Dogs Don't Generalize!

You send your kid to school. They learn 2 + 2 = 4. They come home, show you their math homework, and you ask them what 2 + 2 is. Even though the person asking them changed and even though the environment changed, your child is still able to say 2 + 2 = 4. This is called generalization, and it’s something we humans take for granted.

Dogs are not born with this brain function.

Dogs are not born with the capability of generalization. If you change the context of a concept even just slightly, their brain tells them it is a completely different concept. To give an example of this, you teach your dog to “sit” inside the house. You go to the park and your dog is paying no mind to you at all, giving a completely blank expression when asked to sit. How is this possible? He does it perfectly at home in your living room. Your dog is so stubborn isn’t he? Wrong. Your dog is confused because, at least to him, sitting in your house is a completely different concept than sitting at the park.

This doesn’t mean all hope is lost, however. Just because a dog isn’t born with the ability to generalize concepts doesn’t mean they can’t learn how to. If they couldn’t, we wouldn’t have life saving service dogs, guide dogs, and police K9s who must perform their jobs under a wide variety of new distractions and environments every day. Learning generalization just takes time and patience, but all dogs can do it.

So how do I teach my dog to generalize? 

As with everything, it’s done in baby steps. The first thing you’ll want to do is set up a basis for good communication through loading your dog’s marker word in as many different environments as possible. A marker is just a short word or sound that lets your dog know they’ve done a good job and they’re to expect a reward (“good!” or the click of a clicker are two examples). To load the marker, stand totally neutral, say the marker, then move to deliver food to the dog’s face. Try to avoid showing food to your dog before saying their marker word, because chances are, your dog is going to be more focused on the treat than what you are saying. In the beginning stages, it is not necessary for your dog to be paying attention to you when you say the marker (it’s actually more beneficial for the dog to NOT be paying attention); nor is it necessary for your dog to even look back at you when they hear their marker (if this is the case, just reach around and pop the food in their mouth anyway). The goal of this exercise is to build the association that their marker = reward, over, and over, and over again. 

Make a point of loading the marker in every room of your house, in your yard, in your driveway, down the street, at the park, in the car, etc. Everywhere you take your dog, teach them that marker = reward. And remember, at this point they don’t need to be doing ANYTHING to get this reward… so long as they aren’t doing anything wildly inappropriate, that is. 

From here, start loading the dog’s name the same way you loaded their marker. Name = treat, over, and over, and over again in as many different environments as possible. Just like with your marker, in the beginning stages, your dog doesn’t even need to respond to you in order to get the reward. This is just basic word association and teaching the basic concept of generalization.

You know your dog is starting to get it when you can say your dog’s marker or name inside your house and they whip around to look at you, their ears might perk up, their tail might start wagging, and it’s clear to them that they are expecting a reward. Take them out of the house to different environments and try this. Do you get the same response? If so, congratulations! Your dog is learning to generalize. If not, keep working at it. Some dogs take longer than others. 

Once your dog is fully responsive to their marker and their name in a wide variety of situations, you can begin introducing cue words. Teach a cue (such as sit) inside your house, and work on generalizing that cue to as many different environments as possible. To do this, you’ll need to reteach the behavior from start to finish everywhere you go. 

When working with service dog puppies, we took these puppies out to 5 new environments every week for the purposes of training and socialization. We warmed up by loading their marker, loading their name, and re-teaching the cues we practiced at the training center (from start to finish) in those new environments. I still do this with every new puppy or dog that I bring into my home. 

It is a process, but it is well worth it. 

How do you tell if your dog has learned to generalize? Once you can teach a behavior inside your house, take them to an environment they’ve never been to before, request they perform that behavior, and they do so without any looks of confusion. If you haven’t reached this point with your dogs yet, I urge you to have patience and keep going. There’s truly nothing better than having that dog you can take anywhere and ask them to do anything and they will eagerly perform because they understand exactly what is expected of them.

​