This week I had two consults with two brand new dog behavior clients. Both families were awesome, and also pretty different from my last few clients. In 2012, I worked with several dog-reactive dogs and a couple of human-biting dogs. This week’s clients were both families with great young dogs who wanted some guidance so their already-good dogs would be better.
This got me thinking: how do we motivate owners to do the work with their dogs?
true love can be achieved with more data collection!
I am in my second-to-last semester of my master’s program in Behavior Analysis. For the last year and a half, I have regularly had to design, conduct, and report on various behavior change programs. I have done the majority of these projects on the athletes I coach; a few have been done on myself and my lovely wife. Every so often, though, the parameters of my projects allow me to work with my dogs.
This, I think, has been huge in shifting my work from the traditional dog trainer approach to a more scientific approach. Right now, I am working with Lenny on a recall program. Every single step of this process is video recorded, measured, and graphed. Yes, I am a huge dork, but this is so cool. I am seeing all of the things we talk about in my classes happen in real life. It is, honestly, quite thrilling.
I am clearly thrilled in this picture. Lenny, less so.
So where do my clients come in to this? Well, I keep working with Lenny for a few reasons: 1. I want her to come when called, but honestly this is probably the least motivating aspect of the project for me. 2. I have to present this project as a poster to two classes of grad students in just two months and it has to be the best. I am a wee bit competitive. Ah well, we all have our flaws, right? 3. Graphing and seeing her progress is so effing motivating to me.
That’s right. This whole project is pretty much motivated by the beautiful graphs that are coming out of it.
These beasts are skeptical.
So to bring it back to my clients again, what I need to figure out is what motivates them to keep working with their dogs? There are, of course, some pleasures built into the whole system: working with your dog is fun; seeing progress is fun; the approval of your dog trainer, I assume, is reinforcing. But many of these are delayed. Sometimes you don’t see progress right away; sometimes your dog doesn’t make the process fun; you only see your dog trainer once a week, and is her approval really all that important?
What I am interested in is how can I get people really excited about working with their dogs regularly. Do regular dog owners enjoy a good graph? I would love to collect data on all of my clients’ progress, but I’m not sure whether that would actually deter owners from doing the work with their dogs. Should we implement a token economy, such as a sticker system? Maybe X number of stickers gets you 10% off your next visit?
This could be you! Hard at work, surrounded by dogs (sounds like my dream. Turtle looks like she's surviving, but maybe not thriving.)!
I am open to your thoughts, folks! What would make you work with your dog more? What would balance out the pain of having to actually collect data on your dog’s behavior (or would you secretly love it like I do?)? Help!
Having just completed a course with Charlie, I can tell you that a big deterrent to training is the weather! It is not easy to use a training clicker and fish out treats while wearing two pairs of gloves. Charlie is also not a big fan of the cold (but will tolerate it). It is discouraging when I get home from work around 4 and it is already twilight.
In lieu of what I’m supposed to be training, I have started training other things indoors. Like learning to accept the toothbrush as a normal thing that should be in his mouth (Charlie can and will bite, hard, over things like this). I just hope that we are not back to basics on his reactivity when the warer weather rolls around!
We are bringing a new puppy home next month. Right now my biggest motivator is remembering Chester and what a great dog he was, and knowing that I will only have that kind of dog if I work just as hard with this pup. Another motivator is remembering why we had to get rid of Moose. Every time I think about him, and see the scar on Nikki’s face, I know that things need to be very different this time around. That said, we’re ready for you and Dulcea to visit Wyoming anytime, I’ll even let you play with my dogs
Knowing how much better behaved my dog will be and the pride that will bring me in the long run is what we are using as our motivation with our puppy. I wish I could get people-treats for working with her!
Seeing measurable progress would be awesome. So, uh, graphs and stuff, and knowing what to record. My dog has entered his Adolescent Asshole phase, and while he used to do things like sit on command and stay the hell off the couch, he is regressing and making me feel like an abject failure. Having evidence that I’m conquering his rebellion would make it way easier to continue arguing with him about how I know damn well that he knows “sit”.