Listening To Your Dog’s “No” And Building A Better “Yes” Together

Every time your dog says “no,” they are giving you important information. I’m sharing how to listen to your dog’s “no” and build a better “yes” together so you can turn those moments into opportunities for learning, growth, and connection. Transcript Summary: If you believe like I do that our dogs are always doing the best they can with the education we've given them in the environment that we're asking them to perform and they say no, then we've got to look at the job we've done. So, what would I do if my dog said no because they didn't see the value? I would number one go “Hmm. I've got some work to do.” because value is grown in layers. Has there been a transfer of value from what my dog loves to what I want them to do in the base layer? Now what if your dog sits in front of that first jump and then they start going over the second one they say, “Yeah I see some value in this.” but they're walking. In my opinion that's not giving you an implied permission to keep going. They are saying, “I still don't see a great deal of value in this.” What would I do then? I would pull the dog back. I would do something simple. Like, can you do a hand touch? Can you do a spin? Can you do a down? Can you chase me out of the ring? As I run to your crate, play some Crate Games, throw you in there, pull up my journal and say, where have I gone wrong? And how can I start training my dog better? What are the layers I missed? And I would not be going back to agility for a very, very long time. Okay. What if my dog says, there's competing values here? “Look, there's kids on bicycles and I'm so excited. I can't possibly stay sit when you asked me to sit.” We need to as I said in episode number 24, when you're dealing with any kind of distractions, minimize the distractions so that the dog can do what we've asked. So, I want to turn that “No, I can't” in to a “Well yeah, I can do that”. And we’re going to do that by all the steps I said in that episode, most importantly get the dog out of the environment and then re-ask your question. What if my dog says there's some emotional stress here? “I am really fearful of this environment.” Well, you want to turn a no into a yes, but it may not happen right there. What you're going to do is get your dog away from where they're showing emotional distress. Now let's say the dog is in flat-out fear. They're way over threshold there, nothing good is going to come from this today. You are not going to get a reinforcement. They're not going to take your reinforcement if they're in flat out fear. Get them out of the environment, get your journal out and go, ‘How can I work on counterconditioning and desensitization to eliminate that which is my dog is showing fear to’. Now what if it is eustress? What if they're just so excited they can't do what you're asking. The exact same thing. Go to episode number 103, where I talked about when your dog has to arouse to respond and start with the application. So, you're normalizing yes when you are really excited, you can still be thoughtful and drive. That's the ultimate goal for a dog who's showing eustress today. Now what about my dog who's showing physical pain, Susan? Surely you don't want my dog to turn that into a yes if my dog is in pain. Maybe. What if we're trying to cut our dog's nails and that pain may be “It feels weird to me”. It's like on a scale of 1 to 10, it's like a 0.0001. It’s a little bit of discomfort. I'm going to work at turning that no to a yes by my strategic use of reinforcement. Number one to classically condition a better response and number two to grow that dog’s value by generalizing and desensitizing any discomfort they may have. All right. Now, if my dog is in acute pain, like I'm doing something and all of a sudden, they yelp and go, “Oh my Gosh! Uh.” I'm never trying to turn that no into a yes. I'm always going to be the best advocate for my dog and say, “Hey, thank you. We are out of here.” Right. But what if my dog is saying, “I don't feel well, there's a little malaise here.” The answer to that is it depends. 'll give you an example. Just this week, I took my puppy This! to a dog training class about an hour away. And for whatever reason she was car sick in the car. Hasn't happened in months but for whatever reason it happened. So, I got into the classroom, and you could tell she was not happy. And so, I let her sit and settle and then I didn't go “Here's our first exercise.” It was jump, tunnel, jump. I didn't go. “Okay. You've had five minutes. Let's get out there and try a jump, tunnel, jump.” No. I took the lowest level of connection between us. I got her out and I said, “Hey, do you want to chase me?” And I pushed her back.