What to expect when bringing home a trained dog from Zauberberg K9 Academy

You have seen the video of your new dog performing with the trainer at Zauberberg K9?

He was introducing you to a training program that is very unique in the industry of dog training and successfully transferring trained behaviors of a dog into another trainer's hands (the new dog trainer being YOU!)

The new trainer needs to follow a few rules in order to be most successful in taking over a dog that can perform behaviors with another trainer in a different place.

From now on it will be a different person / family, a different place with different distractions in the environment.

Let's look at this from the dog's perspective.

A dog is an animal that mainly communicates through body language. Humans more likely desire to have the dog communicating through language.
That just makes perfect sense to us as we want the dog to come back when called and if he doesn't look at us (more likely the case!!!) he can not receive a hand signal to come. That example describes perfectly why we want the dog to respond to verbal signals.

That is very strange to the dog. It is a “new world” we introduced him to.

Humans like to believe that a dog is born with a “sit” “down” and so forth......

This is not the case.

Yes he can do all of those gymnastic skills of those behaviors- yet he does it when he is naturally inclined, or if he experiences (learning) that one or the other behavior is worth to perform as the environment (including people) have reinforced the behavior one way or the other (positive or negative).

Training a dog is all about putting behaviors on a cue or key. The behaviors we want the dog to be doing should be performed when we give the cue or “turn the key”.

Let's look at what that all means for training and especially for a transition off the trained dog to a new dog trainer.

A key is definitely of a very specific shape. And it is meant to be that a certain key only operates a specific lock. That being said, during our training here at the K9 Academy, we make the key (the command or cue) that fits that specific lock (making a behavior happen).

It means that a word such as “sit” gains a specific meaning and therefore controls the behavior of sitting. The more consistent in tone, volume and frequency the word “sit” has been given by the individual trainer, the more the word “sit “ will have gained signalizing meaning for the dog to do a “sit”.

When a dog changes trainers (new owner) the key can only be given to the new trainer to a certain degree of shape and form. Everybody speaks in a different way even considering they would use the same language. It is important that the new trainer displays consistency in how he gives the cue to the dog. He has to use the very same words- but has to realize that the key is different even though it is spelled the same. Another thing to realize is that the source of information that is giving cues now has changed from one person to the other. Which needs to be experienced by the dog.

A transition will take a few days until the dog realizes that the new person is interesting and can be a source of information. The information being a cue, a reward and maybe a punishment.

If the new owner follows the transcript of our training program with the remote collar, the dog already knows a few things that we sent with him that make a transition easy. 1) the electric stimulation is very consistent and well known 2) the tone coming from the collar is consistent as can be and has been conditioned to signalize the information “you did it right – you have something good coming your way”

After the new dog has realized that the source of information has now changed, it will just take a few repetitions with consistent cues combines with the use of the remote training collar following our system to transfer the Familiar (but yet slightly different) keys into the new owner's hands.

If a dog would be responding the same way to everybody's (strangers') cues, the burglar could just come to your house, make the dog lay down and get to business!

Thus, a dog that will listen to everybody is an undesirable thing to have.

Realize that the remote collar is not used as a punishing device for behaviors that have not been performed!

Dogs can not comprehend that something bad happened because they did not respond. Humans can comprehend those reasons because humans can explain them verbally (if they speak the same language that is).

Punishment can only be a consequence for actual behaviors – not for “none”- behaviors.