If my clients were all sitting in a room together, many of them could say, “She said that to us, too”.
“Imagine someone having their hands pressed against your throat. Would you still be able to do algebra? ” That’s just one of my math analogies. At any moment in time, dogs will either be able to to respond to your cues (aka to others as ‘commands’ ) or not.
How well a dog responds to his or her owners’ requests depends on other math examples. In training a dog to ‘sit’, one must realize that while dogs are capable of sitting, they do not automatically understand that they should deposit their butts to the floor when you say, “SIT”. To get dogs to ‘sit’ with regularity, we must show them enough times in many locations and make it worth their while so that they come to associate the position of sit with a visual or verbal signal from us or another environmental cue. Dogs learn as people do– with repetition.
Some basic math questions relative to training a dog to sit on cue. How many times does your dog sit each day? Week? Month? Year? In how many different locations– indoors? Outdoors? Will s/he sit only if you have a treat in your hand?
If your dog will not sit unless you present a treat first, you’re going about it the wrong way and likely have not done enough training. There’s a linear formula that explains it simply…. A + B = C. That is, A is for Antecedent (verbal, visual, environmental cue)… B is for Behavior (sit, down, stand, heel, stay, etc)… and C is for consequence (food treat, toy, access to you or an activity, etc). Reversing the equation does not yield a ‘trained’ dog… Having to present the Consequence to get the Behavior is backwards. Lure-Reward training has its downside, that is, you must get rid of the food very early in the training process.
Learning Theory provides a training outline (sequential reinforcement schedules – continuous, fixed rate variable and so on in multiple environments) for success in training dogs. Remember that dogs learn by doing and do not generalize behavior easily. Most dogs labelled as ‘stubborn’ have simply not performed the behavior enough times.
In my work with people and dogs experiencing behavior problems, I’ve found it useful to calculate the number of times a dog has practiced the culprit behavior(s) over the course of his or her life. Doing so reveals the richness of the reinforcement history of the problem behavior(s) and the need for a serious investment of time and effort in resolving the issue. Consider a 4 year old dog that has gone for three walks per day and lunges at other dogs on average, three times per walk–
4 years x 365 days/year = 1,460 days x 3 walks/day= 4,380 walks x 3 lunges/walk= 13,140 lunges at other dogs
That’s A LOT of reinforcement of lunging! YES! Each and every time a dog practices a behavior makes the behavior STRONGER. This math thing I do serves to put in perspective the need to commit to training dogs early in life as a preventative measure and that both training and behavior problem resolution (aka behavior modification) take time. The above calculation gives new meaning of the phrase, ‘An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure’.
How long might it take until a dog no longer lunges at other dogs after having done so 13,140 times? Well, it depends on many variables… and, still I can say that is entirely possible to resolve the problem! Many people are surprised at the lack of direct proportionality to this equation. For those who are unfamiliar with that math term, it is often the case that it takes less time to resolve such a problem than it took for the owner to fully realize the need to address the problem – ie, called for my help.
Changing your behavior is the first step toward changing your dog’s behavior. In doing so, your dog may experience an ‘A HA’ moment!
~ Vera Wilkinson CDBC, CPDT-KA