Dog training is a
game of consequences. The objective of the game is to get
a dog to reliably obey a variety of trained commands. If
you play the game right, you can win. If you play the
game wrong you will lose.
The game is
actually quite straightforward. When a dog does anything at
all, there are three possible consequences. You
play the game by altering the consequences. The objective of
the game is to change the dog’s behaviour. Here
is a description of the three possible consequences
Things get
better for the dog
Things stay the same for the dog
Things get
worse for the dog
These three consequences are what control a
dog’s future behaviour. Any time a dog does anything,
one of these three consequences applies.
Each consequence
has the power to alter the behaviour that immediately precedes it in
one of two ways. The behaviour that precedes the consequence
can be
Increased
Decreased
The
first consequence in our lists ‘Things get better for the dog’
increases the behaviour that preceded it, the second two
consequences diminish behaviours that precede them. Here are
some examples.
Consequence 1:
Things get better for the dog
Your dog sits and
gazes lovingly at you as you eat your breakfast. You give
him a piece of toast. Things just got better for the dog.
He will be much more likely to sit and gaze lovingly at you whilst
you eat tomorrow.
Consequence 2:
Things stay the same for the dog
Suppose you buy a
dog-proof rubbish bin. Your dog spends ten minutes trying to
get inside it and fails. Things have stayed the same for the
dog. He is less likely to repeat the behaviour try and get in
the bin again. After a few repeated attempts to get into
the bin, the dog will give up for good.
Consequence 3:
Things get worse for the dog
The dog puts his
feet on the kitchen table whilst his owner is standing next to him.
The owner smacks the dog. The is less likely to put his feet on
the table again when she is standing next to him (what he does
when she leaves the room is another matter)
How did this
‘game’ evolve?
The wild animal
needs to make sense of its environment. It needs to be able to
behave in a way which is beneficial. Behaviours which do not
have beneficial consequences are a waste of precious energy. So
animals have evolved not to indulge in activities which do not have a
beneficial consequence. They have also
evolved to react rapidly and without hesitation to environmental
triggers that predict unpleasant or pleasant consequences. This
offers the wild dog the best chance of catching himself a meal, or of
avoiding danger. The more often a consequence is
repeated, the more automatic the response from the animal.
We can use this simple fact to modify an animal’s behaviour and to
create an ‘automatic’ or ‘trained’ response.
The trained
response always involves the ‘game’
A trained response
is automatic. It is unthinking and occurs without any
hesitation or calculation on the part of the dog. To
achieve this blissful state of automatic obedience, we have to
embed a trained response into the dog. We do this through
this game of consequences that we call dog training. We
take charge of consequences.
Controlling
consequences
Some consequences
are easier to control than others. Consequence 2
‘things stay the same for the dog’ can be quite
difficult to control because dogs do not exist in a vacuum. If
we do not provide a consequence immediately, the dog can and
will, generate his own consequence. This means that
it is sometimes very difficult to ensure that ‘things stay the
same’ for the dog.
When dog training
is going well consequence 1 ‘things get better’ usually
comes in the form of a reward provided by the trainer.
When dog training is going badly consequence 1 is often provided by
the dog ‘helping himself’ to an enjoyable activity.
Consequence 3 ‘things get worse’ usually comes in the form
of a punishment of some kind provided by the trainer.
The law of
consequences
Consequences
control a dog’s future behaviour. If you control the
consequences, you can control the dog. But there is an
added difficulty. Generally speaking, the further away
from you the dog is, the harder it is to control the
consequences of his behaviour, and this is because of the first
important ‘law’ of consequences in dog training.
Consequences must
be timely
The law of
consequences is very specific. The consequence must follow the
behaviour immediately if it is to have any influence over the dog’s
future behaviour. In nature cause and effect is swift.
There is no delay. Dogs have evolved to take advantage of this
fact.
Thus a
punishment to be effective must be applied at the exact moment that
the dog commits an error, and the same applies to a reward.
Consequences must
be correctly chosen
Consequences that
humans deliberately provide and/or control during training fall
into three categories to match the three outcomes described above.
We can label these categories as
Good
Indifferent
Bad
A
good consequence makes things better for the dog, a bad one
makes it worse, and if the dog is indifferent to a consequence
or if there is no consequence at all, then things remain the
same for the dog.
However, and
this is crucial, it is the dog’s perception of the
consequence that matters, not ours. And if you label a
consequence wrongly, your training will fail. It is
no use offering a ‘pat on the head’ as a consequence for
example if your dog is indifferent to being patted on the head.
Nor is it any use squirting a dog with water as a bad consequence if
your dog quite likes it.
Nor is it any good
allowing your dog to chase his tail as a ‘no consequence’
for disobeying your recall, if he loves chasing his tail.
You have to work out which label your dog would apply to a
consequence, not the one you think should apply. Once your
labels are correct, you can make the right choices
Trust in the
science
The rules and laws
which govern animal behaviour have been thoroughly demonstrated and
tested over many years by scientists in and out of the laboratory.
They have stood the test of time and you can trust them.
Because these laws
are often couched in complex behavioural language, illustrated with
serious looking diagrams and steeped in jargon, people are put
off investigating further.
The fact is, dog
training is just a game, based on common sense and logic,
that anyone can play.
If you follow these
rules faithfully:
Choose the
right consequence
Time your consequence accurately
you
will be able to control and enjoy your dog, each and every day
you spend together
