Although dogs (like people) learn fastest when they are younger, no dog is too old to learn new tricks (or basic obedience).

Perhaps you’ve adopted an older dog, or just never got around to training the dog you acquired when it was a puppy. Either way, there is no time like the present to improve your dog’s relationship with the humans in its life through training.

How Dogs Learn:

The learning process has four stages:

1. Acquisition — this is the phase in which the dog acquires new knowledge. The dog learns that certain behavior is expected of him, and you the trainer focus on the accuracy of that response. This is the phase in which you will bestow lots of treats!
   
   
2. Reliability (Fluency) — this is the phase in which the dog improves his performance so that the response becomes reliable and natural. Your focus is now the speed of the response. This is the phase in which you will treat on an intermittent schedule to strengthen the response and fade the use of treats.
   
   
3. Discrimination and Generalization — this is the phase in which the dog learns to tell the difference between the command you’ve been working on and other commands, and that this command is relevant in a variety of situations. Dogs actually generalize very poorly compared to humans. When a history professor teaches us new material, we recognize that the relevance of the material is the same whether the teacher is wearing pants or a skirt, whether it was provided to us in a small classroom or a large auditorium and whether the teacher was standing or sitting at the time of the lecture. Dogs, however, initially see EVERYTHING as being tied to the relevance of the command, including the trainer’s body position and the space in which the command is taught. A dog has to learn that Sit means to sit whether in an apartment’s living room, in the building hallway or out on the street. If you’ve been training your dog at all on your own, you know that you can have great response to a new command in your home, but later, when you bump into a friend on the street and try to show off your dog’s education, your dog will stand there looking at you as if you just grew a second head. It’s not stupidity or obstinacy! Not at all. It’s just that you haven’t practiced that command out on the street, so he’s not sure if that’s what you mean. Ditto with body position. Teach Sit facing your dog until you get 100% response, then turn sideways and see what happens. You’re facing that two-headed thing again.
   
   
4. Maintenance — this is the phase in which the dog incorporates the new response into its day-to-day behavioral menu. And here is a hard-and-fast rule: If you do not revisit certain commands after training to 100% response, the dog’s response will eventually deteriorate. That’s why training never really stops — you may be finished teaching your dog new material, but you will always be revisiting the commands you’ve already taught her. Big Apple Dog School pays a lot of attention to the ways owners can weave maintenance training into their daily routines.

Closed economy vs. Open economy?

A closed economy is when a dog obtains all of its food through training, while an open economy is when a dog obtains some of its food through training and some through the usual meal times.

A closed economy does not mean that you are denying your dog food; it just means that you’ve tied it to learning. This is the most effective way to teach, as it takes a resource over which a dog is usually highly motivated (food) and requires that the dog perform for it.

Most people, however, teach on an open economy. If your routine is to put down your dog’s breakfast before heading to work, you might not see how you can take the time to turn that meal into a training session. And that’s fine. Being ultra-busy is a part of urban life. However, a dog will be less motivated for a training session on a full stomach, so when it is time to train, do it before your dog’s next meal, or at least four hours after her last one.

If you’re coming to a Big Apple Dog School group class on a Saturday morning, please do not feed your dog breakfast, or if you MUST, make it a one-third portion. Your dog will eat plenty during training. Ditto if you’ve arranged for an evening private session after you get home from work.

Exercise:

Most dogs require one to two hours of cardio activity every day. Taking your dog out for a pee-and-poop in the morning and at night does not count. Without proper exercise, dogs will be more hyper, destructive, jumpy, prone to separation anxiety, disobedient and distracted during training.

Visit a Manhattan Dog Run (see our Dog Runs page for a run near you), play energetic tug at home (no, playing tug does not increase “dominance” in a dog!), throw a ball down the hall (at a reasonable hour, please, for your neighbors’ sake). Think of creative ways to get that dog moving!

Please visit our Basic Obedience page for more information on what every good adult city dog needs to know.