Training Is (Not) The Answer

Sometimes we trainers are asked to train some very silly things.  One of my favorite trainer friends Steve Benjamin had a client with a dog who was constantly shredding the toilet paper. His solution? Close the door.

A little bit ago I had to move my cats into my parent’s house. And instead of trying to train them to stay on the second floor, we put up a gate with a curtain.  This way, they couldn’t jump over it and it was easy to manage.  Sure I could have done some training but why?  Why in the world put that much time and energy into something temporary? It reminds me of when we get calls around the holidays to train the family pet to stay away from the Christmas tree.

Another popular training request is to stop the dog from getting into the trash can.  Why when you can just get a trash can with a lid?  Again, there are loads of training things to do, but why?  I remember when I opened a small doggie day care, I didn’t feel like training each and every dog that came into it.  So I spent the money on a mac-daddy, butterfly lidded trash can that was about $75.  And I can tell you, this bad boy was Husky proof.  We actually had a Husky jump on it, and knock it over, and vola!…  nothing happened.  And after that, never tried again.

I think my favorite things are the simple things though. “My dog eats my shoes and chews my dirty socks.” And again, prevention and management is easier than training.  I’ll bet money that every single puppy class out there will tell you to pick up your shoes and put away your clothes.  When I had my puppy, there was nothing, and I mean nothing left out of any value that he could chew.   I really didn’t want him to learn how great it was to chew up my flip flops.  It doesn’t take much to learn a self rewarding behavior like chewing.

Even if you plan on doing behavior modification and are going to actually train your dog to do “THING X” one of the first steps is behavior management.  How many times have you heard, “The first step is to prevent the dog from doing ‘THING Z’ so we can retrain him to do ‘THING X’ instead.”  So, even if you’re going to train a different behavior, typically managing the environment is the first step anyway.  Why?  Because you need to prevent the dog from reinforcing himself over and over again and practicing the unwanted behavior over and over again.  Quite often you can change behavior just by changing the environment.

So remember, not everything is realistically solved by training.  And in fact, there is some stuff not worth training.  And there is nothing wrong with management.

MORE EXAMPLES:

• Using a crate so your shiny new puppy doesn’t chew up the electrical cords.
• Using a front clip harness (like an Easy Walk) to walk your dog without him pulling, because you own 20 acres and have back problems and just never practice walking your dog.
• Put up a baby gate so your dog just can’t help himself to the Christmas chocolate under the tree.
• Close the door to the laundry room so you don’t have to buy new underwear every week.
• Shut the lid if your dog drinks out of the toilet so he doesn’t ingest the pretty blue chemicals.
• Clean off the counter so your Great Dane just can’t help himself to the butter stick.
• Put the cat litter box somewhere inaccessible so the dog can’t eat the “kitty cookies.”
• Use a car barrier so your St Bernard puppy doesn’t learn your lap is where he should be on a car ride.