Is Time A Factor?

[Feisty49]

I've had Annie Bella since mid-July of this year. For the most part, she's never done "bad" things. There is no counter cruising, no basket sniffing, no going on furniture (which isn't bad to many people but I don't want it), no accidents in the house, no rooing at 3 AM, no barking, no being a pain with me or visitors at the door. She walks on a leash pretty good. She ignores and walks away from excited dogs at a dog park as if she recognizes they could be problems. When I ask, "Want some kisses?" (which is the word I use for petting and massaging her), she comes right to me.

 

What else doesn't she do? She won't sit at all. She won't lay down on command, unless I tell her, "Take a nap," and then she *usually* goes to her bed. She doesn't always heel, but doesn't pull on the leash either. She "just" prefers being out in front. I swear she does it because she knows when I say "heel," and she returns to my side, she gets a treat, and a "good girl." The moment those words are out of my mouth, she'll go back to leading me(unless I hold her on a tight leash), looking over her shoulder as if to say, "Give me a treat, and I'll come back....for 10 seconds."

 

She is not food motivated, other than heeling, which isn't working anyway. LOL She has favorite foodies that she doesn't get except when I'm trying to train her. She loves cheese, she loves peanut butter, she loves tiny liver treats, etc. But rather than try to do what I'm trying to teach her, she walks away from me, leaving the treat behind. I've moved a treat slowly from her mouth higher and higher so she'd move her head up and maybe sit. She doesn't follow it with her eyes or nose. The moment I move it up, she looks down at the floor.

 

I've had a trainer from Bark Busters here who trained me what to do. I've followed her plan and it does not work with Annie Bella.

 

Has anybody else experienced this complete lack of interest? Does anybody have ideas? She's so good, I tell myself she doesn't need to be trained, but deep in my heart I'd love for her to be a therapy dog. She has a calm, passive, sweet personality and loves to meet new people. Everybody who meets her, even people who don't like dogs, ask if she's always this calm and sweet. Yes, she is, but then all Greyhounds are sweet and wonderful.

[TheFullHouse]

I think it takes greyhounds a bit longer to "get it" when it comes to training.

[Feisty49]

I think it takes greyhounds a bit longer to "get it" when it comes to training.

 

I was thinking the same thing, or at least thinking it of Annie Bella, but didn't want to think something negative about my girl.

[BatterseaBrindl]

Anniee Bella sound perfectly 'normal' to me!!

Actually...she sounds like the perfect dog!

 

Some dogs are more food motivated than others.

Have you tried clicker training? I had super results with one of our Dobes, using a clicker.

 

Does your Therapy Dog group require that she heel/sit/down?

 

I have had 4 dogs certified through St John Ambulance, and these are not part of their 'test'.

They do have to walk quietly on lead without pulling/criss-crossing, but they do not have to be in the exact 'heel' postion.

 

 

We've had Nixon for 19 months and he has never been food motivated.

He knows 'wait','get back' and 'off'.

For us, these are the most important ones.

He did learn to 'sit' and 'down', but I had to use some pretty enticing stuff.

 

We've had Ruby for 4 months and she came to us with 'sit' pre-programmed....it is something she just 'naturally' does.

She has learned 'wait', 'get back', 'off'. We're working on down.

 

We have not done 'heel' with either Grey.

They do not pull on leash and I don't care if they walk a step or two ahead of me.

[Guest k85trb]

Diesel wouldn't sit on anything but a soft bed at first, if I tried to lure him into position without something soft under his bottom he wouldn't follow the treat. It took about 5 weeks to go from looking at treat, to bum crouch, to bum on soft bed. We then got him to sit on other soft surfaces, around the house and eventually outside on the grass. Now he'll sit anywhere.

 

Maybe your Annie Bella just wants a nice cushion to sit on?

 

Tina

[kudzu]

The short answer is yes.

