The Four Quadrants Ep4

The Four Quadrants Ep4

you're listening to creating great grooming dogs I'm Chrissy Neumyer Smith I'm a certified professional groomer a certified Behavior consultant for canines and a certified professional dog trainer and this my friends and colleagues is the podcast who we grooming and training meet today I want to get into some training methods but before I do that I want to talk about the fact that there are many ways to teach a there are a lot of opinions out there um I'm going to ask all of you to be open-minded and kind to each other sometimes discussions about different methods turn into internet Warfare and I don't want that for any of us um I know what my own biases are and I know that it could be hard to listen to something different with an open mind but it is really important I'm going to share information that's been successful for my own customers and for their dogs I'm a crossover trainer so I started working with dogs in ' 86 and I've definitely changed the way I do things I don't think I even do things the same way as I did last year because I'm always taking more information in I'm going to continuing ed I'm always learning and that does mean kind of replacing something you were doing with a new tool but I want you to be open-minded I understand that it can be hard I ask you to give it some serious thought ask questions give suggestions be willing to try something new and listening to the ways that I explain why and what I'm doing may actually give you some ideas on how to explain these things to your own customers maybe some co-workers or an employer um addressing each other with kindness and respect will encourage learning and if we only learn from people that we agree with we won't learn much at all I actually listen to an awful lot of stuff from people that use methods I don't use and some of my best friends use methods I don't use um so I want you to be open-minded while I give you some brief overview of training today

I know that we often think in terms of um a quick recipe for fixing a problem what do I do if a dog is bad for his ears what do I do if a dog hates having his nails trimmed but I'm going to tell you that that's not the best way of looking at things and we're going to talk some training stuff so every dog is different and the beh it a behavior is an individual's response to something that's going on and because every dog is different we need to be thinking about why they're doing it and understand the concepts of behavior change um to ask a dog to stop doing something isn't a goal I know we kind of think about it that way I used to too it's pretty common for us to think I just want him to stop wiggling when I do this I want him to stop being you know aggressive toward me about nails or I want him to stop screaming when he's in the tub um but stop doing isn't a goal if we're trying to stop a behavior we are setting ourselves up for this long battle and what it turns into is just putting out fires right you have to wait for the behavior to happen before you can stop it right so it's sort of um like okay when he does this how do I react and I don't want you to get into reactive training that's that's not our goal

In fact I hear it awful lot when people tell me that um well I've got a couple of dogs that are only you know I can only groom them nobody else can they're only good for me and I've got to say that that's great that you got to that point but your training isn't yet Complete because we need the dog to be able to understand that the train that the grooming is safe and have it transfer to other people also and that's where I immediately start thinking does the dog know it's safe or has the dog learned that you better not bite me or I always win or you or something else that we kind of don't want that's a lot of baggage I don't want you to have baggage I don't want the dogs to have baggage I don't want there to be all sorts of contingencies it should be you are calm and comfortable and cooperative and because of that I can do my job or the vet can do their job or the owner can do their job

I actually have a lot of trouble getting video of naughty dogs being better and I've tried because I'm like how am I supposed to sell this to anybody if I can't get good video of a before and after but I don't want to do one more just for science right like one more dog freak out but what I do is I start off with calm in the in a previous podcast we talked about three steps of calm but I start them off with calm I continue to nudge into their comfort zone and help them be a little bit more comfortable with it I end on calm so it's start with calm maintain calm end with calm and what happens is I don't get any really uh fantastic video I don't get big dramatic befores and afters but let me tell you why that works

all right I want you to be thinking about not only is every dog different but the core behavior that we're looking for is a dog who was good for grooming and what that really entails is a dog who can be touched all over be repositioned can stand can sit can have a leg lifted up can maybe have their front legs lifted up while we while we do something on their belly right they need to be repositioned they need to be able to be picked up moved from a table to a bathtub into a crate we need to be able to touch them with objects and those can be Clippers those can be scissors um those could be the dryer because you know think you're still being touched the dryer is still touching you we need them to be comfortable with the variety of sounds and so those when we think about those things as skills that we can now build on so then we're thinking all right well how do I build a skill of whatever you know whatever it is we need to do let's um let's start off with an example of okay the skill of standing how can I build that skill well I can reward it I can I can reward it so you'll hear things like positive reinforcement and um I'll talk about the quadrants in a second but I tend to be a positive reinforcement trainer which means it doesn't mean that you only use positive reinforcement all the time and that means cookies what that means is is that you I choose to find the behavior I want and in enourage it and by doing that I build that Behavior's frequency so I know I get a little techy and I'm not trying to but for some of you you need the tech and some of you just need the concepts um because this is for trainers and for grimmers

