“Your Dog Should Work For Everything”… Ummm No Thanks
I recently saw a trainer I know offering some advice online about motivation and I was shocked. A professional trainer, recommending that you restrict access to everything your dog values, so they have to work with you. Now this was common advice back in ancient times, but these days, our understanding of behaviour is so much deeper and if we can only motivate our dogs by creating desperation, we’re not really creating true motivation. Simply a state where our dog has no choice,,
Which isn’t conducive to a healthy relationship. If we want to truly have a great working relationship with our dog and build good behaviour we don’t have to ask for, we need to really understand how our dogs work and how motivation works. In this post, I thought I’d share a deep understanding on motivation and how you can grow a deep bond where your dog wants to work with you; not because they have to, but because they really love it!
Understanding Motivation
I want you to think about about something you truly love doing. Maybe a hobby or just an activity you enjoy. Now think about why you love doing it. I can almost guarantee you don’t love it because someone pays you to do. In fact I’d bet that motivation comes from within; a sense of joy or achievement that doing that activity brings. We call this an intrinsic motivator. A motivation from within. It’s the most powerful motivator there is.
On the other hand, I want you to think about your job. You might love your job, or hate it. But no matter how well paid you are, I’d bet money isn’t the reason you love it. In fact I know lot’s of people who feel they have to suffer through a miserable job because it pays the bills. Well when you restrict access to everything your dog likes, unless they “earn” it, thats exactly how they’ll feel. Yes they’ll perform but at the detriment to their mental health and your relationship.
That doesn’t mean that external motivators aren’t important, but it needs to be something extra. Something special that really drives you to want something. Think about working towards a bonus at work, or competing for a trophy in your hobby of choice!
Now, if we want to truly obtain great motivation, we need both of those things to align. Think about it this way - if you love your job AND you’re well paid, you’re not going to be looking for a better alternative. But if one of those things is missing, you’re likely to look for something better.
If we look at that in dog terms, if walking nicely on leash is boring, your dog is going to look for fun elsewhere, they’re going to look for a more rewarding alternative, which might be chasing squirrels, running about or trying to get to other dogs.
Understanding Intrinsic Motivation
We’ve established that we need to motivate our dogs with both internal and external motivators, but what does an internal motivator look like for a dog? The easiest way to understand this is to look at why your dog is performing the behaviours you don’t like. Take pulling on the lead for example. Your dog probably loves to sniff, maybe they want to play with other dogs or run around. These are all internal motivators. So what if we took these things and gave them to our dogs ourselves. For example if your dog loves to chase things, what happens if they can chase you instead. They love play? Take a tug toy out on your walk. This is going to tap into their intrinsic motivators but instead they’re going to look to you for those outlets. Magic right!
Another really easy way to look at internal motivation is to look at your dog’s breed or background and spend time working on something they were born to do! This builds a great bond while tapping into your dog’s natural instincts. But remember that the dog sport world is full of unqualified trainers who will do more harm than good so tread carefully and reach out to me if you need help on where to start!
Understanding Reinforcement
The other piece of the puzzle is to provide value in the behaviour you want from your dog. We often think about rewards as treats but thats honestly the wrong way to look at reward.
You’ll have heard of positive reinforcement, but most people don’t actually know what it means. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not a training technique, it’s not a methodology, it’s not an ethical standpoint. In fact it’s an observation of our influence on behaviour. Let me explain. Positive reinforcement is one of the four quadrants of operant conditioning. I don’t have time in this post to go through each one, but what you need to know is that positive means to add something to the environment and reinforcement means to see an increase in the behaviour. So if we put that together, positive reinforcement means to see increase in behaviour from adding something.
What this means when we’re looking at reward is this - a successful reward should result in the increase of a behaviour. If that’s not happening, then your reward isn’t actually reinforcing to your dog. This also means that we don’t dictate what’s rewarding. We have to observe our dog and see what really motivates them.
Reinforcement Hierarchy
An easy way to understand how your dog views reward is to create a reinforcement hierarchy for your dog. This is basically ranking your dog’s favourite things. And not just the things that come from you, it’s also helpful to look at what your dog values in the environment. For example, is chicken more interesting that a squirrel, or do smells take over everything for your dog. Understanding where your rewards sit in comparison to environmental rewards can help you understand what you’ll need to motivate your dog in a given scenario.
The Role of Emotion on Reward
If your dog won’t take rewards at all in a certain environment, the answer isn’t to create desperation. Instead we want to understand why our dogs are not interested in something they usually are. When dog’s go into emotional overload, they often go into tunnel vision. So if your dog is overexcited, overwhelmed, overstimulated or afraid, they won’t even realise you’re sticking food in their face.
In this situation, it’s important to dig into whatever they’re feeling and take a step back. If we’re not addressing the underlying emotion, we’re just creating more problems for our dog (and ourselves) in the long run. I teach this a lot in my 30 day loose lead course, so if you’re struggling with your dog’s ability to take food, check out the door games lesson in my course - http://amelia-steele-s-school.teachable.com/p/30-day-loose-leash-challenge get 15% off during December 2024 using the code LETSWALK
The Importance of Safety in Training
Another really important part of learning and motivation is a safe learning environment and the freedom to fail. There are a lot of trainers out there who would have you believe that physical punishment is a tool for clear communication, but we know from more recent research that this isn’t the case. When an animal (or human) fears a negative consequence, they are much less likely to try. Instead you may see an illusion of good behaviour when instead your dog is just unhappy and doesn’t want to try anything that may lead to pain or discomfort. For a truly happy relationship on both sides, we need to eliminate “corrections” and instead focus on teaching our dog that the alternative is much more rewarding.
How to Put This Into Practice
To summarise everything we’ve talked about today, the most important thing to remember is that motivating your dog isn’t about creating scarcity. It’s about proving extra value, understanding your dog and more than anything creating a safe environment for your dog. Meeting their basic needs each day is so essential and by allowing them to access these things, we can step back and look at whether or not we are truly motivating our dog as well as being able to watch out for underlying issues. Withholding important resources isn’t that way forward if we want to truly impact our dog’s behaviour.
I know I’ve shared a lot of information here and you might be wondering how you can actually put it all into practice day to day. The good news is, every course I’ve ever designed takes all of these things into consideration. So if you’re struggling to see results and you want a simple step by step guide to improving your dog’s behaviour, you can access all of my courses via my training hub and I’d love to give you 7 days free to check it out and find the course that suits you. Just click here to try it free! This includes my 30 day loose lead course, 6 week reactivity program and much more!
Anyway, I really hope you found some value in this article and if you have any questions, I’m always reachable via amelia@ameliathedogtrainer.com.
Much love as always…
Amelia
