Small Wins Create Big Change

Would you say your dog is smart, or dumb?

Most of you will likely answer that he is smart, and you will beam with pride when doing so. You may be correct—he may be smart, or at least smart enough. On the other hand, he may be as dumb as a box of rocks, and you might not have any trouble admitting this truth. You love him either way, right? I mean, it’s not like he needs to graduate from college or anything. Does it really matter?

Well, as far as this blog post is concerned, only in the sense of how much patience you have to train him. Training doesn’t have to be difficult or time-consuming, but it can definitely be frustrating sometimes to try and communicate with an entirely different species who has zero problems cleaning the most taboo parts of his anatomy with the same tongue with which he licks your face each morning. It’s our job to communicate with them, not their job to figure us out.

So when we get to the work of training, we are likely to get a bit frustrated and impatient at times, even with a normally smart dog. Sometimes, things will go smoothly, and they will be fun. Other times, it will seem like your dog is Dory from the movie “Finding Nemo”: a flighty fish with zero short-term memory skills. So, what do you focus on? Class is in 2 days! The teacher and the other students will judge you, and assume you haven’t even tried to do your homework (probably all in your head, but it’s a story that works for you right now).

You can't expect a dog to be able to "stay" while you walk
away (and there are distractions) if he can't even do it with
you standing in front of him. Start with small
steps and get big success.

You feel as if you need to hurry, to do more in less time, so that you can catch up to where you need to be. But the opposite may actually be true.

In their most excellent book Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, authors Chip and Dan Heath suggest breaking tasks down, especially tasks that involve helping people change their minds (though it works with dogs), into doable chunks. They call it “shrinking the change.” Author Charles DuHigg also touts the importance of small wins in his book The Power of Habit. “Small wins fuel transformative changes by leveraging tiny advantages into patterns that convince people that bigger achievements are possible.”

What does this mean for you, in this moment, as you struggle with your hapless hound?

Incorporate small wins into your training. Slow down, and do less. Stop sooner. End with success. Are you training your dog in 30-minute sessions? Why? Dogs can have short attention spans, too. Do several 3-5 minute sessions per day. This way, the dog gets to win at the game a lot!

Take the tiny advantages the dog is giving you and build patterns with them. Shrink the change, as it were. Cut bigger steps into smaller pieces to make it easier for you and the dog to get where you want to go. In training, we call it “successive approximation.” Want an example? 

Does your dog rush past you to get out the door first when you are headed out for a walk? You probably have no idea how to stop this besides holding him back with the leash. Certainly, doing this is better than yelling at him, or allowing him to bowl you over, but it’s not teaching him to wait.

Your dog may not be able to not rush out the door right now, but can he sit for 5 seconds? Yes? Then you can fix this problem. Put him on leash. Tell him to sit, and stand between him and the door. Open the door a crack. Does he rise? Shut the door and make him sit again. Repeat this a few times until he figures out that the door ain’t opening wide enough for him to get through unless his bottom is on the ground. The next time you open the door a crack and he doesn’t break the sit, reward heavily, and go out the door. Start asking him to hold it longer and longer over time, and eventually to look at you when it opens, and eventually to remain inside until you walk out and call him. Voila! You have taken something the dog knows (a 5-second sit) and used it to teach him to wait at thresholds until invited out.

 

Want to teach your dog how to fetch? Great idea!
But if he isn't really interested in balls or toys,
you will need to create value in some items (or at
least one) before he will bring them to you happily.

Marry your long-term goal with short-term critical moves. Building trust now by giving the dog easy wins will help you in the long run. Capturing the bits that work will give you something to build on. Think of it as building the foundation of the house, one board at a time.

Tweak the environment. When a situation changes, behavior changes. So change the situation. If you don’t seem to be making any progress, changing the environment can make all the difference. Switch from indoors to out, from a large room to a small one, from your regular training ground to someplace novel.

You can apply this to other areas of life, too. Any task that seems formidable can be made easier if broken into chunks. Changing the environment can change your perspective.

What if you are not trying to change your dog’s behavior, but people’s behavior? Does your work involve motivating other people to do their jobs better? Well, take Heath’s and Duhigg’s words to heart. Of course the same rules apply. And here’s one more that can help you to know:

People find it more motivating to be partly finished with a longer journey than at the starting gate of a shorter one. If your colleagues, or children, are having problems getting from point A to point B, showing them how far they’ve come already can help them feel better about the ultimate goal.

