The Science of Motivation

If your dog ignores treats outside, checks out on walks, or looks “unmotivated” the second distractions show up, the problem usually is not your timing or your tool. It is that the reward has no value in the moment, and that starts with the lifestyle you built around your dog. Meg and Thoma break down the psychology of motivation in dog training, using real board and train examples like Sharkbait and Daisy to show what it looks like when a dog has energy but no engagement, or when a dog is so shut down that nothing can compete. 

We walk through how to build motivation from the ground up by restructuring resources: scheduled meals instead of grazing, intentional affection instead of constant background noise, and earned freedom through crates, gates, and boundaries. Then we connect the practical side to behavioral science, including motivating operations, reinforcement schedules, and why variable rewards create persistence while constant rewards can make behavior brittle. We also get into dopamine and anticipation, marker timing, and how the way you deliver food or play can change everything for a dog who “isn’t food motivated.” 

From there, we explore agency and a canine version of flow state, plus why short, focused sessions protect engagement better than long sessions that wander. Finally, we unpack the dog training research that people love to cite, including what the well-known PLOS One study actually measured and the key nuance most debates skip: unpredictability drives stress. If you want a dog who understands how to win, offers behavior with confidence, and chooses to work with you, this framework will change how you train. 

Sources:

1. American Journal of Veterinary Research (2025) — Food motivation and owner feeding management practices associated with overweight in dogs https://avmajournals.avma.org/view/journals/ajvr/86/5/ajvr.24.11.0358.xml
2. PLOS ONE (2020) — Does training method matter? Evidence for the negative impact of aversive-based methods on companion dog welfare https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0225023
3. Scientific Reports / Nature (2018) — Incentive motivation in pet dogs, preference for constant vs. varied food rewards https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-28079-5
4. Scientific Reports (2018) — Development and validation of the Canine Reward Responsiveness Scale https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22605-1
5. Biological Reviews (2023) — Animals in flow, towards the scientific study of intrinsic reward in animals https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/brv.12930
6. Frontiers in Veterinary Science (2021) — Working Dog Training for the Twenty-First Century https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/veterinary-science/articles/10.3389/fvets.2021.646022/full
7. Frontiers in Veterinary Science (2026) — Professional dog trainers' perspectives on training methods, ethical and evidentiary insights https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/veterinary-science/articles/10.3389/fvets.2026.1744448/full
8. PMC / NIH — Dogs' Body Language Relevant to Learning Achievement https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4494300/

Visit us on the website here to see what we've got going on and how you can join our pack of good dogs and owners.

Transcript

Welcome And Why Motivation Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Hello, and welcome back to the Everyday Trainer Podcast. My name is Meg, and I am a dog trainer. Today we're gonna talk about the psychology of motivation in dog training. I've gone down the rabbit hole of dog training research. So we're gonna talk about everything that I've found and how you can bring these tips into your own training. You know the drill? Grab yourself a tasty drink and meet me back here. Hey guys, welcome back. Hello, Toma.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Hello, hello.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

I've I've got him up right now. We'll see how long he lasts in this episode. Hey, this is a long day, but he's still he's still got some energy left, so there's

Sharkbait Vs Daisy Motivation Reality

SPEAKER_00 1:05

hope for us. There's hope for us. Okay, so today I want to cover the psychology of motivation in dog training. And I will tell you what kind of inspired this for me is we got a dog in for a board and train, and I was super pumped to get him. Sharkbait. I was very excited to get him because he seems very motivated. And we've had a batch of very unmotivated dogs. And I was comparing him to Daisy, and Daisy is, I believe Daisy probably has some neurological issues. She's a little bit slower, she's an all-white dog, and sometimes you can see that with all white dogs, like they're like blind or deaf, or like she always has like her head cocked to the side, you know. And then we also come to find out that her mom said that she raised her from like a tiny little potato puppy and nursed her, and that she the vet said that she wasn't gonna make it, you know, like one of those dogs. So we just had Daisy in for training, and I was like, this is she is such a difficult dog because you cannot motivate her. Like, she's got something going on, she's a very, very slow learner, like she's tough to motivate, and she's tough to train for that reason. And we've just kind of had a batch of dogs like that. So sharkbait is, I would say, what do you think he is? A Malinois pit bull mix.

SPEAKER_01 2:43

That's a bull herder.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

Yeah, he kind of looks like a cholo with hair.

