From Overwhelm To Confidence: How To Create The Dog Of Your Dreams With Strategic Reinforcement

I'm sharing how to create the dog of your dreams with strategic reinforcement that turns overwhelm into confidence. Whether you’re starting with a new puppy or navigating some challenges with your current dog, small shifts in how you train can lead to big changes in behavior, connection, and clarity.

Transcript Summary:
For those of you who say, “Yeah, my dog training isn't working, Susan.” So, you and your current situation with your dog right now might be in one of two places. You might have like a new dog, a new puppy who is kind of a blank slate. Maybe there's some chewing and there's a lot of puppy type behaviors.

But you aren't dealing with any serious problems. And unfortunately, so many people get that puppy and think, “Well, I'm one of the lucky ones. This one's going to be good.” And as my mentor, Bob Bailey always says, ‘Reinforcement builds behavior.’ And if you aren't very conscious of the reinforcement in your puppy's life, the environment's going to be building that behavior if it's not going to be you.

And so, that puppy that seems to be so loving and really does everything you want, that stage is going to end very soon for you. Now I can tell you that for my own puppies, it just never ends because I intentionally build in the reinforcement I want to get the puppy of my dreams every single time.

So, for some of you, you might be coming here because you've got the new puppy. Thank you for being here now. Now for others of you, you are in a predicament. You haven't been as aware of what punishment or reinforcement that has been going on in your dog's life that has both created behaviors that you don't want to deal with and potentially fears and reactivities that you don't know how to deal with.

And so, if that's where you are, let's make this super easy for you. The first thing we always deal with when we're dealing with a challenge is we decide, is this a behavior or is this an emotion? Because we do not train, ‘sit’, ‘down’, ‘come’, ‘heel’, if we have an emotional challenge.

As I mentioned in podcast episode number 297, we look at, what do we have to desensitize? Then how can we help counter condition? And then we look to, “Alright, now I'm ready. I'm ready. I want to bridge that gap, and I want to start using really strategic reinforcement-based dog training.”

Now, those of you with the puppy, you're both yes, going to continue to condition positive experiences for that puppy. Super important for a new puppy, but you're also going to intentionally use reinforcement to create a bond.

Now, how does that bond start? The biggest mistake some people will have you do with that puppy? It goes back to masking. Taking a cookie, putting it on the puppy's nose and getting them to do whatever you want by following a cookie.

Eventually that cookie is not going to be very attractive. So, rather than taking that approach, let's use the cookie, whatever that is your dog currently likes, let's first grow other reinforcers. Maybe you've got dog kibble. Maybe you've got some homemade dog treats. Maybe you've got some chicken breast that you've roasted up.

You've got to have a selection of reinforcement with different values and shouldn't all be food. What about toys? If you've got a puppy, let's get a long toy that they can chase. Let's get them interacting with the toy. Let's get them bringing it to you every single time you ask.

You never throw a toy for a puppy unless you're willing to bet the other person in the room, “I bet you a hundred dollars this puppy's going to bring it right back to me.” Otherwise, if you throw a toy for a puppy, what's going to happen? Exactly. You don't know.

There's a chance the puppy will go, that was fun and bring it back. There's an unequal chance they will say, “This thing squeaks.” and take off in the other direction. Or as my Terriers always did, the first day I brought them home, when they'd get a toy, they would just try to eviscerate it.

So, there's so much reinforcement that can happen away from you. What we need for either, the dog that we're trying to rehabilitate, because there's a challenge in your household and the puppy that we want to create really intentional pathways, we need to have a plan. And that plan is going to include manners, things like, yes, we don't want the puppy to bite.

Maybe you don't want that puppy to jump up on you, or you don't want the puppy to get on the furniture. Whatever the manners look like, you have to envision what does this look like two years from now? When guests come to my house, what do I want? We got to lay down the foundation that, ‘that can happen now.’

What does it look like when eventually you are walking your puppy or dog out on leash? What does that look like? Chaos of them pulling you from seeing a dog to person, to bush, to bicycle, or is it a dog that's engaging with you? That engagement comes through strategic reinforcing games that you can do while you're out on a walk.