24 DecEpisode 185 | How to teach a dog to “Break” during play. Also: On how “No” can confuse (and stress out) both dogs and humans

While doing the NYC's annual workplace Sexual Harassment Prevention course, Annie noted that people are being told to assume that many things other than the word "No" may mean "No." This might be a good thing, but it's also potentially confusing! In the world of dogs, she's seen how the word "No" can also be a confusing concept, as it is frequently used ineffectively, and can even end up positively reinforcing some behaviors. She thinks about how, for both dogs and humans, this confusion about "No" can lead to stress. What if, with both dogs and humans, the focus were not on explaining what not to do, but rather on teaching what appropriate behaviors can be engaged in instead? Maybe men, in particularly, could learn something by taking discussion-starting tips from "Linda Richman," the Mike Myers "Coffee Talk" character from Saturday Night Live in the nineties. ("Talk amongst yourselves: I'll give you a topic. Discuss!")

Annie goes into how it's possible to condition a secondary punisher to make the word "No" more meaningful... but most people don't do this work. She also explains that it's a misconception that Positive Reinforcement-based trainers never try to stop behaviors. She explains how SFTD trainers work to help build a dog's ability to stop and start a behavior, and help owners think about what a dog should ideally be doing instead of an undesirable behavior. As an example, she explains how "Break" is taught at School For The Dogs for dogs attending off leash play sessions.

Interested in learning more about our trainer supervised off-leash sessions? Visit us online at https://www.schoolforthedogs.com/services/school-yard/

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Mentioned in this episode:

NYC's Sexual Harassment Prevention

Coffee Talk with Linda Richman (Mike Myers) on SNL

In the #MeToo era, 60% of male managers say they’re scared of being alone with women at work

The School Yard | A Private Dog Run in the East Village

Special thanks to Toast Garden for the theme song!

 

Related Episodes:

Episode 26 | Teach a foolproof DROP and COME using Classical Conditioning

 

Transcript:

Voice:

No comes in many forms. Verbal no means no. Body language can mean no. Excuses can mean no. A tone of voice can mean no. Maybe can mean no.

 

[intro and music]

 

Annie:

I recorded that clip from the annual sexual harassment awareness training required by everyone at any business in New York state. So, I'm going through this online training thing, and I realize there's kind of this focus on the concept of no, and not “no means no,” which I feel like is what I always heard growing up, that people need to understand the meaning of the word “No” in terms of sexual harassment, or anything else for that matter.

 

Now it's more like everything probably means no. Like, when in doubt, assume no. And you know, fair enough. I think that that is okay, but man, is it confusing! The word no hasn't changed, but more things can mean no than just no. And that is a confusing thing for many humans to understand.

 

And, of course, it made me think about our dog friends and how we're asking them to understand that no can mean a million different things. No can mean stop doing that thing that you're innately interested in doing because it served your ancestors well for many millennia before we asked you to live in a small apartment with us. Stop doing this thing that you really enjoy doing for whatever reason. Stop doing this thing that you're gonna get attention for doing, if only because I start yelling no at you.

 

No can also mean that you should start doing something else. If you're yelling no at a dog who is jumping, you could say that no means do the other thing where you have four feet on the ground. No could mean drop it. If you're asking a dog to not run after something, no could essentially mean come.

 

No could very well be a reward to our dogs, and I believe in order to really be effective as any kind of secondary or conditioned punisher, needs to be repeatedly paired with something that is a primary punisher, such as anything that would cause any degree of pain or discomfort or the removal of something desirable.

 

An example of a conditioned punisher would be the beep that some shock collars attached to invisible fences make as the dog approaches a boundary. The beep is meant to be information, a previously meaningless stimulus that, after repeated pairing with the unpleasantness of the shock, becomes meaningful.

 

I really don't know the research on this, but people who use those kinds of fences will argue that the pairing possibly only needs to be made once. Although I would suspect that it is based on the individual and the intensity of the punisher, which really is sort of the same as a conditioned punisher with humans.

 

Like if you got sick after going to a particular restaurant for the first time, you probably wouldn't wanna go back there again very quickly. But if it's a restaurant that you had a million good meals at before that, or if they started serving your absolute most favorite kind of food, like a sundae brownie float, I'm thinking about what would be my – with cookies all around it – that would be my absolute favorite food. And were selling it for a good price or something, right? Then you might think about maybe going back to this place that you got sick at. So, how effective the conditioned or secondary punisher is can depend on a lot of things having to do with the circumstance and the environment, and also how sick you got.

