Using Another Dog To Increase Drive (Patreon)

You may have noticed that as soon as you start walking with another dog, your dog gets a bit ... competitive, pulling ahead when you previously had a really nicely heeling dog. Or you may have used another dog to "teach" your dog how to do something. When I taught my friend's dog to bikejore (pull a bike - something CoolWhip loves), we started with putting Whip on the bike out front for the new dog to chase (which is also how Whip learned). Pretty soon the pulling becomes inherently reinforcing and the new dog was able to keep tension on the line on her own out in front. 

Putting two dogs in an activity can increase competition, drive, and excitement about an activity. And those competitive feelings can stay with the dog even when there isn't another dog present. You're creating a conditioned emotional response (CER) to the activity itself.  

As  you may have heard me mention, I'm gearing up to potentially compete in UKC's Elite Shed Dog competition at the beginning of April. I happen to be going out to look at a breeder, and watch that breeder's dogs run in this competition. The breeder invited me to compete, and I figured, what the heck! I don't have enough to do! Why not challenge myself to take my relatively non-retrieve driven dog who hates carrying large, pointy, and hard things, and teach her to hunt over an acre of land and pick up multiple hard things and retrieve them to me in a timed event. What could go wrong? 

Anyways, I'm kind of committed now. So, I wanted to show you one of my training sessions, and how I use a second dog and competition to increase drive. Admittedly, this is not my best session, in that I had just filmed Whip's trick title and she was a bit gassed. I've had better results out in the yard, which is actually a good thing because outside is where she really has to hunt. But, I still wanted to show you how you could use a similar setup to increase one dog's willingness to do a thing, which in turn can train in positive associations and feelings of urgency to do a task. I do a similar thing with restrained shed training where I'll hold her back from being able to retrieve the shed, and then release her. In a recent session, she was ripping out of my arms to get the shed (of course I didn't have that on camera!) 

Some things to note about this session: 

- This is the whole session. 2 minutes of dogs switching off for two retrieves. That's it. I keep the shed sessions really short to increase her motivation to want to come back for more. I also saw that Whip was a little tired, so we want to end with her doing the thing successfully, and come back at a different time when she has "fresh legs". 

- In the past I've used "Place" when training multiple dogs. However, Jake is pretty driven to retrieve the sheds and at 14.5 years old is struggling with patience and will break sometimes when I throw the shed. I don't want him breaking when it's Whip's turn, so I've set up the session to use the crates to manage this issue. I'm not working on Jake's stay, so I'm just going to set us up for success, and not harp on it. 

- I treat outside the create for the retrieve, and then inside the crate once they've completed their crating cue, as I don't want them to resent going back into the crate. 

- If these were younger, less experienced dogs, I may use something like a food robot (or just throw food in the crate periodically) to reward them for calm, quiet, behavior while the other dog is working. However, if you can run this in short enough loops, the quiet behavior is reinforced by the chance to work again. 

- The food puzzle toys and other crap on the floor is definitely there as distraction training, and not because I didn't clean up my house before shooting ... 😂

So overall, nothing fancy going on here. Just what a breakfast training session looks like in my house that I thought might give you some ideas for your own house. Sometimes it's just about getting the reps in! 

Happy Training Ya'll!