조건화된 반응: 모든 신규 강아지(및 반려견) 보호자가 반드시 알아야 할 마법 #130 #팟캐스트

And I'm hoping people with new puppies are listening to this because this, my friend, is going to make all the difference in the world. I'm going to go through a list of things and I want you to think in your own dogs, is this good, bad, or it's just, you know, meaningless. That's meaningless. Good, bad, or meaningless is what we're looking for. So, you put your hand in your pocket. If you're a person who keeps treats in their pocket and there's been a lot of repetitions with a hand in the pocket means something good's going to happen, then you may have your dog's attention all around you when you put your hand in your pocket. That would be ding, ding, good. For some of you, it might be meaningless. I don't actually ever carry treats in my pocket. I pick up the dog food bowl, just walking across the room. There might be nothing in it, but there's been a history because that's what learning is. Learning is a behavior change based on experience. That's all. And so, the experience of getting food in the bowl, I've learned that that bowl signals something good's about to happen. Right? What about the doorbell rings? Does, if your dog loves people, then they may get excited, start bouncing up and down, maybe barking, circling, because the doorbell is a signal that something exciting is about to happen in their world. What about your dog's name? Something good? Something meaningless? Oh, I hope it doesn't mean something bad. It should be no matter what tone you say your dog's name in, it should always be something good. But unfortunately, especially with you puppy owners, you say the dog's name so much, the puppy learns that it is meaningless. We're going to fix that at the end of this podcast. Okay. What about you lunging, try to catch your dog? I bet you for most dogs, it's, well, it's like a good bad. It's good because this is fun, but it's bad because don't get caught. No, you've grabbed those kids' socks and you're racing around the house. Do not let them catch you now. Woohoo! So, there are things that get conditioned in a way that we don't want them to. But this is the magic of conditioning. We can change it. We can intentionally condition something different. If you have a cue, sit down, come, that you've have to repeat more than once. Like your dog is saying that it isn't a conditioned response. It isn't a, now I'm not saying you learned it through conditioning. The dog hopefully has learned that when I hear this word, it means boo. You may have shaped the behavior with rewarding with cookies,

but the word itself means I do something now. If it's been trained correctly, if it's been trained incorrectly, the conditioning means, might mean to your dog, when I hear that word, I check out my environment, see if there's anything else going around, and then maybe check in with the person talking to me, wah, wah, wah, Snoopy's, Charlie Brown's teacher, and see if maybe they have something better than what I can find in the environment. Okay. That is how cues start to become meaningless. We're going to fix that. Yeah, we're going to fix that. Okay. Let's fix these things. It's so simple. Number one, I want you to make a list of all the things in your dog's world that are good, that the response is good. And it could be person, place, thing, time of day, something you're wearing. I know every time I put on my boots, my dogs know she's going outside and we want to go too. And so, they get excited. The sight of me putting on my shoes or boots means very good chance they're going to be going to do something with you. Maybe we're going to the building to train, or maybe we're going for a big walk. And so, that is a conditioned response. Picking up a leash for some of you may be a conditioned response. Now, some of you who go for a walk may have a dog that when you turn around to go home, the turnaround to go home is a conditioned response and they put on the brakes. Oh, nay, nay, I'm not done. Likewise, you might have a dog that you might go to a dog park. Not something I'm a big fan of. There's an asterisk to that. Some of them maybe, but generally not. But you go to the dog park, you let your dog off leash, they're having a great old time and then you want to go home. They see you pick up the leash. That conditioned presence of the leash at home meant, woohoo, we're going to the dog park. The conditioned presence of the leash at the dog park means, uh, no, we're not done playing with Jimmy. Yeah, we got a game on over here and scores tied and, uh, oh, nay, nay, I'm not going home. All right. We don't want those responses. Let's talk about how we're going to fix this. Let's start by just using something that the dog's already conditioned to think is wonderful and use it to our advantage. So, go grab your dog dish. You're going to take your dog dish. You're going to put a treat in it and put it on the ground in front of your dog. What's your dog going to do? Well, Susan, of course, they're going to dive their face in and they're going to eat it. Now, maybe your dog knows it's your choice and they're going to wait. That's fine too. Tell them they can get that cookie and all is good.

Now, what you're going to do is you're going to do that two or three times until they anticipate that the cookie is going to be in the bowl. The fourth time you're going to put an empty bowl down. The dog is going to… Now, if your dog really knows it's your choice and they're not moving, then don't put the bowl right on the ground. Just put a bowl in front of them. So, you know, you can be telling them to get it. So, they're not in a control position. I don't want them to wait. I want them to just stick their head in the bowl. The fourth time you put the bowl on the ground, or if you've been holding it, hold it out. The dog's going to put their face and there's going to be nothing there. And you're going to say, good. And immediately drop a cookie in the bowl. Like the cookie should come in before their face even gets out if you can be that fast. But the word good has to happen first. And you're going to go back to a cookie in the bowl, and then you're going to go back to no cookie. Good. What I want the dog to do is start putting their head in the bowl when there's nothing in there. Why would they do that? Because we are shaping them. We're taking a conditioned response. I see this bowl and it's good. And we're now shaping a behavior associated with that. It's easy to shape now because we've already got a conditioned response to start with. Now you've got a dog who will stick their face in the bowl. Okay, Susan, that's really fun. What else? Now, if you have a new puppy, you can do something like take their collar, put it in the bowl, put it on the ground. They're going to be putting their face in the bowl. You're going to say, good. And drop the cookie in the collar in the bowl. So, the collar's round in the bowl, and then the cookie goes in the collar. After a few times of that, take the collar out of the bowl and put it on the ground. And the dog goes to put their head in, put a cookie in the collar. Now they're targeting the collar on the ground. You can hold it up in your hand and have them put their nose in. What we're doing is teaching them that this collar is good. This collar is fun. Now you can undo the collar, go to put it around their neck, take it off, give them a cookie. You can do the same thing with your leash. Put the leash in the bowl, have them target the clip on the leash. Now we've built in power to things we're going to use on our walk, our leash, our collar. So, when you go to put a collar on your dog, you might go to just about clip it on and then take it off and give them a cookie, walk away. Do that a couple of times

