Fear Is A Powerful Motivator (For You! Not Just Your Dog)

00:00 — Kati opens with a trigger warning and asks listeners to subscribe to support the…

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, let's jump in. Hey guys, thanks for joining me today. I think we have a pretty decent episode lined up for you today. I wanna talk about the difference between building a behavior and stopping a behavior.

And this is something we've touched on many times, but it still, it just blows my mind almost every time I talk to somebody, uh, for the first time. Because here's the thing, there is so much information out there about teaching your dog to do things and building up behaviors like simple commands, like sit and down and come when called, and things of that nature.

And a lot of that information is actually really good information. Um, but building a behavior takes time. It takes skill, it takes repetition, it takes a motivated dog, all sorts of things. And it's actually much, much harder than stopping a behavior. And what's so funny about that is that's what everyone's struggling with. That's what everyone is struggling with. Yeah, some people struggle with teaching their dog basic commands, but not many. We have a lot of dogs come in that already know their basic commands. They know sit, they know down, they know come when called. They even know heel or place.

Um, they don't know that it's non-negotiable, which we'll get into that in a minute. Um, but teaching your dog to do behaviors is something a lot of people do successfully all on their own. It's not that hard. Yes, it takes some skill, but most people can do it.

Um, I'm not saying they do it as effectively or as efficiently as a professional dog trainer might, but they get it done. The dog learns the word, they learn the behavior, and that's great. The, because there's a lot of support and information out there online to do that. And most of it is accurate. Um, I'm not gonna say it's all accurate. Um, there's definitely some flawed information out there on some certain aspects of it, but we don't need to dissect all of that right now. The point is, when it comes to eliminating behaviors, um, which we all need, right?

Because none of our dogs are perfect. You know, if you have a dog that's getting into the garbage, if you have a dog that's jumping on people that's barking out the window, it's chasing bikes, chasing the cat, any of these things, these behaviors are usually very easy to stop.

And it's mind boggling because nobody knows how to do it. Nobody knows how to do it, and there is no information out there online to teach you. I'm not gonna say there's none, right? Because obviously there's some, my information is out there. Um, but it's very, very few and far between. It's very hard to find, you know, we talk about my stuff, I'm like a speck of sand at the bottom of the ocean. Um, it's very, very hard to find, but it's easy guys. It's easier, right? Teaching your dog not to jump on people is easier than teaching them to sit.

04:00 — Kati argues that eliminating unwanted behaviors is easier than teaching dogs new behaviors.

That's the thing I find so fascinating about it. It's not that it's hard to do, it's that the information isn't out there. And there's lots of false information out there telling you that if you do the things that you need to do to stop behaviors, that you're basically an abusive person.

That you're mean, that you're harming your dog in some way, that you're damaging your relationship, that it's gonna come back to haunt you. Your dog's gonna become aggressive. They're gonna bite all this fucking nonsense. Um, and that's why people don't know how to do it. That's why. And that is why it burns my butt so badly, um, because it keeps people stuck and there's just no need of it. These are things people struggle with and suffer with for months and years. And you can fix a lot of this stuff in one day, one day, one lesson, sometimes one minute.

I'm not saying it's always one and done, it's not. We'll talk a little bit about that. But there is no reason for somebody to struggle with jumping for years. There's, there's no reason for that. It is so easy to stop. And so let me just say like if you hire a trainer and you ask that trainer, Hey, how do I stop? You should ask someone this before you hire them ideally.

And if they say, first of all that they're not gonna tell you because you have to pay for the information, that alone in my opinion is a red flag. Or if you say, Hey, how do you stop jumping? And they start rattling off these long, complicated protocols that you have to make adjustments over time and chip away at it and use lots of rewards and lots of leash guidance and all this stuff. Don't hire that person. They don't know how to stop it or they're lying to you. Neither one is good <laugh>. No. The way we stop behaviors is not by using any kind of reward that will not stop your behavior.

