Rob Peladeau: "Behaviorist Dog Trainer" | Talks at Google

Video Statistics and Information

Video
Captions Word Cloud
Captions
ANGIE PRIMAVERA: Hello, everyone. I'm Angie Primavera, and I am a project manager here at Google. And I am very happy today to welcome Rob Peladeau from NexGenK9. For almost 20 years, Rob has been training dogs and specializing in behaviorist modification for aggressive and/or reactive dogs, as well as some unwanted behaviors. He also works with our local law enforcement, training their canine units, as well as some local clients such as myself. I met Rob about a year ago, and he helped me out with my dog, Dakota. And I can attest to his skills, not only with dogs, but also with their sometimes stubborn human companions. So everybody, I'd like to welcome Rob Peladeau. [APPLAUSE] ROB PELADEAU: All right. Well, let me start off a little bit more about how I got into the dog training world and why there is so much confusion out there. I got into it about 20 years ago, as was said. Started off-- I was an auto shop repair guy. Had a shop in Concord. It had a big yard that was getting broken into a lot of times by the people who would hang around the front. So I thought, oh, I'll get me some really mean dogs, and they'll protect this area. Well, my really mean dogs, I thought, get the biggest vicious dog you could find, right? At least as far as breed. Well, people were stealing my dogs too. So I quickly learned it's not just a breed-specific thing. There are things about dogs that I didn't understand. And with my personality being what it is, I had to learn everything and anything that I could. So I started in learning about perimeter dog training and how to train a dog to guard an area. And it went from there. Went into sport, and then that sport world kind of overlapped with law enforcement. Got into law enforcement, became a police officer myself few years ago. And here I am today. What I want to talk about today is how dogs learn. The way dogs learn is through repetition. They learn certain behaviors get them a reward. They want to repeat that behavior. Certain behaviors get them an unpleasant response, they want to stop that behavior. They're not, as we would many times try to make them, well, in a human term, intelligent. Their intelligence comes from the ability to pick up patterns, ability to pick up routines. They are all about patterns, are all about routines. And many times in our dog-human relationship, dogs who aren't picking up certain behaviors we want them to, we want to tell each other that they're stubborn, they're disobedient, they're willful, et cetera. But I can tell you there's not a dog on Earth that really has a rebellious streak as we think of it in like a teenager's terms. Dogs either understand what you're doing or they don't. Or there's a higher motivation somewhere else than what you're offering. You might have a piece of food in your hand, but it's not near as cool as chasing that squirrel. You might have something exciting in your hand, but you are the most boring person on Earth to come back to because you just stand there and expect your dog to do something. Dogs operate, again, off of routine. They operate off of drives. And if those drives can be satisfied on their own, they do not need you to satisfy that drive. There's two ways that we train dogs. And it's through classical and operant conditioning. How many of you heard of Pavlov, the Pavlov's Dogs experiments? How many of you took psych in college and learned really how far that experiment went? It wasn't just ringing a dinner bell and then watching the dogs drool. There was a lot of other experiments as well. And it goes into the realms of antecedents, that which happens before their reward comes. And what he learned was that if he rang the dinner bell and dropped the food at the same time, eventually taking the food back out of it and ringing the dinner bell, there was no response to the dog. So again, by conditioning-- classical conditioning-- we have to create a space in time between the time that we use a command-- the time that we use a marker-- and then that time which the reinforcer comes. So why I talk about this is because what we're going to move into is marker training. So if I'm giving my dog a treat every time I say yes, my verbal command, my verbal marker, means nothing. And if you're using a clicker, it's the same thing. Clickers are nothing more than you saying yes if you teach them a primary reinforcer behind the click. If you say yes, treat-- yes, treat-- that's how we build that conditioning. That's classical conditioning. The other thing that we often fail in in training our dogs is that same kind of thing when teaching behaviors. We want a dog to sit. How many of you tell your dog to sit, and you go sit, sit? And you're moving into it every time, right? And then when you say sit, your dog goes, no habla. Because he really doesn't understand what you're saying. Because we haven't done enough classical conditioning for him to understand the verbal response. Our antecedent is always together with the physical motion. Dogs are body language masters. Most of what I do with aggressive dog behavior rehabilitation is based upon my ability to read your dog at the impure thought. As soon as they begin to even think about a behavior that they're going to exhibit, I already know it. One is because I've seen it a million times. The other one is they are body language creatures. They don't communicate verbally. And it's the same thing when they're watching us. So if we're going sit, really all they can hear is this. There's a famous trainer, who I learned a lot from, who was talking about the first time he was teaching Malinois, which is what Samson is. I'll bring him out in a little bit. Very high drive, very trainable dogs, but oh dear god-- do not get one as a pet. He was talking about being able to do verbal commands to change positions from a distance. And I forget what the distance was. Let's call it 50 feet. So the dog is 50 feet away. He's telling him, hey, buddy, watch this. I can change my dog's position verbally. And he goes watch-- sit, down, stand. And his buddy says, no, your dog's not changing positions verbally. He says, yeah, he just did it. He goes, no. This time when you tell your dog to sit, I want you to hold your head perfectly still. 