This could be a reality for you: You’ve trained your dog only using food for many years and everything has gone great. There has never been a day where you’ve needed any other form of communication. But then out of the blue, one day your dog stops doing something you need it to and you panic. How are you going to be able to overcome this disruptive challenge?
A client called me when her 100 pound golden doodle stopped loading up in her car on his own. This client is a 72 year old woman who this doodle in addition to an 80 pound doodle and has no capability to pick these dogs up on her own. It created panic because she was getting ready to do a long drive across many states where the dogs would have to go out at gas stations to potty. “If I try and force him up with his collar, I am afraid he is going to slip his collar at some rest stop and then what do I do?!” This dog used to load up with treats as a motivation no problem and one day stopped for reasons unknown to humans. Now what?
This is one of the major issues when it comes to training a dog with positive reinforcement methods (food) only: There is no way to tell a dog “you must do this,” because the dog can always refuse food. My training and philosophy is such that there must be a way to hold your dog accountable when you give it a command. Equally as important, you must have a way to tell your dog no. “No, you cannot jump on grandma” “no, you cannot dig through the trash” “no, you cannot choose to not load up in the car, you must.”
Dogs all have a stress threshold and most dogs show you when they’ve crossed it because they stop taking food. Even bottom feeder dogs like mine; I know when I’ve crossed Onyx’s because he won’t take his kibble. It is important when you reach this pivotal crossroad that you have a way to guide your dog through the stress and ensure they come out on the other side unscathed. Similar to humans, stress is inevitable in dogs and if they never have to work through it, it can build poor behavior and is a fast track to having a reactive dog. This is why I talk and work a lot with clients on “stress inoculation”: created controlled stressful situations where you work collaboratively with your dog on them so they know they can handle stress in the real world!
Back to the client with her doodle: She had tried providing him higher and higher value treats until she was throwing hot dogs into the car and he eventually stopped taking them. This is a slippery slope with positive reinforcement because now you showed your dog that if he refuses his regular DOG food, he can hold out until he gets practically whatever he wants from your pantry.
We decided to implement a car ramp and brought in a slip leash. If you read my post about tools, you know that a proper slip leash tightens around the dog’s neck when pressure from the handler is applied and then loosens when pressure is released. It ensures a dog cannot slip the leash/back out of it, and the dog learns quickly that they must adhere to the direction their owner wants them to go or the annoying pressure is not removed. The ramp wasn’t enough in this situation for the doodle because he simply did not want to go up the ramp, but together with the slip we showed him that he MUST go up the ramp into the car. After all, dogs are living in a human world and there are things that they must do and must not do to live harmoniously with us in it. That is the reality.