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Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, Welcome to the Foundation's podcast. I'm your host,

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Speaker 1: Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about figuring out

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Speaker 1: how to connect positive associations to specific dog behaviors and

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Speaker 1: why it's the foundation of almost all successful dog training.

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Speaker 1: You know, this is a pretty easy one to understand

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Speaker 1: on the surface, but when you dive into it, you

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Speaker 1: realize that the concept is pretty nuanced when it comes

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Speaker 1: to our everyday interactions with our dogs. Positive associations, conditioned responses, rewards,

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Speaker 1: that sweet, sweet dopamine hit that comes from getting what

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Speaker 1: you want, Well, that stuff works with our dogs too,

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Speaker 1: and we should think about it whether we are working

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Speaker 1: with an eight week old puppy or a middle aged dog,

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Speaker 1: which is what I'm going to talk about right now.

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Speaker 1: You guys might not be super aware of a lot

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Speaker 1: of Russian physiologists who were doing whatever physiologists did in

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Speaker 1: Russia around the beginning of the nineteen hundreds. I know

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Speaker 1: I'm a little light on knowledge when it comes to

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Speaker 1: that topic myself, but there was one fella in the

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Speaker 1: field at that time, not surprisingly named Ivan, which doesn't

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Speaker 1: mean anything to you, but his last name was Pavlov,

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Speaker 1: which might ironically ring a bell Pavlov won the Nobel

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Speaker 1: Prize in nineteen oh four for his studies on digestion

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Speaker 1: in dogs, and as any good researcher will do, Pavlov

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Speaker 1: didn't set out to study conditioned responses in canines, but

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Speaker 1: he did notice that the dogs he was working with

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Speaker 1: started to salivate when his assistants would walk in the room.

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Speaker 1: During his research, Pavlov or one of his assistants would

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Speaker 1: introduce either edible or non edible items and then measure

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Speaker 1: how much saliva the dogs would produce. His thought process

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Speaker 1: was that salivation was a reflexive response, or in other words, unconscious.

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Speaker 1: It just happened, like how some folks in their heart

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Speaker 1: rate will skyrocket at the site of a snake or

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Speaker 1: a giant, hairy, dumb spider on their wall. Now, throughout

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Speaker 1: his research, Pavlov realized that the dogs would salivate not

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Speaker 1: at the site or smell of food, but simply when

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Speaker 1: a white coated research assistant would enter the room. The dogs,

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Speaker 1: in his reasoning, would have had no reason to salivate

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Speaker 1: at the mere sight of a person unless he deduced

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Speaker 1: correctly that the dogs had been conditioned to associate those

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Speaker 1: people with some potential calories some reward. A lot of

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Speaker 1: great scientific discoveries have happened when a researcher said something like, hmm,

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Speaker 1: that's interesting, and they followed their curiosity down an unintentional path.

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Speaker 1: That's what Pavlov did first with a metronome that he

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Speaker 1: used as an auditory connection to the delivery of some food.

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Speaker 1: He knew because he checked that hearing a metronome at

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Speaker 1: the onset of the experiment didn't elicit a salivation response.

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Speaker 1: It was only after he connected the food to the

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Speaker 1: sound that the dogs also connected the prospect of food

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Speaker 1: to the sound. While he wasn't a psychologist, he did

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Speaker 1: jump start the whole field of behavioral psychology with his findings.

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Speaker 1: This is spiraled out into the world of us humans

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Speaker 1: and has greatly influenced behavioral modification treatments and mental health treatments.

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Speaker 1: Now we take this for granted. Now we think, well, duh,

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Speaker 1: you can get a dog to do things you want

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Speaker 1: if you promise it something it wants. But this was

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Speaker 1: back when dogs weren't hanging out on the couch with

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Speaker 1: us and snuggling up in our beds at night. The

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Speaker 1: View on Dogs one hundred and twenty five years ago

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Speaker 1: was vastly different from our view today. His research was groundbreaking,

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Speaker 1: and the crazy thing is it works on us too.

