Have a differently motivated dog? This episode is for you! Sharon and I do a deep dive into what it means to train and compete with these dogs.  

 Transcript

Melissa Breau: This is Melissa Breau and you're listening to the Fenzi Dog Sports Podcast brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, an online school dedicated to providing high quality instruction for competitive dog sports using only the most current and progressive training methods. Today I'll be talking to Sharon Carroll about differently motivated dogs. Hi, Sharon. Welcome back to the podcast.

Sharon Carroll: Hi, Melissa. Glad to be here again to start us out.

Melissa Breau: You want to just take a minute and kind of remind everybody a little bit about you?

Sharon Carroll: Sure. So I live in Newcastle on the east coast of Australia and I work as a behavior consultant and I'm a certified behavior consultant, CDBC and so for dogs and also horses with the IAABC. And I'm also a certified professional dog trainer with ccpdt and I have a master's in animal science and I'm an instructor at Fenzi.

And I have three standard poodles who are now 8, 6 and 4. And this year there may be a new puppy. I know. Exciting. And not a standard poodle this time. Oh, boy. I know, I know. And so that's something for middle of the year, hopefully. And yeah, and I compete in rally and obedience and tricks and musical freestyle. And he'll work to music and scent work. I think that's it at the moment.

Melissa Breau: Yeah. Because that's not a long enough list. All right, so I mentioned we're going to talk about differently motivated dogs. So how would you describe a differently motivated dog and how is it different or you know, kind of is it from just a low drive dog?

Sharon Carroll: Sure. So differently motivated dog to me is when the innate drive doesn't match the sport or activity we're wanting to do. So if we have a dog that has a huge hunt drive, so meaning they really like to track scent and sort of search odor and follow it.

If we're doing nose work with that dog or we're doing tracking with that dog, we're not working with a differently motivated dog. But if we try to take that dog in the obedience ring or the rally ring and they don't have any innate desire to engage with the handler, but they have this huge desire to engage with the environment and this huge hunt drive, then I would call that a differently motivated dog.

So typically we're referring in mostly with our dog sports, we're referring to wanting some sort of handler focus. So when we're looking at our sports like our tricks and obedience and rally and to a certain extent agility, we usually looking for the dog to have an innate desire to notice the handler and to connect with the henness, notice what we're doing and be interested in what we're doing. And also often a strong desire to interact with toys. So some sort of prey drive that makes toys sort of interesting to them.

Melissa Breau: So looking at how that might impact our work with our dog, just to sort of get a feel for why does it matter if our dog's differently motivated?

Sharon Carroll: If we were to look at something like during acclimation time, our work oriented dog is going to shift to handler focus as soon as they're satiated in the environment.

So they'll spend a little bit of time, they're like, yep, I'm fine here now. And they're going to shift their focus to the handler. So issues sort of that arise with those dogs is more that they won't take the time to look at the environment, but certainly once they're satiated, they will shift their focus to the handler. But a differently motivated dog may never even consider switching to us.

So even when they're satiated, they've looked around, they're not uncomfortable, they're not fearful, they're not worried in the environment, they've had a good look around, but it hasn't even occurred to them to turn around and like pay any attention to us because it's just not an innate desire, it's not an innate drive to them. So we need to create that desire and create those habits that we don't need to with the work oriented dogs.

And if we look at another sort of area, it would be if we've left a situation where there's ambiguity about whether to engage or disengage. So we haven't had lots of clarity about when there's end of work or when they're on a break or when they should be paying attention. Our work oriented dogs will default sort of to attempts to work or engage. So if anything, those dogs, if we're not telling them when to work and when not to work, they're just going to keep to attempting to solicit work or attention or rewards.

Even when we want them to disengage, we want them to switch off, but their default is to just stay sort of very engaged unless we've given them lots of clear information that now's the time to disengage. Whereas our differently motivated dogs, they're going to default to disengaging, exploring the environment, wandering off to do independent things. So if we haven't given them lots of clarity about when to engage and when not to engage, their default is going to be to Disengage at any time.

