반려견 훈련에서 우연의 일치와 긍정적 연관성 활용하기 #44

From the eyes of the dog, I'd like the dog to think that somehow this is all a big coincidence. So I'm actually arranging coincidences for my dog. For example, you go out, the dog's just hanging around going, well, I can't get Netflix. I don't know how to use the remote. What's this garbage can here? And tips it over. And then what a coincidence. There's leftovers in the garbage. And I love leftovers. So that arranging of coincidences for the dog will lead him to try the garbage bin again. Do you see how it works? Now, unfortunately that positive association doesn't go through you. It goes through you leaving and the dog getting nosy while you're leaving. So, what I would like to set up are positive associations through me. I'm going to give you another example. And this one is true life. So a student who came here not too, too long ago with a new puppy and the puppy came in on leash. And as the dog was coming through the door, she had her arms full with other things and the puppy came in on leash. So she couldn't even see what the puppy was doing because she had her arms full with the crate and everything else. And, um, the puppy jumped on an adult dog who was going by, got snarled at, not a positive association. And then when she turned the corner, somebody had an open bowl of dog treats. Puppy grabs his mouth in. Now he's straining at the leash way out ahead of her, grabs his mouth, dives into the, she doesn't even know that he's eating them. And I have to bring it to her attention. And so the puppy has learned, okay, run as hard as I can to the end at a leash and really good things could happen. I could find some really tasty treats. So then, uh, she gets herself set up. I explain what we're going to do. I said, you know, we're just going to do a simple recall. And she immediately takes her dog off leash before I could say anything. Now the dog starts, you know, sniffing and going around inside the building and grabs a toy and starts doing loops. So, so many positive associations, none of them with what you'd want the dog to have positive associations with. The dog is learning. The moment I get free from you, take off and grab what you can find. Oh, here's a toy that I like. Yeah. Now let's play keep away. It didn't have to be that way. Imagine if she had come to the class and ideally had a second crate, left her dog in the car, brought her crate in and her treats in and set everything up, had a little chat with me to discuss what we were going to do. And I would have then said, carry your puppy in because there's a lot

of activity going on here. Now I granted some of you have, you know, massively large puppies. Uh, you know, last month I went and talked to somebody in their home with their Great Dane puppy. They aren't carrying that puppy into the building. But in this case, it was a little border collie. Carry your puppy into the building. And then I would like you immediately to start playing game of tug. So, that's the first associations that's easy to create value for something the puppy loves that comes through me. And then our first recall, I would have said, let's just keep him on leash until we can see what kind of focus he has. So, it allows you to create positive associations through you. Things that you love in life come through you. Okay. So, back to this progression chart. This is a simple progression chart I have probably used for 20 years with my students. It starts with the very first time you start training your dog. And guess what? If you say, oh, Susan, that ship has sailed. My dog's eight years old and he's learned a lot of things. It doesn't matter. Tomorrow could be your very first time. You could just say, we're starting over. So, at the very beginning of training, there are two things that could happen. The correct behavior, what I'd really like to see the dog do, and the incorrect behavior, that what I'd rather the dog not do. Now, unfortunately, a lot of people just think it's a flip of a coin and it's 50-50. It's not that way. Because if my puppy chooses an incorrect behavior, chances are it was a test on my part. I'll get to that in a little bit. Just hold on. All right. So, early on. So, the first progression is brand new to training. That's, you know, I would say my puppy who is 11 weeks old now, we are not brand new to training. We are, you know, we've progressed along this chart. But brand new, this is what we did. The correct behavior, what I wanted my dog to see was extremely easy for my puppy to be correct. I altered the environment so it was almost impossible for her to choose incorrectly. So, I might have taken her into my bedroom and fenced off an area with an X-pen and gone in there and trained a game like It's Your Choice. So, not only are we in a small environment, I may even have had her on a leash and It's Your Choice. And if you haven't played It's Your Choice, just go to the show notes and we'll send you a link on how to do that. So, it's Your Choice. The correct behavior is simple. Just don't jump up at my hand and I'll open it and you can get a cookie. So, early on in training, the correct behavior is extremely

