개들이 명령을 '무시'하는 이유 #323

consequence is probably something pleasant. Something that reinforces the dog, even if it's just a pat or a smile or a good dog. Antecedent behavior consequence. But here's where it gets super sticky. When we are asking the dog to do something, cueing a response, we are thinking in a singular form. We're thinking we have a word or it might be a signal to get a dog to do something. But the dog is thinking in pictures. They're thinking about all of the things that go into the request that we just made. And you're going to say all of the things, put your butt on the ground. But oh, nay, nay, it's not that simple. And it's super important that all dog owners consider this. Antecedent behavior consequence. It's one behavior, in this case a sit, but it's many antecedents, which is why it's referred to as an antecedent arrangement. Because what a dog is thinking of the pictures when we ask for something, they're thinking of everything that they had to learn or unlearn in the process of what a sit is. So, for many people, they start teaching the dog a sit by putting a cookie over their nose, putting it over their head until the puppy or the dog loses their balance and puts their back end on the ground. So, as they're doing that, they're saying sit to the dog. So, sit initially means follow reinforcement. And when you follow it far enough, you get a cookie. That's the picture that the dog initially learns. Some dogs learn sit, unfortunately, by somebody pulling up on the collar and pushing down on the back end. So, they learn that this is the action that means sit. When my hands come towards you, it has some powerful meaning. So, the dog has to learn and unlearn what sit means many, many times over because maybe you will lose the lure of the cookie in your hand and you might just use your hand. When the hand comes up like this, it means sit. But that means if I can't see your hands, I don't have to sit. There's so many things that the dog has to process, what they're learning, what the antecedent arrangements really mean. It's what you hear. It's what you see. It's what you smell. It's what you feel. It's the sound of the cue. Sit, sit, sit. It's the emotion behind the sound of the cue. There are so many things that go into this picture, which is why some dogs won't sit when you say sit, but they might sit when you say sit. It doesn't mean that your dog needs a command. It just means how you train the behavior didn't build in the urgency you wanted by using a simple quiet cue sit. So, also evolved in the sit is what the dog is experiencing. What other distractions are

in the environment? Where is the dog? Does sit mean run in front of you and sit right in front of you? Does sit mean sit in the kitchen only, but it doesn't mean sit at the front door when company is coming through that door? Hey, if this episode is helping you to see your dog a little differently, well, that's what we do here every week. So, subscribe and let's keep that relationship growing. So, your dog's education on all these cues that you believe you've taught them is mostly incomplete until you've helped them generalize and weed out the pictures that are really not that important. And how do you do that? Well, you've got to consider the antecedent arrangements in your training. That's a big part of what helps a dog to learn or delays the learning for that dog. But also there's the human mechanics. How well did you arrange the environment for that dog's learning? The human mechanics and the antecedent arrangements is what brings clarity for the dog in those pictures, but then there's what reinforces the behavior. Where is the value of the reinforcement? If the value is chase the food, and eventually I'm going to repeat this so many times that you're going to understand what I mean, and I'm going to fade the food. The value still stays with the food because sit meant find the food. Okay. Now I just have to wait to find the food. The dog is focused entirely on the food. It may never happen that the food value transfers into the act of doing a sit with you. And if it does happen, it will very likely be an unusually slow process. And you might lose some of the joy and the expediency along the way. Take for example, Kim who works here, she has a terrier mix belief. Now I asked her if I could take belief out for a walk with one of my other dogs. But before I went, I said, Kim, can you get belief to sit in the kitchen? Now it was dinner time for belief when I asked her to do this. And so, she called her in and belief was very excited because it was dinner time. She asked her to sit. And if you're watching this on YouTube, you can see belief came in like a flash and sat very quickly, very excitedly, very expectantly. And then when Kim took the bowl of food and put it in front of her, she still sat there and stared at it. She didn't leave to try and eat the food because she understands sit means hold position until I give you a release word. Now, does that mean when I took belief for a walk a little later in the afternoon, that when I put her winter coat on and I took her out in the cold and me who is in her owner asked her to sit,

that she would sit? Well, if the Q sit is trained properly, then yeah, I would get that sit. Okay. But what if she's running away from me? Would I still get the sit? Absolutely. I get the sit with the same enthusiasm, the same joy, the same drive because of the way the sit was taught. But what if that dog was like a hundred meters away from me in the winter coat, in the cold, on the way back to the house? Absolutely. I'd get that same sit. But then people will say, oh, but if we're going to train this way, when can I get rid of giving the dog a reinforcement? The way we train, we don't eliminate reinforcement. We evolve what's reinforcing. I'm going to say that one more time. When you train this way, you don't think in terms of eliminating reinforcement. You think of evolving what is reinforcing. So, maybe belief gets the reinforcement of getting to chase my dogs because she sat when I asked her to not chase the dog. Maybe she gets the reinforcement of getting to run in the field. Maybe she gets the reinforcement of tugging on a toy. She might get a reinforcement of some food. But when you train this way, the value gets transferred into the act of working with you or in this case, somebody that isn't even her owner. And I purposely didn't take one of my border collies out to do this demonstration because I know the comment section would then be singing, oh, it's your border collie and border collies are brilliant. This isn't my dog and she's a terrier mix. When we're training this way, we are creating partnerships. Think of commands. That's creating pressure. Training doesn't have to be that way. And it all goes back to the way you consider the words you say to your dog and the way you interpret the dog's non-compliance with what you've said. When you stop thinking it's disobedience and you start considering it's a reflection of what you've taught, the world of possibilities opens up for your dog to have joy at a thousand feet, regardless who's asking them to do the behavior. Reinforcement used correctly is never bribery, it's communication. When a behavior is taught cleanly, generalized well, includes the element of the dog's joy for working in the criteria of what success looks like, it becomes automatic for the dog. They don't have to consider should I comply or not. It becomes automatic. A well-taught cue doesn't require compliance because it creates confidence as it's creating teamwork between the dog and the human. Well-taught cues hold up under distraction. Well-taught cues, they travel anywhere. Well-taught

cues don't create hesitation in the dog because they have confidence. They know how to respond with joy. Don't believe people that say the dog needs to know what might happen if they don't listen. It's the trainer that needs to know what should happen if the dog doesn't listen. Turn the magnifying glass on you and you will be a better person for it. Thank you for joining me today. And remember, stay curious, stay humble, and continue to make life better at both ends of the leash. I'll see you next time right here on Shaped by Dog.