Puppies Unleashed!
By Stephanie Keesey-Phelan, Ph.D., BCBA
Last week we introduced some great books that can help guide you in the early days of life with your new puppy or dog. One of the books we recommended was Control Unleashed: The Puppy Program. This week we’ll be talking more about why Control Unleashed is such a great foundational framework for puppies (or your new dog!).
In a previous post, we made a case that there are no hard and fast rules to what you should teach your dog. Because every dog and every family is different, there may be skills that would be important for your dog that won’t be relevant for someone else’s, and vice versa. To that end, we would recommend that when (or even better: before!) you bring your pup home, you consider what skills will be relevant for them.
That being said, the pattern games and skills described in The Puppy Program are ones that can be helpful in every puppy’s toolbox. The power of these activities is in their predictability and their simplicity. I’ll go through one example below to give you a sense of what these activities entail.
The Puppy Ping-Pong Game
In this pattern game, we work on reinforcing our pup orienting towards us by delivering treats to the left and the right. It looks something like this:
Your pup orients to you. This could mean they are facing your body, they are looking in your general direction, or they are making eye contact or just looking up toward your face.
You mark it by saying “yes” or clicking a clicker.
You roll a treat gently to the left side of your foot.
Your pup eats the treat and you wait for her to orient again. When she does, you mark it and roll a treat gently to the right side of your foot this time.
Then you repeat, alternating with the treat rolling to the left and right sides.
Why teach something so simple and repetitive as orienting and then going to get treats rolled to the left and right? Exactly because it is so simple! Your new puppy is going to be faced with so many new experiences upon joining your family. From experience, I think many of us can relate that when we are in a new environment or dealing with something stressful, it can be hard to engage in more complex or complicated skills. But easy tasks that result in lots of reinforcement are much more achievable. They set the stage for a positive experience and association in the new context. In addition, when you bring your puppy to a new settings where everything is unusual or different and they don’t know what to do, returning to the pattern can give them a clear route to access reinforcement. In this regard, I like to think of pattern games as something of an anchor.
One caveat to the above is that there may be situations in which the Ping-Pong game wouldn’t be the right fit in the moment or for your particular pup. We emphasize that there is no one size fits all training recommendations. You should always take into account your puppy and your context and if you need help with that, that’s what we are here for! Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have questions.
The Puppy Program includes many activities similar to Puppy Ping-Pong and much more, and that’s why this program is one of my first stops when thinking about how to support a puppy or dog in their new home. Although at first it may seem silly or unnecessary to work on such simple tasks, this is what makes them perfect for puppies and effective when you’re out in the world or even experiencing new things at home. We highly recommend you check out The Puppy Program book or seek out a Certified Control Unleashed Instructor (CCUI) to help guide you!