How to Turn Obedience Skill Drills into Real-Life Behavior Success (Patreon Article Unlocked!)
This article is a TRANSCRIPT of the above video!
Hello, hello! This is Cori from Venus and Mars K9, and this presentation is about how to turn obedient skill drills into real-life behavior success.
Why Do Obedience Drills?
First of all, why do obedience drills? And what do I mean by “obedience skill drills”?
When I say obedience skill drills, I mean formal skills: sit, down, heel, come, go to place, and so on.
These skills can be great because they introduce or reinforce the concept of the dog following direction from the handler in a specific and reliable way.
Many problem behaviors can also be addressed in a pleasant and effective way for both the dog and the handler by having a little routine that they do together—one that promotes the desired behavior.
A common problem people run into, though, is that the dog performs well only under very specific conditions.
They’re training at home in the kitchen or living room. Or they’re only training in group class. Or perhaps they perform well in group class but nowhere else.
I want to point out that this problem exists regardless of training style.
Whether you’re using positive reinforcement with food rewards, leash corrections, e-collar corrections, or something else, you can still run into the issue where things only go well when the dog feels like they’re in “training mode.”
For this reason, obedience drills sometimes get a bad reputation.
In reality, all behavior training needs to be generalized as much as necessary for success.
It doesn’t matter whether the behavior appears to be a formal skill or an informal behavior to the person observing it. It still needs to generalize.
Tip One: Act Natural
The first tip I’m going to give you for taking obedience skills from “training time” into real life is to act natural.
In the beginning of training, when we’re first introducing skills, dogs often require a lot of prompting, formal body language, and/or rewards in our hands.
We want to be able to give the dog a cookie really quickly, or whatever reward we’re using.
That’s what they need to learn the new skill and perform it successfully.
The whole thing very much looks like training.
I’m calling my dog. I’m moving in a certain way. I’m engaging with them a lot.
Maybe when they’re in a stay, my shoulders are very straight and I’m staring at them the entire time.
That may be what they need in the beginning.
But as quickly as possible—meaning once the dog is doing well and they’re ready for more challenge—we should move past that.
Hide the Reward
One example is to have your reward hidden or holstered until after you say your marker word.
That’s one of the reasons we use a marker. Some people use different marker words, but whatever you use gives you the opportunity to keep the reward out of sight until you actually want to bring it out.
Practice Casual Body Language
You should also practice standing casually, looking away from your dog, talking to other people in the room, looking at your phone, or doing whatever else you might naturally be doing while your dog holds a stay.
Basically, try to look a little more normal as your dog improves.
Save your help for the spikes in difficulty and the really tough distractions.
I’m not saying you can never look like the hyper-focused, classic dog-trainer picture.
You absolutely can.
But as your dog gets better, you should save that level of formality for new situations, new distractions, and situations where the dog genuinely needs more help.
Turn Real-Life Routines Into Obedience Skill Drills
Next, I think you should try turning real-life routines into training drills.
Actually, let me clarify that: don’t immediately integrate the skill into the routine. First, do some drills so that you can eventually integrate the skill into the routine successfully.
For example, put your dog on place while you put your shoes on, grab your keys, and get ready to leave.
Practice that several times in a row.
This is a classic separation-anxiety drill, but it can also help a dog who gets extremely excited about going outside.
Maybe they’re jumping off the walls, barking, biting you, or generally losing their mind when it’s time to go for a walk.
Instead, you can have them perform another behavior and give them a task while you get ready to leave.
You could also practice sending your dog to place and pretending to answer a Zoom call. (That’s a classic COVID puppy dilemma. A lot of dogs learned that when their owner gets on a Zoom call, it’s time to bark.)
Practice Real-Life Conversations
In group class, practice approaching another dog and saying something like:
“No, thanks. He’s not friendly.”
A lot of the time, we don’t practice saying these things to other people when we’re in a group class setting.
