Training: Obedience

Sorry I have been MIA over the past couple of weeks. Over the weekend I was with a big group of friends and got some really great feedback on my training post I had a couple weeks ago, so I will try and keep posting. Today’s topic is obedience.

Having a well-trained, good-mannered dog can get you invited to a lot of places and on a lot of hunts, while having a renegade, nutcase dog can have the exact opposite effect. This posting will focus on manners, i.e. obedience. This would be a great topic to cover if I had a new dog to work with, and I could post videos and photos… but I don’t. If I end up getting a puppy later this year I may cover this topic in more depth.

Obedience training is often very tedious and boring. It is what a lot of trainers refer to as “yard work,” as most of this training is done in the back yard as opposed to the hunting field. Training a dog is a lot like teaching a young boy: very short attention spans and you will have to repeat every item a thousand times. The trick is getting the dog (or boy, if you are using this post to help you train your kids, Tammy) to understand exactly what you expect when you give a command.

Two birds with one stone, working with the dogs and one of the twins.

So, if I say, “Lori, Sit,” she must understand that she must sit instantly or there are consequences. Once she understands the command, there can be punishment for noncompliance. The problem a lot of the time is the trainer punishes the dog before the dog understands the command. The trick to getting the dog understanding what you want is repetition. I don’t mean ten times, I mean thousands of times. When the dog does the correct thing, praise the dog with a few pets and kind words.

Remember the dog’s short attention span. It is hard to get a dog to focus on you for hours on end. It is better to work in five to ten minute bursts. I also like to incorporate the training into everything I do with a dog. For example, if I am working on “Sit” with a dog, give the command before the dog can eat, give the command before you allow the dog to go through a door/gate, give the command before you let the dog do anything. The dog will quickly learn that it will not be able to proceed with its life without following your instructions. And again, when the dog completes the task, praise with a few pets and kind words.

When giving a command, I start off with the dogs name as a cue that something is about to happen. So if I am telling Lori to come to me, the command would go, "Lori, Here." The same thing with heeling, "Lori, Heel." As we discussed in the last post, you give the command once, and be in a position where you can enforce the command if the dog decides not to listen. I am not a big fan of giving treats for following directions. Your dog should follow your command because you are the master and you said to, not for a reward. Like my dad used to say, “Because I said so and that’s the only reason you need.”

The last point I want to touch in this post is an obedience command that has kind of evolved with a couple dogs I have worked with. With my pointers, I like to say “Easy” before telling them to “Whoa”. This is just a little warning that they need to be careful and start slowing down. The use of “Easy” for me has been great around the house. It is almost like a, “calm down or you are going to get in a lot of trouble” command. This command may take tens of thousands of repetitions to work, but it is great. If Lori is going nuts when I let her in the house or she is being crazy outside when we have company over, I just give her a stern “Easy,” and she settles down quick.

Wyatt being "Easy" waiting to hunt.

That is all I have for this post, I hope it will help you in training your dog... or kid. If you have any questions or would like me to cover certain areas, shoot me an email and I will see what I can do. My email address can be found under my profile.

Happy Hunting - 2B