How dogs learn to do what you want
How dogs learn to do what YOU want
Imagine life with a well behaved dog. He is happy to hang out on his bed while you are busy or waits patiently for you to come home. He sits or lies down when you ask him to and stays until you give him permission to get up again. You take him for a walk, and he walks nicely beside you on his leash, no lunging or barking at other dogs. You can let him run off leash in a safe environment because you know he will happily come back to you as soon as you call him.
Sounds like a dream?
You can absolutely make this dream come true for you and your dog!
All it takes, is for you to understand how dogs learn and then getting your dog to understand what it is that you want him to do. And you need to know what your dog really wants, so you can motivate him to work with you.
Dogs are really smart and they learn very fast. But unfortunately that does not always work to their (or our!) advantage. Because dogs are smart, we often expect too much understanding from them without having taken the time to help the dog understand what we expect. And to complicate things, our dogs are learning all the time – unless we are very proactive, they learn stuff that we would rather they didn’t know about. Incidentally, this is precisely why crate training is your friend.
Back to how dogs learn: I am sure you have seen those dreadful facebook videos where the owner asks in a stern voice “who did this?” holding up a shoe that has been chewed. All the dogs are lined up and the guilty one is quickly identified. He ducks and pins his ears and shows clearly that he knows he did something wrong. Not!
I dislike these videos. Almost as much as Brian hates the Romans: A lot.
Dogs don’t do things we dislike to get back at us or be stubborn or naughty. That’s a myth. To dogs the world is either safe or dangerous and things either work or they don’t. Right or wrong never enters into it, because dogs do not have the capacity for abstract thought. (Btw, the “guilty look” is really a calming signal – the dog perceives that the owner is upset and tries to pacify him).
Dogs do what is safe and what works. That’s all.
If a dog barks at you to throw the ball and you throw it, rest assured he will do that again. If you ignore the barking he will eventually give up and try something else. He is not trying to be obnoxious; he is just doing what works. If you ask a dog to sit and he doesn’t, he is not being stubborn; you just haven’t trained him well enough yet.
So, the first step towards having a well behaved dog, is to understand how dogs learn
Dogs learn by association (by emotional response)
Learning by association means combining an experience with an emotional response. We humans learn by association, too.
When you meet someone for the first time you come away with an association—positive, negative, or neutral. If you really enjoyed the interaction, you are likely to be happy to see that person again. If you found the person difficult or argumentative, you might get that little pit of dread in your belly when you see him or her again—you have formed a negative association with that person.
Dogs experience the world this way, too, perhaps more strongly than we humans. They are constantly forming emotional associations: dogs learn which things are safe, what is dangerous, what is neutral.
From the dog’s perspective something is either good for him, bad for him or neutral. These associations influence the decisions dogs make and the reactions they have to various situations and things in their environment.
A good example of how dogs learn by association is their reaction to the sight of a food bowl. Dogs love food bowls! Pull out the right bowl and the average dog will jump into fits of joy. This is because dogs have come to learn that this particular bowl always predicts mealtime. Food is tasty so we love food bowls. In other words, dogs associate bowls with eating.
The amazing thing is that we can manipulate dogs’ associations to things. For example, new puppies generally find leashes neutral; when first shown a length of nylon with a clip at the end they have a neutral association to it. But find a way to make a dog associate anything with something he loves and you can teach him to love that, too.
How?
Clip on the leash and give him treats or take him for a walk. Every time you leash him, either take him for a walk or give him treats until you take the leash back off. Pretty soon the puppy figures out that the leash means fun and, bingo! You have a dog that loves leashes.
The frightening thing is that learning by association also works in reverse. You can teach a dog to hate or fear leashes by repeatedly using them to give corrections or tie him up outside on his own.
Why should we care about how dogs learn?
Because everything you do around your dog influences the associations he makes. That is also why we put a lot of emphasis on socialization in our puppy classes.
Dogs learn by consequence (by doing)
OK, this looks like an easy one. And so you might give your dog a cookie when he is good and smack him with the newspaper when he was naughty. You showed him the consequence, right?
Not quite. In most cases people are expecting too much understanding from the dog.
You can tell a school-age child that you will take him out for ice cream when you see him next week to celebrate his good report card. When he eats the ice cream, he understands he is being rewarded for grades he got a week ago, and he got those grades for work he did over several months.
A dog could never understand this—it is way beyond his ability to connect events. Dogs learn by consequence like we do, but for dogs the consequence has to be immediate.
Say I get my dog into a sit. Then I rummage around for the treat. By the time I deliver the treat five seconds later, the impact is lost because in those five seconds, the dog sneezed, sniffed the ground, and looked left. All of a sudden a treat appeared. As far as the dog is concerned, he got it for looking left. You will eventually teach that dog to sit, but it will take a while. Or you might end up with a dog that sits and looks left.
Why should we care about how dogs learn?
Because it explains why we need precision and immediacy to train dogs. Give your dog immediate feedback—let him know right away when he has done something you like. You can use praise, treats, or other dog rewards such as throwing a ball, opening a door, or letting your dog off leash to romp.
When clients first enrol in any of our classes, they think it is the dog that needs to learn. Soon they realize that they need to learn as much as the dogs. To quote the great animal trainer Dr Bob Bailey “Dog Training is a mechanical skill and like all skills requires practice”.
A dog’s view of the world
So, dogs learn in two ways—by association/emotion and by consequence/doing. And because of these two ways of learning, dogs see the world in two ways: What is safe/good for me vs. what is dangerous/bad and what works vs. what doesn’t.
Safe vs. dangerous
This outlook on life comes from learning by association. When dogs gets punished for peeing on the carpet in front of you, they don’t learn inside/outside—they learn that it is not safe to pee in front of you, but it is safe to pee when you are not there.
Works vs. doesn’t work
This outlook on life comes from learning by consequence. All dogs try staring at the refrigerator as a strategy to get it to open. After a time they give up because it doesn’t work; the fridge never opens. They also try staring at their people at the dinner table. Every once in a while someone gives in and shares a bite. Staring at people while they eat often works, so dogs continue to do it.
Why should we care how dogs learn?
Because like all things in life, dog training is best done without judgement. Dogs are dogs, not people. Be patient with your dog and careful about what you pay attention to and what you ignore, and you will soon have a relaxed, content, and well-trained four-legged friend.
