I think it makes sense that there really is no way to stop a dog from reacting to something if you aren't around, so the only way to "stop" it is to not leave your dog outside unattended. But I was interested in hearing your response as of how you would stop the behavior as it was happening. You said you would go and grab your dog if it jumped into a lake, but is that all you would do? Just take the dog away from the situation? There will be times that you can't just take a dog away from something and training them to pay attention to you is crucial.
So, could you go further into the steps of how you would stop the behavior that Barb is describing? What would you do while it is happening? What actions would you take to begin it's prevention in the future?
I am reasonable new to dog training so am being educated as I live with my dogs and often they are far ahead of me but we are all having great fun!
To answer questions- stopping self reinforcement is crucial. So if you in situation when your dog did not listen and went into said lake you go and get him. After you get your dog out you go and hit your head on the wall
for being lousy trainer...
Seriously, I feel very lucky to see how great dog trainer Susan Garrett trains her dogs first during recallers and now with PuppyPeaks. Example about the lake taken from her teaching. Susan has large unfenced property near Toronto with several ponds for her BC to swim. She hates swimming. As she says in all her years of living there with dogs she only had to go after dogs twice. Now with present puppy Swagger, she will not let him swim in the pond until she built enough value for what she wants- never ever go into pond without permission and recall at first whistle. She will walk past the pond on the leash, play gazillions of games, build enough value for what she wants before letting him to test the waters.Point is, many casual trainers, me included, don't take that first step. We let dog to lunge on the leash and bark at passing cars and only then we start putting harnesses, gentle leaders and snoot loops trying to prevent it. If dog does not know how much fun barking at people passing your fence is, you can SO MUCH EASIER train them to behave well. So you start with a puppy, and train "be calm when people passing your fence" as any other skill you train. Once you build enough value for what you want, you test that value. What if person runs past your fence? What if person skateboards? What if children scream? It is like a bank account- once you have huge stack of positive behavior, things are easy, because value is with DaMama and with good choices.
Not everything has to be trained of course, some things get redirected, some things get managed. If your dog does not like vacuum you might want to put your dog in a car and vacuum house then...
As for fence running, we don't have a fenced yard. In my BIL house we have neighbor dog- anytime my pups attempting to start a fight they go on leash and practice polite behavior, even if we have to leave. Needless to say I am always with them and monitor. Pups have decent recall off everything else. At the dog park when pups get into fence running mode, I just go and hide on them the minute they took their eyes off me. I teach them to always keep momma in the view. If they are too excited I have a squeaky signal I say to let them know "go find momma" We play lots of hide and seek in the house or any other appr safe places. Needless to say, it is getting harder and harder to hide from them
Susan Garrett teaches us to build the behavior, test the behavior. Give dog choices, control self reinforcement. Accept their behavior as great feedback and embrace holes in our training.
I think much of the training is about how much this or that behavior irritates you. Some people have no problems with their dog running and barking in the yard all day along and some are absolutely no no for such behavior.
It is still possible to change the behavior but the longer it is going on the tougher is to teach new behavior. If your pup has been running fence with other dogs for years, it will take a lot of time to change it. Like a theater, rehearsal makes it perfect:sadsmile:
p.s. my head is often sore from hitting on the wall and my training looks like a swiss cheese after embracing all our holes in it... but we are having a blast!
