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This is the puppy training podcast Episode #41, the Canine Good Citizen Test. This podcast is designed to help you on your journey of becoming best friends through love and learning as you train your own dog from home. I'm here to help you every step of the way. This is the puppy training podcast, and I'm your host, Amy Jensen.    

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Hello and happy Tuesday. Today we're talking about AKC Canine good citizen test. I'm going to tell you what it is, who can participate, and how you and your dog can prepare for it. Those are the three topics that we're going to cover. But first, I want to welcome you, and thanks for listening. I know we have some new listeners out there, and we're excited to have you join us. Thank you for being here today. Each week we talk about a training topic and I welcome questions from you guys. Feel free to send in questions. You can send them to info@BaxterandBella.com, and I will add those to the list of topics to be covered this year. We're off to a good start. Also, be sure to check out the previously recorded podcasts, as I think you'll find answers to many of your frequently asked questions already there.  

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All right, what is the AKC Canine Good Citizen Test? The American Kennel Club created the Canine Good Citizen Test as a way to help owners take responsibility for better dog ownership and to build a bond with their dog through training. Owners sign a pledge as part of the test, and you're stating that you will be responsible for your dog's health, the dog's safety, their quality of life, and that you'll also be responsible for your dog being well behaved in public. The actual test is performed with your dog on a leash, and you can use a buckle or a slip color. You can also use a harness, as long as that harness does not restrict movement. Then owners may use praise, but no food or toys during the actual test. We do highly recommend, though, that you use the food and the toys (things that motivate your dog to want to learn) during the training process. Then, when you go to take the test, we just simply use praise. There are 10 test items: accept a friendly stranger, sit for petting, appearance and grooming, loose leash walking, walking through a crowd, sit down and stay on cue, come when called, reaction to another dog, reaction to a distraction, and finally supervised separation.  

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I do get asked a lot who can participate. Dogs of any age and any breed may participate. Even mixed breed dogs are very welcome to take this test.  Dogs who growl, bark, or snap, though, will be dismissed from testing, so make sure your puppy doesn't have any of those issues when you go to take the test.  

speaker 0:   2:40
All right, for the next part of this podcast let's really talk about all of the different testing items and how you can prepare for them. We're going to go through each one and just give you a few ideas on how you can practice these at home with your dog. The first task is to accept a friendly stranger. Basically the evaluator is going to walk up to you and your dog. They're going to ignore your dog. They're just simply going to say hi to you, shake hands with you, and then walk away. Basically, we're looking for your puppy to be well behaved, well-mannered. We don't want your puppy to solicit any kind of attention from the evaluator, and we absolutely don't want them to jump on the evaluator. To accept a friendly stranger, I suggest teaching your puppy 'sit to say please'. This is a basic behavior that I teach every brand new puppy I work with. We're teaching them that when they want something, they must sit for it. When somebody approaches us, they're going to want to say hi. We hope our puppy would sit in that moment. We can help them do this by using some food rewards that they like, or a toy. We're going to motivate them to get into that sit position, and then hold that sit position while the person approaches us. The reason I like them to stay in that sit position is because then it does prevent things like a jump. You can teach them a 'sit-stay', you can teach them a 'watch me'. In our lesson 1.1., we cover the basics of getting your puppy to 'sit to say please' for a variety of things and in different circumstances. If you're looking for help and you're a member of my program, be sure to check out that first lesson 1.1.  

speaker 0:   4:06
All right, next is to sit politely for petting. The evaluator is going to again approach you, and this time, our puppy needs to be in a sit while they approach. It's just good practice for that number one to already have your puppy in a sit. But the second one our puppy must be in a sit. Then, as the evaluator approaches us, they're going to ask if they can pet your puppy. When you say they are allowed to pet your dog, then they will gently pet your dog. At that point, your puppy is welcome to stand up. That's okay if they stand up while the evaluators petting them, but initially, we would like them to be in a sit. Again for 'sit politely for petting', teaching that 'sit-stay', teaching a 'watch-me' to get their attention on you and not the person that's petting them, these are all things that are really helpful. To practice this, I would teach my puppy that 'sit-stay', and then I would have guests come over and I would practice this in my home with different people. I would also have my family members help. I would ask them to approach me and practice having my puppy stay in a 'sit-stay'. Then when I'm out on field trips. If you have puppies that have had all of their vaccinations and can now walk around on the ground, hooray for you. I know you're feeling happy about that. Have them practice as well, go to stores. Maybe you go to like a Home Depot or some sporting goods store that allows dogs and is dog-friendly. You could walk through and ask the different employees to greet your dog. You could get your puppy into a 'sit-stay' as they come and approach your puppy. That would be great practice for this item number two.  

