Mixing up verbal cues

2771 Views 12 Replies 8 Participants Last post by CptJack, May 7, 2014

Chichan

Discussion Starter · Apr 30, 2014

Chico and I do obedience training twice a day for 10-20 minutes. I use his kibble and this is how he is fed his lunch and dinner.

Before April 25th we had master Sit and Down (with both hand and verbal cues) and have been working on a more solid 'leave it' and a further distance recall.
I decided to introduce Stay since Sit and Down were going so well.
Everyday I added 5 seconds (five Mississippis) to the Stay in both a Down and a Sit and everything was going fine...

Until, yesterday (25 seconds).
I put Chico into his Sit and when I said Stay he went into a Down. I didn't reward.
I tried putting him into a Down-Stay instead, but when I said Down he didn't respond. I didn't reward.
I kept trying, but he kept repeating the above.
Eventually I just did repeated Downs (verbal+hand cue) and rewarded when he did it and did very quick Sit-Stays and rewarded before he went into a down.

Today: He's still mixing up the verbal cues, so I just did what I did yesterday again.

Any advice or ideas as to why this happened/how to fix it?

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kdawnk

· #2 · Apr 30, 2014

I'm having a similar problem with Sansa.
She does the same things as well as doing tricks without the command just to get a treat or reward. (Although I don't give her anything without the command)
I assumed she gets the commands confused because she's either not focusing and just doing things she knows produces a treat, or I've tried to teach her too many things too fast and I need to go slower.

Interested in hearing what others say.

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goodgirl

· #3 · Apr 30, 2014

Could it be something you're doing with your hands to where he could confuse the hand signals between down and stay? I think you're right to go back a step or two...what are YOU doing while he stays? Like are you walking around, turning your back to him and such? If he's getting bored at that duration (this is a puppy I think?) you could try a sit/stay for 20 seconds then add some distractions or distance from you before adding more duration. You could also try adding a little break in there to play tug or something to keep him engaged. OR break it up with something more interactive with you like "up", "spin," "roll over," or anything where he gets to jump or move around differently. Might make him feel more like he's "doing" something fun! Or even just a higher rate of reinforcement or higher value treats on things he finds harder to do. Just some ideas that may or may not be useful

Sounds to me like you guys are doing great!

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Chichan

Discussion Starter · #4 · Apr 30, 2014

goodgirl said:
Could it be something you're doing with your hands to where he could confuse the hand signals between down and stay? I think you're right to go back a step or two...what are YOU doing while he stays? Like are you walking around, turning your back to him and such? If he's getting bored at that duration (this is a puppy I think?) you could try a sit/stay for 20 seconds then add some distractions or distance from you before adding more duration. You could also try adding a little break in there to play tug or something to keep him engaged. OR break it up with something more interactive with you like "up", "spin," "roll over," or anything where he gets to jump or move around differently. Might make him feel more like he's "doing" something fun! Or even just a higher rate of reinforcement or higher value treats on things he finds harder to do. Just some ideas that may or may not be useful Sounds to me like you guys are doing great!

I don't think so, I made my hand signals very unnatural to avoid accidentally doing them in everyday life.
And during the stay he is very focused on me/his stay. Sometimes I do nothing, but sometimes I flail around or squeak a toy or the cat walks by and bumps into him (on purpose I'm sure).
Those tricks are definitely more fun but I am afraid it may be too much too soon, which like kdawnk mentioned may be the reason behind the command confusion.
He's only 14 weeks right now so I'm focusing on the basic manner commands.
Thanks for the suggestions

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hanksimon

· #5 · Apr 30, 2014

Two things could be going on - either one, or a mix:
1. He is approaching the time of losing his puppy teeth and growing his adult teeth. In large dogs, this occurs around 4 - 5 mos, but I don't know if it's the same with a Chi. Possibly. So he could be teething, his mouth is sore... and he's in training with an additional distraction - pain.
2. A 25 sec. Stay may be a long time for a 3 mos pup, and you may have reached the point of frustration ... so he's borderline confused.

In either case, stop the Stay for a few days, and simply go back and retrain Sit and Down, possibly from the beginning, to get them back to 100% ... It may only take a few sessions. Then work back up to a 15 - 20 second Stay, and remain with that time for a week or two. The slower approach may help even if the pup isn't teething.

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Chichan

Discussion Starter · #6 · Apr 30, 2014

hanksimon said:
Two things could be going on - either one, or a mix:
1. He is approaching the time of losing his puppy teeth and growing his adult teeth. In large dogs, this occurs around 4 - 5 mos, but I don't know if it's the same with a Chi. Possibly. So he could be teething, his mouth is sore... and he's in training with an additional distraction - pain.
2. A 25 sec. Stay may be a long time for a 3 mos pup, and you may have reached the point of frustration ... so he's borderline confused.

In either case, stop the Stay for a few days, and simply go back and retrain Sit and Down, possibly from the beginning, to get them back to 100% ... It may only take a few sessions. Then work back up to a 15 - 20 second Stay, and remain with that time for a week or two. The slower approach may help even if the pup isn't teething.

My vet did mention he would start teething soon so that can be a very real possibility thanks.
I'll go back to scratch then

Thanks so much.

