> Paul Bowers wrote: > Four dogs, each clicker trained for basic obedience... > However, walk through the gate into the backyard and > it's mayhem--dogs jumping up, competing for attention Hi, Paul. First, you might want to invest a few dollars in a booklet titled "Feeling Outnumbered?" by Karen London & Pat McConnell. It's only about 40 pages, but it directly addresses some of the problems of the multi-dog household including how to train the dogs to react as a group. I do quite a bit of multi-dog work--I have five dogs presently, and used to have six, so I had to become an expert or else! I'll describe a couple good exercises for you to try. And once you understand the basic concepts behind each exercise, you can probably make up variations of your own. 1) First, think of your dogs as individuals who each have an individual relationship with you and with each of the other dogs. Forget the "pack" and "Dominance" stuff because these ideas will not help you. Whether they are correct paradigms or not, these ideas are irrelevant to the training your dogs need. Nothing that you would do in CT has anything to do with hierarchy. Think in terms of four individuals to start with. 2) If you don't already, always use the dog's name before every command when you address one dog. "Fido, Sit." "Buffy, Stay." Make this a consistent habit. 3) In situations like your backyard brawl, use the mayhem as a training opportunity. In advanced training, we add distractions to "proof" the dogs. Well, lucky you! You already have the distraction part working! Now think of the following training game as a competition among your dogs to see who obeys the best. Select one dog, concentrate your attention on it, (ignore all the others as they assault you and bounce off the gate) and tell that one animal firmly, clearly, but in a friendly voice to Sit. "Buffy, Sit!" Look right at the dog, and give it five seconds to comply. Continue your eye contact even if the dog is not looking at you. If the dog does not sit in the allotted time, turn immediately to another dog and repeat: "Fido, Sit." Five seconds of eye contact... If the dog sits, immediately click & treat only THAT dog. As you treat, give some verbal praise, too. Lay it on: "Good girl! Wonderful..." Pay no attention to the others. Now continue on to the the next dog. "Pluto, Sit." Eye contact for five second. No Sit? Move on to the next contestant. (If Pluto does Sits, click & treat, lots of praise, and then move on to another dog.) Cycle through the four like this a number of times. (If other dogs sit down along with the dog you are working with, that's a good sign, but do not reward them because you were not talking to them! If you find that some dogs sit and tend to stay seated as you play the game, then simply walk a few feet away so everyone must get up and follow you before the next round.) If you have trouble getting this going at first, you can either try using really super special treats, or for the first half dozen rounds you can show the treat while you are giving the command. But do not continue to lure like this for too long. The treat should normally be out of sight when you give the command. The important part is not to interfere in the game in any way yourself. This is not an exercise in fairness or equality. If one dog obeys well and the others won't sit, then one dog is going to get all the treats! (Tough luck! Want a treat next time? Then Sit when I tell you.) Also, do not define success by the number of dogs or the number of times each dog does sit for you on command. You may do this exercise several times and not have one dog sit: that's just fine. Keep repeating the exercise a few times each day. You can only look for success by comparing today's sessions with the ones you do a week or ten days from now. So the rule is: every session is a good one, whether all the dogs sit or nobody sits. There is one problem that can develop that will spoil this exercise, and that is if any of your dogs are bold food grabbers. If they become aggressive and try to steal the treat as you are rewarding the complying dog, you need to prevent that. This is the only circumstance in which you would intervene in the exercise. Probably the best way to deal with this is to split your four up in some way. Do the exercise with just two at a time, while the other two are placed in the house or in another room. Often, food aggression will disappear in a smaller group or due to the absence of a particular dog. If one dog in particular is an aggressive grabber, play the game with the other three, and at another time, work on increasingly long Sit Stays with the cookie monster. Add a little time to the Stay every few sessions, and try to get him up to at least a two minute stay. Then go back to a shorter Stay time and work on getting the dog to Stay while you hold a piece of food visible in your hand. Use that food as the reward if the dog completes the stay. (The dog will learn some impulse control this way.) By the time you work for a few weeks on Stays with the one instigator, you should have the other three complying pretty well in the Sit game. Then you can try integrating the more aggressive dog into the game. Start by pairing him with just one other dog, then two, then all. Once you are getting good compliance with the Sits, you should make Staying part of the group game. Command Sit and then Stay to one dog, and then stretch the time before you C & T. Just add 5 seconds every few sessions and work toward a 30 second Sit Stay. If you start seeing some dog's having difficulty complying with a longer time interval, back up a bit to the last shorter time and train at that level for a while. Unlike the simpler Sits you began with, with the Stays, let the worst performer dictate the length of the Stay so you can keep the group working together. At this point, you want to be rewarding everyone as often as possible, not putting pressure on one dog to Stay longer than it can. Finally, when playing this game, you need to be aware of differences in your dogs. If you know one dog is always slow to comply with a Sit command, you may give it a few more seconds to Sit than you would the others. Although I call it a competition, it is really a rigged game! There is nothing truly fair about it. Your job is to see that all four succeed more than they fail. If that means that a certain dog needs a handicap to allow the group to go on, then fine. Do what you have to to assure that all dogs are usually successful and all feel like winners as soon as they are willing to give you basic compliance. You can pull this drill unannounced any time during the day when the dogs are together and havoc begins. It will actually help if you do it in different locations. And you can, of course, move on to other commands instead of using Sit & Stay forever. > But can c/t be used to shape the behavior of the > group as a group? In other words, can one train the > group as a whole? Depends on what you mean by "train the group as a whole." Training the group does NOT mean that you can teach a new command or skill to all four at once. What it means is that you can teach the group of four to function as a group of four rather than individually. You would not train the group to perform a particular behavior until