speaker 0:   5:29
Number three is appearance and grooming. Basically, the evaluators going to look and see if your puppy is well-groomed. Anytime we take our dogs out in public with us, they need to look nice and presentable. We don't want to have them, obviously,  matted or dirty in appearance. We want them to be very clean when we take them out. Their evaluators are going to check their ears, look at their eyes, make sure there's no goop in the eyes. They are going to lightly brush them, and then, if possible, we're going to pick up their front paws. Basically, we're checking to see if these dogs would be good citizens as they go out into the community and go to a groomer or a veterinarian. Are they going to be polite while someone else lightly handles them? For this, I like to desensitize my puppies to the different grooming equipment, and I take it very slowly. With a brand new puppy, I might brush and give a treat, and brush and give a treat, until it's completely finished. Some things that you can do to help your puppy enjoy the process would be you can give a food reward or drop a food reward on the ground while you do a little section of brushing, and drop another food reward on the ground and do a little section of brushing. Another thing that I like really well is the Lickimat. This is a little rubber mat, about seven inches by seven inches square. You can find them on Amazon, and you can smear peanut butter or cream cheese on it, and then place it on the floor for your puppy to lick up. He stays very entertained while you do the grooming. He's creating a very positive association between the Lickimat and the yummy stuff on it in the grooming process. Using food as a distraction is very helpful. Again, I like to have everyone in the family practice doing these items, so it's not just me that's brushing my puppy or touching my puppy's paws, but they're used to multiple people doing these things, and they're comfortable with people that don't regularly do these things, helping them through this process. If you have friends over, ask them if they're willing to brush your puppy or touch their front paws, maybe pick up their ears and look inside. This is all just good socialization for your puppy, and it will help you pass that third test item.  

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Number four is to walk with a loose leash. In our program, I teach several different kinds of walks. One would be a 'let's go', which means we basically want to walk together with a loose leash, and we'll keep moving as long as my puppy doesn't pull. This is a little more of a relaxed walk, in that he doesn't need to be in a strict 'heel' at my side. But we're out walking together, and as long as that leash stays loose, we keep moving forward. I reward every time my puppy looks at me with that 'let's go walk' look. As we're walking down the street and my puppy looks up at me, I'm marking 'yes', and here's a food reward. Sometimes I don't actually even mark 'yes', I just give that food reward. My puppy just knows my kitchen area. I call it 'the kitchen', because any time he's to the left side of me, I chose left. You can choose right, it's up to you, but pick a side and be consistent. I walk my puppies on the left side of me, and as long as they're in that little kitchen area, then they get food rewards. Now the rate at which they get food rewards and what kind of food rewards always varies. I'm mixing it up to keep my puppy engaged in the training process. But they know when they're right there in that area that good things happen. That entices them to want to stay in that kitchen area. That's where they get the rewards. When I'm doing loose leash walking practice with a brand new puppy, I recognized that they have very short attention spans. Zigzagging, changing directions frequently, keeping that walk short and successful is more important than trying to get distance in the beginning. We just want our puppies to practice walking with a loose leash, rewarding them every time they're in the kitchen area, and any time they're giving us attention. That's the behavior I like, I like that they're checking in with me, that they're matching my pace, and there's lots of training games that we have in our program and different little skill sets that we ask you to pass off with this loose leash walking practice. There's a game that you can play to help with this and I'm gonna teach you how to play this game. You can get a treat or a favorite toy that your puppy loves, put it about 20 feet away. Then you're going to have your puppy with you, unleashed. They're going to see that item from about 20 feet away, and again, puppies, when they see things they want, they want it right now. We're gonna use that to our advantage to train this loose leash walking. Start walking with your puppy. The second your puppy pulls, though, stop. You're going to wait to move forward again until the leash is loose. When your puppy puts slack back in that lease, you can continue walking toward the item. If they pull, you stop. When they put the slack back in, you go. Your puppy's going to learn that 'oh, as long as there's no tension between us, we get to move toward that super yummy thing, or that super exciting toy that I want right now'. Your puppies learning patience, he's learning, 'I need to go at the pace that my owner is going in order to get to what I want'. That's counterintuitive to a puppy, but a very important skill for them to learn. When you reach the item, you can pick it up, and I like to get my puppy into a nice 'sit-to-say-please' behavior, because, again, that reinforces that behavior that we have been working on. When my puppy does so, then I reward him with the food item, or I play with him for a few minutes with the toy. And then we'll repeat that game. I'll put it back down on the floor, we'll walk 20 feet away, we'll start to approach the item, with the same rules. That's a fun one that you could play. You can also get your kids involved if you have children in the home and you're looking for some structured interaction time. That's a great game for them to play. Help them be really conscious of the pulling and when to stop and when to go. The more strict you are with the amount of tension on the leash, the faster your puppy will pick this game up. If you're kind of lenient, and he's pulling a little and you move, it's harder for that puppy to decipher where that line is, of 'I can or I can't move'. Be super strict in 'I feel a tiny bit of pressure, we're going to stop'. Help your kids do that as well if they're going to be involved.  

