Will I Confuse My Dog If I Allow A Behavior Sometimes? Not Necessarily.

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Welcome to Off Leash and Unfiltered. Trigger warning. I'm Kati Peppe, delivering the truth in dog training.

Hey everybody, this is your host, Kati Peppe. Before we jump in, I just wanted to take a quick second and remind you to hit the subscribe button because that helps us so, so, so much. We appreciate every subscribe and follow, and we have so much valuable information we wanna share with you. So we don't want you to miss an episode. Without further ado, hey everybody, thanks for joining me for another episode of Off Leash and Unfiltered. Hope everybody's having an amazing day and enjoying this super awesome weather. Oh man, it's so great. Um, man, summer's so short in Maine.

I just wish it would last longer. Um, but for that reason, we'll be taking a trip soon up into the woods. Um, I'm super excited for that. It's like my favorite place to be is just in the northern Maine forest. Um, really doesn't get much better than that, especially when you're spending most of your time now just blocking people on social media.

So for those of you that don't know, uh, we have a lot of folks leaving us crappy comments and messages and angry reactions and fake reviews and blah, blah, blah. That's fine. It's just, it's a lot of work to take out that garbage every morning, but, you know, is what it is. <laugh>. So, but anyway, it's time for me to take a vacation, um, and get my head screwed back on straight. So today we're gonna talk about an interesting thing, um, that we get asked about a lot in our, our go-home lessons. Um, because as you know, people, obviously, they do the training, it's an investment, right?

02:00 — Kati describes owners worrying that familiar routines, such as allowing greeting jumps, will undo…

Then they're going home and they don't wanna mess it up. And one of the most common things that happens is people might have routines they like to do with their dogs, but they're afraid it's going to mess things up.

Um, like they might let their dog jump on them when they come home and things like that, and we're not big fans of that. But the fact is, if you've got, like, especially like if you have one person in the house that doesn't mind the dog jumping on them, but somebody else does, right? Or you don't want your dog jumping on everybody, or the most common example is you want your dog to be able to spend time on the couch with you, but you don't want them up there all the time. You don't want them up there unsupervised.

You don't want them up there getting their dog hair in there when, you know, you have company coming, things like that. Um, and so you're basically telling your dog like, look, sometimes these things are okay, and sometimes they're not. And to most people they go, well, that's confusing, right?

That's mixed messages. And it's like, well, no, not necessarily. Um, so it can be, but not if you know how to do it. Um, so it's perfectly fine, guys, to have behaviors for your dog that are sometimes okay and sometimes not. Um, basically what that means is you're just asking your dog to make a discrimination, which if you feel like that sounds too hard for your dog, let me tell you, they're making discriminations all the time anyway, whether you're asking them to or not, because it's just naturally part of the pattern. There are always discriminations that need to be made for the brain to figure out what causes what, right?

What's contingent upon what. Um, and so for instance, a good example is the story I always tell about my own dog and the cat food, right? He, he learned he couldn't eat the cat food when I was around, and then he learned that he couldn't eat the cat food when he was alone, right?

Because I went outside and I pretended to leave and I had a camera set up and I corrected him when he went to eat the cat food. And it was very simple. Um, and I set that up several more times to make sure he was making the right choice before I truly left him alone. And it worked beautifully. He doesn't eat the cat food. Now, I can leave him home alone for eight hours outside of his kennel and he won't touch the cat food. But if my mother's there, he does, right? So he behaves better alone than when my mother is there.

And that is simply because he's made a discrimination and he knows there's consequences when I'm home and there's consequences when he is alone. But there are no consequences when my mom is there. So I, I know I keep throwing my mom under the bus, she fits nicely <laugh>, but that is how it works.

Your dog will make discriminations. And so it might be a person, it might be something in the environment, it might be the environment and where you are, it might be a noise, it could be anything that occurs, um, as part of the sequence, right? And so your dog just learns that. And so another good example would be Gary Wilkes. I've mentioned him before. If you don't follow him on social media, you should, um, a wealth of information, uh, to be had following his social media. Um, but he told the story, uh, once upon a time of a client that he had with a dog who needed to learn when they could and couldn't go out the open door.

05:00 — Kati describes owners using a doorstop statue’s direction as a signal for their dog.

So in their case, what they did was they taught the dog that when the statue, they had a little statue that functioned as like a doorstop where it would hold the door open when they wanted their door open.