easy. And what that does is it increases trust between the dog and I. They know the moment they're set foot on the ground to look to me because good things could be happening with me. It increases trust and it starts to pave the way to increase confidence in the dog making choices that leads to their own reinforcement. Okay. So, early on, it's extremely easy for them to be successful. And we're establishing a transfer of value. What you find of value. And early on, my puppy might only find food and maybe chasing a toy. They may not even find tugging a value yet, but food and chasing a toy might be the two things that they value. Extremely easy to earn that value. Now the incorrect behavior, extremely difficult. I mean, it's super hard, but it is never impossible. And that is important the way I train. I always want my puppy or dog to be making a choice. So, when I'm playing, it's your choice. It's not impossible. You can choose to ignore the food. And if you do choose that, then I know I have set you up to fail because I didn't choose a high enough value food. Or I didn't choose an environment where you could feel safe enough to play a game with me. Or I didn't choose a time when you were hungry rather than satiated. Like maybe I tried to play it right after a meal. So, the incorrect behavior early on in my chart, I've got correct behavior, extremely easy, incorrect behavior, extremely difficult, but not impossible because we want the choice. And early on, it would be things like it's your choice. It would be tug. It would be crate games where it's super easy for the dog to be successful, but it's not impossible. They still are making choices. Now, as we progress, the stages I'm telling you are early, mid, and very late on in your dog's training. And there isn't like a time, an age. It is a layering of confidence that takes you through these stages. So, the mid stages. Now, the correct behavior isn't quite so easy. So, as I move from early into mid, it would be things like I might be playing tug with my puppy with a bowl of chicken in front of her. I ask you to tug. Well, she has to make a choice. I really would like to take that chicken, but you asked me to tug. All right. I made a choice. I'm going to tug. So, the correct behavior is easy, but the environment has been altered such that you could choose incorrectly, but my puppy or my dog won't. I would say 99.90% of the time, they will choose what I want because I've built that trust and I can predict what my dog is going to do. So, the mid stages of training, confidence is erupting in my

dog or puppy because we have laid down foundation of correct after correct after correct after correct. And then when they've made the incorrect choice, it's easy for me to control the environment so they don't have a positive association with that incorrect behavior, like running off with a toy and playing keep away. So, I would never take my puppy outside and throw a toy and expect that it's coming back to my hand. That would be setting myself up for failure because I wouldn't know with great certainty that it would happen. So, I would never do it. All right. So, mid stages, confidence is growing and there are more choices for my dog to make. So, the correct behavior becomes slightly more difficult. The incorrect behavior, I am now tempting. There are more opportunities to choose to do something else. So, instead of playing in a little X-pen where I might've started with an eight-week-old or seven-week-old puppy, now I might be playing in a bathroom. You could go and play with the doorstop, but you're not going to because of all those layers I've put in. I've increased the environment where I'm asking the puppy to play with me, which means I'm increasing options. Puppies can find amazing things to play with it in a bathroom, no less. There's paper, toilet paper rolls, there's toilet brushes, there's the doorstoppers on the spring. Dwing, dwing, dwing, dwing, dwing. There's so many things. So, I'm giving them, I'm tempting them with more environmental choices, but they will make the correct choice 99.9% of the time because this progression has been super slow. Now in that bathroom, I might play short retrieve blocks that teach the puppy how much value it is to put a toy in my hand. And if you're on my homeschool the dog program, you know what I'm talking about, our bring me program, right? Now, as we progress from mid to late, late stages, this is where my adult dogs are now, where there is nowhere I could take them. I could take them into the middle of some deer. I just, every time I say that statement, I think about Fenton in the park in the UK. If you haven't seen that video, you've got to Google it. It's so funny. I feel bad for Fenton and Fenton's owner and those deer. But that's another story. I could take my dogs into the middle of that park with the deer. And if the deer started to run and my dogs might even take one step towards, I might just have to say to them, yeah, we're not doing that. Come on, we're going this way. I wouldn't have to raise my voice. I wouldn't have to get mad. I wouldn't have to throw things. I wouldn't have to,

no, we're just not doing that. So, in this late stages, the correct behavior might be extremely difficult for my dog to get because there's so many environmental choices for them. They could choose to follow the smell of a deer. They could choose to eat rabbit poop. They could choose to roll in something that smells really good over here. They could choose to chase a kid on a bike. They could, they would never do it because of how we have progressed through each stage. The correct behavior is extremely difficult. But if you follow this progression, what you're doing, whenever you, I come to a new environment or new challenge, my dogs, it's just like a challenge. And they're like, yeah, well, that was easy. What else you got? They're proving to you how amazing they can be. They're proving to you how trustworthy they are. They're proving to you that there is nothing that they won't choose over you and what you would like them to do. So, at the late, late stages in training, the correct behavior could be incredibly difficult and the incorrect behavior. So easy. So easy. But they're going to choose correctly because you have moved through these progressions super slowly. And that's what my online students, the homeschool the dog students and our recaller students, or even my handling 360 students, my agility students were building understanding, confidence, and trust. So, the dogs are like, yeah, I got this sister. Yeah, you just hold it there. I can do whatever it is you would like me to do. And that's why it seems like there's this magical connection between professional trainers like myself and our dogs that there's this, you know, mind melt. We're all on the same page. My dogs look at life like I've arranged coincidences for everything. You've got a tug toy. I want a tug toy. And all of the associations that are amazing in their world, all of those positive associations that they got from a puppy, from an adolescent, from a doll dog, all the way up, all of those positive associations came through me. And I made sure that if I couldn't control or wasn't a hundred percent sure of what association would be built, then I just controlled their environment until I evaluated what that would look like. I hope now you have a greater understanding of how to create positive associations through you and start arranging coincidences. So, your dog is amazed at how things work out when they listen to what you want. But remember, start at the very easy level. Create an environment that is almost impossible for them to fail. And if you haven't done so yet,

check out some of our games like It's Your Choice or Crate Games. And these are things that can start arranging coincidences for your dog. I'll see you next time on Shaped by Dog.