Training question
Moderator: chowadmin
Training question
Sadie took the basic dog obedience class. In class they taugt me to use a "mark" word when training. I use the word "good" as the mark word for Sadie. Should I use a different "mark" word for Jake?
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*chuckling at some of the "mark" words used* .. I'm not sure begging counts!
VTCHOW, I use the same word to mark the behavior with all five of my dogs. I also teach each of them to understand their own name and so I can pair commands or behavior markers with the name if needed. But they pretty much understand - if I'm focused on Khana, and I say "YES!!" (my marker word) they all know that I'm giving her the treat and not them.
What I've found with commands and words is that they need to be clear to the dog but easily used by us. If you start using different words with different dogs, it gets really confusing down the line. When I first started showing and was trying to figure out which commands worked best, I tried different words with the two dogs I was showing at the time and promptly got myself ALL mixed up .. *L* .. I would be in the ring giving the wrong commands! So I've settled now on certain words that seem to work well overall for both me and the dogs.
Melanie and the gang in Alaska
VTCHOW, I use the same word to mark the behavior with all five of my dogs. I also teach each of them to understand their own name and so I can pair commands or behavior markers with the name if needed. But they pretty much understand - if I'm focused on Khana, and I say "YES!!" (my marker word) they all know that I'm giving her the treat and not them.
What I've found with commands and words is that they need to be clear to the dog but easily used by us. If you start using different words with different dogs, it gets really confusing down the line. When I first started showing and was trying to figure out which commands worked best, I tried different words with the two dogs I was showing at the time and promptly got myself ALL mixed up .. *L* .. I would be in the ring giving the wrong commands! So I've settled now on certain words that seem to work well overall for both me and the dogs.
Melanie and the gang in Alaska
LOL Roxanna... that's how it is at my house, especially with Molly. You could just put Molly's name in place of Dakota's.Roxana wrote:Ha!
My usual mark word is "please Dakota, just for once listen to me, pretty, pretty please??" It doesn't usually work by the way. Sorry, I know I'm not much help.
Nancy and Tai