What do piano lessons have to do with dog training?

Some of you may know that when I first got into dog training, I was teaching kids piano lessons.  I think it gave me a lot of insight into working with kids and when it comes to dog training, I have to admit that 9 times out of 10 when there are kids involved in classes, I have more fun teaching the kids than I do their parents.  When I stop to ask myself why? the answer is pretty simple: less pressure to jump to the end result and less concern about expectations.  They want to learn for fun, they want to be involved, they want to PLAY the game.  They’re not worried about being top of the class, making the dog the perfect pet in the home, or what society is going to think of their dogs when they’re out in public.

When I think back (omg over 30 years ago) to my own journey learning piano, what I find interesting is that the more pressure there was from teachers, my parents and myself leading up to recitals, exams, & competitions to not only perform but trying to do it to a certain standard, the less fun it got, and the less I wanted to do it.  I eventually quit and didn’t touch a piano for a long time.

It wasn’t until I moved out on my own that I decided to pick it up again.  I bought a piano and started playing again - this time for no reason but to enjoy it as an outlet for myself whenever I felt like I wanted to do it.

When I compare that to my dog training journey - especially as I’ve started to get into competitions and performance, I see an AWFUL lot of parallels.

Before I go any further, let me be clear that I am NOT anti-sports, anti-competition, or against dogs performing.  I’m not saying these things are bad at all and plan to continue doing all of these things with my own dogs.   They serve a range of purposes: they can motivate us to work more with our dogs, elevate our skills, we can use them to see where there’s room for improvement, we can use them to learn from watching others and inspire others still to get into the field.  If you’re the type of person who finds competition fun - then it’s also fun to compete. And if you’re making sure to choose sports/activities that your dog finds fun, then it’s for fun for the dogs too.

BUT

When we’re teaching another sentient being (be it another human or animal) I think we have to be very careful with pressure and expectations or we risk not only taking the joy out of training but we can actually make the experience itself aversive even if we think we’re only using positive reinforcement.  If we find ourselves putting too much pressure on ourselves and/or our dogs, we really need to step back, ask questions, and make some changes or I would argue that we shouldn’t be doing it.

We talk about motivation in dog training all the time - food, toys, access to desired resources, etc.  But the motivator that I don’t think we talk about enough and the one that I would argue is the MOST important to consider is choice or a sense of control for the learner.  This applies to classes, our practice at home, and in performance/competition settings.

I’ve noticed a significant shift in recent years toward more game based dog training, which is a welcome step in the right direction - it makes training seem more fun, and it increases the likelihood that the dog will want to engage on their own accord because it feels like play.  But I still see a lot of people putting pressure on their dogs to engage when the dogs aren’t ready to and I also see it backfire a lot.  (This usually looks like shoving food in the dog’s face to try to lure them to do things when they aren’t interested in it, trying to rev them up with toys when they’re not interested in playing or trying to act more exciting or getting more firm to get their attention so you can get them do something and the result is usually a dog checking right out and not wanting to play anymore).  

If I can encourage you to make one change to preserve the joy of training for your dog (if you’re not already doing it), it is to look for ways to reduce pressure and add more choice into your setups.  If you’ve worked with me over the past few years, the entire Control Unleashed program is centred around giving the dogs more choice in their training.  The Give Me A Break game is the best example of what we can do when we want to set up our conditions to get our dogs enthusiastically choosing to get us to play, and to incrementally add pieces to see if it changes their motivation to come back and keep the game going.  You can find this game in any of Leslie McDevitt’s Control Unleashed books and I also teach it in my Control Unleashed class.

I hope that gives you some important food for thought and I hope you enjoy my music - mistakes and all :)  The song is The Music Box Dancer by Frank Mills