Does your dog view cookies as a bonus or a paycheck? I’ve had one of both. My GSD girl, Zita, loved to work with me. Verbal praise and physical petting made her wiggle with joy. She was a serious working dog and knew her job. To her, cookies were a bonus; they were simply frosting on top for doing a good job. So, when I got my Springer, I trained him the same way. If it worked for her, why wouldn’t it work for him? I’m sure you can see where this is going...
I’m careful with using cookies. I’ve heard (and seen) the trouble that arises from being dependent on treats. Yes, in the beginning, they are visible lures to help me develop muscle memory and shape specific behaviors and positions. But, they quickly turn into rewards. And, this reward isn’t simply handed to the dog. Instead, the dog is asked to “work” for the cookie in most cases, by doing a spin or a bounce, or even chasing the cookie down in my hand. So why was my ring performance starting to suffer? Finishes were getting slower and my dog was looking towards the ring gate. He wasn’t stressed in the ring (we’ve gone through that in the past), in my opinion, he was looking for his crate and his cookies.
About a year and a half ago, I started jackpot work with him. Wow, he thought that was wonderful. Give me effort and earn an exceptional jackpot. It worked, and worked very well...for awhile. Then, while I got sporadically great work in the ring, at other times it was (what I considered) subpar. I’d lost the crispness that I loved with this dog. However, when I exited the ring he was back to his “over the top” self. He’d offer spins, perfect heeling, perfect halts....because he knew the jackpot was coming soon. But in the ring, he was lackluster. He did well. Still won nice sized classes, still pulled some nice scores, but what I loved about showing this dog was not there. He wasn’t working for me, he was working for his jackpot. I knew things had to change.
Enter “cookie rehab”...I reached out to Linda Koutsky, who is an exceptional trainer in Michigan. She has published work on rehabbing this particular problem and she believes in the dog working for the relationship with the handler, not for the cookies. She helped me walk through my problem and confirmed my belief that Gunner felt the cookies were the paycheck, not the bonus that my GSD had seen them as. So what does this cookie rehab involve? No food...EVER. Well, not really EVER, but no food was to be given for ANY formal component of an exercise. What?? No more spitting a cookie to my dog for a good front? I’m not sure who this was harder on....Gunner or me. Instead, I was to move to highly reinforcing “bridge” behaviors - like spins, through the legs and up into heelwork position and hand touches. The food could be used here, but no more jackpotting and no more rewarding exercises with food. This was to help change my "dog’s expectation about the jackpots and being fed” (Linda Koutsky). Food could come out on motivational behaviors or compulsion exercises and corrections, but that was it. Wow, this was a completely different method of training for me. It was a difficult concept to wrap my head around and I read my notes over and over again. (The tug toy, as well as personal praise and play, was also to be used liberally throughout this process, both as a reward and during compulsion exercises.)
A little background on Gunner....he is a pretty environmental little dog. He will tug like a demon at home or at places where he feels very comfortable, but these places are few and far between. So, how do I get this dog to tug, when he is unable to block out the environment to tug with me? I have to make him mad. Actually, sometimes VERY mad. I grab at him, I push him, I tell him that I’m going to “get him” as I’m going towards him with my hands out. I get him growling. (I actually have growling on command as a trick.) When he got mad, he would tug. Yes, he probably wanted to rip my arm off in the beginning, but he knew the tug was a better decision. Fortunately for me.
Oh my gosh, this was a lot of work, for BOTH of us. Training sessions were short, but a lot of hard work. But, I’m determined and the cookies stayed put away. I tried a couple of different styles of tugs. I tried a few different ways of making him mad. And, guess what? It’s working. He's forgetting about the cookies. He thinks tugging is fun, so much fun that I very rarely need to get him mad to tug anymore.
I tried bringing the cookies out to work on some compulsion games the other day. His behavior changed immediately. He was 100% fixated on my mouth where the cookies were. He was springing at my mouth, anything to earn a cookie. I tried two compulsion exercises, I looked at my training partners, said “this isn’t going to work” and I ate the cheese in my mouth. Back to the tug.
While I’m hoping I can bring a few cookies back into training at some point, he’s not ready yet. And, honestly, neither am I. Maybe when we get over the “hump” and he’s back to being committed to working with me, I’ll try again. But, maybe not. Maybe by then, I (and Gunner) will be so happy with the tug work that I won’t feel the need to reach for a cookie.
There is no such thing as a quick fix. I am not going to be able to change this dog’s behavior overnight, but I do think we’re on the right track. The first few shows will be hard. There is too much background of jackpots and cookies to be erased overnight. But, I can see the glimmer in my dog’s eyes again....and I love it.
Train hard. Play harder.
Shannon
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