By Brooke Steinbach: CPDT-KA
Many people don’t realize that calmness is a behavioral skill that can be taught. They interact playfully and happily with their excited, bouncy puppy, and wonder why that puppy has trouble calming down. Behavior that gets rewarded gets repeated, so by primarily giving your puppy attention when he’s in an excited state of mind, you are rewarding active, alert behavior.
By teaching Chin-on-the-floor, you can teach your dog a skill that naturally leads to calm behavior. A dog who is working hard to keep his chin on the ground can not simultaneously be jumping on you. He also can’t be barking, so this is a behavior to work diligently on teaching to those more vocal dogs.
I was given the challenge of helping a service dog prospect overcome her barking in public. She stayed with me for a week, and earned all of her food that week by putting her chin on the floor. By the end of the week, public access was no longer an issue and she went on to become a demo dog for the service dog organization.
The Procedure
With your dog already lying down, lure his head lower. Place a treat on the ground, cover it with your hand, then click the moment he lowers his head even a tiny bit. Move your hand and let him have the treat. Repeat, clicking every time his head gets a little lower. When his head get all the way to the floor, give 5 small treats right after the other, not a whole handful at once. This is a jackpot reward and lets your dog know he figured it out.
The next step is to just place your hand on the ground without a treat and see if he lowers his head. Just wait. If he understands, he will start to lower his head a little bit. Click and treat. Keep watching and rewarding when he moves his head lower and lower. Eventually, his chin will touch the ground. Give a jackpot reward. Practice several times and reward heavily every time his chin touches the floor.
When you are 90 percent sure that your dog will put his chin on the floor, add a cue word such as “chill” or a hand signal. I point to my chin as a hand signal for chin-on-the-floor. When I am in public with my dog, I want to be able to silently communicate to him that it’s time to be calm. Increase duration one second at a time by waiting to click and treat.
Live it out in real life. Find 10 times a day when you can reward your dog for having calm behavior. I keep treats in strategic locations around the house so that when I see dogs being calm, I can calmly give them rewards.