Dog Training Dog Socialization

Let’s take the car sickness issue for example.  The dog doesn’t understand the vehicle or anything associated with it.  This can causes the dog to become nervous.  When this happens, dogs tend to lose control of their body and either throw up, drool excessively, get the nervous runs in or out of the vehicle, etc.  So we have to train them to understand everything about it.  In the 1st day of my dog training, I would want to do a treat trail going in and through to the other side of the back seat of the vehicle (requires two people).  This is to help the dog to be comfortable with the vehicle and understand that the vehicle comes with treats.  The 2nd day of dog training, I would want to show the dog the treat, toss the treat into the vehicle, while associating a command with going into the vehicle.  This is to help the dog continue to be comfortable with the vehicle and whenever I say a particular word for the dog to load up, that it comes with reward.  On the 3rd day of my dog training, I would then tell the dog to load up without a treat, get into the vehicle myself, then start to desensitize the dog to everything while inside the vehicle.  This can be done by getting the vehicle to make some type of noise or movement and rewarding the dog every time I do it.  (i.e., rev the engine give a treat, rev the engine give a treat, continue to repeat this pattern until the dog doesn’t care about the noise or vibrations anymore and only cares about the treat.)  You want to continue doing this type of pattern for anything that you can think of that might make the dog scared of while being in the vehicle. (i.e., making windshield wipers move, making the air in the vents go high, making the windows go up and down, starting and turning off the vehicle, etc.)  This type of dog training may take a couple of days to complete.  Day 4 with dog socialization training, I would want to start driving around the neighborhood and getting the dog comfortable with the movement of the vehicle while also working on the dog’s equilibrium.  This can be done by speeding up and give a treat, slowing down and give a treat, making a left turn then give a treat, making a right turn then giving a treat.  This is best done with two people, so the driver can focus on driving and the passenger can focus on the dog.  When the dog becomes comfortable with this after a day or two, then you can start driving further distances with the dog and rarely giving treats.  As you can see from this example, we are building up such a good association with the car, that now the dog will actually want to go into it because it associates rewards with everything about the vehicle.

Now let’s move on to example two, crate training.  Once again, the dog may not understand it, so they become destructive, or cry, or whine, or scratch to be let out, etc.  We need to build up such a good association to it that the dog actually wants to be in there.  On the 1st day of my dog training, I would start out by doing a treat trail going into the kennel.  This is to help the dog be comfortable with the kennel and understand it comes with treats.  The 2nd day of dog training socialization, I would want to toss treats into the kennel while using a dog training command, so they associate the command with going into the kennel.  On the 3rd day of my dog training,  I would now tell the dog to go into the kennel and close it while building time of the dog being in the kennel by giving them treats, then adding more time while giving less treats.  Day 4 of dog socialization training is where I would want to continue working on time with using more verbal and physical praise for being quiet and relaxed in the kennel while giving treats randomly, maybe even adding an enrichment toy like a Kong toy stuffed with regular peanut butter to help with extending the time without treats.  My dog training on day 5 would consist of getting the dog in the kennel and closing it while working on building distance of being away from the kennel.  This can be done by going back and forth extending your steps away from the kennel and giving treats every time you come back to the kennel.  Then on day 6 of dog training would be like day five, except using more verbal and physical praise with the occasional treat, maybe even adding an enrichment toy like a Kong toy stuffed with regular peanut butter to help with extending the distance without treats.  

Based on these two examples, we can see that the first day always stays the same, but from day two on of training they go into different directions, but the concept stays the same.  The concept is slowly building up the dog to understand the environment being associated with and that the environment may come with several different environmental changes to it.  The more you do of this type of training with new environmental changes, the easier, better, and faster your dog will respond to new environmental changes in the future and with ease and very little training.