It's A Dog's Life

Mr. Slade and I had a bite to eat together the other day, and I started telling him about my dog, Beckett, who has . . . well, multiple issues. I have four dogs, and have done obedience competitions, agility, hunting trials, and run the show ring. However, Beckett has always been my problem child (see Beck's picture below). When I described how much I had learned from dealing with his various complications (both behavioral and health), Mr. Slade said, "sounds like a book to me." Now, in terms of being a teacher, what in the world do dogs have in common with classroom instruction? I don't meant to be degrading by comparing kids to dogs, but they do have much in common when you are teaching them.

Consider the following, and replace dog with student, and see if you make the connections:

1. Dogs by nature are generally good-hearted creatures; they want to please you.
2.Dogs need very clear instruction; if they don't understand the directions, it's usually the instructor's failure to make it clear.
3. Dogs need to know their boundaries, and they must be consistently reinforced.
4. Dogs need to know that consequences for undesirable behavior will never deviate.
5. The consequences for undesirable behavior must be fair and directly related to the infraction.
6. Dogs are much easier to train when good habits are formed from the start; it is much harder to break bad habits later on.
7. Dogs need more positive reinforcement than punishment. Dogs need to know when they are successful, and they appreciate motivating rewards when they perform well.
8. Dogs need to learn things in incremental steps. In pedagogical terms it is called "scaffolded learning"—building or reinforcing one idea and then moving on toward the next idea. The instructor must be aware of confusion and back-up to the point that they are on even footing again before moving on.
9. You can't assume that a dog will transfer knowledge from one behavior to a different but related task. The instructor must activate correlative concepts carefully. For example, if you have taught the dog to retrieve a toy using a "fetch" command, you can't assume he will understand that he should retrieve a bird with that same command. What may seem obvious to the instructor may be completely befuddling to the learner.
10. Don't show your frustration or anger when the dog is not performing well; he will feed off your negativity, and his anxiety will impede the training process.
11. When your dog is "emotional"— tired, overly excited, distracted, or not feeling well—don't push her to perform. You and your dog will both become frustrated if she can't concentrate. Work in brief time increments, take a lot breaks, and keep the instruction short and fun.
12. Perhaps this last is the most important:
Make sure your training techniques, rewards, and signals are logically related to the behavior you wish her to perform, and ensure that the environment is pleasant, safe, and comfortable. This equally true for human students. A teacher's intimidating blustering and unapproachable demeanor damages the learning relationship. Dogs and kids are far less willing to respond to learning in that kind of environment.

Trust me, some dogs (or kids) are easier to work with that others. Take my first obedience dog, Truffles. Smart as a whip; deviously smart. She can watch me working on a new concept with another dog and learn that behavior by just watching. While she's easy to train, she thinks she can outsmart me too. Truffles is the kind of dog that needs to be learning something new all the time, or she will get bored and start getting into trouble. If she thinks she is being neglected, she'll become sullen and pouty, which makes her difficult to work with (see rule #11). She might be compared to an extremely bright kid who needs constant stimulation in order to feel successful and happy. Kids that are finished with their work tend to start talking off topic and distracting students who are still working. The teacher then becomes aggravated, and it creates interruptions for the rest of the class during learning (ala my son's 6th grade science teacher—but that's another story).

Conversely, Truffles half-brother, Rumor, is extremely sensitive. Breeders often perform temperament tests on pups when they are six-weeks old in order to determine their personality types. I took Rumor to my dog trainer, Anne Jones, who helped me perform the tests on a litter of Irish Water Spaniels that I helped breed. Rumor was unsure of everything. He felt very anxious out of his familiar comfort zone. The final exercise of the temperament test is dropping two clanging steel bowls to the ground and timing how long it takes the pup to investigate the bowls (outgoing personality) or to recover from the noise by resuming normal behavior (reserved demeanor). Rumor never recovered. He was a basket-case. For the rest of them time I was there, he scuttled about nervously, creeping along on his belly and whimpering. Learners who are extremely unsure of themselves need lots of positive encouragement. However, it's usually best to ignore the dog's apprehensive or unresponsive behavior. Coddling is unproductive; remain upbeat and positive, and anticipate success rather than failure. Accommodating fearful behavior tends to validate it as a way of getting attention or to avoid uncomfortable situations. Hesitant learners may just need a slower learning pace. But instructors should never believe that a canine or human pupil is incapable of performing (see rule #2). I took the learning more gradually with Rumor and made the redirection and consequences of his undesirable behavior far more relaxed. With patience and consistency, Rumor has turned out to be a very capable obedience dog.

Then there's Beckett. I don't want to categorize him as unintelligent, but let's call him thick-headed or challenging instead. Getting into all the issues with training a creature such as Beckett is an entry in and of itself, so I'll save that one for a later post. I can then also discuss another training problem—attention deficit issues— using my dog "D" as a good example. Don't think I've got all this stuff figured out, not even close. However, I've observed that techniques that are successful with dogs can usually be applied as some form of behaviorism when it comes to humans as well!

Anyway, while it may appear to be inappropriate to compare kids and dogs, I think the connection is clear and valid. In fact, while I was writing all this, I thought of a few little tidbits to chew upon myself. But, perhaps that is yet another post. Right now, I've got a few holes to dig out of elsewhere.