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It only took four kibbles to fix a problem I’ve had for about eight years.
A long time ago, I sought to stop using body pressure to move my dogs through space. It was a conscious and serious effort. For me and for my dogs, using body pressure was not a benign undertaking. You can see two of my very first YouTube videos about it. Negative vs Positive Reinforcement and Teaching a Dog to Back Up Without Using Body Pressure.
Maybe it’s because I’ve had a fair number of frightened or sensitive dogs, but I’ve seen the aftermath of using body pressure so frequently. And I don’t want my person to be something a dog shuns! I want them to be comfortable with me, to come close to me, to settle into my space, and not to flinch or run away if I enter the space gently. their. I want them to have pleasant associations with my physical presence.
But from the title you can see that I haven’t completely succeeded. There is one last behavior that I taught with R-.
I’m not talking about the accidental ways that R- creeps into our lives with our dogs and even into our training. It probably still happens sometimes without my knowledge. And I’m not talking about things like letting a dog walk out of a training session, which may be a planned choice but is still a mistake on my part. I’m talking about a deliberate choice I made to exert pressure for escape behavior. Yes, reader, I did.
How we did it: arrange the dogs on the bed
Clara didn’t get the privilege of “sleeping in her bed” until she was almost two years old. It had nothing to do with his behavior. It was the reality of having a household with four dogs, one of which (Summer) really wanted to take out another (Cricket). I had a size 300 crate on my bed for the summer, Cricket and Zani were loose on the bed, and I had no room for Clara the hulk. She slept as she had the first night in my house, in a crate on the floor right next to my spot on the bed.
I took this whole setup apart after Cricket died in 2013. I moved Summer’s crate to the floor (she was still sleeping there most of the time). Clara was granted bed privileges and never left. I will never forget his first night. She planted herself against my leg and didn’t move all night. Anthropomorphizing a little: she seemed incredulous at this development and remained motionless as if not to miss the opportunity. She never once got out of bed at night unless she was about to be sick.
The unwanted behavior
So what was Clara’s unwanted behavior that I used negative reinforcement on? Was she bullying other dogs? Be noisy ? Trying to play or creating problems at night? No. Is that every night, when I was about to go to bed, she went to bed before me in my exact place. She flattened herself against my pillow and made herself comfortable where I had planned to sleep. All. Only. Night.
So every night when I was ready to go to bed, I needed Clara to move.
Years before, in another setting, a trainer I respected told me that although she let her dogs get on her bed and sleep with her if they wanted to, she never used treats on the bed. She said the bed was already rewarding and hanging out on the bed was a privilege. Also, she discouraged games on the bed because she wanted it to be a place to relax.
I took those words to heart, probably out of the context in which she originally meant them. No treats, no play on the bed. Check.
The result: I was left without powerful positive reinforcement methods to move my dog. And it didn’t occur to me to try a hand target, for example, and reinforce with caresses and sweet talk. Or I could have made another area of the bed more attractive with fluffy blankets. None of these probably would have worked against “that special place”, but I wish I had at least tried.
How I used negative reinforcement
Every night, I would get Clara moving by telling her “move” and nudging or pushing her into her space. I did it knowing it was unethical, but I couldn’t think of any alternative. I didn’t insist on it, but R- is R-. You can achieve avoidance with a small stimulus. And in the typical progression of negative reinforcement, Clara started drifting away earlier in my behavioral sequence, before I even said anything. All I had to do was walk over to my spot on the bed and she jumped up and pulled away. (She never stopped getting there in the first place.)
I didn’t like that. It made me sad for my dog to see me coming and going like I pushed him with a stick. That’s the thing with R-. I wasn’t even touching her then. I didn’t have to. She saw the precursor, which had become the (aversive) signal to move, and she moved. And the move was recognizable as a move away from something unpleasant. It didn’t sound like happy, positively reinforced behavior.
It bothered me for scary years: my beloved friend stepping out of the way like I was a danger to her.
what i do now
Enter Lewis. Nothing like a new dog in your life to make you rethink things.
The first two nights, Lewis chose to sleep in a dog bed on the floor. Then he got up on the bed with Clara and me. Then he approached me and started snuggling up.
So he decided he wanted Clara’s current spot right next to my head and upper body. He’s an ambitious little guy, and whatever Clara has, he wants. It didn’t agree with me that he kicked her out of her place, but Clara wasn’t assertive enough to hold on. I was going to have to move a dog on the bed again.
So I thought about it for two seconds and decided that the “No food on the bed” rule was going to go away. I took the ridiculously easy option of grabbing four pieces of kibble from a jar, getting Lewis’ attention, and tossing two where I wanted him to go. Then I used the other two to bring Clara next to me (his usual spot) when he was away. (None of them keep the kibble.)
Instead of a dog looking at me with concern as I approached, I had two happy faces looking at me. “Here are our last two treats of the day. Where are you going to throw them?
Another change
Lewis’s arrival brought another change: my bed is now covered in chews and toys. I see two Nylabones, a water buffalo horn, one of those hard tree roots, three stuffed toys, an unstuffed toy shell, and a piece of cardboard. Obviously, the “Bed is only for sleeping” rule is also gone. (All chews have risks; I’m not making any recommendations for anyone else’s dogs.)
This means that there are other forms of reinforcement available for Lewis besides comfort and hugs. So when I direct him away from home, I don’t send him into a desert. I toss the kibble towards one of his favorite items. He can sit there, or he can come back and snuggle up against my legs. His choice.
To fall
No dislike is too small to be concerned. I know of a dog who started growling and snapping at his owner when she pulled out the tape to work on the “hide your face” trick. I know of another who became dangerously aggressive after his owner used a spray bottle on him. I even know of one that started biting the family after being physically pulled off the couch, quite similar to my problem.
Clara has never been aggressive, luckily for me. The fallout for us has been avoidance. His positive conditioned emotional response to me was damaged. Probably only to a small extent, because there were so many pleasurable experiences on the other side of the scale. But I really don’t want one of my dogs to see me coming and think, “OMG, you better get moving!”
The reason for this message
I imagine I will get horrified responses from other positive reinforcement coaches to my admission that I recently used negative reinforcement to get behavior. But this is not a new admission. Here is an article where I listed the situations in which I was able to use it. I don’t tolerate it; in fact, I hate its insidiousness and am always striving to find a better solution. As I get better at being a trainer, I can eradicate it and make things more fun for my dogs.
But I also expect the opposite reaction, that the question is ridiculous and understated. “She wrote a whole article about how sad her dog had to move!” These readers may say that my dogs need to toughen up or even that I let them dominate me.
But my reasons for the job are more important than this little behavior. One of the reasons was to share that I was taking something too literally and not thinking for myself. This is a mistake I make as a non-professional. I just don’t have the breadth of experience to avoid misapplying things like “rules”. The other, more practical reason to share is that I – and all of us – can always reconsider a training technique. Nothing should be below scrutiny.
I regret using my body as something to avoid.
Clara and Lewis
I’m glad Clara now gives me an expectant look when I approach the bed at night, waiting for her kibble. (Croquette! That’s all it took!)
And Lewis isn’t always vying for his place now. He waits next to the bed to see where I’m going to throw his kibble. Sweet!
And the irony: Lewis is not a sensitive soul. I’ve never tried it, but I’m pretty sure from other experiences that he wouldn’t have yielded to my body’s pressure at all. He is a master at suddenly becoming limp and very heavy.
I’m glad for both of them that I finally used my brain and stopped listening to a voice from a long time ago.
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Copyright 2022 Eileen Anderson
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