“My dog knows what to do. He just doesn’t do it.”
Yep.
Seriously, I believe you. There’s no bait-and-switch here. I’m not about to say “no, you silly goose, your dog doesn’t actually know what to do at all”! (Partly because I already said that in this other article)
I’m sure there are lots of commands/cues your dog can follow beautifully in your kitchen or at training class, which they completely fail to follow in any of the actual real-life scenarios you need them for.
Hey, totally random question: you know how to floss your teeth, right?
It’s almost like knowing how to do something isn’t the same as actually being able to do it reliably and consistently.
I kid, I kid. Sort of. But yeah – knowing and doing are completely different things. Humans are painfully aware of this about ourselves. We just seem to forget this the moment we’re talking about our dogs.
We assume that once the dog understands a cue, training is basically over. Therefore, if they fail to perform correctly now, that must say something unpleasant about either them or us.
Nah.
There are a whole lot of reasons why a living creature might know how to do something and still not do it in a particular moment.
Here are just a few.
1. It’s harder than you think
If someone tells me they can do a pushup, I would not then presume they could do a hundred in a row or do a handstand pushup.
There’s a difference between understanding what you’re supposed to do and having the skill to actually pull it off under the conditions you’re being asked to do it.
Same goes for Sparky.
He may be great at recalling from ten feet away at puppy class. Coming when called from 100 feet away while frolicking in the forest is something else entirely.
Loose leash walking is another great example because, holy shit, loose leash walking is complicated.
Your dog has to keep track of where you are, match their speed to yours, respond when you change direction, notice when the leash starts to tighten and adjust their movement accordingly. All while they’re also trying to, you know, relax and enjoy their walk.
Not to mention that most dogs naturally walk a hell of a lot faster than humans do. So we’re asking them to perform this complicated collection of skills while moving at what must be an infuriatingly slow pace.
Knowing the rules isn’t necessarily the problem; sometimes the physical skill itself just needs more practice.
2. The habit hasn’t been formed yet
A dog might know what a cue means, but if performing it still takes a ton of conscious, deliberate effort, then it’s nowhere near fully trained.
Think about learning to drive.
Sure, you memorized the driver’s manual and aced your written permit test, but as soon as you’re on the road, all of that goes completely out the window. Wait, who goes first at a four-way stop again? You want me to make a lane change? Are you insane?!
But for most people, if you keep at it long enough, the day arrives when you pull into your driveway after a long commute from work and realize you don’t even remember driving home. Your brain put that incredibly complex skill on autopilot.
That’s what we call being fluent in a behavior: not just knowing it, but being damn good at it. Fluency is the real bar to aim for in training.
3. Something else is more reinforcing
You pick up your phone because you need to finally answer that email you’ve been avoiding. Unfortunately, you also have TikTok, Instagram, and Youtube installed on that phone.
Godspeed, my friend.
Every animal is constantly making decisions, conscious and otherwise, about what is worth doing right now.
You have a little bag of chicken treats.
The forest floor contains the scents of a few dozen prey animals and the “social media updates” of all the dogs in the neighborhood.
Who will win???
This is why motivation is right up there with fluency when it comes to building reliable behaviors. They need to be damn good at it AND they need a damn good reason to do it.
4. They’re overwhelmed
You know that feeling when you have a million things you need to do and somehow the result is that you do none of them?
Dogs can get overwhelmed too.
Imagine asking Sparky for a heel at a busy park. There are dogs running around. Kids yelling! Skateboards! Traffic! Food smells! Strangers telling them what a handsome boy she is!
It’s a lot to deal with at once.
And if your dog is barking and lunging at another dog, frantically trying to get somewhere, or otherwise so wound up that their brain is basically not there, insisting that they perform some complicated behavior probably isn’t going to help.
5. Their training didn’t match the arousal level of the moment
Think about trying to type an important text when you’re REALLY excited about something. You know how to type. But suddenly there are typos everywhere and your fingers are moving faster than your brain.
Your dog might perform beautifully when they’re calm and completely fall apart once they’re excited.
This is one of the most overlooked variables in dog training.
A dog who can do a gorgeous [insert behavior here] while in a chill mood may suddenly struggle to do the same behavior when you break out their favorite toy. A dog with a perfectly respectable recall on a quiet walk may have a much harder time when they’re running around with another dog in full LET’S FUCKING GO mode.
The behavior isn’t fluent enough at this arousal level yet.
What is arousal?
In dog behavior, arousal is basically their nervous system’s level of activation. i.e. how revved up or alert the dog is at that moment. A dog with low arousal might be sleepy and relaxed. Higher arousal can happen when a dog is excited, playing, frustrated, scared, or intensely interested in something.
Arousal isn’t inherently good or bad, and it isn’t the same thing as “high-energy.” But as arousal gets higher, thinking, concentrating, and performing learned behaviors can become much harder.
6. The situation looks different than they’re used to
Not to brag or anything, but I’ve been grocery shopping for my entire adult life. Even without a list, I have a pretty good idea of what I should get. But I always start at the produce end of the store. On the extremely rare occasion I start at the other end, I’m a disorganized inefficient mess. It’s like my first day on earth, basically.
Dogs are really, really good at noticing context. Sometimes too good for their (read: our) own good.
Let’s say every time you’ve practiced “down,” you’ve been standing directly in front of your dog in the living room, making eye contact. Then one day you’re sitting on the couch, watching TV and holding your (human) baby, and ask Sparky to lie down.
Nothing.
Baffling. It’s the same word!
