Working Through Trainer Frustration
Today, I was working with a lovely Boston Terrier puppy named Nelly on a few basic behaviors. I know her mom reads this, so hi! We were working on her not trying to constantly play with her best friend Bobby, an older Shih Tzu. It was her first day, so there was no true expectation. It became a bit frustrating at how she was not responding like I would have liked. This is very common to happen, and it is a very common to feel when working with an animal on a new skill. In that moment, I started rehearsing internally some of the methods I use to work through trainer frustration. I thought this is something that everyone could benefit from. So, here we are!
I thought this would be an important topic to discuss because a frustrated trainer may be affected by cultural fog and use aversive methods instead of remaining positive and ethical. Emotions can get ahead of us, and watching the animal practice escape/avoidance behaviors makes us feel like we are finally making progress. In reality, you are not making any progress because your animal is not learning the new skills you are after, rather, how to escape and avoid the aversive consequence. It creates distrust in the relationship you have with your animal, especially with increased use of aversive methods. I also know that a lot of people just do not know how to handle the situation except to use aversive punishment and methods. I have created this guide to help you have a process to consider instead of reverting to using aversive practices. This works with any behavior and species.
First, evaluate if you are being clear with your communication on what you want. Stop and break down exactly the behaviors you want to see. I want Nelly to stay on my right side, I want no pulling, and I want to easily redirect her attention. I want all of this while her bestie Bobby is walking quite a bit ahead so she is out of the radius where she would not be successful, but she can still see and smell him. Overtime, he will be brought closer with her success. Now that I have broken this down, what can I do to aid in this? I can use a toy lure being held on the right side of me to keep her over there. I can increase my rate of reinforcement to capture those small approximations and increase my communication that her staying close to me without pulling is what I am after. With a higher rate of reinforcement, I can keep her at my side better because she doesn’t have enough time to pull away before another treat comes. Overtime, I can decrease that rate of reinforcement. I can also be sure that Bobby is far enough away to not have any issues with that. Always remember if you are not having success with your animal, break down the behavior into smaller steps to aid in having more success.
Next, inspect the environment to see if there are any protentional distractions like scents, people, objects, etc. In this example, I made sure Booby was far ahead to not distract her. Today there were a lot of people and kids out that did divert some attention, but she was very focused on Bobby, so they were less factors. I made sure that she was in an environment where she was successful. She walks more, and is more successful, on the left side of the street than the right. The right side has this garden in someone’s yard that smells really good to her for an unknown reason. She always pauses and looses focus, pulling to try to get to it. To increase success, we stated on the left side.
Decide if your animal’s current skill level is ready for the behavior you are asking. Nelly already will walk nicely on the leash with minimal minor mistakes. She is under 6 months, so that is to be expected. It is time to start to get them walking nicely together. She would not be successful if I were to walk them next to each other on my own. So, I had their mom walk Bobby so I can focus on Nelly and working out the initial behaviors. Also consider if it is the right environment for their skill level. Maybe you can ask your dog to sit inside the house, but when you take them on walks, they do not. If that is the case, break down the behavior and re-teach it in the new environment. Or, sometimes, it is best to go back to the environment or skill where you were last successful and continue to work there for a bit to build that behavior.
Another consideration is has the training session gone on for too long? Training session length vary depending on the skill you are teaching, the species of animal you are working with, the age of the animal, and the individual you are working with. Generally, it is in best practice to keep training sessions short. Having your training session be about 5-10 minutes in length is an ideal training session time. It is best to have them about twice a day, but at least once a day to keep consistency. If your animal is not being successful, look at how much time you have asked for the animal to focus and learn new skills. For Nelly, we work for about an hour. That seems like a long time compared to what is generally recommended. Here is what I do to break that up to continue to make her successful. We have play breaks during the walk where I bring a toy and we play tug for a few minutes. She also sniffs a lot. I always allow and recommend for people to allow their dogs to sniff. Sniffing is a break while training, but also, she is being trained still by being out in the environment and exploring scents. In the future, these familiar scents will be less distracting, which helps overall with training. We also play training games that are more fun than structured. Some days with that puppy brain she needs her session to be cut shorter. For exotics, I usually keep to the 5–10-minute rule and increase the number of sessions we have if they are wanting to train more. Alfie, my Moluccan Cockatoo, can train for 10 minutes 20 times a day and still want more, but Crazy Bird, my Blue Front Amazon, only wants to train for 3.5 minutes from 5:30-6:30pm.
How Long should Your Training Session Be?
Make sure that the reinforcer you are using is valuable enough to the animal. I have written a more in-depth blog post on this topic, but manipulating reinforcers can aid in success with your animal. It is called food management, which is different than weight management and should not be confused. I just withhold food items my animal’s love and only give it to them while training to increase their value. I can also give more of a reinforcer to communicate that it is the behavior I am after, which is very helpful if you are struggling or teaching anew behavior. Think about not only the type of food you are giving, but also the amount. Animal can become satiated of the food items, which influence motivation, or they may just be full if a lot of food has been given. That is a huge reason why I prefer to use very small reinforcer size so I have more opportunities to reinforce, and if I need to give a larger sized reinforcer I can and it will be the size of a normal treat instead of this monstrous sized food reward. Primary reinforcers, like food, are generally used, but never forget secondary reinforcers. I use both for Nelly following this example. Her secondary reinforcer is a tug toy, which at specific times of our training sessions is more valuable to her than food. Do not forget about secondary reinforcers, or reinforcers that have been positively conditioned, like attention, toys, chewing items, moving forward or away, etc.
Manipulating Reinforcer Size and Type
Keep in mind that your animal is not doing the behavior on purpose. The animal does not want to make you upset, hate you, is stupid, or anything else. They are learning, and mistakes or hard moments will happen. This about you learning any new skill; I doubt you are always perfect at everything immediately. It also does not reflect on your abilities as a trainer. I mess up, move too quick, improperly interpret behavior, and everything else. I am human; it is bound to happen. It is good to be realistic with your expectations for yourself and the animal while training. Expectations always change. Like I mentioned above, this was the first session for Nelly and Bobby working on this behavior. I had no expectations. I was focused on learning about the behavior Nelly would showcase, how she would respond to me and cues, and figure out a plan moving forward. I wanted to consider if she was ready for this, if there are any behaviors we can continue to strengthen before I bring Bobby back out with er to aid in her success, what reinforcer works when one of her highest (Bobby) is not obtainable but still there, and so much more. I am here to calculate the best plan of action being behaviorist.
Finally, you are going to want to be sure that the training plan that you are using is the right one for the individual. Not having the right plan-of-action will lead to less success and increased frustrations for both animal and human. If you feel like your animal is nor progressing like you think they should, or you are having more negative/frustrating experiences than positive ones, then you may want to reevaluate your methods. You may just need to break down the behavior, choose a different environment, and other changes we have discussed. Other times you may need to create a new plan-of-action. I highly recommend to always reach out to a professional when starting your training journey to have that support and the right training plan off the bat, creating the ability to practice errorless learning instead of trail-and-error learning. At the minimum, if you are struggling, you should always each out to a qualified, certified professional science-based behaviorist and trainer.
This may be a lot of information to consider and think about. Don’t worry! I have created a free guide to break down these steps and summarize them so they are easy to recall and remember. You can even print this out and keep it in your pocket if you need it, or download it onto your phone for quick reference no matter where you are. If you need help modifying your animal’s behaviors, always feel free to reach out to me. I work with all species of animals and all behaviors.
