Does Your Dog Wish You Knew This?

The Unconventional Dog Trainer

Hey there, dog lover! Welcome to this episode of the Unconventional Dog Trainer. We hope you enjoy our battle tested, relationship based solutions for helping your unconventional dog shine, with your host, Luzelle Coburn. Let's dive in.

Have you ever struggled to get your dog to understand a concept, a training, a trick, or whatever? I have been there, my friend. Hi, I'm Luzelle, the dog trainer, and in this episode we are going to talk about thinking outside the box when it comes to training your dog. So, before we begin, did you know that a fifth of the nutrition you take in and your dog gets used up by your noggin?

And I feel we're not really utilizing all that nutrition that well, because we're constantly telling our dogs what to do. So in today's episode, I'm going to challenge you to try and do something differently. So, there are a couple of things that, uh, our dogs. There's ways that people and dogs learn that you may not.

be thinking about when you are training your dog. And one is latent learning, where the dog has to sleep on something, or the human. I don't know if you've ever gone through this, and I have, because I'm an artist in my spare time. So I've struggled with a piece of art, and then I've slept on it, and then all of a sudden, Um, I've processed what I was struggling with and come up with a solution, um, usually it's just before you fall asleep or in the morning when you're a bit groggy.

And the next time I tackled that, I could do it. So that's latent learning. And then there's vicarious learning, where you learn through watching. Now I'll tackle that one first. I've got a fun story for you on that one. My very first Malinois was a dog called Delta. She's still alive. She's now a retired military working dog.

Fabulous dog. Anyway, she's quite a bossy boots and she's very selfish and entitled. Now, I tried to get her to do some things. One of them was breed showing because we did, we dabbled in breed showing and, as well as, um, competitive obedience. And she did competitive obedience fine. She, like, would do the steer.

Um, every time she was on my left. Now I needed her to be on my left and I needed her to do run prance around like the show ring and the show ring looking straight ahead, not looking up at me so that she could show off her structure. So I took her to the show that day. Previously, we, it went terrible because most people put their dogs away between their turn.

So this time I actually decided I grabbed myself a camping chair and we were watching the show. I put her next to me in a down stay, um, at first she was not impressed with it, she wanted to chase the dogs running, and that was, she was firmly told, no, that's not what we do. I put her in a down stay next to me so she could watch the show.

It took a little while before she figured it out. Anyway, come our turn, and I just about fell off my chair, and I wasn't even sitting, because Delta pranced around that show ring like she'd done it all her life. Yep, Delta was a vicarious learner. She learned best through watching. And this came out a few months later when I tried to teach her the Test A Recall.

Now the Test A Recall here in New Zealand is where you put the dog in a Satoru Downs day and you walk around the ring and you call your dog into your Now, the problem Delta had was when she would come into each, the side that was closest to her, whether it was my right or my left. And that wasn't what I wanted.

So, I decided, right, we had some success with this, with the breed show, why don't I try it? I put her in a down stay and did the exercise with my German Shepherd, Kaz, and it was like Delta was like, why didn't you tell me that's what you wanted in the first place? Cause she did it perfectly from that day forward because Delta learned best through watching.

So this is something that you can try with your dog. Do you need to make them watch other dogs perform the exercises so that they understand what's required from them? All right, so that's vicarious learning and I use that now a lot in my training. I let a dog watch other dogs and I've, I've had some really good success with it.

It's not something that every dog, that helps every dog, um, but this is definitely one of those things that can get you over a hump if you need to. The other one is latent learning. So I have found that sometimes I really struggle to get a concept and I need to sleep on it. I am definitely a huge latent learner.

And I found that the same with many dogs. Um, I can't actually think of an example, I have got many, but I can't think of one now of one of my dogs who did, um, this. But quite often if my dog is struggling with a concept. I will go, you know what? This is not us today. I will go do something else. I won't, I won't finish upset or anything like that because I've learned that.

You know what? We can try again another day, and maybe they'll have a chance to sleep on it. Think and process, and get it right the next time. This is particularly valuable for something like tracking. So, I used to find tracking very frustrating. I haven't tried it in ages, so, um, it's But I do know that that's where a lot of dogs need to think and process things.

Because you get, you run one track and then the dogs generally, especially if it's been a really long track, too tired to run another track, they need a day or so to think and process so that they can run better the next time. Now, another thing I wanted to cover is, I feel that we have our dogs in a too stressed state quite often.

If we keep in mind that cortisol, or the bad stress hormones, you always need a little bit of all the hormones, um, but too much of a good thing is a bad thing. So, too much cortisol in a dog's system is, and human's system, is going to interfere with thinking and processing. So, I remember when I was highly stressed, I couldn't problem solve to save my life and, um, I also had a lot of problems with memory.

So if we keep dogs in a high stress state, then we are going to have more problems with thinking and problem solving. Um, so they're going to struggle to get the concepts we're trying to teach. Um, so one of the things we need to do is work our dogs in a lower stressed state. Um, Especially when they're learning a new concept.

So keep in mind that highly adrenalized and dopamine based training, so markers, clickers, toy play, that sort of stuff, really increases the cortisol levels. So you need to be aware that if your dog is struggling with learning and memory, maybe bringing down their stress hormones is really going to help them problem solve and process.

And this is super important to try and keep in mind when you're training your dog because you will If you try this way, so I do a lot of calm based training, I get the dog when they're uncomfortable, because learning is uncomfortable for us and our dogs, that's why so many people struggle with it, that's where you get your stress eating, because you're trying, you're uncomfortable, so you're doing something to deal with that discomfort, instead of just learning to be comfortable with the discomfort and getting working through it.

And the same with our dogs. We need to teach them to work through that discomfort and not avoid it. And if we use adrenaline and dopamine based training, um, to cope with it, we're falling into pattern style training. And that is usually, um, what's needed because we can't. use because her dog's memory and thinking ability is impaired.

So try these things. I hope one of these tips helps you with your dog and helps you problem solve some of the challenges you're having. Um, happy training. _Um, _please, if you know somebody who could benefit from this video, share it with them. Please leave us a comment below. If you agree or disagree, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

And if you'd like to hear more. Subscribe to this channel and I'm hoping to share a lot more tips and tricks and hacks and Insights with you in the future. Happy training

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