Training is a process that requires measured steps. Rushing will not yield the results you seek. Shoot for small wins, and enjoy the journey.

The Value of Preparation, Second Iteration

This post delves more pointedly into other aspects of preparation when living with a dog than my previous post. It is not a prerequisite to this one, but a companion piece.

When I was 15 years old, my best friend’s father taught us how to change a car tire. He wouldn’t allow my friend to get her learner’s permit until she had mastered that skill, even in the rain. On a warm summer afternoon, after both of us did it individually on his 1981 Corolla, he told us he was taking us to Sizzler for a steak dinner in a little bit, but first we were to put on our bathing suits and meet him back at the car. Then he turned the hose on, held it over our heads, and we had to change a different tire—from the beginning.

He wasn’t holding me against my will. It wasn’t torture. I could have left and walked home at any time, but he asked me the same question he asked her: “Do you expect that you will ever drive by yourself in your lifetime? And do you ever think you will drive in the rain?” I probably shrugged and nodded. He handed me the tire iron and smiled. “Wouldn’t you prefer to practice?”

I suppose I should have been thankful that the car was parked in a driveway, on level ground, and not on a busy highway. At the time, though, I probably rolled my eyes. The prospect of a steak dinner and not wanting to abandon my best friend kept me there, and of course I have used that skill several times, even in the rain, in the ensuing decades.

I am reminded of this frequently in my work with dogs and people. People tend to do the least amount of work needed, as a general rule, in any given situation. We like shortcuts, and we tend to avoid performing tasks that have no real or perceived advantage to us—short- or long-term. This conserves energy and often resources, and frees us up to participate in more things that we enjoy, so it’s not necessarily a negative. But when it comes to certain jobs, such as training one’s dog, there are no shortcuts. You will spend more time looking for them than the work would have actually taken. Not only that, but the work itself has great merit, both for the human and the dog.

“If you take the time it takes, it takes less time.” ~Pat Parelli

One of the problems I often hear about are situations that could have been prepared for, should have been prepared for, but weren’t. In the owner’s eyes, their dog didn’t need that skill or that confinement or that preparation, because their immediate situation didn’t warrant it.

Crate training is one of the most common areas of this. I meet someone with a puppy or dog who is not using a crate (there are several reasons people may have for this, but I want to focus on just the one right now). They are not using it because their dog “doesn’t need it.” He is not destructive. He is fully housebroken. He just hangs out while they are gone, and someone’s usually home, anyway. Ergo, they think he doesn’t need to learn how to tolerate confinement, because they cannot envision a situation where it would be needed.  But this is a common misconception, and it can make life quite frustrating for the dog and his humans later in life:

My dog Yukon Cornelius injured his leg and
needed crate rest for several weeks. 

• They take a road trip—a long one—and the dog is nauseated, or otherwise stressed, the entire time
• They stay in a hotel, and cannot leave the dog in the room because he barks at every sound, or suddenly learns how fun chewing pillows can be. The hotel stay triples in price.
• They arrive at their destination, a friend’s house, and assume the dog will be fine to just roam the house like he does at home—but the dog, in a new environment, becomes destructive (or forgets his housetraining). 
• They leave the dog at home and hire a petsitter. When she arrives, the dog is hiding and will not let her put a leash on him to take him for a walk
• They must move to an apartment and the dog will not allow the maintenance people to enter. He bites one of them and his owners are threatened with eviction. They then start using a crate, but since he is unfamiliar with it, he cries all day and wakes the neighbors, who complain to management.
• The dog ruptures his ACL, or suffers any malady that calls for him to be kept very quiet and still for days or weeks. Imagine trying to keep an active dog calm in a crate for that long when he has never been required to be crated at all.
• There is an evacuation order due to an upcoming weather event, and they must leave their home and find shelter. The dogs are allowed, but only if they are crated (if you live near the ocean, this will probably happen to you at some point).

Crate training is valuable for many reasons, but one of the most valuable is that it helps prepare the dog for confinement both now and later. It can, done properly, have a great calming effect on the dog whenever he is placed in an unfamiliar situation, where misbehaviors are most common due to the stress of change. If you don’t prepare your dog for dealing with stress when you have the time to do so, you may not have the time later—and the older he gets, the longer it will take. A dog who is taught how to deal with frustration and confinement is a dog who is always easier to live with. Why wait?