but when I when I build those Concepts when I say all right I need you to be more comfortable with standing then I can build that in a way where the dog is comfortable with standing and we can add things after that because a dog that's comfortable with standing doesn't necessarily transfer immediately to I'm comfortable with standing and having Clippers on me right so we need to have that part be be functional for us we need that dog to be able to understand how to do it and we can build that instead of stop sitting or stop struggling or stop you know trying to knock the Clippers out of my hand with your foot we can build stand and be still and by building a new skill we're saving a whole lot of time time right we don't need to reinvent the wheel for every little skill we just need to help them understand some of these bigger Concepts

and so I'm going to talk a little bit about the four quadrants you guys might have heard of this if you're groomers you might not have but um there are the the idea is it's a loose guideline it's hotly debated we could certainly go on for days entire entire weekend seminars are deated to this so we're not going to get into too much dep but it's it's kind of a guideline you can increase a behavior and that's what we call reinforcement when a behavior increases or the likelihood of that behavior increases the frequency of that behavior increases that's reinforcement if we're trying to decrease a behavior that is punishment and it doesn't have emotion wrapped in it I think that sometimes we start thinking reinforcement is all like oh hey we're giving them cookies but sometimes a cookie is just a cookie if it does not increase the behavior here it was not a reinforcer it was just a cookie

um so punishments don't necessarily mean that you are angry this is a scientific version of punishment the the the behavior was reduced so punishment means that the behavior was reduced if you yell at a dog or tell him no and the behavior is not reduced the behavior was not punished from a scientific point of view it was just you simply got angry so some sometimes you know a cookie is just a cookie and sometimes a yell is just angry and they have no effect on the behavior we're looking at it's important to have something in mind of what we're looking at so again we're talking about let's teaching him stand to stand still right so if he's standing up and I've got my hands on them I can encourage that in two ways so reinforcement we talked about reinforcement and punishment but reinforcement there are two ways to reinforce there's positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement and what positive reinforcement is is when something is added to increase the likelihood of the behavior happening again

um negative reinforcement is when something is removed to help that behavior happen again all right so it gets a little tricky because it's more of an algebraic kind of positive negative not an emotional something good something bad I don't want you to think about it in terms of good bad Pleasant unpleasant because sometimes those things just muddy up the waters this is getting into more of the science of it okay but positive reinforcement for a dog who happens to be standing and is being really good could be petting it could be a cookie it could be whatever um that the dog enjoys or likes and that would be oh the likelihood has increased now we won't know if the likelihood increases until we try it again we got to keep trying it we got to keep working that's where we get some repetitions in because otherwise it could just be that he got a cookie and he has no idea why and that's where we get into reward markers and stuff stuff that's not going to get covered today but when we start talking about having um the ability to encourage the thing that we want

now negative reinforcement again isn't an emotional thing it's about removing something to increase the Behavior you want it's hard to come up with a good example for standing but I will use an example for negative reinforcement which is um if a dog is barking for attention and as you walk closer barks at you for attention if you turn your back you are removing your attention to increase the likelihood that he'll be quiet right it gets a little bit tricky but if we're trying to encourage him to be quiet we might remove our attention um and like I said these these get tricky entire weekend seminars cover this stuff um God knows how many books right so um I try not to use negative reinforcement all that much but I will say there are times where I do use it so if I were holding a dog and I'm working on teaching him to be standing and to be still I might if he starts to wiggle calm him down again and then let him off the hook right like okay you can go play and that would be removing the task right I know it gets a little bit confusing but that would be okay now your task is done not that it was particularly unpleasant but it might just be that he's a little bit tired right

um so I'm going to remove the task as a reward for being calm because sometimes they remain calm if they think oh is she going to let me off the hook if I'm just quiet all right I Know It's Tricky and we'll talk more about it so anyway punishment punishment we talked about is when something is reduced it is less likely to happen and when that means is there are two ways to do that we can add something to make something less likely to happen or we can remove something to make it less likely to happen I personally don't use punishment a whole lot um I wouldn't say that I would never ever use it just that I can't remember the last time I did um but to add something to a dog um to a dog's Behavior to decrease it are things like um saying no if they've been taught that that means to end what they're doing um getting mad at them or a leash correction leash Corrections are a pretty common one there's not a whole lot of good uses for punishment in The Grooming Room because what we're seeing are stress behaviors and it's it's really hard to tell a dog knock it off I don't want that when they're stressed out right it's better to replace it with hey this is the thing we do want this is the thing we do want I'm all about setting them up for Success

