반려견이 당신을 사랑하나요? 관계에 대해 이야기해 봅시다 #80

The words, because I said so, may come out of your mouth if you are living in the world of demand, dominate, and control. The downside of this, well, the obvious stress on the person who's being demanded of and dominated and controlled, but it's constant. You as the leader always needs to be there to watch over every behavior. That's where somebody might put cameras in their business offices to watch their employees when they're not around. It demands a lot of work from you. And for the person being, or the creature, the animal being demanded of, the lack of punishment actually becomes the reinforcement. Because behaviors change due to reinforcement. And when you're not getting in trouble, it's like, oh, thank God. Oh, phew. This kind of approach to leadership, it creates a lot of opposition. It creates resistance and it creates rebellion. The subject learns to be sneaky or they learn to be fearful and paralyzed. Think about any time in your history when you've ever felt controlled by something or somebody, even if it was your perceived control. So, we all went through our teenage years and we may or may not have felt controlled by somebody and thought, well, when I get my own place, I'm going to do this. Or when I'm a parent, I'm going to do this. And how do you feel? It's frustrating. You get this bottled up anger, which you may not be able to express depending on the authoritative person or that's luring above you. But there definitely is feelings of anger and frustration and maybe resentment. Let's take a behavior, a simple dog training behavior, like getting your dog to retrieve. You throw something out and if the dog retrieves it slow, or maybe they get distracted, they're going out and they go, oh, this smells really good. Or they pick it up and they run away. If you are somebody who is training with any form of demand and control, you are going to blame the dog. Hey, you're going to maybe, you know, go and correct them. Some people might pinch the dog by the ear and say, I told you to get that. There's a lot of teeth gritting when you're training with ego. Okay. So that kind of relationship is exhausting for the person who is at the top, who has to give out the demands because nothing gets done without your say-so. And it's very frustrating for the person that's at the other end of it. Okay. Let's go to the second relationship. And that's one of bribery, cajoling, and catering to. This is where a lot of people who believe dogs should just be allowed to be dogs. They'll fall one between number one and number two, mostly.

It's a relationship of, I promise you this, if you do that. So if we want our dogs to come, we might show them a cookie or rattle a cookie jar or squeak a squeaky toy. Or if the dog's distracted, sniffing something, you might slam a toy on the ground to get their attention. It's a promise of, if you do this for me, I will give you this. And you get your dog excited by showing them something they really, really, really want. If you're a parent, it might look something like, hey, if you help your sister do her homework, then I'm going to let you watch TV an extra hour tonight. If you turn off the TV now and go to bed, I'll let you have an extra 30 minutes on the computer tomorrow. It's a transactional relationship. If you do this, I'll do that. If you're training a dog and the dog doesn't do what you want, you, mommy's got a cookie, or you might attaboy them. So going back to our retrieve example, if the dog gets distracted, you might say, come on, come on, get it, get it. Repeat the cue in a very happy voice. If the dog's picking up the toy and running around, you might try and cheer them in the back. Come on, come on, come on, come to mommy, come to mommy, come on, come on, bring me, come on, come on, come on. There's a lot of attaboys. There's a lot of cheering. Or you might, if you think your dog is going to run away, you might show them another toy. Come and get that. Come on, come on. And so, it's transactional. What happens is there's bartering that happens. I've seen it with kids myself when the mother asks them to do something and they go, well, if I do it, can I watch TV for 10 more minutes? And there's always a negotiation. It's got to be exhausting way to live. For those of us who own a dog, we're asking the dog to make their decision based on what they can see or smell on us. That the value, they have a lot of things that they love, but they are going to go through this decision process. Is the cookie she got more important than chasing the squirrel? No, chasing the squirrel. Does, there's always this process of evaluation because it's like being at the Saturday morning market and you're like, well, I'll give you a $5 for that. Well, I really want 10. There's always a back and forth. It can create lazy and uninspired dogs, but it definitely will create dogs who lack freedom. I would say dogs who have been dominated and controlled and demanded of probably have more freedom than the dogs who've been bribed and controlled and catered to because the dogs above may have freedom, like with a shock collar on that you're allowed to go and run in