50 feet away, guy says sit. Dog changes no behavior. He goes. Dog sits. Therein lies a lot of the problems that we find when we're trying to get our dog to that 100% level. As I heard somebody in here talking about, their dog is at X%, and they want to get them to that 100%. A lot of it is based upon our timing and understanding of how dogs verbally learn and physically learn. So if we want our dogs to learn a verbal command-- and let's put this all together, our classical conditioning-- we teach them, sit. We use a verbal marker, then we teach them physically-- then the reward. So here, sit. Yes. And again, that one second-- kind of half a second to one-second window that you can use to respond. If you do this every time you say yes, this becomes the marker, and they don't hear a word out of your mouth. Make sense so far? So through classical conditioning, we create our markers. Then what we do is we move into operant conditioning. If you've taken those same classes that taught you about Pavlov's dog and classical conditioning, then you moved into operant conditioning. The difference from operant conditioning is the mouse finding his way through a maze to get to food. Right? It's the dog where you hold a piece of food out, and you say nothing. And the dog starts looking and going, how do I get that piece of food out of your hand? And they wiggle, and they put their butt on the ground. You go, yes-- bang-- and you pay them. That's operant. That's them offering a behavior to get that reward out of your hand. Two kind of dogs. Those that are non-operant-- those dogs have to be taught everything through rote by giving them some kind of physical movement or something to help them to understand. And those dogs that are operant, that offer behaviors to get the reward out of your hand. You take your hand, you put it on the ground. The dog goes, hmm, how do I get down there? How do I get that food out? And they paw at your hand. They lay down, as soon as their elbows touch the ground-- payday. Dog goes, oh, when you do this, I go down. Then we add. Now we back up our classical conditioning to our operant conditioning. So food comes out, his butt hits the ground. Yes, treat. Now we go, sit. We use our operant conditioning, and we wait for the behavior-- associate, name it, and reward it. So he'll offer you a behavior. You will then name it. You want your dog to do something over and over, you have to name it. So let's get into one of the biggest things that people run into with recall. And I know that's probably a huge percentage of what I get calls for. My dog just won't come back to me. Why won't my dog come back to me? How do I teach my dog a recall? And I've seen a million different ways, and there is no one way. I don't know if you've dealt with many dog trainers before, but the only thing that two dog trainers can agree on is that the third one doesn't know what they're doing. They're all very valid, different ways. And just like raising children, no two are alike. If you've had multiple children, you will know that what works for one child doesn't work for the other. What works for one dog doesn't work for the other. And it's up to you or your trainer to figure out which method works best for your dog. But I can tell you this, right? From the time your dog is a puppy, you can teach a puppy how to recall and be very consistent in it. Just by having-- every time the dog comes to you, as soon as he starts to turn to you, name it, here. He's coming, yes. Good boy, good girl, good dog. You start building that up. And one of the things for our dogs that are very drivey-- the dogs that will go chase a toy, and puppies all will chase a toy-- you start with a place that you know he goes to all the time. Everybody's dog has a little favorite place. Don't they? Your dog just runs and goes, OK, I'm going to go rest over here. Whether it's under a table or on his pillow, he's got this favorite place. So we teach our dog to retrieve and let him carry that toy to his favorite place. Retrieve. Throw something, he takes his toy to his favorite place. Then I go sit in his favorite place. Throw the toy out. Where is he going to go? Back to his favorite place. Name it, then reward it. He comes back. So throw it out. He goes out and grabs it-- here. And he has no idea what "here" means, but he's coming back to you, and you're rewarded it. Now he associates-- "here" is come back to me. You do that for just a few days and then start moving it into different places, and you've got a dog that will have a solid recall. You do it in a low distraction area, you do it with great reward, and you will find them. So let me give you a few of the ideas about marker training and why there's so much controversy around positive reinforcement versus aversive method, et cetera. Everybody's heard reward-based or positive reinforcement training. Positive reinforcement training is what every dog trainer is doing. Positive reinforcement only is-- I'm going to put it out there. I think it's causing a lot of problems. It's causing a lot of failures in dogs. It's like the child who never learns limits, the child who never is told no-- the child who never learns through experience that there is a consequence to behavior. So the dog who has a problem with chasing another dog, who you can't give enough food to. Go, my dog would-- just keeps chasing other dogs. Well, yeah, because every time you're feeding your dog-- you walk down the street, and your trainer told you, just go behind this car and then shove food in his face. There's no behavior change. And for a person who isn't a professional dog trainer, it's hard to know where that dog's head is at at that moment. Are we rewarding a heightened state of mind when another dog comes around? So another dog comes around, or a dog gets excited, we pull him behind a car and go, good boy. So the dog kept going, I'm being rewarded for this behavior-- I must be doing it right. And I've seen some dogs spiral seriously out of control based upon that method alone. For some dogs it works. Like I said, there's no one right method for every single dog. The reason why aversive methods have come under so much scrutiny is because, yeah, it's uncomfortable. And these are our little four-legged creatures. But none of us would raise our child without some form of adversity-- would we-- to let them learn on their own that there is a consequence to behavior. And believe it or not, anybody who tells you they are reward-based only, or positive reinforcement only, lies because a punisher is as simple as removing food. That's punishment. It's called negative punishment. If we give a correction with a collar or some other kind of physical correction, that's called a positive punisher. We're adding something to the environment, whether it's-- again, most of the time it's something physical. A little pop, a little flick, little aat-- something that adds to the environment. When we take away-- we go "sit," and he goes, ah, I think I'd rather go look at squirrels. We remove the food, and he goes, wait a minute. That's