The Power of Training Where the Behavior Already Shows Up

Dog training often feels hard because we ask for too much too soon. Here's how to make it easier — for both of you.

It’s rare that I give global dog training tips, but there is a piece of advice that I feel pretty comfortable sharing: when possible, start your training where your dog is already offering desired behaviors (even if the behaviors are only approximations of the ones you ultimately want to see). For example, rather than trying to work on recall with your adolescent dog at a park, you might first work on it in the yard and gradually add controlled distractions. This advice sounds reasonable enough that you may nod when you hear it in passing, but the more you understand the science behind it, the more central it becomes to your training and the more skilled you get at putting it into practice.

Why does this matter? Well, put simply, it’s going to make your training a million times (a very scientific quantification) easier and more effective and likely minimize the stress your dog experiences during your training.

What Behaviors Do You Actually Want to See?

Let’s say your dog currently pulls like a maniac towards other dogs on walks to try to get closer to them. Training around other dogs is not where I would start (though I would spend some time making sure I understood the “when” and the “why” for the “problem” behavior, which I am going to gloss over here).

I would think about what observable behaviors I actually want to show up around other dogs, e.g.:

• Continue walking near me while maintaining slack in the lead

• Orient to me (perhaps upon seeing the dog/certain environmental stimuli and/or when verbally cued)

• Turn around and walk away from the dog with me

• Stop when I stop

• Eat food I offer

From there, I would ask myself: under what conditions do these behaviors (or approximations of them) already show up?

There are three main reasons I ask this question:

• You can’t reinforce behavior that isn’t showing up. I have to figure out how to arrange conditions so that desired behaviors can actually contact reinforcers in the dog’s environment.

• I don’t want to compete so hard against other strong cues and contingencies, so I am going to where those contingencies aren’t signaled.

• I don’t want to keep reinforcing all the unwanted stuff under the “problem conditions.”

Sometimes we inadvertently ask a whole lot of our dogs. The distance between a quiet living room and a city street filled with dogs is often far greater than the few feet it takes to walk out the door.

What You Can Adjust: Space, Additional Stimuli, Learning History and Motivating Operations

Here’s the thing I think is so cool: there’s so much we can play around with to arrange conditions so we can work where desired behaviors show up. For example:

• Space/Location: is this location (broadly speaking) distracting? I think about indoors versus outdoors, new versus familiar, quiet versus loud, big versus small, empty versus filled with life, etc. For example, my familiar living room (without anything intentionally set out to distract my dog) is likely going to be a less distracting space than a new empty field (aka a field my dog has never been to) where other dogs have been (even without dogs currently present).

• What is in the space: The location itself is going to have a “level” of distraction, but it’s also important to think about what may move through that space. Are there cars driving by? Are there people walking around? Is there a toy on the floor? Is a friend whipping a toy around ten feet away? Is there a bowl of food out on the floor? Do I have a friend walking their dog 50 feet away? In some cases, I am intentionally adding to the space, and in others, I am picking spaces because of what/who fills them.

• Other distant antecedents: While playing with the space alone gives us plenty to work with to support our dogs, there’s even more we can think about! How big is my dog’s reinforcement history for these skills? Is my dog more likely to orient to me/walk near me if I’ve given him a play date that week? What about if my dog goes on a nice sniffy hike before we train? There are so many ways to play with setting events and motivating operations that can shift how likely or unlikely it is for certain behaviors to show up during training.

We may need to play with all of the above to create conditions where desired behaviors reliably show up.

Progress Isn’t Always Linear (and That’s Okay)

Often, when we progress on one dimension, we scale back on another. For example, we might start off in a living room because that’s where the dog can orient to their person and walk beside them with a loose leash. Then while their person plays a pattern game with them, I might start waving my hands. Can the dog still orient to their person while I wave my hands? Yes, good. What if I wave my hands and talk. Yes? Good. What if I jump? What if I hold a toy and walk around. You get the idea. Then when we take it outside, we drop the added distractions (like the toy) and make sure the behavior is stable in the new location without all the additions before we work back up.

Ultimately, you are trying to get the old “problem” behavior conditions to be a part of the antecedent conditions for desired behaviors. By starting where behaviors already show up, your job is to move those behaviors to the old “problem conditions” rather than to try to squash with all the other unwanted stuff showing up. So you slowly change conditions and add variety until those desired behaviors are showing up where you want them to.

If It’s Not Working, Back Up

So if you find yourself feeling frustrated because your dog cannot seem to do what you are asking of them, one option is to change conditions until they can.