Having a dog who walks nicely on leash is another task people with yards often neglect. Since they have a yard, they never teach the dog how to walk nicely, because they don’t see the need for it. But walks are beneficial for most dogs, even those with yards. And no one wants to walk a dog who drags them down the street, or lunges at people, or gets underfoot, or sits down and refuses to walk. Why not fix this common problem when the dog is young, or right when you acquire him? It is a win-win for both the dog and the human. Even if you have a yard, you will need to take your dog to the vet, at the very least. And since walks are a big part of mental stimulation and socialization for your dog, by not walking him, you are denying him something he needs to thrive.

I had an email a few days ago from a man who got two dogs fairly young, and never leash-trained them. Now they are 4 and 5, and pull terribly. This wasn’t a problem when he had a yard, but guess what? He had to move to an apartment, and now they must be walked multiple times a day on leash. He cannot control them together, so he spends twice as long on walks as he needs to, and is now suddenly quite motivated to get them trained. I told him I can absolutely help him fix that, but done correctly, it won’t be a “snap your fingers” fix. It will take some time and patience to do it right so that it sticks, because pulling on leash is rewarding to dogs until they learn otherwise.

How about some other examples?

Teaching the young pup or dog that absences are a part of life will help to inoculate him against future separation distress. This means, in part, using confinement and “forcing” some independence when you are home. It also means you need to stop fondling your dog so much.

Teaching the young dog to allow himself to be physically handled by humans is a huge benefit when he goes to the vet or groomer. Lots of owners hate vet visits as much as the dogs do because they have very little control over their pets and it’s embarrassing or frustrating to go to the vet. But if the dog tolerates being handled for exams, having its teeth looked at, having its nails trimmed, being brushed, and being picked up or carried (for smaller dogs) by others, the visits to the vet or groomer’s become much less stressful. Having a dog that has no problem being pilled or medicated ensures that treatment will go more smoothly, and may be cheaper. The dog that tolerates grooming will save you money, and will be healthier and happier because he won’t be matted or suffering from too-long toenails (which can hamper movement and cause gait problems).

It is unlikely that you will live in the same place, in the same house, forever. It is likely that you will change jobs, change partners, or add children to your life at some point. Your schedule may change. You may fall ill and experience having to cohabitate with family or friends because of financial difficulties. Your home could be made uninhabitable due to a natural disaster and you may need to seek temporary shelter. Life happens to all of us, and the more resilient our dogs are, the more likely they can stay with us and help us through the tough times—as best friends do.

You do your beloved dog zero favors when you don’t prepare for the potential future. In the same way you’d gas up your car before a road trip, you can “gas up” your dog to help him adjust to the bumps and falls in life. Make hay while the sun shines. Better to have the knowledge and not need it than to need it and not have it.

The Value of Preparation

When we decide to acquire a dog, we know that we will need to have certain tools and supplies in place before the dog arrives. Those who have owned dogs previously wouldn’t even think of bringing a puppy or dog home without the essentials of crate, gates, a knowledge of where the pup will be confined, and a plan for housebreaking and obedience training. Even newbie dog owners know that bowls, food, bed, collar and leash are going to be needed. We may elect to procure these items at the same time as we get the dog, if not before, but we certainly don’t (or shouldn’t) think we can bring a dog or puppy home and go for days or weeks without the proper equipment.

Preparation saves a lot of headaches later on. It tends to make things like having a picnic, buying a car, going on a vacation, and bringing home a new baby much easier, doesn’t it?
Well, the same is true for dogs, but not just for the first night home.

Preparation regarding training is also quite helpful.

I’m not talking about knowing the best method for training, per se. There are many paths to a well-trained dog, including hiring a professional, or reading books and articles and watching videos in a “DIY” manner. Some people try it on their own first, then hire a pro. Most dog owners do not hire professional trainers, though. They either make it work with DIY, or they just live with the dog’s behavior. Or, they get rid of the dog.

What method you use isn’t really the point here. It can matter, for sure, but you probably already knew that.

What I’m talking about is preparing the dog for his life ahead, or the training itself as a preparation.

Pretrain your dog to lie in her bed while you answer
 the door, instead of mauling your visitors.

If your dog jumps up on people when they enter your house, waiting until people come over and yelling “DOWN!” at the dog (or yanking him down, or something worse) when he jumps is not training.

If your dog chases the cat, waiting for him to start chasing and then yelling at him or throwing things at him is not going to fix that problem.

If he jumps up on counters, pulls on the leash incessantly, barks obnoxiously at passerby, chews your belongings, or tries to bite you when you walk past him while he is eating, your responses during those situations do not constitute meaningful training.

