Category: Improving Response Time

Setting a mental state into motion before you actually need it to increase the probabilities of success and to realistically adjust your expectations

Priming is the idea of setting a mental state into motion before you actually need it. In this case, it involves training indoors for short, intense bursts to get your dog engaged and focused. I’ve noticed a distinct difference between the dog who is primed and the dog who isn’t. And of course, the more you do it, the better they’ll listen over time.

Training outside can be challenging because of all the distractions, but priming can give you a higher probability of success. It’s also much easier to train inside which means it’s low cost for a high benefit. I’ve had even greater success by priming outside around my building and THEN going for a walk. This involves strict training out the door, down the elevator, through the lobby, and in circles around the building. Once I feel we’ve reached a good point we depart to explore the city. I also usually restrict the first few social encounters as well. Think of it as a fading practice. You prime inside, then outside, then for the first five minutes of your walk allowing more freedom the longer you go. Use commands, keep them engaged by requiring eye contact, and setup boundaries that require them to walk politely alongside of you. The goal is to slowly expand outward and slowly diminish the rules until you have a well behaved dog.

The idea of priming came to me when I started to treat outdoor environments as a completely separate training area. Meaning that it has it’s own progress that’s disconnected from indoor success. Just because Ellie sits, stays, and comes inside, doesn’t mean she’ll succeed at the same level outside. This was a helpful perspective to adopt because it also required me to reset my expectations. Expecting Ellie’s indoor performance to match what happened outside was naive and unnecessarily increased frustration. The outdoor world is a fascinating place for a young puppy full of distractions and new challenges. Adapt accordingly.

Another helpful tactic during the first five minutes of walking is to use treats and count out eye contact. I do this by counting each glance up to 5, taking out a treat, and then counting to 10 before I reward her (read more here). I also tell her “no” when she tries to stop and tug gently on her leash to redirect her focus forward. The objective is to remain focused, keep walking, and give me eye contact for a sustained period of time. Anything outside of that is not allowed (besides potty breaks and greeting best friends of course).

Don’t expect these things to work right away though. It gives you an advantage, but requires time and effort to optimize. Be patient, accept failure, and keep trying. It WILL shape your dog over weeks and months, if you make it consistent. A simple hack to help improve performance is to show and hide treats in your pocket. There is a noticeable difference between Ellie with treats and Ellie without, but I can achieve similar results by showing her treats and then hiding them back in my pocket. I distribute just a few in the beginning and randomly along our walk to remind her that they exist. This increases the likelihood of good behavior and doesn’t require a treat bag or excessive rewarding.

Sometimes during these early training sessions you might feel bad restricting your dog or get looks from people when you avoid socialization. However, it’s ok to temporarily apply strict directives, not just in single sessions, but over a period of time as well. It can help lay a foundation for future good behavior and I’ve found that dog training relies not just on situational knowledge, but also an ability to predict future events. Priming and strict walks might seem overbearing at times, but look forward and see the potential for a positive walking experience that’s only 15 minutes away and the well-behaved, trustworthy dog that develops over the coming months.

Priming is a useful tool that helps shape your dog and boosts immediate results. It also helps readjust your expectations and reveals the differences between indoor and outdoor training. By testing out the recommendations above you can start to better understand your canine friend and realize the deliberate effort, the consistency, and the commitment required to achieve great results.

Improving and maintaining response times by adjusting your strategies over time

When I first got Ellie as a little puppy she listened well and stuck by my side, but as time passed she grew more confident and independent. She began running away to meet other dogs despite commands to stay. She became more distracted and felt less compelled to listen. It was harder to grab her attention and if she wasn’t giving me eye contact there was a significant dip in obedience. That’s when I began considering “response time” as a new focus to our training.

Unfortunately, training response time is challenging and hard to influence without rigorous consistency. My commands are just not as interesting as the outside world and this is problematic because eye contact and breaking away from interesting stimuli can greatly improve your dogs obedience. If they glance at you, even for a second, the command to stay and not chase after another dog suddenly gains more weight and they’re hesitant. So how do you make responding to your voice more consistent?

My original hypothesis was simply that training and rewarding responsiveness whenever possible will eventually yield results based on the assumption that she will grow more bored with the world as she gets older (i.e. there are less surprises, less interesting, engaging stimuli and thus she will become more inclined to respond over time). But this mindset is hard to maintain because it is inherently frustrating when you’re on a schedule, when you want to train, etc. I kept telling myself, “she’s young, just reward when she does give attention, reward eye contact, don’t repeat commands too frequently, just reward for the quick ones.” But I also found myself occasionally forcing eye contact with my hand, pulling her away from interesting things to try and regain control, etc. It made for less positive walking experiences and thus was not an optimal solution. Again the issue being simply that trying to be patient is not always easy and so dealing with a lack of response time is just hard to deal with. One of the other problems with this hypothesis is that it breaks down if you encounter novel stimuli throughout the dogs life. If she gets bored of her normal life, but travels with me to the mountains or a new locale I should expect a dog who no longer listens.

Another aspect of this training is that we often look at behavior as either “good” or “bad”, but there is a third type to consider: “neutral behavior”. Neutral behavior is something that changes frequently based on setting updated expectations about behavior. In this case, “not listening or responding” is neutral because of her age and training experience, but eventually “not listening or responding” will become “bad” if she does well in the future and I update my expectations about what is reasonably expected from her. Neutral behavior doesn’t require a response from you, it is neither good nor bad. Instead it helps diffuse frustration when training challenging commands because you have one additional non-bad area your dog can operate in. Otherwise you might lump in not responding quickly as “bad” when running away from you is bad, but not listening is neutral, and quick response times are good.

So I went back to the drawing board and began to consider new strategies and also what I might be doing wrong. One recent instance came to mind. I was in the elevator with another person and Ellie was overexcited. I tried to get her to sit and eventually had to force her down. I realized after reflection that I was skipping steps here. This is kind of hard to explain but basically I imagine two extreme ends: on the left is an overexcited dog that doesn’t want to listen, on the other a well-behaved, calm sitting dog. I tried to jump from the left to the right without any intermediate stages. First up should have been a resounding “no” to break her focus and tell her that she’s doing something wrong. It probably would have taken a few of those plus a shortened leash and a commanding voice. From there I should have re-positioned her away from the person and focused on getting eye contact. Sometimes this means kneeling down to their eye level so they really know you’re talking to them. From there I should have used treats or faked a treat to get her to pay closer attention followed by a sit command. This would have been far more realistically achievable. The lesson here is to start at the most basic level of a desired behavior and work towards an actual goal. If you don’t know what those stages are this is a good red flag that you might need to study up and reflect on it. Remember, we know what we want, but they are relying on a loose understanding of our desired behavior.

From here I started focusing a lot of attention to rewarding eye contact and treating walks more like training sessions and less like an opportunity for exercise. I stopped forcing eye contact but also stopped looking at this as something I couldn’t train. And from there I began to realize some new opportunities for how to train response time which will be covered in Part 2 (I have to stop writing because Ellie is whining and wants to go outside).