How we train dogs to listen around distractions

hey everyone my with Hamilton dog training in this video I'm want to show you how we train dogs to listen around distractions we're going to cover the mistake that people make mistake one then I'm going to give you the solution then we'll cover mistake two and I'll give you the solution to that and throughout the video I'll show you examples with an actual untrained dog that way you can see everything applied to a dog so you can apply it with your dog at home so what's the first mistake well this is probably the most common

mistake that I see people make but it's increasing the distractions to soon and on the surface this sounds incredibly obvious like there's no way you could be making that mistake right but a lot of times owners do this without even realizing it it's completely unintentional and they don't even realize they're doing it so let me give you an example when we first started training Arrow about a week into the training he knows all of the basic stuff right he knows the loose leash walking he knows sit he knows down he knows pressure to position like

he knows all of the basics so I'm thinking okay great now it's time to take this dog on a structured walk a structured walk is basically a walk but it has rules right can't pull me on the leash can't react at dog can't react at whatever got to listen to commands that sort of thing right so we take him on a structured walk I'm thinking this is a perfect environment the neighborhood is super low distraction there's nothing going on on it's a quiet residential neighborhood no people out no dogs out like this is a perfect

environment to to do the structured walks that's what I'm thinking so we take the dog out and at the beginning of the walk hyperfixated on the environment he's scanning everything everything every little thing in the environment he's hyper aware of his nose to the ground he's tracking the smells all of that stuff right and so periodically throughout the walk I give him a command sit or down and I see what he does he failed probably 80 to 90% of those commands and what I mean by failed is I give him the command down and he

fails to hit the position then I have to make pressure to get him in the position so that's what I mean by failed so after that walk I'm like okay he failed like 80 90% of the commands maybe he just this is a new environment right new walk like he's never been on this route before so so maybe like over time he'll desensitize to it right so but we take them out again same walk same thing fills 80 90% of the commands so I'm like okay let's take them out one more time we take him

out again the next day same thing fails 80 90% of the commands so now I'm like all right we need to take a step back in the training okay and this is a good general rule for you guys if you're ever out training your dog and your dog is more wrong than right you probably need to take a step back in the training all right if your dog is ever more wrong than right you probably need to take a step back so I knew after that after attempting the structured walk in what I thought was

a low distraction environment I knew I needed to take a step back because this is way too distracting for it right and here's the solution here's what we did we need to create a ladder a lad of compliance all right we need to create a ladder of compliance and this is what Arrow needed badly okay so a lad of compliance this is what I call it I don't know exactly what the behavioral psychology uh term is for this so if any of you guys know let me know in the comments please I would greatly appreciate

it but essentially what this looks like is we needed to take a step back for arrow in the training and create this ladder of compliance now what does that mean well the reason why Arrow was failing that walk is because he had literally no concept of listening to a command outside in the environment around distractions it like wasn't even a possibility in his head he didn't even know that was a thing that was possible like being outside in the environment and having to sit foreign foreign like foreign concept right being in a smell mid smell

and having to down foreign right never has he ever experienced something like that that sort of obligation in the training right he just didn't comprehend that he just didn't understand that was a possibility which is fine all we have to do is now we have to create a ladder of compliance with this dog so here's what it looks like the first step is as low of a distraction environment as you could possibly imagine for most people that's going to be inside your house inside your living room inside your kitchen whatever right low distraction as it

can possibly get so what you do here is first you make control here right your dog should be able to hit all of the positions extremely reliably they should sit down come heal everything should be perfect inside this environment here okay and what we build is we start building a history of compliance so the start dog starts getting used to complying with you in this environment then we step up so what's the next step well the next step for you might be your backyard it might be your driveway it might be your garage it might

be the hallway outside of your apartment door right whatever it is that next step for us it was the backyard okay that's the next step of the ladder for Arrow inside the house master that now we got to master the backyard once we've got the backyard okay next step front yard front yard all right front yard we're just going to work on the loose leash walking we're going to do the basic obedience commands all of the basic stuff in the front yard okay specifically the driveway okay the next for us was the culdesac just the

circle just the circle not anything further nothing just the circle okay culdesac then after that the adjacent Street to the culdesac right the ones that are connected to it so just walk out of the CAC take a right okay walk out of the CAC take a left and that's it just those roads there okay so that's the next step and then we start branching out further and further and further than there and you can use your imagination to fill in the the steps here okay so creating a ladder of compliance that is what we needed

to do with arrow okay we needed to show him that yes he must listen here in the low distraction environment in inside the house then he also must must listen in the backyard that was difficult that was difficult that took work before he was reliable in the backyard right then the front yard that took work right then the kisac again and then we have to level up level up level up okay and now that we've done this now he can go on the same structured walk and he listens he's successful 80 90% of the time

right and so it's a complete flip all because we took a step back in the training and created this ladder of compliance right because what ends up happening guys is you start developing this Habit in the dog The Habit is when I give you a command you listen to the command it's just the default response it's just the default so inside the house it always happens inside the backyard always happens living room always happens whatever front yard cold the sack everything it just always I always comply every time I hear a command I always comply