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Speaker 1: If you don't believe that, go get your ass married

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Speaker 1: and pay attention to the times when you find yourself

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Speaker 1: doing a bunch of landscaping in the yard or some

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Speaker 1: other tech you'd rather just hire out or not do

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Speaker 1: at all, and then think about the prospect of what

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Speaker 1: that might mean to you, uh rewards wise. That's all

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Speaker 1: I'm going to say on that. Conditioned responses are what

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Speaker 1: we are all aiming for with our dogs, which is

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Speaker 1: a concept you can hear an actual dog trainer touch

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Speaker 1: on if you listen to the upcoming interview episode I

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Speaker 1: did with Jordan Horrock, who is a badass trainer who

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Speaker 1: knows a lot about dogs. We want our dogs to

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Speaker 1: want to work for us, and that means we need

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Speaker 1: to motivate them. It's as simple as that, but it's

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Speaker 1: also kind of not simple, or I guess not as

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Speaker 1: simple as we would like it to be. The easiest

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Speaker 1: way to understand this is to look at what Pavlov used,

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Speaker 1: which is food wild animals like the kind that we

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Speaker 1: eventually molded into chihuahuas and German shorthaired pointers spend their

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Speaker 1: lives in the pursuit of two things, well maybe three

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Speaker 1: food safety in a mate, but we'll call food and

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Speaker 1: safety for now. And food is a powerful motive because

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Speaker 1: without it then it's time to die, a usually not

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Speaker 1: very enjoyable death. Treat training is wildly effective, which is

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Speaker 1: why it comes up a lot on this podcast. We

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Speaker 1: know how to get young dogs to pay attention to

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Speaker 1: us and to offer us certain behaviors, and it works

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Speaker 1: very very well. In fact, there was a time not

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Speaker 1: long ago which might have been born out of just

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Speaker 1: trying to be contrarian, where you would hear some trainers

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Speaker 1: talk about how treat training is never necessary, and maybe

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Speaker 1: it's not, but it's also very uncommon to hear these days.

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Speaker 1: Most people who are tasked with getting dogs to do

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Speaker 1: something people want dogs to do will reach for a

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Speaker 1: handful of kibble right off the bat. Even low food

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Speaker 1: drive dogs which I don't meet too often but they

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Speaker 1: do exist, can be coaxed into behavior with some kind

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Speaker 1: of treat. At its most simple point a to B

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Speaker 1: level that is just a conditioned response. Offer the food,

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Speaker 1: often by letting the dogs see it or smell it,

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Speaker 1: give it a command, and if the behavior is delivered,

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Speaker 1: the food is provided. If you do nothing else but

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Speaker 1: that to start to cement the foundational elements of obedience

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Speaker 1: in your dog, then you have at least put them

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Speaker 1: on the right path early on. Where this gets muddy

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Speaker 1: is that we forget sometimes that everything we do can

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Speaker 1: elicit a conditioned response over time. So let's say you

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Speaker 1: go to treat train your puppy to sit. Simple right,

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Speaker 1: let it smell the kibble in your hand, tell it

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Speaker 1: to sit while pushing down on its rear end, and

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Speaker 1: then minute butt hits the ground, the dog gets the reward.

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Speaker 1: But what if you don't always wait for that butt

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Speaker 1: to hit the dirt before you release the treat. Then

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Speaker 1: your dog will figure out it can kind of half

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Speaker 1: squat to get the reward. You've conditioned it to a

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Speaker 1: partial behavior and not one you want, because it'll only

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Speaker 1: get less solid the more you reward the half delivery

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Speaker 1: of that behavior. Now, if you think that some dogs

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Speaker 1: won't do this kind of thing, keep try training them.

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Speaker 1: I had a Golden retriever that I was potty training

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Speaker 1: figure out that if she faked peeing, she'd get a treat,

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Speaker 1: So suddenly she had to go outside all the time,

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Speaker 1: and suddenly she had to pee a lot, but only

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Speaker 1: for like one second at a time. She got greedy,

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Speaker 1: and as smart as she was as a little pupster,

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Speaker 1: she was no match for one of the more successful

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Speaker 1: squirrel hunting article writers out there. The lesson here is

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Speaker 1: one that will come up a lot when you're trying

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Speaker 1: to get a dog to do what you want it

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Speaker 1: to do. There is always room for error if you

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Speaker 1: allow it. I recently had a conversation with a trainer

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Speaker 1: who said that every dog needs to be force fetched,

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Speaker 1: but there are different ways to achieve that. Now. Some

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Speaker 1: dogs need the toepinch method and the pressure on pressure

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Speaker 1: off stuff to instill in them that not only will

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Speaker 1: they be expected to pick stuff up, but they'll be

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Speaker 1: expected to hold it until they are allowed to give

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Speaker 1: or drop. You can condition this response by force, which

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Speaker 1: is very effective and not nearly as bad as it

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Speaker 1: sounds on the surface, but you can condition this other ways.

