Motivating Your Dog

Your dog is running around in the park. You call her and she just keeps on running around and sniffing. You feel like murdering her. Instead, wring the neck of the person who said that “dogs like to please”. Of course they do. Themselves.

Motivation is a state of wanting something and being driven to behave in a certain way in order to attain what one wants. The behaviour is usually goal-oriented, and the goal is the fulfilment of some internal need, interest, desire, preference or drive.

Hence to motivate is to bring about a state in which a person or dog wants to do something, or behave in a particular way.

Motivation is what drives the dog to act, and what keeps it going when actions have been learnt. Motivational training means using what the dog wants to achieve the behaviour that you want.

If you are having trouble motivating your dog, this means that you want your dog to do one thing and your dog wants to do something else. Why is this?

1. Very simply, not rewarding your dog often enough for doing the desired behaviour

2. Rewarding your dog, but combining reward with correction, reprimand or punishment

3. Not controlling and using the every day life rewards that are important to the dog

I will talk about all of these aspects of motivation.

What is the role of motivation in training?

In the early stages of training, you are laying a motivational foundation for the dog. This will stay with the dog as you proceed from initial teaching to reliability to to final performance. Unless there is a sound motivational foundation, the dog’s performance will break down, as a result of boredom, fear, distraction, stress or lack of enthusiasm.

Pack drive, the desire to join in activity as part of the team, does not always come naturally - at least not in the sense of co-operating in basic obedience exercises. The ultimate goal in advanced level training is for the dog to find the activity undertaken with its handler (be it herding, guarding, competing in agility or performing any other specialised roles) to be intrinsically rewarding. However, this is not achieved by thinking that the dog ought to just naturally like the task, or “do it to please”.

Intrinsic motivation (finding an activity rewarding for its own sake) is built up by leadership, interaction with the dog and use of the primary motivators such as food and play. The motivation gradually becomes generalised :

1.    “I really want  ... this food/to chase this ball/ to run in this park”
2.    “If I perform this action, I will get something I want”
3.    “All good things in life come from activity with my handler”
4.    “I really enjoy these activities”

“Earned rewards” reinforces your position as pack leader and is a system of teaching your dog what you want by using natural motivation.  This is how you can do it :

1.    Find out what motivates your dog - what does your dog want or enjoy?
2.    Restrict your dog’s acccess to those things
3.    Bring about the behaviour that you want, for example by inducive hand movements
4.    Use whatever motivates your dog to reward or reinforce the behaviour you have induced
5.    Require your dog to respond obediently to a command in return for any of the good things in life
AIMS : To identify what motivates your dog. To increase your dog’s interest in natural motivators.

Now let’s look in more detail at the three main reasons for lack of motivation.

1. Very simply, not rewarding your dog often enough for doing the behaviour.

Why not?

One reason is that people assume the dog wants to please, so doesn’t need to be rewarded.

“Dogs want to please...”

This is the biggest myth. If dogs wanted to please their owners, no-one would have any problems with their dogs, and this is obviously far from the truth!

Generally they do want to please - themselves. As we all do. The traditional approach to dog training is to make the dog do what you want. The more modern “motivational” methods, which I prefer, are based on motivating the dog to want to do what you want.

...or avoid getting into trouble?

Praise, petting and company are important to dogs. Isolation is stressful and causes many behaviour problems. Communicating our emotional state also has a profound impact on our dogs, who are receptive to expressions of fear, anxiety, aggression or happiness on the part of their owners. However, it is a giant leap from that to the claim that “dogs work just to please” or that dogs are motivated solely by praise. Usually traditional trainers resort to “correction” (i.e. harsh voice, reprimands, jerks on the lead, physically shaking the dog) when praise turns out to be an insufficient motivation to guarantee the dog’s behaviour.  The motivation of the dog is not “trying to please” so much as “trying to avoid getting into trouble”.

Not enough practice

Another reason is that people do not practice enough, and although the dog is rewarded for doing the behaviour, this does not happen enough for the behaviour to become well established.