It seems a bit ambiguous as to what to do. So it's, it's highly likely with those dogs they're going to disengage when we want engagement. So that's just sort of two examples of the differences we might come across when we're working with those differently motivated dogs. So you mentioned kind of innate preference there or innate. You mentioned the word Nate there and I caught it. And I had a question about that in particular for next.

So you know how much of what we're talking about here in terms of motivation is innate or kind of an internal preference and how much of it's just about kind of building reinforcement history. Yeah. So both intrinsic and extrinsic reinforcement are highly effective, but it's easier to work with a dog that finds the task intrinsically reinforcing. And that's because what happens is we have this sort of. If they've never done the task before, they need to have a motivation to do the task.

So we do something to motivate them to do the task and then they perform the behavior and then there's reinforcement. But if that's intrinsic, they're intrinsically motivated to do the thing anyway. If you're a herding dog, you're intrinsically motivated to engage with the sheep. You know, if you, if you're a really driving, work oriented dog, you're intrinsically motivated to try and work out what the handler wants. So you've got that motivation part already covered.

Whereas when we're working with a dog where it's just extrinsic rewards, we can only work on that feedback of they get to the point where there's reinforcement, then that reinforcement feeds back into motivating them to perform the behavior the next time. So you need to get to that end of that loop. You're getting that reinforcement history which is feeding back to provide the motivation. Whereas when we're working with intrinsically motivated dogs, intrinsically reinforced, that find the behavior intrinsically reinforcing, the motivation's there and they're finding an intrinsically reinforcing just doing the behavior.

We don't have to carefully link that reinforcement that we're providing specifically to that behavior because they just feel that it's amazing while they're doing it, so it's just a little easier. So the innate motivation is already present. We don't need to build a reinforcement history before we start to see them enjoying the behavior and performing that behavior more frequently. It's quicker to reach the habit formation stage because the associations made more rapidly, because again, it's not relying on us being really clever with when and how we're providing this reinforcement.

And there's no shift to reducing reinforcement because it's going to remain on that continuous schedule forever. Every time they perform a behavior, it feels really great. So it's being reinforced all the time. Whereas when we're working with extrinsic rewards, we need to go through the thinning reinforcement process. And that's complicated. And lots of things can go wrong during that process. Sometimes people are reducing reinforcement too soon. So when we create a new behavior, what actually happens is we need to go through three stages.

Sort of. There's the acquisition stage, where the brain's actually trying to connect the dots. This is trying to work out, I did this thing, and then this good thing happened. Okay, what was it again? I did this thing. The good thing happened. It's a very early stage, before the dots are really connected. But then beyond that, there's still the action outcome phase, where the brain's going, I'm pretty sure this is right now.

All I have to do is I do this thing and then the good thing happens. Okay, I do this. The good thing happens. The brain's starting to recognize there is a pattern there. But there, the brain's still constantly looking to make sure that that reinforcement comes, because that's how they know, the brain knows that they're doing the right thing, that the behavior is correct. It's not until all of that's complete that we reach this habit formation stage where the brain's no longer so consistently looking for that reinforcement to be sure that the behavior is correct.

Now, what happens when we're training is we often rush to get rid of that reduce. To reduce the reinforcement. And when we rush to do it, we haven't got to that habit formation stage. So the brain is still going, is it right or not? And then we start reducing reinforcement, and so we make this behavior weaker and it's a bit inconsistent and unreliable. Whereas if we waited until we got to habit formation stage, we could start reducing reinforcement.

We wouldn't have a big problem at all. But again, if this is intrinsically reinforced, we don't have to worry about those things. It doesn't matter if we're a little bit slack or not. So crash hot on when we stop handing out the treats, because the treats aren't the thing that's maintaining the behaviour anyway. And same with reducing reinforcement too rapidly. So not maintaining that adequate effort to reward ratio, we need to make sure we Keep that rate of reinforcement high enough to maintain the reliability of the behaviour.