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Speaker 1: I love dogs that have so much retrieving desire that

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Speaker 1: they are annoying as hell. If I have that, I

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Speaker 1: usually have quite a bit of natural hold and carry

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Speaker 1: to work with, which makes my job of training hunting

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Speaker 1: dogs a hell of a lot easier, but it's also

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Speaker 1: a way to deliver what the dog wants or to

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Speaker 1: withhold it, so that dog that needs to learn how

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Speaker 1: to pick something up and hold it can control its

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Speaker 1: own fate with the next retrieve. They drop the bumper

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Speaker 1: at your feet, they don't get that next throw. They

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Speaker 1: come to heal and wait to deliver it to hand.

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Speaker 1: They get the next retrieve, which is all they want.

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Speaker 1: If I had forty dogs a quarter to train in

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Speaker 1: a limited amount of time, I probably wouldn't go this route.

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Speaker 1: But with one high retrieving desire dog every half decade

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Speaker 1: or so, this is an easy way to condition a

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Speaker 1: response out of them. They get to choose what behavior

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Speaker 1: they deliver, and they will almost always give you what

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Speaker 1: you want if that behavior also gives them the rewards

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Speaker 1: that they want. I know that's kind of a muddy sentence,

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Speaker 1: but it's true. At their most fundamental level, Connecting positive

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Speaker 1: associations with certain behaviors works to facilitate specific tasks that

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Speaker 1: the dog is expected to do. But there is also

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Speaker 1: a reason why when you go to the vet, the

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Speaker 1: texts and the vets will love up your dog and

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Speaker 1: give them treats if you allow it, because that's a

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Speaker 1: potentially high stress environment that can bring out the worst

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Speaker 1: fear responses in dogs, some of which will manifest themselves

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Speaker 1: into aggression and just generally uncooperative dangerous behavior. But your

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Speaker 1: dog will have to go to the vet clinic multiple

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Speaker 1: times in its life, and so wouldn't you rather have

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Speaker 1: a dog that is conditioned to be excited about it

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Speaker 1: over a dog that cowers in the corner and bears

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Speaker 1: its teeth. These are the things in our lives with

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Speaker 1: dogs that we often overlook solely to work on their

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Speaker 1: behaviors at home and in the field. But it's the

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Speaker 1: parts of life that don't involve tossing a bumper in

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Speaker 1: the backyard or looking for a few october grouse flushes

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Speaker 1: that fill up most of our relationships with our dogs.

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Speaker 1: This line of thinking works for training into a dog

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Speaker 1: the kinds of things we want, like not having a

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Speaker 1: dog jump on people, not having our dogs range four

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Speaker 1: hundred yards out to blow the whole pheasant field out,

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Speaker 1: or not having our dogs jump out of the duckboat

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Speaker 1: the minute the first bird strafe overhead and the group

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Speaker 1: three cattail points down from you touches off. The first

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Speaker 1: three shots of the morning. It's also the most valuable

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Speaker 1: tool for getting over fear based issues. Let me tell

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Speaker 1: you an example here about how dumb I am to

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Speaker 1: cement this point. When my daughters were eight, I decided,

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Speaker 1: much to my wife's surprise, that they were ready to

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Speaker 1: turkey hunt with shotguns. So I went and bought a

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Speaker 1: Youth Model twenty gauge. It weighs a shade over five pounds. Now,

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Speaker 1: the thing about lightweight guns is there easy to handle,

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Speaker 1: but they kick like a Muytai fighter in the first

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Speaker 1: ten seconds of round one. They are brutal, and because

