Sometimes waiting for your Chi to produce the desired behavior on her own may take too long. In this case, using food lures to shape your Chihuahua into position can be very effective and is absolutely nonconfrontational and nonthreatening. A really good example of using a food lure to shape a behavior is the sit.
Holding the Chi gently by the collar with one hand and a treat in the other, you would slowly move the treat from the tip of your dog’s nose slowly over her head, skimming closely over her muzzle and the crown of her head. By the time the treat is overhead or between the ears, the dog will have folded back on her hind legs, giving you a perfect sit.
For simplicity’s sake, a secondary or conditioned reinforcement will be referred to as click, whether you’re using a snap of the fingers, clicker, cluck of the tongue, or an “Okay!”. The primary reinforcement – treat, ball, or play followed by physical praise – will be referred to as pat.
Timing is important when using a food lure to shape the correct behavior. Just as with free shaping, you want to give the command only when the dog is in the correct position. So with the sit, you would not say “Sit!” until your Chi was squarely on her haunches. You would then click and pat.
Repetition is very important for the dog not only to recognize what it is you want her to do but also to build her confidence that she is doing the right thing each and every time. Where many novice trainers fails is that they don’t reinforce each step of the process enough.
Every trainer has his percentage, but it is generally agreed that the dog should provide the desired behavior correctly and with confidence at least eight out of ten repetitions before moving to the next step.
Small Steps to Success
In addition to not allowing enough correct repetitions of an exercise, another common error is increasing more than one variable at a time, setting the dog up for a mistake. Of course, this means that as a trainer, you’ll need to recognize what variables are involved in the exercise you are working on.
Setting a dog up for success means setting up an exercise so that the dog literally can’t fail the task. Free shaping incorporates this philosophy well, as does shaping using lures – as long as the handler increases the difficulty of the exercise slowly.
For example, with the sit-stay, your variables are time and distance. You would never want to increase your demands for both the amount of time your Chihuahua must remain in a sit as well as how far away you move from her. Instead, you could increase the time you expect your Chi to remain sitting by thirty seconds for a total of ninety seconds.
When she can accomplish this reliably nine out of ten times, you can then increase your other variable, distance. Depending on where your Chi was with this exercise, this might mean adding one additional step away from her for a total of four steps.
A variable that is often forgotten is location. If your Chihuahua sits reliably on command anywhere in the house, this does not mean she will sit on command when you are on the sidelines of a kid’s soccer game. When adding a new variable to the mix, start at the beginning. If you’re working on a sit, begin with the lure to shape the sit. You will progress more quickly this time; however, you are setting your dog up to succeed by giving her an easier, confidence building task.
How to Find a Good Trainer
Are all of these technical training terms make your head spin? Don’t worry. It’s not important that you remember the exact terms, but it is important that you understand how your dog learns and the best approach to take in training. A key for novice trainers is to find a professional dog trainer or training club that has experts who can coach you on how to train your dog.
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