SPEAKER_01 2:49

Yeah, he's a good-looking dog.

SPEAKER_00 2:51

Yeah, and he's like very bouncy, like he I thought liked to train. So he's come to a couple classes before, and I think like compared to a lot of dogs, he is pretty drivey, but I would say more so high energy. And I saw this because I was like, oh my gosh, I'm so excited for this dog. Like, he's gonna work, right? I take him out to go potty and I have him on a flexi lead. He does not care about me at all. Like, I thought that I would be able, like, I had food and I was like, oh yeah, I'm gonna get him to do things, and I couldn't get him to do anything when there's like minor distractions around. And I was like, oh, I'm gonna have to build up his motivation. And I was reflecting and I was like, we don't talk enough about that, about like the dogs like Daisy that you basically cannot like they are so hard to motivate with like punishment or rewards, or dogs like shark bait that have a potential to be very motivated dogs, but we have to know what to do to motivate them. So I did a little research this past week and I was like, you know, what does the science say about motivation in dog training? Like, do we talk about building motivation? Is that even like referenced at all? I was talking with Angela about this as well, about good dog trainers are really good at motivating dogs. You know, think about the people that we know that are good dog trainers and they're really good at motivating dogs, you know. I think that is a big part of it is like seeing a dog, figuring out how to motivate them to get them to do what you want them to do and what they want to do. Like that is a valuable skill on its own. But is this studied? Like, is that studied at all? And pretty much what I found is in motivation, in dog training or animal behavior, it's not something in the literature, it's not something that can be changed. It's more so like a fixed thing. So it's is this dog food motivated? Yes or no? And then they would categorize dogs as food motivated or not food motivated.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

It's never like, can you build more?

SPEAKER_00 5:18

It's not a dynamic thing, it's like this fixed variable in the research. And I was like, well, that's crazy. That if we're not even identifying motivation as something that can be changed, then that means we're really not even

When Technique Fails Without Buy-In

SPEAKER_00 5:35

looking into it at all.

unknown 5:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

Or almost not even talking about dog training.

SPEAKER_00 5:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:40

As far as like the studies go.

SPEAKER_00 5:42

Yeah. So before we talk about any training techniques, before we get into commands, leash pressure, markers, rewards, any of it, we have to talk about motivation because none of that matters if the dog has no reason to work with you. And I want to say that again because I think it gets skipped over constantly in the dog training world. None of it matters. Like it does not matter your technique, your markers, like all the stuff, all of our communication that I talk about all the time. You cannot use it if you don't have a dog that is motivated, right? Yeah. So you can have the best technique, the best timing, the best treats in the world. And if the dog has no reason to care, you're gonna hit a wall every single time. So this week I want to talk about what motivation actually is, what the science says about it, what the science gets right, where it falls short, and what I have learned after years of working with dogs who came in the door with almost nothing to work with motivationally. Like, wouldn't you say that a majority of the dogs that we get are not motivated enough so that we get excited when we have yes, finally when we have a slightly motivated dog.

SPEAKER_01 7:10

Yeah, we had two dogs like recently that are super fearful, and you know, there's no hope in like getting them to take food right now, they're just like so shut down. One's like more of a flight risk, and the other one's just like frozen, like stuck in like this state of like perpetual fear. Yes, those are extremely hard dogs to trade.

SPEAKER_00 7:32

Yeah, and also it's it's not like we can really like go into walking drills or like teach the dogs anything or do e-call or like we literally cannot do anything with the dogs until they're comfortable enough to be able to be motivated by us, essentially. You know, and like that is I feel like that is something that is not talked about in dog training.

SPEAKER_01 8:01

For sure. I think that's why like we got so excited when we got shark bait. The other thing too is like he came to us, like you saw right away that he's like more drivey or at least has more energy. Yeah. And also came like on a harness with an owner that's super like down to use tools. So I was like, okay, cool. Like, we have not done anything with this dog yet. There's a lot of room for growth.

