Page 43 - Demo

Get a Cue!
Part 1: Cues and Training by Meredith Lunn, Behavior Editor
It’s week one of my basic obedience 102 class. These are dogs and owners who have completed basic obedience 101 and will be working on the 4-Ds—duration, distance, distraction and difficulty—with those behaviors they learned in that class. Week one is a review of the basics. To begin with, I ask the class to get their dogs to “sit.”
The man with the golden retriever snaps his fingers while giving the verbal cue “sit.” The woman with the mini- Dachshund bends over her dog and issues a crisp “sit” com- mand. The woman with the Australian shepherd says “sit” and moves towards her dog. The man with the Labrador retriever remains stationary as he tells his dog to “sit.” All four dogs comply, placing their rear ends neatly on the floor in response to the verbal cue “sit”—or so their owners think.
When I get their attention, I ask them if they think their dogs have learned the word “sit.” There is laughter around the room. They agree that of course their dogs learned “sit,” or they wouldn’t have passed the first class. If this is true, then I suggest an experiment. This time when they ask for “sit” I want them to stand straight, arms at their sides, and concen- trate on not moving their heads, feet, or hands when they give the cue word “sit.” I want them to assume as neutral a body posture as possible.
The man with the golden says “sit” very clearly. Nothing happens. I ask him to give it one more try. He says “sit” again, and again nothing happens. I go around the room, asking each handler to do the same. The only one that sits on verbal cue is the Lab, or so it appears.
Again I ask the class if they think their dogs have learned the word “sit.” This time there is no laughter—in fact there is no response except for the incredulous looks on their faces. I ask everyone to think about what they do with their bodies when they verbally cue their dogs. The golden’s owner con- tends that he doesn’t do anything in particular. I ask him to go through the motions of asking his dog to “sit,” but this time to not say the word “sit.” The first thing he does is bring up his hand to snap his fingers. His dog sits. The mini-wiener dog sits as her owner bends over her. The Aussie sits as his owner steps towards him.
I ask the Lab’s owner to demonstrate his dog’s reliable reac- tion to the verbal cue. Confident that all he needs to do is
say the word, the Lab’s owner takes a breath and asks for the behavior. The Lab does not sit right away. The owner exhales, and the dog sits. In reality, his dog was not responding to the word, but rather the action of his owner breathing out. He was literally waiting for his owner to exhale.
Did they all flunk the beginner class after all? No, not really. What my students experienced is actually a common occur- rence in dog training. Dogs don’t have a spoken language the way we do. They understand barking, and they understand body language, as that is how they communicate with each other. Learning our words that cue physical actions such as “sit” or “down” can be difficult for them. Physical cues are easier for them to understand.
Any gesture or body movement can inadvertently become a cue or a signal for the dog to do a behavior. Because of the Dachshund’s size, his owner had to bend over in order to reward the “sit.” She would start to bend, reward in hand, as soon as the dog started to sit. When the repetition of her bending over was paired up with the action of the dog sitting down, it turned her bending over into a cue for the dog to sit.
The golden’s owner started snapping his fingers when the dog wouldn’t respond right away to his verbal command to sit. He was doing it out of frustration, in hopes of speeding up his dog’s response. On closer examination of the behavior, it was not the snap that the dog was responding to, but rather the action of the owner raising his hand into position to snap his fingers. However, the constant repetition of the two actions together gave the raising of the hand a definitive meaning to the dog. It didn’t really speed up the dog’s reactions to the cue word, except that the dog wouldn’t sit without it.
The Aussie’s owner experienced something similar. In her case, her action of stepping in her dog’s direction got him to sit. This is a common reaction when an owner steps into the dog’s space. Some dogs will back up, some will try to go
May/June 2005 The Australian Shepherd Journal 41