FF185: Ready and Resilient: From Puppy to Awesome Adult

Hi everyone! I'm Irith Bloom, and this is Fenzi Dog Sports Academy BH245: Getting Geeky About Behavior Change.

Teaching Arousal Management, Part One

In this lecture, we're going to get practical again and think about teaching arousal management.

Arousal Management is a Skill

I want to emphasize that arousal management is a skill. Some animals are inherently better at it than others. Some animals struggle with it more. But it is a skill. It can be taught, it can be strengthened.  It can be improved upon.

Why work on arousal management?

In case any of you are wondering why you should work on this, it's because arousal affects learning and behavior.

The following is something called the Yerkes-Dodson curve. 

I won't go into an in-depth analysis of what is shown above right now -- that is in its own lecture -- but here's what the curve shows us that matters of the sake of this discussion:

• There is evidence from years of research dating back to 1908 that if arousal is too high, certain kinds of learning - which are usually the kinds we don't want - are more likely.
• Also, the kind of helpful learning that we do want can be less likely.
• As a result, in higher states of arousal, you may find that an animal chooses behaviors that you wish they wouldn't choose.
• On the other hand, in a lower, more -ppropriate-for-the-task state of arousal, they might choose the behavior that you've been working on as a nice substitute for the less than ideal (to us) behavior.

The bottom line is that arousal affects our ability to think;.  It affects cognition, which means it affects learning and it affects behavior. All of this means that, managing arousal is an important piece of getting the behavior that we'd like to see and helping an animal -- especially a young one like a puppy -- navigate the world successfully.

Three Options

I'll be discussing three options for teaching arousal management, in this lecture and the two after it. Note that these are far from the only three options. They're probably not even the three best options, but they're three options that I use a lot. Here's the list:

• Off-Switch Game
• Play with Deliberate Ups and Downs (in arousal)
• Self-interruption of Partner Play

In this lecture, I will focus in on the Off-Switch Game. The play topics, which will each get their own lecture, will be coming up next.

The Off-Switch Game

NOTE: There are lots of variations of off-switch games.  Mine is not the only one, and I do not mean to suggest it is the best one, either.

The Off-Switch Game, as I teach it, is a game where the handler moves at a level that the animal can handle, then stops and then cues a stationary behavior of some kind.  Note that:

• The stationary behavior is reinforced every time.
• You use the same stationary behavior every time, unless the animal indicates to you that they prefer a different stationary behavior, in which case you can switch to the one that they prefer.

Eventually, the animal starts to learn to anticipate the cue and and goes into the stationary behavior before the cue happens.

This is one of the goals - it's a kind of cue transfer where the animal learns that when you stop, that's the cue to go into the stationary behavior.

NOTE: If your puppy doesn't have a stationary behavior on cue yet, that's fine! Most puppies will at least pause in a stand when you turn towards them.  Feed for that (and feed low so they keep all four paws on the ground).

This game teaches two things.

1. First of all, it teaches a default behavior (or a new habit, if you will) around movement. In other words, the default goes from 'chase the person around and then jump on them if they stop,' to 'chase the person around and then stop when they stop' - which I personally think is a good thing.  Hopefully you agree! 😉

2. Also, when this is done at the right level, so that the handler is not pushing the animal too hard, it helps the animal to learn to manage their arousal.

As The animal gets better at this, you can start to increase the difficulty by making the movement more exciting or having the session last longer. All of that will help develop their arousal-management skill.

Video Examples

Let's take a look at two examples of this game.  Unfortunately, I only have video of adult dogs doing this,* but the videos demonstrate the concept clearly.  

*NOTE: I am hoping some of you will be willing to share your video with puppies for future use in classes and presentations. 😁

The first video in particular will be a good guideline for many of you right now, since puppies often need to start the game in a very easy way.

This video shows a beginner dog. This particular dog does a thing where he nips his people's rear ends when they move away from him. That is obviously uncomfortable and a bit of a problem for the humans. 😕

For that reason, we are working on teaching the dog to stop when the humans stop. 

We are hoping that will also help him be a little calmer around movement in general, because we're stretching his arousal around that type of stimulus. Even if the behavior doesn't generalize to other types of movement, though, at least the humans will be able to stand still to stop the jump-and-nip routine.

For this dog, any movement at all increases his level of arousal, so we start at a very low level of arousal. Note that there is no sound on this video.  Let's watch! 

NOTE: I recommend you watch once through, then read my notes below, and then watch again.  The video is very short.

You can see the human walk away from the dog. You can see she's walking very calmly. He follows her, she turns, she cues him. I believe she actually cued him to sit and he may have dropped into a down there. She's asking me a question and I am saying it doesn't matter that he went into a down. If that's the behavior he wants, that's fine.