 

Greyhounds in general seem to be very smart dogs. They are bred for independent work. So nothing I am aware of in their breeding would lead them to have the same "What do you want me to do next" genes that some other breeds have. For me, methods like those used by Bark Busters do not work well at all for Greyhounds, assuming you actually want to train your dog rather than just suppress a few bad behaviors. Greys have never had to learn what people are trying to teach them, at least not in the way most of us think. Greys have learned to comply to some request that are part of their daily kennel routine but not to all the specific commands we want.

 

You need to learn a common language & that does indeed take time. My Greys love to try to manipulate me, far more than my other dogs have. So I use this to my advantage. You've seen this with Annie Bella's heel work. So to extend the length of time she will heel you might start by giving her a reward one second short of when she would start leading you. If she goes back out at 20 seconds then reward her at 19 seconds. It helps if you can pick a word that tells her she's done it correctly. You'd say the word immediately at 19 seconds & follow it up with the reward. Remember that anytime you say that word you give a reward, even if you screw up & say it at the wrong time. That word is not only your signal to her that she's done it right but also your promise that something good will quickly arrive. So what if she goes out to lead at 18.9 seconds? Call her back to heel & do it again. If she is not succeeding the majority of the time then you're asking for too much. Back it up to say 16 seconds. When you think she is succeeding 80-100%. (What percent depends on the trainer you ask.) Then you can occasionally & at random skip the reward, which means you will also skip the "marker" word you have been using to mark the second she has done it right. Then you start skipping the reward a little more often, continuing to vary ex. reward x 3, no reward, reward x 2, no reward, reward x 4, no reward, reward x 5, no reward x 2, etc. It's like a slot machine. You know it will pay off as some point but you never know when. So now you are ready to extend the time to 20 seconds & the process starts over again. This is the slow is fast approach. The process seems very slow but you manage to get to the end product of consistent heeling much faster & without the routine you have right now.

 

For Annie Bella it's still basically the same as what happens with your current heeling but she just has to work harder. She has to really think to figure out what the new criteria is to get the reward. "Uh-oh. My old approach isn't working. Now what do I need to do to get this human to pay out?" You can apply this marker + reward approach to all manner of training. Though as you've seen, just using a reward even without a "marker" works. It is just less precise. If her heel duration is only 19 seconds & at 20 she leads you don't have much time to get the reward to her but you can deliver the marker almost instantaneously giving you a little more time to get the reward to her.

 

What you are considering a problem with heel is actually the beginning of a wonderful working relationship. You realize that you've already trained Annie Bella to train you to give her rewards. She's already figured out the first part, how to manipulate you. Now you need to learn how to reciprocate. Up the ante so she has to perform more. To Annie Bella it can become a game that you will both have fun playing.

[jetcitywoman]

Also don't forget the greyhound attitude. "What's in it for me?" Or as I'm sure Capri thinks many times when I ask her to do things: "Hmm, do I feel like doing that? .... hmm... okay, sure." (Or not, on occasion.)

[Guest PiagetsMom]

I'll also mention clicker training. In many ways, your Annie Bella sounds like my Mirage, except that he is food motivated, which I think does help with training. Your just need to find what your girl is motivated by - praise, toys, etc.

 

I've had Mirage for over 3 years, and I've never tried any type of training before. His manners have always been acceptable, he gets the "go lay down" and "wait", and he doesn't pull on leash. After we lost Piaget, I decided to pull out a clicker I'd thought about using previously but never did, read a few clicker books, and see what MIrage would do with it.

 

Neither of my pups were natural sitters, they always go straight to a down. I started on capturing the butt on the floor as he was preparing to lie down, and after two weeks, he offers a pretty good sit. He had formed a habit of trailing behind on walks, and the clicker has definitely helped him learn to walk "by me". We're working slowly and I think compared to other pup examples in the books I've read, he's taking a longer time to get it, but we're making progress!

 

We're not working toward a therapy dog or anything like that - I really just wanted to offer Mirage some mental and physical challenges since he's now an only pup. Better manners, or responding for an asked behavior, is just a bonus for us.

[krissy]

I agree with what everyone is telling you.