It might actually stop it temporarily in the moment, but you're not going to get any real long-term change out of that. You just won't. Yes, I've tried it. Yes, I know <laugh>. Um, I wasn't always who I am today. I wasn't always a dog trainer, but when I began my career as a dog trainer, or when I started to get into dog training as something like a hobby and then a little bit more than a hobby, it was all reward. And trust me, I noticed there were things I couldn't stop. I couldn't get any real change.

I've tried it. Now, if you ask these people who only use reward and tell you that you should only be using rewards, why don't you ask them if they've ever tried punishment? Because the answer is probably no. It's probably no. And if by some chance it's yes, and it didn't work out right, didn't do it right, that's common too. But most of them haven't because the whole idea isn't to actually change the dog's behavior. The idea is to look good, to sound good. So let's talk about building behaviors versus eliminating behaviors. When we're building a behavior, the goal is to actually get the dog to execute something.

08:00 — Kati defines building behavior as teaching a dog to execute something, making it more…

So right off the bat, you can see why that's a little bit more complicated than just stopping something, right? If somebody wants me to cook pancakes, I have to be taught how to cook pancakes. This takes some time and some effort.

But if someone just wants me not to cook waffles, okay, that's all that means is don't cook waffles. It doesn't mean I have to do anything else. So what do I have to learn in that case? Nothing, right? I just have to not cook waffles. That, that's much, much easier than cooking pancakes. And that's why building behaviors is more difficult most of the time than eliminating a behavior, right? Because the expectation is higher. The dog, the neurological processes that have to take place are much more demanding when we're asking the dog to do something versus not do something.

So when we're teaching a dog a behavior, we're teaching them usually a verbal word, and we want that verbal word to become associated with a physical behavior of some kind. And we want that physical behavior to then be associated with a reward so that they will be motivated to do it more. That takes a lot of repetition. It takes doing things in the right order. It takes having the dog properly motivated, which sometimes we can't do. Sometimes dogs just are not motivat able. Um, a lot of dogs like food, obviously. We'll use food, we'll use high value food if we have to.

We're usually tying in low level e-collar so that eventually we can motivate them by just bumping up that e-collar a little bit, right? So it's negative reinforcement. I don't like to get into the sciencey terms, they don't matter, but it's basically escape training, right? So we use very, very gentle eco stem. And after we do enough repetition, it's like, okay, if the dog is still just totally disinterested or defiant or whatever, just doesn't wanna do it, doesn't wanna put in the effort to learn to do it, we can just increase that level a little bit, just enough to influence his behavior and to get him to go, okay, maybe I should pay attention.

Maybe I should put in some effort. Maybe I should learn how to shut this thing off. It's annoying. Um, and so those are the different ways we can motivate a dog or some dogs like praise and affection.

Draco that I have here right now really wants to be told he is a good boy, <laugh>. He does not want any trouble. Uh, he's very, very submissive to his humans. He, he wants your approval. Um, and so that's helpful, but not all dogs are like that. So there's skill required, there's timing. Dog needs, needs to be motivated. Your sequence needs to be in the right order. If you say the word as the dog is doing the behavior, that's not the right order. If you say the word as you're pulling out a food lore to bribe the dog, that's not the right order.

12:00 — Kati emphasizes that the verbal cue must come before the handler moves or offers…

So your sequence matters. If you're trying to teach your dog a word, the word needs to come first before you move a muscle. So there's lots of things you need to consider when you're building up a behavior. And then you wanna generalize that behavior to various environments, scenarios, situations, inside, outside, at the park, in the backyard, at the beach, whatever, wherever you wanna take your dog. 'cause they're gonna regress a little when you go into different places like that, different levels of excitement, different levels of distraction. And then ultimately, once your dog knows the word, knows the behavior, has lots of reps, then guess what?

Then we're gonna start treating non-compliance just like an unwanted behavior, right? But we don't rush to that. That's way down the road guys, most of the time, especially if you're DIYing your training, right? That's not something you're gonna do tomorrow.