But if it's intrinsically reinforced, we don't have to worry about it because even we might be handing treats and that might be nice and the dog likes them, but that's not what's maintaining the behaviour. Plus, we need to find a reinforcer that's potent enough to actually confer value to the behavior anyway. And if our differently motivated dog is one that doesn't really have a big toy drive or anything else, what are we going to do that's so exciting, that's so valuable, that's really going to confer all this value to want to perform the behavior again, again, intrinsically reinforcing, don't have to worry about it because it's so enjoyable doing it that they're ready to do it again.

And also, I think too, it's worth noting how much those innate behaviors, we sometimes don't even realize how important it is in the learning process. So if we've got just circling a cone, if you're just training circling a cone to a dog, like a herding dog or a dog with shepherding genetics, that circling, that's a natural behavior. They go, oh, what should I do? You show them to circle at once and they're like, that was amazing, I want to circle again.

And you know, or you send them out on a big circle circle around you and you put a whole heap of cones out and you make a big circle. You send them out, but by session too, the cones don't even need to be there. They just like, I love circling. This is what I was born for. I love circling things. Whereas you've got this other poor dog who's got no understanding of why they would ever be circling something.

And so, you know, four sessions later, you're still trying to lure them around a cone, or you're standing there waiting for them to work out, to go around the cone and come back. And people start adding distance because they've seen their friend's dog. By session four, they've got six meters distance and they're still left there with their. Their dog that doesn't understand about circling. It's not innately reinforcing to that dog.

And the dog still going, what are we doing? We're going around. Why are we going around this? What are I going to do? I've got to go. I've got to go around this cone. This doesn't make sense. Why? Why am I doing this? And so they have to really learn it as a Skill just to go around a cone. Something that's so innate and intrinsically rewarding and just an innate behavior for so many of our working lion dogs.

Melissa Breau: Yeah. So thinking about all of that, how can we kind of pick up on those clues and kind of figure out what actually motivates the dog in front of us? Especially when it doesn't. Like when the answer isn't just treats, Toys.

Sharon Carroll: Yeah. Well, we need to make sure we're not assuming. Assuming that every dog loves tugging because they don't, or even assuming every dog loves being handed a treat because they don't.

So we need to observe our dog, but we also need to make sure that I think a lot of people, when I talk about differently motivated class, they turn up thinking we're going to suddenly have these magical reinforcers that nobody's thought about before. But it's not what happens. We really are still using treats and toys a lot of the time. We're just using them in a much more clever way.

We're really tailoring it to the dog. We're looking at the way it's been done, we're looking at the timing, we're looking at the rates. But I think it's worth noting that there are so many things out there that are reinforcing for our dogs, but they're not practical always. So just say we have a dog that really likes greeting other dogs. We don't necessarily want to use greeting other dogs as a reinforcer because, you know, that's not, it's not practical, you know, and even a dog that really loves going off and wandering and sniffing around the environment, can we use it to reinforce behaviors?

Yes, but how practical is it? We might be able to get a really good solid sit. You know, can you sit and I'll release you to go off and sniff the environment. Okay, you're going to get a really reliable sit. But are you going to be able to do loops of sport behaviors like that? No. You're not going to get the repetitions. You're not going to be able to get what, you know, what we often need when we're training sport behaviors.

So even though it would be nice to find all these really unusual things that our dog really loves and use those as reinforcers, we can absolutely use them for enrichment, but we can't necessarily use them to directly reinforce loop type sport behaviors. And so we need to just instead be looking at our usual reinforcement, our treats and toys, but we need to be observing our dog and looking exactly how do they like those presented?

How can we do it in a way that's maybe less pressure or do we need to increase the rate of reinforcement or can we change the timing or the delivery? And often we need to use social interactions as well in amongst the reinforcement because we'll typically need to develop sort of some value for the relationship and we need to nurture cooperation with these dogs. So we need to really get that social interaction aspect going too. And we certainly do look at that. How can we use the social interaction and the play and the engagement to the social engagement to pique our dog's interest in wanting to engage with us.