Missing opportunities for reward

A third reason is that the dog does the behaviour, and the handler puts in time practicing, but misses opportunities for rewarding. This might be because of simple training error, not being prepared, not noticing etc. or it might be due to moving on to intermittent rewards to soon.

Insufficient reward means that you have not established a motivational foundation for the dog to perform the behaviour reliably and maintain it.

2. Rewarding your dog, but combining reward with correction, reprimand or punishment.

This is highly demotivating for a dog. Forms of correction, reprimand and punishment have no place in the early stages of training because they cast such as long shadow, turning the dog off the training situation in general.

Stages of training

Training is not just a “one size fits all” process. There are stages of training, and the role of rewards and reprimands varies with each stage.

Initial teaching stage

Ian Dunbar calls the initial stage of training the “what” of training. The aim at this stage of training is to establish the behaviour and teach the dog what you want. According to Dunbar, about 10% of the effort of dog training is in teaching the dog what the signal means. At this stage, it is appropriate to reward the correct response and ignore the incorrect response.  Any correction or negative feedback will confuse or demotivate the dog, and may generalise to the whole training situation. The traditional approach of praise the correct and reprimand the incorrect has a superficial rationality, but is highly demotivating. Reward versus no reward works a lot better, and the good trainer will set her dog up for success, ensuring that mistakes are minimal.

It is extremely important in the early stages of teaching to work on motivation, not just on response to commands. It is all too easy to teach the command in such a way that the dog reaches the point of refusal - to take an  eager dog and bore the dog to death, by repetition, irrelevance and insufficient reward.

Laying a motivational foundation

The next stage is what Dunbar calls the “why” of training

Dunbar suggests that this is the crucial stage of training - 85% of the effort consists of teaching the dog why she should do it, motivating the dog to want to do it - “now I know what sit means, but why should I do it?” The answer is : “Because if you don’t I will not open the door. You will not come in. We will not go for a walk, you will not be patted, you will not get your dinner etc.” It is best to teach relevance of a command at home in the course of everyday living. The dog should only get a life reward for doing it right the first time. If the dog gets it wrong at this stage, you can let her know what she missed out on. However, if your dog is getting it wrong more than once out of about ten times, you need to review the teaching stage.

It is at this stage that you try to move from primary rewards such as food to life rewards and generalise the rewards to intrinsic enjoyment of the activity. Dogs internalise the idea that walking, sitting, coming when called, fetching the dumbell etc. is enjoyable because it has been associated with all sorts of good things.

Dunbar says that it is important that no punishment or reprimand is used until the dog has been thoroughly trained in this stage. It is most upsetting if someone acts in a punishing way towards you and you don’t know why.  It undermines the dog’s confidence and trust. Personally, I prefer to avoid using punishment or reprimand as much as possible. However, if you think your dog has a strong motivational foundation, and is reliably getting the behaviour right 90% of the time with intermittent and every day life rewards, an instructive reprimand, such as “no, sit” when your dog jumps up may be used without destroying motivation. The problem with teaching this is that people tend to latch onto it, and overuse it in the early stages of training, leading to a loss of motivation.

The *STAR* SYSTEM

There are different aspects to training. Getting the behaviour initially is different from the stimulus control stage, where the focus is on the signal or cue that you use. To help people to understand these aspects, I have introduced the *STAR* System.

S stands for Signal - give the signal, for example say the word “sit”

T stands for Teaching - teach your dog the meaning of the signal by inducing the appropriate action

A stands for Action - your dog sits

R stands for Reward - then you give your dog a reward to reinforce the behaviour

You may have taught your dog to do the Action in response to your Signal, but you are nevertheless having a problem; this may be due to your dog’s motivation, e.g. how often and on what basis are you rewarding your dog? What happens when the rewards are intermittent? Does your dog know whether a reward is likely? Can you maintain your dog’s motivation despite extending the length of time and the number of repetitions in between rewards?

Insufficient reinforcement leads to loss of motivation, slowing down of the response, and eventually no response.

For example, if your dog is slow on the recall, but seems to know how to do it, you have have a problem with motivation. Review your rate of reinforcement to troubleshoot this problem.