 

The thing about greyhounds (in my limited experience...we had a foster right before Summit) is that they don't know how to learn, at least not in the way that we mean it. Obviously every animal is always learning things for themselves and our dogs learned many things at the track. But they've never learned obedience and it's a whole new way of thinking. I find once they get it a little lightbulb goes on and everything becomes a lot easier. You just need to get that first behaviour under your belt.

 

For us we started with down. Sit is difficult for a greyhound to begin with, and especially one that doesn't understand what is going on. Teaching Summit to down took about 2 weeks to go from luring him under my leg to being able to just look at him, say the command, and down he went. Teaching him sit which was the second thing took him about a week to get pretty consistent with it. This summer when I taught him to shake a paw I literally did it in the 10 minutes before I had to leave for work. He's a pro star now and when I teach him something new (right now we've started "spin") I can see the little wheels in his head turning wondering "okay, what is she trying to tell me?".

 

Have you read the blog Never Say Never Greyhounds? She has some great posts on teaching a new greyhound how to lie down and sit. Never Say Never Greyhounds

[Guest KennelMom]

I do almost all of my "obedience" (I use that term loosely ) training with my dogs off leash...mostly b/c it forces me to really pay attention to how I'm communicating with the dog. I've tended to find that a dog will walk away when my frustration level rises (even if I'm not showing it...or *think* I'm not showing it) or they simply do not understand what I'm asking them to do (and their frustration level rises). Also, when the training session has gone on for too long...some dogs, literally, need to have a 5 minute or shorter training session to start.

 

If you haven't seen it already, you may want to check out Jen Bachelor's site. Every time I think I can't teach a greyhound something, I dig into her site and get a refresher of motivation: http://neversaynevergreyhounds.net/ She's one of my greyhound heros.

 

Some greyhounds ARE easier to train than others...and it's not just about food motivation, but also about desire. Some just seem happier working for things and solving puzzles. If I'd have tried to convert my first greyhound to a therapy dog, she would have been miserable...not just the training part, but the actual volunteering part too That stuff just wasn't her cup of tea and I was happy to have her as a well behaved, though "untrained" pet...she just always behaved really politely. So, you may have a pup that's somewhere in the middle. FWIW, I find it's MUCH easier to teach some basic agility stuff, like jumps, than it is to teach obedience stuff so I usually start with that to build a rapport with the dog and "sneak in" a few minutes of "sit" and "stay" while we're doing the fun stuff.

Edited November 11, 2011 by KennelMom

[Guest Swifthounds]

Has anybody else experienced this complete lack of interest? Does anybody have ideas? She's so good, I tell myself she doesn't need to be trained, but deep in my heart I'd love for her to be a therapy dog.

 

That attitude, whether you intend it or not, will come through and hold you both back. You have to come from a mental place that says "I'm committed. We'll get there and I won't give up until we do."

 

There's no such creature as a dog that isn't food motivated. There are, however, plenty of hound's who have been taught that they don't need to *do* anything for food. In the wild, they would have to hunt for it. That it's freely given by a human acting like an appeasing peasant doesn't do much to further that bond. If I had a nickel for every dog I was told wasn't food motivated who learned just fine when it had to earn its meals through training, I would be very wealthy.

Edited November 11, 2011 by Swifthounds

[OwnedBySummer]

She's so good, I tell myself she doesn't need to be trained, but deep in my heart I'd love for her to be a therapy dog. She has a calm, passive, sweet personality and loves to meet new people. Everybody who meets her, even people who don't like dogs, ask if she's always this calm and sweet. Yes, she is, but then all Greyhounds are sweet and wonderful.

 

Sounds to me like you are pretty much at the therapy dog level. Assuming the "sit" and "down" aren't mandatory with your group (& greyhounds normally get exempted)... go for it!

[Time4ANap]

Clicker training worked best for Rocket. He trained us just fine with it.......

[rascalsmom]

Our dear Ruby, who passed in August at the age of 12, never sat. The closest she ever got was when she was peeing. We tried teaching her a few times, and she was resistant--and really, she didn't 'need' to sit, so we didn't make a big deal of it. Her litter-sister, Rascal, was taught to sit, and shake 'hands', and also the 'down' command, in about 20 minutes. Our first male dog, Buddy, learned all of the above commands simply by watching Rascal do them (and get treated for it!), so he started doing it.

