One of the first things to teach when we are working on impulse control is to "say please" when she wants something. That just means that she sits before she gets something she wants. This helps her learn that self control gets her what she wants.
I don't want to say "sit" for everything, I just want it to be an automatic response to getting what she wants. If she jumps, I turn my back.
When she sits, I open the gate. If she gets up before I say "ok" and I close the gate.
If she holds the sit, I continue to open the gate.
When I say "ok" she can go through. We apply this to play, doors opening, putting leashes on, getting attention, having her food bowl set down on the floor, etc.
When she gets in the habit of doing this, she'll start to offer that self-control whenever she wants something.
She loves to jump on people so we've added in an exercise to help her stick that sit better. When she is in a sit, I slowly lower a treat to her.
If she jumps up or gets up, the treat goes behind my back.
She was a little confused about what to do next so she tried to offer a down. For this exercise, I want her in a sit so I got her back into a sit.
And started to lower the treat again.
As long as she stays in that sit, the treat keeps coming down.
If she can hold that sit, she gets the treat.
This is a really simple exercise you can practice periodically to remind her that good things come to those who wait.
As she gets better, I can make it harder by adding distractions or moving slower.
But, for now, this is challenging enough for her so we'll stay at this level for awhile.
If I can reward behaviors I like, she'll learn more quickly. She won't learn well if we're working at a level where she frequently gets it wrong.
Plus, I'm always looking for opportunities to reinforce impulse control!
And speaking of impulse control, working on her stay helps tremendously with her impulse control. I introduced her to a tool called a Treat & Train. It's a way to remotely reward her and it allows me to reward more often than I could if I was doing it manually so she learns more quickly. But, first, I need to get her use to the sound and where the treats get dispensed.
That did not take her long. Love a food motivated dog!
Now I can work on her down stay and reward her from the remote control.
Stay is broken down into three components; duration (how long she stays), distraction (what's going on around her when she stays), and distance (how far away from her I can move while she stays). If I worked on all three of these at once, it would be too hard for her and she would break her stay so we work on one at a time in the beginning.
So, for duration, I just reward her for staying. I don't move away from her and I minimize the distractions around her. We're just working on how long she can stay. In the beginning, we'll make it short but we'll add to it as she improves.
If she breaks, I may have gone too long or I wasn't rewarding enough. I simply reset her and make the stay easier for her to succeed.
Our whole goal is that she succeed so I can reward and she learns more quickly.
Calmly staying in a down on her mat is what gets her a reward....
Trying to crawl inside the machine does not get you a reward.
When we are working on "leave it," I have a low value treat in my closed had and hold it out to her.
I calmly say, "leave it" and wait her out. She'll try a variety of behaviors to try to get the treat but I just hold it steady and wait her out.
Eventually she will back off...
Or look away. The second she does, I say "Yes!"
And reward her with a high value treat I have hidden behind my back. Now she's starting to figure out that she'll get something even better if she leaves it alone.
As she gets better, we can make it harder by having the treat in my open hand.
If she dives for it, I don't pull it away but, instead, simply close my hand.
As soon as she backs off or looks away, I mark and reward it.
As she improves, we'll keep progressing this to harder and harder items.
Self-control gets her what she wants.
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