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.
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.