Melissa Breau: So thinking through all of that, you know, how much of that is about choice or autonomy that we kind of build in to build motivation in these types of dogs? To build the motivation for kind of what, I guess what we want in these types of dogs?

Sharon Carroll: Yeah, that's the key thing, isn't it? It's about building. Often we're trying to build, well, sport behaviors often. And yeah, that's how do we go about doing it? And certainly choice is huge. Choice is huge for success with differently motivated dogs. Because these dogs do not desperately want to work. They're not going to just push through challenges in order to get the opportunity to work like some work oriented dogs.

And they don't desperately want access to that toy. So they're not going to push through excessive challenge and adversity. And certainly if we get stuck nagging like trying to out compete the environment, then we're just going to push them away more. So if we're just like, watch me, watch me. No you can't sniff. No, you can't do that. No you can't look over there. It's not going to be successful with these dogs.

So we absolutely need to get their buy in. We have to get, we have to be looking at agency, we have to be looking at choice, we have to be getting their buy in. So we use opt in strategies and we strategically then generate habits that are beneficial for our end goals. Yeah, okay, so how. So we've talked a whole bunch about kind of the whys and the what's and the, the bits and pieces there.

But how do we actually help handlers build kind of that genuine engagement, that motivation, that perseverance, a little bit of resilience or handler focus with these dogs who maybe like are less driven just by kind of doing the thing with us? Yeah, this part's going to sound insanely easy, but simple, not easy. All we have to do is reinforce engagement. And that sounds like, well you know, it can't be that simple.

But the thing is, what we've often learned through the fact that we're often all learning off people who are working with work oriented dogs is that quite quickly you can shift from this. The dog offered engagement. So now we ask for a moment of work and then we reinforce the work. It's like, that's not going to work for a differently motivated dog. Because what's going to happen is they're going to offer the engagement, you're going to ask them to work, they're going to go, that's not very fun.

And then the next time they're not going to look at you because they go, hang on, when I look at you, you ask me for work. That's not. Whereas if you're a work oriented dog and you look at someone, they offer you work, you go, this is the greatest thing ever. I'll just look at them again and they'll offer me more work. And then they reinforce it afterwards with a treat or a toy.

This is great. But if you've got a differently motivated dog, you need to switch that to offered engagement reinforcement, Offered engagement reinforcement, offered engagement, maybe a moment of work and then reinforcement, but forever. You need to make sure that a percentage of those offered engagement moments are directly reinforced with something that dog wants. Not always reinforced with work and then the treat or then the toy. Because, yeah, it's just not how it works.

And we also need to build a really strong relationship with these dogs because these dogs care who's on the other end of the leash. If you've worked with really driving, say a dog with a really big hunt drive, that, that's doing scent work, a really driving hunt, they don't care. They don't care who's on the end of the leash. They want to do the job, they want to hunt for odor and they really don't care.

You can hand them off to anyone and often, you know, customs dogs, dogs like that. The whole point is they have to be so driven to do the task and or so committed to accessing the toy that they really don't care who's holding the leash. But our differently motivated dog, we got to form a relationship, they're working with us. For us, it's really about the relationship. So we've got to create cooperation, we've got to manage the challenge level really well for these dogs.

We've also got to be prepared to compromise, sometimes compromising on the amount of work, the number of trials we do. So when we go to a competition, we might only be able to do two things in a day, not six, because these dogs are not going to want to do maybe six things in a day. And so we might have to do some compromising. We might have to compromise on the speed of action.

So not every dog is going to do things super fast. They're not going to splat into a down and jump up into a stand. We can do things to help them with conditioning and we can make sure that they've got really good training. So there's lots of clarity. But a Great Dane and a border collie are not always going to do things the same. You know, you can't, you can't choose a Great Dane to do agility and then want it to do it like a border collie, you know, but people do.

Like you're laughing, but people do. You know, people come to me with dogs that are just your really nice pet dog, not super athletic, not just that they're not fit or conditioned, but they're just not an athletic nature. And they want these super skidding into a drop on recall slide to the ground, you know, that they've seen on all the social media videos. And it's like, yeah, we got to be realistic about what's possible for these dogs.