SPEAKER_00 8:25

Yeah. So when dogs first come to us, we typically don't ask a lot from them. And this is what kind of brought me to motivation with a dog like Shark Bait is, you know, I took him out on a flexi. I was like, surely he'll take food from me outside. Like he's not overweight, I have high value rewards, like he'll for sure take food from me outside, and he didn't. And I was like, oh shit. Okay, so what happens when that happens? And we have a dog in for training, you're on a flexi. Their criteria is pretty lax for what I expect from you. But our walks, I'm not holding you to a heel, right? Because I haven't taught you a heel, I haven't taught you leash pressure, I haven't done anything with you. All I can do right now is kind of tell you what I don't want you to do with the leash on the flexi. And my criteria, like the bar is low for our flexi walks. So basically, just don't eat shit off the ground, you know, like don't eat trash and like do unsafe behaviors and don't rush up to people and other dogs. Other than that, I don't care. You can sniff the ground, you can wander, you can, you know, hang out and sniff, you can do whatever you want. But if you start to eat things off the ground, I'm gonna pop your head up with the leash. And if you go to rush over to somebody, I'm gonna pop you back over to me with the flexi leash. So I was kind of left with that on the walk with shark bait. I was like, okay, well, I guess we're gonna do this for a bit, you know, until eventually you're like, hey, what's this lady here? What's what's she want? You check in with me, I'll see if you take some food. Awesome, we can go from there, right? But that just that whole picture of like, okay, well, I can't really teach you anything right now because you're not super motivated. Um, I don't have like food rewards or leash pressure or e-caller or any communication to teach you anything that I want to teach. So all I'm left with is kind of this very broad picture of what you're allowed to do until I can get you a little bit more motivated. But we don't really talk about that too much in dog training, about the beginning stages of motivation. So

How “Loving” Routines Kill Drive

SPEAKER_00 10:47

let's paint a picture of what we see most often come through the door. The dogs come in overweight, they are fed on a schedule that is free feeding. We're basically just letting them graze all day, or giving them treats all day, or we're giving them bully sticks, like they're constantly getting very high value things for free, all day long, all day long. Uh, the dog bowl is full, dog eats whenever they get affection anytime they're push their nose into the owners when they jump up on somebody, or when they're literally just sitting there doing nothing, we'll go, oh my god, she's so cute, and give them tons of affection, which we're not anti any of that, any of that. But they've typically had full run of the house since day one. There's no crate, no structure, no concept of really earning anything because everything is always free all the time. They get to do whatever they want, whenever they want. And the owners love their dogs. Like that is not an issue that we are seeing. They're not bad owners, they are loving owners who wanted their dog to be happy and comfortable, and they gave them everything that they could. And we see this a lot with rescue dogs as well, right? We kind of feel bad for their past. And so we think that loving them and giving them ultimate freedom and all of this stuff is what's going to fix them. The problem is what feels like love to a human, constant access to food, constant affection, unlimited freedom, actually creates a very specific kind of dog. This is a dog who has no reason to work for anything because there is nothing left to work for. So when we try to use food as a motivator with that dog, it does not work. And the owner comes to me and says, My dog is just not food motivated, or my dog is stubborn, my dog is picky. And we kind of just have to say, like, that is just not what's happening. Your dog is not picky, your dog is literally never hungry, they never go hungry, they never like I'm not saying we need to starve our dogs, but they are very, very well fed.

SPEAKER_01 13:24

Yeah, it's just being more mindful of everything, like how we feed them, but even the affection. Like it's all a reward if used properly.

SPEAKER_00 13:32

Yes. So when people come to us with behavioral issues and they're also adding in all of this extra, right? It's really hard to stop problem behaviors because we can't really teach the dogs what we want them to do because those things are not motivating to the dog because the environment hasn't made food motivating. So this is where training gets stuck before it even starts. You cannot build behavior on a motivational foundation that is not there. And the job, before we ever talk about technique, is to restructure that dog's relationship with resources.

SPEAKER_01 14:21

Yeah, very well put.

SPEAKER_00 14:24

Okay, so what does that actually look like?

Food Affection And Freedom As Currency

SPEAKER_00 14:28

So, first things first, food needs to be on a schedule, one to two meals a day, measured portions, no grazing, no free access. Food becomes an event. It's something that the dog looks forward to in our training sessions, and it's something that has value because it is not always available. I did a post on this last week about like chocolate cake. If somebody's like, oh, you love chocolate cake, okay, well, there's always chocolate cake here, and you have to eat six pieces of chocolate cake a day. It's like, okay, well, chocolate cake is actually not that rewarding to me anymore because it's always there all the time, and it's actually something that I have to do multiple times a day, even when I don't really want to eat chocolate cake. It's like, okay, yeah, I have to, I have to eat chocolate cake.

