Reward What You Want

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If we find a way of re rewarding what we want them to do and showing them what we want them to do, rather than punishing the thing we don't want them to do, we're more likely to be successful.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Welcome to the Absolute Dog Text in a Squirrel podcast. I'm Lauren Langman. I'm one of the world's leading dog trainers, and it's my mission to help owners become their dog's top priority. In each episode, you'll discover how to gain trust and communicate with your dog like never before, creating unbreakable bonds that make you the most exciting part of their world. So I'm joined by the lovely Linda. Linda, you were just talking about a client that you had recently who had a dog that is barking at windows and actively, in fact, I said is, was. This dog was barking at windows and actively annoying the household, making the household difficult, making the household stressful, making the household chaos, noise, energy changes, frustrating. Like it's not nice for anyone.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

No one enjoys that. No. It's not nice for the dogs, actually, either. But people get very, very frustrated by it. And you see it quite a lot, don't you? It's very common. You know, don't walk about the place and dogs will be barking at the window. So, yes, and I and it's something that crops up quite regularly with with um with clients that um that the the dog barks at the windows and they don't know how to stop it. And the the way that they mostly try to stop it is by telling the dog off. So interrupting it with some sort of punishing voice and telling it to come away. And then the dog goes back and does it again.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

Now you had a great example a minute ago when we were talking about children, and I was talking about the horseworld actually as well. What is one of your favourite ways to explain it and to describe it now to an owner when they're telling the dog off, or when they're maybe trying to use that way of learning for educating their canine companion how to behave?

SPEAKER_00 2:01

It's well, it's it's what we've we seem to have always done for centuries, isn't it? And we've done it a lot to be. You've been the boss of the dog. The boss of the dog, the boss of the horse. And we used to do it to children, but we've all learnt better now that we don't do that to children. We actually try to encourage children to do the right thing and look for when they're doing what we like and praising them for what we like. And certainly, I mean the education world got you know led the way in realizing that if you turn things around and actually positively reinforce what child kids are doing right, you'll get more of that and they'll be more engaged in the process of learning than they will if you are hitting them over a hand with a ruler, which is what used to happen in my school. So that change of attitude for the children in our lives now applies to dogs. If we find a way of re rewarding what we want them to do and showing them what we want them to do, rather than punishing the thing we don't want them to do, we're more likely to be successful.

A Real Window Barking Case

SPEAKER_01 3:09

Absolutely, absolutely, and it just makes sense, doesn't it? And I was saying too, it like seems nuts that like people get on a horse and smack it when it doesn't do what they've asked, and you've given them a choice to do it or not do it, and actually they often back it up with a stick, which again, when you look at it, just feels nuts. It is nuts, it feels nuts like when you think about where we are. And I think when I grew up, my sort of world hitting was still a thing in in our age group, whereas now you cannot imagine someone hitting a child, it just isn't something that is done, yeah. No, and it's certainly frowned upon, absolutely frowned upon, and worse. So let's get back to the problem. So let's talk through our case study. What was happening?

SPEAKER_00 3:54

So, what was happening? I visited the house, we've got a goody dog, and the house is on a pavement, so it's you know, an easy vigilant spot, vision spot for the dog. So people will walk past, there's like often in these houses, there's a sofa under the window. Perfect. So all set up for the dog to launch the dog. So be vigilant, get at the window and have a go at passers by. So that's what the dog has learnt to do. Obviously, guarding the house or getting stimulated by the movement, whatever, started the behaviour and it became a habit. The house, the lady of the house had had been doing her very best to stop the behaviour by telling the dog off for it. So she'd she'd use a sort of funny sort of sound to tell the dog to get off the sofa and go go to its bed. But it didn't, it didn't get anything for going to its bed. There was no value in going to its bed, it was just punished because it was at the window. And that and that obviously wasn't working because the dog's habit was to still do it. And it the dog was getting something out of doing it. You know, it was what we still reinforcing. It was self-rewarding. And uh shouting and being unpleasant to the dog was not helping.

SPEAKER_01 5:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:20

So it was continuing to happen. Yes, it was.

SPEAKER_01 5:22

So you went in, we did a house visit and had a chat to the owner. What did we change?

SPEAKER_00 5:28

So the first thing we have to stop if we can or limit the rehearsal of the habit. So the rehearsal of launching yourself at the window. And the thing I always recommend for that situation is putting film on the window.

