What A Dog Can Teach You

Dog trainers are supposed to be teaching their dogs.  Eric Brad has found that there is much that the dog can teach the trainer as well.  In this installment, Eric says “Thank You” to his dog Tiramisu for the lessons he has learned.  Listening to his dog has made him a better trainer.

On Sunday of this week my girl Tiramisu will turn 8 years old.  She is the first dog we have raised from a puppy using positive training methods and behavioural science as a guide.  And, if I’m honest, she started as an experiment.  After our failures with our previous dog, Vince, I set out to employ the concepts I was learning from books like “Don’t Shoot The Dog” and “Culture Clash” that advocated a different way of approaching dogs and dog training.

It’s surprising what a dog can teach you if you are really looking and ready to learn.  My journey into a new way of living and working with my dogs has taught me many things but perhaps the most important is that we humans impose far too many assumptions on our dogs.  We think that we know how they see the world.  We think we know what motivates them.  We have ready explanations for everything from their disobedience to their moods and emotions.  Perhaps we should pay more attention to them and let them tell us these things.

One of the unexpected benefits of Mark and Reward training is learning to truly see your dog.  You need to be a good observer in order to mark the behaviour you are looking for when it happens.  The more accurate you are in marking behaviour when you see it, the faster the dog will learn.  But there is another component to this.  You get to watch your dog thinking.  That means you get to observe her when she is confused and when the light bulb goes off and she figures out what you are asking for.  You get to see her frustration at not understanding and her relief when you provide prompting that helps her along the way.  And, as my Tira so clearly taught me, you can also see boredom when your dog seems to say “We’ve done this 6 times already!  I get it.  Can we move on now?”

Unexpected Insights

Several of the things I learned from Tiramisu and Mark and Reward training were pretty obvious once I actually stopped to look at it.  They had more to do with the learning process than the results and that was a major breakthrough for me.  It was that change in approach from trying to get results to trying to teach my dog that shifted our relationship to cooperation instead of confrontation.  I was supposed to be helping her learn and not trying to get what I wanted.

So, thanks to my beautiful girl, I am a smarter trainer now.  And I thought that, in honor of her 8th birthday, I would share some of the lessons Tiramisu has taught me.

• Be Still – Sometimes we get so caught up in trying to get the behaviour we are looking for that we become very animated and impatient.  Tira taught me that every movement, every sound, every gesture, while it may be intended to help, can actually be a distraction.  Putting myself in my dog’s place, it’s easy to see that all of that added stuff can just be confusing.  Sometimes the best thing we can do is just keep still and let our dogs work out what we are trying to teach them.  As I’ve said in another article here at Life As A Human, sometimes “helping” is not helping at all!
• Be Patient – One of the hardest lessons I had to learn fro Tira was that she needs time to process things and work out what I want.  When she was 12 weeks old, I was teaching her to spin in a circle and it seemed our progress had come to a stop.  I sat in front of Tira thinking of what I could do to change my approach to help her understand.  After about 30 seconds, suddenly Tiramisu looked up at me and quick did a spin in place exactly as I had been trying to teach her!  Sometimes we just need to let our dogs THINK.  It can be a delicate balance but if we learn to truly see what’s going on with our dogs, we know when it’s time to help and when it’s time to just let them work it out.
• Know When It Is Enough – As I’ve mentioned, Tira was good at telling me she was bored and wanted to do something else.  But I also learned to see her subtle signs of frustration and disappointment.  Mark and Reward training is based on the dog being successful most of the time.  So it’s important to know when it’s time to take a break from training for a while.  It’s also important to end on a successful note even if that means asking for a few well known behaviours.
• Training Should Be Fun – My Tiramisu LOVES her food treats!  She will work for almost anything.  But I also made sure to introduce play and games to our training routine as a way to make things fun and interesting.  A quick game of tug or chase the toy can be just the thing to break the intensity of trying to learn something new.  Adding some play and silliness to our training made it more like a party than a classroom and it certainly made Tira look forward to training with me.

From Books To Life

All of the books I have read about positive training theory and techniques certainly taught me what I needed to do to be a better trainer for my dog. I’m so very grateful for all of the great books from some very smart people who have pioneered such an effective approach to teaching our animals.  But once I learned the basics of the training process, I still had to learn how to apply them most effectively with my own dogs.  The one thing the books couldn’t teach me was the actual doing of the training.  I would have to learn that for myself.

I have said in the past that I consider Tiramisu my greatest teacher.  I stand by that statement.  What she taught me was how to be a great observer.  She taught me to know enough to let her work things out.  She taught me to be patient and let her learn at her pace and not try to get results when I wanted them.  She taught me that learning can be a game and it can be fun and that sometimes it’s just not important that we learn something right now and we should play instead.

But most importantly, through this process of positive training through Mark and Reward and it’s techniques, Tiramisu taught me who she is.  She is an intelligent and eager learner.  She is focused and intense about everything she does.  And she hates to mess up.  She is not easily frustrated but if she gets overwhelmed, she’s done.  Talk to the paw!

To My Girl…

And so, to my Professor of Dogs and Learning, let me say “Thank You” and “Happy Birthday”, Tiramisu.  You have taught me more about being a good dog trainer in 8 short years than I might have learned in a lifetime without you.  I love the look in your eyes that says, “Hey dad!  What are we going to do today?”  Thank you for your patience, your enthusiasm, and your ability to forgive me when I mess up.  Thank you for learning to work with me and teaching me who you are.  If there was ever a miracle with four paws, Tiramisu is it.  Happy Birthday Sweetie… and many more.

Until next time, have fun with your dogs!

 Photo credits –
All photos copyright Petra Wingate 2006-2012 

Recent Eric Brad CPDT-KA Articles:

• The Dog That Changed My Life
• Keeping Your Dog Informed
• Teaching Your Dog to Not-Behave
• The Simple Complexity of Dog Training
• What The Dog Wants