So we might need to compromise a little bit and we need to recognize the fragility of the engagement and work with these dogs and really try hard not to push these dogs. But in terms of motivation, that comes from us really understanding the reinforcement part, we really have to understand how extrinsic reinforcement works and when to fade and how to fade. We really need to learn that bit to keep that motivation high so that that reinforcement history is feeding back into the motivation part and also understanding the impact of competing motivations.

So our differently motivated dog is not going to push through like for work in a really distracting environment because the work doesn't mean as much to them. So we have to do that much more incrementally until they've just developed a habit rather than trying to get them to push through because they want the work so bad or they want the toy so bad that they can ignore other distractions.

And I think it's in perseverance as well. In terms of perseverance, it's about setting achievable tasks. So short pieces of work, high rate of reinforcement and build it up gradually. And then in terms of resilience, it's about quickly resolving any miscommunications or moments of lack of understanding. So we need to help resolve the communication, really, the confusion rather really rapidly for these dogs. They're not going to tolerate being left in a state of being uncomfortable and uncertain about what they're meant to do at that time.

At that point, they're just going to walk off. They're not going to push on in the same way as a dog that's like, I really want to work, I really want that toy that you've got. So I'm just going to push on. It's like, no, these dogs aren't. We need to make sure they're not left confused or frustrated for too long. We really need to help them out of that.

And that's where the resilience then they do develop resilience. They develop the ability to dig deep. They develop the ability to push on a little bit at critical times. But they develop it because we are quickly resolving things for them. And so they start to become optimistic about the fact that they will be able to find a way to the other side, that they will be successful rather than just leaving them to work it out.

But handler focus has a lot to do with building habits. So telling them when we want engagement and really reinforcing that engagement and then equally telling them when it's okay to disengage. So when we start to look at actual games or drills or skills building pieces like, what's one of your favorite kind of little things to work on to help bring out motivation in a dog that may be a little harder to engage?

Yeah. Structuring acclimation in a way that the handler check ins are likely. So making sure that we're in a sensible area, it's not too distracting, it's not beyond their ability. And then we can, we can wait in those situations if we set it up really well. But then when you get that handler focus, you just reward it. You just reward it. Whether that's treats, toys, social interaction, play.

And then you let them disconnect again. You give them the opportunity to disconnect again, tell them it's okay, let's go, you know, let's disconnect again and then wait for that check in again. So not adding further requests for work too quickly, but run and treat games are another one. So just running and then giving some treats, running in a different direction, giving some treats so that just paying attention to you is fun and rewarding.

Spending time together, just doing activities that our dog enjoys, fulfilling their innate needs. So whatever their innate needs are for that individual dog, the more their own needs are met, the more they're available to offer sustained handler focus at other times. So, again, it comes down to cooperation. They're like, you know what? I've had my needs met. Sure, I'll do this thing that you want to do that makes no sense to me, but fine.

And my dogs do it all the time. I had one in Sydney just tonight at a scent work competition. And he doesn't have a huge hunt drive. And to watch him work, it's painfully slow because he's very methodical. He wants to sniff every centimetre of every chair and every table, but he's working. And if I tried to rush that, if I tried to say, no, you should look like a working line cocker spaniel, it wouldn't work.

If I rushed him, he would become flustered and uncomfortable and he wouldn't want to do it anymore. So I let him do it at his pace and he qualifies and everything's great and he's qualified at Masters tonight. But the fact that he does that is not because he particularly loves doing that, but importantly, he doesn't dislike doing it. And also importantly, he. It's not that he. I think that this is a huge difference for people is to recognize that difference between dislike and like.

Like, he doesn't have to love doing it, but I. But if I thought he disliked it or he was uncomfortable or fearful or concerned, that would be a problem for me. And also I spend a lot of time making sure he absolutely knows how to do that skill. There is no confusion for him when he turns up somewhere. He knows exactly what I'm asking. He knows what it's going to look like.