SPEAKER_01 15:22

Yeah, almost to the point where like it could be aversive, you know. Imagine someone shoving chocolate cake in your mouth when you really you're like, I don't want more.

SPEAKER_00 15:30

We see that all the time with the dogs that we're training who are not like food motivated or who are super overfed. Like, we'll literally like give them food and they are like, Oh my god, I can't believe you would do that. Please don't, please don't give me that.

SPEAKER_01 15:44

I'll literally tell like owners, like, all right, if your dog doesn't want to take food right now, like don't keep trying. So you're just getting food.

SPEAKER_00 15:51

Yes, we're just like ruining the value of our food. Okay, so food is kind of the first thing that we can address. The second is affection. Affection has to become intentional. And I'm not just talking about physical affection, but also all of the unintentional talking and baby talking, and like we're constantly giving our dogs tons of affection and attention when that could be used to really like build them in our training sessions. So affection becomes intentional. This is not about being cold or withholding love, it is about making your attention meaningful. When affection is constant, it becomes background noise. And when it is given in response to behavior, in response to something that the dog does, it becomes something the dog will work for. So I think of you know, our training sessions with Muffin, we really hype her up in those training sessions. And that's like what she needs out of training. And I know that because of the type of dog that she is, she gets a little flat, she gets a little bored in our training session. So I have to be more fun and motivating. But if I was always talking to her in the same way that I do in my training sessions, then I wouldn't get the same response in the sessions, you know? So I kind of tell people like our active training sessions is time for you to use your dog mommy voice. Like, be like, Yeah, come on, come on, come on, come on. We can use that to our advantage to like build up a dog that wants to work with us.

SPEAKER_01 17:42

Yeah, that's when you can hype them up. Give them all that verbal praise.

SPEAKER_00 17:47

Third thing is uh freedom. So freedom is earned. The dog does not have access to the whole house, they earn it through their behavior, so that means crating our dogs, tethering our dogs, smaller spaces, baby gates, X pens, things like that. And this is not as punishment, this is simply structure to your dog's day and as a way of saying the world opens up to you when you engage with me, when you show me that you can handle that level of freedom.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

Yep, literally had this whole console today.

SPEAKER_00 18:28

Yeah, did you have this conversation?

SPEAKER_01 18:30

100%. Yeah, no, for sure. Even even like the little things that people don't acknowledge, you know, like all right, only let the dog out once they're calm, like things like that, rewarding more of the behaviors you want to see more of. Yeah. Super basic.

SPEAKER_00 18:47

And, you know, we're coming from the place of dog trainers, and that this is literally our job. People typically come to us with a problem or a goal that they're working towards, and it's our job to help them get there. We're not trying to, you know, change your little life with your dog. If your dog doesn't have behavioral issues and you don't have any goals and you don't need help motivating them, then like by all means, give your dog constant freedom. Give them food to graze off of. Because I know that's always kind of like a little argument that I get just in social media is like, well, my dog has never been created, and my dog gets free access to food all day and they don't have issues. Well, you're not the people we're talking to because we're talking to the people who are struggling with their dogs.

SPEAKER_01 19:34

For sure.

SPEAKER_00 19:35

You know, but I would say that that is more common than overfeeding. Yeah. I would say maybe in the beginning of my career, I had a lot of fat dogs and a lot of very overweight dogs, and most of the dogs that I would train like they would not take food in training to the point where I was doing so I used to measure out the dog's food for the day. We had little containers of like, okay, this is the dog's food, it would sit on top of their crate, and that's what we would use in all of their training sessions. And I liked that, but like some dogs would just not eat, and then you worry about like them losing too much weight, and it was like a full thing. Now we use high-value treats to motivate the dogs, but that just goes to say a lot of the dogs that I got for training, like food wasn't really an option for them. Like, they were not motivated by food, they were very overweight, they could go a really long time without having to work for their food, and it just wasn't worth it for us.

SPEAKER_01 20:49

Yeah, tons of body fat to burn. Literally, literally. Right now, I would say we don't really get any like it's very rare that we get an overweight dog. If the dog's not food motivated, it's generally more like just lack of motivation, maybe like fear.

SPEAKER_00 21:06

Yeah. I don't even necessarily think it's lack of motivation. I I think they're just in that beginning stage of like they're given so much freedom that they don't even know that training with us and working with us is like inherently rewarding and like a cool thing, you know?

