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Speaker Key
SG Susan Garrett
Transcript
00:00:00
Imagine living with somebody who commanded of you all day long. “Get in,” “get off,” “get over,” “get
on,” “don't touch,” in a very stern, militant voice. Wouldn't you want to pack your bags and leave?
00:00:18
Hi, I am Susan Garrett and this is Shaped by Dog, where dog training makes sense at both ends of the
leash. And I'm going to start with a question today. The question is, when you ask your dog to do
something, sit, down, come, roll over, get in a bed, what do you believe you are doing?
Do you believe you're giving a command? Do you believe you're cueing a behavior? Do you believe
you are making a request or maybe depending on your dog, it might be a suggestion? Because what
you think you are doing has an unbelievable impact on how you will do it.
00:00:56
And I hope this gives you reason to think. Think about the way you talk to your dog today and maybe
about any words you've ever spoken to your dog in the past. When we talk about giving a dog a
command, it's something very militant. It's very stern and it's absolutely non-negotiable.
It's a command. ‘I am the master.’ There's just so many powerful words that the command is
demanding. Now, a cue, a more scientific word, cues a behavior. I truly believe I'm cueing my dog, but
I'm making request. In my brain I'm making a request.
00:01:31
And I'm going to preface this by saying, when I make a request of my dog, my expectation is that they
will respond to that request with joy, with drive, with expediency, with urgency.
And if my dog for some reason chose not to do what I'd asked, I don't take that as a sign of
disobedience. I don't take that as anything other than a reflection on the education that I've given that
dog.
“What is missing?” “What is incomplete?” I think if the world considered dog's behavior from that point
of view, they would not only have more patience for the dogs in their life, they would have more
patience for the people in their life because I believe dogs are a vector to help us all to become the kind
of people we're meant to be.
00:02:22
Now, if you consider that all of the things that we train a dog to do using operant conditioning, which
most of the things we train a dog to do, we use operant conditioning, all of them follow a model that I
have spoken about here on Shaped by Dog in the past, Antecedent, Behavior, Consequence.
So, if you think in terms of a cue, the cue would be the antecedent that prompts the dog to do a
behavior. Let's say I say “sit.” That's the antecedent that the dog says, “I know what that means,” and
they will put their butt on the ground.
And the consequence is probably something pleasant, something that reinforces the dog, even if it's
just a pat or a smile or a “good dog.” Antecedent, Behavior, Consequence.
00:03:06
But here's where it gets super sticky. When we are asking the dog to do something, cueing a response,
we are thinking in a singular form. We're thinking we have a word, or it might be a signal to get a dog to
do something, but the dog is thinking in pictures. They're thinking about all of the things that go into the
request that we just made.
00:03:30
And you're going to say all of the things, “Put your butt on the ground,” but oh nay nay, it's not that
simple. And it's super important that all dog owners consider this. Antecedent, Behavior, Consequence.
It’s one behavior, in this case, a sit, but it's many antecedents, which is why it's referred to as an
antecedent arrangement.
Because what a dog is thinking of the pictures when we ask for something, they're thinking of
everything that they had to learn or unlearn in the process of what a sit is. So, for many people, they
start teaching the dog a sit by putting a cookie over their nose, putting it over their head until the puppy
or the dog loses their balance and puts their back end on the ground.
00:04:15
So, as they're doing that, they're saying “sit” to the dog. So, sit initially means follow reinforcement, and
when you follow it far enough you get a cookie. That's the picture that the dog initially learns. Some
dogs learn sit unfortunately by somebody pulling up on the collar and pushing down on the back end.
So, they learn that this is the action that means “sit” when my hands come towards you. It has some
powerful meaning. So, the dog has to learn and unlearn what “sit” means many, many times over
because maybe you will lose the lure of the cookie in your hand, and you might just use your hand
when the hand comes up like this it means sit, but that means if I can't see your hands, I don't have to
sit.
00:05:02
There's so many things that the dog has to process what they're learning, what the antecedent
arrangements really mean. It's what you hear. It's what you see. It's what you smell. It's what you feel.
It's the sound of the cue, “sit,” “sit,” “sit.” It's the emotion behind the sound of the cue. There are so
many things that go into this picture, which is why some dogs won't sit when you say “sit,” but they
might sit when you say “sit!”
It doesn't mean that your dog needs a command. It just means how you train the behavior didn't build
in the urgency you wanted by using a simple quiet cue “sit.” So also evolved in the “sit” is what the dog
is experiencing. What other distractions are in the environment? Where is the dog? Does “sit” mean
“run in front of you and sit right in front of you?” Does “sit” mean sit in the kitchen only, but it doesn't
mean sit at the front door when our company is coming through that door?