And here you can see he went into a down very quickly, which is really nice.

Now she's going to walk away from him again. And that time, I don't know if you saw, her finger pointed down. So she gave him a cue for the down.

A little bit of a lip lick there. He's not quite sure what's going on. She and I are talking, which is not his favorite thing.

And finally there is a nice, low-latency down.

We're going to end the session here because I usually keep Off-Switch Game sessions to one minute or less. There's a lot of cumulative arousal that happens in these sessions. Keeping the sessions to one minute and making sure that the animal stays calm the whole time is crucial to success.

The other note that I will add about this is I don't care what the stationary behavior is. This dog happens to do a down, which is totally fine. Whatever the stationary behavior is, as long as it works for you and it works for the animal, that is fine.

From here, what the client would do is she would start to increase the pace of her movement; the next video gives you a sample of what that might look like.

NOTE: I want to say a huge thank you so much to these clients and the ones in the second video for allowing me to use these, which were taken during zoom sessions, for presentations. They are truly stellar, wonderful human beings for allowing me to use the material in this way.  This note applies to everyone who has allowed me to share video of them, of course. 🙂

This next video shows a dog who is more intermediate. The dog has learned the game and is getting better at it. Given her level of understanding of the game, we are starting to push the speed a little bit.

There are a couple things I want to point out before you watch.

• One is the dog's body language. Towards the one minute mark, you're going to see the dog's body language start to get more and more aroused. There are definite signs of arousal. I want you to watch for those, because you're going to need to watch your own animal for those.
• I also need to warn you that there's a little bit of shaky cam, so hopefully it won't make you too crazy.

All right, let's watch. (Again, I recommend you watch once through and then read my notes below the video.)

So you can see the person is moving away. The dog is very attentive. You can see she's already pretty excited. He asks her for a stationary behavior. He feeds.

Now he's going to walk away. She doesn't follow because I think she thinks she's in a stay. And then she races over to him, but she's not nipping at him (which is what she typically did before we started working on this game). He stops, she stops. She gets a treat.

Now he's going to start picking up the pace. And when he stops, she stops and she gets a treat.

And now he's going to pick up the pace even more. And look at that: She went into the down before even cued!

Now, here is where her arousal starts to get too high. Watch her tail. So she does stop successfully, and we end the session right there.

Helpful Tip: With this particular dog, before we played the Off-Switch Game, we practiced 'down' a little bit because that put 'down' in the front of her mind, which made the task a little easier for her.  We all agreed that down would be a suitable behavior for this scenario because she's also one of these dogs who tends to nip. (She doesn't nip at rear ends. She grabs at clothing.)

You can see how far she's come in just a little bit of work. This is either her second or third Off-Switch Game session. I suspect she just needed to know what to do instead of nipping.

So that is what the Off-Switch Game looks like. 

Quick Summary

Remember, the focus of the Off-Switch Game game (as I teach it) is twofold:

1. Teach a stationary behavior for the animal to do as soon as the humans stop and stand still.
2. Flex the animals "arousal management muscle" so they can learn to deal with their impulses in a more productive way.

One More Tip: Remember the Yerkes-Dodson curve above? What we are doing here is a difficult task.  That means the key to success is working at a level where the animal can still think through the problem.  In other words...

• Start out super-easy, with slow, boring movement.
• Build up in tiny increments/steps to faster or more exciting movement.
• If the animal starts to forget what to do, take a break and then make things easier again in the next session.

Key Takeaways

Here are the key takeaways from this lecture:

• Arousal management is a skill.
  • Like all skills, that means it can be worked on.
  • You can improve the skill with practice.
• There are a lot of ways to work on enhancing arousal management, not just the three that I mentioned above (and that we will cover in this and then next two lectures). If you find something else that achieves the goal, by all means, please use it for arousal management practice.
• Keep sessions short!
  • Cumulative stress and cumulative arousal can derail your practice.
  • Short sessions are a great way to start.
• Make sure that you're working at the level that the animal can handle.
  • Constantly watch their body language to see whether they're amping up or not.
• When you practice at the right level in short enough sessions, you may see two different benefits (and possibly others as well).
  • One is that the animal is better able to manage their arousal level, so they don't amp up as fast or they don't amp up as high.
  • The other is that the animal may be able to think through higher levels of arousal, so they're more excited and yet they're still able to respond to cues and so on.
• Test to see if what you're doing is working.
  • The best way to test is by varying cues or asking the animal to do something that is unexpected in that context and therefore requires them to stop and think.

Next Steps

Gold and Silver Students

• Consider trying the Off-Switch Game.
• Share questions, thoughts, and ideas.
• Post videos if you try this type of training.

Bronze Students

• Follow along.
• Try this at home.

Thank you so much! I'll see you next time!