[Finnsliz]

My 12 year old Wink learned to sit at the ripe old age of 11! Not the brightest lightbulb, she always had a perfectly good natural sit on the couch or in the car just was very uncomfortable doing it on deman... and still is. Her rear end and legs get all shaky with nerves because she HATES to sit on demand. Birdie has no problem and neither did my big tall male gh.

 

As for the leash walking .... Their training at the track required them to walk well on a leash, but out in front of the handler who was trying to wrangle several dogs at once. I think it is from that training that they seem to naturally want to walk out front. I don't have a problem with that as long as there is no pulling.

 

Obviously I am not into training Your dogs sounds perfect to me.

[Feisty49]

Thanks -- there are some great ideas here. Annie Bella truly is an easy dog for which I am grateful. I had a foster here for just a week, whom I feel in love with, but he drove me nuts. He pooped on the floor some times but just as often would let me know he had to go out. He cruised table and counter tops and snarfed down anything in the basket he could reach. He was a rascal - a loving, joyful, I-love-life rascal, and when he left, we both cried (I with tears, him with whimpers and roos). As much fun as he was, and as sweet in showing his immediate affection for me, he was not easy and at this stage of my life, I want easy.

[Hubcitypam]

I don't know if this will be relevant or not.

 

I've really only tried to train two of my greys and one was because he was a bit of a problem child. He and I went to a group training class and it really seemed to help him. I'd ask to go near the end in exercises and I swear that he "went to school" on the other dogs by watching them. It went far quicker than training him by himself.

 

The other dog I took to a greyhounds only training class where the instructor had her doberman demonstrate then we all turned to the wall and had our dogs do it while the instructor came around. May have just been the difference in dogs but that class didn't produce near the results of the one where the dogs got to watch each other time after time.

[schultzlc]

When you ask "is time a factor," I would say absolutely yes! My Luna, who I've had for eight months, isn't as interested in treats as some hounds either. In fact, she dislikes all treats except for one brand of cookie. Everyday, as I leave for work, we go to her pillow and I ask her to sit, but she usually ignored me. I tried all the tricks, trying to get her too look up and naturally sit, quickly accosting her as she laid down to catch her in the sitting position, etc. Nothing seemed to click, but I still did it every day. Then, randomly, last week she decided she'd start sitting on command, and she's been doing it beautifully ever since! What got her going, I have no idea, and I knew that little goober could understand me all this time . Now this week she's learned to shake. On Monday, after she sat, I gently took a front paw and said "shake." On Tuesday, I said "shake" and she voluntarily gave me her paw, clever girl. I almost can't believe how quickly she is learning things now, since for the longest time she was being too stubborn. I hope for the same for you and your Annie Bella!

[Feisty49]

When you ask "is time a factor," I would say absolutely yes! My Luna, who I've had for eight months, isn't as interested in treats as some hounds either. In fact, she dislikes all treats except for one brand of cookie. Everyday, as I leave for work, we go to her pillow and I ask her to sit, but she usually ignored me. I tried all the tricks, trying to get her too look up and naturally sit, quickly accosting her as she laid down to catch her in the sitting position, etc. Nothing seemed to click, but I still did it every day. Then, randomly, last week she decided she'd start sitting on command, and she's been doing it beautifully ever since! What got her going, I have no idea, and I knew that little goober could understand me all this time . Now this week she's learned to shake. On Monday, after she sat, I gently took a front paw and said "shake." On Tuesday, I said "shake" and she voluntarily gave me her paw, clever girl. I almost can't believe how quickly she is learning things now, since for the longest time she was being too stubborn. I hope for the same for you and your Annie Bella!

 

This is a great story! I know Annie Bella's not stupid. She's got her own mind, as most Greys do. Sometimes it's finding and using the correct word. Annie won't respond to "stay" but she does to "wait." It took *me* weeks to learn that one. I assume somewhere in her past, wait was the word of choice. I don't want Annie to do cutesie little tricks. I would like her to learn the 10 things on the list to become a certified therapy dog.

