Episode #37 Timing Matters

Timing is key in effective dog training. When we say timing we mean the second we mark the behavior we are looking for so our puppy understands exactly what they did to earn a reward. In this episode, Amy teaches you why timing matters, what good timing looks like and how to improve your own timing so your dog learns more quickly.

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speaker 0:   0:00
This is The Puppy Training Podcast Episode #37: Timing Matters. This podcast is designed to help you on your journey of becoming best friends through love and learning as you train your own dog from home, and I'm here to help you every step of the way. This is The Puppy Training Podcast, and I'm your host, Amy Jensen.  

speaker 0:   0:27
Hey, everyone, Happy New Year. I took some time off for the holidays. I know I've been gone for a couple of weeks, but I'm back, and I'm super excited to be back and to start this year off with our first episode of the podcast for the year. Thank you for listening to The Puppy Training Podcast. I so appreciate it. Whether you've been listening for a while or your brand new, I want to welcome you. I hope that you find answers to your puppy training questions here. That's my entire goal of creating this podcast is to let you listen on the go. We're all busy, we have places to be and things to do, but we all have this one thing in common that we want a dog to be part of our family and we want them to be well behaved. So I thought, 'why not do a podcast where I can share tips and tricks to help you be successful?' I do want to give a big shout out to Louie and his humans, Brian and Chrissy, I know you're listening. Thank you for being a listener and also thanks for joining the online puppy school in the program that I send out to families to help. I hope that that is working for you and I look forward to working with you this year.

speaker 0:   1:28
Today I want to talk about timing. When it comes to dog training, timing is one of those elements that's very critical that we get it right. Dogs are in-the-moment kinds of creatures, meaning every second counts. In order to better communicate with them what we're wanting, timing is critical. I want you to think of the arcade game where the light goes around in a circle and the object of the game is to stop the light precisely between two exact points. If you do, you get hundreds of tickets and you get those really awesome prizes is that everybody wants: the big stuffed animals and things like that. If you don't, maybe two or three tickets, which equates to a fruity or a tootsie roll. You can envision this game, the lights going around, and in order to win all the tickets that we're wanting to get the great big prize, we have to stop the light exactly between those two points, it has to be very precise. I'm not very good at it, I will tell you that right now, but I can get it very close. We want our timing to be such that we're marking a desired behavior precisely between those two points. That's a win-win and dog training. We asked our dog to do something, we wanna mark 'yes' or click with a clicker, whichever method you prefer, the second that he does something correctly. Very similar to that concept of the arcade game. The good news is in dog training, you probably have a little more of a window than you do in that game, but not much. I really want you to keep that game in the back of your mind as your training your puppy so that you can remember how important it is to mark the precise second that our puppy does something that we asked them to do.

speaker 0:   2:59
What do I mean by marking? Let's go there first. I want to make sure that everyone's clear on what I mean by marking a behavior. I use marker training to help my dogs learn more quickly what I want them to do. It's like the hot and cold game. I have something in my mind that I want my dog to do, and I could teach him to do it several different ways. We're gonna talk about that in just a second, the different methods of teaching your doctor do a behavior. But in terms of marking, I like to use a verbal marker 'yes'. The reason why is I always have it. It's always with me. Some people use clickers, and they're great, too. If you are a clicker trainer, that's phenomenal. Continue to use it. Some of you keep clickers around your homes or just easy, accessible places that you can hurry and grab one, that's great. For me, I prefer a verbal marker. It's easy to transfer to the rest of my family so that they can also mark 'yes', and dogs respond to it really well. I do make my 'yes' a little more different in tone between what I normally say in conversation, so it's a very poignant 'yes, yes, yes' so my dog understands that very quick tone, almost like a click. The idea is that it pinpoints that exact second that the dog does what we're wanting so that the dog then learns, 'oh, that's what got me my reward'.  

speaker 0:   4:10
Remember we mentioned that dogs are very instantaneous creatures. Let's give you some examples of what good timing would look like. Let's say, for example, you're gonna ask your dog to sit, and let's say that you have a brand new puppy, he doesn't know what sit means, and so I'm gonna take a food reward, put it on his nose, lower his head up so that he looks up at the food reward, and then his rear end naturally goes down to the floor. The second his rear end hits the floor, I want to be marking 'yes' and feed him a food reward. I mark and then the food reward comes. That marker is basically the bridge in between the behavior and when that food reward is delivered because that timing is so critical. So the marker allows us to be very precise with our timing, even though it might take me a second to get the treat out of my pouch or into my hand and that kind of thing. The marker is very important to help our timing be accurate. Now let's say that you ask your puppy to sit and you were a little bit slow. You're lowering your puppy up, his rear and hits the ground, he goes into the sit position, and then he turns his head to the left, and you finally say 'yes' or you give that click with the clicker. The puppy is actually thinking that the head turn to the left was what got him the reward. It is very important to be very precise about when you are marking and what you are marking so that your puppy learns more quickly. All right, here's another example and I hear about this a lot from people who are training puppies. They'll say 'I took my puppy outside the party, and then when he came back inside, I rewarded him. So I'm teaching my puppy that he needs to party outside, and when he comes and he gets a reward'. That's okay, other than the puppy is connecting the reward with coming back inside the house, not the actual behavior of going potty. In my program, I recommend we take our puppies out on leash, I have a food reward in my pocket, ready to go. We take them out into the yard where I want them to do their business, I say the cue: 'go potty', 'better hurry', whatever you'd like to say. When my puppy is finished, the second he finishes, I mark 'yes', and I give him a reward. That's marking the potty behavior because the timing of the marker came in the appropriate spot. 

