November 2023 - 2 Minute Trainer

Build confidence with “What’s That?” Dog Training Game

The “What’s That?” dog training game helps your dog explore the world with confidence. It’s great for every dog, but can be life-changing for shy or timid dogs.

It also encourages you to shop in one of our favorite places for dog-training gear – your local dollar store. You’ll want a variety of different objects. Vary the size, shape, and material the objects are made from. You can certainly start with stuff you find around the house. Just be sure that nothing you use is breakable or cherished by someone.

First step:

Get your clicker, your timer, a boatload of treats, the object you’re playing the game with, and your dog. When you’re ready, start your timer and place the object on the floor.

Typically, your dog will glance at the object. Click and reward near the thing. Looking at it is the first step. If your dog doesn’t keep looking at it, stand over the object and stare at it (like in “Boxey”). Kneel if you need to get closer. Your dog will probably be confused, especially if you’ve spent their life telling them “leave it.”

That’s okay. Be patient. Stare at the object and wait for your dog to look at it again. You’ll almost be able to see your dog shrug and think “I don’t see what’s so fascinating, but she thinks it is, so I’ll humor her.”

When your dog has received three to five rewards for looking at the object, it’s time to ask for more. It can be anything – nosing at it, pawing at it, stepping on it, mouthing it, licking it. Whatever your dog does, click and reward near the object.

You never know

Every dog is unique and despite knowing your dog well, you can’t predict how they’ll react to different objects.

In Hope’s Beginner Obedience class there are two dogs with opposite personalities. One, a Newfoundland, seems outgoing, confident, and ready for any game.

The other, a miniature Poodle mix, is shy and often tries to hide behind her mother.

Which dog do you think was freaked out by the idea of walking on bubble wrap? To everyone’s surprise, the Newfie was scared of it. The Poodle mix didn’t really even notice it was there and danced right over it.

Take it at your dog’s pace

Decide what the goal is for every object you introduce to your dog. If it’s something they can pick up, you may want them to pick it up and hold it. Something like a small white board that you can write messages on. It may be something you want them to carry, like a small tote bag. Or a foam roller you want them to push. Or a step you want them to sit on.

With your ultimate goal in mind, shape your dog’s behavior with your rewards. Remember that what gets rewarded gets repeated. If you want your dog to hold the object in his/her mouth, only click and reward for using his mouth. Every object can have its own game, but they all start with “What’s That?”

Next step

You can also let your dog guide the direction of what’s that. If you don’t have a particular goal in mind, see what your dog does with the thing and go with it. Always ask for more after your dog has received a few treats for a particular interaction. Look can be followed by sniffing, licking, pawing, etc.

If your main objective is to build your dog’s confidence, you can set up a circuit of different things around your training area. Encourage your dog to check each one out. If they’re not interested or confused, go stand by the object, stare at it, move it a little, and wait for your dog to come check it out. With patience, it will happen.

Expanding their world

“What’s That?” can be played anytime, anywhere, as long as you have rewards with you. When you’re out on a walk and your dog sees something new and different, how do they react? If they’re hesitant, it’s time to get enthusiastic and say “What’s That? Let’s go see!”

The more things your dog has the opportunity to explore, the more confident they will become. Once they’re familiar with the “What’s That?” game, they’ll know they’re safe if you’re encouraging interaction.

With clicker dog training, every “click” is a promise

Clicker training is a fast, simple way to communicate clearly to your dog. Every click says “good dog!” and every click is a promise of reward.

Many people seem reluctant to embark on clicker training their dogs. We get it. The timing and mechanics take a while to smooth out. But it’s worth it. As fluency increases, it gives you more flexibility in training your dog. Every “click” is a promise to your dog. It’s an affirmation dogs love (you’re doing good!) and a pledge that their good work will be rewarded.

Everybody’s clumsy at first

Whether you hold the clicker in your hand or have it on a wrist strap doesn’t matter. There are times it’s not where you need it to be. Or you drop it, or it twirled around your arm and isn’t where it should be.

It doesn’t matter. Your dog doesn’t care and won’t tell anybody that you may have messed up. Your training class teacher has been there, done that. It’s worth sticking with it to be able to use this great training tool.

Nobody has enough hands to manipulate leash, clicker, and treats at the same time. The whole concept of the clicker is its use as a bridge between the behavior and the reward. It lets your dog know “Yes! You’re doing it right!”

Clicker familiarization

Dogs catch on really quickly to clicker training. Most dogs get it after a single session: Have 10 treats in a bowl. Click and give your dog a treat. 10 times. That’s it. You’re on your way to having your dog love the sound of the clicker.

At first you absolutely have to give your dog a reward every single time you click. Even if you click by accident. Even if the clicker hit the ground and clicked. Remember that dogs don’t understand “sometimes” or “maybe.” The value of the reward transfers to the sound of the click. Done consistently, it will always make your dog happy. If you don’t follow through, you diminish the value and your dog won’t care about the click.

Better than “Yes!”

There are a couple of reasons that a vocal marker like “Yes!” doesn’t have the same impact as the clicker. It takes longer to talk than click. Once you become used to using the clicker, it’s almost automatic; you see something you like and you click. If you use a vocal, you have to think about it. It has to process through your brain rather than going right to your reflexes.

The clicker is also a sharper sound, more distinguishable in a noisy or distracting environment. Even in a clicker training class, the dogs can tell when it’s “their” clicker that made the sound. We’re not sure how they know, when everybody has the same equipment, but they do.

Give it some time

If you’ve dismissed the idea of clicker dog training, or at some point decided it wasn’t for you, give it another try. You certainly don’t have to use it all the time, or for every behavior. But there are some games where it’s priceless. It gives you the freedom to lock your eyes on your dog and mark the action you want precisely. When Hope’s French Bulldog Torque is playing his “Bowling” game, he knocks down all 10 pins, hears a click as each one goes down, and then runs back for his reward. It started with one pin, one knock-down, and one click. Games can grow click by click.