I get the reward whatever right and so you build up you step up every step one step at a time up this ladder of compliance until you have built a history of compliance and then that history of compliance becomes the Habit it becomes the default and that will serve you once you up distractions even further right so again I don't know what the behavioral psychology term is for this if any of you know please let me know in the comments but this is what I'm choosing to call it for now because it does it is

like a ladder so create a ladder of compliance with your dog what we did the mistake we made was we skipped steps I thought the neighborhood walk was a low distraction walk but it wasn't in reality I skipped like five steps that I shouldn't have and that's why he was failing once I went back fixed each of those steps and then go on the walk again boom now we have success on the walk so sometimes that's what you need to do with your dog is just to create that ladder of compliance in incrementally increasing distraction

levels okay all right so that's solution one all right so moving on now to the second mistake that people make with this is they don't allow the dog to learn from mistakes and this is key guys this is so key whenever you're teaching anything to the dog any Behavior or whatever it is it's so important that the dog learns from their mistakes because dogs just like with humans just like with kids you learn so much through mistakes mistakes are a critical part of learning it's so important and a lot of people they prevent their dogs

from making mistakes in the training they prevent it and this is going to sound very contradictory to some common advice that you hear lot in the dog training World which is always set your dog up for Success right always set your dog up for success and what you'll find in dog training is there are a lot of contradictions right because that is true you should always set your dog up for success in fact the previous thing that I was just talking about is setting your dog up for Success right and so what do I mean

by this allowing them to make mistakes right doesn't that sound like you're setting them up for failure yes you you are you are and that's the thing with dog training is those contradictions exist and so you're going to have to learn as you're growing as a Handler how to juggle those contradictions that's part of the art of dog training so what do I mean by this how do we do it how do we allow the dog to learn from their mistakes so the mistake is basically like people prevent their dogs from making mistakes they try

to avoid it if they can maybe subconsciously for example let's say you're working on a down stay and and they're they're kind of afraid their dog could pop up at any moment and so they act in ways in accordance to that and they try to prevent the dog from getting to from making that mistake from breaking up popping up they kind of preemptively come back or War the dog very quickly then release the dog because they're afraid of their dog making that mistake okay that's what I mean by that now the solution to this is

to allow mistakes and I'm going to call this add the 3DS all right the 3DS baby something else you guys maybe have heard of before but we use this in the training for sure so allow mistakes add the 3DS what do I mean by that well when we are teaching a behavior once the dog has known once the dog knows the behavior like they know it they know sit they know down we've taught the we taught the behavior we taught it with positive reinforcement we taught it with negative reinforcement they know sit they know down

they know Cal they know heal they know Place whatever it is now it's time to add the 3 DS okay the 3DS are as followed d d d we got distance we got duration and we got distractions all right so for example when we are teaching something like a down for instance in the beginning we just teach the down we just teach the dog how to hit the position then we start adding the 3DS we make it gradually more difficult for the dog now we tell them to down and we ask for a little bit

of duration the dog must now hold it for a bit right and in the beginning you want to set your dog up for Success right so in the beginning you might hold it for only 5 Seconds tell the doctor down good good down CH and then reward and then release the dog right so in the beginning you make it quite easy distance you tell the dog to down good good down you take one step back then one step forward CH reward right so you make it very easy one step then two steps then three steps

then four steps and so on right now to give you an example of allowing your dog to make mistakes at some point when you are adding these 3DS your dog is going to make a mistake and that's a part of the training it's a critical critical critical piece of the training at some point you're adding distance duration distractions at some point you tell your dog to down you step back maybe you step four feet back your dog breaks in that moment you've got to Mark the behavior ah come back make pressure down good down and

now you repeat so your dog just made that mistake and they learned from that mistake okay when he tells me to down if I get up oh I get corrected I meant with pressure I have to go back in the down very good so now we have to reset down good good good down now instead of stepping four feet back I'm just going to step two feet back then come back good CH reward the dog now I'm going to step three feet back good come back chip reward the dog right I'm not going to prevent

the dog from breaking I'm not going to prevent them from making a mistake I'm not going to be scared of them making a mistake if they make a mistake they make a mistake and they're going to learn from the mistake it's super important guys and then once we take a step back okay 2 feet three feet now we go back to four good come back CH reward the dog good down right so you see mistakes are a critical piece of this of the training when you're doing these behaviors so we make the distance make the

