Functional Conditioning

Scent drives hunting behavior that dogs utilize to both identify and locate prey, though sight and sound also play a very important role. However, what is fundamentally difficult is not so much refining any one of these inherent functions since they are innately capable of utilizing them already. It is how to prompt them to jump-start a tracking task. The key to teaching your dog to learn any command is by respecting the learning process of your dog. Primarily dogs learn from other dogs, but if that is not workable, they can also learn from us through a process called conditioning. Assuming that you have already succeeded in teaching your dog the basic commands: sit, down, and stay. You have already been engaging in what is commonly known as Operant Conditioning. This conditioning leads to a learning process that has something to do with behavior and response, or cause and effect schooling. There is this other conditioning called Classical Conditioning that pairs two stimuli, not two behaviors under the operant conditioning. Since this is carried out by stimuli, it somehow also accomplishes another stimuli; meaning involuntary behavior. To illustrate, when a dog smells, sees or hears prey, its immediate reaction is to hunt it. This has been indicated in my previous article on switching prey with artificial toys by waggling it to catalyze their hunt stimuli instead of just giving it to them like a hand out. 

With these two types of conditioning in mind, you can now break down your scent, sight and sound conditioning suitably. Scent conditioning would mean letting your dog get familiar with the scent of an object, preferably its favorite food or special treat to ooze it to hunt. This exercise must be regularly repeated on a daily basis or until it can adequately associate it as prey. What must take place also is to apply the operant   conditioning every time it succeeds in locating the desired object; through praise or a pat, to express your approval of that behavior. Retrieving nonetheless is conducted in a similar manner except that the goal is how to associate you as their lair, or a place of retreat, or a peace and quiet hideout. Unlike larger hunting animals, lions and bears eat their prey where it falls, smaller animals however, like canines carry their prey back to their lair, where they can eat it safely. Therefore, the best place to start is to determine first where your dog’s lair is. Station yourself where your dog’s lair is then toss an object to let it bring its prey back to its lair. Toss a verbal command shortly thereafter so it can associate it with the task at hand while you slowly move away from the lair, and repeat the exercise until you become its lair. To succeed in conditioning its retrieving instinct, you have already succeeded in ‘sight marking’ after tossing an object to be retrieved, ‘Blind Retrieve’ becomes the next necessary conditioning to enable your dog to take distant cues from you, after it has been sent off. In other words, this is you, who knows where the retrieving object rests and the need to guide your dog; from a distance, to help it locate the object and bring it back to you. This involves sight and sound from a distance where you will need hand signals and a whistle for attention and correction. You can start by making this drill either easier or more difficult by simply shortening the time gap before sending your dog to track and retrieve, and lengthening the distance between you, the dog and the retrieve.     

These conditionings will mean a whole lot if you wish to have complete control in accomplishing any task with your dog outdoors, while off leash, or any sporting activity you wish to engage in.

Nothing but a drill

A dog’s temperament is largely based on its instinctive trait, but for all that, its environment also influences its behavior. Training can help a dog cope with new experiences, but it cannot change its instinctive trait. This in a nutshell is the foundational bedrock of the good, and of course, the partial training methods that is at loggerhead in our modern world of dog training. In other words, incomplete training is customarily the building up of its emotional behavior only, which either leans towards positive or a punitive inducements. However, good training is for the most part, a kind of training to sway a dog to momentarily bridle its prey instinct for better coordination to catch a prey.

A dog’s behavioral aspect primarily rests on stimuli, and since it does not have logic like us; to start with, it is consigned to instinct. Now, the role of stimulus in a dog involves its social interaction, which guides it to action, but the force of its instinct is largely responsible to enable it to make a perfect persuasion or a balanced one. This is what it means to have a forbearing or a coping temperament. It is essentially a dog’s general attitude toward its trainer and as a result of all the other factors that it absorbs while in action. Therefore, what this involves is repeated exercises to gradually shape up its forbearing temperament; it is to condition the dog to mark those appropriate behaviors associated with the cues that the trainer gives while hunting. This training exercise somehow, is similar to the reason why people exercise. Exercise is an important part of a healthy lifestyle, it is not a lifestyle in and of itself, but it conditions you to have an aptitude to succeed in whatever daily affairs you have in life. Hence, a dog with a forbearing temperament that has been alerted by those exercises will mean a better behaved dog in the house, a better dog when you walk it in a park, and a better dog in any sporty activity that you want it to engage in.

A good piece of advice when exercising a dog is to first take an account of the kinds of activity that is involved in your hunting expedition with your dog. Next is to break them down into several exercises and associate them with what kind of cues to give to alert your dog to respond appropriately. The whole activity must be broken down into increments and reduced further into smaller increments to make it easier for the dog to get an overly simplified performance. You must use the same verbal expression or cues so that the dog can easily associate this with the previous exercise it was taught to do. However, when you move on to a new exercise, you must spend a few moments working on exercises your dog already understood before beginning to practice a new one. The main reason for this is to ensure that your dog is in an ideal condition to learn the new exercise. It is also very important that you finish your training sessions with one or two of the exercises he enjoys the most, then follow it up with a brief play session. The idea is that dogs tend to associate the pleasure at the end of an exercise as its sweeping deposition. Furthermore, it is very critical to know that it only takes about 1.5 seconds for the dog to accurately associate the cause and effect of an experience. This means that to teach your dog to do anything beyond this period is not only futile, it will also just confuse your dog or make it learn something that is entirely different from the thing that you want it to learn. Consistency and reinforcement given either during or immediately after a good response, must also be given due consideration if you want to send the same message firmly.  Happy training to all.