Um, they taught the dog, when the statue was facing in one direction, the dog could not go through the door, and when the statue was facing in the other direction, the dog could go through the door. So to some people, this is gonna sound wild, um, but there's really no reason that you couldn't do it as long as visually it's easy enough for your dog to see the difference. Um, uh, it's all you do is you attach consequences to the behavior that you want to, right? Or you could even attach consequences to both. There could be a reward for going through the door when the statue is facing in the correct way, but there's a punishment for going through the door when the statue is facing in the incorrect direction, uh, right?

And so all you're doing is you're just giving your dog a pattern, guys.

And that's what all training is, is it's a pattern full of contingent behaviors and consequences. And the consequences have to be meaningful, whether they're positive or negative, right? They have to be motivating in some way. If the dog is, um, indifferent about the consequence, then it doesn't really do much. Um, so you could just present a pattern that way. So it's the same thing with jumping and with getting on the couch. It's like, you know, if someone likes to roughhouse with the dog and let the dog jump all over them, like that's fine, do it by invite, right?

So you have to have a sign that tells the dog, there will be no negative consequences for doing that behavior. Um, but if I don't give you this sign, then there is a negative consequence for doing this behavior, right? So, and I would recommend, well, I'll get there in a minute.

So let's say that the sign was you could pat your chest and invite your, maybe there's a verbal as well, right? And you invite the dog to come jump on you, give you a hug, whatever it is you want. Okay, great. But then you have to correct the dog when they do those behaviors, and you haven't given that sign. So the biggest problem with this is that humans are just so wishy-washy and inconsistent, right? So most people, if they're trying to do this, what would probably happen is they invite the dog up, they have a good time, whatever, then the next time the dog does it on their own, they'll just make excuses.

The dog's confused, the dog doesn't know, the dog doesn't understand. It's like, well, we know that because you haven't taught them yet, right? So you have to actually give them the information.

And that's the part we don't wanna do <laugh>, we don't wanna give the dog the information. So you have to say, right, you have to have a marker, probably "no" is what we usually use. You have to say "no," follow up that "no" with a correction. Now, what I was going to say a minute ago is I would recommend in those cases that your correction be relatively gentle. I know it's not something you hear me say a ton, um, but the reason for that is the stiffer the consequence, the less likely your dog is gonna wanna try that behavior again, right?

Not the end of the world if that happens. But now you've got more work cut out for you trying to encourage your dog to do the behavior when it is okay, right? So I would actually start out with relatively gentle consequences. Um, what that looks like just depends, of course, highly on the dog.

Um, but so just to give an example, if you're one of those people that wanted your dog to hug you and you invite them up and they hug you, and that's fine, you give them their affection, um, but when they jump up and jump on you or hug you or whatever, when you did not give the preceding sign, right, they just did it on their own free will, they just wanted to do it, then you would say "no" and you would correct your dog, um, at like a low, barely motivating tap on the e-collar, right?

09:00 — Kati recommends starting with relatively mild corrections because the behavior will still be allowed…

Or just, maybe it's just a little bump of the knee, maybe it's a little leash pop. You could do whatever works for you, which is true in most cases. Um, but we're not trying to send the message, "I never wanna see you do that again," not yet anyway, right?

So we start relatively gentle because we're just trying to establish a pattern in the dog's brain, right? We want them to see, oh, when I see the sign, and then I do the behavior, that works out great. If there is no sign and then I do the behavior, that doesn't work out as well, right? But it's not earth-shattering <laugh>, okay? However, as your dog starts to discover this pattern and becomes better rehearsed at it, and they've had a chance to see what leads to what consequence, and, and you know, just more time, more rehearsal, more reps, and you know that they're understanding it, that's when you start increasing the accountability.

Okay? So now you would up your, your negative consequence, right? Because it's so well established. Because they know at that point that when you invite it, it's okay. And that's the thing you really wanna get established before you really start correcting highly doing it when it's not invited, right? So same thing with the couch.

Couch. If I pat the couch or I say up or whatever the word is you wanna use, um, and the dog comes up, everything's great, they have a good time, we have affection. You can use a food if you really wanted to use food to, to strengthen that, um, you know, you could actually teach a formal command even if you wanted to, right? And then there's just a correction when you do the command, and I didn't tell you to, which, by the way, is like what you would do with a service dog, right? You can't have service dogs going around, flipping lights on and off and picking things up.

They're not supposed to. That wouldn't work. So just because you teach your dog a command, you can also teach them: you only do this command when I tell you to, right? It's a discrimination. But the thing that that requires is immense consistency.

And as humans, we're just not really very great at that <laugh>. We tend to either get lazy or just kind of feel bad and just let things slide and think it doesn't matter. And it's so, so important. The more complicated the thing is you want your dog to learn, the more discriminations they need to make, the more important it is that it's consistent, right? Because that pattern gets jumbled if it's not. And so there basically is no pattern, right? Because things, things are genuinely random. It's not that the dog thinks they're random, they truly are, right?

