What Is The AKC Canine Good Citizen Test?

May 3, 2017 by Fanna Easter

AKC Canine Good Citizen Certification

There are 60.2 million households in the U.S. that own a dog, according to American Pet Products Association. As the human population continues to grow, it’s only natural more and more dogs will become pets as well.

With that said, we have a few responsibilities as pet owners. One of them is ensuring we have a sturdy and protective fence to keep dogs from fence fighting and possibly getting harmed. Another responsibility is teaching our dogs polite manners. AKC’s Canine Good Citizen (CGC) test sets the standard for pet owners and dogs.

What is the Canine Good Citizen Test?

American Kennel Club’s Canine Good Citizen test was designed to provide a standard for canine polite manners and promote responsible dog ownership. Thankfully, the CGC test is open to all dogs regardless of breed. However, dogs must be up-to-date on all vaccinations, including rabies.

The CGC test involves 10 steps. A CGC evaluator sets up the course, observes and assesses a pet owner and her dog’s training skills within a myriad of everyday distractions.

Dogs and pet owners must pass all 10 steps to earn the CGC certificate, and treats cannot be used during the exam. Dogs should wear a flat buckle collar, martingale collar or body harness, and must be leashed at all times.

Before a CGC test is completed, a pet owner must sign AKC’s CGC Responsible Dog Ownership Pledge. This pledge verifies a pet owner will be responsible by providing her dog proper veterinary care, picking up after her dog and training her dog.

10-Step Canine Good Citizen Test

Accepting a Friendly Stranger

Tested dog allows a stranger to approach and chat with handler for a few minutes, then turns around and leaves.

Sitting Politely for Petting

Dog allows a friendly stranger to pet him or her while out for a walk with pet owners. Dog should not jump up on stranger.

Appearance & Grooming

Friendly stranger is able to touch the dog’s front paws and ears and brush the dog’s body.

Out for a Walk (Walking on a Loose Leash)

During an informal walk, dog is able to walk on a loose leash. Remember, a loose leash (no pulling) is considered polite leash manners. 🙂

Walking Through a Crowd

Dog is able to walk happily through a crowd (three or more people) while remaining well behaved. Dog should not jump up on people.

Sit & Down on Cue Plus Stay Behavior

Pet owner asks the dog to “sit” and “down” on cue. Both behaviors should be performed separately. Using a 20-foot line, pet owner asks the dog to stay in either a sit or down position until evaluator instructs pet owner to release her dog.

Coming When Called

Pet owner walks 10 feet away from her dog while the dog wears a 20-foot leash, then calls the dog to her.

Reaction to Another Dog

Leashed test dog is able to walk near another leashed dog without barking, growling or pulling toward the other dog. Both handlers will stop, shake hands and chat for a few seconds, then walk away in opposite directions.

Reaction to a Distraction

Test dog should ignore or show slight interest in a distraction within his or her environment. Distractions can be many things, including an evaluator walking near the test dog with crutches, a cane, a walker or a baby stroller, or an evaluator dropping a phone book or pushing a shopping cart nearby.

Supervised Separation

Test dog is left with the evaluator for 3 minutes while pet owner is completely out of sight.

Upon successful completion, the tested dog earns the title of “CGC” after his or her name. If a team fails their CGC test, they may take it again.

Benefits of the Canine Good Citizen Title

With breed-specific legislation and strict homeowner restrictions, it’s important to achieve proof of your dog’s good behavior. In fact, some homeowner insurances offer discounts for dogs that have passed the CGC test.

Preparing for the CGC Test

The CGC test is tough. Pet owners and dogs should attend puppy and adult dog group classes first. It’s also highly advisable to complete a 7-week CGC prep course too. Most CGC prep group classes offer a CGC test upon graduation, which is very convenient. Don’t forget to practice each CGC step in different environments, such as a neighborhood, park or pet store.

How To Fade Dog Training Treats

May 1, 2017 by Fanna Easter

Randomly Rewarding Training Treats

Fade Food Lures — Christian Müller/Adobe Stock

Dog training treats are extremely useful when teaching your dog new behaviors. Once your dog has practiced a specific behavior in a myriad of situations with various distractions, it’s time to start fading treats. But not so fast! There’s a technique to fading dog treats! 🙂

Fading Dog Training Treats and Gambling

Randomly rewarding your dog’s behavior works. People are rewarded randomly every day at casinos. Gamblers learn to continue playing the game in hopes of a large payout even after long sessions without winning. It’s so effective that gambling can become addicting. Another example of a variable reward system is the lottery. Despite the 1 billion to 1 odds of winning the lottery, people still shell out their hard-earned money because the payout is extremely valuable to them.