SPEAKER_01 21:28

Yeah. No, we gotta definitely like teach the dogs to like want to work for us.

SPEAKER_00 21:33

Yeah, we have to teach them that it's like, hey, this is fun for both of us. And we kind of get into that a little bit later. So I want to be very clear about all of this. It is not mean to put your dog on a mean uh meal schedule, it is not mean to not let your dog on the couch until they sit and just giving them some sort of boundaries and conditions where training can actually work. So I saw this also in one of my camping trips. Um I would say the girls did not crate train their dogs enough. And so one, the dogs really struggled being away from their owners at all. Like we could not do all the dogs had to be out all the time, right? So one, we definitely need to work on that because the dogs should be able to you should be able to walk away your from your dog without them losing their mind. But anyways, the other big issue with the dogs that weekend was that because they weren't crate trained and didn't have a ton of structure and like downtime, they didn't, they were too tired to want to work in the training sessions. And so I really wanted to like teach these dogs things, but they just didn't have it in them because they weren't given any downtime, you know, and that's something that we emphasize a lot as dog trainers is when we are not actively working with the dogs, when they're not on place or the treadmill or on a walk or in a training session, they are in their crates, not just as a way to make sure that they stay safe and prevent them from doing bad behaviors, but also to give them some downtime so that they're more motivated in those training sessions that we are doing with them. So if you find that your dog is not wanting to learn, or you only get like a solid, you know, minute or two from them, look at your schedule with them. Do they have free range all the time? Is the only time you're telling them what to do in that training session? Of course they hate that because you know they're like, oh, this sucks. I want to go stare out the window and do whatever I want. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:02

100%.

Motivating Operations You Can Control

SPEAKER_00 24:04

So there is a concept in applied behavior analysis called motivating operations. And the formal definition of this is an environmental variable that changes the reinforcing effectiveness of a stimulus and changes the behavior that has been reinforced by that stimulus, which just means the value of a reward depends entirely on the conditions around it. So a dog who free feeds all day in a state of sacy or I can't talk. Satiation. Satiation means the reinforcing value of food is low. Not because they're a picky eater, because their brain is not registering food as something that is worth working for right now. So the change occurs and you can change the value. Makes sense?

SPEAKER_01 25:09

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 25:10

And this is obviously something that we see all the time. And one of the main ways that we can build motivation in our dogs. So I'm gonna bring a study into this. A 2025 study in the American Journal of Veterinary Research confirmed this directly. They found that food motivation scores and owner feeding management practices were directly linked to overweight status in dogs. So dogs with free access to food at home were consistently harder to motivate with food in training. Obviously. And that was kind of something that you know, a little side note. Reading the research, it's like duh. That's pretty much my response to all of the research that I've read about motivation in dog training. And also, I'm gonna get into this more next week, but the science behind the camp of force-free people and how it's the worst science I've ever read. And the fact that we're like using that as gospel is crazy to me. But, anyways, lifestyle comes first. Motivation is not something you find, it is something that you can build, and you build it by first changing your dog's lifestyle and conditions. Okay. So we've talked about the lifestyle piece. Now let's get into what the behavioral science actually tells us about how motivation works once you have it. So we've already kind of worked on how we can build that up by changing our dog's environment. Let's start with motivating operations again, uh, because it's worth going a little deeper into. So the concept comes from applied behavior analysis. And that is this core idea is that motivation is not a fixed state. It is not a personality trait, it is a state that fluctuates based on what is happening in the environment. And us, as the trainers, have a significant amount of control over those conditions. And this applies to everything: food, toys, social context, access to the environment, all of them can be high value or low value depending on the context. A dog that just ran for an hour might not care at all about chasing a ball. Or a dog that has been crated for several hours is going to find that ball significantly more interesting. It's the same dog, the same ball, but a completely different value. So let's talk about the reinforcement

Variable Rewards And The Casino Effect

SPEAKER_00 28:06

schedules. Um, this is one that has direct application to how you build persistent, consistent behavior. And it's something that we do all the time. So, one of the most well-documented findings in behavioral science is that variable ratio reinforcement schedules produce the most persistent behavior. What the heck does that mean?

SPEAKER_01 28:30

It's the casino effect.

SPEAKER_00 28:31

The casino effect. So when the reward is not predictable, when the dog cannot know exactly when it is coming, they keep working, they keep trying, and this is the same psychology behind slot machines.