 

Anna Ostroff, one of our trainers gave an example once of how there are certain names in her inbox where it's just punishing to see the name that pops up in her inbox, ‘cause she knows she's gonna open it up and it's gonna be some sort of difficult conversation she has to have. I think we all know that feeling, but the intensity of the punisher is going to come into play, as is the frequency of the experience in the pairing.

 

Like if I have a really terrible email exchange with someone who has an unusual name, and then that name pops up in my inbox, especially if I've had many bad communications. Whereas if I, I don't know, had a difficult communication with someone named Jennifer where I had one really punishing email experience seeing the name Jennifer in my inbox, might not be so bad because I have seen a lot of emails from people named Jennifer in my inbox that haven't been paired with any kind of bad feelings. So it carries less weight.

 

There's something that happens when any animal is confused about not doing something, about the meaning of the word No, let's call it, which is that creativity can be inhibited or an animal's desire to experiment trying new things or possibly do anything can be quashed. Certainly it's something I've seen with dogs.

 

One time I was at a family member's house, and their friend happened to come over. They had a new German shepherd, young adolescent dog who was in a shock collar that had a remote control attached to it. And the owner just was saying “No” over and over to this dog, every little thing the dog did. And I think sometimes backing that No up, indeed, with a shock.

 

And it seemed to me like the dog was scared to move, did not know what to do other than to sit in place because he kept getting yelled at and shocked. And the result may have looked like a well-behaved dog, but I did not think it was a dog that was very happy or stress free. And of course, stress, fear and anxiety can lead to problems that are often a lot of work to deal with. The kinds of problems that help places like School For The Dogs stay in business.

 

If you see a dog confused about what means no, they are not being taught what to do most likely, and also most likely leading a life where they are trying to avoid landmines.

 

And what's interesting to me about the sexual harassment training is the way in which the change in what we are all expected to know means No. I mean, we're literally being told by the state to take this course that tells us that maybe may mean No, and that we should all so be expected to understand that a tone of voice could be indicating No, even if words are not indicating No, it seems that it's led to people, especially men, walking on eggshells around each other, which does not surprise me when I think about the way I've seen dogs be similarly confused about the definition of this word, and the way in which we're now saying many things beyond the word No can mean No, seems to me like it is creating a similar atmosphere of fear.

 

And this is substantiated. There have been several studies that have come out in the last few years, talking specifically about men being scared of doing the wrong thing in the workplace, being canceled, as it were. The New York state sexual harassment primer, or anti-sexual harassment primer, I guess I should say, talks about this.

 

Shortly after this section on all the things that can mean No, there's a section called Women in the Workplace where it says, “Men: do not avoid working with women because you are afraid of sexual harassment complaints. That is gender discrimination. To avoid sexual harassment complaints, do not sexually harass people.”

 

Which is good advice, do not sexually harass people, period. But it's kind of like telling people No! Telling them what not to do rather than telling them what to do, which is of course, one of the big problems with trying to use No to stop behaviors when you haven't taught your dog what you want them to be doing instead.

 

There are a billion different behaviors that could be happening at any moment. And when you are saying No to one behavior, you are not indicating which of the other 999,999,999 behaviors that are possible you want to see happening instead.

 

And it makes me wonder how many people out there maybe really don't know what to do instead. Don't know how to interact with people at the workplace without mentioning something that could be interpreted as offensive about their clothing, or gender, et cetera. Like maybe that's what they should be teaching is all the things that are acceptable. Rather than explaining what isn't and why it gets people upset, what if the course focused on how to get people to have interesting conversations about the weather or fruit? Like here's a guide to having non sexually inappropriate conversations about snow and strawberries.

 

Like Coffee Talk with Linda Richman from Saturday Night Live in the nineties. She could lead these sessions.

 

[excerpt plays]

 

Linda Richman:

Talk amongst yourselves. Here's a topic, did Truman drop the atomic bomb to defeat the Japanese or to scare the Russians? Discuss.

 

[music]

 

You know where you hear people say no to their dogs a lot is at dog parks. And one misconception that many people have about positive reinforcement-based dog trainers is that we never say No, that we never attempt to stop behaviors at all. And I would say that is not true. We just attempt to stop behaviors effectively. And usually in my experience, yelling No at a dog is not effective.

 

Teaching a dog exactly what you want the dog to do when they hear the word No can be effective. And at School For The Dogs in our off-leash session, which we call School Yard, we use the term Break. Break means stop what you're doing and pay attention to me. And when we are working with dogs off leash, we practice this over and over and over again, to make sure that we're not using break as something that is always difficult and always about stopping a potentially dangerous situation.

 

In fact, those kinds of situations, ideally, should never happen because of all the breaks or asking for all the time. What we're doing is working in the habit of, I get excited, I play with the other dogs, but I also literally take breaks. It's not just all go, go, go. We’re helping to teach them to regulate their energy and to lean on us, literally and figuratively, to keep them safe, to make the whole experience about being with other dogs with us.

