BKLN Manners

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Kate Naito. BKLN Manners

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About BKLN MannersTM

As a dog trainer in Brooklyn, New York, I’ve learned that diversity is not limited to people. The dogs I work with every day run the gamut: snorting French Bulldogs, athletic Border Collies, rescue dogs from nearly every continent, designer dogs like Maltipoos to Puggles, blind and deaf dogs, and the list goes on. While these dogs may appear quite different, there is a common theme among them. When their owners contact me for help, nearly every request emphasizes the word stop. “Max needs to stop pulling.” “I want Molly to stop eating garbage on the street.” “I wish Sam would stop barking at noises in my building’s hallway.” And, being an urban dweller, I understand these very normal human concerns. None of us wants to get complaints because the dog’s barking has been waking up the neighbors, and you can extract a half-eaten bagel from your dog’s slimy jaws only so many times before losing it.

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Marking and rewarding go hand in hand. Marking identifies the behavior we want, and rewarding encourages the dog to do it again. If you mark too slowly—for instance, after Princess has popped back up from the Down—there is the chance that you’re marking the wrong behavior, and she will learn that “Down” means “lie down and stand up quickly” rather than “lie down and stay down.” Rewards should come pretty quickly after the verbal marker, within a second or two of marking, especially when you’re teaching a new behavior. Always reward Princess while she’s still doing the desired behavior. In this case, reward her while she’s lying down so she learns how awesome it is to lie down.

If Princess starts to lie down but then pops up into a stand, we mark that moment, too. We use a no-reward marker (NRM) like “Oops” or “Uh-uh” to identify the moment the dog did the wrong thing. When that happens, just say your NRM and start over. There’s no need for an angry tone, and, please, no physical corrections. When the dog makes a mistake, it is just that: a mistake. Imagine if your teacher punished you every time you made a mistake; you probably wouldn’t want to learn from this person anymore, and rightly so!

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