy.