Right for You

Learning new things with Fig, especially in the sport world, has reminded me how difficult training can be to start. It’s hard to know what the right service is - online training, group sessions, in person privates - or what goals are reasonable to set. And the trouble is, those decisions are in the hands of the handler who is the one with all the questions and none of the answers. Only I know what training will help me learn alongside Fig, keep me working hard, give me feedback at the intervals I need it, and offer sustainable support and progress towards goals that only I can define.

As a trainer, I know there isn’t an easy solution when a client is asking what service is right for them. There are so many different approaches to services out there, and so many trainers who will tell you one type of service doesn’t work or another type is the best possible option. And even within a service, the structure of the service typically is adjusted to meet that trainer’s strengths, their training niche, and their communication and teaching style. That’s not a bad thing - that’s a wonderful thing! But options, especially as you’re just starting out, can be intimidating.

When you’re choosing a service, consider:

• What is your budget and is there flexibility in your budget? As much as I wish this was always a non-issue, this is probably the first question I would encourage anyone seeking services to be aware of going into their decision. Every individual has different financial circumstances, as well as willingness to invest in training for the behavior problem they are seeking out. That is not a moral measure, or a commentary on the care someone has for their dog at all. For some clients, Fig’s habit of springing on new people (Tigger-like) would be a number one priority, cost is no issue, to adjust. For me, it’s a minor annoyance that I spend occasional time training for. Your dog’s training priorities can only be defined by your lifestyle needs (see this post for more on that!).

  Having an idea of what you’d like to spend and the ceiling to which you’re willing to spend will define what services you seek out, as well adjust the range of expectations for your answers to some of the questions below. Budget will impact how hands-on training can be, and likely how many sessions/touchpoints with your instructor you can have. Less direct contact doesn’t need to make training any less impactful, but it does mean that you want to go in carefully selecting the service that will bring the most value to you, and set you up best for transitioning training into your own hands as efficiently as possible.

  I won’t go too much more into budget in terms of choosing a service - look over trainers’ pricing first to determine which of their services meet your budget needs and use the remainder of the questions to direct you to the best service for you! Keep in mind for all services, that the cost of the service takes into account more than just their time working with your dog, but their education, their knowledge, the resources they are able to provide. While many trainers work hard to account for lower budget options and solutions for financial constraints, keep in mind too that often cost is commensurate with experience!

• How overwhelmed are you by the challenges that are causing you to seek out training? As much as I hate the idea out there that “your dog is feeding off your emotions” (because how many people just stopped being so anxious when they were told it was making their dog anxious?), you absolutely can create a negative feedback loop with your dog walking into training feeling frustrated, overwhelmed, or pessimistic. Behavior modification in particular, but also puppies and adolescent training, can all be incredibly overwhelming, and as the saying goes, you can’t pour from an empty cup. Especially for people who have a lot of other responsibilities on their plates, or folks who have had a recent bad experience (with reactivity, a dog attack, etc) with training, being more hands-off at the start of a training experience can help everyone recover. Are you mentally and emotionally in a place where you can set yourself up for success working with your dog, or would it be helpful for someone to step in and help your dog learn some skills while you get a chance to catch your breath and reset? The more stress the behavior challenges are causing the human, the more I’m inclined to suggest training solutions that prioritize training with the dog first, and a lot of support for the human client when handing off.

• How specific are your challenges to your dog/your lifestyle? How complex are your goals? Do you have typical puppy problems and want to work on sit/down/come? Or are you working through a complex inter-dog household situation on how to integrate two big personalities into a new home? The more specific your goals are, the less likely group training is going to be a good solution, and the more direct support I’m likely to recommend.

  Take reactivity for example. If your goal is to have your dog-reactive pup who barks and lunges but easily reconnects with you be able to walk down a street with a hot dog at their nose, providing skills and maybe a little troubleshooting will hopefully get that within your reach. If, however, you want that same dog to be able to come with you everywhere, travel in hotels, hang out at the brewery, and eventually integrate a younger dog into your household, you are likely looking at more ongoing support or more tailored coaching!

• How much time can you put in to maintenance of your goals? If the answer is “not much” you may want a service that includes some touchpoints with you, but is more ongoing with the intended maintenance of behaviors with trainer support and the ability to chat with them about touch-ups when you need it.

• How do you learn best? How important is it for you to understand the process of learning behaviors? This is a big one, and more often than not differs between trainers as well as between services. I personally put a lot in writing - usually with videos to help out - whether that’s in my self-led material or in ongoing programs like Day School. However, if you know yourself to be the kind of person who has a lot of clarifying questions in the moment, group classes may not give you the flexibility you need to answer those questions. On the flip side, if you like the chance to get information and revisit and digest it before following up with troubleshooting, those self-led courses might be ideal for you!

  For some folks, especially if they have a wide array of training goals, they want to understand why the behavior they are learning works well and how they might adapt it to several situations. For others, it’s a matter of needing to know what to ask for and when in order to elicit the behavior they want to see from their pup. You don’t need to become a dog trainer in order to have a good relationship with your dog - if knowing how and what to ask for is what is important to you, you might be a great candidate for some of the more hands-off training options folks offer!

I see a lot of discouraging posts surrounding training services and approaches that don’t immediately involve the owner. The concern with services like day training (which I’ve provided in some way or another since 2019) or board and train is that the behaviors don’t translate to the home, and don’t benefit the handler because the dog and handler team do not learn them together. Don’t get me wrong - I love when I can work with dogs and their humans and see their relationship and communication snap into place during a private session or a group class. It’s beautiful to watch that connection develop over time spent working on learning behaviors together. But that is a reality that isn’t always feasible for every family, or for every dog.

In some cases, particularly reactivity and behavior challenges, clients are incredibly overwhelmed by their dog’s needs. By the time they seek out a trainer, the emotional toll of living with this complicated dog has made training a painful and stressful experience. Neither the dog nor their person enjoy working together in that way, and confidence in improvement has taken a huge hit. In that moment, it’s not always helpful to ask the owner to put in all of this groundwork that they are going to dread or feel defeated by. That cooperation you want to see as a trainer between dog and handler isn’t going to slot into place where they are right now. This is where day training programs, or board and train can do immeasurable good. Both services allow the dog and their person to take a break from trying to tackle this problem together, and the dog has an opportunity to learn from someone prepared for those challenges. They can learn the skills they need at their pace, while they can just focus on enjoying life and being together with their owner.

In addition, especially in long form services like day school, the dog gets to practice those behaviors and other, more lighthearted ones, with the focus being on continually meeting the dogs social and mental needs. This provides them with immediate troubleshooting, adjustments to new challenges, as well as decompression and enrichment that make their day to day relationships set up better for success.

Now, a key piece of this is that at some point, the owner should also be brought in. Whether through follow up private sessions, group classes, or written or recorded online resources (or probably a combination of all of the above), the goal should always be to make those skills work for the owner. But when the owner is brought in, they can be confident that their dog can achieve those goals (because they’ve seen it recorded with the trainer), they will have had the chance to recover emotionally themselves (because they had time to do so), and they aren’t stumbling through with a dog just as confused as they are (because the dog has baseline skills they can lean on).

This should be true for big and little things. In my Day School Heroes’ Guild we work on continual progression of the dog’s skills in a variety of environments, as well as providing enrichment and fun challenges for them to keep working their brain in different ways. Their owners receive daily updates with videos of what they worked on, and occasionally resources if we introduce a new concept so they can follow along as much as need be at home. I’m available to owners in our community Facebook page and through Zoom sessions or drop in group classes. They have immediate training support as soon as their next session for any behavior challenges that crop up. Most recently, a client shared that they’d fallen behind on watching the videos, but their dog was still offering behaviors they’d been learning in school - without any input whatsoever on the owner’s part!

In a board and train service, the transition should be the same. No dog is going to leave any board and train program the “perfect dog ad infinitum”. But what they do have is a lot of practice and a lot of skills that can be handed off to the owner through private sessions. This is a big piece of why I provide customized videos, instruction and webpages for my board and train clients - so they have a reference that is personalized to them at the end of the stay. I also offer a virtual “hand off” session to go over the details of that website, and at least one in person follow up so they can practice the skills with coaching. The other option I include in my board and train services is a relevant online course that clients can revisit for more instruction on growing behaviors, and even next steps. But online courses are a whole other thing…

I also see a lot of hesitance about training solutions that are self-led, or online. This is a service that a lot of trainers are excited about, but typically I see concern from pet owners about how helpful it can be. The best advantage of these courses to me is their immediate availability. There’s no other training solution that gives you resources the moment you confirm the service the way online classes are able to. While they may not be my first choice for the overwhelmed client, I do find they can be an ideal standalone service for clients who have inconsistent time available to train, but really want to work through the process of learning with their dog. In addition, it can be an amazing tool as a supplement for clients who are looking for more information up front and lots of behaviors, but have limited time to commit to structured private training - the self-led class can introduce behaviors, and then touchpoints with a trainer (in private sessions, virtual Q&As, or group classes) can be dedicated to tweaking, troubleshooting, and coaching through utilizing those skills. Online classes are a great way to jump start learning and get the most value out of fewer direct touchpoints with your trainer.

This is what my online offerings are structured to provide. The online class includes lifetime access that you can jump into the second you sign up - and within the class you are invited to share videos directly with me for feedback, but also attend complementary Q&As over Zoom on a monthly basis. With those resources, the class can standalone as a reactivity resource without ever scheduling an additional service. Drama Class especially is also intended as a supplement to in person reactivity classes that focus solely on implementing and coaching those behaviors, or as a reference resource so private sessions can be all about making those behaviors work for you, your family, and your environmental needs. Drama Class was the first of my online self-led classes because I find it reactivity concerns to be consistently be my most urgent and complex training requests - having a recommendation to help clients as soon as they reach out (rather than waiting for my next availability) was important to me as a pet owner who lives with reactivity myself.

Most initial client inquiries equate training with the traditional group class or private training session. With general manners training, and early puppy work, group classes can be the perfect place to start! They are typically a lower price investment, and allows your dog to work in distracting but controlled environments as they learn new skills and the value of focusing on you through those distractions. Especially for puppies, having the opportunity to get practice in without the whole focus of the class being on them (like it often is with private sessions) can give dogs just enough down time and breaks that they actually learn much better in a cooperative group environment. Group classes become tough when the dog is unable to focus through those distractions or their training goals are too situationally specific or complex to be reasonably addressed in a group environment. This is where private sessions can come in - I love doing private sessions virtually, starting out with a really focused conversation with owners when they don’t have to also worry about managing their dog around a new person, and introducing some easy relationship-building behaviors to the dog in a distraction-free comfortable home environment. The ability to help and observe without being physically there (and, by my very presence, changing the environment) is invaluable as an introductory session.

For some trainers and training situations, it’s helpful to then move to in-home sessions. This isn’t my default, primarily because I find home environments are often more emotionally charged and have more history with the undesirable behaviors than a neutral location like a park. Introducing behaviors in private sessions means we can adapt and adjust the plan to meet that individual dog’s needs, and work at a pace and level of distraction where they are able to focus throughout the lesson. The goal I have as a trainer is to be able to move at the dog’s pace and provide coaching and troubleshooting tailored to the individual through the session, but also to provide resources (like my personalized webpages, or some of those supplemental day training or online classes) that the client can reference later to carry over into their regular routines.

The key across the board, I think, is support. My favorite service is usually a package that combines a few of these services because each of them can help in different ways and meet different needs of the client and their pet. When you are looking for the right fit for your pet, you’ll see a lot of advice on finding a training philosophy and methodology that matches your own. While that is important (and you can learn more about my methodology here), I think equally important for finding the right fit is identifying the service that best addresses the needs expressed by these questions above, finding a trainer that offers support in the way you learn best, and securing support that offers sustainable solutions for your lifestyle.

Choosing Kindness - An Addendum to my Training Methods

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I wrote this post initially in August 2020. It seems disingenuous to delete it entirely, especially because a great deal of my thoughts, on the surface, remain the same. But as usual, with age and experience and education comes nuance, and the question of training methodology just isn’t as black and white as I had once thought of it. I was very focused in the post on why training with punishment can be appealing for a pet dog owner, but in some ways was just as myopic as the approach I was criticizing. This is what I had to say:

We live in a culture of instant gratification. You can stream television, curate your interests and contacts on Social Media, and reach anyone in the world at any time on FaceTime, Skype, or the now COVID-popular Zoom meetings. Even looking for advice on dog training, the internet has oodles of advice without even leaving the comfort of your home. With so many answers available, it seems inevitable that if we play the right card, click the right button, visit the right website or see the right person, we can find the answer and implement the solution to every challenge we face. We want it to be easy.

I often marvel at the world of dog training, and how successful marketing seems to be for trainers who use aversive techniques. There is a clarity in training with punishment - a product to buy, a result to see quickly and easily, a tool to sell you. Validation that yelling “no” was a productive use of your time. I get it. Successive approximations is a hard sell when your dog’s behavior is impacting your life now. You want the life with the dog you pictured in your head.

Stop. Rewind.

Today, I am still using positive reinforcement as my primary approach in training. But, I hope, I have been successful in taking a more nuanced view towards training methodology overall and to individual client concerns specifically. Rather than “choosing positivity” - the original title of the post - I want to always be returning to “choosing kindness.”

I am a reinforcement-based trainer, but I’m largely uncomfortable with training methodology labels because I think there is always an interpretation of the definition that not only doesn’t define, but works against my perspective.  

I don’t use what the training community refers to as “tools,” but based even on the schisms within those communities, the definition of tools differs - I’ve worked on head halter desensitization, I use front clip harnesses, and for many that would eliminate me from a truly “force free” designation.

When I train, when I think about my goals in training, it comes down simply: I want to train with kindness.  I want to train the dogs in front of me by recognizing that the life we ask them to live in - the behaviors we want and don’t want, the environments we put them in, the consistency we demand of them - are all incredibly big asks for these creatures that we share our lives with.  I want to make behavior plans with the awareness that we hold every single card that shapes our pets’ lives.  With an acknowledgement that - as only a millennial who grew up through the rise and fall of no less than three separate Spiderman franchises can tell you - with great power comes great responsibility.  

I train with the understanding that kindness extends beyond the dog in front of me.  Training involves change on both ends of the leash, within and outside of a household.  The behaviors I teach, the goals I want to achieve, don’t end with the dog themselves - they spiderweb (get it?) out further than I may be able to see in the moment.  When I ask a client, “does that sound like something that will work for you?” after a proposed solution - I mean it, genuinely.  Because no matter how clever the training solution is, if it isn’t sustainable for everyone involved, it’s not a solution at all.

For me personally, the situations I have run across where tools may be tempting come from an emotional place - a desire to control the situation and avoid the behavior that I don’t want to encourage in my dogs.  I don’t see that desire as respectful for my dog, or productive to our relationship.  It’s certainly not leading with kindness.  I am cautious of the implementation of tools in training programs because I do see situations where tools are used as a way to shift away from our responsibility of listening to the dog and to shut down communication we dislike.  

In understanding a behavior, we’re told to ask ourselves the function of the behavior in our animals.  If the function of the consequence we are handing out is to keep everyone safe, to be clear with them, to build up a behavior, to allow better quality of life, then I don’t think it necessarily matters if we use tools.  If the function of the behavior is to express frustration, to release anger, to exert power over another or to threaten that we can…that is where we stand to fail our animals.  Considering the function of the consequences we dole out is as important, if not more so, as considering the consequences themselves.

The error that “force free” trainers continually make when shutting down all tool use, or all punishment in training, is the assumption that the goal is always selfish on behalf of the human and about shutting down the dog’s side in communication.  The error that “balanced” and “traditional” trainers make when dismissing reinforcement-based training is the assumption that leading with reinforcement automatically results in permissiveness and only placing importance on the dog’s communication with little regard to the human’s needs or desires.  There are certainly trainers that exist that fulfill the worst of those traits.  It’s a fear of being associated with those traits that keeps trainers clinging to the labels they’ve chosen.  We’re told building bridges, failing to condemn other training methods, claiming labels that we don’t 100% conform to, will confuse issues further in an already unregulated industry.  I would argue, though, that the true divide is more delicate than that.  

The people who love their dogs - our colleagues, our training buddies, our clients - are all united in similar goals.  We want to enjoy our lives with our dogs.  We want our dogs to enjoy their lives with us.  If we start there, from a place of meeting those two goals, then our training choices will be deliberate, they will be thoughtful, and they will be kind.  Our behavior plans will include management and prevention that is sustainable for everyone involved, enrichment that the whole household can enjoy, and skills and behaviors that reward our dogs for making the best choices for the whole family.

One of my favorite clients was working on a pattern game with her dog, who was reactive at the door.  We’d used this pattern game to success, everyone was happy with the results of the game and the ease with which it could be utilized.  Yet, week after week, when I came over, the game wasn’t set up, wasn’t in use.  When prompted, she explained with a self-deprecating laugh, that the set up for the game, which required bowls on either side of her door, simply wasn’t pretty, and because of that she was procrastinating.  It would have been an easy thing to dismiss, or to chuckle at with her and then move on.  But the fact of the matter was, the skills as we had currently established them, were kind to the dog, but they weren’t kind to her, and her quality of life.  Everyone works hard to make their life and home feel like their own, and feeling good about your front walk is part of that.  In that situation, it was fortunately easy enough to come up with an aesthetically pleasing set up for the game - but acknowledging and adapting to the human needs allowed for sustainable change that improved everyone’s life.

Kindness in training, then, requires a great deal of thoughtfulness, and even more nuance.  Nuances I’m still personally untangling, nuances that oftentimes contradict one another.  Approaching things in a thoughtful way, leading with kindness, for me, has yet to mean the implementation of tools in my training plans.  But my experience is not comprehensive. While I have not implemented tools in my personal or professional training, that professional training, my professional growth, my professional education is never complete.  I have seen tools implemented for challenges in painstakingly thoughtful ways, that have inarguably improved the lives of the dogs and of the humans.  I have seen “force free” methods implemented in ways that have been diminishing and unkind to both the dog and the humans involved.  The divide in the training world has less to do with methodology and more to do with an honest assessment of quality of life - for everyone. 

There’s very wise advice I see circulated often.  When choosing a pet professional, ask them:

• What happens if my dog does something right?

• What happens if my dog does something wrong?

• Are there less invasive alternatives to what you propose?

These are great questions.  I would add to them: why?  Why are we doing what we are doing when the dog does things right?  When they do things wrong?  If there are less invasive alternatives, what is the reasoning for not using them?  

Is your trainer kind?  To your dogs, and to you?  Are they looking for the solution that best supports the needs of everyone involved in your training relationship?  

If your trainer is leading with kindness, they will be looking to match with clients whose methodology reflects their own.  They will be transparent with their experience and humble enough to refer you to a trusted colleague if your challenges, your preferred approach, or your goals would make someone else a better fit. They will be able to speak to the thought process behind their approach, and answer your questions in full.  They will work to find solutions that fit your life, while advocating for the needs they see expressed in your dog’s behavior.  They will not judge or shame or belittle you for things you did not know, did not understand, did not do the way they would do it.  They will lift you up for seeking help.  And they will do all that because they are training with kindness, no matter what tools they are or are not using.

The Three Ring Circus

The first question I get when discussing any of the new arrivals into my home is a polite, “Oh, and how is Mouse doing with that?”

Mouse, it is known, is a complicated dog. Or perhaps the problem is that she is far too straightforward. A classic pit bull, she struggles with arousal control around other animals, and has always been reactive towards dogs. It’s been rare that she has a dog friend, and never one for very long. Over the years, she’s adopted what I fondly refer to as a “don’t start nothing, won’t be nothing” philosophy, but her definition of “starting something” can be impressively subtle.

I knew that getting a second dog would be a Herculean task. For years, I wrote off the possibility, was content with Mouse being my one and only dog for the entirety of her life. Overall, we were quite happy with that. Even when I started training full time, I borrowed demo dogs as I needed them, and Mouse was good enough at being neutral that she could help in plenty of scenarios.

Mouse has a history of being inappropriate to the dog next to her immediately after a posed photo. This was the first photo I’ve taken of them without an adult or barrier in place between them and both did great before, during, and after the picture.

Then, the pandemic hit. Which is such a frequently used fulcrum for drastic changes at this point that it’s nearly a trope in and of itself. But I quickly learned that when I didn’t have the outlet of training other people’s dogs, I got pretty restless pretty quickly. I wanted to train. Mouse, the aging pittie who has an affinity for being left on her own in sunbeams…did not.

At least not as much as I wanted to. And I realized as I worked with her, and practiced behaviors with client dogs, that I felt distressingly stagnant. Starting over with familiar behaviors wasn’t challenging me, and it wasn’t making me a better trainer. Foundations are essential, and I love that I have the opportunity to practice them as much as I do. But to be mechanically challenged, I needed to start training new things and expanding my horizon. I needed another dog.

At this point it was something I had toyed with. Mouse had a small circle of dogs she hiked well nearby, even with a leash dropped. She had successfully had dogs stay in the house. She even befriended one particular absolute saint of a boarding dog. A second dog seemed…possible.

Preparation started with friends’ dogs. Spending more intentional time with one another. Muzzled off leash hikes and sniff spots. Relaxation sessions inside the house. More boarding and utilizing my space to make it two-dog friendly. Baby gates were identified and installed.

Fig arrived more quickly than we’d planned. But upon her arrival things still went slowly. Fig primarily lives in the basement, in my training office - out when I’m in the office and available to her, crated when I’m not. This works well for our dog-dog challenges, but also for Fig, who has a tendency to get into trouble when left unattended and loose. When crated, things started with a gate around the crate, then just a crate cover available when supervised, to where we are now - Fig and Mouse are prepared to ignore one another behind gates or crate doors. They rarely ever even sniff at each other, whether they are on either side of a baby gate, the back kennel, or their crates.

And that’s an important distinction. My goal in this was always to have two dogs who basically ignored one another. I have no illusions that Mouse wants a friend, or that Fig needs to be that friend. Fig is much more social, and has plenty of friends. Her sister, she needs to simply co-exist with. We’ve done that by parallel hikes, and then progressing to off leash parallel time - but first always with Fig and Mouse being given tasks to do (chase a ball and rest on a mat, respectively). Indoors we have done relaxation protocol with a barrier up. At this point, the barrier is almost completely down, but it will go back up when one dog is asked to perform tasks while the other holds their down.

Early on, Mouse and Fig practiced doing training sessions and relaxation on either side of a baby gate.

Outdoors now, they’ve been able to be walked by one person, pose for pictures, and co-exist without being given specific tasks. First with a muzzle, and then without as they proved themselves relatively uninterested in one another. The goal will be to continue building those habits outdoors so that by the time (if the time comes) they are asked to do the same indoors, they are well-versed at ignoring one another. I fully expect to be working on this over the next year, at least.

We’ve done similar with the kitten we recently adopted. Catra was an unexpected surprise, but we’ve followed similar protocol. Currently, our house is crate and rotated three ways. Catra remains in one of her rooms (unless she makes her way into the drop ceiling…), Fig is in the training room, and Mouse is elsewhere in the house. As we build comfort with sounds and smells of each other, we are setting up spaces in the house for Catra to be high up and hidden from the dogs if she should so choose. When they are together, we are working on relaxation and stationing behaviors while everyone is getting trained, for only a few moments at a time. Catra can be aggressive towards the dogs, and while Mouse is uncertain about that and Fig barely notices, it’s clearly from a place of fear. My goal is to continue to build Catra’s confidence and help her understand she always has options to access places the dogs aren’t permitted. For the dogs, my goal is for Catra to be barely something they notice.

It’s often a surprise to folks when they realize that my three (mammalian) pets have barely ever met, and almost never in the house they all three live in. It is, however, the way that we can ensure that all the pets involved feel safe and comfortable, and continue to do so as we help them understand how to live alongside one another. And if that takes some extra time to achieve that peace - that’s all good with me.

Practicing with close supervision Fig and Catra relaxing together with me. Fig isn’t aggressive about Catra, but does think she’d be really fun to play with, which just isn’t safe with their difference in sizes.

In both images with Catra, the dogs were being asked to lay down and relaxed while Catra had the opportunity to explore them. Now that Catra is a little more comfortable in the home, she’s also being asked to remain on her own station.

Early on, barriers spanned across the whole room while both dogs were tethered and as far apart from one another as they could get. Here you see the barrier is fairly short and they remain fairly close to one another. I was able to walk around them and do relaxation protocol exercises while they both held their downs.

Later, we moved them further apart again, but took away the barrier entirely. Both dogs didn’t move from their downs in an 8-10 minute session in the room with one another. There were also no hackles/barking/shifting that would indicate that either was approaching threshold.

No Ribbons for Reactivity

There’s no ribbons for reactivity. You’re not prepping for a trial, or a show. Your criteria for behavior is important, but only so far as it serves your goal; decreasing your dog’s threshold over time and ultimately improving your dog’s (and your own!) quality of life.

Especially if you’ve worked hard with your dog, and your dog has a lot of skills on the table, this can be a hard concept to grasp. Of course we know we’re not competing for every day life, but there’s a challenging narrative to struggle against about not “needing treats” for your dog and that, once learned, they should just “do the behavior.” Plenty of well-meaning trainers remind you that your criteria needs to be clear and once you’ve established criteria for a behavior, you need to be consistent with what you’re asking for.

Across the board, this isn’t always realistic. Dogs - even those without significant behavior challenges - get overwhelmed, overstimulated, or just have a bad day. Our dogs, we increasingly are aware, experience a range of emotions. It stands to reason that emotional state, like in humans, somewhat dictates or at least influences capacity for behavior.

In theory, clear criteria should be your goal. Especially if preparing a performance - for a specific event, for a show, for a trial - being clear about what you need your dog to do and avoiding a reliance on treats is important to your success. You want to recreate the picture you will need in a trial as much as possible. But day to day life isn’t leading up to a single event. The context of the performance is always changing and, in the case of a reactive dog, the experience and their capability can vary greatly from day to day.

So what can you do when your reactive dog needs help? If you’re asking for a behavior, you first want to make things easier, and if they still can’t perform, switch to management mode.

Reactivity is a bit different than manners training. There’s less reliance on cues and more reliance on adjusting your lifestyle to give your dog the space (physical, temporal, emotional) to cope with their BIG feelings . There’s a perspective shift necessary to go from asking your dog to do something, to teaching your dog how to adapt to their triggers. And there’s a lot more dependent upon your ability to address the emotions evident in the behavior than insisting on the consistency of one specific behavior.

My general progression from “working on building resilience to triggers” to “managing the environment for the most positive experience possible” goes something like this:

Look at That Variations

• Look at That - this is the hardest behavior to ask your dog to do when faced with a trigger. Rewarding your dog in a known pattern of looking at their trigger, and then looking back to you means they both are able to handle the trigger itself, but that they also remember the pattern you’ve worked hard to help them learn.

• Look at That (Then Enrichment) - if they struggled to look back at me but managed it, I’m going to switch to steps 4 or 5 and do a treat scatter or another form of enrichment my dog enjoys, rather than asking them to continue the pattern and look back.

• Look at That (Easy Mode) - if my dog couldn’t look back at all? I’m marking “yes” before they’ve turned their head back and rewarding them back towards me, even if it means sticking the treat right in their nose. Am I changing the criteria? Yes. Am I luring after they’ve already learned the behavior? HELL yes. Right now what matters more is keeping the experience positive for my dog than keeping this behavior crisp. We will work on the pattern again later on - right now, I’m focused on my goal; setting up my dog so they don’t need to react.

Getting Distance

• This Way - I’m typically only going to break this out when I run into a trigger and I already know we are too close to play any variation of Look at That. If we’ve already played and are struggling, I want something more directly enticing.

• Ready Get It - when my dog is struggling with Look at That, a behavior they know well, I know it’s time to build distance. My next step is going to be looking for attention - any attention - and tossing a treat away from the trigger for my dog to chase and pounce on, moving them backwards a ways before I try again. Depending on the amount of space I can make, I might continue to the next section, or I might go back and play another variation of Look at That.

• Magnet Hand - it seems obvious that a dog will follow a handful of cookies, however, this isn’t always the case. Practicing your dog sticking close to your treat hand with duration can help move them out of sticky situations without the need for physically moving them to create distance.

Doing Something - Anything - Else

This can be literally anything your dog finds enriching - tricks, attention games, tug, hand targeting - whatever your dog finds super enjoyable and engaging. The point here is not to look over or pay attention to the trigger at all. You’re going to do this when either they haven’t succeeded at playing Look at That, you can’t build enough distance that you’re confident in their LAT game, or your dog has already dealt with a lot of triggers and needs a break. My personal preference and the most popular amongst dogs seems to be:

• The Everlasting Treat Scatter - Not only a treat scatter, but ones where treats keep dropping on the ground while my dog’s head is still down. Sometimes bouncing off their nose and sometimes a little further away so they have to hunt, this is all about keeping the dog sniffing while the trigger passes us by (no worries, the dog definitely still knows the trigger is there!).

Last Resort - Move The Dog

Sometimes, none of this will work. Hopefully rarely, your dog will already be mid-reaction and unable to be distracted with even their favorite things. When that happens, walk up your leash (remember - climb a rope, don’t reel in a fish), grab your dog’s collar or harness, and walk them away. They can have treats as soon as they are able to take them (but keep walking), but for now, just remove them from the situation. What we don’t want is for our dogs to sit in whatever feelings are causing this overblown reaction, we want to be able to introduce a new emotional state as soon as possible. If they recover quickly, we can try one of the other exercises at a distance, but most likely after a moment like this, I’m going directly into an everlasting treat scatter because now we’re all about recovery.

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There’s no ribbons for reactivity - but there are for reactivity class! If your dog needs to be introduced to foundations for reactivity work and you’re not sure where to start, reach out about our options for reactivity students with private training or Drama Class online.

If you’ve already taken a reactivity course and would like the opportunity for in person practice, check out our in-person Drama Class. This class is intended for reactive dogs of all levels of progression who have taken Drama Class Online or an equivalent reactive dog class or private session package, and aims to provide real-world application, coaching, and practice.

Baby Steps (With Babies)

This past week, we took our Preschoolers to the pet store. This was a BIG outing and a big deal for the three puppies who came with us. They spent a long, single training session working on attention, loose leash walking, sits and downs - all in a bustling, noisy, and delicious smelling store - with people and food and animals all around them. The puppies were of varying ages, between 4 and 6 months old, but all three of them did phenomenally and had a successful and happy socialization and behavior outing.

How did we get here? What I can tell you is that we did not take unknown puppies, bring them straight to a pet store, and hustle them into the door. This was a process - one that was different for each of the pups involved.

First, there was Gari. As you might have read, this was graduation day for our sweet German Shepherd girl. For Gari, everything about this outing could have easily been a trigger for barking, growling, lunging, snapping - just a few short weeks ago. Our process with training Gari was very slow and methodical. In her first sessions, Gari was only asked to be out for short periods of time with lots of breaks for rest and recovery. We made sure her first sessions were in fenced yards where she could be dragging a leash, so she could gain as much distance from us - new people - as the other dogs, and anything else she was concerned about. She could explore the world at her own pace. When we took her for walks, it was in open fields where we could again let her be out on a long leash at a comfortable distance, and where we could see any new people or dogs coming. Her interactions with the other puppies were either very short while in the fenced in yards, or sniffing between fences when she was on a leash and might feel more vulnerable. It was in fields like these that we first started having closer indirect interactions with dogs - letting her come and practice settling with other puppies nearby, both leashed without any options for direct interaction.

Once she was able to comfortably settle with the other puppies, we moved those same activities to fenced in yards and asking her to settle off leash with one other puppy. After she was able to settle calmly, she was then allowed to play - first with just one puppy at a time, and then in subsequent sessions adding additional pups. Clover has been one of her best buddies from early on. After she would play with Clover, they also were often the pair we would leash up and practice manners in each other’s presence, especially as we started walking again in new environments. This way, Gari learned that other puppies and other distractions were nothing to be concerned about, and also something she could focus on learning around. Her first trip to a pet store was with Clover and on her own, in short bursts with lots of play breaks.

Clover, the Sheepdog/Poodle mix, has long since overcome her initial concerns about other dogs and people. Her family’s hard work and her consistent attendance at socialization sessions and preschool has made her quite the ambassador for all the other puppies. However, Miss Clover can still be very concerned about new noises and occasionally new environments. For that reason, her introduction to those things was slow as well. On walks, especially in neighborhoods with a lot of car noises, Gari was her emotional support just as much as she returned the favor. And we would listen to her responses to those triggers and offer her the safety of a yard or a quiet park when she made it clear she was done. During training, we’ve focused not just on manners with her but on relying on her person in uncertain situations and looking to them to get her to a place that feels safer. Clover did well in her first pet store excursion, but like Gari, did only short bursts in the building with lots of breaks and play time in between.

Lastly, my buddy Arlo came to the pet store. Arlo is a cattle dog mix, which is not usually what you’d associate with a sensitive soul, but he has one! He has been showing a little worry about new people in certain situations, and also can be easily distracted by scents or sights around him. With Arlo, his preschool sessions thus far have been focused on building comfort and confidence in a variety of locations, and working on polite loose leash walking.

This week we wanted to prepare all the puppies for a successful pet store outing that would last longer and be a little more crowded and busy than the previous store we went to. They had a chance to get their energy out with a long play session, time in and out of the pool and running around the yard with each other, and then some time to decompress in kennels before we went out. When we got to the pet store, we worked them with different activities and kept things moving with lots of reinforcement for good behavior. We kept them away from people until they could handle walking near them and were acclimated to a new place.

Lastly and most important, we didn’t push it. When we started seeing slower responses, we left while they were still behaving generally well - we didn’t ask more from them than what they were able to give to us.

This wouldn’t be possible without our amazing puppy parents. Preparing puppies for busy socialization outings - or adult dogs for anything they might find overwhelming - means knowing the dog you have in front of you and progressing at their pace, setting them up for success along the way. Sometimes that means steps forward are tiny, and sometimes it means taking breaks to step back to give our dogs and ourselves a chance to regroup. But it also means that when you take that final step to meet your goal, the result can be seamless.

The Impact of Early Intervention

Check the Glow-Up!

Gari graduated preschool today with Citizen Canine today!

Gari started with us at around 3 months old. She was originally attending Play n Learn sessions, but was so unsettled by the people and other dogs we made the switch to her attending puppy preschool only.

Gari has attended weekly preschool for the last three months while her dad works with her at home and recently started manners classes. From a 3 month old puppy who was scared by *everything* and couldn’t handle other puppies, people, or sounds from a huge distance, she has become a lovely playmate to known dogs, and able to focus and respond in unknown environments, like a busy pet store!

Gari still has a long way to go through her adolescence, and will continue learning with us in Day School. But she has made us so proud, and is a shining example of the importance of early intervention and meeting a dog where they are able to perform.

Happy “graduation” Gari - we are SO proud of you!!!

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I’ve been thinking about Gari a lot today - and the puppies we work with that are like her. Gari’s transformation was particularly dramatic - her first day of preschool she worked almost entirely solo, and we worked her against adult dogs who wouldn’t be put off by her barking, growling, or snarking at them. New people had to be a baseball field away in order to avoid her hackles rising. This could have easily been a dog going down a very difficult road.

Our sessions of preschool are a week apart - this gives sensitive dogs like Gari time to decompress and recover before continually trigger stacking. Because we take only a few puppies at a time, we can customize care for them however is needed. With Gari, that mean slow, steady introductions, and a lot of practice just learning to settle around other dogs prior to any direct interactions. It meant communication with her family to make sure that she was comfortable at home and not in a position that would push her too hard, too fast - which could reaffirm the fear she clearly felt.

Gari was adopted by her current family at 12 weeks. It’s tempting to assume some form of trauma in cases like hers, but with the limited knowledge we have it seems likely that this was a more genetic temperament, and the only thing she suffered prior to finding her home was a lack of exposure to novelty.

A puppy like Gari needs less focus on speculation about the past, and more focus and compassion on the present. Rather than overwhelming them with confronting their fears, give them short introductions to new things or people at a distance they are comfortable with. Work with a trainer early to learn to read your dog’s body language and adjust your asks based on their comfort level. Prioritizing focus on you, ability to settle,and comfort in new environments is largely more impactful at this early socialization age than any manners you can ask of them, and it lays a foundation for training a confident dog as they enter adolescence. Patient introduction to novelty during this critical developmental period can alter the entire course of their life.

If you’re seeing fearful or reactive behavior from a young puppy, reach out to Citizen Canine early to discuss the best puppy program for you and your family!

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Building Behavior, Or, “but My Dog Does it for YOU!”

Alternately titled: “Humble Brags About My Son and Dog.”

Mouse is generally well-behaved for me. This is common in a household - there’s usually one person (usually an adult) that a dog looks to for guidance, does more training, does more walks, is the person the dog listens to. This is a frequent complaint in training sessions: “well for my husband he won’t jump” “she doesn’t pull my wife on the walk…” And even more often, when training a dog, I hear “well yeah he does it for YOU” as if I have some sort of magical aura that encourages all dogs to listen and be attentive to me (I do: it’s the smell of my treat pouch).

Meatball-and-cheese-scented perfume aside, the problem is usually a little bit two-fold. First, and most impactful when I’m working with a dog before I hand them off to the owner, is training knowledge. I try to take time to remind those who get frustrated by how quickly their dog picks up a behavior with me that I have the easier job. I know how to train the behavior. I know how to watch for little movements, adjust my criteria, time my reward so the dog knows what they’ve done right. I’ve done it before. This is not true of many owners, and if they have done it before, it probably wasn’t within the same 24 hour period. The owners are asked to train themselves while they are training the dog. No wonder at all that there are more stumbling blocks along the way.

Secondly, and usually more connected to the Person The Dog Listens To - is the history built up around the person and the behavior. Dogs are creatures of habit, and if their habit is paying attention to what their human is asking of them, that’s what they are more likely to do. If, rather, their habit is ignoring them in favor of what they’d prefer to get into…well, that’s what happens too.

When explaining it to my kids, it goes like this: I can do a puzzle. In theory. Usually. Not well. Hold on, let me start over.

Your dad can do a puzzle. Their dad is great a puzzles - they get put together quickly, seemingly effortlessly, and there’s rarely a misstep in finding the right piece for the right spot.

Now if I sit down to do the same puzzle…or if the kids do…Dad can help, sure. Edge pieces can be found, colors can be grouped together, the puzzle can be broken down into more easily managed pieces to set them up for success. But.

I still have to do the puzzle myself. I still have to be the one to put together the pieces - the picture isn’t clear until I’ve done the assembly.

Behavior can be like that. In the video linked, Mouse and I started out playing with my leftover baguette from Panera (healthier eating by training with your leftovers!) - she did really good so I figured I would capture a little on video. We do a lot of impulse control work with food, so the addition of motion, throwing the food up in the air and only then inviting her to catch it or wait for it, went really well. And then Ryan wanted in.

Click here to watch Ryan’s training session

A caveat to this should include: my kids, generally speaking, are not the type to coo over a dog. They like animals, they just aren’t…excited, like some kids can be. They get exposed to a lot of dogs in living with me, and as a result, their opinion of the animals they live with is often pretty nonchalant. They sometimes like to help train or take care of the animals in the house - Ryan is very excited to be training his betta fish, Cassidy loves helping me take care of the snakes. And both of them like to help with training Mouse here and there. But this is not a regular occurrence. If anything, Mouse has a much stronger history of stealing food from my children than training with it.

So his first attempt to mimic what I did went…not well. Mouse immediately went for the food. But here’s where Ryan impressed me - instead of being disappointed that Mouse couldn’t perform the same way for him, he took it as a challenge to build the behavior with the two of them. As you watch the video, notice when Mouse stops paying attention to me (hearing me say “wait” and “take it”) and listening for Ryan, her handler in that moment. How clear her movements get - and how quickly the puzzle is able to come together when Ryan takes the pieces I’ve put aside for him and brings it together to form a picture.

Watch him increment his behavior slowly - first looking for a pause with the treat in the hand, then one on the floor - then mixing in other behaviors he knows she can do (and has done before) with him, finally adding distance, and finally finally adding back in the exciting motion of the treat.

This was successful because the trainer was willing to step back and work on the foundation of the behavior, regardless of the evidence before him that the dog could perform the behavior with someone else. The trainer took small steps forward and celebrated each success with the dog, making it a fun and engaging experience for both of them. When mistakes were made (watch the treat get placed too close to Mouse near the end of the video) - there was no complaints or frustration, just problem solving. The treat was moved further away, and Ryan didn’t go as far next time.

Did the final behavior look exactly like Mom’s did in the beginning? No, not quite - we might need another baguette for that. But it looked much closer than it did in the beginning, and with another session we could have the puzzle completely put together. But more importantly, the behavior and attention - and connection and relationship - looked totally different from the beginning of Ryan’s session to the end. This was a great training session, and it was all thanks to the willingness of the handler to adjust their expectations and celebrate their progress. And a little bit of thanks to Panera.

Give. Dogs. Space.

“Hell hath no fury like a reactive dog mom scorned.”

— Proverb (Slightly Adapted)

Today, I was supposed to have a decompression hike. Heading out to a quiet park with a trainer friend and our reactive but well-behaved dogs, hike a little, relax in the sunshine, pack up and head home. Simple. That’s always the plan on days off - keep things simple and quiet and enjoy the presence of our own dogs for a while.

That’s how it was supposed to go, anyway. And how it mostly went. Near the end of the walk, we were working down stays and relaxation in an open space near the entry of the park - wide open lawn with at least 30-40 feet on either side. And this older gentleman enters, stage right, with his bull terrier. His bull terrier pulling forward on the leash to access the dogs lying quietly next to us. The dog’s handler allows his dog to pull him, curving through the field rather than remaining on the path, closer and closer to us. Close enough that I need to devote my attention to Mouse, who has gotten tense.

For those of you who have not had a reactive dog, know that every dog has a threshold, and a sense of opportunism. There is a point where, when surprised, getting up and walking away will do you no good because if you stand to get away, your dog will take that instant of inattention and act on it, reacting exactly when you are most likely to lose control of them. Mouse was in that moment.

My trainer friend, bless her, calls out “Hi, her dog is unfriendly, can you give them some space?” Confusing in the moment that follows, I watch my dog grow more tense. What I didn’t know what that, in response to a relatively normal request for space - especially in a pandemic - this man chose to step closer to my dog. And closer. Close enough that my dog hopped up and lunged at the end of the available slack in her leash - about a foot and a half, but enough to clearly tell that she was struggling. I reiterated, as the man stood parallel to me, maybe 10 feet away, that we needed space and that my dog would likely bite his.

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“Then hold on to your leash and we won’t have a problem,” came the reply.

My actions next were…not quintessentially professional. But they were calculated. They were calculated because I, in fact, can hold on to my leash. I can handle my reactive dog. I’m confident in the training and practice and time and investment and the community I have around me. I could be strategic, if not strictly nice, in my response because I have spent 9 years working with this dog, observing her, knowing full well what she is capable of and where her threshold hits its breaking point. I could take the actions I did because I could read my dog clearly.

For many reactive dogs and owners, you are at the mercy of the stranger in a moment like that. I’ve been there. I’ve felt how helpless you can feel, how trapped. I truly believe that had I not taken actions that I did, his dog may have been allowed to come up and sniff mine. And that would have been incredibly unsafe, for both of our dogs, as well as potentially for any humans getting involved to break up what would be inevitably, a dog fight.

“Hanging on to your leash” has nothing to do with it. A reactive or aggressive dog, sufficiently motivated, can pull a leash out of an owners hand. Can break a leash or slip their harness. Retractable leashes, which many dogs are walked on (don’t walk your dog on a retractable leash please!), can break or snap or malfunction. Or someone can simply misjudge their distance and let their dog get too close - I can tell you that this approaching dog was well within a normal 6 feet leash radius, had I not had a closer hold on Mouse’s lead. Not to mention, her lead was 20 feet long.

Even if all the dogs (and humans) are kept physically safe, an approach like that can hold sway over so much for a reactive dog. Many dogs are reactive due to fear or anxiety, and their big explosions have more to do with desperately trying to chase off whatever concerns them than anything else. Even if this is not the case, a dog in a frantic emotional state is not enjoying themselves. Seeing this happen when you work hard to avoid it is incredibly disheartening or even scary for the owner of a reactive dog. Reaching that level of distress can set their dog back, causing unseen harm that may take months to undo. I work with these reactive dogs, and their owners. I see how hard the dogs work, how hard their owners work - to improve their relationship with their dog, to build their dog’s confidence, to increase their quality of life. I see the money and time and care and worry they invest in their companions. I hear their frustrations, I see their tears. I’ve had those frustrations, and I’ve cried those tears.

And when I see someone who feels entitled to flush that all down the drain because of their own ego, I get… a little upset. And because I have the leash and handling skills to keep my dog safe, because I have the awareness of my dog to keep her under threshold and have systematically spend years maintaining that threshold, because I know my dog will recover quickly and won’t experience any real setback from the encounter - I acted. I acted, and I hope that this man thinks twice before doing the same thing to another dog, because I work with and know and love too many dogs that would be damaged by his behavior.

When approaching another dog on a trail, please give them space. If space is requested, give them double the space, or as much as the trail allows. Keep moving. I can tell you that if someone is aware that their dog is likely to react and asks you for room, they are working on their dogs responses. They don’t need advice in the moment - they need you to move on so they can attend to their dog’s needs.

If you are declined from being able to greet a dog, say hi to a dog, pet a dog, or have your dog come to play with another dog, please don’t take it personally. It’s not about you. It’s about an owner who is confident and empowered enough to set boundaries for their dog. Our dogs are asked for so much, in a culture that expects every dog to be tolerant of everyone and everything.

If you have a dog who needs their space, stand by it. Congratulations for getting them out and committing to their continued learning and quality of life by bringing them out where they may be challenged by the area that they are in. Ask passers-by for what you need, and don’t feel obligated to compromise you or your dog’s feeling of safety to spare feelings.

And for goodness’ sake, stay 6 feet apart anyway. We’re in a pandemic, after all.

Take A Step Back

Have you ever noticed those times you are consumed by a problem, so focused on finding a solution, that you’re ready to tear your own hair out - that it’s often not until a break to grab food, or put the kids to bed, or run an errand, that you stumble across a solution?

How about when the conveyor belt of life has you running from one thing to the next and you feel yourself losing perspective? How do you get it back, regroup, and come back again refreshed and ready to try again?

There’s a reason it’s called getting away from it all.

I recently had the opportunity to take a similar break myself, getting away from it all at a family house in the mountains of Pennsylvania. While there I hiked, relaxed with a friend, read stories, ate junk food, and watched the dogs play in the cooling September water. All told, I accomplished very little. That was the point. When I came back, I was able to jump back into my day-to-day with better energy and clarity, because I had what I needed.

Distance.

When I talk about training, I often will tell clients distance is their best friend.

Is your dog overly excited? Distance.

Reactive? Distance.

Fearful? Distance

Aggressive? OH YES DISTANCE.

The crux of the matter here is that regardless of the form it takes, if your dog is being overwhelmed by their emotions, the answer is to give them distance. Just like we occasionally need to step back to regain our footing, our temper, our composure , our dogs need that too. They need us to build it into our training plan, to make providing distance part of the protocol when they struggle, and shrinking it part of the criteria on the journey to success.

There’s often push back when I suggest this - the idea being that it is somehow encouraging a bad reaction to give your dog space, that they’ll never learn to cope with whatever reality of life is a struggle to them if we offer them this escape. But it’s not so different from the grace we grant ourselves, and it doesn’t mean we stop challenging them, or us. But when you are overcome, overwhelmed, overstimulated - you don’t learn. Our dogs aren’t learning when they are having an intense reaction to stimuli. They aren’t learning when they are barking and lunging and generally losing their minds at the end of their leash. They need our help in that moment, help to escape and to focus on something else. Distance gives you that. From a distance, your dog can concentrate again, can focus on you and your cues and training, and you can plan on how to start closing that distance gradually and incrementally, how to avoid asking too much of them at once.

Embrace the getaway and get distance from the problem - that’s where you solve it from.

End on a Bad Note

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My daughter got skates for her birthday. She’s very excited about her growing collection of Things With Wheels that allow her to continue to pursue her eternal quest of keeping up with her brother - so far this list includes the skates, her beloved bike, and her brother’s scooter, which she’d prefer everyone consider to be communal property. Getting on the skates was interesting - I’m not at all well versed in skates, or how they fit over shoes, and we didn’t…exactly go for quality right out the gate. Fit was an ordeal. But there was my girl, decked out in protective gear and shiny blue skates, inching down the sidewalk. She hasn’t gotten too far yet. She shuffles and loses her balance a lot. She’s fallen. Fortunately, her favorite song of the moment is from the movie Trolls, so a gentle reminder that Poppy would Get Back Up Again is usually enough to get her to move along.

Except - maybe sometimes we shouldn’t?

It’s something you hear a lot - since childhood, from family, from teachers and coaches and friends. When you fall, get back up again. Get back on the horse (even when there’s not a horse to be found). Try, try, try again. End on a good note. Which, like all common sayings, can be good advice. In the right context. In the wrong context, it’s what drives perfectionists to anxiety. It’s the cause of frustration and tears and feeling trapped. Endlessly trying for a good moment when things have gone downhill can ruin something that once brought joy. It can stall learning.

* I don’t know why, but every time I hear “Pavlov is always on your shoulder” I picture a parrot on someone’s shoulder. Now you will too. You’re welcome.

Because here’s the thing. Pavlov is always on your shoulder*, right? No matter what you’re doing, what you’re attempting, your mind is forming associations about that task. The more you practice the frustration of not getting your “good note” to end on, the less pleasant your brain decides the entire task is. If you can get back on that difficult-to-perceive horse quick enough, sure, you might get a little boost there, but if you wind up in a cycle of failure searching for your win to end on…you’re probably not going back to that task anytime soon. In a training session, you the trainer may struggle with motivation to keep going. Your dog definitely will. They’re forming associations just as much as you are - if you’re growing more frustrated, that probably shows, and that’s no fun for your dog. In frustration, cues become less clear, tone changes intensity, and everything about your body language will be telling your dog that things are no longer a good, fun time. In addition to that tension, they also may be growing frustrated trying to understand what you want, trying to reach their goal (treats! toys! sniffing!), and not being able to achieve it because we’re chasing our own tail trying to catch that increasingly ephemeral “good moment.”

It’s no good.

Add on to that, if the bad moment is about a bad reaction, we could be compounding the issue. When your dog is already having an emotional reaction, are already in a negative headspace, recreating the situation over and over, or trying to continue with what you are doing, is only making things more challenging for your dog. If your reactive (aggressive, frustrated, fearful, excited, etc.) dog has a reaction, and you continue exposure to potential triggers, now you are attempting to repeat a task they already struggled with at their baseline when they are recovering from a reaction, experiencing heightened arousal and adrenaline, and set up to fail. They practiced an undesirable behavior, and that is frustrating, but be careful not to prime them for another failure in search of a “clickable moment” to end the session on.

End on a good note, if one is easily found. But alternatively - be gentle with yourself and your dog. Give yourself permission to retreat and regroup. Let mistakes have space. Leave, and go back in with a plan. Rest. Recover. End on a bad note, and blaze a comeback trail when you’re ready.

As much as I try to embrace this, I struggle with not ending on a good note, and I certainly don’t stop and take pictures of the bad moments.

I do, however, choose bad moments to take pictures. So here you go.

Choosing Positivity

Note from the future: If you are new to this page, welcome! You should be aware that I have an updated post that (hopefully) includes some growth and nuance to this one, but is also about my personal methodology and training philosophy.

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We live in a culture of instant gratification. You can stream television, curate your interests and contacts on Social Media, and reach anyone in the world at any time on FaceTime, Skype, or the now COVID-popular Zoom meetings. Even looking for advice on dog training, the internet has oodles of advice without even leaving the comfort of your home. With so many answers available, it seems inevitable that if we play the right card, click the right button, visit the right website or see the right person, we can find the answer and implement the solution to every challenge we face. We want it to be easy.

I often marvel at the world of dog training, and how successful marketing seems to be for trainers who use aversive techniques. There is a clarity in training with punishment - a product to buy, a result to see quickly and easily, a tool to sell you. Validation that yelling “no” was a productive use of your time. I get it. Successive approximations is a hard sell when your dog’s behavior is impacting your life now. You want the life with the dog you pictured in your head.

Stop. Rewind.

You want the life with the dog you pictured in your head.

That might make sense with another purchase - I expect my tv, my computer, my phone, to work the way I expect it to. My household appliances, my home itself, my car - they should be optimized to serve my needs. But a dog…that’s a living creature. And when we dig deep into the desire for training to mold your dog into the vision you wanted them to be - when you really examine that reaction…it’s an understandable impossibility. Dogs are going to be who they are, not who we thought they were going to be. And there is something beautiful, and difficult, and complicated about that relationship with them.

I think that outlook is the key to why punishment-based training - the sprays, the penny-cans, the e-collars and fences, the prongs, the choke chains - is appealing to many. Without a deeper look into the motivations for changing your dog, adding a punisher to suppress behavior that you dislike in your dog is often a quick route to behavior you prefer. With permission to be angry or even stern with your dog, we receive the emotional gratification of permission to express that frustration. Positive punishment often feels easier, in the moment.

So why not punish your dog? When you’re working with a positive trainer, they will probably discuss operant conditioning as a way that dog’s learn and a reason for their training approach. It’s entirely true that operant conditioning includes positive punishment (adding something to the environment that suppresses behavior), but Skinner, like so many scientific founders, was not considered terribly humane in his implementation of his studies, and in life with our dogs, we aren’t living in a laboratory. When we use punishment in training, we cannot predict exactly what our dog is associating with any given stimuli. They could associate it with the behavior we want to suppress, but they could also associate it with anything else in the environment, including you.

Our dogs are always learning. They’re learning what to associate us with, what to associate learning with, what to associate certain behaviors with. When punishment is included in a part of your training and your relationship, your dog can easily begin to associate you with the punishment of choice. The fallout of punishment is that while the dog may choose to behave in the moment, their underlying emotional state is not being improved, and they may not look to take cues from you when punishment is not in play. When you use reinforcement in your training, the goal is for the dog to associate the trainer with things they value, so by contrast the dog does look to the handler even with the primary reinforcer (toys, treats, etc) is not present.

Positive reinforcement training, limiting actions that are aversive for your dog may require a longer training plan, and more intensive work with both you and your dog. It may require a change of behavior on the part of the human in the equation, and often requires an adjustment in expectations from that human. But it is also more sustainable. The dog has clarity in what they will be rewarded for, and will seek that behavior out. They will place value on attention to their person and consider that person a source of reinforcement. It’s simply more sustainable and stronger, when implemented correctly. Training “force-free” encourages you to interact with your dog, play, reward, and love on your dog as much as you want. The more you bond with your dog, the more value you have for them. While behavior may come more gradually, they will stay engaged with learning and will be thrilled to keep working with you!

What's in a Walk?

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I frequently talk to clients about dog’s energy needs, and how a walk around the block probably isn’t going to fulfill the physical energy needs for most dogs. We have two legs and our dogs have four - the exercise math simply doesn’t hold up for the majority of adolescent and adult dogs. That doesn’t mean, though, that walks don’t have value, and that we shouldn’t look to have pleasant, satisfying walks around the neighborhood with our dogs. Walks are wonderful outlets for mental energy - allowing your dog the opportunity to sniff around for the news, and to work with you in their training with the variety of environments and distractions your average neighborhood can offer your pet.

Once your dog can maintain focus on you for a good 30 minute walk though, and the walk itself isn’t about training loose leash walking - what do you do? What does an on-walk training session look like and how can you incorporate it into your daily routine? I offer training walks as one of my regular services, and I honestly believe that every dog should have regular training walks for their enrichment and continued reinforcement of desired behaviors. A training walk is a neighborhood walk where your dog is working to enhance their skills. That might mean polite leash manners, it may mean reactivity management, it may mean impulse control and relaxation. The specific makeup of the skills on the walk might differ from dog to dog, but my goal is that a dog on a training walk is working and actively engaged with me from the first to last step.

Fitting this around the natural distractions of the neighborhood is easy once you get creative about it - working attention after a dog has had a thorough sniff of the cable box, asking for a wait at every curb. Working recalls when the dog is distracted and gets well ahead or behind you. Tossing treats and then asking the dog to wait to retrieve them - or even teaching an implied pause until they are released after the treat. Can your dog hold a wait as a person passes by on the opposite side of the street? What about the same side?

This is a lot of mental energy for your dog to expend ,and it’s important to go at their pace. Some dogs love to walk and happily buy into engagement and focus with you, while others would rather spend their energy doing other things. Keep walks - like any other training session - fun! Start with short, easy sessions, always keeping an exit strategy close by. Practice all of those focus behaviors you want your dog to employ on a walk in your house, in your doorway, in your front yard first. It’s so easy to jump into neighborhood walks with both feet, especially with an antsy adolescent, but taking it slowly will pay off in the long run! Ensure you know your dogs triggers and be ready to create distance and work them past anything they may find too exciting or too troubling to handle. If you’re likely to encounter stimuli like that, consider building in a “play break” into your walking session - letting them sniff out a food scatter, or playing tug or fetch with a toy you brought with you!

And oh my goodness, have treats on you! What works in the house will likely not work on a walk, and you want to make sure you have some really good stuff to make their attention worth their while. Try to keep a variety of treats, and lean on the highest value stuff around. If you’re not used to carrying a treat pouch around, the good news is that they have plenty with room for keys, wallet, and the always-essential poop bag, so you don’t need much more! I love my Doggone Good treat pouch that I mention in my Party Loot (recommendations) page! Keep in mind that walking should be about reinforcement coming from you, so be picky about who (canine or human) you let your dog go up and say hi to - remember that you are never obligated to let your dog say hi, no matter how cute your puppy is!

The more you engage and train with your dog during their walk, the more practiced they will become at engaging with you outdoors, and the more energy they will expend while out and about. I sing praises for decompression walks a lot - giving your dog the chance to sniff and run (relatively) free and experience time where nothing is asked of them, but the training walk is also important, and often easier to schedule!

What’s in your walk?

The Bad Dogs Are Good Dogs, Too

The “bad” dogs

There’s an expectation, floating out there in the ether, that as a trainer, your dog should be perfect. I’m not sure where it originates from, or even if it’s something taken truly seriously by anyone for whom it is more than a passing thought, but it is there. I feel it, often, when my dog misbehaves. There is an expectation surrounding professionals that in order to be effective, your personal connection to the same subject must be perfected.

It’s not true.

More so with dogs, I think, than many professions, for reasons dealing with how we approach our dogs. There is a cultural expectation that dogs like other dogs. That dogs, in their infinite “goodness” like anyone and everyone they meet, regardless of species and behavior. That a dog who dislikes other dogs, or humans, or kids, is inherently defective or “bad.” That something must have happened to that dog to make them the way they are.

That’s not true, either.

And then there’s the approach to training. Even more than children, in some ways, the behavior of one’s dog can bring about swift, unyielding judgement from others. When your dog pulls on leash, or barks, or lunges, there’s often an immediate, almost visceral directive to control your dog. But what does that mean? It means suppressing the outward behavior, stopping the unseemly, un-dog-like reaction your dog is having, the one that’s perceived negatively by the observers. It implies that training a dog is a matter of exerting your will thoroughly enough to have your dog obey.

Nope. That’s also not true.

So being a trainer with a “bad” dog is a challenge. To those external judgements, sure, but also because those expectations and cultural ideals live within me, too, no matter how illogical I know them to be. My dog isn’t even all that “bad” on the spectrum - she loves people, loves children, is generally well-mannered in the house and doesn’t get into or destroy anything. She is dog reactive. Extending more knowledge to the definition of “bad,” even that doesn’t make her a bad dog - it puts her smack dab in the breed standard for an American Pit Bull Terrier.

The essential characteristics of the American Pit Bull Terrier are strength, confidence, and zest for life. This breed is eager to please and brimming over with enthusiasm. APBTs make excellent family companions and have always been noted for their love of children. Because most APBTs exhibit some level of dog aggression and because of its powerful physique, the APBT requires an owner who will carefully socialize and obedience train the dog. The breed’s natural agility makes it one of the most capable canine climbers so good fencing is a must for this breed. The APBT is not the best choice for a guard dog since they are extremely friendly, even with strangers. Aggressive behavior toward humans is uncharacteristic of the breed and highly undesirable. This breed does very well in performance events because of its high level of intelligence and its willingness to work.
- UKC APBT Standard

Arguably, Mouse is not only a good dog, but a perfect example of her breed. Unfortunately, that does not make her dog reactivity any easier to live with, or cope with as a trainer.

When Mouse came home, I was a novice dog owner. She’s my first dog as an adult, and my forays into training as a child involved reading books like Jelly Bean vs. Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and working my relatively easy-going lab mixes in our basement. Not exactly the training methods I rely on now, but far more balanced than the Cesar-Milan-steeped world of 90s and 00s pop dog training. I knew I would need help if I wanted her to be a good example for the bully breeds, and I did as many things right as I could. In retrospect, I would have done more. But as usual with any subject - when you know better, you do better (thank you, Maya Angelou). In the end, it doesn’t matter very much what I could have done - Mouse is, and will continue to be, a dog-reactive dog. And that’s taught me a great deal.

In training, it’s taught me the importance of emotional regulation, of meeting the dog where they are and working with what the dog is able to give you without going beyond their threshold. Mechanically, it’s taught me the value of situational awareness and precise timing. But in life, it’s taught me empathy. I owe the course of my life to my reactive dog, and to the people I encountered working with her. But in so many interconnected ways, I owe my parenting to the focus on small victories, on persistence, on resilience, on compassion and communication that working with a challenging dog taught me. I owe the ability to adjust in the moment, to not get stuck on plan A, to not strive for perfection and exhaust everyone including myself in the process, to my dog and to training with her. There is so much that is good in my life and that is good about myself that I owe directly and wholly to my “bad dog.”

