What A Trained Family Dog Looks Like

What might seems simple - a dog who can go with the family fishing at the lake, ignore all prey, social, and defensive distractions, and engage only with the family in their endeavors - is often the accumulation of thousands of hours of success and quite a bit of hard work.

Often people struggle with the idea that obedience - which is the language that allows you to direct a dog through space safely - has anything to do with the problems they are having with their dogs. It seems abstract, unrelated, persnickety. They have dogs who will not come when they are called because the world offers a plethora of self-reinforcing distractions. Dogs that will injure them on leash as they are attempting to walk the neighborhood for exercise. Dogs that cannot settle inside, reacting to every stimulus whether the human can perceive that stimulus or not because the dog exists in a languageless, undefined state and everything around them seems threatening.

All problems in dog behavior stem from a key truth -

Dogs do only what works for them in the moment.

Dogs are motivated by the acquisition of resources - space, privilege, mental stimulation, prey, food.

Dogs are motivated by the removal of pressure, fear or discomfort.

So, let's look at our examples from the point of view of analyzing WHY they happen from the dog's point of view.

Dogs who will not come when called have learned that ignoring humans calling them has no consequence and no reward. Alas, it is a rare dog who actually finds humans innately rewarding, (particularly without a working relationship) what we provide to them is food, affection, and protection typically. In order to get a dog to discard something that is inherently interesting (chasing prey, sniffing scents) we have to provide both reward for the recall and consequence for the ignoring of the recall.

Then we have to do it 100% of the time that we call the dog.

Not 50%. Not 80%. 100%. Every. Single. Time.

This is where failure occurs - most people singularly lack the determination and discipline to actually go out and enforce a command.

Especially when commands are irregularly and passively enforced, this creates a dopamine reward cycle similar to what you see in GAMBLING.

All problems in the response from the dog are from the inconsistency of humans. After all, dogs ONLY do what works for them in the moment.

The same dynamic happens with a dog that pulls on the leash - to them, pulling on the leash gets them through the activity faster, they get to access whatever scents interest them, they get to maybe fight another dog through a fence (an inherently rewarding activity because it is both fun and has the potential to alleviate fear).

A dog that has learned to scream at threats gets a great deal of positive feedback for this - the dog doesn't know you're using mean words nor do they care, they only care that you are also screaming with them as well as giving them attention. Your elevated state indicates that they have correctly identified the threat as a huge concern as well. As the threat always goes away, it seems to the dog like their screaming has very effectively made the mailman leave, and it works every time.

Dogs live their lives winding their way through the dark without any feedback from humans other than these unclear, inconsistent responses.

What obedience does is define - for the first time in a dog's life - what is actually expected up front in a predictable and achievable fashion.

When the word "Come!" is heard, return to the front of the human at the pressure of the lead, and receive affection. Affection rewards, the absence of leash pressure upon completion of the recall ALSO rewards.

When learning to heel, affection is given at the heel position as you are moving, and the absence of leash pressure as the heeling pair move through the turns also rewards.

When the dog screams at a threat, calmly assess the threat and handle the situation, send the dog away from the threat to maintain distance from the dog and the threat, and if need be deliver a correction that the dog actually cares about (such as a high quality bark collar).

When you have accumulated enough repetitions, enough datapoints for the dog to understand what they need to do for success and to secure their resources is through those obedience commands, then they change their behavior to take advantage of this new strategy.

And then you have a lovely, trained family dog.

Dog training is relatively simple once you understand these principles. The challenge lies in the doing.

That is how I challenge my students. I challenge them to do it.