Your Dog Needs to be on the Payroll!

 

Hey Humans: You interviewed for a job. There is no job description, and all the bosss and staff speak French, but, you don’t! But they seem nice enough and really excited to see you, and you are optimistic in assuming that you will of receive on-the-job training, so you say, "what the heck, I'll take the job!".

But....the initiation is perplexing because you lack skills and you do NOT speak French. But you get along pretty well by being affable, watching body language and figuring out the hand gestures. While on the job, you receive hugs from everyone. At the end of the week you collect a huge paycheck, and by the end of the first year you get bonus trips to amazing destinations with your friends! You are thinking wow this is a great place to work!

But.... by the end of several months, while you have figured out some of your job very well, you have not managed to speak fluid French yet and all of a sudden, you notice you are getting paid less.  What the Sam Hill is going on here, people? NO weekly bonus, and at the end of six months, all training has ended! Then, you notice the staff barely acknowledges your presence, except when you make a mistake....and the manager, oh the manager!..... your manager’s expectations are now even higher even though your on the job training has ended and you are told all paychecks and bonuses have ended! 

Would you stay at this job?  Let's change the word "you" to "your dog".

When it comes to training and developing a strong relationship with our dogs, we often forget that they need to be put on the payroll and kept on a payroll!  We all want our dogs to simply behave because we ask them to, just as every boss would like their employees to simply do the jobs they've been hired to do. But, is that realistic?

You and your dog require more than just a warm hug at the end of the day to be motivated enough to comply with your job description! If you want your dog to be obedient, then don’t stop the paychecks! Using treats to train initial behaviors is great. If you want to ultimately wean off using treats as paychecks, you must a) replace those treats with another kind paycheck, doing it gradually over time.

You can move toward age appropriate rewards, such as going for a walk, playing tug or a good game of fetch. You can even spread food rewards out more as your dog gets better at behaviors (random reinforcement), as long as you give bonuses along the way! Stopping rewards altogether will reduce your dog’s willingness to respond to you, no matter how much s/he likes you. 

Sure, some things in your dog’s life should be free – good nutrition, a warm home and comfy bed, proper socialization, exercise and training. But just as a boss has to figure out what kind of paycheck will keep human employees on the job, the best dog owners on the planet figure out what their pet’s favorite things (food, toys, etc) and activities are and use those doggie paychecks to motivate and reward their dogs for a job well done.

Most dogs find food to be their best paycheck, but will find over time that a good word, a toss of a ball, or a game of chase or tug is rewarding as well. But, food always makes for a great bonus paycheck. My personal payroll department has three levels, low value, used for reinforcing behaviors the dog already is good at, medium value for behaviors they are pretty good at and high value when learning new behaviors or training known behaviors in a new environment. If I am expecting my dog who knows how to sit, to perform that behavior in the middle of a busy store with lots of things going on, I am going to give a high paycheck for doing something that would be more difficult in a place that is new and distracting.

In much the same way that I expect to be paid for services rendered, I expect the dogs I train to get paid for theirs as well. I recommend that you not begin to phase out food rewards for the first six (6) months of training a behavior. You can become more random in the reinforcement, using things like play, ball tosses, etc as a reward, but you really need a good six months of solid behavior before expecting to no longer pay your dog "weekly", but instead get bonuses every so often. Just like you, your dog's enthusiasm for the job is tied in to the enjoyment of the tasks and the paychecks.

Remember this: Paychecks are motivators! What you reward will continue. What you do not reward will become extinct.

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