And so if you piece those two bits together where they know, they absolutely know the job, they're very confident doing the job and they don't dislike doing the job, then cooperation will go a long way. Like, they will actually go, you know what? That's fine. We do things I like. Do you think you like to. That's fine. But if we started to make that too hard, if I was taking him in situations he wasn't prepared for, if he didn't feel certain that he had the skills or he was uncomfortable anyway, or if it's something he genuinely didn't like, then we're going to have a problem.

But a cooperation will get you a long way with those sort of things. And so fulfilling their needs is what we were talking about. Fulfilling the needs is really important. And also making sure that your independent dogs get to do independent activities. So they need to go for those long walks where you're not interrupting them all the time and asking them to do things. Just let them do some sniffing and exploring.

And the more that they get that independent time, the more they can give you some focused work. But if they're not getting that ability to be independent makes it very hard for them to, you know, and also they become opportunistic. So at any moment when you're not on top of them, they're just going to switch to doing the thing that they're desperately craving, which is being independent and going off and wandering and sniffing.

Melissa Breau: Yeah, yeah. So talking about the other end of the leash for a minute, you know, how do you help handlers recognize that they're making progress on some of this stuff when maybe it's not super obvious or it doesn't look like, you know, the dog's bouncing, excited to work with them, or there's obvious enthusiasm there? How do we kind of keep the handler feeling motivated, I guess?

Sharon Carroll: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that can be hard because it is a bit of a mindset shift. It takes a while to recognize that it's okay. It's enjoyable to watch a dog work that's happy doing the work, but maybe not doing it in the way that you picture when you look at social media videos. Social media videos have a lot to answer for for the people they do. For the people that have a less athletic dog or a less fast dog or a less drivey dog, it can be a little, you know, disheartening sometimes.

So, yeah, I guess getting back to your question, I guess it's also, though, worth remembering the differently motivated doesn't always always mean slow or not athletic. I mean, if you take a working line cocker spaniel into the obedience ring, it's not like they're going to be slow or not athletic. It's just that they're not going to be focused on you unless you put the work into creating that engagement.

Because they've got, you know, more important things on their mind at that time. Unless you've put that work into building the habits and building their motivation to be engaged with you. But certainly for the lower energy dogs, look for the loose body language, like, so it's, you know, look for that looseness and that relaxedness in the body. Even if they're not doing it fast, they shouldn't be looking concerned or worried or stressed.

They should just be looking loose and happy and relaxed and look for the persistence. If they're persisting at a task, it's a fairly good indication that they're quite content doing that task. Whereas, you know, if, if they're spending a short amount of time trying to solve a puzzle, then they're working, walking off and going and laying down somewhere. That's not a good sign. And look for the buy in.

Are they pushing? Are they coming back in? And again, pushing doesn't need to be what we've seen of pushing, pushing, pushing for work. It can just be that they're there looking at you, kind of looking like, what are we doing next? You know, it can look a little more casual, but it's still buying. And look for the accuracy and reliability. If you're getting really accurate work and they're reliably responding to cues and they're staying doing the work, then they're happy and they're engaged.

And we've got to be happy ourselves that we've got a dog that's keen to do that. Even if they don't look like the picture that we were hoping maybe or that we see in other people's dogs in our in person class or on the social media videos.

Melissa Breau: Are there, you know, kind of common mistakes that you see handlers or trainers make that accidentally kind of go against what we're hoping for here?

Sharon Carroll: Right, that's suppressing motivation rather than building it. You know, what do you see, what do you see people doing and maybe which sign should folks watch out for that this may be the case in their situation? Right? Yep, yep, yep. Asking for work when the engagement is still too fragile, that's a big one. You know, if you haven't got buy in, if your dog's not paying attention to, if they're not wanting to do stuff, then trying to add work is not a good plan.

So if our dog is looking up at us less and less is because whatever happens after the looking up at us isn't rewarding or enjoyable for our dog. So we need to look at the work itself and go back to rewarding the engagement and try and work out how we can make the work. Often the work's not enjoyable for the dogs because it's not clear enough. That's often the common reason.

