A matter of motivation

I keep having the same conversation with different people and it all comes back to the same topic: motivation. Guess everyone’s thinking about how to motivate themselves and their dogs when the heat index is 100 degrees and even when it isn’t. (We’re enjoying a reprieve of several “cool” days in the mid-80s before launching back into the tropical blast furnace. There’s that d*mned word again: tropical.)

What motivates your dog? How often do you reward? Do you use the same reward for everything? What if your dog decides he doesn’t want it? Then what do you do? Have you tried getting your dog excited about a new motivator? Did it work?

Whoa. That’s a lot of questions.

A motivator is a paycheck, it’s something of value and is worth working to get. You do THIS, you get THAT. Each individual being determines what motivates them. What if I said I would detail your van, inside and out, if you trained your dog for 15 minutes every day for the next week? That would be a fairly high value reward, right? (I’ve seen the inside of some of your vans!)

What if I said I would give you a tomato if you trained your dog for 15 minutes every day for the next week? Yeah, thought so. This time of year you could probably get a tomato from your neighbor without so much as even looking at your dog. Maybe you don’t even like tomatoes. Even if you love tomatoes with every ounce of your being, training for seven days is a lot of work for one stinkin’ tomato. Not much motivational value there.

It’s the same with dogs. They’re individuals. Give them something they want. It’s not much of a motivator if the dog doesn’t want it, no matter how cool you might think it is. At the same time, experiment with finding new things your dog thinks are fun or tasty.

You build the drives you use. If you constantly reinforce with food, your dog will expect cookies for a job well done. If you reward with the same toy over and over, your dog will start to engage only with that toy and not want anything else. I make it a point to use a different toy every time Phoenix and I train so he doesn’t get overly attached to any one of them at the expense of all the rest. Some days we play with tugs, some days he gets to chase a ball or a flippy. I have to admit that I have MY favorite toys but Phoenix doesn’t seem to care, which is great.

Sometimes the work itself is so reinforcing and the dog enjoys doing his job and being with his handler so much he truly doesn’t need anything else. That is the ultimate state of nirvana when it comes to training and one I’ve reached with certain dogs on certain exercises. Otherwise, I’m happy to bankroll our partnership and give tangible rewards when they are deserved. After all, NONE of this crazy behavior I ask my dogs for is "natural."

A motivator doesn’t even have to be a “thing.” Phoenix loves to chase me. He finds that highly motivating. Since he can run faster than me, he gets to “catch” me, which he also finds very motivating. This “catching” takes various forms. He hasn’t drawn blood in quite a while.

Is one type of motivator better than another? I don’t think so. It’s nice to have a dog who responds with equal enthusiasm to both food and toys. Some training skills lend themselves best to food rewards when you want to emphasize position or location, while others are perfect for a toy reward to build or release energy.

You can build toy drive in a “food dog” and you can build food drive in a “toy dog” but it takes time and you’ll need to be consistent and patient by pairing them together: if you’ll interact with the toy, you get a treat or if you’ll eat the cookie first, then you can play tug. That's a waaaaaay simplified explanation and if you've ever done it, you know it takes time and patience to build a drive that doesn't come naturally to your dog.

I like tugging because it allows you to physically interact with your dog — in other words, PLAY. A game of tug creates energy and makes the dog focus on you, since you control the game. Sure, you can pop a cookie in your dog’s mouth and that’s fine, too, especially if you want to get quick, multiple reps of a skill, but sometimes I want to do more than just “feed the meter” training.

I’ll admit, there are some days when I am just not up to tugging with Phoenix. He’s 53 pounds of solid muscle and he plays rough. My hands and wrists ache the next day after I’ve done a lot of tugging in a training session. Gimme the bottle of ibuprofen! So some days the rewards are going to be all food because physically, that’s all I’m up for. But no matter what reward I use, it’s accompanied by a genuine smile and sincere verbal praise. Never miss a chance to tell your dog how brilliant he is.

So what motivates your dog? And what motivates you to train when it’s so dang hot? For me, three words: final CDX leg. Followed by two more extremely motivating words: Utility debut.