Stimulus Control is an important part of training – we want our dogs to understand when to do specific behaviors. This can be part of having reliable responses and is especially important for some types of competition training. A short version: The dog should respond to the cue with the correct behavior (and never any other behavior in response to the cue), the dog should not do the behavior in response to other cues, and the dog should not do the behavior when no cue is given. Here’s a nice article on stimulus control. Obviously there are some behaviors that the dogs have to do at other times (lie down – they need to rest!) and some behaviors where it is useful for dogs to continue to offer (attention).
Here’s a video we took for the online class we are in to show where we’re at with cues/stimulus control. In this video we:
- Warmed up with an offered behavior
- Added the cue
- “Tested” by asking for other behaviors – was he going around the cone on any word or listening? We interspersed the new cue for going around the cone with the 2 behaviors he knows well – “Lie down” and hand touch.
This is our first time adding a cue to the cone behavior and he’s still pretty new to cues (bed, down, come, get it, and release). This session went quite smoothly – that’s how training should go. There are still a few changes I would like to make – I should have re-set him once or twice when he made errors (hesitated before going around the cone or did a leap before going around) – but he was adorable and fixed himself so easily I let him continue. Next session I will do better! I will also do more pauses – I think if I had waited very long he would have probably offered going around the cone.