Trent DeLucia: Training Your Dog

I chose training my dog because I thought it would be fun to incorporate him into a school project.  His name is Bear and he is three years old.  None of my family members have taken the time to teach him any cool tricks or train him in any special way so I took it upon myself to accept the challenge.

I had no idea where to start after I read the book, Do as I Do, by Claudia Fugazza.  It gave me a few ideas on what tricks I could teach him, but also brought to my attention that Bear has a few bad habits he should change.  Begging at the dinner table has always been annoying, but nothing has been done to stop it.  In fact, my family has been encouraging Bear by feeding him from the table to make him go away and stop growling.

Last Sunday, I decided to focus on getting rid of the bad habit of bear begging at the dinner table.  The guidelines from my book have definitely helped because he has not begged in three days. I used the plan:

"The main cognitive variables involved are:
1. Motivation
2. Attention
3. Memorization
4. Replication (Fugazza 20-21)."

Fugazza, Claudia. "Imitation." Do as I Do: Using Social Learning to Train Dogs. Wenatchee: Dogwise, 2014. 20-21. Print.

I used this 4 step guided plan to help Bear stop begging:

1. I motivated/encouraged Bear to not beg by giving him a dog treat after dinner and not giving him any more people food.

2. I switched his attention/distracted him from delicious smelling food to toys.  I would throw him a toy that I'd keep on my lap when he would come near the table.

3. I helped Bear memorize/recall his learning through telling him "No!" when he started to beg.

4. This was replicated/put into action in only four practice days and the outcome has been no begging since!

The past few days my family and I have been able to enjoy our dinners more from not being annoyed by Bear.  My mom said, "Finally, I don't have to share my food!"  Training Bear so far has been fun and effective.  Do you think that focusing on reducing bad habits will please my family more than cool tricks?

Before: Bear begging when it's dinner time.

After: Bear with his favorite toy during dinner.