Deaf Dalmation Dog Training
This video clip is a follow up to my previous blog on deaf dog training. The featured clip follows a training session I did with a client with a Dalmation he had adopted as a one-year old. He had been rehomed by his previous family as they didn’t realize he was deaf and as such were unable to effectively manage him.
When it comes to dog training, whether deaf or not, management is of paramount importance. We market our dog training, not as dog training, but rather as dog owner training. Dog training, whether it’s deaf dog training, police dog training or any dog training relys heavily on the owner being able to properly maintain the training. We had a client today that enrolled his young doberman into our program. He had purchased this dog as an adult dog with training from a vendor in Europe, however he knew very little about maintaining this dog’s training and as such the dog was running the house.
This is one of the reasons we provide our clients with lifetime follow-up and assistance with their dog’s training. We tell everyone that our training is good for the life of the dog, both in the application of the training playing a role throughout the dog’s life, but in also providing help and assistance through all of the stages and problems the dog’s behaviour may present. Of course real-life intervenes sometimes and we realize that dog owners are people and may slide in the management of their dog’s training, which we are easily able to assist with because of the lasting results of our training system. Dog’s do not forget their training, but rather learn that their training doesn’t apply unless the owner is reinforcing it. This is the nature of all living creatures.
I relate much of what we do to human behaviour because we can all relate to that. In terms of driving and a police officer’s role in maintaining compliance with traffic laws. If police stopped ticketing people and reinforcing trafific laws obviously the drivers out there would begin taking advantage of that and start breaking laws left right and center. This is true for dogs ignoring owner’s requests. Reinforcement is necessary to ensure the dog continues to stick to their training.
This video clip features an example of one or our dog training lessons and shows how the owner is able to get the feel for our training system and start maintaining the dog training right away. This particular clip again shows the training from start to finish. This dog had NO prior remote training done and the training he had received was minimal. Limited to simple commands inside the owner’s home. Certainly not any sort of distraction training as you can see from this clip, it is shot outdoor, and of course once the dog gets the basic hang of things, I bring one of my dogs out to gain that valuable distraction training.
Below are some comments I posted to our dog training forum in response to an individual’s questions sent to me about the deaf dog training in this video.
Thank you for contacting us.
I’m responding to your questions regarding the video clip of the deaf dalmation. I’m not entirely clear on what you’re questions are, but I’ll try my best.
The clip covers the entire training session from start to finish with some of the repetitive exercises cut for timing. What you see in the clip is basically what the training session covered showing the initial handling of the dog prior to training, then the dog being handled by the trainer and taught some basic skills. From there the owner is then brought into the picture to learn to handle the dog, and from there it’s repetition of a few different exercises.
One of the things that needs to be understood about training and in particular training deaf dogs is that commands/hand signals (cues) are only useful from a training standpoint if the dog understands that a specific behaviour (e.g. sitting) is beneficial so the cue can be associated with it. In the case of a deaf dog hand signals are only useful of the dog is looking at you. The first phase of training is to teach the dog awareness for the handler as well as build in the positive association with specific behaviours. This was the focus of the first session.
With our training approach the remote system is utilized to be a cue for the dog to look to the handler, however until the dog understands this cue there is no integration of hand signals. What is essentially happening is we are developing the cued response to the remote by showing the dog we want them to sit/come. In other words, when the dog feels the remote tap they are learning that the handler is trying to talk to them. Hand signals have the same affect as verbal commands in that they have no meaning to an untrained dog. Certain body positions however are naturally communicative for dogs as they use canine body language cues. Exmaples of this are crouching down to invite a dog into the handler, moving directly into a dog to push them back, etc. Physical guidance is a cue just like a hand signal, except dogs will intuitively respond to it. In this phase of training we are using these cues to communicate with the dog as it is easier for the dog to understand.
Once the dog understands that we are talking to them the level of attention begins to build in the dog as you can see as you watch the video. The dog becomes more and more aware of the handler as he walks away and begins to follow without physical guidance. At the point where the session ended, the dog was aware enough to start overlaying hand signals with the actions which is seen in the video too.
I hope that answers some of your questions and feel free to contact me if you have any further questions.
Sincerely,
Ashton Fitz-Gerald
