FF155 Go Ahead, Motivate Me! Engagement for the Differently Motivated Dog

Written topics will be released in two batches each week (one at the start and one mid-week). There will also be relevant practical exercises released each week; gold students are welcome to undertake all of the exercises or select only the exercises that are best suited to their dog. Gold students are also welcome to continue working through earlier exercises in their videos if they feel they need more time on a specific week’s practical work.

Week 1.

This week includes introductory topics as well as topics that focus on building a stronger relationship; improving 2-way communication; recognising “opting in” and “opting out” behaviours; and strategies for improving overall engagement.

Week 2.

This week focuses on “rewards”. We discuss all the uses for rewards, including their role as reinforcement for desired behaviours. We take a detailed look at “appropriate” reinforcement, reinforcement schedules, “reducing reinforcement”, and building reliable behaviours in the absence of visible treats / toys.

Week 3.

This week focuses on motivation. We discuss the relationship between motivation and reinforcement, as well as the changes that need to be made to our training strategies depending on whether the behaviour is intrinsically motivating / reinforcing or is only maintained through the provision of external rewards (e.g. access to treats/toys).

Week 4.

There is always a balance between our dog’s motivation to “work” with us, and their motivation to interact with another aspect of the environment (e.g. leave us to “visit” another human or to run to another dog, leave “work” to chase a bird or other prey animal, stop “work” to investigate an interesting scent on the ground, etc.). This week we look at strategies for reducing the perceived “value” of environmental stimuli, which has the effect of increasing our dog’s relative desire to remain engaged with us and the “work” we are undertaking.

Week 5.

When our dog perceives a behaviour as “low effort” (i.e. “easy”), then our dog is more likely to remain engaged and more likely to enthusiastically participate. This week we discuss this concept in more detail, and we also discuss strategies for improving our dog’s overall confidence (e.g. with spatial pressure, with unstable objects, on different terrains / surfaces, with objects that move and/or make noise, etc.), and we undertake exercises for improving their skills for interacting with objects.

Week 6.

In this final week we target increasing our dog’s ability to deliver prolonged periods of focused, accurate “work” (i.e. increasing the amount of time our dog can “work” in a focused and enthusiastic way before needing access to rewards). Not only do we look at improving mental stamina in this week, but we also cover topics that will help those preparing for competition, including information about acclimation, how to prepare our dog for “work”, and exactly what steps to take when our dog is saying they are not yet ready to “work”.

There are no prerequisites for this class.

Although reinforcement and motivation are distinct concepts, they are also closely related.

Motivation.

Motivation is present BEFORE a specific behaviour is performed. Motivation is the desire to perform the specific behaviour; it is what “drives” the individual to initiate and maintain the behaviour.

Typically, the higher the level of motivation, the more enthusiastic, intense, and/or focused our dog will be as they prepare to undertake the task, and whilst performing the task.

Many typical sport dogs / working dogs have an innate “drive” (intrinsic motivation) to perform specific sport and training related behaviors, whereas our differently motivated (DM) dogs may also have strong motivation to perform specific behaviors / activities, but these “behavioral drivers” may be less conducive to undertaking typical training / “working” tasks.

Typical sport / working dogs possess one or more of the following traits:

• They are highly biddable (i.e. their genetics generate innate motivation to want to listen to the human and focus on the human, and they have an innate desire to determine what the human wants and to “comply” with the human’s requests).
• They have a strong innate motivation to perform the required sport / ”work” behaviors (e.g. a nosework or tracking dog that has a strong innate desire to hunt / track / locate scent; a bitesport dog that has a strong innate desire to monitor movement in the environment, and to chase and bite; a herding dog that has a strong innate desire to interact with livestock; a retrieving dog that has a strong innate desire to carry / retrieve; etc.)
• They have a strong innate motivation to perform behaviours that can easily be transferred into very powerful “reinforcement tools” (e.g. a strong desire to chase, bite, retrieve can allow toys to be used as high value reinforcement; a strong desire to move / run / circle (herd) can allow something as simple as wrapping a cone to be turned into a powerful reinforcer; etc.)