Help! We broke our dogs!

We broke our dogs! Hope’s Torque is broken. So is Fran’s Booker.

Not physically. But some training games have apparently been erased from memory. Absolute rock-solid training games have been corrupted or are missing entirely.

Not to worry – when you train step-by-step, you can always recover what was lost. You just go back to the beginning, step-by-step, and see where the behavior falls apart. And take it from there.

Similar and different

It’s just coincidental that both of our dogs are broken at the same time. We play training games with the dogs individually, so there isn’t any cross-contamination. And the circumstances are different, too.

In the case of Fran’s Booker, it’s his Ring-Stacking game that’s gone with the wind. He’s always been a special dog. If he were human, he’d be tested for where he falls on the spectrum. Being an 11-year-old dog, we pretty much stand back, assess what he’s up to, shrug and say “Bless his heart.”

Booker discovered that stealing the rings, sticking his cute little butt in the air and chewing on them was more fun than carrying them to the post and stacking them. He’s okay for the first one, but then it’s like his brain glitches.

Fran’s taken it back to the start. Heavily rewarding him for picking up the ring, carrying the ring, taking it over to the post, and putting it on. Each step is deliberate. And she’s no longer tossing a dozen rings out for the game. One at a time. Heavily rewarding for each step of success.

We don’t know if Booker will ever play a full Ring Stacking game again. It doesn’t really matter. He has fun. Every dog in your life teaches you something. Booker has been expanding Fran’s capacity for patience for years.

Hope busted Torque herself

Hope’s always pushing the limits of what she asks Torque to do. One of her recent ideas backfired – big time.

At the end of Torque’s Bowling Game, Hope decided that he could help “clean up” the bowling pins. She asked him to “get it,” a behavior he already knows. He did, and even brought it over to the basket where the little plastic bowling pins are stored.

What she didn’t figure on was how much Torque would enjoy fetching and squishing the bowling pins.

When Hope says his “Go Strike!” command, he runs to the pins, knocks over a couple, then starts grabbing them and squishing them. Oopsy.

Fortunately, he drops them when told. He even puts them in the basket. But for the moment, his “Go Strike!” is striking out. So sad that we broke our dogs.

The action plan is to go back to the beginning and use incredibly high-value treats to reward Torque for just knocking the pins down. We’ll start one at a time, and discontinue the clean-up part for now. He just needs to remember what this game is about. So even though we broke our dogs, we’ll get them back.

Does it matter?

Yes and no. No, we really don’t care if our dogs are whizzes at Ring Stacking or Bowling. What does matter is that we all agree on the rules of the games we play.

Dog training is a constant give-and-take bargaining with your dog. They get what they want (your attention, treats, praise) when you get what you want (good choices).

You get to define the rules for every single game you play with your dogs. Your dog, your game, your rules. The secret to success is keeping those rules crystal clear for your dog.

Dogs are Copycats

It’s not your imagination. Dogs are copycats. Your dog copies what you do. Copying is one of the ways dogs learn. And it’s not restricted to watching and imitating other dogs. Dogs mimic people, too. That’s why you shouldn’t be surprised if your dog starts digging in the yard after “helping” you with gardening.

Even more impressive, one study proved that dogs not only can copy what you do – they can do it with a significant delay between the time it happened and they’re asked to repeat it.

Demonstrate what you want

A while ago, when we were first developing the Ring Stacking game, Hope was teaching her French Bulldog Teddy the steps. We’d just started taking video of the sessions, so the camera was on.

Teddy had just about all pieces of the game; picking up the ring and going over to the post. The actual placement of the ring on the post was the issue. He kept nudging the post, dropping the ring in the vicinity, but not placing it on the actual post.

In the video, you see Hope showing Teddy what she wants. She probably was doing it out of frustration, rather than really demonstrating. But then you see Teddy stand there and think about it, then place the ring precisely on the post.

At the time, we didn’t know for sure that dogs learn by copying. But it paid off.

Other dogs show them how

It’s true that puppies learn from an older dog in the house. Potty training is much easier when the newcomer has an example to follow. Same with other household rules – most puppies will follow the lead of the established dog. That’s a big reason that two dogs are easier than one, although not if both are the same age. Or littermates. For most people, getting littermates isn’t a great idea.

It’s optimal to play training games with only one dog at a time. But that doesn’t mean training in isolation. With four dogs in the house, three are in crates at the side of the training area, watching the proceedings.

Did you teach him that?

Sometimes when we’re ready to introduce a dog to a game another dog knows, we’ve been surprised. While performance isn’t perfect, the dog already knows the game. It prompts a discussion that goes

“Did you teach him that? I didn’t teach him that!”

“Wasn’t me!”

“Oh, he got it from his brother!”

Try it for yourself

Think of something to do that your dog can copy. In the research we read, one of the things owners did in the lab was stick their heads in an empty bucket. A vast majority of the dogs in the study were able to copy the action after seeing it only once.

Make sure the demonstration is something the dog is physically able to do. Our dogs are too short to get their heads in a five-gallon bucket, so we’ll use something lower. Give the action a name, like “Copy!” using it for all kinds of different actions.

That’s how you teach the dog to mimic you, rather than performing a specific behavior. We’ve even seen it in action with the dolphins at the Dolphin Research Center in Marathon, Florida. The trainers there use a specific signal for “Imitate!”

In no time, you and your dog will be playing “Simon Says!” with all sorts of behaviors. Be sure to get it on video – you’ll need proof of your dog’s genius!