The dog is correct. Um, because our pattern is not staying the same if we let it slide sometimes, and they're not gonna get it, right? But you would start out with a cons, a negative consequence that is, you know, low to maybe middle of the road for the dog.

It's just enough. And then, like I said, once they're, they're good at it, you know, they understand it, then you can start increasing that accountability. Right? Now there's a real correction. Uh, feeding time is another good example of that. When I first start teaching dogs that they cannot advance on their food bowl when I put it down, right? All dogs are taken aback by that. Even the dogs that belong to people that say they make their dog sit, they make their dog wait, it's like they're usually managing the dog, even if it's just with commands.

13:00 — Kati describes setting down a food bowl without commands, then marking and correcting the…

And, and we don't do that here. We just set the bowl down, and so the dog sees the bowl hit the ground, and I haven't given them any commands, so they just move in on it right away. And I say no, and I give them a little correction, but it's, it's usually pretty low, right?

Again, dependent on the dog. And if it doesn't work, I can turn it up a little bit. Um, not the end of the world. But if I just came in real hot and I said no, and I just walloped them with something really, really high and uncomfortable, some dogs will go back and eat after that, but a lot of them won't, right? They're gonna be nervous about it. They're, unless you have a really, really, like, um, obtuse, confident, resilient, forward pushy dog, they might be fine just going right back to the food when you tell them to.

But, um, a lot of dogs will be like, no, I'm all set. I don't want any part of that right now. Um, so we tend to go lower, right? But once we're reaching the end of a dog's program and they're two weeks, three weeks in, I'm holding them much more accountable, right?

Because we're feeding them at least twice a day, right? So they're getting tons of practice and you will often practice, uh, during the day as well, not with meals, but with just resources. Um, so especially when we're teaching, like, out command and stuff, we're putting resources on the floor. And the first thing that happens is if the dog advances on it, we tell them no. Right? And there's a correction for that. You can't advance on a resource until I actually invite you to do so. Um, and so by the end of the program, dogs have had plenty of rehearsal.

Um, and so we are, we're holding them more accountable for that, right? And so what you'll see is the same dog that if I had corrected them really high in the beginning, they wouldn't have been interested in their food, right? At least not with me around.

Like they probably would wait for me to leave or maybe they'd eat the next day or something like that. Um, but that same dog, if you do it correctly and you're coming in at the right levels, then at the end of their program, I could correct them that high and it wouldn't faze them at all because they would know exactly what caused it. Because they have the practice, they have the rehearsal, they know the pattern, they've seen it so many times. And so what I guess the point here is, guys, like once your dog has had tons and tons of practice, if you're consistent, right, and they know the pattern, that means they know what's what's happening.

They know what the correction is for, right? Your dog becomes more certain about what causes a consequence once they know the pattern, right? But in the beginning, before they've had a chance to see the pattern, they don't know yet.

16:00 — Kati distinguishes sometimes-permitted behaviors from never-permitted behaviors, using counter surfing as an example.

So that's why you don't wanna light your dog up like a firecracker for doing something, um, that you're going to allow them to do sometimes. Now, things like counter surfing that you never want your dog to do, right? Or if you're one of those folks, hopefully like, like I am, you never want your dog to jump on you, um, then you can go high right away. And that's totally fine. In fact, it's recommended, right? But I'm talking about the very specific situations where your dog's allowed to do this behavior sometimes and not other times. Your dog's allowed to do this behavior when you invite it, but not when you don't invite it.

Things like that where there's a discrimination involved. Um, you really wanna wait. You wanna give your dog the information, but you wanna do it more gently. You wanna wait until your dog really knows the pattern before you turn up the heat and really increase that accountability. But it becomes safer to do that as your dog learns the pattern. Does that make sense?

So that's it, that's how you do it. So dig in and start experimenting with teaching your dogs some ex, uh, yeah, <laugh>. Start to dig in and start experimenting with teaching your dog, uh, to make discriminations where you want them to. Kind of a short one for you guys today, but I think it was a goodie. Hopefully you got some good information outta this episode that you can, that you can use to your advantage. And I think we should do more like this. They're fun. So let me know if there's something in particular you want me to cover.

Alright, guys, thanks for joining me today. I look forward to next time. Bye. Hey, guys, thanks for joining us today. I really hope you enjoyed the show. If there's a specific topic you'd like to hear discussed, you can send that to me directly via email or fan mail. Just jump down into the show notes. That information will be there for you. I really look forward to hearing from you. Thanks for supporting the show, and I look forward to next time.