The maintenance stage

At the maintenance stage of training, when your dog has acquired the behavior and will perform the correct action in response to your signal, you ned to shift your focus to the R stage - the rewards you are using. You might focus on which reinforcement schedule is most suited to what you are trying to achieve. Is your aim to move on to everyday life rewards to maintain good manners in your pet dog? Or is it to use rewards in a discriminating way, to fine-tune your dog’s actions? Or is it to experiment with variable rewards, to maximise your dog’s motivation, and maintain enthusiasm for an activitity on the long term? Each of these goals will be best served by a different reinforcement schedule, a different choice of what, where and when to reward.

Loss of motivation occurs in the maintenance stage when people assume that the dog “knows” the exercise, and therefore no longer needs rewarding. Behaviour that has been built up can unravel without a carefully constructed rate of reinforcement. I prefer to maintain a high rate of reward, but become more and more discriminating in my criterion of reinforcement. A common error amongst handlers is to be concerned about making rewards intermittent, but being very slack about their criterion - which leads to slack behaviour, inadequately reinforced.

3. Not controlling and using the every day life rewards that are important to the dog

Up until now, I have been talking about using rewards to motivate your dog. But what do we mean by a reward?

A reward is anything that your dog wants, especially what she wants most at this time, in this situation.

Practical pet training often emphasises the use of every day life rewards - pleasant things you do with your dog in the course of every day life.

What motivates your dog?

The most common motivators for dogs are:
•    eating food
•    playing with toys
•    getting social rewards e.g. praise, petting, attention and company
•    playing with other dogs
•    play or activity with human handler
•    physical activity
•    exploring and sniffing the environment
•    self-rewarding activity, such as escaping from a boring backyard
•    everyday life rewards
Dogs also find sex rewarding, but that’s a hard one to use in training!
The motivators listed here are “natural” but they have to be developed and built upon. The natural urge to play has to be channelled, so that all the dog’s enthusiasm is directed towards training activities using that motivator.

Every day life rewards should be controlled and used to reinforce desirable behaviour. Releasing your dog to play or have freedom is a form of reward. The sit command can be used in this way - sit to earn attention, sit as an alternative to jumping, sit for every day life rewards such as coming in the door, going out the gate for a walk, being released in the park etc.

What are your dog’s top three motivators?

Write down your dog’s three preferences

1.
2.
3.

For example, food, pats and playing ball.

Motivation is relative

Your dog’s preferences will change according to the situation. For example, in the park, at home and at training school your dog’s preferences may be different. Take time to write down your dog’s preferences relative to the situation.

At home my dog likes:

1.
2.
3.

In the park, my dog likes:

1.
2.
3.

At dog school, my dog likes

1.
2.
3.

Offering your dog a low level preference and withholding a high level is a bit like punishing. Trying to force your dog to eat in the park when she frantically wants to play or chase a ball is not going to motivate her to come when called.

So use the highest value reward available. So as not to overdo it, you can combine high, medium and lower value rewards within the one exercise. I suggest you give the highest value reward least often, with more of the lesser value rewards leading up to it.

The Premack principle teaches us that you can reinforce an activity with any activity of a higher value. So if your dog would rather roll in a dead bird than watch you attentively - great! You have a 6 million dollar reward to offer. Get some eye contact and release your dog (with a release word) to go and roll her heart out.

Motivational release

The “motivational release” is a special form of release in which the dog is motivated to work by means of controlled play used as a reward. It is very upbeat and energising, giving your dog the motivation to continue responding to you with great attentiveness and enthusiasm.

The intense concentration of the  formal heel exercise takes the form of coiled up energy, a build up of tension leading to an anticipated reward. 

The ordinary rewards used to reinforce the dog for heeling are praise and food. Food is used primarily to teach the dog correct position. Praise is used to lift the dog’s mood a little and give occasional feedback in between food rewards.