00:06:16
So, your dog's education on all these cues that you believe you've taught them is mostly incomplete
until you've helped them generalize and weed out the pictures that are really not that important. And
how do you do that? Well, you've got to consider the antecedent arrangements in your training. That's
a big part of what helps a dog to learn or delays the learning for that dog.
But also, there's the human mechanics. How well did you arrange the environment for that dog's learning? The human mechanics and the antecedent arrangements, is what brings clarity for the dog in those pictures.
00:06:53
But then there's what reinforces the behavior. Where is the value of the reinforcement? If the value is
‘chase the food,’ eventually I'm going to repeat this so many times that you're going to understand what
I mean and I'm going to fade the food, the value still stays with the food because “sit” meant “find the
food.”
00:07:15
“Okay, now I just have to wait to find the food.” The dog is focused entirely on the food. It may never
happen that the food value transfers into the act of doing a sit with you. And if it does happen, it will
very likely be an unusually slow process and you might lose some of the joy and the expediency along
the way.
Take for example Kim who works here. She has a Terrier Mix, Belief. Now, I asked her if I could take
Belief out for a walk with one of my other dogs. But before I went, I said, “Kim, can you get Belief to sit
in the kitchen?” Now, it was dinner time for Belief when I asked her to do this, and so she called her in
and Belief was very excited because it was dinner time.
00:08:03
She asked her to sit, and if you're watching this on YouTube, you can see Belief came in like a flash
and sat very quickly, very excitedly, very expectantly. And then when Kim took the bowl of food and put
it in front of her, she still sat there and stared at it.
She didn’t leave to try and eat the food because she understands ‘sit’ means hold position until I give
you a release word.
Now does that mean when I took Belief for a walk a little later in the afternoon, that when I put her
winter coat on and I took her out in the cold and me, who isn’t her owner asked her to sit, that she
would sit. Well, if the cue “sit” is trained properly, then yeah, I would get that sit.
00:08:48
Okay, but what if she's running away from me? Would I still get the “sit?” Absolutely, I get the sit with
the same enthusiasm, the same joy, the same drive because of the way the ‘sit’ was taught. But what if
that dog was like a hundred meters away from me in the winter coat, in the cold on the way back to the
house?
Absolutely, I'd get that same sit. But then people will say, “Oh, but if we're going to train this way, when
can I get rid of giving the dog a reinforcement?” The way we train, we don't eliminate reinforcement.
We evolve what's reinforcing. I'm going to say that one more time. When you train this way, you don't
think in terms of eliminating reinforcement, you think of evolving what is reinforcing.
00:09:35
So maybe Belief gets the reinforcement of getting to chase my dogs because she sat when I asked her
to not chase the dog. Maybe she gets the reinforcement of getting to run in the field. Maybe she gets
the reinforcement of tugging on a toy. She might get a reinforcement of some food.
But when you train this way, the value gets transferred into the act of working with you or in this case,
somebody that isn't even her owner.
And I purposely didn't take one of my Border Collies out to do this demonstration because I know the
comment section would then be singing. “Oh, it's your Border Collie and Border Collies are brilliant.”
00:10:13
This isn't my dog. And she's a Terrier Mix. When we're training this way, we are creating partnerships.
Think of commands. That's creating pressure.
Training doesn't have to be that way. And it all goes back to the way you consider the words you say to
your dog and the way you interpret the dog's non-compliance with what you've said.
00:10:36
When you stop thinking it’s disobedience and you start considering, it's a reflection of what you've
taught, the world of possibilities opens up for your dog to have joy at a thousand feet regardless who's
asking them to do the behavior. Reinforcement used correctly is never bribery, it's communication.
When a behavior is taught cleanly, generalized well, includes the element of the dog's joy for working in
the criteria of what success looks like, it becomes automatic for the dog. They don't have to consider,
“Should I comply or not?” It becomes automatic.
00:11:14
A well taught cue doesn't require compliance because it creates confidence as it’s creating teamwork
between the dog and the human. Well taught cues hold up under distraction. Well taught cues, they
travel anywhere. Well taught cues don't create hesitation in the dog because they have confidence.
They know how to respond with joy. Don't believe people that say the dog needs to know what might
happen if they don't listen. It's the trainer that needs to know what should happen if the dog doesn't
listen.
00:11:50
Turn the magnifying glass on you and you will be a better person for it. Thank you for joining me today.
And remember, stay curious, stay humble, and continue to make life better at both ends of the leash. I'll
see you next time right here on Shaped by Dog.