a negative punisher. So anybody who tells you they're positive reinforcement only has lied in their own little right. Now that I've put that out there, we'll move on. All right. So how does marker trainer work? We just talked about clicker training. A lot of the clicker training came from a Dr. Skinner who found with training marine mammals when that animal is away from them, they could not get through water and everything else. They learned clickers travel through water. Now you know why clicker training is so popular. Again, a lot of people took it the wrong way. A lot of trainers took it the wrong way. Because he says, look, we don't have to correct an animal-- a 3,000-pound animal or bigger. Why do we have to correct a dog? Well, if I put my dog in a tank with no other dogs around him, with no other squirrels to run by him, and the only source of food he ever got came out of my hand, I could use positive reinforcement only. Because the negative consequence is he doesn't get fed. So is that positive reinforcement only? So again, that's where the clicker training came from. And that's where a lot of the positive reinforcement came from. But it cannot be the only way we work when we live in a very rich environment for distractions for dogs and other animals. And then we put all our anthropomorphisms on there. Oh, well, they're just being stubborn, they're just being willful, without understanding, no, there is a disconnect in our thinking process. So the type of reinforcement that we use, we want our dogs to understand the behavior changes based upon them. They get to decide how that behavior gets them their reward. And again, we mark it with the yes. And that yes becomes the same as the food. The same thing happens on the other end. I want you to walk with me. The dog says, hmm, squirrel, let me go to the end of the leash. We can give a little, leave it, a verbal command, and then a correction-- pop the collar. They go, what? We can praise. Where we get in trouble is when we allow emotions to get into our dog training. Dogs don't understand anger the same way we do. Dogs understand markers. When we create a marker, we want it to be steady. Yes, treat. Good, sit. Everything's the same all the time. We use our volume not to indicate our displeasure, but to break through distraction. So what I mean by that is the guy who's got his dog and he says, sit. And the dog says, squirrel. And he says, no-- sit. Hmm. [SNIFFING] Sit! And now he's yelled it, and the dog goes, oh bloody hell. And he sits down. Which noise does the owner now have to make the next time to get his dog to sit? The third one. Exactly. Because that's the one where the dog goes OK, pressure comes off, and OK, good boy-- if he gets a "good boy." You let anger get in there. We use volume to break distraction. My dog goes into full squirrel mode, then it's a much louder command to break through his fixation. Make sense so far? Raise your hand if you want me to stop at any time because I'm not making sense, because I will talk on and on and on. So when we give a command, even if we are ignored the first time, we make the same command again. Sit. Squirrel? Sit. Pop the leash. Sit. Bigger pull, or luring, or whatever this dog is going to operate best off of. But the command always comes the same. What usually happens when we end up destroying our relationships with our dogs or making training not fun for them is when we do allow those emotions to get in there. Because a dog doesn't understand why you're mad. He doesn't know anger. He doesn't know those things. He doesn't know right and wrong. He knows that there was something that made him do what he should or should not know based upon that antecedent, that loud correcting. Same thing happens with recall. I had a client not too long ago-- got a dog who had a human bite issue. He had actually bitten a person in their house. So a couple of things we teach to start changing their behaviors. The first one is we teach him to leave it. And the second one is we got to teach recall. If you've got a solid recall on your dog, he's not going to bite. If I can call my dog at any time, from any situation, am I going to have a dog who's going to bite? No. So I tell the guy, we got to teach your dog recall. He says, my dog knows recall. I say, your dog doesn't know recall. He says, my dog knows recall. No, your dog doesn't know recall. We go back and forth for this for a little while. All right. I'm going to sit here, and I'm going to pet your dog. You go into another room in the house, use his name and his recall word. And we'll see if your dog knows his recall command. He goes, yes, I'm going to show you. I'll show you. He knows it. I don't know why he wants to argue, but OK. Goes to the room, calls his dog's name-- Fido, here. And Fido just looks at me going, keep petting me, please. Fido. Here. Come on boy, let's go. Come on. And the dog is going, oh, my master is somewhere else. And he goes off to him. Does he know recall? No. So you got this whole string of words. How many of you go to dog parks? Yeah. How many of you are either that person, or you've seen that person, when your dog is out there and you're giving this 47-word-long command to come back? Promising them the world, promising to end their world. Come on buddy, I've got a nice big treat for you. Or, come on, buddy, I'm leaving without you. All these things, and we think they understand us. How many of you know Charlie Brown? You know his teacher? You ever heard her talk? That's all we sound like to our dog, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah. They don't understand a word coming out of our face. So we've got these 47-word commands, and finally the dog turns and goes, are you talking to me? And then he sees our physical. Come on. And we go, see our dog knows recall. The dog doesn't know recall, because you've never made it consistent. You've never done that thing over and over again. But yet we expect our dog to know. So when we recall, then when they finally come back to us, some people, not all, are a little bit hot-headed. And they get angry. They say, I told you not to! Oh my god, if I have to call you! And they get angry with their dog. So let me back that up for a minute. Dogs live in a one- to three-second world. And that's the golden rule of dog training. It may or may not be true, but that's what we go by. One- to three-second world. My dog goes out, and then he finally comes back. And on his way back, I'm chewing his butt-- that was a bad dog. So my dog's coming to me, and I'm telling him he's a bad dog. He goes, why do I want to come back to you? Or you see the dog who does come back, but watch what he does. Maybe your dog's this