so with punishment like I said it's adding or subtracting from what they're doing to decrease so positive punishment doesn't sound it it might sound friendly but it's not um it means that we're adding something to to make that less likely and that might be um well these are things that I don't use but it might be like squirtting a squirt bottle at a dog who's barking which by the way I worked at one grooming shop and they would squirt at dogs that were barking and I have never worked anywhere with so many cage aggressive dogs I've got to say they had such a high high number of dogs who were cage aggressive in their grooming shop so it's not about if it reduces the behavior I'm sorry it is about if it reduces the behavior it's not about um just getting angry okay cuz they weren't getting angry when they were squirting the water but they also weren't getting any effect from it the dogs were still barking so it was just turning into something that created a new problem which is I don't want you near my cage because you might come over with the water bottle

all right negative punishment is actually a little bit Kinder than positive punishment like I said it's weird so negative punishment means you're removing something so you're you're removing something to get the dog to be less likely to do it again um so it might be you walking up with a cookie and at the last minute the dog did something you don't like and you're like H never mind you don't get the cookie right like too bad you don't get the cookie I I remove that or nope you can't get out of the crate now you were you were doing really well but I was going to let you play but the last minute you did something Goofy and I don't like it so I'm going to stop right it's actually a little bit Kinder than positive punishment because positive and negative when we're talking about the four quadrants means adding and subtracting and Punishment and reinforcement mean um decreasing and increasing behaviors

all right so I know that's a big jumble a whole lot of stuff to unpack it's hard to just briefly discuss it but when I'm thinking about adding a behavior that I do want that becomes clearer for the dog I'm going to give you a human example and I hope that this makes sense to you um this is the human example I give a lot of my training customers so it should make sense imagine you're at a new job and you are just being told okay you have to pick up the phone all right so you pick up the phone the phone rings you pick up the phone Jo Mo's Pizza how can I help help you and the person they're training you says no you're like okay so the phone rings the next time maybe you don't pick up the phone they still tell you no or you pick up the phone you're like Joe Mo's Pizza may I take your order and they tell you no and you start getting really frustrated like every time you pick up the phone you try something new you try something different you're trying to make them happy and they always are just telling you know until you say well too bad I'm just going to do it the way I want to because there's a point where in that job scenario you would be saying no I need to know what exactly you want from me tell me how to pick up the phone tell me how to take an order tell me what you want me to do and that's where we're coming in with like that would be job training and I think it should be our dog training too I want them to know exactly what to do

so now imagine you're at that same job and the worker who's teaching you says okay we pick up the phone by saying this hello Jo Mo's Pizza let me take your order or we have specials today right and then they have you practice it before you actually have to pick up the phone and then they're there beside you when you do pick up the phone to tell you you did it right or to tell you how to tweak it to tell you how to be better at it which job are you going to stay at I know that the do job where I'm constantly being told no I'd probably leave well probably right away I don't think I'd stay the the shift but the job where someone's telling me exactly what they want from me and guiding me along setting me up to get it right giving me instruction is the job that I would stay at so that is why I'm always trying to build the behavior that I do want instead of putting out fires

the um the idea of telling somebody no um I understand where it comes from we want them to stop what they're doing and God knows it sputters out of my mouth once in a while with my own guys you know hey no and then I catch myself and go all right I might have temporarily stopped what was going on but I haven't taught them what I want him to do and I need to teach them exactly what I want them to do set them up to get it right and if that behavior is not increasing in frequency if that behavior is not happening more often for me if that's not getting better I need to back track and say how can I make that clearer to the animal and that's part of training

so I know there was a lot covered and it's only a short podcast so we will cover more but I want you to give that some thought mul that over ask me questions um because I want you to understand that there's some science behind it it's not that I'm against punishment it's that I am totally more interested in setting up exactly what I want exactly what I want from my customers from my dogs and usually I refer to the dogs as my customers too which my sister thinks it's kind of adorable she talk about like my customer Sparky um but I want I want them to know exactly what I want from them and encourage them toward that um instead of worrying about what do I do if he is bad because then you're just putting out fires I could answer that pizza phone that pizza job phone a million different ways before I ever caught on to the one that works and if they aren't there to tell me the one that works I might just think that they forgot to say no so it's a lot to unpack give it some thought I know I got early kind techie but I have fun with it

I'm going to add a little podcast disclaimer yes I'm a behavior consultant trainer and groomer but this podcast does not take the place of consultations and lessons the information here is meant to be educational and helpful this field is ever changing and newer information comes out older podcasts may become outdated I am not responsible for how you may use this information for real individualized help you can get a lesson or a consultation with Me by emailing me at Chrissy happy critters.com dogs Facebook page I am happy to work with people on their very specific goals and needs but don't hold me responsible for things that happen on a podcast