the woods because I know if you don't come back, I'm going to shock you. I don't know. They use, they have the more friendly words. Stim, stim. There's very friendly words so that you're not actually shocking your dog in your mind. Okay. So those are two different approaches. And if you are a business owner who you are demanding of your employees, then when you're not there to watch them, it's highly unlikely you're going to get the same kind of effort from them. And the same is true of parents, right? If they go away for the weekend, that's when the crazy parties happen because, you know, thank God no one's around to try and control me. Now, the third approach, what I mentioned of choice, reinforcement leading to autonomy. Now, for my young folks that are listening to this podcast, and I know there's a lot of you, thank you. Autonomy means you're taking care of yourself. You're in charge. You're making good decisions even when no one's looking. You're self-governing. That's what autonomy leans. Now, with training this way, everything is a choice, right? So if you refer to episode number 44 here on the podcast, it was called using coincidences or arranging coincidences and positive associations. And I walk through the progress chart that I use in all of my dog training. One choice is a domino to all others. So everything we do starts with the, it's your choice game. And if you aren't familiar with, it's your choice and you'd like to learn more about it, skip back to episode number 78, where I give people an opportunity to learn more about it's your choice. So with choice-based training, the reinforcement isn't produced until the choice has been made, right? The dog makes a choice and then they get reinforced for that. And it's been scientifically proven that when dogs are trained this way, when they make that choice point in the decision-making process, they get a dopamine release. When they make the choice that they know is going to lead them to reinforcement, there is a dopamine release. There is no dopamine release when you're using lures as bribes to get your dog to do something. Dopamine, as you know, is the feel-good drug. So dog training this way can be addictive to the dog because they get this dopamine release. Training this way creates trust. And that trust is what gives you massive influence, even at times when you're not around. Now, we're not going to take a puppy, play it's your choice, and then give them the freedom to run around outside and expect that they're going to listen to us because they've made one good choice. It's layers of learning that lead

to this autonomy for the dog, that they have the freedom because I know they're going to make that right choice. It's consistent effort on your part that leads to that self-governing on the dog's part. And rather than training from a place of blame, all training is a question. So when I say to my dog, sit, what I'm really saying, can you sit in this environment with the education I've given you on what you understand the word sit to mean? Everything I ask of you is a question. So when I throw a toy and I say, bring me, what I'm really saying, have I educated you well enough in this environment that you're going to run out as fast as you can, pick that up and run back as fast as you can. If you're slow, if you get distracted, if you choose not to do it, if you run off, the first thing I'm going to do is, hmm, what have I missed? Second thing I'm going to do, well, maybe the first thing I'm going to do is control the reinforcement from the dog so that they don't get into trouble. So can I control that dog who's running off with my toy? Maybe, maybe not. If the dog's in a safe environment, I might just ignore them, turn my back, do something else. And they will eventually come in. If they're slow or they get distracted, I'm going to say, hmm, like my training needs to be better. There isn't enough drive and motivation. There's a layer that needs to be tweaked. What have I done and what can I do to make that different? There's a lot of my friends will ask me parenting advice because they know I understand behavior. I had two friends of mine, they're husband and wife. They're both doctors. They have a pretty large family. Their oldest is 17. And at the time they came to me and they said, she wants to, when she finishes school, take a year off, not go to college. She wants to get a part-time job now and get a job for part of the next year and then travel around the world before she goes to college. And we don't want her to do that. Plus we don't like the way she's been dressing. And so we've told her, you know, it's our house and our rules and she needs to set an example for her brothers and sisters. And so all of that is trying to control. You may love your kids, but you're trying to control them. Coming at it from a point of questions. Why do you feel you need to? What college have you picked a college? At the end of the day, if she wants to take a year off, she's going to take a year off. So how about she takes a year off with your support leading towards something that you've agreed on together?

You're going to travel here. Maybe I'll meet up with you. Maybe it'll be, you know, a family adventure a couple of times when you're traveling. Traveling is a good thing, I believe. So when you're creating a relationship from choice and reinforcement, you create a relationship that always questions. That is the key to the success of that relationship. You question yourself. And when there's something you don't like about what's going on with the other person, you question them. For example, the way that I lead my team, they have complete autonomy in their roles and their work. I don't know what they're doing at any point. In actual fact, they tell me what I'm doing this week. So they'll come to me and say, here's a list of the things we need from you as they are running their own little businesses in what we call a team. So there is no, what did you do and blame. There is, if something goes wrong, you take risks. Maybe things don't go right. If something goes wrong, we say, what can we do to fix this now? What can we do to make sure it doesn't happen in the future? And we have processes for that. So it's a great way to live. Most people are doing a combination or a mix-up of this. If you believe dogs shouldn't be trained, you're probably not listening to this podcast, but if that's your approach, chances are you're doing a mixture of probably one and two because your interaction, your relationship with your dog is the training. The questions you have with your kids, the questions you have with people who are on your team, that is your relationship. And if you want what I want, where my dogs flourish on their own because they've made good choices, then take a look at some of my past podcasts here and see how these layers of learning come together. So you do end up with a dog who absolutely loves you, but they love you because of the freedom you've provided for them. That's it from Shaped by Dog. I'll see you next time.