20/01/2018
Today's comes from Christine Schwartz and we love it! ❤🐕❤
"I was recently working with a young Border Collie – Belgian cross who was extremely treat motivated. His owner called him “The Shark” and we changed his nickname right away, but I could see why she came up with it. Barkley had a $20.00 – 30.00 a day treat addiction and his owner was concerned for her wallet as well as his health. She has been to some puppy classes and was told that her dog could have a tendency to be reactive and she needed to be proactive. She learned to treat any hint of good behavior as well as using the treats to get his attention when she met another dog, person or anything distracting on her walks. Barkley’s owner soon started to dread taking him out and stayed up a little later at night to walk after 10:00 PM, hoping that the streets were quiet.
This was rather inconvenient and we had a lot of interesting discussions about the use of food. Many positive methods teach that there should be a “paycheck” and it is unreasonable to expect your dog to work for you for free. I am not against the occasional treat, but don’t like the paycheck idea. My dog is not my employee. He is my friend, companion and partner. I am not asking him to work, I am just asking him to get along in the world. For most of us the term “work” means something we have to do and we are only doing it to get the paycheck. Often we are a lot more engaged when volunteering or just helping out a friend and do so with less resentment. There is no paycheck, but the reward is fun, friendship and the knowledge of doing the right thing.
I am happy to do something nice for my dog when he does something nice for me, ie. behaving the way I would like him to. He knows that a cheerful “good boy” means he is on the right track and the occasional morsel that finds its way into his mouth is always appreciated, but not necessarily expected. I have seen a number of dogs who were trained with the paycheck philosophy and, as soon as they realize the owner is out of treats, completely blow their person off. No paycheck – no work. I have found that the dogs that work for you because you have a friends and companion relationship are often more reliable and consistent in their compliance. They do the right thing because it is the right thing to do and life is better when everybody gets along. Their behavior is learned, rather than trained.
Robyn Hood always says ‘use the slot machine, rather than vending machine approach when treating your animal’. When you insert money (or in this case offer the correct behavior) into the vending machine you expect a candy bar and get mad when the treat does not appear right away. We have all given the vending machine a good shake when it took our money and did not deliver the reward. However, we are happy to keep putting money (or good behavior) in the slot machine and excited when it produces a reward every once in a while. When it doesn’t we are still hopeful that it will happen next time and are happy to try again and again.
Back to Barkley. It was much harder on the owner than the dog to cut down on the treats. It had become a crutch for her and she did not even notice how mindlessly she kept shoving treats into his mouth to keep him engaged or focused on her. I had her say the word “treat” every time she fed him and she quickly realized how unaware she was of her habit. We then started asking for 5 simple behaviors before treating Barkley and while I was fairly confident that this would work I did not expect it to work this fast and well. We replaced treats with some cheerful words and a few TTouches thrown in and by the 2nd session Barkley was no longer asking for treats and when his owner offered them he took them much more gently and mindfully, shedding his shark reputation. We worked on having him actually look at the things that concerned him on his walks through the neighborhood while still checking in with his person when unsure. It was like he was discovering a whole new world. He changed his posture when walking as he was no longer constantly turned towards her, twisting his neck and back. He had even started wearing the pads of his feet unevenly from never walking straight.
Another reason to limit treats on walks is to discourage off leash dogs from coming over. Some see you feeding treats to your dog and rush over to score a morsel as well. We also taught Barkely some Calming Signals, something he had no idea about since he had always been asked to look for treats and at his owner. He did not know how to properly greet another dog, look away and calm down a tense situation. But he quickly learned.
After about 2 weeks Barley’s treat bill went down several hundred dollars a month. My apologies to the Pet Food store for losing such a good customer, but it is nice to see a much more confident and relaxed dog."