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Speaker 1: I'm dumb, I didn't factor this in, and I even

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Speaker 1: shot that gun a couple of times to show them

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Speaker 1: it wasn't scary. But I'm also six two and not

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Speaker 1: very small, and I've shot a lot of shotguns for

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Speaker 1: a long long time. But when my first daughter sat

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Speaker 1: down and aimed to beat at our turkey target, I

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Speaker 1: watched in horror as she picked up her head to

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Speaker 1: look at the trigger. Then she pulled it. That created

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Speaker 1: about an inch of space between her face and the

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Speaker 1: stock of that little shotgun, which means she got cur

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Speaker 1: walloped right in the lips. And that was it. I

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Speaker 1: had a gun shy daughter and her twin sister, who

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Speaker 1: saw the blood on the lips and the tears flowing

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Speaker 1: down the cheeks, said, you know what, Dad, I think

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Speaker 1: I'm good because she's no dummy. I had to dig

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Speaker 1: out an old four to ten I actually forgot I owned,

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Speaker 1: and then lock it into a heavy tripod and then hey,

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Speaker 1: each girl twenty dollars and give them twinkies to get

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Speaker 1: them to shoot that smaller shotgun. I had to offer

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Speaker 1: up a reward sufficient enough to get them to get

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Speaker 1: over their fear of shooting all guns. And I'll tell

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Speaker 1: you they are thirteen now, and while things have gotten

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Speaker 1: much easier, neither one has forgotten that ill fated day

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Speaker 1: at the gun range when their expert hunter father did

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Speaker 1: just about everything wrong that he could. So let's say

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Speaker 1: you do something wrong with your dog at some level,

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Speaker 1: with some task. Swimming is an easy one, right. You

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Speaker 1: take your little lab puppy out on the boat and

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Speaker 1: think it's all kosher until you hear a splash and

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Speaker 1: see the panic swimming. You scoop that dog back into

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Speaker 1: the boat and you realize that a core memory is

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Speaker 1: formed and not one you really want for a future.

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Speaker 1: Duck dog. Can you untangle that mess? Yes, you can,

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Speaker 1: but it'll take a lot of positive associations with water.

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Speaker 1: You're gonna have to start them over and figure out

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Speaker 1: a way to reward them somehow where they will eventually

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Speaker 1: get over their fear and step in and then even

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Speaker 1: walk in deep enough to have to swim. That might

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Speaker 1: be a handful of treats. It might be utilizing their

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Speaker 1: retrieving desire, it might be offering up shitloads of praise,

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Speaker 1: or in reality, it might take all three at separate

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Speaker 1: points and during the same sessions to break that fear.

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Speaker 1: Tom Dokin likes to explain this very simply by saying,

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Speaker 1: if you were super scared of skateboards, but someone started

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Speaker 1: rolling one by you that had one hundred dollars bill

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Speaker 1: on it, you know that would be yours, just for

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Speaker 1: the taking. If you could get over your fear, you'd

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Speaker 1: probably start to look at skateboards differently. It's simple, but

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Speaker 1: it's true. I used to be scared of heights like bad.

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Speaker 1: That's not a great affliction to have. If you're obsessed

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Speaker 1: with bow hunting white tails, and eventually your paychecks indirectly

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Speaker 1: hinge on your ability to successfully bow hunt white tails,

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Speaker 1: mostly from up in the trees, you know, after climbing

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Speaker 1: into a hell of a lot of trees and realizing

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Speaker 1: that when I was hunting pressure deer like the bucks

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Speaker 1: that live on public land, the higher I went, the

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Speaker 1: likelier I was to not get busted, and to have

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Speaker 1: deer walk by me that had no clue I was there.

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Speaker 1: My desire to arrow more deer started to outweigh my

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Speaker 1: fear of gravity and losing my ability to walk and

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Speaker 1: talk by slamming into the ground in the woods somewhere.