dog. You call your dog, and you're, come on, buddy. Come on. And he goes, all right, I'm coming, but I'm going to sit over here because you're going to yell at me. Because there's something wrong. You're not happy about me coming to you. My own dogs have once in a while gotten away from me. And I go out, and I go to get them. And when I get to them, I have to cover up all my displeasure and all my, oh my god, I'd like to throttle you. And if they come back to me-- they can run for two hours. They come back, that last minute, that last second-- they turn around and they go, Dad? Good boy. I'd like to kill you. Good boy. Right? So every time he comes to me, it's a positive experience because he cannot understand that for two hours you just chased him. All he's going to remember is what happened just before he came to you. That's it. That's your dog's world. So when you wonder why your dog doesn't want to come back to you, ask yourself, did I reprimand his return? Did I do something that caused him to think that there is going to be an issue when he got to me? Again, go back to your basic recall stuff. If you're having problems with recall, you build it to where the dog is always excited about coming to you and that the reward matches the behavior so that that dog can understand that coming back to you is the best place on Earth. When I bring out my dog here in a little bit, even though there's other dogs here-- of course he'll probably make me a liar because that's what dogs do-- they cheat and they make you liars. He'll pay no attention to people or dogs, because the best place on Earth, the best things that ever happened have been right here at this position. And you'll watch how fast he wants to get there, because that's where happinesss-- that's where the magic happens. That's where everything great that's ever happened to him in his life has been right in this position. And he can't wait to get there. That's how you build that. You never come down on him for wanting to be with you. Even if he comes to me and I don't want him to, and he knocks me halfway across the Earth, because he bounces into me. [SIGH] Good boy. I hope that came through convincing. Right? Happy, happy. This is the best place on Earth. This is good. So when other dogs are out there, and I go, here, and he goes, oh, it's better next to Dad than it is out there. Because this is where the best stuff happens. But that relies upon us being active participants in their play. All right, any questions so far? Yeah, the question is when I have food in my hand or in my pouch, when I have food on me, my dog is golden. I'll just paraphrase it. He'll listen, he'll do everything I want. But as soon as the food's gone, then the higher distraction wins. That's where we back up our training. And we go, where did I fail in this? Did I only do this training with the food in my hand? Did I have my food-- and one of the ways of training is luring, right? We always bring the dog in with food. So yes, that becomes a command. Did we ever break that training down to where we incrementally removed the food? The same way with incrementally removing the physical command out of a sit. So if I say "sit" and I show him-- sit, sit, sit-- and he doesn't, I give him a little help, then eventually just sit. Right? Incrementally. We want our dogs to learn just based off of what we're telling them, but that's not how dogs learn. They learn incrementally. So the dog who comes back only for food, we're bribing them. We're saying, get on over here, and I got this nice juicy steak for you. Come on over. I might even have some bacon, food of the gods. So the dog comes back, says, OK. Now, when we haven't conditioned the dog to understand that our verbal marker is the same as that food training, yes, they're only going to work for that food. So you back up, and when your dog is undistracted in your living room, someplace else-- you're doing your training in an undistracted environment. He's nice and rested, everything is good. And you do everything with a leash or something like that, for recall especially, so you can never have failure to where you go here, and he goes upstairs. And you're like, OK, whatever. And the dog then goes, oh, "here" means go upstairs and lay on your bed. We have to teach them what we want. So back up your training, have your food reward after your marker. You go, here. And he goes, no habla. A little tug on the leash, pull him in, he goes, oh. And then, we back up. Yes, then the treat comes out-- bingo. So he can always have that. Then we variable that. After we do a few, every time he comes back, he gets in that position. Yes, treat. He comes back, he gets in that position. Good boy. No treat. Next time, treat. Then three times the recall, then a treat. Four times the recall, then a treat. Then recall, recall-- treat, treat, treat, treat. Break it out to where the dog goes, in his mind, there's always a possibility of there's something great coming from you. So that can help. Let me back it way up here, on creating that marker in the first place. When you want to create a marker, you pick your marker. I don't care what it is-- good boy, yes, whatever. You have that marker, that yes. You need to teach him what it means. And if you're going to use food as your reinforcer-- your primary reinforcer-- then you want to just sit on the couch sometime with him sitting in front of you and go, yes, treat. Yes, treat. Yes, treat. Yes, treat. You are now the dinner bell in Pavlov's experiment. Right? So every time you say, yes, he goes, [HAPPY DOG SOUNDS]. That's what you want to create. That's how you create that positive reinforcer so you don't have to have that food every single time. Yes. He goes, oh my gosh. And all the endorphin release, all the same chemical response, all that that comes from classical conditioning is present. So make sure your dog understands his positive marker. And like I said, backing this up. So along with our positive marker that says yes, you've finished your job, you also want to have a marker that says, yes, that's what I want you to do, and I want you to keep on doing it. A continuation marker, right? Because otherwise, your dog comes in, and he sits. And you go, yes, and then as soon as you say, yes, he jumps up and goes, OK, I'm done. Right? Now I want my dog to come in. I want him to sit, and I want him to stay sitting. He comes up, yes. My intonation drops off, I drop energy. I don't get all crazy and goofy to cause him to get all excited. So he comes in, he sits. Yes. Treat. And we're going to sustain the behavior. Walk away. Good. Treat. You see how we stay in there? He's still going, now I'm sitting here, and I'm getting my treat. And then when