May 26 • Trusty Tidbits
Importance of Building Engagement
Your dog being able to engage with you is probably the one skill that will set up the rest of your training for success. When your dog is to highly distracted by the environment they are unable to learn what you are trying to teach. Sure, you can ask your dog to sit or down when distracted but do they really know or care that you are there? Even if they do sit or down they could very well still be focused on the distraction. I saw this many times in the veterinary field with people and their pets waiting in the lobby. Their dog would be focused on another dog (sometimes vocally) so the owner ask/tell their dog to sit and then shoves a treat in their mouth all while their dog is still not engaged with their human. Congratulations you just rewarded/reinforced your dog ignoring you and staring at the other dog.
“But my dog sat when I told them too”. That is true but that is not what your dog interpreted that reinforcement for at all. Dogs will pair a reinforcement with what is spiking their dopamine at that time which is why behaviors repeat when rewarded (even self-reward) and those that are not rewarded tend to decrease. What the dog learned is if he stares at that dog intensely and all he has to do is sit (not ignore) then that is reinforcing and my owner agrees. This can also be done on accident with classical conditioning and your dog goes into that mindset. Could be a sound or that last turn before you step into the vet office that puts your dog in that mindset of disengagement with you.
I have an example of my youngest dog Káosz being very distracted by something in the dunes at the beach. We were there to do a survey with @Paul Bunker and Poppy and were letting our dogs run around a bit after the ~3 hour car ride down to the coast. Káosz and I were standing on just where the dunes started and I was going to let him run around where it dipped between dunes. He saw something apparently on the neighboring dune and was overwhelmed with wanting to go check it out. I, of course, was not going to cut him loose since I needed him to realize that even when he is overwhelmed with the urge to go check something out that I am still an important part of the equation. So, I did a low key version of the Check In Game where I just marked every time he looked at me and gave him a treat. Visual engagement with me, mark, treat and repeat. I kept doing this until he wanted to engage with me more than whatever was out there and felt confident that he remembered I existed in his overwhelmed moment.
Now I only did this next part due to where we were and the fact that it wasn’t busy on the beach at that time. Once Káosz was consistent in wanting to engage with me I unclipped his leash, waited for him to look at me then gave him his release cue of “ok” and let him go check it out. He ran over to the neighboring dune, looked around and then ran back after maybe 20-30 seconds to which I rewarded him for returning to me. I did not call him to me and just let him get it out of his system (whatever it was). If I needed to recall him for whatever reason I felt confident that he would have returned despite finally being where he felt compelled to go.
This is not something I would do every time my dog is overwhelmed about something regardless of what it is but I think it is important to be able to let your dog know that sometimes I will let you check out what has your attention and sometimes I won’t. As your relationship grows with your dog they will learn that not going to check out what has their attention isn’t the end of the world because sometimes you let them (use your judgement based on location and what your dog is like). Doing something like the Check In Game whether or not you will let your dog investigate is recommended that way your dog doesn’t learn to predict that they will or won’t be able to investigate. If it is safe for your dog to investigate but not be off leash (or you don’t feel comfortable with them off leash) that is ok just be sure that your dog is calm when approaching and if need be do some counter conditioning and/or come in at an angle/zigzag instead of directly on.
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Importance of Building Engagement
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