He knows what to do, he's just being Stubborn!
How many times have you felt that when working with your dog? You’ll be at the West Coast Park Dog Run, saying “Sit, Sit, Sit, SIT” but your dog’s too busy checking out the action around him to pay attention.
So has he really gone strategically deaf or is there something else going on?
There’s two possibilities of what might be happening.
Distractions:
First – it could be that your dog understands that sit means butt on the ground, but only in the context of limited distractions. So, he can do it excellently when you’re together one on one, but when someone comes to visit or if there’s other exciting dogs around, it’s like he doesn’t even know you exist, much less hear the words coming out of your mouth.
What’s really happening here, is that you probably haven’t proofed the Sit behavior with enough distractions.
For this, you need to practice that behavior in different situations – such as you moving around after having said Sit, then you jogging around, running around, shaking different toys in front of him. Then you bring in other people and go through the same progression bit by bit, always ensuring you work at the level of distraction that the dog can easily be successful at. The more distractions you practice around, the more solid that behavior becomes, and your dog gets that Sit means butt on the ground, no matter who is around.
Context:
The other thing that might be happening could be that your dog knows how to sit, but he only knows how to do it in the context of your home, that’s why when you’re out at the park or outside a store, it seems like he just doesn’t want to do the behavior.
In reality it could be something simple as he hasn’t put the pieces together yet that Sit means butt on the ground irrespective of where we are.
For this I would recommend you practice the behavior in multiple locations, both in and out of your home, so that he really gets it. Often dogs need to be able to do the behavior in roughly 3 different contexts, before they can piece together that the cue means the same behavior, irrespective of where you guys are.
Capacity
As mentioned in my earlier post here, dogs don’t have the cognitive ability to practice complex human emotions such as revenge or altruism. With that in mind, dogs are incapable of “being stubborn” just for the heck of it.
If you find your dog is unable to respond to cues he has previously demonstrated he knows, look around you and see whether the distractions competing for his attention are more interesting than you, or if you’ve ever practiced the requested behavior in that environment before.
So no, he’s not being stubborn, its simply that you guys haven’t practiced enough in different contexts for him to clock in that Sit means butt on the ground no matter where you are or what’s going on around you!
Go practice some more and watch him transform in front of your eyes!
If your a dog parent in Singapore and need further support reach out to me here!