And so again, if you've got a work oriented dog, they will push through quite a bit of lack of clarity, but the differently motivated dogs just won't. And so yeah, asking for work when that engagement is not really there yet is one. Adding inhibition or adding impulse control before motivation is another big one. So I believe there's probably too much emphasis on impulse control as a blanket strategy out there in the dog sort of training sector.

So too much stop and not enough go. And that's okay. When you're again, dealing with these very pushy, driving dogs and they're just pushing and, like, they're boisterous and they're sort of charging at you. And, yeah, okay, you can put some stop in there, but when you're dealing with a dog, that's different to that. Then we need to be working on the go part, the motivation part, not on the stop part, the impulse control part.

So, you know, examples of that would be people, you know, desperately training the out before they've really got the tugging. You know, like, you know, the dog barely grabs hold of the tug, and they're. They sort of teaching the out. It's like, if the out was super easy to teach, it's probably because the dog doesn't have enough drive for the tug yet, you know, so build more motivation for the tugging.

Training the stay before the run, the recall, the retrieve. Like, get the momentum first and then add the sort of impulse control. And again, if you've got a dog that's coming out with all that forward already in there, fine, start with the stop. That's okay. But if your dog doesn't have all the forward, don't be patting yourself on the back for how great the stays are. If, when you call the dog out of the stay, they barely get up and slowly walk towards you.

You know what I mean? Like, you've got to look at what's in front of you. If the dog has lots of go, put some stop in there. If they have lots of stop, you need to be working on the go. So, yeah, training. The other one would be a lot of dogs being trained to ignore distractions, like putting them on active stationing, for example, ignoring the distractions of, you know, tugs being waved around or people jumping up and down and all this, but it's in.

Then when they cue the dog to go forward to the dish, they just sort of walk off the platform or they stop. They don't even. They just stand there, and it takes three cues to get them to come forward to the tug. It's like, okay, you've put too much stop in and not enough go. So it's just that. That balancing act all the time. And I mean, I know I've talked about this before, and I know it's in a few of the webinars I've done.

You know, I have this chart with the motivation and then rules. You know, it's like, you've got to have the motivation there before you start putting rules in place. And with these differently motivated dogs especially, say when it comes to toy play, if you're starting with like, you can only grab it this way and you must release it when I say this and you must do this and you must do that, you know what, you keep the toy.

I wasn't that interested in the first place. You just made it too hard. And so you've got to build that motivation to play with the toy first. Really get that motivation happening before you put the rules in. And the same with us. Build the motivation to play with us first, then worry about putting the rules in. Now that's different. If you've got again, a really pushy forward dog that's biting and mouthing and climbing all over you.

Yeah, put some rules in place. But if you've got a dog that hardly ever checks in with you, don't start putting in. You must sit when you go through doorways and you must sit to get your bowl of food and you must sit to, you know, and don't touch me when I don't ask you to and that sort of stuff. Because it's like they go, you know what, that's fine, I'll just stay in the corner and you know, but don't think I'm going to do sports with you because, you know, cooperation, again, it's got to be a two way street.

Melissa Breau: Yeah, yeah. So we're talking about all of this because you're offering your class on this stuff in the February term. Go ahead, Motivate Me: Engagement for the Differently Motivated Dog. Do you want to just talk a little more about kind of what's in the class and maybe who might want to sign up?

Sharon Carroll: Sure. So in probably have to refer to notes for this one. Yeah. Okay. So in week one we're talking about engagement, communication, cooperation.

There's a whole heap of theory topics and exercises based on that sort of area. And then in week two, we're looking at reinforcement strategies and building reliable behaviors. So all about that when to fade reinforcement that we were talking about week three is all about motivation, speed and competing influences. So we're talking about that stop versus go. So in ambiguous situations, some dogs tend towards acting and some dogs tend towards not acting.

