Luring is your first step when teaching the basics such as sit and down. It can be used for other behaviours that include moving your dog into a position.
We never want to use force or push our puppies into certain positions. It can be painful and it also isn’t an effective teaching method.
When should I stop luring?
We want to fade food lures into hand signals quickly, otherwise your puppy will become “lure dependent.” We do not want to remove rewards, this is very important, however, we want our dogs to respond as reliably as possible to hand signals and verbal cues which are FOLLOWED by food rewards.
The Push-Drop-Stick System
This system was created by Jean Donaldson, world renowned dog behavior specialist. She founded and facilitates the Academy for Dog Trainers, the Harvard for those wanting to teach dogs and people.
This system will tell you when to fade lures.
Push Drop Stick Rules:
Train is sets of 5
- If the dog gets 4 or 5 correct in a set push to the next level of difficulty. (hand signal would be next)
- It the dog gets 3 out of 5 correct repeat (stick) the same step again. (keep using the food lure)
- If the dog gets 2 or less correct drop to the previous, easier step. (use a better food lure, check your technique proficiency)
If we are fading a food lure and adding a hand signal we would want 5 correct responses to the food lure before we remove it.
You will need:
- treat training pouch
- tasty treats