I'm all done, yes. And he goes, OK. That's your release word. Some people use "OK" as a release word. Whatever you want to use, they're just noises for the dog. Every one of my dogs has been trained in a different language. Eventually, some of them become bilingual, but that's not my fault, my problem. And people go, wow, you speak that language to your dog. It's just noises. I don't even know if I'm making the word right. I'm sure somebody, if my dog is trained in Czech-- somebody comes from the Czech Republic, and they go, no, that's not how we pronounce that word. You think my dog cares? I could make noise like brrr and have the dog sit. It really doesn't matter. It's the noise, the antecedent, that comes before the behavior. Right? So your commands, your thing, you could train them in anything you want. It doesn't matter. There's no proper word for anything. Got it? So make sure you have your positive marker-- yes, treat, yes, treat. And he doesn't have to do anything for that. He just understands that whenever that word comes out of your face, you become a Pez dispenser. Here comes the food. So eventually when you're walking down the street, and he's seeing that other dog, and he looks up at you. And you go, yes. And he goes, oh, I did something good that's worthy of a reward. So break down your training. Whenever you see that kind of a failure where the dog is only responding to a reward, make sure that you just back up, remove the reward from it. Work in a undistracted area, and rebuild. The beauty of dogs is that they can be retrained at any time, because they are very much creatures of habit. I have rehabilitated dogs that are 11 and 12 years old, some dogs that were very aggressive, et cetera. Dogs who have done things in their world all their lives, but they can change. It's just a matter of recreating a new set of guidelines. That's not to talk about-- in case some of my professional peers are out there watching this-- that's not to say that imprinting is the same thing. There are some things that get imprinted that, yes, we cannot get around. And we build different kind of parameters to help the dog live within that imprinting. If you want to know more about that, ask me later. We can go way deep into what imprinting is and what it does to dogs and how we use it positively, like we do for searching for [INAUDIBLE], or how sometimes it's inadvertently done, even at the breeder level. Does that answer your question, sir? AUDIENCE: Yes. ROB PELADEAU: All right. A couple of dog training myths I wanted to cover real quick. I've heard people tell me that you can't start training a dog until they're six months old. Well, that is false. Dog's brains are the same from the beginning to the end-- not much different than ours. And most of you, I hope, still have a good enough memory to remember when you were 13 years old. Everybody here remember that far back? I know I do, and it's a lot farther for me than most of you. And do you feel like you are any different of a person? I mean, do you feel like you're X number age? Does something change in your mind? Or do you still feel like that same person? You still have your basic thoughts. You still have all these basic premises that make you who you are, your personality. And they stay with you throughout your life. Right? It's the same thing for dogs. They might be young and might be very distractable. They might be trying to figure out the world and everything. But they still learn the same way. It's still by process of conditioning. The difference between training a six-week-old puppy and a six-year-old adult dog is the same as it is for kids. That attention span is very, very short. So you do it in short bursts. I've got one out with me now, he's 16 weeks old. And he's already got recall, he's already got sit, he's got how to drop his toy, et cetera, just because that's what we do every day. Whatever you do daily is what they're going to do. Whatever you do by rote is what they are going to do. And if you change anything, they'll let you know. How many of your dogs pull you as you get to your house? You went for a walk, came around the block, and all of a sudden they're like, hey, there's our doorway. Try walking by your doorway tonight when you take your dog for his evening walk. I know all of you are taking your dogs for walks every day, right? So try it. Just walk by. Don't go towards your house, and watch your dog go, foop, towards the house. And the first thing that's going to come out of our mind or through our thought process is, oh, my dog really just wants to go home. He wants to lay down. Well, no. He's done this for whatever his age is, for X number of days based on those years. Therefore, when you walk by the house, the dog goes, that's where we go. That's the pattern. That's the habit. Has nothing to do with him wanting to go in and lay down and stretch, hey, we're done, Mom, Dad-- whatever. Because I guarantee you, if you walked by your house for six days without going into your house-- just do it six days. Just do it a few times. Walk up and down the street without going back into your house. Within six days, your dog, when you get to your house, he will not pull to go into your house. Because it's a new pattern. We don't just walk in here. We don't just do that. Dogs are all about patterns. All right. So yes, you can. And matter of fact for puppies imprinting, the best time starts in that 6-week age-- starting to show him what behaviors you want and what behaviors you don't. And again, we'll take that to the human world. The best time to learn languages is at your youngest age, right? All the pathways for all the neurological things that go on in your brain-- I'm not a neuroscientist, so please don't quote me-- but those pathways stay open as a child. And you can learn language and things that later on in life are either difficult or impossible because those paths are no longer open. So taking that younger puppy at his most eager to learn and eager to please time is the primary and the best way to insure that your dog's going to understand what you want and create a better relationship with them. The old, old dogs can't learn new tricks-- definitely false. Like I said a minute ago, we can take a dog, as long as it's not something that's been an imprinted problem, something that came from their early years, or there's a neurological or psychological issue with the dog. But basic behaviors we can change because they still learn the same way. The question already came out I was going to touch-- if you train with food, you could never wean away from it. Once your dog has learned an exercise, you wean them off of the food. So training with food is an absolutely valid