So in other words, when they don't know what they should do, some dogs will just start throwing behaviors out there. Like they're just rapidly cycling through all their previously reinforced behaviors. They don't know what to do, but they're going to do something. And then you've got the other dogs that go, I don't know what to do. I think I'll just wait until there's a bit more clarity. And you see a lot of hesitating and a lot of stopping and a lot of not acting.

And so we talk about that in week three. Week four is all about the environment and the sort of play, the interplay between work and the environment, acclimation and context and perception. Week five is confidence, errors, clarity and understanding. And week six is persistence, mental stamina and competition preparation. So it's a big six weeks. It is a big six weeks. It's a whole lot of stuff in there.

Yeah. And in terms of who might be interested, anyone. A differently motivated dog would be good to have anyone who wants to learn more about working with these types of dogs. So I actually think a lot of trainers don't come across these types of dogs as often, maybe as they come across the more drivey dogs. And so it doesn't hurt to get extra information about why these dogs are different and why it might be necessary to tweak some things.

So these are the sort of dogs that are quite independent. They don't check in frequently, they appear a bit unenthusiastic about training or they show limited persistence. Maybe they leave even during training. They lose interest in the work very quickly, get distracted by just about anything. And that's because the work is so low down on their preference list that almost anything will overtake it. And so that's why we have to build those habits so that they do continue working in different environments.

And also the dogs where you get a lot poorer performance when the treats and toys are absent, because that's a really big clinical that the work is only being held together by the externally provided rewards rather than it being intrinsically reinforcing.

Melissa Breau: Yeah. Anything else on the schedule lately that you want to mention or talk about for a minute?

Sharon Carroll: I do. I have a webinar coming up on the 12th of Feb that I'm really excited about. It's called Reactivity and Aggression When Fear is Not the Driver. So I think we all spend a lot of time making sure that those dogs that are really fearful or anxious are looked after and that we don't put them in situations that are beyond their ability to cope, and that we undertake our desensitization and counter conditioning strategies. But in this one, we're not really looking at those dogs at all.

We barely touch on them right at the start, just so that we know what they look like. But what we're looking at instead are things like alerting behaviours and behaviours driven by guarding instinct and behaviours driven by a lack of tolerance of other adult dogs. So genetic intolerance of other dogs. Also behaviours driven by a lack of tolerance for handling or restraint. So dogs that are quite independent and have a lot of like a lot of autonomy and don't like to be physically manipulated, not because of fear, just because it's irritating to them, they don't like it.

And also looking at dogs where the behaviors are due to being stimulated by movement, so the prey drive and herding instincts. And also we are looking at issues with emotion regulation. So all of those others are sort of innately driven rather than an emotion. But we also will look at issues with emotion regulation and excessively high arousal. So excitement, excitement morphed into frustration and over arousal.

Melissa Breau: Yeah. Also a big topic. A big topic to get into one hour. Yeah. Any final thoughts or maybe key points you kind of want to leave folks with as we wrap up here?

Sharon Carroll: Yeah, I don't think so. I mean, going back to the differently motivated dogs, it's important to remember that differently motivated dogs are capable of beautiful, focused, reliable work. But we do need to, in order to achieve that sort of solid engagement, we'll usually need to make some adjustments to those standard type of training approaches.

That's just because many of the standard training approaches have actually been developed to work for work oriented dogs in the sports sector. And yeah, working with differently motivated dogs is a passion of mine. This is the second time this class is being presented. It's over a year ago since it was presented last time. I've made a few small tweaks to the format, but it's largely the same. We had a lot of fun last time and lots of success stories out of that one. So yeah, I'm really looking forward to presenting it again this time around. Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Sharon.

Sharon Carroll: No worries. It's been great.

Melissa Breau: And thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week, this time with Shade Whitzell to talk about reducing reinforcement. If you haven't already, subscribe to the podcast in itunes or the podcast app of your choice, our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available.

Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty free by BenSound.com the track featured here is called Buddy. Audio editing provided by Chris Lang. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training.

 Credits

Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called "Buddy." Audio editing provided by Chris Lang.

Thanks again for tuning in -- and happy training!