Oh, learning is occurring, but it isn’t the type of learning that is going to help you.

So, you say, “When IS the time for meaningful training to begin for the dog who jumps on guests, chases the cat, jumps up on counters, pulls on the leash incessantly, barks obnoxiously at passerby, chews my belongings, or tries to bite me when you walk past him while he is eating?”

The answer, of course, is “before he started to exhibit those behaviors.”

And you are saying, “But I didn’t know I needed help with those things until he started doing them!”

That’s where you should have prepared a bit better.

See, you don’t try to train a dog not to do something when he is in the middle of doing it. And you don’t try to train him to do something when he is in the middle of doing something else. You train him to do the behaviors you want before you need him to do those behaviors, so that when the time comes and the need arises, he already knows what you require and either 1.Waits for you to remind him what to do, and then remembers and does it, or 2. Does it automatically.

(2. comes after a certain amount of teaching. 1. constitutes a trained dog, but 2. is even better.)

Dogs jump, pull on leash, eat what smells good, chase moving objects, make noise, and chew things naturally. These are default behaviors to most dogs, and one can pretty well assume most dogs will do them if not taught not to. In fact, you should absolutely assume they will.

Pretrain your dog to sit quietly when
you want to stop and chat with a neighbor.

So, you pretrain the dog to sit for greetings, keep four feet on the floor in the kitchen, walk nicely next to you on leash, chew their own toys and bones exclusively, refrain from chasing the cat, and allow you to control their resources without complaining. You train in advance of these things so that the dog can fully concentrate on what needs to be done when the behavior is needed. You pretrain because while he is learning the new behaviors, you need to be able to control the dog’s attention and give him lots of small successes, and this is unlikely to be successful when things are already hectic.

In short, you don’t train when you need the behavior—you train before you need it. That way, it’s already instilled in the dog, and all he needs to do when told to sit, or stop, or get off, or move away, or be quiet is remember what he already knows.

Because if you haven't taught him these things, he doesn't know them.

Think of it like taking a test. You don’t try to take a test without having studied. You learn when the test will happen, and you prepare for it by learning the material. Then, on test day, you walk in, sit down, and wrack your brain to remember what you just stuffed into it. There is no learning happening at that moment—it’s all recall.

Good dog training imparts the lessons before they are needed, so that when they are needed, all the dog need do is remember.


Prepare your dog to exhibit good behaviors in stressful or hectic situations by pretraining him. It’s much more kind and effective, and a lot less frustrating, than reacting in the moment.

A Tired Dog is a Good Dog

A while back, I was on a dog-related forum and a member was talking about how she is taking her dog to a training class for the first time.  

She remarked, "It's amazing how the mental workout exhausts her."

This is something many dog owners don't realize. Mental stimulation provides a more lasting calm than physical exercise, especially for physical dogs.

Does that seem odd?

Physical exercise is, of course, necessary on a daily basis for all dogs. But there is a huge difference between allowing the dog to run pell-mell for an hour at the dog park and stimulating it mentally for as little as 20 minutes. The former often serves to ramp the dog up, while the latter helps him calm down.

Exercise is important, but it should be the right kind of exercise, and include a mental component. This can be obedience work, nosework, exploring new places on a walk (with structure--especially the "heel" command), or games like "find it" inside the house.

More exercise just creates a more physically fit dog, and one that requires even more exercise to tire. Ever started an exercise regimen? If you are out of shape, it doesn't take much to tire you. But keep at it, day after day, and soon you can walk or run or work out longer and farther without tiring. You hit a fat-burning plateau, and now you have to really bust your butt to keep losing weight or build muscle.

Over-exercise a dog, and you get a very fit dog who now requires 2 hours of running to tire instead of one. (This is especially true of the muscular breeds like pits, boxers, and other “bully”-type dogs.) I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had owners tell me “I run my dog 5 miles a day, and he is never tired!” No wonder—he’s the canine equivalent of an endurance runner.

The nice thing about mental stimulation, on the other hand, is that is has no fitness plateau. 

Think about the last time you spent an hour or more studying for an exam, or muddling over a thorny mental conundrum. I’ll bet it made your brain tired. Did you sleep well after that, especially if you figured out the problem? 

(Sometimes, going to bed before you figure out the answer, and sleeping on it, will help you solve the problem—see the link at the bottom of this post.)

