반려견을 훈련하고 싶지 않은 기분이 들 때 #60

to change our dog's physiology in order to recharge them to get to work. Well, do something to change your physiology. You know, run on the spot, jump on a rebounder, do something that just gets your heart rate up a little bit, and then check back in with your emotional state. Do you feel like training? Yeah, Susan. Yeah. It's still a no. Yeah. Okay. Let's move on to the first piece of insight from the great college football coach, Lou Holt. And what he says is you always need to put the why before the where or the what. Put the why of your dog training before the where. So, don't say, yeah, well, this is what I've got to train and this is where I'm going to train it. And we often don't think about the why. The why is important. It reminds me, so Lou's book, Winning Every Day, great book. But it reminds me of another book. I'm going to talk about a lot of books on this podcast. This is a business book. So, any of you who are interested in business, phenomenal business book called Start With Why. What Lou talks about in this book is that purpose follows passion. So, if you aren't really feeling like training, think about what are you passionate about? Well, if you're listening to this podcast, I can guess you're passionate about your dog, about the life your dog gets to leave. And so, that passion is now going to drive the purpose of why you want to train. Your why is because you want your dog to live the best life. You want your dog to be able to go off leash with you when you go hiking. You want your dog to come with you when you go visiting people. You want your dog to not feel anxiety when they are walking down the street and they see another dog. You don't want your dog to feel anxiety when you leave them or whatever it is that your challenge is. You feel passionate about your dog. That helps to create your purpose, which is your why. And from that purpose, from that, okay, I want my dog to live their best life. Now your objectives of what you should be training become really clear. Okay. So, I want my dog to come back when they're called. So, I'm going to start working on that great recallers program that Susan Garrett talks so much about. So, now you know, whatever it is, those pieces that you are working on, your objectives are clear. I want my dog to walk on a loose lead. I want my dog to bring the toy back to me. Now those clear objectives are what gives you focus for what you need to do. So, for example, if you were really focused on, you know, getting a great grade on a test and, you know, a couple of your buddies phone you up and say, Hey, we're going

out for a couple of drinks. You want to join us? Yeah. Yeah. I got to take a pass tonight because I got something else on the go. Okay. Maybe that wasn't a great example, but if you're really focused, you're going to pass it up. There's a great quote by Zig Ziglar. And he says, the number one reason for people's lack of success is their willingness to give up what they want most of all for what they want right now. And if you've got clear objectives, if you've got goals in mind, that creates the focus for you to say, right, I want my dog to have his best life. Therefore, I've got these goals. Therefore, that gives me the focus. And when I see training time on my day timer, I go, yay. Let brush off the, let me shake out those cobwebs. Let me jump right in and start training this. That's what gives you the laser focus for what it is that you need to do. Lou says that you're never going to be indecisive about what it is, what you should be doing if you have that purpose. That purpose is what brings about the goals that you want to achieve. And those goals help identify what is the daily action you need to be doing. And you just ask yourself, have I done anything today to help my dog live that better life? And that's what's going to say, right, yeah, that's my why. You know your why guys. Now you can say, all right, where am I training? And what exactly was I going to train? Oh yeah. Right. Here's my goals. That's what I'm going to train. Okay. So now you're all right. It's probably, you might be listening to this at 11 o'clock at night and you're going to, I got to train my dog. Wow. I got to train my dog. Another great quote by John Wooden. This is awesome. Is you should never mistake activity for accomplishment. So, if you are just saying, oh, I got to train my dog. So, I'm just going to go out there and do whatever. That is just being busy. I'm a massive fan of John Wooden. So, I have a number of his books. Probably this would be a good one. Um, wouldn't, lifetime reflection. But I loved his mindset about helping people achieve goals. So, if you don't have goals in mind when you're training your dog, you're just going to go out there and have some activity. And that's what John Wooden meant by that quote is never mistake activity for accomplishment. When you have focus, you are going to be getting your dog closer to that best life. Okay. Now let's focus on the dog. What if, okay, Susan, I've got my lesson plan because your lesson plan is created by breaking down your goals. I've got what I'm going to do. I've got a dog who doesn't want to train. Now, there could be two

