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Obedience vs. Behavior Modification
This is just something that occurred to me recently that I find amusing so I thought I would share.
My pit/boxer mix, Nico, is a rescue. We got him from the pound when he was 11 months old. He had been there for about 6 months so he spent pretty much the entirety of his adolescent/teenage years in this high stress environment. We have no idea how he came to be there so we have no clue what kind of environment he may have been in for his critical socialization window. Overall he is a very sweet, extremely cuddly dog. And he is well behaved at home with myself and my husband, but around other people, and especially around other dogs, he had some behavioral issues that prompted us to get him into training classes.
I had never taken a dog to training classes before. I did a little research and found a place I wanted to try, but they offered so many classes and I wasn’t sure what he needed. I called and was told to start with just a basic beginner obedience class. Almost as soon as the instructor met him she said we may need to move him to an impulse control class, but it is the first week and they are all a little amped up the first week so let’s give him a chance and see if he will calm down first. We were able to manage his behavior well enough to finish beginner obedience, but get control was still our next step. Our instructor for get control tried several times to stress the difference between obedience and behavior modification and it just wasn’t sinking in. I often felt a little overwhelmed in class, trying to watch the instructor and listen to what she was saying, while keeping an eye on my dog and continuously working to try to keep his focus, with a million thoughts running through my head of how to do that. Was there something else I was supposed to be trying? Should I have rewarded that? But because he had good obedience and we had learned to manage his behavior well enough, we made it through the class and moved on to get control 2. Our get control 2 class had another dog who matched Nico’s energy level and we could not get either dog calmed down and the poor behavior only seemed to get worse as the weeks went on.
In the midst of all that is when I had my “Aha!” moment and spoke with his instructors about where to get started to make a career change. I began mentoring at that facility with Nico’s obedience instructor. I don’t remember how it came up, or even what class we were in when she said it, but a casual comment made in a class that I was simply observing finally made it all click. Your dog may have fantastic obedience. They may sit and lay down and stand up on cue every time. But if they bite every person who walks through the door, you have a behavior problem and being able to sit on cue won’t fix that. She was talking to the class, not to me, but it hit me like a train…this is what everyone has been telling us! Suddenly everything we had been doing made sense. I guess I just needed to hear it in layman’s terms, and on a day when I didn’t have Nico distracting me.
Nico did amazing in his reactive 1 class and we were permitted to skip reactive 2 and move straight to reactive 3. He is struggling with reactive 3, but we made a discovery last week that I am excited to test out at his class tonight.
I had taught dogs prior to Nico a few cues, but nothing major. We taught Nico several cues on our own, then got him in to classes where he learned cues I never would have thought to try teaching. The thought that keeps running through my head that I find so amusing is that Nico is both the best trained and worst behaved dog I have ever had. A concept I have had a hard time wrapping my brain around, but now I enjoy the irony of it. Nico has a long way to go, but we have made huge strides with his behavior and I am very proud of him. And, oddly enough, I am thankful for his behavioral issues because that is what set me on this path.
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3 Replies
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@MInhouse , I so enjoyed reading your post about Nico, which included so many nuggets of gold throughout!! I’m rooting for you both from the sidelines as you continue your journey with him and look forward to more updates.
I also really appreciate your comment about being thankful for his behavior issues. During the early years of my career, I adopted several challenging dogs of my own, plus fostered a lot of dogs with issues, and they were integral in shaping my understanding of behavior and improving my skills. Living with a dog who has challenges also makes me much more empathetic when working with clients who live with similar issues.
When you have a chance, please let us know the results after this comment you made: “He is struggling with reactive 3, but we made a discovery last week that I am excited to test out at his class tonight.”
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It was actually something incredibly simple, and definitely something I had learned and should have known, but with so much to try to focus on I just hadn’t thought of it. When we got Nico we were determined not to give him any people food so that he wouldn’t become a horrible beggar like some of our past dogs. But as we worked our way up through classes we needed higher and higher value treats. When we got to reactive 1, I decided that despite our goals, he was going to get cheese. And it worked amazingly! So because that was high value and it worked so well, I have continued to use it – every time we go for a walk, or go to the pet store, or go to the park for practice, all through reactive 1, and for the first 2 weeks of reactive 3. Cheese WAS a very high value treat, but now that he gets it all the time it has lost its excitement. All it took was mixing up the reward. Even stuff that I would have thought would be lower value rewards became higher value just because they were new and exciting.
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What a great point, @MInhouse ! Thanks for the update!
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