[Jenbo]

Myka was similar to Luna. I found if I could make her understand what I meant -- like shake -- and then not ask her for a few days -- she's fine. No sit though, no way, no how. Mostly I've had to catch her doing the behavior in order to reinforce it, like saying LOAD UP when she's jumping in the car. Now she does it on command. She'll bow too.

[rschultz]

We had some tell us that Lexie could never be a therapy dog. We did a lot of repetition. I mean like 20-3 times a day...lol.. Lexie was food and praise motivated. Maybe try some special small treat and only use that for training purposes. It did take Lexie a long time. I even "practiced" with her at some nursing homes that didn't require certification before she took her official test. Just lots of repetition. She will get it.

[moofie]

Clicker training has worked really well with my 2, they pick things up much quicker than the class we went to a few years ago that didn't use that style of training and i like that i can do things in smaller steps or capture things they already do. I discovered Hattie will only sit if lured up from a down, if i try the same lure technique from a stand she doesn't get it.

Edited November 12, 2011 by moofie

[philospher77]

I will say that it took Katie a while to become the little movie star that she is! I started with handfeeding her all her meals, to build the bond between us since she was such a shy dog. Then we took some classes. And somewhere in there I started messing around with the clicker. Then to working for her meals, based on what she had learned. It took some time for her to get the entire idea of learning, but once she did, look out!

 

I will say this: training should be fun. You say you don't want to teach her cutsie tricks, just the basic commands, but once you get started, you may change your mind. I put Katie's eagerness to train down to playing 101 things to do with a box, where she was rewarded for doing just about anything. That's what got her to learn that training is a team sport. That I would ask her to do things, which she could choose to do or not, and get rewarded for or not. But also that she could offer me behavior, which I might decide to reward, or not. It was simply thrilling to watch her carefully repeat an action to see if it would get a click and treat like it did the first time! Thankfully, she's a natural sitter, so that was just capturing it and putting it on cue. But things like teaching her to crawl was inspired by actions that she did to get food without having to stand up and walk. I took that behavior, shaped it, put it on cue, and now she will do it when I ask. She's far from winning any obedience trials, because I don't really care that much. But we have gone from learning a trick slowly, over multiple days, to being able to pick up the basics in one session and get it pretty solid in the next few. The most delightful thing is that to her, training is just a game, one of those silly things that humans ask you to do, like playing with stuffies or running around the yard. She sees me pick up the clicker and the bait bag, and she's there ears up, eyes shining, giving me a big play bow and waiting to see what I ask her to do. Which is, of course, part of why I have taught her so many cutsie tricks... I have to do something to keep her that eager to learn, and it's just a lot of fun to do.

 

So, I would keep working with Annie, and see what happens.

[Fruitycake]

I agree with the vast majority of people here. At least to start, training goes really slowly because she's not just learning the trick you're teaching her, but learning how to learn. With those that do clicker training where they capture things, the above post about watching the dog try to figure out what will work to get another treat is right on the money. It is fascinating to see the wrinkle between the brows when they're trying to figure out why you don't just give them the treat already (and with Monty, look around at the floor to see if you dropped it on the sly and he missed it). When they realize they're getting stuff because of something they are doing, they really try to figure out what "that darn human" wants and will start offering you behaviors. I really like the "capture a behavior" type of training, at least to start, because it's easier than trying to force a behavior you want somehow.

 

Also, if your dog is only marginally food motivated, definitely reduce the amount of food before training time. Delay breakfast or dinner until after and have them hungrier to give a little more incentive to work with you.

[Feisty49]

You're all very encouraging and I'm taking heart from it. I started clicker training yesterday. Just a simple thing that when I click, she gets an M&M size liver treat. All she had to do was be there. LOL This morning I did a session of just click/treat again, and this afternoon I raised the treat to my face to get her to look at me. When Annie Bella looked, I clicked and gave the treat. She's not a dog to look people in the eyes often, and most times I had to physically raise her face up and then immediately followed through with click/treat. I know I'll be excited when she can do even this simple thing without me touching her.