When you own Beagles a big part of your life tends to focus on how to keep your dogs safe and close whilst still getting the off-lead exercise that they need to thrive. With our two it really is a full time job!

We’re quite proud of the fact that we have a reliable emergency recall which is powerful enough to pull them off a scent. However, if we use it routinely to keep them close to us it looses it’s power as they begin to associate it with curtailing of fun adventures. This has happened in the past with more casual recall commands such as ‘come’. Trainers frequently advise not to use ‘come’ to do something unpleasant to your dog – that makes sense. But what’s the point in training a recall command if your dog stops responding if you expect him to break off doing something it likes more than once in a blue moon? Clearly we need to make our dogs want to stay close rather than relying on recall all the time. But earlier attempts at being more exciting than the environment often proved disastrous.

In agility classes Beanie’s teacher had given me a few excellent tips that really kept Beanie’s attention on me during classes. She has a Parsons Terrier (another tricky breed) that she’s trained to a high level in agility, so she’s no stranger to working with hard-to-train breeds. Her approach has some subtle variations from typical rewards-based training but these make all the difference with dogs that have been bred to work independently from their owners (read that as dogs that bugger off and do their own thing no matter how hard you work at keeping their attention). It’s astonishing how easily you can turn an apparently obstinate, stubborn, strong-willed, independent beagle into an eager to please velcro dog! So we asked her if she had any ideas that might help us whilst out in the park. She agreed to help and is confident that we can have excellent off-lead control of our dogs with a bit of work.

One exercise that she gave us was to go out into the garden with a few treats and just walk around ignoring the dog. Eventually the dog comes over to see what you’re doing and gets a treat. You keep ignoring, walking, changing direction frequently and rewarding the dog for staying close. Gradually you build up lots of tricks into the routine and make the dogs work harder for each treat – so a bit like a cross between a walk and a heelwork to music routine without the music! We also throw in some games of ‘fetch’ to help ensure that they’re getting enough exercise. The subtle but important difference is that you completely ignore the dog until it starts offering behaviors – and then you give it ‘work’ to do. I’m not sure why it works so well, but if we try and get our dogs’ attention they’ll invariably choose to ignore us. But if we ignore them then they are absolutely DESPARATE to do things for us!

As the dogs get more and more attentive the idea is to start taking the routine out to safe, quiet areas of the park. Over time we build in more distractions and field test it in lots of new places.

We’ve been doing this for a couple of weeks now and have progressed to the dog enclosure at one of our local parks. We also practice the drill pretty much everywhere we go, but with the dogs on a training line. Once we get started (which I have to admit can take a bit of effort with Biggles who’s going through a difficult stage!) we can spend a whole hour in the park enjoying our dogs undivided attention. About 20 minutes of that time is spent doing the drill described. First with the dogs working individually, then with the dogs off-lead together but each working with their own handler. Then we let both off-lead together for 10 minutes but still doing the drill with just one of us. Biggles would still quite like to play chases with Beanie and ignore us but she’s having none of it. With practice Biggles will be equally attentive. But in the meantime, without Beanie’s cooperation he settles for giving us his undivided attention. I guess we’re better than nothing! Finally we clip on the leads and take the dogs for a long walk around the park. They walk on a loose lead the whole time watching us constantly. We throw in the odd trick as we walk – which they thoroughly enjoy!

Here are some little clips showing some of the tricks that they’ve been practicing during our walks. They’re learning fast!

First Beanie:

Then Biggles:

If it’s dry tomorrow we’ll video our actual training session at the park so we can build up a record of their progress. For a chanage I’ll try and wear something that’s not full of holes!

For some time now we’ve been having trouble with Beanie and Biggles running off on their own adventures during our walks in our local park. We’ve tried various things to curb this behavior; we’ve walked them separately, worked really hard at making ourselves more exciting by playing high energy games, and carried all manner of succulent treats to get them to stay with us. While some of these measures helped to a degree, some days nothing would stop our two intrepid Beagles doing their disappearing act.

Finally we turned to a book that was recommended to us some time ago by Beanie’s agility instructor: When Pigs Fly by Jane Killion. It’s aimed specifically at “difficult” dogs like hounds and terriers. The early chapters of the book describe our two pups perfectly: energetic, resourceful & intelligent but completely uninterested in pleasing us. They’re not difficult to train in that they can learn things really quickly, but they only comply with our requests when it suits them. In short, they are not “biddable” dogs.

