Did you know that the finely coiffed poodle is a serious hunting dog? Originally bred in Germany as a water-retrieving dog, they are also extremely versatile and effective at hunting small animals and birds, due to a high prey drive.
Meet Ollie, an 11-month-old poodle, whose guardian enrolled him in the DogDude™️ Jump Start Puppy Program to set him up for success. Ollie graduated that program, which is designed to provide a very strong foundation of obedience and leash skills, with an excellent foundation.
Ollie knows how to “heel” on both the right and left sides, how to move and yield space with his guardian, how to come back and sit in front of her waiting for her next command, and how to focus on her during the walk. But even with those skills, there were still behavioral issues when on a walk. Despite his basic training, Ollie struggled with a very common issue, and would react over threshold at the sight of other dogs, birds, and rabbits. To make sure that he continues on the strongest path possible, Ollie’s guardian invested in advanced training to help desensitize and counter condition him to stimuli in his outside environment.
You see, for Ollie, chasing those stimuli is highly rewarding, so I started using engagement as a reward for practicing obedience. The concept is very simple. When you take your dog outside on a leash, you are exposing them to stimuli they usually don’t encounter, and if you don’t have a strong bond with your dog (in other words, if your relationship with your dog is not as highly reinforcing as, say, chasing a rabbit) then your dog will likely choose the activity that presents the higher reinforcement level.
With the DogDude™️ advanced training program, Exercise, Agility and Advanced Obedience, Ollie is carefully exposed to novel stimuli and instructed on how we (myself and his guardian) want him to behave in those given situations. He earns the ability to participate in highly reinforcing activities like running alongside my bike and running an agility course with his “pack” member. Dogs love to run, jump and explore with a teammate and I use Anthem’s main park as an agility course. When his obedience tasks match my commands, he is rewarded with access to those highly stimulating and reinforcing activities.
So what does all that mean?
With the advanced training program, Ollie is learning through exposure. By desensitizing him to stimuli he would normally want to chase we are shaping new neural pathways in his still growing brain that will stay with him as he gets older.
Think of it as a rut in a hiking trail. When a new trail is formed, the landscape is rocky and uneven, but as the path is traversed over and over, you begin to see a rut carved out from the repetition. Working with dogs is very similar to hiking a new trail. When you first start, the trail is rocky and unpredictable. As you build a solid relationship with your dog through training, the trail becomes more defined and in time becomes second nature to the dog and their guardian. With time and with patience, new neural pathways (trails) are formed that teach the dog that the reinforcement value of chasing and lunging at other dogs, birds and rabbits is not as rewarding as interacting with his guardian.
The ultimate goal is to get Ollie to see me (while training) and his guardian, and his interactions with us as the highest value reward he can gain access to. When that happens through practice and repetition, Ollie will choose his guardian over everything else. Doing what his guardian asks will be “more reinforcing than a rabbit” and that’s a wonderful place to be.
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