What is functional obedience?
Functional obedience training in its essence is training dogs with the real world applications in mind. It’s scenario based obedience training.
Dogs think in “behavior pictures” meaning when you teach a new behavior (say sit) everything is very context based. If you only practice obedience training in the kitchen before you feed breakfast, you have a dog that knows obedience in the kitchen before breakfast.
When you send dogs off to board and train programs most will teach the dog a familiar training routine. Example: We come out of the kennel. Have a potty break. Do 10 minutes of walking on leash. Then come inside practice sit, then down, then place and end with some recall practice in the yard.
This is highly effective at making a dog learn new behaviors very quickly because dogs love patterns. It does have weaknesses. Since dogs enjoy patterns so much, many dogs don’t contextually understand training outside the pattern. This can make the transition of coming home more difficult when owners likely will break those patterns frequently in training.
Most dog training programs will practice “distractions” (competing motivators) while asking dogs for different obedience commands. They’ll implement the “3 D’s” of dog training (distance, duration, distraction) while practicing sit, down, heel, etc. This may look like “sit” at 10 feet away or “down” for 2 minutes or “heel” past another dog. These are all fantastic things and necessary in obedience training. At Focused K9 we practice the 3Ds, but then we also take it one step further.
It’s one thing to practice sit for 30 seconds to a minute, it’s another thing to practice sitting while you walk out the door, grab a newspaper from the driveway and walk back inside. Dogs who’ve practiced “sit” for a minute aren’t ready for you to do complex behaviors while they remain in position. A dog may learn a long down-stay in training. The high distraction environment of a dining patio may be far too advanced for them.
For this reason we spend the majority of the last week of board and training programs practicing functional obedience. We break down a dog maintaining “place” while a guest knocks on the door and enters. We practice walking down busy hiking trails, sitting on coffee shop patios, and having a dog hang out while we sweep or vacuum. This way our owners don’t have to struggle with breaking down these behaviors by themselves.
It’s important to train with application in mind so dogs are successful outside training sessions. Dogs have a tough time when training becomes practice because training usually isn’t broken down into scenarios they might actually see. It’s vital for many life-like scenarios to be broken down into component parts. We want dogs to generalize behaviors and become great companions. Training shouldn’t just be for inside training sessions, training should be for you and your dog to live harmoniously.
Are you ready to have a well behaved dog?