When we are working with our DM dogs, we often need to adjust our training strategies because:

• Their reduced innate biddability results in our dog becoming very de-motivated about continuing to work with us as soon as they experience even a small amount of challenge (e.g. frustration that is not RAPIDLY resolved; any amount of mental fatigue; any amount of physical discomfort (e.g. a small amount of physical fatigue, environmental conditions that are less than ideal, etc.) etc.)
• They may be very independent and possess limited drive (innate motivation) for the specific sport / work / activity we are undertaking. Hence their ONLY motivation to perform the behaviors will be derived from the potential opportunity to access the rewards / reinforcement we deliver.
• Although all DM dogs are still highly motivated to undertake specific behaviors / activities, their individual innate traits may not lend themselves to generating viable reinforcers for typical training sessions (e.g. they may be driven to do independent activities; they may enjoy investigating aspects of the environment in an independent way; they may predominantly enjoy low energy activities; etc.)

Hence, when working with our DM dogs we may find ourselves almost exclusively using food as our primary reward / reinforcement and to motivate the initiation of behaviors in the learning phase. We may also need to utilize food to increase the value of other behaviors that may then be useful as reinforcers (e.g. using food to strengthen the value of toy play, or using food to strengthen the value of personal play / petting, etc.)

How reinforcement influences motivation.

Reinforcement encourages the performance of behaviors because the individual anticipates a benefit from performing the behavior (i.e. they anticipate that performing the behavior will lead to a pleasant outcome (i.e. the influence of “positive reinforcement”), . It is important to note though, that the behavior has to have occurred BEFORE our dog can associate the “good outcome” (reinforcement) with the behavior (i.e. reinforcement comes AFTER the initiation or completion of a behavior). This association has to have been repeated many times before our dog will be able to reliably predict that performing the behavior will result in a “good outcome”. Once our dog finds a behavior to be enjoyable / beneficial, then that previous reinforcement motivates future performances of the behavior.

The impact of intrinsic reinforcement on motivation.

When behaviors are intrinsically enjoyable the reinforcement occurs during each performance of the behavior, this then adds to the motivation to perform the behavior again in a future similar circumstance.

In this case, motivation to perform the behavior will remain consistently high over time (unless our dog is experiencing conflicting issues – e.g. they are extremely fatigued or injured, or their arousal is so high that they are unable to perform the behavior, etc.), and once the behavior is trained / established, it will be easy to reduce (or even eliminate) our externally provided rewards because the performance of the behavior provides innate enjoyment / fulfilment.

The impact of extrinsic reinforcement on motivation.

When we strategically provide extrinsic reinforcement (i.e. when we provide rewards that our dog is able to directly associate with the performance of a specific behavior), this can create motivation to perform that behavior again under similar circumstances (because our dog predicts that a “good outcome” is likely to occur if they perform the behavior, even though the actual performance of the behavior is not innately rewarding to them).

When the behavior is not intrinsically motivating / reinforcing, and our extrinsically provided rewards drop below the threshold where our dog perceives enough “value” for performing the behavior, their motivation for performing the behavior will decline.

Behaviors that are not innately rewarding / enjoyable are more sensitive to changes in the value and rate of the rewards (reinforcement) we are providing and are more likely to rapidly decline in quality and reliability when there is any additional challenge (e.g. competing motivators, shifts in arousal, frustration, concern, physical or mental fatigue, etc.).

In summary……..

Motivation leads to the performance of a behaviour, the performance of the behaviour allows the individual to experience benefits for performing the behaviour (i.e. intrinsic or extrinsic reinforcement), and then the reinforcement contributes to the motivation to perform the behaviour again in the future.

Note: We discuss the influence of intrinsic and extrinsic reinforcement in more detail in the next topic.