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Speaker 1: The positive association there is that I like filling my

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Speaker 1: deer tags and eating venison, and I became conditioned to

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Speaker 1: climbing higher to achieve that because it worked. But it

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Speaker 1: was a process. Now, as I mentioned earlier, there is

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Speaker 1: the reality that you have to understand what the best

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Speaker 1: rewards are for the moment and how to be very

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Speaker 1: consistent with them. A big mistake a lot of people

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Speaker 1: make is that they don't give the connection enough time

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Speaker 1: to truly solidify in the dog's brain. Take that puppy

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Speaker 1: that is being treat trained to sit on command, for example,

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Speaker 1: That puppy will give you that behavior on day one

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Speaker 1: if you give it a few minutes to understand the

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Speaker 1: ask and then the reward. That's pretty amazing stuff. But

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Speaker 1: do you think if you do that on day one

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Speaker 1: and don't work on it for a few days or

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Speaker 1: maybe a week, that that puppy is going to be

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Speaker 1: rock solid on that command when you come back to

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Speaker 1: it later. It won't, and it will only get worse

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Speaker 1: if during the time between, let's say your kids give

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Speaker 1: the puppy treats simply for being cute and yawning and

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Speaker 1: chewing on the remote and whatever else. There's no value

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Speaker 1: proposition in offering up extra behavior to get the same

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Speaker 1: reward you can get for not doing something you don't

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Speaker 1: want to do. This is where it gets tricky because

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Speaker 1: some dogs are fast learners while some are slow learners,

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Speaker 1: but most of them just need more consistency and repeatable

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Speaker 1: lessons than we like to think. This is why you

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Speaker 1: hear so much about day to day to day to

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Speaker 1: day training when it comes to the pros, and why

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Speaker 1: so many normal people dogs aren't very well behaved. It's

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Speaker 1: not that much fun to work on the same stuff

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Speaker 1: every day for weeks or months. But if you want

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Speaker 1: a dog that will give you some type of behavior

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Speaker 1: and not need a treat. Eventually, you have to play

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Speaker 1: the long game and figure out how to you use

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Speaker 1: whatever reward you can, because eventually you're going to change

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Speaker 1: the game up on them and ask them instead of

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Speaker 1: taking a treat to just take some praise or maybe

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Speaker 1: the next bumper toss. You're going to change that reward.

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Speaker 1: So I guess a parting thought here is this, think

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Speaker 1: about how you're conditioning your dog to all kinds of things,

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Speaker 1: not only when you're actively training and trying to make

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Speaker 1: the connection between something positive and a behavior, but all

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Speaker 1: of the times in your life when you interact with

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Speaker 1: your dog and there is some kind of positive or

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Speaker 1: negative reaction out of you, or a positive or negative

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Speaker 1: experience for them, because they are learning all the time,

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Speaker 1: they are paying attention to what we do and what

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Speaker 1: they can get away with. They're simple creatures that are

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Speaker 1: motivated by simple rewards, and that's a blessing and a

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Speaker 1: curse depending on how we view it and definitely how

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Speaker 1: we use it. But it's also the best way to

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Speaker 1: get a really good dog as long as you approach

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Speaker 1: training with the idea that there is nothing more beneficial

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Speaker 1: than that mental connection that your dog can make to

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Speaker 1: something that it can do to get something good from you.

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Speaker 1: As long as what that is is what you want,

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Speaker 1: it's win win. Think about that and think about coming

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Speaker 1: back next week because we are launching the Dog Days

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Speaker 1: of May here at Meat Eater. That's right, We're finally

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Speaker 1: celebrating dogs here, even though our fearless leader, mister Ranella

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Speaker 1: is a diet in the wool cat guy. I'll be

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Speaker 1: dropping a pile of podcast. There's going to be a

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Speaker 1: whole bunch of new articles up at the mediator dot com,

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Speaker 1: and we're going to do a sweet Dog photo contest

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Speaker 1: where you can post up pics of your favorite hounds

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Speaker 1: and possibly win some prizes. So, as always, thank you

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Speaker 1: so much for your support. I'm Tony Peterson. This has

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Speaker 1: been the Foundation's podcast. I hope you have a great week.

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Speaker 1: I hope you take those pups out and you train them,

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Speaker 1: and I hope you head on over to the Mediator

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Speaker 1: dot com if you want to find some more hunting

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Speaker 1: and fishing content because we are dropping new stuff daily.

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Speaker 1: Thanks again,