I really like having my group-class students practice looking at each other and saying whatever their line is going to be:
“No, thank you. He doesn’t like other dogs.”
“Not today. Maybe next time.”
“Sorry, my trainer told me I can’t do that.”
“We’ve got to go over here.”
Whatever you want to say is fine.
This is actually something I should do more myself.
On walks, you can also practice yelling things like:
“Can you call your dog, please?”
“Can you leash your dog?”
“My dog’s not friendly.”
Integrate that into your drills.
Maybe you keep your dog in a heel or a stay while you practice.
The point is that this kind of training allows you to practice your skills more often and consistently throughout the day.
And then, bada bing, bada boom—you’re just doing it in real life.
Be Aware of Training Context
Something else to think about when comparing obedience in an unnatural training environment versus real life is the idea that back-to-back rewards and corrections can become a cue in themselves.
They can tell the dog:
“Oh, it’s training time.”
Imagine that you’re in a group class and you’ve just rewarded or corrected your dog 20 times in a row.
Maybe the trainer is coming by and trying to distract your dog, or you’re walking past another dog, or something similar is happening.
Your dog starts behaving very differently from how they behave on the sidewalk—or even differently from how they behaved at the beginning of class.
You can think of all that repetition as a warm-up.
But it also explains why, if you’re walking on the sidewalk with your dog and you haven’t communicated with them at all for the last 30 minutes—maybe you didn’t reward or correct them, and perhaps you didn’t do any training on your morning walk either—that lack of feedback can itself become a clue to the dog:
“Oh, it’s not training time.”
That’s another reason to make a habit of regularly practicing these things throughout the day.
Space them out.
Integrate them into routines, as we discussed earlier.
The point is not that you should constantly reward or correct your dog.
There shouldn’t be a stark contrast between how you communicate with your dog when you think, “It’s training time,” and how you communicate with them for the rest of their life.
Build in Breaks
If you’re training with a professional, taking a private lesson, participating in group class, or even setting up a training session with friends, one thing you can do to combat the back-to-back reward-and-correction issue is to integrate breaks.
Space out your exercises so the dog gets to feel somewhat normal in between.
Don’t just do:
“Drill, drill, drill, drill, drill.”
On top of that, integrating training into organic lifestyle routines as soon as possible should be a top priority.
For example, send your dog to place throughout the day if you work from home.
Start integrating these drills into your walks.
If you’re having issues in the backyard, make sure you’re practicing regularly instead of doing the training once every ten days.
The more naturally the skill becomes part of your dog’s everyday life, the easier it is for the behavior to transfer into real-life situations.
Exercise One: Rank Your Distractions
For the first exercise, I want you to rank your distractions on a scale from 1 to 10.
You can think about people, places, things, and situations.
Rank them in order of how challenging you think they are for your dog.
I want to emphasize that this exercise is symbolic. It’s not the end-all, be-all of dog training.
I just find it to be a helpful exercise for people.
Here’s an example list for a hypothetical common dog.
Example Distraction Scale
Level 1: Training in the kitchen, nobody else is home, and the dog is completely focused on you. They can do everything.
Level 2: Training in the backyard on leash. This is a little harder but still very doable.
Level 3: Training in the front yard, where some people are walking by. Calm spots on walks could also fit here—for example, a church parking lot rather than a playground.
Level 3: A dog down the block or people walking nearby.
Level 4: A neighborhood walk, where you might see dogs across the street or humans greeting your dog. The dog might also be in the backyard off leash or on a long line, making the situation more exciting.
Level 5: A dog park or a new interior space such as a group class. It’s a new environment, but it’s still a relatively controlled setting.
Level 6: People coming over to the house.
Level 7: Dogs within 20 feet of your dog.
Level 8: A dog within 10 feet, or a new interior space such as Home Depot, or a busy park with lots going on.
Level 9: Squirrels and bunnies.
Level 10: A dog barking at your dog from within 10 feet.
That’s just an example list.
