My failure story and what I’ve learnt from it (video)
Recently I was taking care of a pit bull mix and I’ve been working on loose leash walking with him. He is such a great student! I was able to develop a communication system with him based on his behaviour of looking at me as a way of telling me “I’m ready to work”. I only asked him to heel when he gave me this signal. It might come as a surprise to you that it actually increased the time that we worked, not decreased. He started to give me the signal more often. He learned quickly what is coming when he does that and he could choose to do it on its own. It’s sometimes referred to as a start button behaviour. It can be such a great way of communicating with your animal.
However, I want to be a brave learner, and admit to what I’ve done wrong. It is very difficult to talk about it but at the same time, I want to push myself to talk about the uncomfortable.
Failing to find solutions for challenging behaviours
When I was walking Dutch, almost everywhere we went, he was able to find something to eat. As you can probably imagine, sometimes it can be very dangerous for him to do. When he opened his mouth to eat something that I haven’t even noticed, my learnt reaction was to pull him. If there is potential danger involved, I believe using force has its place but at the same time it kept happening. I struggled to find a different way on how to allow him to sniff and pee and yet keep him from eating anything dangerous.
I wanted to build loose leash walking as an incompatible behaviour of eating things from the ground. I believe, I pushed him too far too soon. As I worked on two things simultaneously, I didn’t give him a chance to practice one thing at the time. I should have worked on duration without distraction and when in the distracting environment I should have reduced the criteria of duration.
Another thing that I could work on would be “leave it” cue. And I failed to try that at all. It didn’t occur to me at the time to do it. And because I used force with him, I felt too ashamed to talk about it and ask for help! I chose to hide and hate myself in silence.
Second challenging behaviour of his was barking. I believe his barking had many functions. One was barking at sounds outside the house, one was to bark at the neighbours when they’ve been outside and he could have seen them from the garden (so the visual cue of the neighbours), one was to bark at me so I will start doing something with him and when I gave him a chew toy to stop this barking, I inadvertently reinforced that. And even those had more complexity. I noticed that he was more likely to bark when I was looking at my phone. Sometimes I could sit on the couch and he would just join in and go to sleep. And even though I knew that it isn’t easy and I don’t have experience with behaviour like that, I still felt ashamed that I wasn’t able to solve it. How come we can be so hard on ourselves?
Failing to remain calm
Even more embarrassingly, there was a time when I screamed at Dutch to stay quiet. It didn’t even change his behaviour, he continued to do whatever he was doing so it didn’t even serve a function of punishment! But it did make me feel like a failure. I started to ask myself, how come I have such extensive knowledge in the subject, being an advocate of going least intrusive, most positive and yet scream at the dog that hasn’t done anything wrong, he just did what works? I realised that this is something that I need to learn as well. Just having knowledge is not enough. And applying the knowledge can be challenging for us just like walking on a loose leash can be challenging for a dog. In certain environments (which includes my emotional state) it was easy for me to be ok with his barking. I then was able to ask myself, what is the function? Could I next time prevent it from happening and not just look for distractions that will inevitably reinforce the behaviour? But there was also the time when my stress levels were high and I wasn’t able to stop myself from screaming. I also realised that I just did what I practised in the past. I heard a lot of raised voices growing up. When something was about to go wrong I would hear “Watch out!” or “Don’t do this!” and then I would hear explanation: “the shelf might have fallen on you if you continue to lean on it”. The first reaction was a scream, later on, the reflection. As a child, I imitated what I've heard. This behaviour of screaming has a very long reinforcement history in my own behaviour. It is something I practised and it is something that can show up. When I’m calm, I have no problem with finding a better strategy. When I had a stressful day, I didn’t control it at all.
When it comes to dogs, the trainers I learned from teach them not only the new behaviour one at the time but also add distractions separately. Great trainers break behaviours down into small steps and add complexity gradually. If we know that it works for dogs, why wouldn’t it be a great strategy to apply to change our own behaviour? Why should I feel bad for not acting according to my knowledge if I never before tried using different behaviours on a stressful day? Should I not allow myself a little more room for learning before I jump to the conclusion that I’m a failure?
Learning to ask for help
I believe that if it was my dog, I would hire a trainer to help me. There is no shame in asking for help. It’s how we learn! I remember how Malena DeMartini shared the vulnerable story on one of her talks I was lucky to attend. She got a new puppy and he started to show separation anxiety and she panicked. It is her field of expertise and yet she felt a need to call her trainers for help, trainers that she taught before. She didn’t feel like she can do it on her own.
Even though this talk was 2 or 3 years ago, I still remember it vividly. It’s ok to admit that you don’t know what to do! It’s more difficult to deal with a dog that you are attached to. We shouldn’t feel ashamed of asking for help.
Even though I remember this story, I still struggled to apply it. I want to learn to ask for help. I want to learn to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. I want to take my time to learn the skill of asking for help. It is an uncomfortable line that I want to learn to cross.
If you ever feel like a failure and are too ashamed to ask for help, know that you’re not the only one! It happens to all of us. We are usually just too ashamed to admit that. It’s all a learning process. No one ever gets everything right the first time. We can allow ourselves more room for learning and adopting new skills in every new situation. Sometimes to be able to do that, getting the help of a professional is the kindest, most effective way of achieving progress.
Be a Superhero for your dog, he will love you for it!
Check also shorter, video version of the story created in collaborations with The Daily BA!