Sure, but almost everything else about the picture changed.
Your body position and location changed. What you were doing changed. Your tone of voice and overall vibe probably changed as well.
This whole collection of information surrounding the cue is sometimes called the cue picture. Dogs don’t automatically know which parts of that picture are relevant and which ones aren’t.
We have to train that stuff on purpose, too.
7. They feel like shit
You know how to do your job.
Now do it after sleeping for three hours while you have the flu.
How’s your productivity looking now?
Pain, illness, fatigue, chronic stress, lack of sleep, hunger, and unmet behavioral needs can all affect performance.
And sometimes our expectations are a tad unrealistic. Like if your dog has been cooped up in the house all day. Finally, FINALLY, you take them outside. And then you’re annoyed because they’re pulling and sniffing instead of demonstrating their finest loose leash walking.
This doesn’t mean we give up on training. It means we take the dog standing in front of us today into account when deciding what a reasonable challenge looks like.
8. The task isn’t relevant to them
If I want a soda, I’ll perform the behavior of putting my money into the soda vending machine. But if I don’t want a soda in that particular moment, why would I perform that behavior? Makes no sense.
This is where “my dog only works for treats” comes into play.
If you’ve spent months teaching your dog that [insert cue here] gets them rewarded with food, congratulations! You successfully taught your dog to work for food.
If they don’t want food in a particular moment, why would they perform the food-dispensing behavior?
To be clear, it IS a good thing to train your dog to work for food. Food is fantastic. We use a shitload of it. This “problem” is not a failure of food-based training.
But eventually, you will hit the point of diminishing returns if food is the only good thing the behavior ever predicts. You gotta diversify your reinforcement portfolio. And sometimes we can actually recruit the thing our dog is “distracted” by and put it to work for us.
They want to get out of the car? Go through the gate? Go back to playing with another dog?
Those can all become reinforcers.
The more valuable outcomes the behavior can lead to, the more valuable the behavior itself becomes.
9. They’ve learned a more specific behavior than their teacher intended
This is where My Dog Only Works For Treats’ cousin, My Dog Only Listens If I Show Him The Treat First, lives.
You might assume that Sparky has decided you’re not worth listening to without food. But in many cases, the actual problem is that the food may have accidentally become part of the cue.
Think about how your training sessions usually go:
You grab the treat container and go to the Training Area. Your dog sees you have food. You turn toward them. Training begins.
Before you’ve said a word, food has been part of the cue picture from the very beginning.
There’s nothing wrong with this early in the training process. Letting your dog know that you have food can help you make progress faster.
But eventually we want to clean up that cue picture. Because if your dog only performs “sit” when you’re standing in front of them wearing a treat pouch, then the cue isn’t really just sit.
The cue is more like:
Human facing dog + treat pouch + training mode + word “sit.”
So the next phase of training has to involve teaching your dog that just because they can’t see the reinforcement doesn’t mean it isn’t coming.
10. They’re in survival mode
Imagine you’re going through a seriously difficult period of your life. Maybe you’re stressed about money, or someone you love is sick, or your relationship is ending.
Heck, it doesn’t even have to be something negative. Could be good stress like moving to your dream city, having a baby, or studying for finals.
You still know how to answer emails and cook dinner and keep the house clean and do your job.
But are you doing all of those things at your absolute best right now?
Probably not.
Now think about a dog who was adopted from a shelter two weeks ago.
Their life has been hell for god knows how long and now they’re in a new place surrounded by strangers. They don’t know you, and they don’t know if they’re here to stay or if this is just another temporary foster.
This is one reason we’re always telling people that training is like the least important thing during the adjustment period with a newly adopted dog.
That doesn’t mean you can’t teach them anything. Learning can absolutely happen during this period, and a bit of training can be fun and useful.
But I’m much more interested in helping that dog feel safe, building a relationship, meeting their needs, and giving them some time to come down from WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING mode.
So… does your dog know it? Maybe! But that’s the wrong question
Knowing it is the starting line, not the finish line.
Putting a behavior on cue is the acquisition phase of training. It’s where your dog learns the basic rules of the game.
You know how video games often start with a little tutorial level where you learn the controls and defeat the first easy enemy? Nobody finishes the tutorial and thinks they’ve finished the game.
Putting a behavior on cue is like learning the controls.
The proofing phase is where you learn to actually play the game.
And I realize you may already know this.
“Way ahead of you, bro. Putting a behavior on cue is step one, blah blah blah, I get it. You have to proof it too. I’ve practiced adding distractions and training in a variety of places.”
And that’s great!
But if it hasn’t really worked and you still get stuck in “he knows it, he just doesn’t do it,” there’s more to the proofing process than you’ve probably taken into consideration.
And that isn’t your fault; proofing is often explained in a pretty narrow context. The Three D’s. Systematically adding distance, duration, distraction, etc.
Those are useful, but we’d argue that proofing needs to be much bigger and broader than that. Getting a whole-ass sentient being – with their own feelings, priorities, desires, baggage, and limitations – to do something on demand, whenever and wherever, is… complicated.
But complicated doesn’t mean impossible.
This topic is at the top of my brain at the moment, because we just released our latest Academy workshop: Real-Life Reliability: How to Proof Your Training So Your Dog Actually Listens.
This workshop looks at proofing through a much wider lens than just the whole distance-duration-distraction thing. We’ll walk you through a more holistic approach to building reliability. An approach that allows for the fact that dogs are just as complicated, messy, and imperfect as the rest of us. Check it out if that sounds relevant to your interests.
