New Issue For Harley

[franklinshauna]

Quick recap: Harley is a 7 pound Malshi (half shih tzu half Maltese and is 10 months old)

 

So in trying the training technique I sat in front of him with a hot dog and was working on conditioning him to the clicker. Click treat, click treat ect...at first he ok, but after a couple times he would go and sit across the room from me and just stare at me. So I assumed he doesn't like the clicker.

 

Day two: I sat down with hot dogs in my hand. He approached me and once he smelled the hot dogs he instantly went across the room and started at me. He associated the hot dogs with the clicker I presume.

 

Day Three: no training

 

Day Four: Tried switching the treats. I sat on the floor and he immediately went across the room and just stared at me. Tried again a few hours later this time I was standing up. He will not get close enough to me to take the treats. I tried tossing him the treats and he would barely take the treat. Once he would take the treat at a distance, I would say good boy and he will scatter away again. I first tried to not say anything and he would eat the treat and scatter. So I thought a good boy may help. Wrong.

 

Harley is never fearful. I've never seen him cower or behave this way. Sometimes I have fed him wet food by had because he has time getting it off the plate. My senior fog gets wet food, so I always give Harley scoop or two. He did take the wet food from my hand no problem, but if he became fearful when it was Turkey or cheese which he loves . I do not want to use the wet food because I dont want him fearful of that too.

 

Again, I have never seen Harley cower or be unsure of anything. He doesn't even get scared when he goes to the groomer or vet. Usually noises are of no bother in fact he chases the vacuum.

 

Please advise. I have yet to have any amount of progress with Harley as this has become more difficult than I imagined.

 

Help! I'm becoming discouraged and that I really suck at this dog stuff. :(

 

I really wanted my husband to be impressed with him

[JMFS]

Aw, if I told you all the trials I had with Momo you'd marvel that I even entertained the thought of getting another dog! You don't suck at it, you're simply new to Harley's particular set of challenges. Dogs are far more complex than we think they are! :) This is beyond my scope and has me perplexed, so I'll offer encouragement instead. Harley is fortunate to have someone who cares enough to try! With Adrienne's help and some patience with yourself Harley will be in excellent hands!

[Adrienne Farricelli]

Oh no, please don't be discouraged! We all face some challenges when training at some point or another. Issues with clickers sometimes arise, sometimes like 1 dog in 10 will find the noise intimidating. I have seen this happen with fearful rescue dogs or noise-sensitive animals, and when clicker training chickens. I know you mention your dog is not normally scared of sounds, but the clicker may be a sound your dog was never exposed to in his life and he may for some reason find it intimidating.

 

Of course, this is just an assumption. Some dogs may react this way too when they are a bit confused or not sure of what is expected from them. Dogs not used to be trained may find the whole idea a bit intimidating sometimes, and they may need smaller steps. Sensitive dogs may also sometimes feel our frustration when things don't progress as we wish and this may cause them to shut down.

 

If the sound is the issue, you can work on using a verbal marker or use some strategies to make the sound less intense as outlined below in a case like yours:

https://www.braintraining4dogs.com/forum/showthread.php?246-Dog-is-terrified-of-the-clicker

 

It may help as well to practice in a different room, just in case he associated a particular room with the sound. Perhaps try in the living room with you sitting on the couch and use your verbal marker "yes" in the same way a clicker is charged "yes, treat, yes, treat." If you still have issues, then likely there's more going on than finding the clicker's sound intimidating and this may require more troubleshooting.

Edited November 11, 2019 by Adrienne Farricelli

[franklinshauna]

Unfortunately it's still going on. He does take treats from my hand again. I waited several days to start back up. He's not intimidated or anything if I just give him treats. The very second I try to put treat above his head to work on sit he cowers off to the corner and just sits and stairs at me. I cant seem to teach him anything but his name. Harley is very special to me as all our babies are, but he is truly my best friend. But...he just turned a year a few days ago and he is still unattainable or maybe it's me that is unatrainable. Unfortunatly, Harley rules our house. It's to bad the forum isn't set up for videos so I could show you what he does. Grrrr

[Adrienne Farricelli]

Thanks for posting these details,

So it appears that he takes treats by your hand, but won't if you put the treat above his head? This little piece of detail helps a lot. Perhaps he's a little hand shy. I boarded and trained a dog like that and this dog had a history of going to obedience classes from other local trainers and not being able to learn anything. I have seen this behavior too in small dogs who are often taken to be groomed. In any case, no worries! There's a solution for that and it's called capturing.

 

Basically, what you do is wait for your dog to voluntarily sit. You can therefore have him in a room with little distractions, you sit down on the couch and just wait for him to sit. This should be easy considering that you mention he sits already and stares at you. The moment he sits, you say "yes!" and toss a treat in his direction. Repeat several times. Trial after trial, your dog learns that sit makes good things happen and you should see it happening more and more often. Once it happens more and more predictably, you can add the verbal cue, just say "sit" a split second before you notice him sitting or right as he sits. After several trials, he'll start associating the word with the action and you can say "sit" and he should sit automatically.

 

You can share videos here if you have them uploaded on YouTube and then you can post the link here.

Here is a video I made several years ago, showing that dog who was hand shy and wasn't doing well with luring so we moved on to capturing. Let me know if you are seeing something similar. The owner was ecstatic with the results from using capturing and the dog also started having fun too.

Edited November 11, 2019 by Adrienne Farricelli

[JMFS]

I'll cast a vote for capturing! I was trying to teach Gertie "bow," and she wasn't getting it with me leading her into a bow so I switched to the capture tactic. Every time she would bow I would praise her and give her a treat. Now she bows for Everything, lol! It's also how I taught her how to shake her body on command. Whenever she shook I would say, "good shake!" I often didn't have a treat on hand for that one so it took a little longer to teach, but now drying her off after a bath is So much easier because she waits until I tell her to shake instead of doing it at will. My post bath clean up is much quicker as a result. ;) I find capturing to be a lot of fun and the pups seem to like it as well because they get rewarded for something they were doing anyway.