By Nicole Rhodes
9/6/15
In the early nineteen hundreds Ivan Pavlov discovered, almost by accident during his experiments on the digestion process, that dogs learned to salivate at the appearance of his lab assistant even when they weren't being fed. He subsequently did experiments associating various stimuli, most famously the sound of a bell, with food. Pavlovian Conditioning or Classical Conditioning was born.
When we are training a dog to follow our commands we are creating associations to verbal and physical cues. Besides the aptitude of the dog, the moment when we give a cue or our timing of the cue, will shape how easily the dog will learn something. Saying words (our commands) at the wrong time or during a behavior we don't want can wind up teaching the dog things we didn't actually mean to teach! Often when someone's dog is doing the wrong thing when they give a command it's because either the dog doesn't understand what they want, the dog thinks obedience is optional, or they taught the dog the wrong association to begin with.
For example, lets say you want to teach your dog to 'come by' and you push him around that direction while telling him 'come by, come by' but instead of doing a correct flank, staying off as he goes around, he slashes past the stock, maybe biting one or two as he goes by. Do this enough times and you've taught your dog that 'come by' means to crash and burn into the stock, while maybe sliding around to the other side, until told to down. I taught my first couple of dogs a variety of crash and burn commands. Whoops!
If you want to find out what your dog thinks a command really means, stand still with your hands in your pockets a distance from the dog and stock, give your dog a command. What he does without physical input or guidance from you is what he thinks that command means. Some dogs don't even register that the words mean much or they only have meaning as part of a physical cue (you lift your hand or stand in a certain place). This is why when we start building distance between us and the dog and stock sometimes the things we thought our dog was good at start falling apart or he doesn't seem to know the command anymore- the dog was relying on our body position to tell him what the words meant.
Once a dog has made an undesirable association it's much harder to undo and teach the dog the correct association. If the dog is consistently offering an incorrect behavior and it is the same behavior each time, we know the dog has learned to associate this behavior with the command, and sometimes it can be easier to teach the dog a different word for the action you are wanting than to change the association of the original word. So if we've really screwed up our 'come by' command we might just go ahead and change it to 'go by' or 'left' or a whistled command instead. Either which way, consistency is key.
So now we've established that we need to make sure that our dog is performing an action correctly before we give that action a label, how do we do that? Lets start with a very simple action: the 'down.' Down is straightforward, the dog should lay on his belly and not move, but sometimes dogs may offer avoidance behaviors when told to down. We've all seen dogs that when told to down they cringe or turn their heads. This generally happens for a couple different reasons. One, the down command was used incorrectly as a correction to stop behavior the handler didn't want rather than giving a correction. Or two, the dog was taught down in a manner that was stressful to it: the handler standing on the lead with the dog flip flopping around struggling to get up while be told 'down.'
The first reason is pretty simple although sometimes hard to practice. We've all been in those frustrating situations where we're just like "lie down dammit! aldkfja;ldjf!" but if we're training it's good to keep this in mind. If you use down to correct what your dog is doing wrong then he's not actually being told what he's doing wrong. You are either making him mechanical by just telling him down, then go here, go there and you will have to continue to tell him what to do. Or you're telling him down in an angry voice and the dog is thinking yikes, something bad is going on but I'm not really sure what it is, and what generally happens is the dog becomes anxious over the down command rather than whatever it was he was actually wrong about. So if the dog is doing something wrong, lets say he is walking in way too fast, give him a verbal correction. I use 'ahh!' or 'heyyy!' and if this dog is just learning I'm probably close to him and can pressure him to slow with my body language as well. That way I let him know he's wrong and do what I need to help him be right. He might slow himself on the correction, and eventually not need corrected, and if not then we give him a command but at least we are clear about it.
As far as the second, there's nothing wrong with using the standing on the leash method but I'd suggest staying silent during the initial confusion and struggle so he doesn't associate the words you're saying with this scary part. Just stand on the lead until the dog lays and relaxes. Some dogs take the pressure of being forced into laying on their belly in stride and are okay with it but others may find it scary, stressful, and it may create anxiety and avoidance behaviors in them. After he's relaxed, tell him 'okay' and let him up, praise him, then start over. When you can start to lift your foot to put it on the lead and the dog lays down you can start adding the command 'down' just before you lift your foot and then slightly lengthening the time between the command and lifting your foot. Pretty quick the dog will learn that after he hears that word he is going to be forced down and will begin to preemptively follow the command to avoid the negative stimulus or correction of the foot.
Going back to flanks or teaching directions on stock, the first step in teaching them is to get the action we want to look pretty close to the end result we desire before we start labeling it. We can do this by using body language, praise and corrections, to shape how our dog moves around and interacts with the stock. The most important part is our dog's attitude, if his head isn't in the right place then his body won't be either. We want a relaxed, thinking, dog. With the correct attitude our dog is in the best state to learn what we are trying to teach but we, the handler, also have to have a clear picture of what it is we are trying to convey. To get the flank command we want, we need to know what that flank looks like, what action we are satisfied with the dog doing in response to the command.
When we talk about a "proper" flank, it means that the dog moves around the stock laterally at the same distance from the stock as he started. It is a command to re position the dog around the stock. If the dog is facing the stock, when given a flank, the dog should turn his head and shoulder to begin the flank. If he doesn't then he will be sliding in closer to the stock rather than moving laterally. We can teach a dog different modifications of a flank by changing the tone or speed in which we say the words or whistle. If 'come by' means flank around to the left, stretching the words into 'coooommme byyyyyy' can mean to flank that direction but go wider rather than holding distance, or 'come come come!!!' can be faster and in closer, or just 'come' for the dog to move a short distance. The short distance flank is sometimes referred to as a 'half-flank.'
Proper flanks are important for competing in sheep and cattle trials but they aren't always necessary in regular farm and ranch work. Some people use flanks just to tell a dog to head in a certain direction and don't worry about how he gets there. Your dog will flank as proper as you insist he be. Just as with any other command, he will follow it as much as you insist he follow it. The important thing is being as consistent as you can.