speaker 0:   11:35
Number five is walking through a crowd. Basically what we're looking for is when you're out in public, and there's people around, and you're walking around with your dog, your dog is going to leave those people alone. We don't want your dog muzzle punching them, or sniffing their legs, or trying to solicit attention from these people. To do this, I would ask 2 to 3 friends to come to help you. Have them stand about 10 feet apart (if your puppy is struggling with the 10 feet distance than maybe spread it out even further so it's 15 to 20 feet apart), and then you can walk in and around these people, but with enough distance that your puppy can still focus on you and not be distracted by the people. Then, as your puppy gets better at this process, this is going to be walking with a loose leash and paying attention to you, and any time that dog pays attention to you, you're going to reward it with food. Then your puppy learns, 'okay, so we're gonna walk through here and I'm gonna pay attention to you instead of everyone else who's standing around me'. As your puppy gets better at that, they can take a few feet in. You want to get to the point, if you can, where these people are standing 4 to 5 feet apart from each other, and it's a pretty tight weave, getting through them without your puppy paying any sort of attention to them. Your puppy can look at them, we just don't want them to be pulling on the leash toward them, or soliciting attention in any kind of way.  

speaker 0:   12:54
The next item is 'sit down, stay' on cue. You're going to be asked to cue your dog into a sit, and then cue them to lie down and then also a 'stay'. Now with the stay, you get to decide whether it's a 'sit-stay' or a 'down-stay'. I would choose whichever one your dog is more comfortable with. Hopefully, they're comfortable with both, and that's an easy decision. To practice, ask your puppy to sit in a variety of settings and around many different distractions. Same with the down. We start by getting our puppies to sit in one room of our home. We're gonna practice that behavior in every room of our home to help our puppy generalize it. We're also going to practice that outside. Then I'm gonna take that out into public, and I'm gonna ask my puppy to sit when we're not at home. This really helps solidify that behavior in our puppies and they understand the cue means, 'I do this behavior no matter where I am'. 'Down' can be a little more difficult to teach for some puppies. Not all puppies love this behavior. Some do it readily. Great! You can just start dropping those treats on the ground to reward them. Others struggle a little bit, so there are a few techniques you can use if your puppy struggling to go into a down. Number one is taking that food and you lure them straight down from their nose in between their front legs. If you push that food lower, just a little bit closer to their front legs and into their chest area, they're more likely to lie down. If that's not working, I use what's called a tent leg. I'll sit on the floor with my knee up in a tent position or an inverted V position, and I lower my puppy under my leg. Then I lower my leg, just to the point that my puppy would want to go into that down position to try to get under my leg. It's almost like getting them to do the limbo in reverse, luring them under, but they have to crouch down on the floor to get under your leg, and that helps them. Then the second their belly touches the floor, I'm marking 'yes' and I'm giving them a food reward. Another trick you can use to teach a 'down' would be to use an elevated surface. If you have a stair, or you have a climb platform, or an elevated dog bed, anything that's elevated that your puppy can be up on. Then you're going to move that food lower than the elevated surface. As they reached down to get that food lower, a lot of times their belly will go down onto the floor as a stretch to get that item that's lower than they are. There are a few different techniques you can try to get your puppy to go into a 'down'. Actually I should tell you one more, the last one that I used frequently. Sometimes you can curl your puppy around into a 'down'. It's not necessarily a very pretty 'down' in the beginning, but you're just wanting to mark that behavior of getting their belly on the floor. If you need to, take that food reward and curl it around, get their head to kind of turn around and put it on the floor, and sometimes they'll just gonna flop right over into that nice down position. For the stay, the owner's going to cue the dog into a sit or a down as we talked about, and then you're going to walk 20 feet away from your dog and then back again, and wait to release your dog until cued by the evaluator. Again, practice with an assortment of distractions, and you're going to work to increase the 'stay' to several minutes, just in case. The stronger your 'stay' can be when going into this test, the more successful you'll be. It is a distance of about 20 feet, and you're going to walk away and then back to your puppy. A lot of us will train 'stay', we'll walk away from our dogs, and then we'll release our dogs to come to us, and so they're used to running toward us. Just be aware, with this behavior in this test item, you're going to be required to walk back to your dog, and then walking back to your dog, they're expected to stay in that stay position. That would be a good thing to practice at home, is walking away and then back to your dog and releasing your puppy when you're right next to them.  

