Choice - Luring the fearful dog...

Having looked at the concept of ‘choice’ when training our dogs in a general sense, I thought I’d try to expand on one of the specific examples I mentioned. Some of this is me thinking ‘out loud’, but see if you can follow my logic – and let me know if you feel there isn’t any logic in here!!

Choice is empowering – it gives the dogs more control over their actions and their environment. Pressure (from the environment or from us) reduces choice, and a reduction in choice can lead to frustration or fear. We can all relate to this ourselves; how much pressure do you feel under at work when your boss is standing looking over your shoulder, however well-meaning or nice they might be? How much have your choices been limited in that moment (pretty much the only realistic choice most of us have is to do the job as fast as we can and ignore anything else that might need our attention!)? How much frustration, stress or even fear does that foster?  And how bad emotionally and physiologically does that make you feel? Not a fun situation to be in! How much more positive and empowered do you feel when you have choice over your workload? So we all know that choice is good!

How does the idea of choice fit in with luring the fearful dog, the subject of this post? Well, I stated in the last post that even when we’re trying to train ‘positively’ we can be guilty of eliminating choice by the use of bribery, and I wanted to expand on that a bit.

Our sensitivity towards our dogs’ emotions has come along quite a way, and most of us in general no longer feel that the way to handle a fearful dog is to ‘make them get over it’ or ‘make them face their fears’; instead we’ve turned to using food or toys to make the scary thing seem less scary, which is certainly an improvement from the perspective of our poor fearful dogs! However, we need to make sure we’re using the food and the toys in the right way to get the best results, and ensure we aren’t putting the dog in conflict or inadvertently removing choice. The hope behind luring the fearful dog towards something or someone it’s scared of is to make a positive association in the dog’s mind between the scary thing and the food, so that the scary thing seems less scary. However, there’s the potential within this to end up putting the dog in a conflicted situation, – ‘I want the food but I don’t want to get that close’ – forcing him through use of the food to go closer than he felt comfortable with. Dogs lured forward towards people like this will often suddenly find themselves too close and end up snatching the food very hard or biting. There’s also the potential to accidentally ‘poison’ the reinforcer; what you’re hoping to do is make the scary thing seem less scary by the presence of something nice, but what you can end up doing is making the something nice seem scary by pairing it with the presence of something scary!

Let’s go with a little analogy…see if this makes sense to you! Say I’m scared of spiders, but I really love Galaxy chocolate bars (at least semi-true!!). My mum decides that she’s going to help me get over my fear by pairing the two things together, luring me towards a tank containing a Tarantula with Galaxy bars. Whilst I’m at a distance I feel comfortable with, this works quite well – I quite happily follow the trail of chocolate bars towards the tank, feeling safe in the knowledge that the spider is in the tank and I don’t have to get too close to it to get the chocolate. Then all of a sudden I find that the final bar is inside the tank next to the spider; how conflicted do I suddenly feel?! I want that bar, but I really don’t want to get that close to the spider. What if mum offered me a ‘jackpot’ by placing a giant bar in the tank? Well now I feel even more conflicted – now I really want the chocolate, but I still really don’t want to get that close to the spider. I might start to feel quite stressed about the whole situation. Even if I felt brave enough to reach in and get the chocolate, with all the stress chemicals currently flowing around my body, am I likely to be building a positive association? Might I actually decide instead that I’d rather never see another bar of Galaxy again?! What if instead of luring me, my mum decided to reinforce me every time I voluntarily took a step towards the tank? Would I feel a bit less stressed about it all? Yes, probably, because I have the element of choice – I can decide for myself whether I want to step forward or not, it is entirely under my own control, no conflicting feelings. Would I ever get as far as voluntarily putting my hand inside the tank? I might eventually, if I felt the choice was mine and that the reward was worth it (this raises a separate issue – the value of the reinforcer), and I’d certainly be less stressed about the whole thing, much more willing to participate, and much more likely to form a positive association.

When working with fearful dogs, and indeed when training any dog, we need to be careful to make the distinction between ‘luring’ and ‘reinforcing’. Certainly luring has its place in our ‘training toolbox’, but we need to be careful that we’re not compromising the dog’s choices or emotional state. Even ‘positive’ encouragement or verbal enticement from us can amount to pressure on the dog, and pressure reduces choice. So if you’re ever trying to accomplish something but you’re not sure whether you should be luring your dog or not, err on the side of free choice and reinforce the dog for voluntarily making small steps towards doing the task instead! :-)