How to Fade Dog Training Treats

Before fading a cue, make sure your dog completely understands how to perform a behavior first. If working on a “down” cue, the dog should respond quickly (within 1 second) to a cue (verbal or hand signal). You should also have your dog practice the “down” cue in your house, in the backyard, during walks and at a park.

Once your dog responds to the cue 90% of the time (lays down when given a “down” cue), it’s time to fade training treats.

When fading dog training treats, you’re rewarding your dog fewer times. You reward your dog only for the best of the best attempts. For example, you should only reward your dog for fast response time (latency) to a cue.

This variable schedule of reinforcement coupled with high value pea-sized treats fine-tunes your dog’s response to cues and his behavior while fading the use of training treats.

Don’t Fade Too Fast

Sometimes, pet owners become too picky about rewarding behaviors and decrease food rewards too quickly. Usually, this results in a confused and frustrated dog that gives up. In addition, the behavior usually falls apart, meaning a dog stops responding to a cue or offers a different behavior instead.

If this happens, take a few steps back and reward every successful attempt for several days. Then, slowly fade treats by rewarding 4 out of 5 attempts for a few days and then 3 out of 5 attempts and so forth. Then, it’s time to reward the fastest response after a cue or desired behaviors around distractions.

Don’t Completely Toss Out Training Treats

Remember, to maintain a behavior, there must be a payout (hence gambling)! When a dog responses to a cue around a tough distraction, give your dog lots of treats. If a dog comes when called while watching a squirrel run across the backyard, make treats rain from the sky. Also, use dog treats to jump-start an old behavior and teach new ones.

Dog training treats are a valuable part of the learning process for dogs, so fade only when appropriate.

Does Permission-Based Dog Training Work?

April 26, 2017 by Fanna Easter

A Look Into Permission-Based Dog Training

While researching scientific data to support another article, somehow I bumped into a dog trainer claiming that permission-based dog training works. As a professional dog trainer, I base my dog training methods on scientific research, which promotes force-free training methods.

Do know, I’ve been around the dog training block for two decades, and I’ve seen dog training fads and concepts come and go. In other words, I certainly have an opinion on this type of dog training. 🙂 Let’s explore the concept of permission-based dog training together.

What is Permission-Based Dog Training?

Permission-based dog training is marketing verbiage for promoting dominance-based dog training. Training a dog based on dominance involves verbal and physical corrections that promote permissive dog behavior. In a nutshell, a dog must ask for permission to eat, walk through a door, go outside, take a treat, bark, climb onto furniture or even urinate. That sounds like ego dog training to me.

Permission basically means a dog must be verbally released and perform a behavior (e.g. sit) or look at the pet owner before doing anything. This concept takes self-control exercises to an entirely different level. It creates dependence on humans. Teaching dogs self-control is important, but adding a layer of strong human dependence is wrong.

Does Permission-Based Dog Training Work?

No, permission-based dog training doesn’t work. Teaching dogs to rely on humans for “important” decisions molds a living being into a robot. Don’t get me wrong, dogs should learn polite manners, but training a dog to focus on his or her pet owner only is overkill.

Dogs are completely capable of learning how to behave politely in situations, and don’t need pet owners telling them what to do next. Teach a dog how to react, and then reinforce it when he or she chooses to respond politely. This is learning.

Take this example. A pet owner has a human aggressive dog. Permission-based dog training would entail the pet owner teaching his dog an “ignore” cue, which would signal to the dog to stop growling, barking or lunging at a person.

While it’s empowering to “call off a dog,” teaching this cue won’t benefit the dog. A better solution would be to teach the dog to ignore humans regardless of whoever is standing by. Even better would be to teach a dog that humans make treats appear and then the dog learns that good things happen around humans. (If you’re thinking this is bribery, it’s not. It’s counter conditioning and based on scientific data.)

[perfectpullquote align=”full” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Teaching human dependence is a disservice to dogs. [/perfectpullquote]

Does It Teach Self-Control?

Permission-based dog training probably started off with self-control exercises in mind, but then took a slight detour. Dogs (and humans) must learn self-control; they should learn how to politely behave within their environment.

Teaching a dog to rely on humans for permission or answers is when teaching dogs self-control took a detour. Dogs are fully able to make good choices, especially when they’re rewarded for them. Teaching human dependence is a disservice to dogs. Instead, train your dog how to react politely regardless of the situation. In human terms, it’s like teaching a teenager to say no to drugs in all situations. Empower your dog to make good decisions in all situations and not just when you’re present.

Training a dog how to react politely in a situation, without human reliance, is powerful.