speaker 0:   6:14
I want to talk a little bit about the different methods that we can use to train our puppies. I'm just gonna talk about two. There are several different ways, but let's talk about the main ones. There's luring and shaping. Luring is we have something in our hand that motivates our dog. It could be a toy, it could be food, something that motivates them. Food is generally a good go to because it's highly motivating to a dog. You take a piece of food, you can lure them into position, so move your hand around and get your puppy into a sit. Put your hand on the ground, see if he'll lie down, turn him in circles, see what he'll do to follow that food reward, that's basically luring. The second that you have your puppy into the position you're wanting, you mark 'yes', and that's how we start a brand new behavior. We lure and mark and reward. We do that several times, and then we can transition. Get rid of the luring. Now the food is hidden behind us or in a pouch behind us or in a pocket somewhere, it's not in our hand, and then we can start to cue puppy to do this behavior, and the reward comes after. Marking that puppy's behavior accurately in the beginning, as we start to lure, will allow us to not have to lure so long. A lot of people worry that they'll be bribing their dog, and then their dog will only work for food. If your timing is accurate and you can train your puppy quickly to do these behaviors, you can then transition from luring into simply rewarding after he does what you've asked him to do, which is what we want, because then our dog is not food-dependent or toy-dependent or reward-dependent. Basically, make sure that your timing is very precise. You're marking the second your puppy does something you're wanting. He'll learn more quickly that behavior, and you can move through the training process at a much faster rate. The other method I use a lot in my program is shaping, This is similar to the hot and cold game. In dog training, it looks like breaking down a final behavior into small, easily achievable steps and I'm going to be marking each little step until we finally get to the end-all goal, where and then going to jackpot my puppy. When I say jackpot, I mean to give him 5 to 10 treats versus one. An example of shaping would be mat training. I like my puppies to learn to go lie down on the bed, and if they do so I'll reward them. I would start this by staring at the mat, my puppy standing right next to me, he's watching me stare at the mat. Every time my puppy looks at the mat, I mark 'yes', and I give him a food reward. He looks at the mat, 'yes', food reward. Looks at the mat, 'yes', food reward. After I've done that several times, I'm going to wait for a better behavior, one that's closer to what I'm actually wanting him to do it, which would be to lie down on the mat. I've already rewarded him looking at the map, what would be next? I would reward a paw on the mat. If he puts one paw on the mat, that's a 'yes', reward, 'yes', reward. I would do that a couple of times, and then I would wait again and see if he'll give me two paws on the map before a mark 'yes'. That 'yes' is helping him get closer and closer to the end-all goal, where eventually he puts all four paws on the mat, maybe he'll sit, I might like that for a couple of times, and then after he's done that several times, I'll wait again and see if he'll give me a down position, then I'm definitely jackpot in at that point. Again, the timing of that jackpot is critical. The second he plops his little belly down on that mat, that's a 'yes', and it has to be super precise because the whole time, he's been trying to guess what we're trying to get him to do, and if we don't mark that and behavior precisely, he'll be a little bit confused. It's not the end of the world, so if you're feeling right now that your timing is terrible, it's okay. I'm simply doing this podcast today to try to instill in you a desire to get better at your timing and then realize that by practicing and getting better with your timing, your puppy's going to respond better to training.  

speaker 0:   9:53
Finally, I want to just give a few tips on how we can improve our timing. Let's say that this is something that you might be struggling with. A lot of us do. This takes time and practice. This is not something that happens overnight. I'm continually improving my timing. I'm always working on it and keeping it in the back of my mind and asking myself, 'how is it? Do I need to improve it? Where can I improve it?' So here's a game that you can play. It's that hot and cold game so kind of what we just described with the shaping behavior of the mat training, but you can play this with humans. Puppy aside, give your puppy a break, let him chew a Kong, or a Benebone or something while you play a game. I want you to get a bowl of rewards. It could be bananas, blueberries, Skittles, M&Ms, whatever motivates you and another person to play this game, and one person's going to be the trainer, one person's going to be the student. The trainer gets to decide an action. It might be something such as circling a chair and sitting down on the chair. Then the students gonna come into the room, there's no talking allowed. The trainer is then going to shape the person to do the behavior of circling the chair and sitting on it without speaking. You're gonna have to break this down into little behaviors. It's hot and cold. As the person gets warmer to what we're wanting them to do, we mark 'yes' and give them a reward, and we do it over and over again until they finally get that jackpot because they circle the chair and they sat down. Go ahead and try it. It's pretty tricky, but I guarantee your timing will get better and better because you'll see on that person's face their confusion level, and you're going to try and get your timing as precise as possible because you can't speak. You can't explain to them or describe to them what it is you're wanting, which is very similar to how these dogs are feeling. These puppies don't know English. We're teaching them vocabulary, but currently, if it's a brand new puppy, they don't know it, and so that timing helps them learn that more quickly.  

speaker 0:   11:44
All right, I pretty much talked your ears off for several minutes, so I hope it's helpful. I hope you all go out this week and better your timing, really work on it, focus on it and watch and be amazed at how much faster your dogs pick up on behaviors that you're wanting them to do. Have a wonderful week, happy training, and I'll talk to you next week. If you have a question about anything you heard on this podcast or any other between question, visit my site, BaxterandBella.com.