BEHAVIOUR
Building Engagement with Your Dog | Essential Life-Skills of Dogs
Teaching our dogs to pay attention to us even in a distracting environment is no easy feat. Dog Behaviourist Karthik R shows you how you can build engagement with your dog.
Table of contents
What is Engagement?
A lot of techniques used in understanding canine and animal psychology in general, trace their roots back to the Industrial Revolution when philosophers and psychologists came up with methods to motivate workforces. One such approach that gained massive popularity is the ‘Carrot and Stick’ theory, based on the principles of reinforcement. It involves offering a “carrot” as a reward for good behaviour and a “stick” as a negative consequence for inappropriate behaviour.
While old-school dog training has relied on the “Stick” side of things, modern trainers have found that rewarding the dog for correct behaviour can yield far superior results. The concept of engagement is an application of the “Carrot” approach aimed at building a strong relationship with our dogs and encouraging the traits we would like to see in them.
Now Engagement isn’t just about the dog! It’s also our ability to make things fun and enjoyable for our canine companions, thereby allowing us to channel their focus and attention into performing good behaviour. Practising engagement with our puppies can bring out the best in them and help avoid a multitude of training and behaviour-related problems. It is a powerful skill to introduce to our puppies and forms a foundation for many other skills.
Let’s take a look at the different ways of engaging with our dogs.
A lot of techniques used in understanding canine and animal psychology in general, trace their roots back to the Industrial Revolution when philosophers and psychologists came up with methods to motivate workforces. One such approach that gained massive popularity is the ‘Carrot and Stick’ theory, based on the principles of reinforcement. It involves offering a “carrot” as a reward for good behaviour and a “stick” as a negative consequence for inappropriate behaviour.
While old-school dog training has relied on the “Stick” side of things, modern trainers have found that rewarding the dog for correct behaviour can yield far superior results. The concept of engagement is an application of the “Carrot” approach aimed at building a strong relationship with our dogs and encouraging the traits we would like to see in them.
Now Engagement isn’t just about the dog! It’s also our ability to make things fun and enjoyable for our canine companions, thereby allowing us to channel their focus and attention into performing good behaviour. Practising engagement with our puppies can bring out the best in them and help avoid a multitude of training and behaviour-related problems. It is a powerful skill to introduce to our puppies and forms a foundation for many other skills.
Let’s take a look at the different ways of engaging with our dogs.
Engagement using Food
Puppies love to eat! It’s no surprise that they finish bowls full of food in a matter of seconds. We can use this enormous food drive to motivate our puppies into performing desirable behaviours.
Luring is a popular technique used to generate engagement with our dogs. It involves holding a piece of food that our puppies like in the palm of our hands and using it to direct their nose. A lot of popular commands/behaviours such as SIT, DOWN, WATCH ME, and HEEL can be taught very easily using this technique. When done correctly, it starts to look like a dance and becomes an excellent way to get your puppy focused on you even around many distractions. Using a portion of the puppy’s everyday meals to practice luring is an amazing way to build engagement in our dogs.
Luring is a popular technique used to generate engagement with our dogs. It involves holding a piece of food that our puppies like in the palm of our hands and using it to direct their nose. A lot of popular commands/behaviours such as SIT, DOWN, WATCH ME, and HEEL can be taught very easily using this technique. When done correctly, it starts to look like a dance and becomes an excellent way to get your puppy focused on you even around many distractions. Using a portion of the puppy’s everyday meals to practice luring is an amazing way to build engagement in our dogs.
Here's a video of how luring works. Observe how the puppy remains glued and focused on the handler during the process.
Engagement using Toys & Play
What else do puppies like to do aside from eating? They love to play, play, and play!
Playing and active interaction with the environment are vital to a dog’s all-around development. This is why we find our puppies chasing our legs and picking up everything they can find. It is possible for us to channel this natural drive to chase, bite, and hold to our benefit. Toys and play are a great way to engage and build a relationship with our dogs.
While play requires us to be much more active and animated, it’s undoubtedly one of the best ways to generate good engagement with our puppies. Most dogs in professional circuits such as dog sports, protection and agility are trained to high degrees of perfection using play as a reward.
Games such as Fetch and Tug-o-war are popular and easy ways to build engagement with our puppies. In order to keep the spark of the game alive, we must ensure that the toys used at these times are kept unavailable to our pups otherwise.
Fetch or Retrieve is a wonderful game that involves teaching the puppy to bring back an object/toy to us. It helps provide an outlet for the chasing instinct prevalent in dogs. It can be taught by using two identical toys of equal value and is a great way to physically exercise our pups.
Playing and active interaction with the environment are vital to a dog’s all-around development. This is why we find our puppies chasing our legs and picking up everything they can find. It is possible for us to channel this natural drive to chase, bite, and hold to our benefit. Toys and play are a great way to engage and build a relationship with our dogs.
While play requires us to be much more active and animated, it’s undoubtedly one of the best ways to generate good engagement with our puppies. Most dogs in professional circuits such as dog sports, protection and agility are trained to high degrees of perfection using play as a reward.
Games such as Fetch and Tug-o-war are popular and easy ways to build engagement with our puppies. In order to keep the spark of the game alive, we must ensure that the toys used at these times are kept unavailable to our pups otherwise.
Fetch or Retrieve is a wonderful game that involves teaching the puppy to bring back an object/toy to us. It helps provide an outlet for the chasing instinct prevalent in dogs. It can be taught by using two identical toys of equal value and is a great way to physically exercise our pups.
Watch this video of how you can practice Retrieve with your puppy.
Engagement using Attention
Food and play are great ways to engage with our puppies but are dependent on external rewards. One of the subtler and more efficient ways to engage with dogs is using our own attention and praise as a reward.
Now you may wonder, why would a dog choose attention over something like food? Dogs like us are social animals and have learnt to receive and reciprocate love. While it does require patience and clarity of feedback, attention continues to be one of the most powerful driving factors in motivating our dogs. Choosing how and when to deliver praises and attention to our dogs can strengthen engagement as a skill. Unlike the previous two forms of engagement, praise doesn’t require a specific time or setting and can be used anytime, anywhere making it the most versatile.
There’s a simple game to practice engagement using attention with our puppies. The Invisible dog is a technique that employs your puppy’s desire for attention and praise to teach simple behaviours like a GO TO BED.
Now you may wonder, why would a dog choose attention over something like food? Dogs like us are social animals and have learnt to receive and reciprocate love. While it does require patience and clarity of feedback, attention continues to be one of the most powerful driving factors in motivating our dogs. Choosing how and when to deliver praises and attention to our dogs can strengthen engagement as a skill. Unlike the previous two forms of engagement, praise doesn’t require a specific time or setting and can be used anytime, anywhere making it the most versatile.
There’s a simple game to practice engagement using attention with our puppies. The Invisible dog is a technique that employs your puppy’s desire for attention and praise to teach simple behaviours like a GO TO BED.
The following video shows us how ‘petting and praising the invisible dog’ can generate engagement from your puppy.
As you can see by now, instilling these life skills in your puppy from day one can have lifelong benefits & help set them up for a balanced and enriching life.
Happy Parenting!
Happy Parenting!
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