How long, I don't know, how much time are you putting in? How well does your dog know the stuff you've taught them? That those are the things that matter. But once your dog is very fluent and rehearsed, you're going to treat non-compliance just like an unwanted behavior that you wanna eliminate, right? So we've been talking about building up wanted behaviors. How do we deal with unwanted behaviors? Well, it's easy guys. We tie an uncomfortable consequence to that behavior, a very uncomfortable consequence, not a mildly uncomfortable consequence. Why? Because I want the behavior to go away, not go away for now, not go away for 10 minutes or a day.

I want it to go away. So I'll use the vending machine analogy again. If I lose a buck in a vending machine, I might try it again, especially if I'm there all the time. If I lose 50 bucks, probably not. Consequence matters. It does determine how likely your dog is to test that again. So I've learned over time by working with lots and lots and lots of people, that that's the mistake everyone makes. Or at least least it's the biggest.

Nobody likes this part of training <laugh>, especially since all the information out there tells you not to do it. And so everybody wants to use the least possible amount of force, the least possible level of punishment, right? But here's the thing, you screw the pooch if you do that, pardon the expression, but you are shooting yourself in the foot if you do that because you're almost ensuring that the behavior's going to come back again and you're gonna have to correct your dog again. And you might also be desensitizing them to the correction so it becomes less and less meaningful.

And then it's almost like it just becomes this random thing that's happening, and they don't even necessarily know why or make any changes to their behavior at all. And that's just stupid, right? And so now you're running around, you're just ringing that thing like a doorbell. Your dog doesn't care, doesn't know what to do about it. This is the thing that happens. Love the show. Well, I have great news. We are offering an inexpensive subscription to our new premium content. This is content that isn't available to the general public. We make it just for our subscribers.

We're gonna cover a variety of new topics in these episodes, and I think it's gonna be a ton of fun. So you can jump right down into the show notes to get that website address and then skip over there and sign up for this premium content. Just wanted to take a second to let you guys know about that. Thank you so much for your support. And now on with the show, no punishment is meant to be very impactful and very effective and safe and humane, right? We don't do anything that could harm a dog ever.

But the fact is, and there is no arguing with this fact, this is a fact with most simple behaviors, behavior, if you can tie a sufficiently uncomfortable consequence to that behavior, so your dog knows it's contingent, right? This behavior always results in something extremely uncomfortable. If you can accomplish that, that behavior goes away. And so you're not correcting for it anymore, right? So punishment, effective punishment is self limiting, it's self terminating because if the behavior goes away, the corrections do too. And I tell everyone, when I'm working with them one-on-one, I said, if you don't do this, if you're too afraid of it, you know, you know, or if you're just too sloppy and your dog doesn't tie the consequence to the behavior, like that's a problem too.

17:00 — Kati describes effective punishment as self-limiting because dogs avoid behaviors consistently linked to severe…

Um, but that happens less often. But if you, if you're too afraid to provide a consequence that's very meaningful to your dog, what will happen is I'll bump into you in six months or a year or whatever and you're gonna, I'm gonna ask you about the jumping and you're gonna tell me you're still working on it. Now if you, if you wanna be that person, go ahead. But why? And everyone's so afraid of it. What's gonna happen if, well, what's gonna happen if you don't? So fear is a very powerful motivator and it is for people too.

So if you're so afraid of what's going to happen for correcting your dog about something, maybe you should ask yourself what's going to happen if you don't? Because dogs don't live that long. Honey, yeah, I guess your dog can live in their kennel when company comes over or maybe a company won't wanna come over, right? Or if your dog runs off from you and off leash, it's like, okay, I guess you can keep them on a leash the rest of their life. And I'm not saying that's the worst thing in the world, but it's not what most people want.

What will happen if you don't sufficiently correct your dog where they need to be corrected? And I still think the most beautiful thing about all of it is the fact that it is self terminating for the most part, right? Yeah, it's not fun, but you do it and then you're mostly done, but your dog's not a robot, right? So sure, behavior could regenerate. I usually recommend to people that they kind of set things up and just check on it, right? If it's not a situation your dog is in all the time, take counter surfing as an example.

