Living for the Moment

As Humans we sure have a lot going on in our lives. Work, Friends, Family all consume our time and thoughts. We are always looking in the past thinking about what could have been in our lives, analyzing past conversations or maybe just thinking about a movie we saw last night. We also worry about the future and how to pay our bills, if our job is always going to be there, or for the health of ourselves and family.

So how do Dogs view the passage of time and do they ponder the past and future? I never admit to knowing what a dog is thinking, sadly we will never know for sure. But we do know certain laws of learning when it concerns animals and dogs.

Dogs will continue to do what has worked for them in the past. If your dog is scared of strangers and growling at them makes them retreat - your dog will continue to growl. He's knows that in the past, growling worked. He doesn't ponder the morality of growling or how humans view this, but simply that it worked in the past to get rid of a scary person. Likewise if sitting down always gets treats and praise, he's likely to do a lot of sitting around you, specially if the same conditions for being rewarded exist again. You dog will remember that before he got a treat, your hand went into that cookie jar! One of the keys to obedience is teaching dogs that they will be rewarded in many different locations, with a variety of preemptive cues (IE, cookies don't ALWAYS come out of a jar or a certain pocket). This is also how we get a dog to perform without treats! We need him to want to gamble that he never knows for sure when he might get a reward. How many of you play the lottery and haven't won yet? Still playing?

However when it comes to teaching and rewarding behavior - dogs live very much in the moment. The most common example of how humans get this wrong is the classic housebreaking example. Man comes home after work to find that Fido has pooped all over the brand new rug and the owner proceeds to tell Fido what a 'bad dog' he is. The owner then brags that his dog must have known what the punishment was for because he 'looked guilty' soon as he pointed out the poop on the rug.

What really happened here was the Dog got worried once the Owners disposition turned sour upon seeing the poop. Perhaps that dog has seen that look and behavior just prior to something bad happening for the dog (another cue like the cookie jar). He has no idea that the physical action of pooping is what is upsetting the owner.

This example of course deals with a behavior that has happened hours in the past, but what about behaviors only seconds apart? Take this example:

Two dogs pass each other on leash. One dog lunges at the other in an aggressive motion before being pulled away by the owner. The quiet dog's owner hurries him away from the lunger while the aggressing dog's owner apologizes and hurries her dog past.

Once separated, the owner proceeds to verbally punish the dog saying what a bad dog he is for lunging at that poor dog. I've seen owners hold their dogs face and give them a lecture or a stern "NO" after such an incident.

This much like our housebreaking example - also doesn't work. Once the encounter is over, the dog has moved on and is thinking about the current moment, while the human owner is still lamenting on the incident. Any reference to that incident for the dog, is now gone. Punishing (or rewarding) for the behavior of lunging will have no effect. Sadly I see this same incident time and time again in parks and on walks.

One of the reason a clicker is so effective is because it signals to the dog at the EXACT moment a behavior is happening. With something as simple as a sit, if you click the dog too early in the sit, you'll teach your dog that 'sit' means to hover his butt over the ground. The reason clicker training was invented was because it was sometimes impossible to reward the animal the moment the behavior was happening if the animal wasn't in reach. Clicker training started with dolphins. By the time mr dolphin swam over to get its fishy reward from the trainer, it didn't know that it was getting the fish because of that 10 foot jump it just performed. A sound like a whistle or a clicker bridged that time gap.

So while dogs may not ponder the past and future as we do, they certainly remember how things worked out for them before, and apply that in the future. The good news is we can use this knowledge in teaching and training. So keep rewarding those behaviors that you DO like, and you'll see a lot more of them!