way to train a dog to learn a behavior. It's our failure to break it up and become a variable reward that causes them not to get away from it. We haven't made them go to the next step. One of my favorite things that I love to beat people up on is when they tell me, my dog knows when they've done wrong. How many of you guys say that? Go ahead, raise your hand. Otherwise, you're lying. You walk into the house, and the place is destroyed. And your dog goes-- I guarantee you, the first time that you walked into your house and your house was destroyed, he didn't do that. About the third or fourth time, yeah, he does that. Where does our feeling of guilt come from as humans? Morality, right? We've got this thing in our human psyche called morality. We know right and wrong. Does a dog have morality? Because if he does, somebody needs to talk to my dog. Because man, that guy-- it's like a prison yard in my backyard sometimes. It's terrible. So if the dog doesn't have morals, if he doesn't know right and wrong, if it wasn't beat into his head like we humans do to imprint a moral code into our being as children-- if he doesn't have a moral code, how can he be guilty? He can't. But what he learns is appeasement, how to turn pressure off. Escape avoidance is the process of training that takes pressure and turns it off by a behavior. So you walk in, he's torn up your favorite shoes, and they're laying there in the middle of the floor where he was sitting there chewing them for hours. And you walk in, Fido! And he goes, what? Bad dog! And he goes, ugh, OK, I'm sorry. Right? That's not really what they think, but they go, OK, make the pressure stop. Oh my god, there's a lot of stress here. And they turn off, and then you go, all right, buddy, it's OK. The next time we come home, Fido! They go, oh yeah, this turns it off. You stop yelling as soon as I do that. Pretty soon, I walk in and there's a shoe that's torn up and them, and they go-- I know something's going to happen. Classical conditioning. We are training our dogs without even knowing it. Right? It's like why potty training goes so wrong for so many people. Your dog does not know it's wrong to soil in the house. Period. He doesn't know it's wrong because it's not wrong. There's no moral code that says, don't potty on the hardwood floor. So you walk in, and your dog's potty on the floor. Ah! And you freak out. You grab your dog. You throw him outside. What does your dog do the next time he needs to pee in the house? Well, they don't want me peeing in front of them. Let me find this corner. And so they find a corner to go pee in. Because you go, hey, I peed. I didn't get yelled at. Pee in the corner. So just throw this out there real quick, cause we're running out of time quickly. Throw this out there real quick, you got to-- see, if the dog is doing it in the house, that's where that whole discipline comes from where you've got to override your emotions and go, OK, all right, buddy, let's go. You pick him up, you take him outside, you put him outside. And if you're having problems with the house breaking issue, you need to turn the finger around and point it at yourself and go, what am I doing wrong? How do I change this? What kind of pattern do I need to create so my dog knows that he goes outside? Either you're not breaking them often enough, you're not letting them take a long enough time to break outside. Because we go outside, and we go, OK, buddy. And he goes, oh jump around, jump around. And we go, OK, he doesn't want to go potty. We bring him back in, and then he goes in the house. That's happened to nobody, has it? Right? So you break that down a little bit. Take him outside. Let him do it. You ignore him, no play, no nothing. You just walk around, and he's going to be biting at your shoes, and biting at-- just walk around. Then he goes, oh, this is getting boring. And he goes and finds, and he goes, OK. And his bladder relaxes, and he's able to do his job outside. Good boy. Treat. We don't win the Super Bowl on this, people. There is a level of rewards that are appropriate for behaviors. My kid brings home an A in PE, we're not going to Disneyland. Bring home an A in physics, yeah, we're going to talk about it. Right? Same thing. OK, so he pottied outside. We want to mark the behavior as being positive, but we're not going to get all amped up and everything else because what's going to happen? Then he goes, OK, every time I pee, I need to get excited, and I need to get this. And I forget to do the rest, and my bladder might not be completely empty, because God knows, dogs empty their bladders every time they pee, right? No. They always have some more. So, good boy. Treat. Positive. Continue to let them work through it. And that's just a bonus. I won't charge you anything extra for that little dog training trick. All right, big one here. And please stop me if you have any questions, and I'll try to get as much information out there as possible. When my dog is nervous, I want to pet him, right? I want to soothe him and tell him it's OK. How many of you have the little yappy dogs? Go ahead, admit it now. I won't hit you. So you've got a little yappy dog. Friends come over, and the dog goes Cujo style on them. And because they're little, you go, oh, so cute when they're young. But later on, it's just getting obnoxious. Now we're three years into it, and oh dear god. So the people come over, and we go it's OK, buddy, it's OK. You don't have to be afraid of them. OK, remember what they hear? What do they here? Wah, ma wah, wah, wah. And you're going, it's OK, buddy, it's OK, and nice dog. What does that sound like? Good boy! That's OK, good boy. And what do we do to praise them? Oh, we touch them. We let them know, hey, good boy. So when we're praising our dogs for being nervous, guess what we're going to have. A nervous dog. He's going, I must be doing it right. OK, I keep doing it. My children, my primates, they understand things a little bit differently than the canines. The primate, my kid comes out and says, Daddy, there's a boogeyman under my bed. Hey, come here. It's OK, buddy. There's no boogeyman. Daddy will take care of it if there is. And yeah, that works great with our kids. We do that with our dogs, and the dog's going, I knew it. I knew there was a boogeyman. It's all bad, because even Dad said so when he told me good boy. So remember, we don't pet nervous dogs. We really got to take on more of a tough love approach. Suck it up, buttercup. We're not going to have that behavior. And if we're going to change their behavior with food and stuff like that, it's got to be giving them something new to do. This is called counter conditioning. Your dog runs up, jumps on you