What are Location Specific Markers?

Location Specific Markers tell your dog HOW they’re getting rewarded (Food or Toy, Add Movement or Stay Still) and WHERE (hand, bowl, ground etc) they’re getting rewarded.

Why are Location Specific Markers Important?

Dogs thrive with routines and patterns. By using Location Specific Markers, you’re helping to create more clarity and predictability in training. It can also help reduce frustration and create cleaner training loops. When your dog knows exactly how and where they’ll be rewarded, it takes the guess work out and reduces extra, unwanted behaviors.

Different Types of Cues:

• Food is Coming to You, Stay Still

• Move to Take Food from my Hand

• Take Food from the Bowl

• Chase the Food

• Grab the Dead (still) Toy

• Chase the Moving Toy

And the list goes on. Your markers can apply to both Food and Toys. In fact, when you differentiate between a Food Cue and a Toy Cue, it can provide even more clarity for your dog in training. You’ll find they’ll learn to switch between the 2 modes easier.

How to Train:

1. Be sure to train all of your cues separately at first.

2. Choose and know the Verbal you want to use before you begin training.

3. Say your Verbal, wait a beat (1 second), THEN reward your dog.

   1. It’s important to wait and not perform both at the same time because dogs will naturally notice and take in our physical body cues first and most likely ignore the verbal. If you say the verbal, wait, THEN reward, you’re allowing your dog a moment to take in your verbal without the distraction of your movement. You are essentially creating a predictable pattern that your dog will learn and eventually when you say the verbal, they’ll anticipate what will come next.

4. Perform a few reps. You do not need to spend more than 1-2 minutes per session. Don’t do 20 reps of just “Yes” “Yes” “Yes” over and over. Your dog will get bored and be more likely to become distracted or leave the session early. Keep sessions short and fun for both you and your dog!

*A special Note for when you practice chasing food - make sure the food or treats you use are large and visible. It’s also ideal to not practice on grass unless your treats will be very visible in grass. You don’t want your dog wandering around for several minutes trying to find the treat.

Keep it quick, keep it clean.

Combining & Proofing Location Specific Markers:

1. Once your dog understands each verbal cue separately, now it’s time to combine and proof them.

2. I like to use chasing the food as the general baseline for this game. It creates a nice rhythm and gets your dog moving and thinking.

3. After a few reps of one verbal, switch it up and throw in a couple of reps of a different verbal. Try not to be predictable!

   1. I know, I know - I just talked about the importance of predictability. But here we are challenging our dogs to really listen to us. In real life, we will most likely be using multiple markers in various contexts and our dog needs to be able to respond to them. The marker itself is the predictable element in a very unpredictable world.

4. This is also a good game for working on arousal. Any marker involving movement, will increase your dogs arousal. Markers requiring your dog to be still, will lower their arousal.