Leveraging The Animal In You...

While I often hear the common training refrain: “Just train the dog in front of you”, I rarely see it manifest in a truly nuanced, and sensitive fashion. That’s not a dig, but rather a reminder that it’s very easy to say things which sound good, but far more challenging to put them into action.

When I’m working with a dog, I’m keenly focused on being hyper-sensitive to all the information coming back to me. This involves far more than just superficial observations. It means you need to let the animal in YOU take in the animal you’re working with. Because the animal in you is far more sensitive and aware of the multitude of large, as well as barely, if not completely imperceptible information being shared by the dog. The overly-intellectual human animal will revert to attempting to process the information in small, limited pieces and place that information in appropriately small, limited ‘boxes’. Because the conscious, intellectual mind can’t take in nearly the amount of information that our unconscious, animal mind can. And it certainly can’t process it fast enough.

And that leaves us not only vulnerable to negative, possibly dangerous interactions, it also means the way we teach and move the dog through the training process will also likely suffer.

But let me be clear, our human, intellectual animal needs to be present as well, but in my opinion, needs to take a bit of a backseat, or at least much more of a co-pilot position. In a perfect world, you want both, and you want to be able to lean on both, and leverage both, moment to moment.

While I can’t teach you how to tap into your more animalistic side, I can provide you with some things I’ve noticed I look at and adjust when I’m in the zone I’m speaking of.

These are things to teach yourself to consciously apply and assess, and then over time, like anything we practice enough, hopefully they’ll become embedded in you and will manifest unconsciously for best application...and consciously for when you need to explain or communicate them to others. You’re looking for what helps, and what harms, and how to best implement the results.

-Body motion: are you fluid or are you too angular, are you moving too fast and making the dog nervous/overwhelmed, how are your overall motions, proximity, angles and approaches?
-Verbal: is your volume, tone, speed of articulation helping or hindering focus/learning safety or risk?
Pressure: are the tools being used too firmly/too softly, are the tools the best for the job, is there too much spatial pressure/not enough, is the environment (dogs, people, noise etc.) causing too much pressure/stress and interfering with learning?
-Motivation: do you need more or less, is the dog becoming mopey and tuned-out or amped up and possibly dangerous?
-Arc of Learning: are you moving too fast/too slow, is the dog confused or not prioritizing, is the dog naturally more anxious/stressed/slower, are any of the above compromising the process?

All of these, and many more factors are at play, and they’re impacting the dog you’re working with, guaranteed. The goal is to be hyper-sensitive about your information, and also hyper-sensitive about the information coming back to you. Work on this process of enhanced awareness, on both ends, and you’ll truly be serving the dog, and yourself.

Just remember, intellect will almost always attempt to trump instincts and your inner animal. It’s where we ‘live’ most often, and are most comfortable, but it’ll shortchange your outcomes...and not just with dogs.

By Sean O’Shea