The Happy Place

So my Bernese Mountain Dog is always hot. Day or night, he thinks global warming does exist. I honesty think the happiest weather he’s seen was this past winter’s blizzard. (Visit our YouTube page to see him in the snow.)

What I noticed was he learns the coldest place in the house, friend’s house, hotel, etc. without any instructions from anyone. He figures this out on his own because he is motivated by his desire for the cold.  (And I call this spot his “happy place.”)

What’s interesting to a behavior dork like myself is seeing the training / learning process.

1. Dog wants to be colder. – This is the reason an animal (including people) will get off their butt and do something. It’s called “desire” and not all desires are created equal. Ever heard the saying, “how bad do you want it?” Meaning: is this a burning desire or just a “it’d be nice” desire. For my dog Koos, coldness is a hard wired, hard core kind of desire. Therefore he’s motivated to learn faster.

2. Then it is doing whatever possible to achieve the desire. Whatever works first generally wins. It isn’t common to figure out something works then think, “I should keep trying.” That’s like thinking you should keep looking for your keys after you already found them. It’s usually only if the previously learned behavior stops working, is when animals try and find “Plan B” solution.

3. Even if the A/C is off and the house fan is on, Koos will by default go and lie in his Happy Place. There is no cool air coming out of the vent, but believe it or not, this randomized cold air delivery actually makes this behavior stick more. Why? Because a random schedule of reinforcement makes behaviors hard to extinguish.

4. At this point, this place in the house has been associated with pleasant emotions. I notice that on his own, without any prompting, it is his first place to lay on the first floor. When he’s back from a walk, he goes there. When we are making dinner, he goes there. The cold air was the beginning motivation, and now he just likes the spot. Honestly, it reminded me of crate training.

I love watching my dog do stuff. Then my trainer brain picks apart the why & how of it. Yeah, I’m a behavior dork. But I’m ok with that.