[yorkipower]

http://www.mightymitedoggear.com/images/targetstick.jpg
Unless your dog already has a pulling problem AND you’ve tried other methods already, I do not see why you need to use a choke chain with a young Yorkie. I have only one Yorkie I use a choke chain with and ONLY under certain circumstances. He is a very high drive and has a tendency to go after big dogs and to chase things – so if I know I’m going to be in a high-trafficked place like an indoor dog show or at the vets, I use a choke ATTACHED to the ring of his REGULAR leather collar. It’s my “emergency brake.” He’s only 8 pounds and trained to Masters Agility, there’s no reason to need to depend on it all the time AND it was NOT the way I taught him to heel (I’ll get there in a bit).

I am a bit concerned that your class uses choke chains as a default. If a dog does not need a choke chain, why use it? They do have their purposes but in the wrong hands, they can also be torture devices. I cringe when I see people walking down the street with the choke chain upside down or backwards. If you told me your pup was a bullmastiff and you are only 100 pounds, I might understand better. Or even if your dog were a rescue with behavioral issues and dog behaviorist told you needed it. In your case, it seems to be overkill and too much to ask of a young dog anyhow. When you are starting out with a young dog, less is always more. Taking things slow and gentle works out to reap bigger rewards in the end (a great book, emphasizing this point is “Building Blocks for Performance”).

You could say there’s a bit of a dog training war going on – old school vs. new school. “New school’ has actually been around a long time but only in the past 10 years or so, applied to dogs. Dolphins, for example, have almost always been trained “new school.” Karen Pryor wrote her book “Don’t Shoot the Dog” applying the training techniques she learned at Sea World to dogs. Choke chains go along with the dominance and negative reinforcement training method. Target sticks and clicker training is linked with operant and classical conditioning techniques (which started all the way back with Pavlov) to “condition” the dog with “positive” reinforcement.

Getting around all this mumbo-jumbo what I mean is just like a parent teaching a kid to behave you can narrow your choices down to two basic options: physical or mental punishment in the way of sending them to their room for a time out, saying no, taking away privileges, or more extremely, a smack, etc. All things that make the behavior they performed associated with a negative consequence, thereby reducing their desire to do it again; or conversely, reinforcing good behavior with praise, treats, special privileges so that they choose to do the good behavior over the bad as their preferred option.

Tiko was so scared being there he was crawling out of his skin. BUT I DON'T PULL ON HIM THE WAY THEY EXPECT YOU TO.

That’s how I felt when I went to the class I described (also incidentally through AKC. Wonder if it was the same class? ) BOOT CAMP FOR DOGS. Quite frankly, obedience training, (unless it’s a matter of life and death like my example of my dog who thinks Rottwielers should shake in their boots upon his arrival,) SHOULD be FUN NOT BOOT CAMP! If you really want a dog to do well in obedience, especially a toy terrier, you had better make it fun because they aren’t’ going to tolerate long term abuse. Some just shut down which sounds like what yours did, others make become snappish, or wired up.

Now for a brief intro to the target stick:

I won’t be able to go into much detail here because there are books written on the subject. I strongly advise you to check out some of these books or watch a video. Since I’ll be summarizing, I’m going to skip on some parts and speed up the
”action” a bit.

A target stick can be almost anything: a dowel or a tree branch will do. If you want to get fancy, both Karen Pryor ( http://www.clickertraining.com/home/ ) and Gary Wilkes ( http://www.clickandtreat.com/ ) make target sticks (check my website for more info on that), but it isn’t really necessary to buy a stick. The point is just to have a pointer to which your dog will touch his nose. Gary also has a great video in which he goes through, step by step training with a target stick (http://ssl.securewebserver.com/click...egory_Code=BAV ) and Karen has a video where she gets a Golden who wasn’t heeling for its owner to heel in one session! Pryor has a number of videos on clicker and target training and I can’t recall which one it was but if you go to her website and click on the “contact” info, someone on her staff should be able to identify which video it is. What I am going to explain is based on what she does in this video.

To simplify this (since this post is getting SO long): You show the tip of the stick to your dog. Your dog’s natural instinct when exploring the world is, of course, to sniff. So inevitably, he will touch his nose to the tip of the stick. You “mark” the moment when the nose touches the stick with some sort of positive reinforcement, if you know what clicker training is and how to use it, you can click the behavior, if not immediate praise (“GOOD DOG”) your dog and reward with a cookie not more than a second after. Do this several more times until you see that light bulb go off in your dog’s heard: “hey when I touched this stick with my nose I get a cookie!” If he is doing well this far, next start moving the stick around his head and waiting for him to turn to touch the stick. If he does that well, I’d quit there for the day and resume the next. You’ll find that your dog catches on faster with short, positive training sessions, a few times a day, as opposed to long drawn out sessions.

Following day, put your leather collar on your dog and his lead. Hold the lead VERY lightly so that there’s tons of slack and you are putting no pressure on the lead at all (this is just so he associates being on a leash with the exercise, if you do this right, you wont NEED a leash anymore). Hold your stick in your left hand (assuming you have your dog in heel position) across your hip, tip facing downwards just above and in front of your dogs nose. He’ll lean forward and touch the stick, again praise praise reward reward. Take a step, he’ll probably do the same and again touch the stick. Again praise praise praise. You see what is happening? Your dog will be heeling almost immediately! I’d quit there for the day.

Next day you up the anti. Now walk two steps and see if your dog will follow and touch the stick. If that works, walk three steps, then four. This becomes a matter of “variable reinforcement” You’re going to start asking more and more of your dog, and more repetitions before reinforcement. The point is to teach your dog to walk at your side with you and not to be dependant on food and the stick for the rest of his life, right? Once you can do a full circle, down and back, start raising the stick upwards so that your dog can no longer touch it with his nose but has to strain to touch it. When he looks up at the stick – praise him – he no longer needs to touch it. Now he’s giving you heeling with attention. You are aiming for him to look up in the direction of the stick and keep his nose in place. Where his head is, that is where his body will go.

At this point, you begin to fade out the stick by sending it higher and higher in your hand until, finally it is no longer visible (this takes about a month so don’t rush it). Eventually, you’ll get to the point where your hand will still be in the position where it was in the beginning, as though you are holding a stick, but there will be no stick. Keep your hand there. This going to be your cue for “heel.” If your dog begins to have trouble with this exercise, go back to an earlier stage where he was OK and work from there again. Eventually, your dog will learn to look up to this hand as he heels (for little dogs its actually the hip bone, but close enough). Now add your command “heel.” And voila, your dog will probably be heeling without the need of even a leash (let alone a choke collar!).

If you don’t want to use a target stick, you can still do this kind of training simply using the clicker. Here is a great website I found which uses a similar technique with attention and clicker training: http://www.clickerlessons.com/aheeling.html

If this seems too difficult, or if the school (should you choose to go back!) is anti-conditioning training, I'd ask if they would be OK with a halti or gentle leader. ( http://www.jjdog.com/Merchant2/merch...dCollarsGENLHC ) Some dogs don't do well with these some do great. It's a kinder option to the choke collar and it does have that immediate effect. However, neither collar is made to be jerked on. If the dog pulls against them, they do the "check" for you.

Lastly, if you are looking for a good trainer, you have a number of options. To begin with, where do you live?