Quote:
Originally Posted by georgepie  I did the bark on command thing last night for 3 hours in the crib with treat to train- he picked it up quickly but now won't do it. I put his bed in the other room with his toys and stuff (I read the dog shouldn't be in the bedroom) he slept in there for the first time and didn't wake me up or whine. I put him in the playpen for a few hours. I feel bad - I'm a s**tty dog owner that lets the dog do whatever it wants and keep him inside all the time. Honest advice or comments please. |
The bolded "but now won't do it" tells me a lot about your understanding of dogs. And how dogs learn.
Let me put it like this - a dog is a different species from us and doesn't know our language or even our wishes. The only way a dog learns is by us getting one to perform a certain behavior over and over in response to a command and rewarding them when they do it and not rewarding not doing it by an "uh oh" or ignoring the failure. Dogs actually learn things we train them to do only by repetition and reward.
Let me explain what happened to your dog last night. It would be as if someone taught you to speak a two-sentence quote in Mandarin Chinese last night by repeating it over and over for a while and you picked it up phonetically, could soon remember the sounds and the order they came in due to the use of your of short-term memory and could, in time, repeat that two-sentence quote in Mandarin Chinese for as long as 3 hours, anytime asked. The person who taught you to speak it was very pleased! Then, you did some other things, went to bed, slept, got up, had breakfast, went through your toilet procedures and watched some TV, opened the mail, talked on the telephone, cleaned the house a bit and surfed the Internet.
Then that same person sat down today and asked you to repeat the two-sentence quote in Mandarin Chinese again. Could you? Did you really learn the quote last night or just the order of the sounds of it? What if that person thought to themselves, "But I taught her to say it last night! And she can't do it today!"
You didn't learn Mandarin Chinese or the meaning of the quote or commit it to your long-term memory - you just performed a short-term memory trick last night. And that's all your dog did with the barking on command trick. Now he's forgotten it - or most of it.
For you, in order to be able to really keep up remembering that Mandarin Chinese quote, you will need to study and repeat it over and over and over, saying it time and again. Some days you will remember the first part of it and occasional other sounds but out of order. Only by keeping at it and getting it down in phonetic writing, reading, re-reading and by hearing it over and over as you say it out loud can you ever commit that Chinese quote to your long-term memory and be able to call it up any time anyone asks you to.
Same with your dog.
He didn't learn to bark on command last night - he just figured out what you wanted and kept doing it as long as you prompted him and smiled, praised or treated when he got it right. But he actually learned nothing - except what bit he might have retained some of from last night. But he couldn't have had the time to commit it to his long-term memory. It takes repetition over and over, working with the dog in an upbeat manner and positively rewarding when he does what you want.
By going over and over telling him to "Bark" or "Speak" today and tonight, in short, repetitive sessions, praising and treating him when he does bark, saying "uh oh" when he gets it wrong or fails to respond; and by keeping it up each day in sessions of 5 or 6 repetitions for the next several weeks, will he finally begin to commit it to his long-term memory and not just be performing a trick of instant recall. Then and only then will he be trained to "Bark" on command.
When training a dog, remember yourself trying to remember a two-sentence- long Mandarin Chinese quote and how long it would take you to commit that quotation to permanent, long-term memory so that you speak it correctly and exactly every time and don't be so impatient with your dog. They take a while to actually learn anything and commit it to their long-term memory just like you do.