and then clip it on and maybe clip the leash on, walk them a couple of steps, give them a cookie, take it off. So, for new puppies, this is a great way to get them used to wearing a collar and a leash and the association that, hey, good, bad, indifferent. Oh, this is good. This is good. You know, I, as a child had my first root canal at the dentist office when I was 10 years old. Guess what my conditioning to a dentist office was? Not good and definitely not meaningless. It definitely was, this is a bad place. The sound of a dentist drill, very, very, very bad place for me. All right. So, we want our dog to say, this is good. All right. Let's now talk about we're going for a walk. If you have a dog who when they're heading back home puts on the brakes, this is what you're going to do. You're going to go out, you're going to turn left or whatever direction you go for your walk, walk three steps, turn around, walk two steps back, give your dog a cookie, and then start going back in the direction the dog wants to go. Every so often you're going to turn around and walk two or three steps, give them a cookie, maybe walk six steps and turn around and go back. What we're doing is we're conditioning them that this is a good way. And then when you're walking home, don't forget to give them rewards so that there is meaning to that walk home. Yes, there's meaning to the walk out. It means I'm going to the park, but they might want to be out there longer than you have time for. So, they're more likely to put on the brakes. This is a way to make sure that they're going to love walking both directions. What about that dog that you take off the leash at the park and then when you go to hook it back on, it doesn't matter. I loved getting the leash on at home, but I'm not happening here. So, first of all, how is your recall? If your dog's name is bad or meaningless, then should you have really taken them off leash at the dog park? Like that's kind of like jumping in the Ferrari when it has no brakes, right? You have to wait till it runs out of gas before you can do anything now. And if you've got that much time, that's great. But don't take that chance unless you've got time to work it out. And here's what I would do. If I'm taking my dog to a dog park and I don't have a great recall, here is what I would do. What is your dog's response to you sitting or kneeling on the ground at home? Chances are they're going to come running in like, what are you doing? And they're all goofy and excited. So, at the dog park, when their dog is like, not first when they

get there, like when there's a lull in the action, just kneel on the ground. The dog's going to come near you, grab the collar, give them a cookie, tell them to go play. If you did that routinely at the dog park, and eventually you wouldn't even have to kneel down. When there's a lull in the action, call your dog over, grab the collar, clip on the leash, give them a cookie, take off the leash, tell them to go play. What we're doing is we're teaching the dog that the leash at the dog park is not a terminal event. It doesn't mean all fun ends because you've got a leash on. We're building the value of putting a leash on at the dog park because we're taking the value of having fun at the dog park. I had to do this exact thing with almost every puppy I owned at bedtime. Because we would have fun, they played crate games, and then I would put them in their crate at night, and they would go, no, I'm not going to go in. My last puppy would sit beside the crate. Yeah, I don't think I want to go in there. Why Susan? We do all sorts of crate games because at night is a terminal thing. So, I just get into the habit when I have a new puppy is I'll put them to bed at night. I'll go and do my teeth. I'll come back. I'll let them out. They can walk around and chase, follow me around. I don't play any games. I don't want it to be crazy fun. And then I'll call them again, put them in the crate. I always give them a few cookies when I put them in the crate at night. And then we go to bed. I might do that once or twice. Now I won't give them a handful of cookies every time because I don't want to fill them up because they're going to bed for the night, right? I just want to use conditioning, the magical power of conditioning. I want to use that to my advantage. So, any time there is a terminal end to fun, a terminal end to activity that the dog loves, make sure you rehearse that end many times before it actually really is the end. And then what we're doing is conditioning the puppy that anytime you call me, something amazing is going to happen. Now that is a rudimentary approach. And I promise you it will make all the difference in the world because it truly is like magic. But if you would like to learn more about how to make sure that your puppy grows up, not learning that their name is meaningless, not learning that the cues sit or down or come or anything is optional. If you would like to have that kind of relationship where you play with your puppy and they're learning because learning is just a change of behavior based on experiences and

your puppy can learn to be exceptionally well behaved while having fun playing games with you. If you would like that, then we will put a link in the show notes so that you can join for four months into one of our online programs. The name of the program is Homeschool the Dog and you will be able to deep dive into all of this. Sure. You can spend the next few hours Googling conditioning and puppies and get some other people's ideas, or you can save a lot of time. And with this link, save a huge investment because I'm offering you Homeschool the Dog at 80% off just because you listen to this podcast. I hope you take me up on my offer. I'd love to see you in our classroom because I want all the puppies and all the rescue dogs and all the dogs starting mid-life that are learning to be conditioned to have an amazing relationship with their dog. I'd like you all to be part of our community. I'll see you next time right here on Shaped by Dog. Tater hit the target. Now it's your turn. If you're not a subscriber to this page, go ahead and hit the subscribe button now and be sure to turn on the notification bell so you won't miss another video. And if you are already a subscriber, that's for you. Go ahead and get yourself a cookie. . .