Do you remember the teeter totter? That age-less partner pass time of back and forth. You
trust me that I wont jump off sending you soaring to the earth, and I trust you back. Up and down, over and over until we mutually decide on a quit time!
In many ways, I relate the relationships with our pets as being on a teeter totter. A constant back and forth of communication, play, and trust, with the occasional free fall drop to the ground! Hit the playground with me and allow me to explain.
Remember for a moment, when you first took home your puppy or rescue animal. Everything is new to them. Expectations are non-existent, their senses are on high alert, and they are constantly forming new associations with you and their environment. I want you to imagine that emotional state of your new puppy is like a teeter totter hovering perfectly even in the middle with both ends off the ground. Each new person, place, or thing that the dog interacts with gets on the teeter totter and either makes a positive impression, a negative impression, or a neutral one. Over time, a few things can happen. If those impressions are consistent, the dog forms firm expectations from each interaction. If those impressions are inconsistent, the lack of predictability can cause confusion and stress. And, when those impressions are “off the charts” good or bad, the dog can have a long lasting association with the encounter. For Example; Puppy encounters a trash bin. As he investigates(plays on the totter with a trash bin) he finds sugary food! That’s great! So great!! Next time he sees a trash bin, he says, Great! Food!, and as he investigates, he only finds tissues and paper? He eats them anyway, because? why not, they are fun to rip. The next time he sees the trash bin, Yay! probably food or something fun! As he investigates, he, OOW, pokes his nose hard on broken glass, and is now in a lot of pain, whining and trying to clean himself. You then rush him off to the vet and the poke him some more!! NOOO.... Ok. Fast forward, the dog comes home, there is a trash bin out in the middle of the kitchen and the dog doesn’t enter the room. The Trash bin was playing nice for a bit there, making small positive deposits when all of the sudden, it dumped a truck load of negativity on the other end which will outweigh any positives for some time...
Why does any of this matter? Well, let me tell a different story. Today, I took our 9 month old pit bull terrier to the vet to get x rays, because her back leg has been off and on kind of gimpy! She likes the vet and looooves people, but she does have a low threshold for pain, (Yes pit bulls come like that too). I am playing the role of the handler, as a vet tech is to administer the sedative via a shot in the arm. I position Fig in a way so she's facing me, not the tech, so there is no focus on what the tech is doing, and instead, just focused on me. The needle pokes, and she flinches towards the arm. I squeeze her a little tighter and verbally praise and sooth her. Unfortunately the vein was not easy to find, and so there is another poke. Ooops, another one, and she's actually moving the needle under while it’s inside trying to find the vein still. One more poke an Fig has had enough of this now and she is no longer comfortable sitting still. The tech wants to try the other leg, and I politely request a moment, which I use to go out for a short walk around the grounds and go to my car to get her muzzle. I am pretty confident she’ll be fine, but better safe than sorry. I bring her back in, already muzzled up nice and tight. She’s back to wiggly and happy, practically jumps up all the fronts steps (of course since her leg is gimpy), and back to the exam room to try again. I position her the same way, hug her nice and tight and sing sweet praises for her. Theres a poke and no wince. A long 5 seconds goes by, but she is done and good and fine. No bites, attempts to bite, reactivity, or uneasiness at all. But why? A few moments ago, she was probably pretty close to lunging at the poor tech and probably me if we hadn’t stopped when we did. Well, on the teeter totter that Fig and I ride, I make a lot of really heavy positive deposits. There's food, and lots of it. Whole meals from my hands or from the toy that I give her, sticks and bones and kong's and toys and walks,rubs,snuggles, car rides, play dates, sweaters, and beds. So, the couple times here and there that I have to make negative deposits on that teeter, it doesn’t weigh enough to make a difference in the balance. Children are a common victim of dog bites in this country, why is that? Well, when you think of the teeter totter that most children ride with their dogs, it’s inconsistent at best, a volatile experience at worst. Or what commonly happens, is a parent trusts their dog to interact with a strange child in the same way they interact with their own, and now understanding what you know about the teeter totter, you can imagine what can happen.
Of all the benefits of training using positive reinforcement, the formation of that trusting bond between ourselves and our pets is the most rewarding. By consistently making these bite size deposits on the positive side of our teeter totter, we outweigh the negatives, and outnumber the positives.