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sassafras

· #7 · May 1, 2014

Did you start with hand cues and then introduced verbal cues later? If so, I think it's very possible that he just really doesn't know the verbal cues and is guessing. I would go back to square one with re-teaching the verbal cues.

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Chichan

Discussion Starter · #8 · May 1, 2014

sassafras said:
Did you start with hand cues and then introduced verbal cues later? If so, I think it's very possible that he just really doesn't know the verbal cues and is guessing. I would go back to square one with re-teaching the verbal cues.

I did both at the same time (together) when I introduced them and then started doing one without the other after I felt like he understood. He definitely picked up on the hand cues much faster than the verbal cues.
So you're right I probably have to strengthen them even more before introducing Stay.

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elrohwen

· #9 · May 1, 2014

I agree with Sass that he is probably guessing, so I would take a step back.

It's also really common for dogs to seem to have sit and down perfected, and then start mixing them up. I'm not sure why, and if every dog mixes them up for the same reason, but it's pretty easily solved by going back a step and making sure the dog really understands the distinction.

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Robbi

· #10 · May 3, 2014

I wouldn't be super concerned, dogs hit snags in training all the time. Sonic will do sends all day from 10 ft away and the next day we come out and it's like he's never done it before...Just earlier today i took him for a walk and you would've thought he had never been on one. He was running all over, paying no attention to me, and trying to pull when normally he's very polite.

He might have just had an off day or have been tired. I'd add back the hand cues and be patient. There will be good days and bad ones, it's part of the process, but I wouldn't look at it as a set back but an opportunity for improvement

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CptJack

· #11 · May 7, 2014 (Edited)

elrohwen said:
I agree with Sass that he is probably guessing, so I would take a step back.

It's also really common for dogs to seem to have sit and down perfected, and then start mixing them up. I'm not sure why, and if every dog mixes them up for the same reason, but it's pretty easily solved by going back a step and making sure the dog really understands the distinction.

I think it's because at first what they really get is 'Owner speaks to me pointedly and I do the thing and get food' not really cuing in on specific sounds. And also when there's just two commands, the dog has a 99% shot of getting what you want next right, since it's 'the other one'. Around the time a third command is introduced as part of the rotation and their odds of getting it right goes down to 50% and they really do have to start listening to the WORD and not just paying attention to you and doing that other thing when you make noise is when it falls apart. Which is incidentally when the first two are solid enough to add the third to the mix, rather than its own training session or thing being focused most on.

Mind you I don't read doggy minds, I just think at first the dogs aren't QUITE getting how it works so it leads to some crossed wires.

All of the theories aside, agreed: Don't worry about it OP. Dogs do some strange things sometimes and crossed wires and mix-ups happen. The one thing I will suggest is to make sure your commands are very distinct words right now. I had sit, sit-up, and up, as separate commands for a while. Yeah. That didn't work. We switched that middle one to beg. And that's not saying there's no weird confusion, ever. Sometimes it's with words being too similar (on and up get her and they're entirely different actions - on being jump on something, up being stand all the way up on your hind legs). Sometimes it's the dog not quite differentiating the physical command (spin and roll over was an issue forever. Because... apparently as long as you turn in a circle it doesn't matter if you're standing up or lying down or which way you turn). Ironically, we never had any issue with twirl and spin, which are just turning different directions.

Basically, it just takes times and mix-ups happen along the way.

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elrohwen

· #12 · May 7, 2014

CptJack said:
I think it's because at first what they really get is 'Owner speaks to me pointedly and I do the thing and get food' not really cuing in on specific sounds. And also when there's just two commands, the dog has a 99% shot of getting what you want next right, since it's 'the other one'. Around the time a third command is introduced as part of the rotation and their odds of getting it right goes down to 50% and they really do have to start listening to the WORD and not just paying attention to you and doing that other thing when you make noise is when it falls apart. Which is incidentally when the first two are solid enough to add the third to the mix, rather than its own training session or thing being focused most on.

I do agree it's probably most likely to happen when the third cue is added. Watson actually started mixing them up again late, well after he had three cues. Not sure why? It may have been some adolescent brain fart kind of thing. Or it could have been that the other cues he knew had different body language and context which made them obvious, but with sit and down he was still guessing. It seems like pretty much every dog goes through this at some point or another.

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CptJack

· #13 · May 7, 2014

elrohwen said:
I do agree it's probably most likely to happen when the third cue is added. Watson actually started mixing them up again late, well after he had three cues. Not sure why? It may have been some adolescent brain fart kind of thing. Or it could have been that the other cues he knew had different body language and context which made them obvious, but with sit and down he was still guessing. It seems like pretty much every dog goes through this at some point or another.

I sometimes wonder if it might be something similar to Kylie's roll-over/spin mix up, or the really common confusion with bow and down. It means get lower and they don't have quite enough awareness to really get that it's lower either all of yourself or the back end, and it just means 'get something on the floor' and they sort of become almost interchangeable in the dog's head. I can ask Kylie for a LOT of things with 100% performance of the behavior even after months, but there are some -and sit and down is up there- that if I don't go back to really frequently she mixes up.

Though with Kylie at least I take the blame. If I'm asking for sit or down they almost ARE interchangeable to me and I just don't care. I don't reward for the wrong one, but I'm not all that precise about moving on if she gives me the wrong one, either.

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