Beware the bad dogs. They change you, irrevocably, for the better.

A Retrospective on Goal Setting

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“Honor the space between no longer and not yet.” This quote is going up everywhere this week - on the blog, on Facebook and Instagram, on the client newsletter I’ve yet to send out. It’s something I need constant reminding of, that achieving progress is more important that achieving perfection.

I met a goal this week - Charlotte and I have been talking about creating a podcast for ages - so much so that we even started working on one, a chat about goal setting for our own dogs and for clients, way back in January 2020. A goal and resolution-oriented topic seemed appropriate for the new year. What we would have talked about then, had we successfully made and produced it, would have been very different than the podcast we made now, in August (July, at the time) of the same year. The world we lived in back in January seems foreign and distant to today’s life.

We made a point, especially given the meta-application of the topic, of talking not about goals but about setbacks to those goals in our conversation. About how people get overwhelmed with the goals they make, stumble and stop moving forward at all, or hesitate to recognize small progress as the achievement it can be. As we went through the podcast again, cutting out the truly egregious tangents (at one point the question was raised about the difference between a cardigan and a sweater - I don’t remember if we ended up leaving that part in), I realized how very susceptible I am to the latter pitfall. Our conversation was a valuable one, I think. I enjoyed having it and I’m proud of the content we put out. But we stumble in parts, we sound nervous until we hit our stride, the audio is unfiltered and includes dogs playing in the background. It is not yet perfect.

At a different point in my own development, I would have used that as a reason not to release the podcast. At the very least, not to actively announce to my social media world that it existed. Maybe after three or four were out there, maybe after we learned more about audio and editing. Maybe once we sounded more comfortable. I would have continued looking for perfection before daring to mention to the world something I created existed, imperfectly.

My son was like that, when he was little (still is, in more subtle ways). We’d catch him, walking into his room, practicing standing, taking hesitant steps, before noticing us and falling back down - pretending he hadn’t yet been walking. It was only when he could stand confidently that he would practice in front of us, once he knew he could take a few steps on his own.

Perfection, though, is fleeting. It’s not a state we can remain in, and what we one looked at and thought was perfect, as we learn and grow we can see the flaws, see where we have improved over time. Progress is what’s worth celebrated. We no longer procrastinated releasing our first episode of our podcast. It is no longer an idea in our heads, but a real, tangible thing that you can pull off of Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and other platforms I’m probably not aware of (as well as right at the top of this entry!). It is not yet what I hope it to be. But the space I am in now - it’s one worth celebrating, worth sharing with the world.

A few weeks ago, Mouse had her first opportunity to come face to face with her "friend”, Beo. Mouse, as has so often been mentioned here, is dog reactive. As much as she would happily go home with the first family of humans who offered her a piece of their lunch, she has struggled politely interacting with members of her own species. It’s not atypical of the breed, and is something that in many ways I’m grateful for - I wouldn’t be a dog trainer if Mouse had been an easy dog. She has walked with Beo for years, but never been encouraged to interact with him. A few weeks ago, we did that - a short session, with muzzles on for safety, just allowing them to occasionally sniff each other as they passed. She had some body language that was more bully than I would have liked, and we didn’t progress further than casual sniffing. She is not yet where I hope she can be. But she has - we have - come so far.

What "no longer” do you have to celebrate today? Where do your goals go from here? Check out our (in progress) podcast below for more conversation on goal setting and recovering from your setbacks.

When Will My Dog Be Trained? Part 4

Your dog’s genetics, temperament, and interest impacts the ease with which they will pick up certain behaviors. Their environment will impact their ability to implement those behaviors smoothly in the face of distractions. Your commitment and engagement in their training will determine the sustainability and longevity of the cues you’ve trained. Ultimately though, your dog will be trained…when you say they are.

What are your expectations of your dog? What do you want to be able to comfortably do with them, what environments do you need them to be able to perform in? What degree of error is acceptable to you? This answer will differ from behavior to behavior, from person to person. A dog living out in the country with no need for leash walking may not need solid leash manners - unless their person wants to be able to frequently take them into a nearby town. Or is simply really frustrated by their dog pulling on the leash. The ability to check off your mental box marked “leash manners” differs greatly based on how you define those manners in the first place.

When speaking with a trainer about a training plan with your dog, they will probably ask you what your training goals are. This may feel like a redundant question if you’ve spent the last few minutes talking about the challenges you’re having - but it’s an important question. What your trainer may consider “done” may not be what you consider to be finished!

Personally, I don’t mind the occasional pull on a leash by an excited dog, but my pet peeves are dogs constantly at the end of their leash, creating consistent pressure, and dogs crossing in front of me on a walk - especially if they slow down! If I were making a training plan for the dog to suit my needs, those behaviors would need to be extinguished before I considered myself “done.” But plenty of folks don’t mind that - or don’t mind it to the same degree that it bothers me!

Conversely, I don’t really personally mind a jumping dog. I’m usually just as excited to see a dog as they are to see me, so a little loss of impulse control doesn’t phase me. This is emphatically not true for many clients - they want jumping extinguished from their dogs repertoire! Training goals, and subsequent training plans, should mirror your goals and expectations for your dog, not anyone else’s. Defining your goals in that way means that you’ll train for the results you want to see, not an ambiguous “trained dog” that might mean something very different to someone else.

Then, consider what “done” might really mean. What do you want to do with your dog over the course of their life? Is training something you want to accomplish early, set some foundational boundaries and manners, and move on with the snuggling and walking and playing fetch parts of dog ownership with maybe some occasional maintenance along the way? That’s awesome! But it also needs to be established up front, because for me (and most trainers) “done” isn’t in our own vocabulary. There’s always something new to learn, some better way to be teaching a behavior, some tweaking to improve performance, some new interest we can be exploring with our dogs. Working with our dogs and learning new ways to communicate and partner together is an amazing part of dog ownership (in addition to the snuggling and walking and playing fetch), and it’s a facet that we seek out throughout our dogs’ lives. It’s why we’re trainers. Consider where on the spectrum you are - what your ideal picture of life with your dog might look like - and that’s probably where you’ll find your goals for training, and a better idea of when your dog will be trained.

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When Will My Dog Be Trained? Part 3

Mouse’s biggest training roadblock: Me.

In looking at a timeline for training your dog, after you look at the intrinsic things going on with the dog in front of you, and the environment they’re in, the next step is that ever (un)popular good, hard look in the mirror. And no, the point here isn’t that you need to be a trainer to have a trained dog.

Consistency

Consistency is key - we’ve all heard it, but when I’m looking at my consistency in training that isn’t going well, I want to think about how often I’m training for the results I want, but also how well I have set my dog up in an environment that makes her likely to choose the outcome I’m looking for. If a dog is in a position to practice an unwanted behavior, or has frequent management fails, that indicates there is something in their environment, or something in my actions that needs to be adjusted.

I also look at how often I’m reinforcing the desired behavior. When a dog is first learning a new behavior, a new routine, or a new family, they have no reason to know one rule, one behavior is better than another. Demonstrating, consistently, that certain behaviors get rewarded will see those behaviors repeated.

And lastly I look at if I am consistently meeting my dog’s energy needs. If my dog is not receiving enough mental and physical stimulation, they will absolutely find ways to meet those needs that likely aren’t in line with a peaceful household.

Engagement

If I’m not committed (and consistent) in my training, how can I expect a dog to be! I want to examine how much fun I am making training for my dog. If I’m continually frustrated, exhausted, and distracted during a training session, suddenly it makes a lot more sense why my dog is disconnecting from training, too. Being aware of frustration impacting training matters at both ends of the leash. Likewise, in the case of a management fail, I want to examine my reaction - was it helpful to the dog? Did it help provide clarity over expected behavior, or was it an expression of frustration that confuses or worries them.

Am I in tune with my training environment and do I fully understand the things my dog finds challenging? This is an ongoing process of developing situational awareness so I’m able to continually better evaluate the environment and make the best choice for the expectations I set for my dog.

Expectations

Continually questioning if your expectations are fair, based on your own consistency and engagement in training, and what you know of your dog’s intrinsic motivations and environmental triggers, will affect hwo quickly and efficiently training takes effect. There is a common maxim: “Train the dog in front of you” - if you are not doing, not in the present moment and instead considering what your dog usually can do or what they can do at home or what they’ve been able to do in the past…you waste precious moments (as you can see in the linked post) to react and train the dog before you in the present moment.

Once the reaction is addressed, your efficacy in training is going to depend upon what you do next and how you evaluate your surroundings. Are you continually putting your dog in situations they can’t handle? A busy neighborhood, like the ones so many of us live in, is not an easy place for a dog to maintain neutrality if they struggle with reactivity or fear. Continually presenting situations they can’t handle can slow their overall progress.

But so can stagnation. If your dog is never challenged, never pushed, they can’t progress either. Dogs, like people, need to incrementally increase the difficulty of a task in order to perfect a behavior or reaction. Train the dog in front of you - if they are struggling in their environment, make things easier. If they are excelling, continue pressing forward.

Just know that tomorrow, they may be in a different spot altogether.

The final piece of this puzzle is asking yourself what this question really means, anyway?

Is your dog ever “Trained” (capital T)?

Where to Shop for Your Dog's Gear

I’m taking a pause from the “When Will My Dog Be Trained” series to share some resources that I have been seeing around for supporting BIPOC folks in the dog training world - and why inclusivity and diversity in dog training is an important subject to address. I’m arguably the least qualified person to address these issues as a relatively sheltered, absolutely privileged white middle-class cis woman. I’m probably going to get things wrong - but I’ll learn, adjust, and do better.

I want to share some resources with you that I’ve been given. Despite dogs being a major focus in American culture and society, the love of animals and desire for pets crossing cultural, racial, and socioeconomic boundaries, the world of dog business and dog sports is overwhelmingly white. I’m lucky enough to be aware of amazing people who are making an effort to change that, and I want to encourage anyone reading this to take a look at the businesses linked in this post to support black-owned businesses as well!

And in light of COVID-19, things are so much more available online - including stores, training, and other services that you might not otherwise be able to connect with. I can tell you that I don’t know all of these products, but that I’ll be trying them out over the course of the next several months/years, following their pages, and doing what I can to amplify their presence.

