Blue BRATT Training

Today I started my 5 week training to be a more advanced volunteer at the Austin Humane Society. Currently, I am a green volunteer meaning I am responsible for walking well behaved dogs that don't pull on the leash, fight with other dogs, or just exhibit generally bad behavior. As a BLUE volunteer, I will be responsible for walking the more challenging dogs, giving them basic training (sit, down, stay etc.) and spending a little more time handling and socializing the dog. In addition to working with the challenging dogs, I will also be asked to help train new volunteers.

In today's training, we learned how to establish a mark word when training the dogs. AHS promotes using positive training to reward and reinforce good behavior. Two of the techniques we learned today were the before mentioned mark word and the attention game. To establish the mark word you say the word- in this case "yes" - and you immediately give the dog a treat. This tells the dog that when he/she hears this word they should expect something good. Essentially it bridges the action with the treat in the dogs mind making it easier for the dog to learn and replicate the good behavior. The trainer can then give the dog a command, mark it when it is done, and then treat them. We practiced this with the attention game. The attention game rewards the dog for giving you his/her undivided attention because you can't train a dog if they are not looking at you. We start in front of the dog with our hands behind our back and quietly wait for the dog to make eye contact with us. Once the dog makes eye contact we say the mark word and treat them from one hand, we then wait for them to make eye contact again and say the mark word, then treat them from the other hand. Depending on how distracted the dog is this can take a while. Once the dog has it down with hands behind the back, we bring our hands to our sides and wait for them to stop looking at our hands and make eye contact with us. After he/she can do it with your hands to your sides you move them in front of you (closer to him/her). A well trained dog will just look at you and not your hands but that of course takes a while. The rest of the training was devoted to learning breed specific behavior and how to tailor your training around specific breed traits. Next week we cover dog development and more training techniques.