I also made example lists for Cupid and Mars. If you’re interested, you can pause the presentation and read them.
Those are actually accurate rankings for my dogs and what they find interesting and distracting.
The point is that you really need to build your dog up gradually.
Sometimes people have to get creative and really think about how to practice in a Level 4, 5, or 6 situation instead of jumping straight to Level 10.
Gradually Increase Difficulty
Let’s go back to our hypothetical dog.
A lot of times, people come in for training and say:
“I just want my dog to stop freaking out when another dog barks at them from 10 feet away.”
Meanwhile, we’ve been practicing skills in the kitchen, then the backyard, and maybe the dog is doing really well in group class too.
Then the dog sees another dog barking very close to them, and you try to have them sit for the first time.
They don’t sit.
Then the person comes back to me and says:
“It didn’t work.”
And usually I’m thinking:
“Oh my God. I did not tell you to do it like that! That was way too much, way too quickly.”
You jumped from approximately a Level 5 to a Level 10 in the span of three weeks.
Meanwhile, how long has your dog been rehearsing the unwanted behavior at Level 10?
Or maybe it’s a new dog, and even a puppy finds that situation inherently exciting.
You need to build them up gradually.
You can do that in a variety of ways, but one approach is to use this exercise:
Work in a Level 5 situation.
Then work in Level 6.
Then Level 7.
And continue building from there.
This is also helpful for trainees who come in saying:
“I only have these three problems. I hate that my dog does this, this, and this.”
Then you discover that the dog is behaving poorly in a variety of situations. Those situations simply aren’t as big of a problem as the Level 9 or Level 10 scenario.
What’s good for that dog is to practice controlling themselves in all of those situations, too.
In that situation, you get a win-win.
You work on your main goals, and your dog also develops better behavior on a day-to-day basis across a variety of situations.
Get Creative With Intermediate Levels
Sometimes you have to get creative.
You might think:
“I know that there’s a situation where my dog is really good, and I know there’s a situation where they’re really bad. What can I do to work somewhere in between?”
For people in the city who have a really busy neighborhood walk and don’t have a backyard, I often recommend hanging out in one spot.
Find a relatively calm location where you can see some action in the distance or have some activity pass by, but where you can still maintain space.
You don’t want to be sitting in the middle of absolute chaos.
Parking lots can be great for this.
Churches during off-hours can work.
Schools during off-hours can also be good.
These can be places where you can hang out and practice around distractions without overwhelming the dog.
Gradual Front-Door Training Example
Another creative solution I’ve used is for dogs who are really, really bad on walks.
There are lots of different ways to work on that, but I’ve worked with dogs who had excellent skills inside—either because of homework I had given their owners or homework from another trainer—but as soon as they stepped outside, everything disappeared.
The dog couldn’t perform at all.
I’ve done lessons with the front door open.
The dog practices their little heeling exercise inside.
Then they walk toward the front door.
Then they go back inside.
Then they move slightly outside the front door.
Then back inside.
Then farther outside.
Then back inside.
Eventually, they’re heeling around the porch.
At that point, they don’t need to go back inside anymore because they’ve learned to control themselves in that environment.
That’s what I mean by building up gradually and getting creative.
And that example leads nicely into Exercise Two.
Exercise Two: Split the Goal Into Baby Steps
Your second exercise has a lot in common with Exercise One, but it’s different.
We’re going to talk about turning one specific problem or goal into baby steps.
Dog trainers call this splitting.
The opposite of splitting, if you’re wondering, is lumping.
Splitting means that we teach each piece of the puzzle thoroughly and separately instead of trying to do the entire thing with the dog all at once.
Pick one goal or skill.
Since we’re talking about obedience, choose one obedience goal.
Instead of simply practicing the goal in progressively harder environments, as we discussed in the first exercise, we’re going to split that one goal into smaller steps.
Example: Sit-Stay While Putting on a Harness
Here’s a really simple example.