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Number seven is 'come when called'. We want to make sure that your dog will come when you call their name. Let's say that you're out in public and you dropped the leash and your dog gets a little bit away from you. We want you to be able to recall your dog to you. For this test item, you'll be required to walk 10 feet away and then call your dog to you. You can't use food in this testing item. Obviously, throughout the whole test, you can't use food, but you can use encouragement with this, so absolutely get excited and animated and call your puppy to you. You can practice at home. I suggest using what's called the 10 to 1 rule. We talk a lot about this in our program, but we want to keep the come behavior positive. A lot of times we only cue our dog to come to us when it's time to go inside, or the fun is going to end, or this is over. And it becomes a very negative behavior to our dogs, and we ruin that cue pretty quickly. The 10 to 1 rule is simply this: we want you to call your dog 10 times to you, mark and reward, hold their collar for a second, praise them, and then let them go play again, for every one time that you call them to you and you're gonna end the fun. We want 10 times the amount of 'oh, thank you for coming, here's a yummy treat, Go play again', which is super fun for a puppy, they love that. Then one time we'll say, 'OK, it's time to go in, let's put the leash on'. But they're going to associate the come with coming to you and most likely getting to go play again, rather than coming to you, and the fun is always over. That 10 to 1 rule is a really great thing to practice when teaching your puppy to want to come to you and it helps him be motivated to do so.  

speaker 0:   18:08
Number eight is a reaction to another dog. We want them to be able to just see another dog and stay relaxed. Things that you can teach to help with this test item would be a 'leave it', a 'watch me', a 'sit-stay', or a 'let's go' (loose leash walking). We teach each of these as part of the online puppy school, and if you need help with these behaviors, feel free to reach out to us. These all work well when needing to get your dog's attention off of something distracting and back on you. I suggest teaching each one of these to your dog, and then when you're taking the AKCCGC Test, you have several options to help with the task of seeing another dog.  

speaker 0:   18:43
Number nine is reacting to a distraction. This would be something like the evaluator dropping a metal bowl, or opening an umbrella, or something happening like a skateboard going by. Just something they would see out in public, but is maybe a little bit of a distraction. We want to see that your dog might startle a little bit, but they bounce back readily. Your dog may or may not startle, we just want to make sure that after that initial reaction that they settle very quickly and they feel like it's no big deal. It's a good practice to socialize your puppy to many different sounds and things that are happening. For those of you who are part of our online program, going through the daily socialization ideas that we give you will more than sufficiently prepare your puppy for this task.  

speaker 0:   19:26
Number 10 is supervised separation. This means that the evaluator will keep your puppy on leash while you go away, and it will be timed for three minutes. We want your puppy to feel comfortable and relaxed with someone besides you, in case you had to disappear while you were out in public for some unknown reason. Things you can do to help with this would be crate time. I believe in crate training puppies. I feel like it's a good way for them to learn house training skills. It teaches them to hold their bladder. It also teaches them to be alone and to relax when they're alone. They come to love that little space as their safe space. Teaching them to enjoy crate time is very helpful with this skill. I do crate time when I'm home. I also do it when I'm away so that my puppy knows, whenever they're in the crate, that it's just time to settle and relax. They might see me, they might not see me, but either way, it's time to just be chill.  A stay also helps. As you work on getting your puppy to enjoy their crate, you can teach things like a stay or 'go to bed' (which is mat work), and then as you work to build that stronger and stronger, once it becomes strong enough over time, it can replace going in the crate. But either way, if you're gonna teach crate time or the stay or 'mat work', honestly, I suggest you teach all of them, but those are three really valuable skills when it comes to this test item, your puppy will be fine when you disappear for three minutes. They're used to you being gone for hours at a time at this point, and they're able to either be in there crate, relaxed, or maybe you go to a different area of your house but they are on their bed, or maybe they're in a stay position. Obviously it takes time to work up to longer durations for the stay and the 'go to bed', but that's why you have the crate in the meantime, to teach that behavior and then you can work to build up those other two behaviors that can eventually replace the crate if you want.  

speaker 0:   21:23
Okay, that's it, you guys. Those are the 10 test items for the AKCCGC, and a few tips as well to get you through each test item. You guys have a wonderful week, happy training, and I'll talk to you next week. If you have a question about anything you heard on this podcast or any other puppy training question, visit my site BaxterandBella.com to contact me.