How To Break Up With Your Veterinarian

April 12, 2017 by Fanna Easter

What’s Involved When Changing Vets

Breaking up with anyone is difficult. Choosing to leave your current veterinarian, regardless of the reason, is extremely uncomfortable. Many pet owners put off this decision, hoping something changes soon, but it rarely does. If your gut is screaming that you and your dog need a new vet, then it’s time to pull up your socks and get it done. Yes, switching veterinarians can be done painlessly and graciously.

Trust Your Gut

It’s easy to second-guess your gut feeling, but that feeling is there for a reason. If your previous vet left your vet clinic, you’ve moved or you had a difficult time scheduling an appointment, then breaking up with your vet is easy.

When you’re dissatisfied with your dog’s health care or staff members are rude, then that’s when it gets tricky. Many times staff members are rude because there was a misunderstanding. In that case, speak with your veterinarian or practice manager about it. However, sometimes those discussions just don’t work and it’s time to move on.

Trust and listen to your gut, and start looking for a new vet before something happens to your dog. Ask dog friends or your dog trainer for referrals and look into force-free vet clinics.

Transferring Vet Records

This is the point where most pet owners chicken out. While it’s easy to start from scratch with a new vet, it’s not fair to your dog. Your dog’s previous health records are extremely valuable to your new vet.

[perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Remember, you don’t owe anyone an explanation.[/perfectpullquote]

There are two ways you can transfer vet records. One way is to ask your previous vet to transfer your dog’s health records to your new vet. The second way, which may be a little less uncomfortable for you, is to contact your new vet’s office and have them request your dog’s medical records from your previous vet. What’s most important is your new vet receives those health records.

Remember, you don’t owe anyone an explanation unless you want to. Do tread carefully though and explain why you’re searching for a new vet. Maybe mention that you’re seeking a more integrative approach, you need a vet closer to your home or you received a referral from a fabulous dog-savvy friend. Never burn bridges, so handle this situation politely.

Meeting the New Vet

Assuming you’ve completed extensive research, it’s time to meet your new vet. Keep an open mind and refrain from bashing your previous vet. When pet owners speak negatively about others, it’s uncomfortable for everyone in the room. Switching vets is explanation enough; your new vet knows there was a reason. Instead of explaining why you left, provide details of your dog’s medical history that your vet may need to know.

Also, observe how your new vet and her staff handle your dog, how she explains your dog’s health, and how she answers your questions.

Never Give Up

Hopefully, your new vet fulfills your and your dog’s needs. Sometimes, it just doesn’t work out and that’s OK. Remember, you’re your dog’s voice, so never give up until you find the best veterinarian and support staff. Yes, it’s difficult and uncomfortable, but it’s completely worth it. You’re your dog’s advocate, so speak up. 🙂

Should Your Dog Chew Pig Ears?

April 7, 2017 by Fanna Easter

Pros and Cons of Pig Ears for Dogs

Dogs love and need to chew. Chewing provides mental stimulation and exercise, keeps teeth clean, is fun and super relaxing. If dogs aren’t given plenty of chewing opportunities, they’ll likely create their own, which is never a good thing. So, should your dog chew pig ears? It depends. Learn the pros and cons of pig ear chews for dogs.

Pros of Pig Ear Dog Treats

The most appealing advantage about pig ear chews is dogs find them simply delicious! In my 20-plus years as a dog trainer, I’ve never witnessed a dog turning his or her nose up at a smoked pig ear dog treat.

Their thick hide and density make pig ears easy to chew for small, delicate chewers and senior dogs. Another huge plus is pig ear chews keep your dog’s teeth clean and gums healthy, which means fresh breath. Pig ear chews are also odorless even while your dog chews them.

Due to their popularity, pig ear dog treats are readily available at pet retailers and online, and are relatively inexpensive compared to other dog chews.

Cons of Pig Ear Dog Treats

Pig ear dog treats are high in fat. When consumed daily, pig ear chews can cause vomiting and diarrhea. Overzealous chewing dogs (power chewers) may choke or swallow large chunks, causing GI obstruction hazards.

Another pro about pig ear chews is power chewers can literally consume a pig ear chew within seconds, which can get very expensive. Most pig ear dog treats are also covered in chemicals, additives and preservatives, so choose chews made in the USA only.

Since pig ear chews for dogs taste so delicious, some dogs may exhibit resource guarding behavior and protect these treats from other dogs, people and children.

Pig Ear Chew Safety

If your dog is prone to obesity, has pancreatitis, is currently eating a bland diet or consumes chews too quickly, then it’s best to provide a different type of dog chew.

Pig ear chews are best for small dogs, delicate chewers and seniors in moderation (one chew per week). For power chewing dogs, bully sticks are a better option. Remember, supervision is vital while dogs chew. It’s the best preventative for choking or digestive obstructions.

What Is The AKC Canine Good Citizen Test?

AKC Canine Good Citizen Certification