Like many owners of “independent thinking” dogs, we’ve fallen into the trap of trying to bribe them into cooperation by constantly using treats, and running around like crazy people to try to hold their attention. Most of the professional dog trainers we’ve met have warned us about this, but none of them have been able to offer an alternative that works. Trying to wean Beanie and Biggles off their treats just results in them losing interest in us even more quickly.

The Pigs Fly book claims to be able to turn this around and put your dog into a receptive, biddable state by tapping into his/her innate problem-solving ability (this is the very thing that makes hounds and terriers great for the things they were originally bred to do, but not so hot as cooperative dote-on-your-every-word pets).  Clicker training is at the heart of the system, but with a strong emphasis on “free shaping”. We’ve used clicker training for Beanie & Biggles but always with prompting and the use of food as lures. In other words, we manipulated them into the behavior we wanted and just used the clicker to reinforce it.

Free shaping with the clicker takes an altogether different approach. In a free shaping session you don’t prompt or lure the dog, you just patiently wait for the dog to spontaneously perform an action or part of an action and click and treat to mark it as desirable. Over time you shape the behavior you’ve just captured by being more picky about what merits a click. As an example here’s a short clip of a boxer being trained to perform a bow via free shaping here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iKaNN_XrnE

The clip is a bit misleading in that it gives the impression that free shaping is a quick process. In reality it’s usually a lot slower than traditional training methods, but according to the Pigs Fly book it’s especially effective for difficult dogs because it puts them into a biddable state – the dog ends up merrily throwing behaviors at you in the hope of discovering one that will get that elusive click.

My first free shaping session with Biggles was great fun, but also a little embarrassing. He ended up so eager to please he reminded me of that scene in Saving Private Ryan where the group take out a radar installation, and lose their medic in the process. They capture one of the German machine gunners alive and he’s so desperate to avoid being killed in revenge that he tries to win them over by cursing Hitler, praising Betty Grable’s legs and singing the Star-Spangled Banner (he doesn’t get a click and treat for all these laudable behaviors but Tom Hanks lets him live so I guess you could say the training session ended well). Biggles didn’t exactly sing the US national anthem but he did roll onto his back a lot which was much cuter.

Anyway, we carried this style of training over into our walks by clicking and treating any kind of behavior that involves our dogs paying attention to us. Once those behaviors were occuring frequently we randomly withheld clicks – according to the book this gives the training an addictive edge, like a gambler trying one more round in the hope of hitting the jackpot.

We’re now nearly a week into this new training regime and we are both finding that Beanie and Biggles are spending more time hanging around us and less time going off on their own adventures. It’s a great start, and I think it contributed to the great walk we had in the park this morning.

Beanie gives Biggles a mid-chase nibble..

..but he gives as good as he gets these days!

He even gets to lead some of the chases

The highlight of the walk was bumping into a little collie/spaniel cross called Millie. She was fit, full of energy and so fast that even Beanie had trouble keeping up with her at first. Biggles had an even harder time and became very vocal about it..

Every so often Millie got so excited she spun round and round on the spot leaving Biggles rather dazed..

Dad! Did you see that?

Eventually she needed a breather, but she didn’t realize that if you’re going to get our two super-excited, you’d better have the energy to keep going or you’re going to get an earful!

And lo, the chasing stopped and there was much woofing

Of course no walk in the park would be complete without a dog trying to hump Biggles, and he doesn’t like it. He’ll happily lie on he ground with his legs akimbo to get his naughty bits thoroughly sniffed and licked, but there’d better not be any rumpy-pumpy. He’s just not that sort of boy!

Seconds later the would-be humper received a stern telling off

Beanie on the other hand is very free with her affections, in fact she had ’em lining up!

So we’re going to keep going with the Pigs Fly system. It certainly seems to be working so far, though I’m not sure if I buy into the theories the author gives for its success – there are other possible (partial) explanations:

• You’re only rarely giving the dog commands. It’s up to the dog to deliver something that’s worthy of a click on his own initiative
• You’re genuinely rewarding only desirable behavior rather than inadvertently rewarding naughtiness by using food as a lure
• Maybe our dogs find our usual vocal outpourings a distraction whereas the clicker is ruthlessly succinct and consistent
• Maybe they sense the change in our attitude when doing free shaping – after all there’s no failure in this kind of training, just different degrees of success