Working on right and left turns at the train station

 I took a few minutes this morning to practice a behavior my dog already knows, at the quiet train station on a Sunday morning.  He knows this behavior but all behaviors need some "tune ups" to keep them "fluent" -- in other words, practice them and give the behavior some additional "reward history".  Sorry for the lingo-- but you get the idea-- since most of the behaviors we ask of our dogs are not something they would normally do like this on their own we have to make sure we've worked those behaviors and rewarded them often enough to keep them reliable in the dog's bag of behaviors. Training never stops, my friends.  

Why? Because if something is not inherently rewarding to a dog, and it doesn't get rewarded externally by something like an owner who trains and rewards the dog, that behavior will..... extinguish.  It will fade out and you can't consider it reliable. It's true with humans, too. So we need to occasionally put some money into the bank account of that behavior because otherwise the balance will decline.  

This is one reason we want to make sure our training is FUN for our dog (and for us!).  By having lots of positive associations with training (and hence with the BEHAVIORS we are training) we are also trying to inject a little longer-lasting joy into the act of doing that behavior.  But do expect to have to review your behaviors and reward them somehow-- it doesn't always have to be food, but there's nothing wrong with food either.

OK.  So on Sunday morning we took advantage of the quiet nondistracting environment at the train station to work on making right and left turns (and a bit of heeling).  Notice how SHORT this session is, and how enthusiastic my dog is-- "Oh boy, we get to play another game!"  This is a tune-up, for known behaviors- you are not seeing me teach these behaviors for the first time here.  

I want my dog to be able to relax more than this when we're just taking a walk, and don't want him to have to focus his head up on me the whole time.  So when we DO need to navigate a crowd, for example, I put my hand down to make it easier for him to see, and that signals him that I need his attention here, and that we're going to be turning.  I can do this silently in a crowd without drawing a lot of attention to us, but I do use verbal cues too most of the time.  On a crowded sidewalk or when going around obstacles like an open grate in the sidewalk (which way will we go around that?) my dog and I become pilot and copilot.  It's super helpful and he enjoys the reinforcement.  

In general this kind of drilling can become tedious for a dog so keep it short, upbeat and fun with a high rate of reinforcement.