 

That's how I like to think about dog parks. It's not a place where dogs are in the middle and people should be on the perimeters like Colosseum spectators watching gladiators. It should be a place where our dogs are interacting with each other and with us off leash.

 

Break is a really good behavior to build if you have a dog that likes playing rough with other dogs, particularly if you have a dog who likes playing rough with other dogs. It's a cue to your dog to stop what they're doing and to engage with you, and interspersing breaks with play is a nice way to make sure that arousal doesn't go to non-optimal levels.

 

And you can also use breaks to help you figure out if your dog is still enjoying the encounter. It's a chance to check in and see if your dog is ready to leave or wants to go back into the action. If you have a dog who's checking in with you a lot, you are going to get a good read on how they're feeling in that particular off leash situation.

 

To teach a break, the first thing you're going to want to do is condition a verbal cue. So get some really good treats near you. Make sure it is something super high value to your dog, have them hidden in your palm or in a treat pouch. And then you are simply going to say the word break very clearly loudly and then drop a treat.

 

How easy is that? I love teaching things using this kind of classical conditioning. In the show notes I’ll link to the episode on Drop and Come which are taught in a similar way, because it's really foolproof. You're asking your dog for nothing at this point. And it's a very physically easy thing for you to do, to just drop a treat. The hardest part is figuring out what is high value to your dog.

 

Of course, it's important to separate the cue from the appearance of the treat. So, you're not saying break while you're waving around a piece of bacon, you are saying the word very clearly, pausing, and then presenting the treat. That is why I stressed you should have it in the palm of your hand or in some kind of pouch or pocket.

 

Once you've practiced this a few times, you're going to add in some movement. And at this stage, you shouldn't be practicing with other dogs around, you can be practicing in a very neutral environment, wherever you like to do training in your home. As long as there's a little bit of room around you, what you're gonna do is now say break and then run backwards a little bit and then present the treat. So what you're doing now is teaching your dog, When she says break, I run to her and get something really good.

 

Now, again, we're still using classical conditioning here. There is nothing required of the dog. You are not forcing the dog to run to you. The treat is not conditional on the running, but you can start building that habit and that association, and the enthusiasm of, because that's ultimately what you want the behavior to look like. You want your dog to be coming to you enthusiastically.

 

Like with any behavior we teach, you are then going to shape it from there, by doing it in new environments, and importantly, with distractions around. Before you move up to the point of working with real other dogs, as a distraction, you can practice breaks using toys as distraction, or play with another human as a distraction. And whenever you are perfecting a behavior, shaping it in any way, you always really wanna focus on one thing at a time.

 

So the first time, let's say you work in trying to do a break to get your dog's attention while your dog is, say, playing with someone else in the room, you might not run backwards before you give the reward. You might go back to the first step of approaching your dog. You want to set them up to get it right pretty much every time. You can always decrease difficulty in order to set up a dog for success.

 

And when you come to School Yard and see us doing this break cue with puppies or adult dogs, often what it's gonna look like is the person literally going up to the dog while the dog is playing and basically putting a treat in their mouth.

 

When I used to do a lot of puppy play times in puppy kindergartens, I would call it, Collar, Name, Treat. I want the person to go over to the dog, touch the dog's collar, say the dog's name – or the word Break. If you're teaching break or teaching a name in this way, it's pretty much the same process – and then give the reward, because that's how sure I want to be that I'm setting up the dog to succeed. I'm asking the dog to come to me, kind of, or to pay attention to me, but I'm already there. I'm already there, collar in hand. And of course, you're also working at creating a good association with a collar grab, which is always a good thing to do whether or not you ever plan to have your dog off leash around other dogs.

 

And again, part of why we're doing this is because we are trying to stop a behavior, but we're also trying to encourage another behavior. There's always another behavior happening, like I said. When one behavior stops, there's not just a vacuum, or at least there shouldn't be. Something else has to happen. And we're trying to give dogs as much clarity as possible about what we want.

 

And to that end, it's important that you're not saying Break, break, Fido! Fido, break, break! It should be said one time, clearly. And of course, like I said, it doesn't have to be the word break. It could be your dog's name. It could be a whistle, whatever you're using. You just want to make sure to condition that word with this very easy process.

 

[Linda Richman excerpt plays]

 

Linda Richman:

Again, I'm just a little verklempt. A little emotional, a little verklempt. Give me a second. Talk amongst yourselves. I'll give you a topic. The progressive era was neither progressive nor an era. Discuss. Okay. I feel better, who knew.

 

[music and outro]