The Importance of a Safety Cue

The Importance of Teaching a Safety Cue

By LukEli K-9, Dog Training and Behavior Modification Professionals

I talk a lot with my clients about having a safety cue that your dog knows so well they almost automatically comply, no matter the circumstance. A safety cue that is rock solid. It’s something you can rely on if your dog becomes reactive to a stimulus in the environment, whether it be another dog, a vehicle, a squirrel, or a person. A safety cue that could save your dog’s life in a dangerous situation, or save another from injury. When you say the safety cue you’ve worked on so diligently in one of these situations and your dog stops thinking about whatever has caught their focus and “just does it”, every moment you’ve spent practicing will have been worth it. This type of reliable behavior can and will save you and your dog pain and grief at some point in time.

I decided to write about this topic after an event the other day that happened when I was taking some recycling across the road. It’s a lightly travelled road in a quiet country setting. Gracie was with me and in a “heel” for safety reasons because we were near the road (she is off-leash trained but roads, no matter how infrequently travelled, are dangerous). You can hear vehicles coming from a good distance so I generally feel safe taking Gracie with me because we have plenty of time to move away from the road before a car gets close. I didn’t hear anything or see anyone so we proceeded. Once we crossed the road I released her from the heel because I’d rather she wander in the grass than sit next to me in the road while I loaded the recycling in the bin.

Gracie was busy sniffing the ground while I took care of business when our neighbor, like a woman on a mission, pulled out of their driveway across the road rather abruptly (and by that I mean she tore out of there like crazy)! Gracie just happened to be rounding the corner of the trash bin as this was happening. I could see her muscles tense as she decided what course of action to take to evade the big, scary, noisy beast.

Gracie Lu, Head Trainer Jenny Proctor's personal dog.
Gracie is a certified Head Trauma/Mobility Service Dog

She was going to dash right into the road! What sense does that make? Not a lot to us, maybe, but Gracie figured she was always safe at home so she was going to run there to escape. Right across the road, in front of my neighbors Jeep Cherokee. I had a very brief window to decide what to do to protect my dog.

Luckily, having a safety cue that is almost automatic for Gracie means that it has become the same for me; a reliable behavior I know Gracie quickly performs with at least a 95% compliance rate that has been developed through thousands of repetitions is the first thing that pops into my head and out of my mouth:

Hang on, hang on. Before I tell you what I did, consider what you would do at this moment? If it were your pet who’s life was on the line in that moment, could you rely on a safety cue that would save your dog’s life? What would you say or do with your dog out of arm’s reach and about to dash across the road?

Ok, back to what popped into my head and out of my mouth:

“Sit”

The word came out of my mouth before I even had time to consider what to say. I said it in a normal tone, the way I always say it. I was about eight feet away from her when I said sit and Gracie, bless her heart, sat. Immediately. Right on the spot. She was at the corner of the trash bin, just off the road in the dirt. She plopped her butt on the ground without hesitation or thought. She didn’t take her eyes off that Jeep and she leaned away as it passed, but she maintained her position. Once the Jeep passed I released Gracie from her sit with an “OK” (the implied stay that goes along with the cues we teach is essential to their safety as well) and asked her to heel back across the road.

Once we were back on home territory I released her from the heel with another “OK” and she happily bounded off to see if the neighbor’s kids had thrown out any more candy wrappers she could try to eat. That was too close a call! I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I’m seriously considering leaving Gracie at home for the recycling trips from now on.

Today as I thought about this incident, I shuddered to think what could’ve happened had I not trained with Gracie to reach the point we have with the sit cue. I have worked a lot with her on all three of the D’s you have to train to increase when teaching dogs a new behavior or proofing a learned behavior: Distance, Duration, and Distraction. That third D was a doozy in this story. The vehicle speeding by was a huge Distraction for Gracie. You have to work on all these aspects as well as teaching the dog the actual cue in order to achieve a reliable cued behavior.

Should this seem like an overwhelming training task, keep this in mind; you have hundreds of opportunities to train your dog every week through every interaction you have with your pet. Training your dog can be as simply as asking them to sit until you release them to go outside or cueing a down before access to the couch is granted. You must be consistent in your interactions with your dog and practice, practice, practice. If you do this, your dog will learn quickly and you’ll be well on your way to having a reliable safety cue you can count on in almost any situation. Remember you can pick any cued behavior you like as long as you practice and train!

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