Struggling with the R+ approach to “off limits” areas

[militantagnostic101]

So I want my kitchen to be an off-limits space for my dog. This is a rule we had with all of our dogs growing up and we’d just tell them "out!” if they crossed the ‘threshold’ and they usually caught on pretty quickly that they weren’t allowed in the kitchen. The tone we used was definitely more scolding, but not angry/yelling/aggressive.

I’m using positive reinforcement training for my puppy now, and the strategy for dealing with unwanted behaviour is to give a command for something else. The problem is that this is kind of cumbersome in practice. My puppy is allowed to roam around our place when I’m in the kitchen and she can play with toys, visit with other people in the house, just sit and chill, etc. When she comes in the kitchen and I tell her to go to her mat, she goes and I reward her. The problem is that now her ‘free time’ has ended and she’s on her mat waiting for sporadic reinforcement. The benefit of the "out!" strategy is that it didn’t turn into a training session, the dogs just learned that they weren’t allowed in the kitchen during their free time. How do you teach your dogs not to do things using positive reinforcement? And does consistently redirecting them to their mat every time they enter a no-go zone actually result in them never trying as adult dogs?

 

[tenderloin]

@militantagnostic101 So much of dog training is routine and habits. I would probably opt to put up an xpen or baby gate outside of formal training sessions to prevent her from coming in the room at all when you're not training, and then have puppy-length boundary training session (keeping in mind that puppies have the attention spans of a gnat) without the gate.

 

[petronela]

@tenderloin I was going to suggest that exact video.

 

[rootstakeflight]

@militantagnostic101 Is there a reason you don’t want to use spatial pressure and an out of the kitchen command? It doesn’t have to be loud or stressful for the dog, “out” can be a command just like “go to the mat” is.

For threshold training, the alternative behavior you can reward is her doing literally anything else except walking into the kitchen. She’ll learn pretty quick that being outside the kitchen means treats, inside means no treats and I get sent back out.

 

[militantagnostic101]

@rootstakeflight Yeah I guess I just don’t want to have to constantly reinforce her when I’m in the kitchen to keep her out because I feel like that focus on me is almost part of the problem? Right now if she’s on her mat and I’m in the kitchen, I’m basically focussing 70% on her and giving her reinforcements for staying on her mat at pretty regular intervals. If I go too long without giving her a treat and she’s just watching me, then sometimes she’ll leave her mat and come into the kitchen, I’ll send her back to her mat, and she’ll get a treat. She’s seeing it as an active training session and coming into the kitchen is a way to re-engage me in the “game” so she can get treats. We practice the relaxation protocol using a “place” all over the house, and I just don’t think she sees leaving the mat and going into the kitchen as different than any other location. I want her to view the kitchen as different because the whole thing is that I want her to free roam and avoid the kitchen rather than have to do place training every time I want to cook and she’s out.