reasons why a dog lacks focus. First one is they're just not motivated. They're distracted. They're sniffing. They're like, Oh, I'm so tired. Or you could have a dog that's the complete opposite. That they're running around like their butt's on fire. That they are unfocused because it's like, Oh, look, there's a bird. Oh, look, there's some grass. Oh, is that? Oh, I think I see something. So, they're all over the place. They're crazy with energy. Let's talk about the first dog who is, they're just a little bit, Oh, I'm just laughing. I'm not feeling it today. You could go through this checklist of maybe the dog is afraid of their environment. Maybe you haven't gone through the D process of changing their physiology. But it could be that there's a history between the two of you that is overwhelming for the dog. Maybe you had expectations that were massively high. You were disappointed in the dog. The dog failed so many times that the opportunity for reinforcement fell further and further from the dog's mind. And so, training just became not worth it. Something called response cost. The level of effort I have to give and the reward you're offering, let's just call it a day and not do anything. And people will say, well, my dog's an unmotivated dog. And that's just labeling your dog. All dogs could be a dog that, I mean, it's training. It's just playing with you. You're doing it right. The dog's going to love it. And I've taken in many rescue dogs that start out that way, that are just like, yeah, I don't really want to do it on either ends. They're either crazy high and are unfocused, or they're just like navel gazing. And yeah, I don't know what you're doing here. I really got nothing. And funny enough, the solution to both is very similar. But what most people do with that dog that's navel gazing and really not interested in, you know, they're checking out how many blades or grass are in this little location right here. They revert to cheerleading where you, attaboy, attaboy, attaboy, you start cajoling the dog. Now think about professional cheerleaders at football games. If you're losing like 99 to nothing and the cheerleaders come by and go, hey, let's give a cheer. Come on. We can do it. All of a sudden, are you going to cheer? No, you're not feeling it. You know, you might criticize the size of the thighs on the cheerleaders at that point, right? But no, we're losing 99 to nothing. No, I've lost interest in this. However, if your team is tied and it's an overtime and the other team just fumbled the ball and your

guy just picked up the ball and they're running towards the end zone and the cheerleaders come by and go, hey, let's have a cheer. You're already going to be screaming. You're going to be screaming because you've been motivated. Cheerleading is just for somebody to lead you somewhere, but it's not true inspiration. It's not true motivation. It's fake. They might get you going, but if you're truly inspired by what's going on in front of you, you don't need the cheerleading and neither does your dog. And what you have is the ABCs of dog training are gone. Because as I talked about in episode number 16, the thing before the thing, the A, if you're just cheering, then there is no division between the antecedent and the behavior because you are creating the behavior with your cheering. And when your cheering stops, guess what? So, does the behavior. So, you're helping is not helping. What you want to do, and this is a help for both dogs, those that are super high and those that are lacking focus because they're just not interested, is you need to create super short sessions with laser sharp focus on your part, starting with high energy and then create a prompt. If you have a cue that you're starting with, you're going to give a cue, but it might just be a, you know, it could be something as simple as follow a target stick, touch a target stick. That might be the start of it. And you present it and then you wait. And then when you get any kind of action, you then reward it and go back to the reward mix that we talked about in episode number 59. That reward mix is going to be filled with high-end rewards. And all of a sudden the dogs can go, Hey, I kind of like this. And when I say you keep your sessions short, if I have a dog who's lacking focus or drive, that session could be 10 to 30 seconds long and we're done. And the dog's going to go, what just happened there? That was something that was really cool. But what happens is people get dogs that aren't really driven or motivated and they work them and the dog's going, well, this is fun. High drive. It's easy to get rewards. And I can touch the stick and everything's fun. And then you keep going and then they start losing interest and then you stop. But you're stopping when the dog is distracted, not stopping when the dog wants to keep going. If we have a dog who is crazy high and lacks focus, you've got to look at the history of training because a lot of times it's poor timing or poor criteria or overwhelming the dogs. And some dogs just stress up higher and higher and higher. So, what is the history of reinforcement?

Those dogs look like they're driven and they don't really need much reinforcement, but the opposite is true. If you give those dogs a higher rate of reinforcement with clear ways, the criteria is very clear how they can be successful. Those dogs will give you better focus. I mean, they still may be a dog that is more excitable, but you're going to find that the crazy factor when they're working with you turns into drive and focus for you and the work that you're doing. So, once again, short sessions, high, high value rewards. With a dog that's higher like that, I would tend to use more food and bigger pieces of food rather than jacking them up higher with toys. Like I would just start with a game of tug and then sit and then food. And they might not want that food. So, what you're going to do is you're going to put the tug down and walk further away and give the food again and keep moving further away and giving them food. And when they take the food, you're going to walk all the way back and start that again so that they understand that eating the food is part of the interactions with you. And when they eat the food, it actually has a calming effect on the brain, which is why a lot of dogs who are trained only with food sometimes are more difficult to get engaged and get high. Think about that one. Hey, I would love for you to know if you are going through this and you say, well, I don't really have clear focus. I don't really know what a plan looks like. If you would like me to demonstrate what something like a target stick, teaching a dog to touch a target stick. If you would like me to show you what that looks like, leave me a comment. Come to YouTube or leave me a comment wherever you are listening to this, if that's an opportunity. Actually come to YouTube and watch this video. Leave me a comment there. I will check these comments. If there's enough interest, then we'll talk about something as simple as creating a plan to get a dog to touch a target stick. I'll see you next time on Shaped by Dog.