Month: July 2018

It does no good if you can’t or won’t do the things a leader suggests to you.

You won’t learn if your focus is on the dog, and changing his or her behavior. To be a successful animal trainer, the focus has to be on changing our own behavior, because that’s how we can best shape the behaviors in our environment(s).

So, if you know right from the start that you don’t want to crate train, or if you are sure that the problem is something wrong with your dog that has nothing to do with you, then maybe I’m not your teacher! If you think that animal training is a sort of magic that is completely different from the ways we educate and socialize our human children, then maybe I’m not your teacher.

Animal training, in my experience, is about building a relationship based on trust with the animal. It’s about learning where reinforcers and punishers exist in the environment, and learning how to control consequences to help our animals adapt to our environments and understand our rules and games. It takes time. And just like humans, animals can unlearn things as fast as we learn them. Animal training requires a consciousness of YOUR responsibility for the state of your dog’s behaviors.

We control our dog’s environment in order to control available reinforcers. For many dogs, but not for tiny ones, a head halter gives you great control over a dog’s environment. Crates, gates, mats, doorways, fenced in yards, rooms in the house, hallway, in and out of the car: each one of these environments can be very carefully controlled to help condition a dog’s responses to distractions and exciting transitions.

But if we can’t control our own behavior, our dog’s behaviors won’t change.

So, that’s the challenge in animal training: we have to be fine with the idea that behavior modification is about us, too. I make mistakes every day, and everyone does! I open the door and the dog goes out. “Oops.” It really doesn’t destroy my training plan, it’s just our quirky imperfect style. Perfection isn’t perfect! If you don’t value mistakes as a natural part of the learning process — and powerful opportunities for growth – then maybe I’m not your teacher.

But if you want to create a plan to feel better and have more fun with your dog; if you aren’t afraid to use real “choice” (rather than force) to motivate your dog; if you expect dog training to be a lifelong activity that you do with your dog, and not just a temporary thing that you can do and it’s “done,” then  I would love to share what I know with you!

I like the idea of reinforcement based training, that’s how I see my approach, but part of reinforcement based training involves understanding the function of punishment, and noticing where it is, what it does. Maybe the best way to describe a training method grounded in behavior science is to observe how trainers control both reinforcement and punishment.

Understandably, it’s harder to observe behaviors shrinking and disappearing, than to notice and observe growing behaviors. Punishment is the function that shrinks behaviors. And most often, punishment is unintentionally shrinking behaviors the trainer WANTS.

Punishment can interfere with creativity, make an animal nervous, avoidant, less interested in the game. It can demotivate dogs. Very often, I notice people are “flattening out” their dog. They want him to behave so badly, they’re like back seat drivers, turning the dog into a passive puppet on strings. To achieve all that is possible with a dog, I think I need to encourage my dogs to think, not just “obey.” That means I have to let the dog make mistakes, have choices, learn from their own decisions, help me solve problems. Seeking “obedience” in dog training might lead towards more authoritarian body language and unintentional punishment, than training aimed more at enrichment, education, cooperation, and games of choice.

Trainers need to be aware of any punishment or reinforcement in the environment, and how it may be influencing our dog’s behaviors. Often, we need to condition our dogs to reduce the impacts of a sometimes punishing environment. That’s the core of communication. We control reinforcements and punishments to reduce suffering and strengthen cooperation.

Understanding behavior science is like understanding gravity, or even more, it’s like understanding chemistry. Understanding all the environmental elements of reinforcement and punishment, how they go together to impact behaviors, we can begin to recognize what shapes our own behaviors, not just our pet’s behaviors! This is one of the fun rewards of training with your dog!