The Bulldogs were beaten 26-10 by Canberra on Thursday.

Under new coach Pay, who took over from Des Hasler in the off-season, they have recorded just one win from the first five rounds.

Pay said penalties and misakes are "killing" the Dogs.

"We were making too many errors and it's just not putting us in the contest," he said.

"We're giving away too many dumb penalties and that's hurting us too. There's a lot area to improve on, they scored three tries off kicks and run 100 metres off the one other one. So, we're doing a lot of good things, but we're just killing ourselves with errors and penalties.

"There's some boys that are really busting their arse each and every week, and we're not getting our reward for what we're doing because we're coming up with poor play and coming up with errors and letting them off the hook."