Update on Shop Dog Training

Posted at November 27, 2009 // Clicker Training

I recently posted about the training I have been working on with my two shop dogs, Trooper and Ammo. My original plan was asking them to sit quietly when someone walked into my shop. It started off rather well – but Ammo eventually started barking even more in order to get his “reward” for then sitting. So I decided to take a different approach.

I read up on clicker trainer, Karen Pryor’s, method of teaching opposite cues. In my case I was going to use the Speak and Quiet commands to teach Ammo to be silent when someone entered my shop. I decided that working with Ammo first would be best, as Trooper’s standing on the gate is not as frustrating to me as Ammo’s barking when customers enter.

So last Friday night I set out to train Ammo – starting at home. I was worried if I did it at the shop (and did it wrong) he would just end up barking all the time, and I didn’t want him to associate the shop with any sort of barking. I sat Ammo down infront of me and made a knocking sound on the table – which immediately set him off barking. I clicked him, gave him a treat and as he was eating (in silence) I lurched forward towards him, he sort of lifted one leg and looked at me – I then clicked and rewarded. We repeated this for a while until I was fairly certain he had the gist. I then added some cues to it. For barking I said SPEAK, for silence I said QUIET. I had originally started using BARK as the barking cue, but I quickly realized it sounded too much like Ammo’s BANG BANG cue where he plays dead. When he started flopping around on the ground instead of barking I quickly changed the cue to speak. So we did this process for a while longer then it was time to test it.

I had my husband go outside and re-enter the house (thus creating a situation for Ammo to bark). As soon as he started barking I yelled QUIET. Ammo looked confused for a moment but immediately stopped barking. Click and treats again. We did this a few more times and each time I waited a little longer to reward him. When we were done I carried the treats and clicker around with me for the rest of the night. Anytime Ammo barked at something (usually any noise will set him off) I tried my QUIET cue. I occasionally asked him for SPEAK as well.

The next day it was time to try it at the shop. I opted to have my parent’s keep Trooper for the day so I could work on Ammo without Trooper interfering. The first customer came and Ammo let out a bark – I quickly yelled QUIET from the back of the shop and Ammo came running to me and sat at my feet…what a good puppy. We continued with this throughout the day – and a few times he actually didn’t bark at all (he got rewarded for this big time).

We did and have had a few slip ups where Ammo just couldn’t control himself and it took me a little longer to get him to listen…afterall he is a Dachshund, and if I have learned anything about the breed – its how stubborn they can be. And man can they be stubborn. Below is a video of Ammo “speaking” notice how at the end I try to knock on a table (which normally would of set him off barking) and he behaves nicely by not barking at all.

Here is a video of the QUIET command:

Overall I think the method is working fairly well. I’m not sure if I will ever eliminate his barking in the shop, but at least now I have a semi-foolproof method to silence him. I’m just going to keep rewarding when he does it correctly and hopefully over time he will only get better (fingers crossed). Next I will have to tackle Trooper’s jumping on the gate!

So how about you? Has anyone else trained any opposite commands like this? Did it work for you? Any other suggestions for me?

-KD
www.ponypaintings.com

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