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July 2nd, 2009 by Ian Brown

You can set things up in a controlled way so you can use sound for training purposes. This lets you get the exact result you want.

Taken to it’s extreme, these four repetitions should be performed in four different places, or with different people, dogs, or whatever the “props” involved may be. Understanding how dogs think, learn, and process information is a stretch of the imagination for most of us. It is obvious that they know more about psychology than we do.

A good dog owner, already knows that dogs think and communicate, but not at all like humans. So it is up to us to make the effort if we want good results.

Be consistent. Dogs get confused if you’re not consistent. Now that you are getting familiar with teaching a command through conditioned reflex, you can use similar techniques to stop or break any behavior whatsoever.

Using a set of cans, or any other source of sound, so long as it is brief, and so long as it can be presented from different directions on each consecutive instance, are all that you need to do to break any behavior. Simply create the sound, and follow through with praise! It’s that simple. Any behavior can be stopped or broken, simply by creating a sound, and praising immediately. The secret is, to allow the undesired behavior to begin again, and simply present the sound from another direction, and follow through with praise. Of course you have to understand how your dog thinks and learns in order to successfully achieve this.

Each time you create a sound to stop or break a behavior, you must praise him for as long as he refrains from continuing such behavior (at least until he no longer thinks about that instance, usually ten or fifteen seconds), and be prepared to create your sound distraction and praise as soon as the behavior begins again. This is the sticking point with so many trainers. “Why should I praise this critter if he’s not even doing what I want?” Remember, dogs do not think in human terms. Most behavior problems are simply a failure to clearly communicate.

Now that you have the technique you can continue for ever to use it to condition him. In future if he makes a mistake in any of the training you have conditioned, it is probably more of a challenge to you as the boss.

Because the process is so enjoyable many people use it forever. Part of that comes from the satisfaction of successfully training our dog. Bear in mind, these are corrections and not the teaching of new behaviors.