20:00 — She uses counter surfing to illustrate how one highly uncomfortable consequence can stop a…

We teach people how to stop counter surfing. We make the counter very, very hot. We tie a very uncomfortable consequence to the dog even checking out what's up on the counter. Very, very meaningful consequence for that. Why? 'cause it could kill your dog.

And even if it just costs you your dinner, like that's not okay either. But your dog could get cooked bones, it could get medications, any number of things. We tell everybody how to stop that. And then we say just check it once in a while. Every few months or so, just set it up, hide around the corner, make sure your dog is still on the straight and narrow, right? Because enough time goes by, the brain might go, opportunity is knocking. We should give this another shot. That's normal. And that's why though it's so important to supply a consequence that is sufficient because you'll see that happen.

It'll be much more likely to happen and happen faster if the consequence is very mild. So what most people are doing with bad behaviors, even though they're attempting to correct them, is they're just interrupting them, right? They're, they're supplying a consequence. That's just enough to get the dog to stop in the moment. And from the human's perspective, they corrected their dog but they didn't in in an hour. If the dog's in the same situation, they're gonna do the same stuff again.

But though it's not the funnest part of training, what I love about it is, for the most part, once you've done it, you've done it right? So if I'm teaching a dog place, we're doing hundreds and hundreds of repetitions of place. If I'm teaching a dog to stop barking out the window like a lunatic, I might only have to correct him once. I don't have to set up 5,000 instances of someone going by the window. Most likely it's gonna be two or three times right before the dog believes, oh, okay, this is not a fluke.

I can't bark out the window anymore. No big deal. We can do that. That doesn't take long to do. So building behaviors much, much harder. You're expecting a lot more from your dog, a lot more reps, a lot more guidance, a lot more food. Motivation help generalization to other environments, distractions, all this stuff. Stopping behaviors. Nope. We're just tying an uncomfortable consequence to that behavior. That's it guys.

And so why is it that 99% of the people that come to me, it might even be a hundred <laugh>, have at least some behaviors they want to stop and they haven't been able to do it. Why? Because nobody will tell you how. That's why. Because the internet is full of lies. That's why it's absurd. And no, it doesn't matter what your dog's history is, it doesn't matter if they're nervous. It doesn't matter if they were abused and by the way, they probably weren't. But everybody has a story about why their dog's behavior is the way it is.

24:00 — She rejects explanations that excuse dangerous behavior solely because a dog is nervous, abused,…

And it's always some kind of a sob story. And I'm sorry if that offends you, but there's no way to know for sure unless you were there and it's not serving you or your dog to perpetuate the story. It's usually not true. It's usually just genetics. Guys. Dogs are born that way. They're born guarding resources. They're born being afraid. It doesn't mean anything happened.

I had a person tell me a week or two ago that their dog knew that some human threw them away. No, your dog doesn't know that she canceled her program <laugh>. Um, for other reasons, most of which I understand to be that my, I didn't take detailed enough notes on her dog. Anyway, that's <laugh>. That might be a topic for another day. Um, yeah, a psycho passage has been coming out of the woodwork lately. But no, her dog didn't know that. Some human threw it away. First of all, probably some human didn't throw it away.

You wanna know what happens Most of the time, most of the time people love their dog and wanna keep their dog, but their dog has behaviors that they can't live with and they can't figure out how to stop them because the information isn't out there, right? And all these rescue organizations and veterinary behavioral associations and all these places that tell you, you should never have to use a negative consequence for anything. You should never make your dog uncomfortable or stressed in any situation. Those folks are the reason the dog was discarded and ended up in a shelter or rescue, quote unquote rescue, right?

'cause they're not, that's why they're there is because of these places in the first place. Do you see the cycle?