The motivational release usually involves the use of a toy, and a release word such as “get it!”, followed by an brief but intense tug game, then a resumption of heeling. The motivational release is a form of reward, which reinforces the dog for concentrating during the heel exercise and gives an outlet for the build up of tension. The point about it is that the reward occurs during the exercise, not after it. Let’s get away from the ridiculous idea of releasing the dog to “exercise finished”. Why tell your dog that training is dreary and all the good stuff happens afterwards. Make all the good stuff happen during training and then give your dog a low key release to a boring rest.

Specific training situations

1. Sit

It’s important to teach pet owners to use everyday life rewards to reinforce their dog’s sit.

I often see people trying to get their dog to sit in situations that they have been told require it. So, while the dog leaps around in excitement at the entrance to the park, the owner struggles with the dog, gives commands, and the dog continues to leap around. Eventually, the owner exerts enough pressure to force the dog’s rear end to the ground, and honour satisfied, let’s the dog off.

Is this what is meant by maintaining motivation in everyday life rewards? I don’t think so.

The dog has no incentive to stop leaping around, because he or she gets let off the lead anyway. All the dog has done is make the owner do the work.

2. Walking on the lead

Why is it so hard to teach dog owners how to get their dogs to walk on the lead without pulling? Because they do not control the every day life rewards that motivate the dog. These every day life rewards are intrinsic to going for a walk. Every time you take the dog for a walk, you are rewarding pulling, and giving the dog more motivation to pull.

Basically, dogs learn from the consequences of their actions. We use this to teach our dogs. Good behaviour has a good consequence. Undesirable behaviour need not lead to punishment, but rather it should result in the dog having no opportunity to gain anything rewarding.

To some extent, when you go for a walk you give your dog a social reward - not just praise, but the pleasure of your company. Most dogs enjoy being with you and moving with you when something is happenning. In addition of course, your dog loves to sniff and explore on a walk. This can be used to reward your dog for not pulling. Rather than allowing your dog to drag you into the bushes, stop as soon as your dog pulls, and proceed when your dog comes back alongside, causing the lead to become loose again. Reward this behaviour by a “release” to the end of the lead to have a sniff.

You should remove all the rewards if your dog pulls i.e. the dog never makes any progress towards goal (e.g. the park or an inviting telegraph pole) by pulling. The dog has the pleasure of the pack leader’s company, and the reward of going out into the environment - but only if he or she walks on a loose lead. Arrival at the park is a “jackpot reward”. Please make sure that the behaviour which leads up to it (which will be majorly reinforced) consists of walking on a loose lead, not pulling. This is called using “everyday life rewards” to reinforce the behaviour you want. These everyday life rewards may be more powerful that praise or food when your dog is walking.

3. Coming when called

The training methods described here are “motivational”, which means motivating your dog through reward to want to do what you want. This is especially important with coming when called. We will go through various ways of maintaining your dog’s motivation to want to come when called, despite all sorts of distractions.

Your dog’s motivation is built up gradually, using these principles :
1.    Coming when called should always be rewarding.
2.    Your dog should not be given opportunities to be rewarded for not coming. That’s the hard part. Try not to overuse your dog’s name or repeatedly call your dog, as this will just teach him or her to ignore you.
3.    Call, reward and release your dog repeatedly, so that your dog learns that coming to you is not the end of the world, the end of all the good fun in the park etc.
4.    Use a variety of rewards, especially whatever relates to what your dog wants. For example if your dog “only wants to play” a brief play with a toy is a better reward than food or a pat.
A reward is anything the dog wants - not just what the handler is offering. Food and social rewards often lose their appeal compared exploring and playing. Use of toys helps to make the handler more interesting than other dogs. Play with people or dogs should be controlled as a reward. I am training a Golden Retriever at the moment. Of course she likes food and fetching toys, but her motivational release is to come running over to me for a cuddle. That’s the sort of “teacher’s pet” that will have me eating out of her hand any day!

“Distractions” can be turned into “life” or “environmental rewards”. If your dog wants to sniff a tree, surge towards a friend or run in the park, restrain her until she gives you her attention, then reward her with release to go and do it. When you judge that she is willing to pay attention again, call her, and release her again. Don’t make coming when called the end of all the good times. Call her several times, and make the release her gateway to her favorite reward.