The goal is for the dog to hold a sit-stay while the handler puts their harness on.
That’s a great solution for dogs who are really wiggly, crazy, and all over the place when it’s time to go for a walk.
Maybe they’re jumping and mouthing, and you just want to put the harness on.
Instead of trying to do the entire behavior at once, break it down.
Step 1
Have the dog hold a sit-stay while you simply present the harness.
Step 2
Move the harness toward the dog, then stop and reward.
Repeat:
Move the harness.
Reward.
Move it back.
Move it toward the dog again.
Reward.
Step 3
Touch the harness to the dog without actually putting it on.
For example, touch it to their shoulder.
Reward.
Repeat.
Step 4
Move or touch the harness toward the dog’s face, similar to what you would do when actually putting it on.
Step 5
Practice actually putting the harness on.
Step 6
Practice reaching over the dog or moving the harness straps in the way you normally would.
Step 7
Clip the harness closed.
If the dog is also extremely excited about the leash, that could become another step.
That’s how you can break the behavior down and thoroughly practice each individual component instead of having to get creative enough to accomplish the entire thing all at once.
If you lumped everything together and did it all at once, you might have to be extremely firm with your dog or use an approach you don’t actually want to use.
You may be better off breaking it down into baby steps.
This is a theoretical example. I’m not saying this is always the answer.
Back-to-Back Rewards Can Help, Too
Remember our earlier discussion about back-to-back rewards and corrections.
That repetition is a context clue.
If you have a real problem with the harness and you’re trying to fix it with the sit-stay example, this is probably something you’re going to work on across multiple sessions.
Maybe you start with Level 1 and get to Level 3 during your first session.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll start your next session at Level 3.
You might have to go back to Level 2.
Those back-to-back rewards can serve as a context clue, which can work against you if you never phase them out.
But they can also work for you as a warm-up while you gradually build toward the actual organic picture.
Use the Biggest Distraction as the Reward
Here are some additional tips.
Consider that your biggest distraction might also be your biggest reward.
Maybe your dog loves saying hello to new people.
Once you’ve built them up enough to hold a sit-stay while someone approaches, you can use that as the reward.
The dog holds the sit-stay, and then they get released to greet the person.
Pick your poison.
Once you figure that out, you can tap into a very powerful concept:
The dog performs the skill to gain access to what used to be the distraction.
You might be able to get to the point where:
“You can get petted by someone as long as you follow these rules.”
Figuring that out may help you fade out cookies or collar pops if you’re trying to move away from those training tools and create something that feels more natural and more like real life.
Use a Clear Release Cue
Another example is having a super-clear free or release cue.
A good example is practicing loose-leash walking up to the dog park.
This is another very common situation for city dogs.
They don’t have a backyard, so they’re walking to some kind of park, and the dog wants to drag them there the entire time.
So you teach heel.
You teach the dog to heel all the way to the park.
You do lots of practice with that.
Then, once you have a clear release cue, you say:
“Free!”
Now the dog doesn’t have to heel anymore.
They can run up to the dog park.
You have a clear way to connect the dots:
You have to do the work until you hear “free,” and then your reward is that you get to go to the park.
Maybe you’re using cookies.
Maybe you’re correcting the dog to maintain the heel.
But ultimately, if you play your cards right, the most powerful reward in that situation may be getting access to the thing the dog wanted to do in the first place.
The thing that started as the temptation can become the reward.
Train Harder Than Real Life
Another tip I have for you, especially when you’re doing obedience drills in a private lesson, group class, or with your partner or friends, is:
Train harder than real life.
That’s another way to make obedience drills transfer into real-life situations.
In your training setups, make things harder than they are likely to be in real life.
Then when you get into a real situation, the dog thinks:
“Oh, this is easier than what you had me do in group class last night.”
That’s something I do in a lot of my group classes.
Example: Excited Greetings
In real life, someone might say:
“Oh, hi! Can I pet the puppy?”