No, they're not all that way, but 99% of them are. And if you work with or for a rescue that isn't that way and that does tell the truth and that does advocate for the use of punishment to stop behaviors, you should be very, very, very pissed off at the other 99% that don't. Right? It's like, okay, I'm gonna tell people they can't punish bad behaviors, so then they can't tolerate their dog. So then they discard it and it comes to me and then I can sell it to somebody with a sob story and around and around and around we go.

And there's no need of it because stopping most behaviors is so easy. And then a lot of dogs, depending on their personality, if they know, just knowing that you'll provide consequences for things, just knowing that they become the best version of themselves. If you look at little Esme that I have right now, she has a bite history. I can't even imagine this dog biting somebody. That's how soft and sweet she has been the entire time she's been here. And that's not me picking on the owner. That's me picking on all the information out there. All the people that are supposed to be authorities on dog behavior, all the establishments that say you can't correct behaviors, you can't use punishment, you can't use negative consequences, blah blah, blah, blah.

Can't do anything anymore. Your dog is just supposed to be able to run a rough shot over you and be free all the time and do whatever they want. And it's all unicorns and cupcakes.

That's who I blame, right? But the reason this is Es MA's situation is she was just doing what came naturally. It's just her natural wiring. It's not 'cause anyone kicked her down the stairs, <laugh>. It's not 'cause she was abandoned, it's not none of that. She was doing what came naturally because there were zero negative consequences in her life. There was zero real structure, zero real boundaries, no rules were enforced. And so when you do that, and a lot of us do, a lot of humans live with their dogs that way. And you know what?

29:00 — She attributes one dog's biting history to absent consequences, structure, and enforced boundaries.

If they're happy that way, great, as long as your dog doesn't bother me, we're fine.

I have no problem with that. But make no mistake about it. If, if you live with your dog in a way that gives them total freedom and they've never felt a correction for anything, you've never set a real boundary. You've never enforced a rule with tangible negative consequences in any context, you will see, most likely at some point the worst version of your dog. You will see what they've got going on in there. So if your dog has any proclivity toward reactivity, toward aggression, toward biting, toward guarding, toward being anxious, any of those things, if you set no boundaries, right, because no boundaries means there's no clear non-negotiable instruction, your dog is just left to be in their completely natural state, whatever that is, it's not always gonna be positive guys, right?

So you're going to see whatever their stuff is, right? Quote unquote. There's stuff, every dog's different. For some dogs there, there won't be any real bad stuff. For some dogs there will.

But how are they supposed to even know any better? You're basically living with them like you are their equal. So then they treat you like it and they use their teeth. It's just normal, right? But my point was a lot of dogs just knowing that you can and will provide tangible consequences for things, it bleeds over into everything and the dog just becomes the most respectful member of the household. And I'm sorry, but I don't see the problem with that. Then other dogs, not so much. Some dogs are very pushy, bratty, um, you know, just think they're royalty.

This is their castle and, and their things. And, but those dogs are a little less common. Most dogs are somewhere in the middle. But I had a dog like that and I wanted so badly to be able to like cuddle with her and let her come up on the couch with me and hang out.

And I like to do those things with my dogs. And I couldn't. 'cause every time I did it, she turned into the devil <laugh>. So every dog is different. But the point in this episode was supposed to be, um, that it's easy to stop behaviors. It's so much easier to stop behaviors than it is to teach and build up behaviors. Yet when I meet people, they've had far more success with building behaviors than they have stopping behaviors. And there's a reason for that. And it's because of all the bull crap that's promulgated out there, all the fearmongering.

Stop being afraid of what will happen if you do, and start being afraid of what will happen if you don't. Dogs don't live long enough. If your dog lives a full long life, depending on the breed, what are we talking somewhere between nine and 15 years usually, right? That's not that long. I don't wanna wait five years to see if my dog starts to calm down as he gets older. No thanks. I'll take a split second correction now in exchange for those years. But that's just me, <laugh>. Hey guys, thanks for joining us today. I really hope you enjoyed the show.

33:00 — Kati urges owners not to spend years waiting for age to resolve behaviors that…

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.