Obedience training: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

Obedience training involves training an animal, most often a dog, to obey basic control commands such as sit, down, and heel.

There are almost as many methods of training as there are trainers, but over time the basic strategy has shifted away from punishment or avoidance training (negative reinforcement) to positive reinforcement, where the dog is rewarded for doing the correct thing during most phases of training rather than being punished for not doing what the trainer wants.

History

Working dogs have always learned to obey commands related to the work that they historically performed, such as when a sheepdog moves a flock of animals in response to a shepherd's whistled directions, or a hunting dog searching for (or chasing down) quarry or leaving the treed quarry at the hunter's command.

It has been only in more modern times, as the dog has become more of a companion than a hired servant (paid in food and a dry place to lie down) who lived in the barn with other livestock, that obedience training has become a separate and specific skill (for both the owner and the dog).

In the twentieth century, formalized dog training originated in military and police applications, and many theories on how to train a dog came out of the same mentality that created boot camp for soldiers.

In the middle and late part of the century, however, more research into operant conditioning and positive reinforcement occurred as wild animal shows became more popular-- Traditional methods of teaching animals behavior (as with dogs) proved irrelevent when, for example, a trainer had to instruct a dolphin or an orca. These aquatic mammal trainers used clickers (a small box that makes a loud click when pushed on) to "mark" desired behavior, giving food as a reward. The improvements in training methods spread gradually into the world of dog training. Every decade sees new methods and new attitudes reach mainstream training clases.

There are at least three levels of obedience training. At a basic level, owners want dogs with whom they can pleasantly share a house, a car, or a walk in the park. Some dogs need only a minimum amount of training to learn to elimate outside (be housebroken), to sit, to lie down, or to come on command (obey a recall). Many other dogs prove more challenging.

New dog owners might find training difficult because they expect dogs to think and act like humans, and are surprised and baffled when the dogs don't (or they fail to make progress because they fail to realize that the dogs don't).

Dogs who demonstrate the previously mentioned basic skills, as well as walking reasonably well on a leash and a few other minor tasks, can be tested for and earn the American Kennel Club's Canine Good Citizen title. (Are there equivalents in other countries?)

For dog owners who enjoy competition and relish the opportunity to work as a highly tuned team with their dogs, competitive obedience is available.

In competition, merely sitting, lying down, or walking on a leash are insufficient. The dog and handler must perform the activities off leash and in a highly stylized and carefully defined manner. For example, on a recall, the dog must come directly to the handler, without sniffing or veering to one side, and sit straight in front of the handler, not at an angle or off to one side or the other.

Competition obedience commands

A handler can choose her own commands, but the actions that the dog must perform are well defined. As a dog progresses from novice to advanced competition, the requirements become more challenging and the list of actions that he must perform becomes longer. Competitive actions include

• Come
• Heel
• Sit
• Down
• Stay
• Retrieve
• Retrieve over a jump
• Select an article by scent and retrieve

(Detailed descriptions needed)

Dogs can earn obedience titles including an obedience championship. In the United States, a purebred dog recognized by the American Kennel Club (AKC) can compete under AKC rules; dogs not recognized by the AKC can earn titles in the United Kennel Club (UKC), Mixed Breed Dog Club of America (MBDCA), American Mixed Breed Obedience Registry (AMBOR), or Australian Shepherd Club of America (ASCA).

Note that an obedience champion might not have excellent companion obedience skills; the actions are so highly formalized for performance in the obedience ring that they do not automatically translate to a dog who walks pleasantly on a leash, comes when called in the back yard, or keeps his nose off the dinner table.

There are many reasons for training dogs beyond the level required for basic companionship. For example, service dogs must obey their sit and down commands perfectly at all times, but they do not have to conform to the rigid rules of competitive obedience.

Dogs competing in dog sports, such as flyball, agility or Schutzhund, must be trusted in an open field, off leash and surrounded by other people, dogs, hamburgers, and frisbees. This requires more focused attention on the owner and a better recall than that found in most household companion dogs, but again it can be a different kind of training than that required for formal obedience.

It is often said that certain breeds, such as Border Collies and Golden Retrievers, are easy to train and others, such as some hounds and sled dogs, are difficult to train. Novice dog owners are not always told that these descriptions are relative to other dogs, not relative to the world at large. Even the most self-centered, easily distracted, and/or lazy dog is much easier to obedience train than, for example, any cat.

Dogs are pack animals, which means that by nature they understand social structure and obligations and are capable of quickly learning how to behave around other members of the pack, whether dog or human. Adult canines train their young by correcting them when they behave in an unacceptable manner (biting too hard, eating out of turn, and so on) and reward them for acceptable behavior (by playing with them, feeding them, cleaning them, and so on).

Some breeds have been selectively bred for hundreds or thousands of years for the quality of learning quickly; in other breeds, that quality has been downplayed in favor of other characteristics. However, the capacity to learn basic obedience--and even complicated behavior--is inherent in all dogs. Owners must simply be more patient with some breeds than with others.

Some people feel that the ability to learn quickly is a sign of intelligence; others feel that it is a sign of blind subservience and that the truly intelligent dogs are breeds such as Siberian Huskies, who are not particularly interested in pleasing you but who are fascinated with the myriad possibilities for escaping from yards or for catching and killing small animals and often figure out, on their own, numerous inventive and ingenius ways of doing both.

For example, some might say that guide dogs, which are required to be obedient at all times, are not intelligent dogs because they do not spend a lot of time figuring out new things to do. However, they must learn a tremendous number of commands, understand how to act in a large variety of situations, and recognize threats or dangers to their human companion, some of which they might never before have encountered.

Some tests for intelligence involve the dog's vocabulary; other tests involve their desire to respond to different situations. If you put a towel over a dog's head, is the intelligent dog the one who pulls it off or is the intelligent dog the one who sits and waits, figuring that humans do strange things from time to time and if they put the towel on the dog's head there must be a reason for it? Just as with humans, there is a wide variety of interpretations as to what makes a dog "intelligent".

Organizations offering obedience titles in the United States:

• AMBOR
• United Kennel Club
• AKC Obedience
• ASCA Obedience
• Mixed Breed Dog Club