Probably most people reading this blog believe that force-free training, with a strong emphasis on positive reinforcement is better for our dogs. We know that yelling and yanking are so yesterday, and that scientific methods can conquer any behavior issue, from basic skills to severe aggression. And while all of that is true, I confess it’s not the main reason I moved away from the prong collars and corrections I first used before my solid position of force-free training. It’s time to confess a selfish little secret: Force-Free Training is better for me, too. While I’ve always had an interest in animals and behavior, I never really got serious about training until a stray pit bull puppy ran across a busy road and into my life. At nine-months old, Oscar was more energy than anyone should have to deal with, and more brains than was safe. Training classes helped temper both of those into manageable levels. Before long we were training in the obedience and tracking phases of schutzhund, taking seminars in Search-and-Rescue, and were scheduled to take our BH (a basic schutzhund test). It’s been five years or so since he’s taken a class at the school that required us to use a prong, and to this day if we’re driving down the road nearby, he’ll lean into the turns we should be taking to get there.
Gradually, I learned about clicker training, and Oscar and I expanded our skills to agility and rally obedience. Oscar was a natural at agility, and it quickly became our favorite class, but, really, Oscar just loved school in general. These last two sports were at schools that used clickers and positive reinforcement – no prongs, chokers, or punishment tools. And it was these two sports that got me to notice something else. Something pretty huge. Here’s a hint:
Did you catch that, or were you too busy trying to solve the murder to see the other changes? It’s easy to miss what you’re not looking for. When Oscar and I were training in Schutzhund and formal obedience, I was concentrating on what he was doing wrong. His heel was so close to me he was physically leaning – correction! His sit wasn’t fast enough – correction! He would stand up too quickly from a down-stay – correction! It was all about looking for things to correct, and while I always loved him, and always knew he was the best dog on earth, I spent all my training time thinking about what was wrong, what should be better. And then we started clicker training – clicking for each tiny increment that he did correctly. That heel that we’d been working on for almost a year took five minutes to correct in a session of clicker training that had so much right going on it sounded like a percussion contest. All of a sudden training went from “why does he keep screwing this up???” to “Look how much he’s getting right!!!” I couldn’t wait to show off to everyone how brilliant he was. Was he more brilliant than he was before? Of course not. But I was able to see it differently when I was looking for that brilliance and not looking for things to fix. Oscar was happy, but he always loved school of any kind, and he’s a generally happy guy. But I was happy because all of a sudden I was seeing all the reasons to be happy. I tossed the prong and never looked back.
I became obsessed with all things animal behavior, and learning all about this amazing scientific method of modifying behavior when a little broken red dog wandered into my world. A trainer I knew saw Liberty get hit by a car and asked me to foster her for a while (one of my early lessons in how terrible I am at returning fosters). Covered in scars, missing half an ear, and with a wonky grin as a result of a previously broken jaw, she was the most shut down dog any of us had ever seen. Liberty had to be carried outside to the bathroom for six weeks, wouldn’t move more than six inches for food, and was petrified of almost everything. Using positive reinforcement for her tiniest of successes, I taught Liberty the world isn’t that bad a place. The improvements she made were positive reinforcement for me as she taught me the other way that force-free training is better for me. Empathy. Liberty had fears that I never could have predicted. Big trucks, sure. Vaccuum cleaners, obviously. But who would have predicted that a small pink basketball could function as a baby-gate because Liberty would be too terrified to pass it, or that a ceiling fan would cause her to curl up in a ball quivering? In Liberty’s case, what-to-click wasn’t a pretty heel or an enthusiastic down, it was stepping forward at all, or encountering something new without melting. You haven’t seen heart until you’ve seen where this girl started and where she is now, and following that journey with her has been not just one of the greatest gifts of my life, but one of the greatest lessons.
Working with her wasn’t a matter of telling her what to do. We were truly in it together. I began to see successes through her eyes – her successes may not have looked big to an outsider, but because I was looking for those tiny increments of improvement, I could look back and see the mountains we’d climbed together. Because, oh, those mountains… From being terrified to get in or out of a car, frozen petrified at the sound of a basketball in the distance, and crying loudly at the squeak of a dog toy to being a guest dog in a class I was teaching where a student’s own dog became injured and helper dog in my Reactive Rover class, to nursing tiny bottle-baby kittens I bring home on occasion from the shelter, Liberty has moved more mountains that most of us have ever seen.
Gradually, more magic happened thanks to force-free training. I began to generalize. When I worked with people, I started seeing more than I should say “thank you” for – more “hey, good job”s started coming out of my mouth. More reasons to tell people I noticed their effort. I started *clicking* people more. And I started being happier with them, too. Now read that again. I started being happier with people. I work in an animal shelter, where a lot of times it can feel like you encounter the worst of our kind – we see on a daily basis the horrors that our species will do to another. But instead of focusing on an underweight dog running the streets, I was seeing the kind person who caught him and brought him to us to be cared for. Instead of complaining that I would never give a dog up just because my husband and I were splitting up, I was grateful that the dog was coming to a place where he would be loved and not given “free to a good home” on a sketchy internet site. My empathy expanded into the human realm, too. Maybe I don’t think I would give up a pet because I was moving. Thank goodness I haven’t had to find that out – thank goodness they were taking care of the pet instead of just leaving it behind. When I started looking at things that way – looking for things to click – I was happier all around. I was looking for greatness, for heart, for inspiration, and I was seeing it, every hour of every day. It’s a powerful lesson that strikes me on a regular basis – you can make your life better, just by looking for good. You really do see what you’re looking for. So click your dogs, your neighbors and your coworkers every time you love what they do. Oh, and don’t forget to look out for cyclists.