Turn Your Noise Into A Cue

SPEAKER_01 5:43

Now, film on the window can have great results, but also some people have limited results from putting film on windows. Actually, the film on the window can really help to effectively stop that rehearsal happening because the dog is no longer seeing everything that's going past and is not at least impaired a little. So it can can impair what they're seeing. So it's it's a little more dull for the dog. Now, this owner though, this really got better because you paired it with something else, didn't you? So then the smart cookie, smart cookie.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

She was making this funny noise, which was at that point was a punisher. Yeah. It was a sort of like an oi, what you doing type. Yeah. And I said, Right, okay, we're gonna use what you what you're saying, something like or something, and we're going to give the dog a sweetie every time you make that noise. So we actually rehearsed that while I was there. So she'd go, uh-uh-uh-a-have sweetie. And I said, What you're now gonna do is you're going to make the noise when the dog goes towards the window, and then put the sweetie on the dog's bed. And that, and then when I went back, so I went back a month later, because there were other this dog is reactive, it was other things I work with, but this was one particular scenario. Went back a month later, she'd got the most love. I've seen the best film I've ever seen on the windows. It was like it was like um stained glass window. Wow. Wow, this opaque stuff, very, very fancy. I went and went, oh, that's very nice, that's a really good job. And she was uh feed, uh-uh, feed, and the dog was put perfect. Well, 80% better.

SPEAKER_01 7:26

So effectively, she said that the uh-a became an attention noise, which effectively is a noise that we pair with food, yes, which is a noise that we can interrupt a behavior with. So we can interrupt this behavior and we can get the dog to do something different. Often the dog can interrupt and go to a bed, or interrupt and go to a pen, or interrupt and go to another room, or interrupt and go on leash, or interrupt and move, or interrupt and do something different, but always interrupt and reward. So always the reward. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:50

There was so the dog, then the noise became rather than something unpleasant and a naggy noise, it became something that was paired with a something positive and rewarding for the dog.

SPEAKER_01 8:01

Now, how did she feel after this?

SPEAKER_00 8:04

Delighted. And she felt really, really pleased that she could do because she actually works with children, and so she understood the children analogy.

SPEAKER_01 8:14

So you got her on board, so you onboarded her.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

Yeah, we don't punish the children anymore. And she was so pleased that she could help the dog to make a better choice and not have to keep telling it off. What breed is this dog?

Why Games Change Behaviour

SPEAKER_01 8:26

It's a doodle. Doodle. So doodles, we see a lot of doodles with this. Karen's Rupert and Kimberly, who's who's a great student of Absolute Dogs. So lots and lots of students who experience things like this. If you have been part of the Absolute Dogs community, then amazing, amazing, amazing learning on doodles. There's loads of doodles in the Games Club community. If you haven't already, you can join Games Club right now for a pound. So there's a pound offer on Games Club. You can join it Games Club for a pound. So you can get any of your newbies or any of your new members pound. So they get to do it for a pound and they get to effectively trial it before they buy it. So they can trial it for a pound. So if you like your doodles, or if you've got these struggles, or if you just want to understand and learn how to play these sort of games with your dogs, it works, doesn't it, Linda? Why do games work for you, or why do you love games?

SPEAKER_00 9:09

Well, I love I love games because the dogs have fun learning and we get the behaviours and the results that we want in terms of a happy dog that is compliant with what we want it to do, and they're not stressed, and I'm not stressed, and we all have you know, we all have a very positive relationship.

SPEAKER_01 9:29

It feels good at the end of the day. Who feels good bullying or or or or like getting at or getting behind or nothing? That's why it just doesn't feel nice, doesn't it? It doesn't feel nice. So none of these things feel nice. Now, you left that customer, was she a happy customer? Yes. And does dog training like this change lives?

SPEAKER_00 9:49

It absolutely transforms people's lives if if we can get them to understand what it is we're trying to do.

SPEAKER_01 9:57

And if you can get someone on board, maybe you're someone who's interested in being a pro dog trainer, maybe you just want to be on Games Club, maybe you just want to learn some of what we're doing and listen to podcasts and share podcasts. The big thing is this is the way that dog training should go.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

This is the way dog training should go.

Join Games Club And Wrap

SPEAKER_01 10:10

Like there's no other way, in my opinion. This is the there is such a good path here. Let's keep lighting it.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

I think the struggle that people have is because we call them games, it seems like we are we are it's a bit like letting kids out of school. They're not they're not learning if it's a game.

SPEAKER_01 10:29

Yeah, like they they it's almost the wording, yeah, it feels a bit too fun. Yeah. And and we have to like we all learn through games. And it's and it's appreciating that actually, I remember being at school and I remember saying to the lady who was saying it was a test tomorrow, and I was like, surely it's a series of games. And she was like, It's a test. And I was like, multi-games, because that's how you want to look at it, isn't it? You don't want to make it out to be a test, and really some of it is just language. Just language. Yeah, just language. So, guys, if you know a dog you box at the window, or maybe a dog you box at the TV or launches themselves in a different way. It's a very similar scenario, yeah. Similar problem, same struggle, same solution, actually. And there's so much that you can solve through games-based learning. Linda loves it, I love it. We're gonna go and do more dog training, we're gonna keep smashing it. You get out there and share it wide and afar, and we'll see you all real soon. Bye guys.