Dear Dog Trainer,
My dog knows all the basics.
At home, he’ll sit, down, stay, and come when I call him…if it’s just us in the house.
The problem is that the second we leave the house or someone comes over, it’s like he’s a completely different dog.
At the park, he ignores me. If another dog is nearby, I may as well not exist. Sometimes he won’t even respond to commands that I know he knows.
My family keeps telling me that he understands exactly what I’m asking him to do and is simply choosing not to listen.
Honestly, I’m starting to wonder if they’re right.
How can my dog know these commands so well at home but act like he’s never heard them before everywhere else?
— Ignored Outside
Dear Ignored Outside,
I can’t tell you how many times I have had a dog owner tell me this. I promise, you are not alone.
Our world is hard for dogs and the way they learn things is quite different from how we do in many cases.
Here’s the deal: there are two big parts to your question and I want to make sure I actually help you with both, so we are going to do this in two parts so I can help you understand your dog better. So make sure, after you read this article, you watch for next week’s article too so you can catch the 2nd part of your question.
So this week, let’s focus on generalization.
When you learn a new skill, let’s say you just learned how to crochet. You learned in your living room and that’s great. And because you are a human, you can crochet other places now too. You can do it in your bedroom, or at the park, or really anywhere you please.
What’s interesting about dogs is that they don’t learn that same way. Just because they learn something in the living room, doesn’t mean they can do the same command in the kitchen, in the yard, or out on a walk.
Dogs learn through pictures. If the picture you originally gave them was working on “sit”, while you sat in a chair with a hat on in your living room and you did “sit” 100 times…your dog now likely understands “sit”, but only in that context.
That does not mean they will understand it when you’re standing…
…When you’re in the kitchen…
…When you take your hat off…
…When your best friend comes over…
…When you’re out on a walk…
Get the picture? (see what I did there…haha)
So until your dog knows how to “sit” in all those situations, and more, they likely don’t understand “sit” nearly as well as you think they do.
So here is how you help them through this step:
Don’t assume your dog knows the command and is just ignoring you.
Instead, help them be successful.
When you take a command into a new situation, go back to basics. Show them what you want the same way you did when you first taught it.
Practice in the house.
Then the backyard.
Then the driveway.
Then somewhere a little
more distracting.
Slowly increase the challenge instead of jumping straight into the hardest version.
And pay attention to what your dog is telling you.
If they are failing over and over again, the situation is probably too hard. That does not mean they are stubborn. It means they need you to go back a couple steps and help them understand the picture in front of them.
The good news is that your dog may not be ignoring you nearly as much as you think.
The bad news?
Even when dogs understand a behavior in a new location, there is another challenge waiting for them.
Next week, we’ll talk about why your dog can know exactly what you’re asking and still struggle to respond when the world gets exciting.
-Your Friendly Dog Trainer