duration distractions this is another good one so for example with arrow this dude had like zero impulse control outside like zero like you just see something doesn't see something does it everything everything anything anything that he wanted to do like he just did it immediately that was that was him when he first came to us zero impulse control outside so we had to really work on that like really hard we had to teach this dog to control his impulses control his own internal drives and desires just contain himself hold it don't act on everything you

want to do the moment you see something or want to do it right you've got to control yourself so we used a lot of this in the training for example Le you tell them to down we step away that's impulse control dog has to control themselves to stay in the position then I started adding some distractions in the beginning I make the distractions pretty easy so for example I have him in a down I step away from him and I quickly move just quickly I kind of do like a little Flinch right and then he

breaks up he breaks he breaks the down he pops right up come back pressure down good down and then I standing in front of him flinch and then he stays down good come back we Ward him in position and then I kind of do a little bunny hop to the side he stays in the down good good down controlling those impulses right in the beginning like this was extremely difficult for him like that that those like sudden movements even though it's just me moving around it's not even anything else like that's very distracting for him

then I started making a little harder I would kind of walk to the side then I would run right in front of him right then I walk kind of behind behind him and I'd run right past him so you see you make it harder and harder and harder and if the dog fails if they make a mistake you just show them the consequence of that of that behavior and then that's it and they learn from those mistakes so we can utilize adding these artificial distractions that's what we call them adding these artificial distractions in the

training and this will help prepare your dog for when they encounter real distractions in the real world right that's why in week two of the training like in week one of the training of our training program in week one we just train the behaviors we just teach the behaviors and in week two all we do is just add these artificial distractions everything you can think of anything you can think of anything that you could possibly think of to get your dog to break the position we do that so that way when you go out in

the real world and they're encountered with real distractions they've already exercised that impulse control muscle Arrow needed that impulse control muscle he was lacking severely right so we had to build that impulse control muscle in them we had to combine that with creating that ladder of compliance that I was talking about earlier and then we start making some progress around distractions all right guys so we're going to work on a little bit of impulse control with arrow now that he's a little tired from the session we're going to just take advantage of this on his

place command and what I want to do is just work on some 3DS some distance duration distractions all right so we just got some artificial distractions here good boy good place and we're just going to throw him around he's on his leash if he comes off I'm just going to Mark with at and then use pressure to get him back on but see I'll start out pretty easy just moving the ball a little bit in his vicinity good job good place buddy and then I'll gradually make it harder and harder but this is really important

these artificial distractions because this right here this impulse control muscle that he's exercising is going to transfer to everything when he's outside in public around real world distractions and I'm having him do obedience around dogs and squirrels and all that stuff he will have already exercised this muscle good boy good place good good job Arrow good good [Applause] place controlling himself good place very good this was really hard for Arrow when we first started he literally couldn't do it he'd break every time but you see it's getting better and better good job cuz if he

can't do this right if he can't stay on his place board while we kick this ball in front how is he going to stay in obedience when we pass dogs that are running around and playing where he sees a squirrel run up a tree right how's he going to hold obedience in that situation if you can't do this he won't be able to he's going to make some catastrophic mistakes and then we'll have to make a whole lot of pressure to keep him in obedience good but if you can just build this muscle now it's

so much easier doesn't mean he won't make mistakes when we start working in the real world but it does mean he will generalize it a whole lot faster good boy good place good good place good job buddy controlling yourself very good good job buddy good place now he's standing and situation much more prone to a mistake good good place good nice place buddy standing is a whole lot less stable than a down that's okay ah place I think he said you heard me say okay but I didn't mean that good what I meant to say

was if he wants to put himself in a stand that's okay as long as he's on his place ah ah Place good there took one step off we'll do it again now I wouldn't be doing this if I wasn't reasonably sure he wasn't going to come off and reasonably sure that I could make negative reinforcement with just the verbal to keep them on so keep in mind this isn't day one of doing this right good good job like obviously if you know your dog is going to break then hold the leash right have someone else

help you out tie tie them behind something good good place buddy good place I know for Arrow that's his weakness is like the sudden small little quick prey drive movements in front of his in front of him close to him close proximity that gets him going he can barely control that in himself and so we just work on that all right we'll do one more we'll do one more and then he's good good boy good place nice job man nice job now the really important thing is once I release him we are not going to

go and engage with those things that would be like if you were having your dog ignore squirrels and stuff and then all of a sudden you release them to go to the squirrels okay okay good job buddy so that's it for this video I hope it helps let me know in the comments if you guys like this style of video and I can continue making more of them if you want um but yeah let me know what you guys think