when you get home. And you go, oh, it's a good boy, but I don't want you to jump on people. How fair are we now? Don't jump up, but hey, it's a good boy. Or they jump up, and we go, stop. Does the dog know the difference between good boy, and no, don't jump on me? Because what is he looking for? Physical contact. Right? He's looking for engagement with you. So counter conditioning is he comes up, runs and jumps up, and you go, sit. And he sits, and you go, oh, now we can good boy. Now we touch. And then you get the dog who eventually, if you're doing this right, he comes up when you get home. He goes, I'm sitting down. Pet me now. Right? Counter conditioning. Keep that in mind. If you keep just these few principles out there, you're going to be able to get through these things. All right. Any questions? Where is the flaw in your thinking? AUDIENCE: There's probably one. ROB PELADEAU: The flaw-- and that's what we do. So if nobody else caught it, I catch it because it's what I do all day every day-- is we put an anthropomorphism in there. She wants our attention. How do we know she wants our attention? We don't. We assume. So first thing we do is take all anthropomorphisms out. Right? And we deal with her like she's a dog, and we counter condition. So that's where you build the markers. So one of the ways to counter condition a dog is to teach them to bark on command. Speak, yes. Speak, yes. Then speak them, no, quiet. And when they don't speak, quiet-- that treat. So you start building a quiet command through positive reinforcement. So you teach them to bark on command, and then teach them shh! Yes, good. So really, yes, they are trying to affect their environment. Dogs bark and cry in crates to get the pack to come back. That's what howling is about and all these different things that wolves do, coyotes, and every other canine kind of creature. Yeah, especially those loud, high-pitched, oh my god, makes your-- it's like a fingernails on the chalkboard kind of thing. Yeah, that's the dog going, get back over here. Get back over here. So we never open the crate or a pen for them when they're in that mode. We get them to go quiet, after we've taught them what quiet means. There is a two-minute period of disassociation for dogs. So although they might be quiet, if you go and open that door within that two minutes, they go, my barking got you here. My barking got me the reward I'm looking for. So quiet, and you work that two minutes, until eventually you get through that two minutes, and he's quiet. And then you go, all right. And he goes, oh, quiet gets me out the door. Quiet gets this open. So that would be one way I would look at. How old is he now? AUDIENCE: Six months. ROB PELADEAU: Six months, yeah. And puppies bark. That's what they do. They are obnoxious. They bark, and they bark, and they bark. Yeah. I would recommend, though, on a social level, to make sure you tell your neighbors, be open with your neighbors. Say, hey, I've got a puppy that's in training. And if he's barking, I'm so sorry. And I promise you I'm working through it. That has done more for people than anything. Because that's one of the biggest problems we have and why we push our dog training into areas that they probably usually wouldn't work is because of social pressure. I want my dog to act a certain way so other people will respond the way I want them to. But if we are much more open and more-- well, in more communication with the people around us, going, hey, this is what my dog does, and I'm sorry, you're less likely to get a complaint to your landlord, and your neighbors are going to not hate you as much, if you are up front and introduce the puppy to them. And then they go, they love the puppy. And then, they'll walk by and go, quiet, puppy, and help you with your training. And bring them in. I always encourage my clients who've had dogs that were a nuisance in the neighborhood to involve the neighbors, who will get re-involved with the dog, to come into the training. Because then there's more of that community approach, and everybody is a little more patient with you. It may not work every time, but you're definitely increasing your odds that you will have a community that's willing to work with you, because we are definitely in a dog world now. It's just remarkable how many people have so many dogs. So yeah, talk to those neighbors and work that way, and expect your dogs to exhibit behaviors. Because otherwise, that's what shuts dogs down is when we try to take away behaviors completely that are completely innate in them. And they cannot understand, and they won't overcome and will have failure leaders in training because we will not do what it takes to get them there. ANGIE PRIMAVERA: "When I'm home with my dog, who's 10 months old, he feels very comfortable and will often play by himself. When I'm away, I feel like he doesn't actually play as much and he just waits for me to come back. How do I make this time away more enjoyable?" ROB PELADEAU: All right. So where's the flaw in the thinking? Anybody? AUDIENCE: The assumption that the dog isn't having fun when he's gone. ROB PELADEAU: Yeah. The anthropomorphisms. When the pack's away, the lone dog or the other dogs lay around and do nothing. This is what dogs do. This is why crate training and other things that give your dog a nice confined area so they can feel like they're denning is very good for nervous dogs so they can feel protected, and they don't have to worry about the boogeyman coming to get them. I wouldn't worry about it. If that dog is not being destructive in their behavior while you're gone, rejoice. Be happy. If you're concerned that they will get into destructive behavior, give them something to do. You know, these KONGs that have peanut butter in them, frozen overnight, things that make their brains work or something they got to gnaw on. That's fine. But don't worry about your dog being bored while you're not home. That's the nature of the beast. They are social creatures. I mean, what do you do when everybody's gone? You're not up there entertaining yourselves, most of the time. You need quiet time, and so does the dog. He's not bored. It's a very well adjusted dog who can lay around and wait for you to come home. Another thing, while we're on that topic, is to think that just because when we get home, our dog's excited, then the dog must be that way all day. So we must leave them outside so they have this big old yard to run in and exercise and do agility while we're gone. Yeah. The dog is excited because he heard you coming from 2 miles away. And when you get home, he's, hey, buddy, what's up? And he's like, OK, when you're coming from 2 miles away, I can expect this, my