you have individually trained all four individuals to do it alone. So you wouldn't be able to save training time by trying to teach a recall for the first time to all four dogs at once. You will, however, gain much better control over all your dogs by teaching them to obey the same command simultaneously. Before teaching group compliance, you need to create a name for the group. Each dog already has its own individual name; you now need to make up a name that means "all of you." Use a short word of no more than two syllables. Possibilities might include "Hey, Guys," "All Dogs," "Doggies!" or "You Four!" There are many ways to teach the dogs to respond to their group name. 1) Begin by using it routinely for any activity in which you call all dogs at once. For example, assuming you feed all four dinner at the same time, once you have the food in the bowls, but before you place them down, call out "Group, Dinner!" using whatever group name you chose and whatever command you might already use to call them to dinner. Use it even if they are right on your heels awaiting dinner! Another opportunities may be when all four are outside and you call them in. For something that is self-rewarding, like calling the group for dinner, you need not click or give any reward. But if the four obey a command together that doesn't really end with a natural pay-off--perhaps coming into the house together--then C & T them all when they arrive. Beware: Try to use the group name only when you are fairly certain they all will obey. If you continue to use it where only 3 of 4 obey, you will weaken the group name and never get it to stick. 2) You can use the game I described above to teach and reinforce the group name once you have gotten the dogs to individually Sit while together. Revise the rules a bit. Instead of looking at a single dog and commanding a Sit, use the group name as you scan across the group without staring at any one individual. "Group, Sit!" Now, alter one other rule of the original game: In the original game, you C & T'ed only the one dog that received the command to Sit. You ignored other dogs who sat when it was not their turn. In the Group Version, you will wait each time until all four dogs are sitting at the same time before you C & T. They do not have to sit in unison... they just all need to sit within 10 seconds. When that fourth bottom hits the ground within the time limit, C & T all four dogs as quickly as you can. (That is ONE click, and then FOUR treats.) Hand out the treats in a different order each time, or you can toss a handful all over the place and let the dogs scatter for the treats as long as they do not fight over the food. (The tossing technique also gets them on their feet so you can then repeat the exercise immediately.) If even one dog remains standing after you command the Group Sit, then do not C & T, and NO ONE gets any treat that time. Walk a little ways to get all the dogs on their feet and try again. If a particular dog seems to be ruining it for the others every time, first try directing your attention at only that dog as you tell the group to sit. Stare right at the non-complier as though you were waiting... which you are! But do not wait more than 10 seconds. If that doesn't work, follow the advice I gave about working separately with a food aggressive dog in the original exercise. Take aside the one dog who just won't sit with the group and work on fast Sits with that dog individually. Meanwhile, play the group Sit Game with the other three. Eventually add the other dog back into the group when he is ready. 3) A final way to teach the dogs to respond to their group name is to simply use the group name often when you refer to all. If you talk casually to your dogs like I do (Don't we all?) then use their group name while all four are riding in the car and you are speaking to them, or while all four are lounging in the living room in the evening. No command or anything for them to do, just start referring to them in conversation by their group name. 4) When you use the group name outside of the training game and one or more dogs does not respond, DO NOT call the unresponsive dogs individually! Instead, ignore them and move on in such a way that they will in some way feel left behind or left out. For example, if you call all four into the house and only three arrive, grab a bunch of pork chops or something and have a party! As soon as the slow poke arrives, end the party and put all the treats away. Don't be surprised if he is the first one to arrive next time. (:-) I hike a lot with my dogs, and we hike off leash in a safe forest preserve that is far from any roads or dangers. One trail is a dead end, so when I get to the end and want to turn around, I will call all the dogs by their group name. (I use "Everybody"--yeah, I know I said only two syllables!) I have another command I have taught them: "Turnaround Time." This means when walking on or off leash, we are going to turn 180 degrees and go back the way we came. So I will call out "Everybody, Turnaround Time!" I say it just once, then I turn around and start walking back. I do not wait for the dogs. After about a minute, I give a treat to any dogs that are with me, and I completely forget about the ones that may have stayed behind. And I just hike home. (Now that is how it has to appear to the dogs! Of course, I would never go home and leave anyone there. And I never have, because sooner or later, the lagger will come running, very fast and a bit relieved, to join us. He gets no reprimand. I just welcome him and we all go home. But he did miss out on the treat. And he did get left in the woods alone. And he did at some point realize this and come a running, to see only my backside moving away from him. If you don't know this one already, the absolute surest way to get a loose dog to come to you is to walk away from it!) 5) Finally, you can use "set ups," situations that you carefully plan, but that seem like normal occurrences to the dogs. One simple set up is to secretly plant some tasty treats in your pocket inside a plastic bag so they will not easily be smelled by the dogs. Do this when no dogs are around to see or hear you doing it! Then, maybe go watch a one hour TV show with the dogs somewhere near. The dogs will see that you have no treats, and they will see you have been sitting watching the TV in one spot for a long time, so they will be off guard and not expecting anything special. Having set up the situation, at an unexpected moment, say "Group, Come" in a normal voice--even a softer than usual voice maybe! Whip out the treats only after the dogs have arrived at your side, and give everyone present some treats and LOUD praise. Whoever did not come, or whoever comes too late gets none! Split theirs among the "good" group members. Pretty soon, you'll have all four racing to get there first! ============================================== Barry ============================================== "A dog cannot be bad, it can only be a dog." ============================================== "Show me a dog that's been trained and trained and trained and still does not obey, and I'll tell you who the slow learner is!" ==============================================

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