With 30+ inches of snow on the ground from yesterday’s blizzard, known locally as Snowzilla, i can’t train the dogs outdoors, so this is a good opportunity for Lightning and me to do some indoor training. I haven’t started anything new, but we’ve continued to practice several skills.

I mentioned in an earlier post that once you’ve trained a hand touch, the dog soon becomes able to respond to sweeping hand gestures without actually touching your hand. For example, I can gesture for Lightning to enter our den from the adjoining room, or gesture for him to jump up into his crate in the back of our van, with a sweeping gesture. Those behaviors are almost always reinforced because they put Lightning some place he wants to be since he knows from experience good things happen there. For example, I always give Lightning, and Laddie, too, a treat as soon as they jump into their crates in the van.

I’ve used the same approach to train Lightning to come to heel on the Heel cue. I began some time ago guiding him with my hand from in front of me at some distance, to one side or the other depending on which hand I’m using, and then in a half loop so that he’s facing the same direction as me, and then cueing a verbal Sit and giving a treat. As I believe I mentioned before, I don’t want my dogs going behind me when they come to heel since they could get distracted and I wouldn’t see it happen. I didn’t begin to use the verbal cue Heel until Lightning was reliably executing the desired behavior. Then I would cue Heel and put down one hand or the other, and Lightning could complete the maneuver without my guiding him the whole way, also sitting at heel automatically. We’ll use this maneuver as part of Lightning’s delivery in the future.

Besides practicing Heel in a variety of locations and distances, I’ve also practiced it with Lightning coming to one side and Laddie coming to the other. I then leave them in a sit, step away and spin around, and again call each of them to heel, this time reversing the side each of them is coming to.

Another cue we’ve practiced indoors is Leave it. I’m not sure I’ve described how it’s trained, so I apologize if this is a repetition.

You hold a desirable treat, preferably one with a strong scent, in your closed fist and don’t open your hand as long as the dog is trying to get it out. When the dog finally pull his or her mouth away, you instantly open your hand and let the dog have the treat. This is sometimes called doggie zen: to get the treat, give up the treat. After a few times, you can predict the instant when the dog will pull his or her mouth away, and just as the dog is about to do so, say Leave it, then open your hand to reinforce the dog’s response. Soon the dog responds to the verbal cue as soon as you say it.

Leave it is a valuable and important cue for any dog, in case the dog is about to pick up something that could be harmful or otherwise undesirable. In addition, some field trainers extend it’s meaning for specific field behaviors. One example is as the last cue in the delivery behavior chain, rather than Out or Give. Another is as the cue when the dog is honoring, rather than No bird or Just watch.

Hopefully we’ll be able to train outdoors again soon. Meanwhile, Lightning and I can continue to practice some useful skills indoors.