reward. Right? Yeah, but before that? And they've done research on this and had hidden cameras and stuff in the house and watched the dogs who just lay there while the owner is gone. And from over a mile away, the dogs are picking up the sound of their owner's car. And the neat part of that experiment was they would take a vehicle, let's call it a '96 Grand Cherokee. And they'd put it out there, drive it up-- it's the owner's car. Every day. So they tried to take an identical car, identical tires and everything, and drive that car up. The dogs would not respond. They just laid there. They're that good. These dogs are phenomenal. Dogs are such awesome creatures when we really look at what they can and can't do. Remember, these dogs now are sniffing cancer cells. They're that cool. From a block away. Very good. Thank you for adding that. Because, very important. She says that from a block away-- she's got the drop cam in there. And she can see her dog start to respond already from a block away. So I'll take Samson out, and we'll do a little bit. Samson is actually my working patrol dog, and he is a Belgian Malinois. [INAUDIBLE] Jump. Jump. Come on. Good boy. All right, so this is why they're not great pets. They're very cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. Sit. Follow. Follow. Down. The level of command-- att-- you cheater. Come here. Heel. Down. Down. You notice I don't use the stay command. I find stay-- ai! Phooey. Down. Told you he was going to make me a liar. Just take your time there, buddy. Down. The level of command-- down. The stay is-- animals and children. Never work with them on television. Down. Heel. Yes. This is his reward instead of food. This is what he loves to do. And he will do this all day long. Out. No. Out. Out. Samson, out. You cheater. I told you he was going to make me look silly. Down. Report. Report. Report. [DOG BARKS] So this is a perfect example of an operant dog. He's going to try to figure out what he has to do in order to get to it. Again, you notice he didn't come out here looking at other dogs. He didn't come out here looking at people. He's like, how do I get that from your hands? This is engagement. Out! Sit. [DOG WHINES] No. Out. Out. [DOG WHINES] Out! No, out. No. Thank you. Now you know why we say Malinois are not great pets, because this is a typical one. Down. Sit. Down. [BARK] Sit. Heel. Heel. Down. [DOG GROWLING] Down. Yes. Out! No. Out. Oh, you're so naughty today. Out. But you notice the commands don't go up with anger, frustration, or anything else. Down. [BARK] You're so silly. Down. OK. Down. Heel. Heel. OK. Load. Load. Good boy. That's Samson. Yeah. He'll make me look bad every time he gets the chance. Real quick, before, I guess-- how much time we got? ANGIE PRIMAVERA: We can probably take about five minutes for questions. ROB PELADEAU: Five minutes, let me give you this real quick. One of the biggest mistakes we're making right now as a culture is thinking that we need to socialize our dogs in dog parks, et cetera, amongst other dogs. It's causing our biggest amount of dog aggression and dog overinterest. Because the dogs are going to the dog parks, and we're sitting there texting and everything else. The dogs are learning that their excitement, their reward-- everything else-- comes from other dogs. And god forbid there's an unbalanced dog in the dog park-- because we never see that, right? I mean, attached to their unbalanced owner. And their dog's exhibiting aggressive behaviors, et cetera. And then our dog has to correct that other dog, and now we get our dog learning that he is in charge of correcting other animals. And we create dog-aggressive, over-reactive, over-interested dogs. The way you get dogs like this who care about nothing in the world is by bringing them out and training them in these situations. Engagement is with you. If you take nothing away from this lecture except for this one word, "engagement." It's all about you. Like I said about five minutes into the lecture, most of the time we're just boring people to our dogs. Because we tell our dogs, go fulfill your day with other dogs and other people. They don't need to-- please, you see my dog walking up, please don't say, hey, buddy, say hi to your dog. You don't know my dog. You don't know me. You don't know. I walk through San Francisco. We were in South of Market area one day, and he's in full police get up, because we just left a demonstration or something. And there's a big old sign on the side of his neck, police canine. And this guy walks up with a stupid flexi-lead and this stupid guy, huh-huh-huh-huh. I'm like, hey, buddy, not a good idea. Huh-huh-huh-huh. And the dog is going further out on the flexi-lead. Hey, dude. My dog doesn't need to say hi to your dog. Oh, why are you such a jerk? I'll take that over my dog getting bit by his unbalanced dog, his over-interested dog. Because my dog is very confident, but he's also very dominant. So the first thing he's going to try to do is put his head over the haunches and going to start a fight. And the other dog, if he's not confident, is going to fight. Who was our biggest fighters in high school? Was it the guys who were the most confident or the guys who were the most afraid? Right? That's the dogs that are acting aggressively, the dogs that are very fearful, very afraid. Teach your dog that the best place on Earth is right next to you. And that way, he can go out, and he will go play with other dogs. And I can call him right out of it. So once you teach your dog engagement with you, where you go by dogs-- sit, down, all of our little tricks we learned at home. Then the dog goes, ah, great things happen when other dogs are around, without me engaging with other dogs. That's how we create dogs who are not dog-aggressive. That's how we create dogs who are interested in us, and that's how we create dogs who will recall even when they're out there with other dogs, or squirrels, or fish, or whatever your dog's into. It's by showing them that the best place on Earth-- Disneyland happens at my side. Make sense? All right. We good? ANGIE PRIMAVERA: We're done, yes. ROB PELADEAU: Well, I want to thank you guys all for sharing your lunchtime with me. Thank you for bringing that food in because now I'm super hungry, all that. But thanks again.
Info
Channel: Talks at Google
Views: 442,883
Rating: 4.7752161 out of 5
Keywords: Dog (Domesticated Animal), TalksAtGoogle, Dog Behaviourist
Id: KrKEZIxFB64
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 59min 18sec (3558 seconds)
Published: Tue Dec 30 2014
Reddit Comments
Related Videos
Note
Please note that this website is currently a work in progress! Lots of interesting data and statistics to come.