Having your dog complete obedience tasks every single day, and changing those up a bit, is one way to provide mental stimulation that benefits your dog in ways beyond your relationship. Do you walk your dog every day? You should—even if he has a yard to play in. Walks are mental stimulation, even if you take the same route every day.

Philosopher Heraclitus said, “No man steps in the same river twice.” The smells and sights and sounds of a walk are always different for your dog, and that’s what counts (though mixing the route up and exploring new walking places is even more fun, so try it!). Throw in some sits, stays, downs, heeling, and recalls on a walk, and you are giving your dog some nice challenges.

Do you enjoy teaching your dog tricks? It's fun for both of you, and yes, it is mentally challenging. Capitalize on the things your dog already likes to do, name them, and reward them. Voila!

For instance, if your dog likes to roll over on his back and throw his legs in the air, he is already doing "play dead." Name it and reward it! Use a treat to get him to roll all the way over, and, you guessed it: you have "roll over." Does he like to stand on his hind legs and dance? Hold a treat just slightly over his mouth and tell him "dance." Now you have a new trick! One of my dogs likes to bury her face in your armpit. Call that "are you embarrassed?" and reward it when she does it. Now you have a cute parlor trick.

These things are also fun on rainy days, or when you can't get the dog out and about for regular exercise.

One final note. After a round of mentally-challenging tasks, put your dog away (in a crate, for instance) for an hour or two, with no stimulation. This allows him to "think" about what he has learned. I call it "gestating." It's good for dogs and people. 

Make the most of your day, and your dog.

Cogitate on it

How do you gestate?

There are many ways to do it. And there are many reasons to do it.

Eric Booth, in his book The Everyday Work of Art, defines gestation as a pause to "reflect, step back from action, to allow intuition and other wordless inner processes to perform their roles" and considers it a necessary part of decision-making and what he calls "world-making." It occurs mostly under the threshold of our attention, in our subconscious.

In dog training, we would put the dog in his crate after a working session to help him calm down and "ponder" what he'd learned. It seems odd that a dog would think about what just occurred, but many trainers find that this does seem to make a difference. It also serves to make training more interesting, as the dog sees it as a chance to be out of the crate and be with his humans.


In contrast, working the dog and then letting him play all the rest of the afternoon with his doggy pals won't allow him time to gestate his new knowledge. Plus, playing with other dogs often supersedes "boring" time with humans doing exercises, so a "green" dog who has not developed a full relationship with his owner or handler will prefer the playtime to the person, thereby making said person a little less relevant.

I have had prospective clients tell me that they take their dog to daycare 3, 4, or even 5 days per week. Usually, this is a daycare that does not meet my standards, and the dogs play all day long. The dog's owners tell me that the dog doesn't seem to give two squirts about them when he's home, and he doesn't listen.

Well, who can blame him? His owners are so far removed from his life that they have become irrelevant. The same thing can happen sans doggy daycare, with owners who won't confine their dogs, ever, and allow them to do whatever they want to do save for the few minutes a day they ask the dog to sit or lie down for some reason.

Having a dog should not be about simply perfunctorily going through the motions to satisfy his needs for food, shelter, and exercise. It should be about developing a relationship, and a bond. Owners who pass off Rover to daycare too often find that being less relevant is not very much fun. (And yes, there is a case to be made for a correlation to nannies raising the children of the rich, but I decided not to go there.)

Gestation doesn't only help dogs to learn. It helps us.

Regardless of what the situation is, I can almost always see the problem much better after I have put it away and ignored it (and I mean ignored it completely) for a while. Sometimes, gestation results in a "Eureka!" moment, and I realize I've just discovered some new way to look at it, which is great fun--even if that doesn't solve the problem.

Sometimes, sleeping on it is the answer. I have also meditated on it, taken a walk on it, written on it, read on it, lain on my back and looked at the sky on it, climbed a tree on it, watched a movie on it, gone to dinner with friends on it, or listened to a favorite orchestral piece of music on it (I think the fact that a symphony or a movie score comes full circle and resolves itself has a lot to do with that working). Every now and again, a bourbon on the rocks will do it, but I drink pretty infrequently, so that's not something I go to right off.

Booth says, "Dreams (of the day or night variety) do not travel the way the crow flies; they zigzag like a butterfly. These tools of gestation go to deep places our intuition would like to tap, to worlds we know, unbeknownst to ourselves."

What about you? When you are faced with a thorny conundrum, how do you gestate? And how long does it take? Is it different depending on the issue? Do you find that skipping gestation results in a degraded solution? Has it ever not worked?