Training Australian Cattle Dogs

Australian Cattle Dogs are highly intelligent and independent thinkers who tend to react to aggression with aggression. A Cattle Dog needs to be trained or they will find their own things to do which may not please you. A positive style of training rewarding with food, toys or life rewards is the most effective way of training a cattle dog.

Cattle Dogs independent thought means they respond very well to clicker training where their behaviour is shaped to what you want – cattle dogs just love to work out what behaviour is going to get them that reward.

Teaching “give me your paw” with Tili @Dragonstones Cattle Dogs

So how do we train using Positive Training

The basic principles are:

Reward (Positive reinforcement) to increase the behaviours you want
Ignore (Negative punishment) to stop behaviours you do not want

Know what behaviours you want from your dog:

Reinforce by rewarding what you like
Ignore what you don’t like
Completely and utterly ignore them – look or turn away and remain completely passive, or calmly walk away, or leave area
Redirect the dog to a behaviour you can then positively reward after ~ 5 secs
Manage the situation by getting the dog out of the situation before the bad behaviour starts, walk away to gain distance, crate or put dog in a no trouble area
Break down each behaviour into tiny pieces (approximations)
You want the dog to go lie on its mat
– show interest in mat
– move towards the mat
– put one foot on the mate
– put two feet on the mat
– put 3 feet on the mate
– put 4 feet on the mat
– get on mat
– lie down on mat
– lie on mat for longer and longer time (increment of seconds)
– send to mat from further and further away (increment of half a step)
– and then go lie on the mat while more and more distracting things are happening
Raising the criterion once each step is learned
Remember the 3D principle and raising only one of these criteria at a time:
- distraction
- distance
- duration
When raising one criterion you need to lower the other criteria
Learned behaviour is one that occurs correctly in at least 8 out of 10 tries out of 10 trials in different locations with varying degree of distraction
Keep sessions short and successful – ideal 3-5 sessions of 3-5minutes working on a behaviour/ set of behaviours at a time.
Always stop when the dog wants more
Proper timing is everything – mark &/ reward in half a second, late or early timing might mark the wrong behaviour
Dogs need down time at the end of a session to think about what they learnt
Remember attention good or bad is a reward

The Clicker

A clicker is a device that makes a short sharp sound, there are a number of different models of clicker on the market.
The click marks the end of the behaviour Whatever you want the dog to repeat now or again in the future, the click will mark that behaviour – the paying attention, the response to your call, the self control etc
For every click there will be a reward – within 5 seconds of the click in the beginning.