Understand what a Marker is in Basic Dog Training

Video Transcript

Hi! I am Melanie McLeroy with Taurus Training for Expert Village and today we are going to talk about training dogs. So let us talk about marking behavior. Marking behavior is a very important part of dog training because it gives your dog an instant signal that they have done something right. This is Shira who is a dog I have not worked with before and I know that she does not really know what her mark is, so this is what it looks like, sit, good. The mark is the “good” the second she does the appropriate behavior. The purpose of this word or sound, you can use anything, it can be a clicker, it can be good, yes, yep, anything, just something that marks that the appropriate behavior has occurred. It acts as a bridge between the behavior and the reward. That way the dog knows the second they have done something, that they have done it right. One of the main reasons we do this is that as we, as humans are very very slow especially in dog’s opinion and it can really really help them know exactly when they have done something right. Now a lot of us like to use the word no when our dogs have done something wrong. It is a matter of contention in the dog training world as to whether this is appropriate or not. Some people choose to completely ignore inappropriate behavior; others use what we call a no reward marker. You can use no, I often use and I feel it can help the dog learn that they have not quite done the right thing and it gives them another chance. So let us work again with Shira… okay, sit, good, okay, sit, good. Now you notice that Shira is sitting a little bit slowly that is okay at this point, because we have just started working, but eventually you want to set your dog up to succeed by incrementally speeding them up. Also notice she moves her bottom just a little bit there at the end, I want her to sit on my terms, so I may use a no reward marker if that starts becoming a problem, okay, sit, good, alright, Shira has done a great job.

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