A picture is worth a thousand words

Does anyone ever work with their dog in silence? Does anyone else try to work in silence? Anyone who has met me knows I talk incessantly. This extends to time spent just me and the dogs. OK, honesty check here. I also babble when I am by myself, sans chien. And yes, I answer myself as well. Very scary! Unfortunately, it seems the non-stop prattle is a hindrance when working with dogs. The saying, "Actions speak louder than words," appears quite true in dog training. After publishing the post on deaf dogs featuring Sam, that gorgeous hunk of a hound, I realized I had neglected to mention this. Deaf dogs are very easy to train once you remember to use actions, like hand signals, instead of words. Though lack of hearing can make getting their attention more challenging at times it also removes most or all noise distractions. Several times this week I have done very short training sessions with my Greyhound maintaining absolute silence. They had to be very short because I could not keep my mouth shut for longer than that.

Though I have known for many years that my dogs pick up hand signals faster than voice commands, I am still sometimes caught off guard when my dog not only does not respond properly, whether that be to a verbal or hand cue. You can sometimes even see the confusion on her face. (I'm not a behavioral scientist so I will not apologize for anthropomorphisms.) Others have had this happen as well. Just ask any dog trainer of any level. The problem is that though we may think our dog knows what a particular cue like Sit means, our dog may actually be cuing off something in addition to or even instead of our intended cue. This can lead to misunderstanding & confusion should any of the many variables change. After just one session session in silence my Greyhound began responding faster and more reliably to my hand signals than she does to verbal commands. Yes, yes, all you obedience training geeks. I am constantly using double, triple or quinticazillion cues.

This same dog-human misunderstanding frequently happens when attempting to correct their dogs. That is one of many reasons I prefer reward based training rather than relying so much on corrections, particularly verbals scoldings. More often than not the dogs just don't get it. Neither misunderstanding is a crisis & at least one makes her happy while the other makes her less enthusiastic about training.

[From Gary Larson's Far Side cartoon]

Our dogs see the big picture and learn things contextually. Humans do as well but to a lesser degree. Most of us have experienced this confusion, ex. meeting up with an acquaintance from church while grocery shopping only to find that though they look familiar you cannot for the life of you quite place who they are or why you should know them. This happens to you right? Please say it does. (And then consider that my entire life is spent like this so if you greet somewhere without your Greyhound in tow and I look befuddled please remember it ain't personal.) Our dogs view the entire context of the situation to determine what the cue really is with no two dogs taking in the situation in quite the same way. It is up to us to make sure our dogs recognize what the cue is and what other info is irrelevant. We humans, verbally centered beings that we are, often have great difficulty conveying this information to our dogs.

For this reason, it takes many, many repetitions of using a command in a large variety of settings, at many different distances, in a variety of tones of voice at varying volumes, etc., etc., so-on & so-forth, before our dogs learn that the real cue is really just the simple word Sit rather than when I say Sit while facing you with my hands held just so, a gentle breeze blowing from the Southeast and the sun at this particular angle as three geese fly over head. I remembered a little Dr. Seuss like poem I had read that played on this training issue. After some search I found it on Suzanne Clothier's website in her "Green Eggs & Ham & Dog Training?" post. Please, please read it. I love that poem & searched it out just so you could enjoy it also. For the record, I had already written the "contextually" statement before reading her post. She certainly does say it much better than I ever could. Shortly before finding Clothier's poem I stumbled on this post from Susan Garrett's site, "Can You Do It In a Box?" I do have to admire a woman who will not only stand on her head to train her dog but share the video on the internet. I'll leave the readers to ponder the similarities between the Clothier & Garrett posts or any possible meanings. Both while saying similar things are worth reading.

One of the most interesting things I have discovered recently came after a volunteer session at a local assistance dog training organization. As many of their clients have limited hand control or speech ability, the dogs are taught to respond to eye gestures as well. I came home and gave it a try with my dogs. To my amazement I discovered that if I remain silent and motionless while using just the eye gesture of looking down at the ground just in front of my dogs' feet they both will usually do a down for me... Though the Greyhound needed to be in the living room with her back to the windows.

There are quite a few cues that can be done just with eye gestures. Some like the down are easy to add because they are connected to things we may already be unconsciously doing. Others are very easily taught with clicker or marker training. But no, I've not done it yet. Remember the first paragraph about my chatty nature? Yet a recent experience showed me that it can be very, very handy to have not only a verbal cue and hand signal but also eye gestures. I found out when carrying far too many things requiring both my hands and my mouth. I tried to shuffle things around to get my car keys while worrying my dog would drift into the traffic lane. Unable to give my dog a verbal cue I amazingly got my dog to sit and wait using just eye gestures. [Cue the advertizing announcer's voice.] "Amaze friends and astound your neighbors. For the low, low price of ___ we'll send you this book with the secret methods of assistance dog trainers." Or you could just click the link on the right for the Sue Ailsby training site and save yourself some money.

So Sam, what do you think of green eggs & ham?