Little Dogs

Sometimes it feels like I have a herd of chihuahuas - and sometimes I actually do have a herd! But I am not really a "small dog person". My dog before Mole was 110 lbs. My dog before that was 30 lbs. How I ended up with two dogs under 10 lbs still escapes me. How I ended up with Abby I will never know . . .

But despite my (mis)fortune of having small dogs, I have to say that I have become a much better trainer because of them. I have always had a knack for training the hard headed dogs because I knew how to be heavy handed without having it destroying our relationship or their psyche. But you can't do that with small dogs. Most small dogs start off fragile and a raised voice or a cross-eyed look can completely shatter them.

When you are training a small dog, you have to leave all of your own baggage at the gate. Your day's frustrations will travel down the leash and can severely impair a training session. You need to learn to have the right level of enthusiasm for praise without being too exuberant that you scare the dog. You also have to have a better relationship with your dog before you begin training. You have to have an unbreakable trust from your dog so that it will do what you ask despite the surroundings. You also need to have more voice control over your dog as a leash jerk could easily injure your friend. You also need to be more creative. Teaching a large dog to down on the floor is easy, but it can take many steps (and cushions) before a small dog will even consider it.

I learned something else about small dogs today too - MY small dog in particular: don't use a negative marker word in training. I have always yammered away at my dogs while training. I have many marker words - some "positive" and some "negative" or "no reward" markers. Today my trainer told me to stop using negative/no reward markers (NRM) with my dog. Even though my marker words have no other meaning then you did something wrong, she still thinks that it impedes training (in agility). Mole doesn't like to be "wrong" and becomes visibly stressed when I use that in training - I have never noticed this myself, but it was obvious when it was pointed out to me. When I used the NRM mole was less likely to do an object that he performed many times before. He was "afraid" of being wrong and instead reverted back to his "default" behavior, refusing to try anything else.

I found this to be very interesting and put it into context of learning something new myself. When I was learning how to knit socks, the people helping me didn't say "wrong" every time I dropped a stitch. I said "oops" to myself and sometimes got frustrated, but it never came from an outside source. And, if it had, I probably would have completely given up and gone back to blankets and scarves. It makes sense that a more "sensitive" dog would also get frustrated if he was "wrong" all the time in training. And there are a lot of "wrongs" which is why we are in training to begin with.

And so, I vow to try to become a better trainer and handler and dog-mom and be more position and no negative.