#71: Teaching a Foodie Dog to Tug

Drinking From the Toilet: Real dogs, Real training

Drinking from the Toilet: Real Dogs, Real Training

Dogobedience, Dogtraining, Hobbies, Kids & Family, Leisure, Showdogtraining, Puppytraining, Dogbehavior, Dogagility, Pets & Animals

4.7 • 677 Ratings

🗓️ 19 October 2018

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week we talk about tugging and specifically what I did with my dog, Rugby, to build it.

My terrier, Rugby, came straight out of the package with good food drive already installed. All I had to do was harness it. But getting him started with toys was a much harder process. I pretty much had to build his toy play from scratch in order to have anything useful to work with.

It seems like a lot of trouble. Why even bother? Listen to this episode to find out.

For full show notes, visit: www.wonderpupstraining.com/podcast/71

This episode is sponsored by Zero to CD. To learn more, visit: www.zerotocd.com

Transcript

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0:00.0	Instead of clicking for holding on to the toy, which we had, she suggested that I switched to reinforcing when he pulled the toy out of my hand.
0:09.9	And holy crow, that was a light bulb moment.
0:13.0	Now we had some context for the behavior.
0:15.2	Now we have an intent for the tugging behavior.
0:18.3	The point of tugging is to pull the thing out of my hand.
0:35.1	Hey there, fellow training nerds. I'm Hannah Branigan, and this is Drinking from the Toilet, the podcast that tries to strike a balance between nerdy and practical on the subject of teaching and training with positive reinforcement.
0:47.5	This week, I'm going to share the story of how I taught rugby my dog to play with toys such that I could use them in training. This was a special
0:56.7	request from one of our listeners, Heather, and I thought it was a great idea. So this one's for you, Heather.
1:01.6	She was interested to know more about the process I used for getting good tugging with rugby
1:06.2	so that I could use it as a reinforcer to train other behaviors. And I really think this is a great thing to talk
1:11.8	about, since I've complained a fair bit recently about having to build food motivation with my puppy
1:16.3	figment. And rugby is the complete opposite. One of the wonderful things that I love about him is
1:22.4	that he will take food pretty much anywhere. On the other hand, it was super hard to get him started using toys
1:29.2	in training. But after experimenting and working on it a lot, I finally hit on a few things to do
1:35.4	in training that could build that behavior to the point where I can now use toys and playing
1:40.6	with toys to reinforce behaviors, even in public, even outside, and even when I also
1:46.1	have food on me, which was a bit of an obstacle. So I really think it's worth exploring building
1:52.7	toy play with your dog, even if it's a category of behaviors playing with toys that doesn't
1:58.4	come easily with you and your dog. And there are several reasons
2:02.2	why I think that this is worth putting some time into. But before we jump into that, I want to
2:07.1	give you a heads up that I am about to open up some spots in my online mentorship program,
2:11.6	Zero2CD. This is that program that I put together to help experience trainers who want to get started
	...

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