15/01/2022
TRAINING versus effecting BEHAVIOUR CHANGE.
The word training is often used where behaviour modification is what is actually needed.
Training means teaching your dog to respond to cues such as sit, down, stay, come, etc., when asked, either with a verbal cue or a hand signal. Of course, there are other aspects of training but training generally involves actions that you are going to ask for, or lack of actions in some cases.
Effecting behaviour change (behaviour modification) is not the same thing. In a nutshell, what this entails is teaching a sentient being to make better choices on their own, typically environmentally cued, so that they can make these better choices in future scenarios where you have previously reinforced a quality choice.
Neither training or behaviour modification exist in a vacuum. Every sentient being has the ability to make a choice in any given context. Just like humans do, dogs have bad days too. Asking for training cues needs to be realistic and involves common sense. The same with behaviour modification.
However with effecting behaviour change, what you have is a cumulative process, where you are shaping quality choices, while reinforcing for those quality choices, as well as managing the potential triggering environments to prevent making fewer non-quality choices.
Effecting behaviour change creates new nerve patterns. It will rarely be a straightforward path, where everything is better each day.
Behaviour change is more like the tides. But the more that you set up the context for success and consistently reinforce quality choices, the faster you help your dog reach a state of mind where they are making better choices.
Your dogs are sentient beings. They get trigger stacked just like humans and they need mental enrichment to keep their cortisol levels at a nice baseline so that they have the mental stability to make better choices.
It's not just a matter of "training". There is no end to behaviour change. It's more like how much "money" have you put into the quality choice bank versus the poor choices that you want less of. Fill that quality choice bank up and you're going to get quality choices more often than not.
You cannot send your dog to "get trained" to make quality choices in your environment, to a location outside of your environment, without your intense participation.
Choose kindness and *real* behaviour change ❤🐾