And the dog gets excited.
In training, assuming the dog is ready for it, you can amp it up.
Have the person say something like:
“Oh my God! Oh my God! It’s a puppy! I’m so excited to touch you!”
Make it really over-the-top and exciting.
Example: Balls at the Park
Another example might be a dog at the park who is being a dingdong because they’re too excited about seeing kids throw a ball back and forth.
The dog loves balls.
You can drill that outside of the actual situation.
Instead of having kids casually toss a ball back and forth 40 feet away—the kind of thing that might happen in real life—you could have your trainer throw tennis balls directly toward your dog while they’re heeling.
That’s probably harder.
You’re intentionally overdoing the distraction to help prepare the dog for the real-life version.
When Obedience Drills Aren’t the Answer
Maybe you’ve heard all of this and thought:
“I’m really stuck. I’ve already done all of that.”
Or maybe you’re a trainer and you’ve already told your client to do all of these things.
In that case, I might say that obedience drills may not be the answer to the particular problem you’re dealing with.
You may need a protocol that focuses on a conditioned response to a specific environmental stimulus.
It’s possible to change a dog’s behavior by creating a classically conditioned response that is either reward-based or punishment-based.
You can teach the dog to have positive feelings about something, which changes their emotional response, or you can teach an avoidance response.
Conditioned Positive Response
A common example is a dog who hears a train overhead three blocks away from their house.
You create a protocol:
Hear the train.
Get a cookie.
Hear the train.
Get a cookie.
Hear the train.
Get a cookie.
You all know that one already.
Conditioned Avoidance
An example involving punishment would be classic snake-avoidance training.
There are reward-based ways people have developed for addressing this as well, and I’m not getting into efficacy here.
The classic punishment-based example is:
Dog sees snake.
Dog receives a strong correction.
The dog develops a classically conditioned avoidance response when they see a snake.
Again, the point is that sometimes a specific conditioned-response protocol may be more appropriate than simply practicing obedience skills.
You May Need Desensitization or Habituation
You might also need a protocol that focuses on desensitization or habituation to particular stimuli.
For example, a dog may have strong feelings about other dogs, and what they really need is simply to be around other dogs a whole lot until they become more comfortable.
That’s a very, very simple example, and it may not be the answer in every situation.
But some dogs do need that, especially if they don’t encounter other dogs very often.
Other Things to Consider
You might need something else entirely.
Maybe you need to look at lifestyle or enrichment considerations.
Maybe the dog doesn’t get enough exercise.
Maybe you need various confidence-building exercises.
Maybe obedience drills really would help.
Maybe you need to troubleshoot motivation.
Maybe the overall training technique needs to change.
There are probably many other things you might need besides obedience drills.
But those are some basic ideas.
Final Thoughts
That’s it!
I hope you enjoyed it.
This could potentially be a huge subject. In many ways, we’re essentially talking about how we train dogs and how we use formal skills to influence behavior.
But I know that some people get really stuck when they’re doing obedience drills.
They get stuck because they can’t figure out how to take those skills and transfer them into everyday life.
I hope these tips help you do that—or help you help a client do it if you’re a professional.
And, yeah, that’s it!
If you have any questions for me, let me know.
If you have any special requests, too, I have a list of Patreon ideas, but I’m very open to taking requests.
See you later!
Bye-bye!
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Venus and Mars K9 provides in-home private dog training and group class for basic obedience, puppy socialization, trick training, dog sport foundations, leash reactivity training, and other canine behavior problems. We travel most frequently to neighborhoods such as Humboldt Park, Hermosa, Logan Square, Avondale, West Town, South Loop, Downtown Chicago, Ukrainian Village, Bucktown, Wicker Park, East Garfield Park, Fulton Market, North Center, Lincoln Park, Lakeview, Roscoe Village, Irving Park, Portage Park, Oak Park, River Forest, Forest Park, Pilsen, and Bridgeport.
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