Things Dog Trainers Do That Most Dog Owners Don’t
Have you ever wondered what life is like for my dogs? Ever been curious about how I work with my own dogs, introduce a new cue or skill, or deal with a problem behavior? Well, you aren’t alone! Throughout my career I have noticed that professional dog trainers (like myself) tend to do things a little differently than the majority of dog owners. I wanted to take some time and share a few of the “secrets” that I tend to utilize with my own pets.
Manage behaviors.
Management is a common theme for dog training success and for sharing your life with a dog in general. It is so much easier to prevent problem behaviors than to deal with the frustration and other negative emotions that can come with them. As a pro, I am very good at picking my battles. I cannot tell you how many clients I have had who are dead set on teaching a dog NOT to do a behavior, vs simply removing the temptation. In one memorable discussion, I had a potential client who wanted to teach their dog to not get into the garbage can while they were away. They were asking me about using a scat mat (a flat device that shocks the dog when they step onto in) to teach the dog that this behavior was unacceptable. My suggestion? Put the trash can in the pantry. Easy. Problem solved. No effort required. This particular person was shocked at my response. I am a dog TRAINER. Why couldn’t I train the dog to do what they wanted? I could, but it would take a long time to teach a dog to avoid behaviors that they are doing when we are not present, since we aren’t there to redirect them to something more appropriate. My question to them was “Why would we waste time and money on teaching the dog to avoid doing a behavior that is so easily prevented in the first place.”
Reward frequently.
When I am working with one of our dogs or a client’s dog in a public space, people are often surprised by how often I am rewarding for positive behaviors. A mantra that I have heard from a colleague that I find myself using frequently when talking to clients is “Treat frequently to teach and infrequently to maintain.” Dogs learn through repetition. Rewarded behaviors get repeated. It is that simple! And this is true for ALL species! This is a major mistake that I see in dog owners all the time. Many people don’t want to reward the dog enough in the early stages of training, so it is much more difficult for them to see training results in their dog. Often when I begin work with a new dog, I am rewarding so frequently that I refer to it as “pez dispensering”. (Haha.) Lots of tiny reinforcers at the beginning stages of learning help a dog figure out what behavior we want much faster, and once they learn the behavior and are performing it consistently, we can begin fading the reward.
Reward behaviors that your dog offers.
As humans, a lot of us want to focus on having the dog respond to our cues and do what we ask them to do. Learning cues and being able to respond to these cues in different environments is important. However, this mindset often takes focus away from the positive behaviors that our dogs are ALREADY doing. For example, when we first adopted Tule, I spent a lot of time tossing treats to her on her dog bed from the couch. She was new to us, and had not lived indoors before she was taken in by the rescue so lots of things were overwhelming and scary for her. These emotions made it difficult for her to relax or get comfortable. By catching her laying down on her dog bed, I was able to teach her a positive behavior very quickly that I could later put on cue. No matter how frustrating or overwhelming your dog seems to you, I guarantee they are doing at least one positive behavior that we can reinforce and use to accelerate learning.
Don’t force dogs to deal with things that are stressful or scary to them.
This one is HUGE, and is quite honestly, a safety issue. So often well meaning dog owners don’t realize how anxious their dog is, or if they do notice, expect the dog to be able to handle it on their own. Neither of these are excuses. If we are going to share our life with a member of another species, we need to learn basic body language cues so that we can accurately pinpoint signs of stress. If we notice these signs and expect the dog to “deal with it”, we are being a jerk. Dogs communicate mostly through body language, so their stress cues can be subtle. We are their guardians and we need to make sure we understand when they communicate that they are in over their heads and need to be removed from a situation. If these signs are ignored, a bite can easily occur.
I went to a small gathering years ago and there was a dog and a toddler present. The toddler kept running up to the loose dog, cornering her. The dog hadn’t interacted with many children, much less learned how to navigate having one unexpectedly in her home and she was terrified. The dog’s owner did not intervene on their dog’s behalf and it would have been easy at any point to remove the dog from the situation. Eventually after repeated interactions from the toddler, the cornered dog became so scared that she growled and air snapped at the baby. Still no one intervened. At this point, I realized that if I remained silent that the child would be bitten and recommended that the dog be crated for her safety and for the safety of the child. The dog’s owner’s response was, “But how will she learn to be around children if she is not around them?” This response is common, but it fails to take into account the safety of the child in this scenario and the psychological effect on the dog’s ability to learn. “How will the child be affected if she had been bitten?” “How will growling at, snapping, or potentially biting children affect the dog’s ability to learn to be around children in the future?” These questions are much more appropriate for the given scenario. The dog was crated, and things went smoothly from then on. But this type of scenario and response is SO COMMON! As owners we often expect so much out of our dogs that it is unreasonable. As a human being, I sometimes act out and say or do mean things that I normally wouldn’t do because of stress. Dogs are the same, except they can’t rationalize. It is our job as pet owners to prevent these scenarios from occurring, and if needed, address them through positive training.