This blog post isn’t about agility, it’s about the other 23 hours, 59 minutes, and 30 seconds of the day. It’s about that moment when you NEED your dog to do something, and positive reinforcement isn’t available to you. Not in that moment. What do you do then?
Let me set the stage:
Alice has had something going on with her toe for a few weeks now. At first, it was just swollen and she was limping a little, mostly on gravel. It was sensitive to the touch. Time and some activity restriction is usually the answer there. Easy, right?
Well, things progressed along, the swelling seemed to kind of go down, but then one day I noticed the toe was weeping at the junction between the nail and the toe. No obvious injury, no obvious place that would be weeping like that, but there we were. Her vet looked at her at the house, not too sure what was going on, but we started her on a course of antibiotics. And, she responded well. Lameness and swelling decreased, she’s basically back to normal activity as it doesn’t WORSEN the toe, but it’s still weeping. So weird. Still on antibiotics, being very good about an Epsom Salt soak each night, but, after a week on antibiotics and no real change, we went back to the vet this morning for an X-ray and a culture to assess infection.
Here’s where the story becomes an anecdote to share with you.
Alice is great at the vet clinic. She goes there weekly. Hangs out, gets treats, knows the staff. This morning was no different. My vet lets me handle my dogs for things like X-rays, so after some treats and discussion in the exam room, we headed back to the X-ray room and suited up.
I lifted Alice on to the table, which is of course a slippery experience for a dog, and when dogs get uncertain they tend to get up on their nails, which doesn’t help. But, after a moment, Alice settled, and got some treats scattered on the table as a reward. When I went to lure her in to a down with a cookie, she decided that was her limit, she didn’t want to move in to a down, and suddenly my amazing cookies turned in to sawdust in her eyes.
➡️ This moment comes for every dog.
At some point, what you’ve got for positive reinforcement is no longer viewed by the dog as positive reinforcement. So it’s worthless at that point. If your dog doesn’t want food up on that table, are you going to pull out a toy and start tugging? Obviously not, that’s not the time or place for that activity.
At this point, it’s negative reinforcement to the rescue.
If you’ve kept up with my puppy training with Alice, you know that I’ve been working through leash pressure with her. Teaching her how to move WITH the leash as a communication tool, rather than resisting it or pulling against it. You may recall the blog post I made a while ago with pictures of Alice in a prong collar. At the time, I was just putting it on her and doing nothing with it, to habituate her to it.
Why a prong collar? Plenty of people have a knee jerk reaction to that particular tool because of how it looks. This reaction is usually due to naiveté, ignorance, or misinformation when it comes to proper use of the collar as a training tool. We imagine some awful harm being done with it when in reality it’s nothing of the sort. In reality, a prong collar allows us to teach a dog to move with leash pressure with far LESS pressure than you’d have to apply with a slip lead or a flat buckle collar. It’s not pain, it’s not intimidation. It’s a novel sensation, and with a VERY gentle amount of pressure, you can achieve the result of a dog that follows where the leash guides them, instead of mounting an opposition reflex response.
You can try one on yourself and see what I mean 😂
Of course, you can argue that ANY object can be used for ill intent as well as good. But I am talking about PROPER use here.
Anyway, back to my vet visit story.
Alice is on the table, but positive reinforcement has just fallen OFF the table. I need her to go in to a down to get that X-ray of her toe. Now what?
Luckily, I’ve been working on leash pressure with her over the past couple of weeks, and she knows how to respond to leash pressure and move WITH the leash as a communication tool, rather than resisting it.
When I took her to the vet, I had her harness on, and her flat collar, but I ALSO had her prong collar on, because I was thinking to switch back and forth between collar and harness, plus I suspected I might need it. So she’s up on that table, food is suddenly poison, BUT, she has her prong collar on. And, with some gentle downward pressure, which she recognizes now as a prompt to lay down, she laid down, and the moment she laid down, collar pressure turns off. No big deal.
She laid down nicely for the X-ray. She let us put gauze between her toes to separate them for better views. And if you’ve seen any of my videos in the Alice puppy blog and seen how I work on body handling with my puppies, flipping her on her side to get a lateral view was minimally stressful. And then it was over, and she was on the floor again, wagging her tail like a labrador and happy to take treats again.
No drugs, no muzzling, no struggle. Was it all unicorns and rainbows and glitter for Alice? Of course not. Were there some moments of discomfort? Sure. Was she traumatized? Nope. She got up a couple of times during the procedure and it was very easy to simply pull downward on her collar gently and she laid down again, each time more fluidly than the last.
This is a story for your consideration. A story about how things CAN go. A story about what options you have available to you when positive reinforcement runs dry, as it most certainly will, at some point or another. When that happens, it’s almost always in a moment of obligation; the dog NEEDS to do a thing because the circumstances demand it. A thing that they do not WANT to do. As humans, we run up against those moments of obligation all the time, and we survive. When it comes to our dogs, it is our responsibility to PREPARE them properly for those moments.
It’s the same idea behind The Missing Half Of It’s Your Choice: dogs do better when they know what’s coming, good or bad.
All of the footage I have of Alice learning about leash pressure is currently in the Alice In Wonderland Puppy Development Blog. If you’re an Agility Challenge Member, you already have access to this, as well as an entire COURSE dedicated to teaching your dog about leash pressure as a communication tool BEFORE you need to use it.
If you’re NOT a member, click that link above, and you can check out the Alice blog for 3 weeks entirely FREE, and see what I’m talking about.
I’ll leave all of you with this video teaser: I’ve put together all of the clips of Alice learning about leash pressure as well as all my other dogs, five in total, and put them in a new course called DIAMOND DOGS: LOOSE LEASH WALKING & A MORE RESILIENT DOG. It’s all of the why of teaching leash pressure, the how, when, where, and what. At a minimum, you’ll glean a ton of info watching the demo videos I’ve got in that free puppy blog link above, but if you want MORE, check out this trailer, subscribe to my email list using the form below, and watch for an email announcement in the next few days about that course, which will be available to email subscribers FIRST, before the general public.
That’s my story for today! Have YOU experienced that moment with YOUR dog where positive reinforcement left the building as an option for you? Were you left without a strategy that didn’t include drugs, or muzzles, or handling that stressed out your dog? Check out the Alice blog free preview link above, and that trailer 🙂