3 popular dog training techniques

Dog trainers talk a lot about positive reinforcement and reward-based training, but it’s perhaps less well known that within this broad description of training method, there are a number of different techniques used – some or all of which you can mix and match when training your own dog. The most commonly used are luring, capturing and shaping.

Luring

For most new puppy owners, luring – often referred to as ‘lure and reward’ – is the simplest way to start. If both you and your dog are novices at this training game, luring is easy to put into practice and therefore less likely to frustrate either of you. 

Luring is simply the process of guiding your dog by holding a small piece of food in front of their nose and, as your dog follows your hand movements to keep their nose on the treat (with the expectation of being given it to eat), you can steer them into position. For example, by holding the treat on their nose and slowly lifting it up and slightly back over the dog’s head, your dog is likely to sit as that’s the most natural position to assume in order to keep that nose firmly sniffing the food between your fingers. As soon as they sit, you praise and reward with the treat. 

When your dog gets the idea and is fluidly moving into a sit, you’ll gradually transform the luring motion into a hand signal and then add a verbal cue. 

Of course, you don’t want to teach your dog that they only need to respond to a cue when there’s food in front of their nose! So, the important thing to remember when luring is to ‘fade out’ the food lure as soon as possible. Then food only appears as a reward after they’ve responded to the cue.

Capturing

This technique relies on simply waiting for your dog to do something you want to teach them, without any luring, and then praising and rewarding them immediately they’ve done it. If you want to train by capturing a behaviour, make sure you’ve always got some treats handy.

For example, if you want to teach your dog to lie down on cue (with some dogs, this can be tricky using the lure method), just wait for them to naturally lie down. As soon as they do, you can ‘mark’ it with a word or by using a clicker and then reward with a treat. Behaviour that gets rewarded tends to get repeated… So, as your dog discovers that lying down gets them a treat, they’re more likely to do it more often giving you more opportunities to capture the behaviour. Your next step is to start to add a hand signal or verbal cue just as they begin to lie down.

Of course, this will only work for behaviours your dog is likely to do of their own accord with reasonable frequency. Although, once dogs discover that they can get you to reward them by ‘doing stuff’, over time you may find them offering you different behaviours which can help speed up the training process.

Shaping

Shaping is considered a more advanced training technique. When shaping, you break a behaviour down and reward your dog as they progress through parts of it to reach the desired goal. It’s often associated with clicker training as that helps you mark and reward more precisely and it’s thus easier for the dog to understand what’s wanted.

There is a common shaping game that simply uses a cardboard box. You can decide what the goal is: perhaps you want your dog to put one paw inside it or, if it’s a large enough box, get in it. 

Once prepared with your clicker (if using one) and some treats, you simply put the box on the ground and wait for your dog to approach it. At the start that’s all you’re looking for. Mark and reward every time your dog gets closer to or expresses interest in the box. After that’s worked a few times, you can try waiting a little without rewarding and see if the dog gets even closer to the box or touches it with a nose or paw before you mark and reward. As you can imagine, this may take time over a few sessions but gradually you will be shaping your dog to investigate the box further, put one paw in and so on.

Shaping can also be a good way to go if, perhaps, your dog is a little nervous about trying new things especially with unfamiliar objects. It puts them in control of how quickly they progress. If you tried luring them instead, their desire for the treat might persuade them to get in the box but they might well still be stressed. 

Whichever technique you learn about and use when training your dog, make sure you both enjoy the process and have fun!    

For more training advice, please visit our dog coach Vicky Carne's website.