3’s a crowd?

[DebraMcfarlane]

Good day, newbie ‘round here.  I have 3 boxers, aged 4, 3, & 2. What’s best, separate or together training?

Thank you

[Adrienne]

Hi there!

Welcome to the forums!

Training a dog requires giving the dog lots of individual attention, especially initially. You will need to pay attention to what the dog does, concentrate on his progress and possibly carry several items in your hands (treats for luring and then rewarding, a clicker -if you use it). On top of this, you need to focus on the dog's body language for signs of motivation, eagerness or tiring or stress.

While there are several training methods nowadays, a popular one that yields fast results is luring (which is mostly used throughout the course), where a treat is used as a guide to get the dog perform a desired behavior and is then quickly faded to primarily being used as reinforcement. It would be close to impossible using two hands to lure two untrained dogs side-by-side without creating confusion. Additionally, it would become confusing for us using the clicker/verbal marker since both dogs will likely perform the desired behavior at different times.

Another consideration is that in the initial stages of training, it is important to start training in an area free of distractions. To one dog, the presence of another dog or more dogs, is a strong distraction. As you can attest, some dogs tend to get into "pack mentality" and influence each other, feeding off each others' emotions. If for example, you are training in one room and one dog is reactive to noises and takes off, the other dog will likely leave and go check things out with his buddy too. Soon, you are left with no dogs to train as these distractions have won over you.

Not to mention, dogs may also tend to compete for attention. In a dog training scenario, competition may involve a dog owner's attention with the added bonus of the presence of a odoriferous treat bag clipped to a belt. Intrusions are almost a certainty with untrained dogs, with them getting in between repeatedly if no measures are taken to keep these dogs under control and out of the way. Some dogs may be prone to resource guarding.

It is therefore important that, in the initial stages of training, each dog is provided with attention until he or she grasps the concept, and then,  other dogs can be brought into the picture. The more dogs in a household, the more crucial it is that all dogs are well-trained and well-behaved.

You would therefore first select one dog to work with. In the meanwhile, you will have to find a way to keep the other dogs out of the way. You can keep your other dogs in another room, behind a baby gate, in their crates, tethered, or in the yard. If you choose to crate them, you can provide the non-working dogs with a safe chew toy or food-dispensing toy to keep them busy. They'll soon look forward to this training routine without getting frustrated waiting their turn to be trained.

If you choose to use a see-through baby gate, from where your dogs can watch you train, consider that they may get frustrated and impatient and this may lead to barking which can be a major distraction. If your dogs though are able to stay calm, reap the benefit of having them observe your training. Studies have shown that dogs learn faster if they watch other dogs being trained. On top of this, by watching, the motivation for the other non-working dogs will increase by the time it's their turn.

If your dogs have had some basic training and know how to hold a solid down stay on a mat, you can teach them to patiently wait their turns, laying on the mat, as you train each dog individually. In the midst of training,  you can pause and drop a treat on the non-working dogs' mats every now and then to reward them for being chill.

Alternatively, you can enlist the help of other family members to help train each dog individually and even in the same room mimicking the group classes dog trainers hold. In such a case, make sure that all members are on the same page as to training methods and verbal cues used.

Once you have trained each dog individually and they all have shown signs of grasping the concept and each dog has demonstrated the proficiency of being able to respond in the training room, but also in other areas of the home and the yard, it is time to add another dog. Which dog should you add though? You may be far better off picking as a combo your most proficient dog, and then adding in your next proficient one and so forth. Once you are done mixing up the dogs in combos of two, further raise criteria, and add a further dog until you have your dogs in a group.

At that point, you can use an attention grabbing cue such as "dogs" (a cue that will come to signify that all dogs must collectively respond) followed by your verbal cue such as "sit" or "down" etc. You can then reward the fastest dogs to comply working down to the slowest ones.

Group training works wonderfully for important cues such as all dogs waiting before you open a door, responding to a smacking sound when the postal carrier approaches (look up the "Look at that" brain game), having your dogs all lie down politely on their mats during your meal times, asking your dogs to do a group sit/stay or down/stay and then releasing them and calling your dogs (watch them competing rushing towards you!) and even holding sit-stays for great group pictures.

I hope this helps,

Happy Training!