By far, this is the best collection I’ve found of Black-Owned Dog Businesses, most with online presence, that has been circulating. It has representation from all over the country, from training resources to all-meat treats, to vegan treats, to bandanas and headbands and toys and gear and more. Most of the folks on there have online stores, and almost all of them have some form of social media (I humbly recommend following Smart Bitch Dog Training - IG @smartbitchdogtraining - for some awesome tutorials and infographics). Let me know what products you really like, and I’ll try to keep folks posted on what I have tried.

The other corner of the internet to visit is Paco Collars Facebook page - not only are they an incredibly well-regarded company themselves, but they are also POC-owned and have been highlighting some incredible stories recently from BIPOC in the dog training community. While you’re visiting their page, pick up some very cool sparkly collars for your dog!

When Will My Dog Be Trained? Part 2

If you’ve trained with me, you’ve probably heard me say “add distance!” at some point when talking about a scenario where your dog has lost focus and reacts undesirably to the environment around them. This is because once you change your training environment, you’re adding distractions that your dog may or may not be ready to cope with up close. Once you’re aware of the internal factors playing into your dog’s ease of training, the next thing to consider is the external, and how to increase challenge levels gradually to see success in your training. Naturally, the degree to which environmental factors affects your dog focus will depend a lot first on their temperament and interests!

Familiar vs. Novel
A few weeks ago I wrote about how virtual training has benefited me and my dog as a learner. It remains a challenging adjustment as a trainer - requiring me to flex my verbal coaching skills without once taking over the leash myself - but the opportunity to work with only familiar stimuli has been phenomenal for the dogs in their grasp of foundational behaviors. Not only do they learn more quickly, but they are learning more thoroughly because they are not distracted by novel experiences. In their own home, your dog only has you to focus on - you are the novel experience, working with them in a new way. In the great outdoors, especially a new trail or around new people - even in a new classroom - your dog has to work twice as hard for even straightforward behaviors. This has been the great advantage of virtual classes - nothing is novel in the environment, not even a new trainer (who smells like treats) to be distracted by. Dogs in virtual training classes have grasped behaviors more quickly and more fluidly than those in in-person classes. The great challenge of training classes virtually is, to me, coaching students through how to adjust to those more distracting environments and how to approach the distracted dog when I can’t be there in the moment to talk them through it.

Indoors vs. Outdoor
Why do teachers say no to that ever popular question: “Can we have class outside?” As a child, I thought it was a gross injustice that the question was so rarely answered in the affirmative. As an adult - and definitely as a parent - I 100% understand. It is SO much easier to concentrate indoors. This factors into the above familiar vs. novel - but even a familiar outdoor space (like a backyard) is going to have more potential for adventure than an indoor space. Consider that indoors, there are visual barriers - walls - relatively nearby. There’s a limit to how far the dog can easily see, smell, and hear. All of these expand when in an outdoor space. Training your dog to focus on you at a threshold, and then just beyond it, can help them learn to move smoothly from an indoor space to an outdoor one.

Whimsical photo courtesy of The Adventure Zone podcast and what I hear in my head every time I use or hear the phrase “Unlesssss…” - which, did you know, The McElroys inflection and use of this directly impacted the similar Hamilton lyrics?

No, this caption has had nothing to do with dogs.

Crowded vs. Peaceful — and the element of SURPRISE
We’re in a good rhythm now - so peaceful spots are always easier to train than crowded, right? Well, mostly. In general a place with limited novel experiences (this all ties together doesn’t it) is going to be an easier spot to train than outside. UNLESS. Unless your dog something does pop up in that peaceful spot that your dog has adapted to. A large amount of distraction can soon become background noise - but a quiet field that suddenly has one dog barking in it - BIG distraction. Remember to consider the element of surprise and likelihood of a distraction being amplified when building a behavior to train.

As you progress through your training, consider all of these elements as factors in how long it may take for your dog to learn a given behavior. Start in easier environments and gradually progress to the harder ones - if your dog can’t focus in a given environment, take steps to adjust one of these elements of the environment to make the job easier for them. This will be impacted by the internal factors mentioned last week, and the handler-centered factors in the coming weeks.

That’s right - it’s not over yet! After looking at the dog and their world, the next thing that matters is looking at the other end of the leash - the consistency and engagement of your dog’s handlers.

When Will My Dog Be Trained? Part 1

Here’s a fun fact about me. I HATE uncertainty. Hate it. I used to feel legitimate anxiety about being asked to “guess” anything - even as simple as “guess which person in this picture is me” or “guess what we’re doing later?” Even where there are literally no stakes to the question, part of me rebels against answering a question I am not sure of.

“Guess which dog is really the American Pit Bull Terrier” and other such quizzes are the BANE OF MY EXISTENCE

Which makes a pandemic fun, can I tell you. I don’t mind saying “I don’t know,” at all - I don’t know just means that I can go and find out and learn more, and I love an opportunity to learn more, almost as much as I hate guessing. But right now, there’s nothing to learn, not really. I mean there’s a lot to learn, of course, but none of it is going to give you an answer because no one knows the answer. No one has the answer to when businesses are truly safe to open up, when my kids can see their friends again, when school and daycare and camps might start, when - or if - life returns to anything like the life we knew. We are, all of us, just guessing.

So when I am asked about training a dog “How long will this take?” or “How many sessions?” or “When should I expect my dog to do X Y Z…?” I feel that familiar tense in my shoulders. Because, while most folks don’t want to hear me, the trainer, respond to that question with “I don’t know”…guessing feels unfair. And that’s what any answer would be. There are so many factors that play into the answer to the question “When will my dog be trained?”

I want to give each category the attention that it deserves. This week I’m going to focus on the dog - their age, their abilities, and their temperaments.

The Age, Temperament, and Ability of the Dog
”Train the dog in front of you” is a maxim for a reason - everything first and foremost rests on the dog. Not the breed, not the dog you want to have, not the dog that they can be - the dog in front of you, right now. Even within this, so many things are factoring into how long it may take a dog to learn a behavior.

Their age matters - puppies are quick, but tire easily and aren’t as physically capable as they will become. Adolescents are balls of energy and struggle to focus on certain tasks, especially if they’re feeling antsy. And adult dogs may be physically mature and capable, but they’ve also been practicing their current habits for years.

Breed and temperament factors in as well. Genetics plays a huge role in skill, talent and capability - and a dog that is bred to be handler focused and responsive is likely going to catch on to training more quickly than a breed intended to be independent and aloof. A beagle will be hard-pressed to give you his full attention when there’s a scent on the ground, as much as a lab will want to trudge into any puddle, no matter how small. These are not insurmountable training goals, but the struggles will be different.

The individual dog will also have their own temperament - fear and anxiety makes learning much more difficult, and the focus changes then from teaching a behavior to helping the dog feel safe. Dogs, like humans, aren’t going to be able to understand and apply learned behaviors - especially complex ones - when they feel uncertain and unsafe. Helping a reactive or fearful dog feel comfortable enough to learn behaviors can be a challenging journey, and takes time in and of itself. The individual dog’s readiness and capacity to learn matters a great deal.

What also matters is their interest in learning. This can certainly be built up over time by pairing training with reinforcement - training the dog that training, itself, is reinforcing, but to do that you first need to have a solid understanding of what is reinforcing to the dog, if not work, and then the dog must build endurance for training, and for that type of training. A dog, especially a puppy, who is not used to a training class, may struggle to focus for the full hour. Or a dog used to training may find a new topic “less interesting” - I have talked in earlier posts about my own dog’s apparent disinterest in trick training. The behaviors practiced may be difficult, uncomfortable (especially if new positions are involved), or just not terribly interesting for the dog. Building endurance for training sessions may delay learning behavior, especially if the dog is being over-extended in what they are being asked to do.

As it turns out while writing this, I have a lot to say about these factors! Next week I’ll be looking at the world the dog find themselves in - the environmental factors that play into how quickly training progresses.

Decompression

“I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order”

— John Burroughs

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It was an exciting week - picking back up with clients now that businesses are opening back up, and seeing my friends, the pups, that I’ve missed so much. As I navigate my own next steps, this week felt like a welcome break - enhanced by the fact that many of my clients converted all or some of their outstanding services into Decompression Walks.

So what is a Decompression Walk, anyway? It’s become a popular term in the dog world and I’m seeing more and more out there about it. Decompression Walks are opportunities, in my opinion, to specifically remove stressors from your dog (and yourself!). We ask a lot of our dogs, and walking nicely in the neighborhood on leash, training, playing enrichment games, and behaving appropriately in the house are all important, fulfilling, and vital parts of dogs and humans co-existing, it doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for your dog to expend their energy just…being a dog. Decompression Walks are walks intentionally chosen in little-used areas of wilderness where your dog can be on a long line - or off leash - and do whatever they choose.

Where do you find these magical places? For a lot of folks, after talking about this on a Quarantine and Our Dogs chat, they share spaces with friends, creating a quiet social black market of isolated spots. For me, I get curious. I pull up Google Maps, look around my area, and investigate the green spaces. I check on All Trails for the “lightly trafficked” hikes, or look up park locations I don’t know. I look at the website for the Department of Natural Resources, county Parks and Recreation, and see what new places I can find. There are folders on my computer devoted to PDFs of maps I have or have meant to check out.

And it’s not enough that it’s lightly trafficked. No, the best decompression spots are not only lightly trafficked, but highly visible, with wide pathways that don’t wind and leave plenty of room for hopping off the path. They include fields or meadows, or forests with old enough growth that seeing through the trees is easy. It’s a tall order.

Once I have a space, I want a dog ready to go on a hike. This dog would ideally know a few cues - though I don’t ask for much during a Decompression Walk, and it’s decidedly not a training session, I might take the opportunity to practice recalls, or simply reward check-ins. I like a dog with some natural impulse control, or a strong “leave it” cue. And I love a dog who knows how to change pace - paying attention to my actions over the last week led me to realize that “easy” was the most used cue I asked for over the course of my walks.

Showing up to the walk itself, though, is decompression for me as much as it is for the dog. In an environment where we are supposed to do everything - entrepreneurship, career, household, spouse, parenthood - the woods are a welcome retreat. I’ve had such joy watching how dogs react, and watched me react with them. Some just wandered, taking in the sights and smells as they went. Others busily moved from one thing to the next, happily inspecting every rock and tree. Still others seemed overwhelmed with their good fortune, prancing and dancing around me in circles until they settled on a particular scent or track they wanted to follow.

For me, I just enjoyed the happiness of the dog in front of me, the sunshine on my shoulders, the chirping of birds and the quiet, and the crisp smell of a springtime forest.