SPEAKER_01 28:51

Dogs run on hope, no different than people.

SPEAKER_00 28:53

People keep pulling the lever because the next pull might be the one that pays out. So, what does that look like for us in training? I also I had this conversation today.

SPEAKER_01 29:07

That's funny.

SPEAKER_00 29:09

Yeah. So I'll give you my little story. Uh, this was in our virtual group call in the community, and one of the girls has a puppy. I don't know how old. I want to say like four to I want to say like four months, somewhere around there. Anyways, it's gonna be a big dog. She is working on walking people walking up, shaking hands, dog stays there, right? So dog is in the heel position, we have him in a sit, we pay them good, they stay there, good. We keep paying them. Somebody walks up, hi, we shake their hand, dog stays there, good. We pay them. So she was like, Well, he does really good if I'm constantly paying him, but then as soon as I like don't pay him right away, he will like get up. So what do I do with that?

SPEAKER_01 30:01

Just checks out, right? But it's like I'm constantly fed.

SPEAKER_00 30:05

So so we have to change up the frequency of the reward. So for that dog, that means we're gradually going to create some more space between those rewards and fade them out. We always want to be predictably unpredictable in our training, and this is where I see a lot of force-free trainers suck, is they are rewarding everything all the time, and they're so consistent with the reward that it is not motivating for the dog. And so they think they're doing right by the dogs and constantly rewarding them, but in all actuality, the constant reward is so just meaningless and boring to the dog that it's not actually a motivator in that situation. So, in training, this is why we start by rewarding the dog every single repetition. This is like when we're teaching something new, and then you gradually move to a more unpredictable schedule. You are building persistence, we're building a dog that does not stop trying just because the treat did not come this time. So that's kind of what my puppy owner is experiencing, right? The dog's like, well, I didn't immediately get rewarded. Okay, well, I'm gonna stand up and I'm gonna break. So to create dogs that don't get frustrated so easily and don't give up so easy, we change the rate of reinforcement.

SPEAKER_01 31:50

Like a really good example of that is if you look at sport work, people that are teaching a focus heel. Sometimes like focus heel, the dog's kind of looking up in the sky into like the handler's armpit and they're working for food or ball, it doesn't really matter what the reward is. Sometimes you'll pay on like step number two, sometimes on step number 10, next one step number five, then back to step number two, like very clear on your variability.

unknown 32:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:18

Clear example.

SPEAKER_00 32:19

Yeah, and it's not just the variability in the frequency of the rewards, but it's also the rewards themselves. So I read over a study from what is this from scientific reports found that dogs who received different types of rewards over time showed less performance drop-off than dogs who always got the same thing. So the reason in this case is the habituation when the dog gets the same treat every single time, it starts to mean less, it becomes predictable. Predictable things hold attention less than novel things.

SPEAKER_01 33:00

Quantity as well, you know. Yes, one piece of kibble, and then later on in the same session. Yes, jackpot, like 30 pieces of kibble. Holy shit, that's an option.

SPEAKER_00 33:10

Yeah, yeah. So we can mix up the frequency, the type of reward, and what was that? What word is that? Uh quantity. Quantity. Yeah, quantity. There we go. And this is why good dog trainers vary what they use. They usually have like a high-value treat, they'll use food. We can use play. That's another kind of component of this, right? Is like some dogs are more motivated by play than they are with food. And so we can toggle a dog's motivation in a training session by switching them between food and play. And we typically only see this with like high drive dogs or like, you know, our malinois. So, like, for example, I cannot get muffin to take food in front of a decoy or even a person who's just standing there with a sleeve or a tug.

SPEAKER_01 34:09

It's too low of a reinforcer in comparison to the like competing motivator.

SPEAKER_00 34:14

Yes, which I also have a study on that as well, competing motivators. But it all of the all of the research is so annoying because it's like, huh. Turns out that the value of a reward changes based on competing motivators. And it's like the situation's like you don't say you needed someone in a lab coat to tell you that. No, literally. And that also kind of plays into like reactive dogs, right? Like, why does your reactive dog not want to take food when there's another dog around? It's like, well, we're dealing with competing motivators there, right? The act of being reactive is so self-reinforcing to the dog that that is way more rewarding than your food, you know? So there's a there's a bunch of different ways that we can reward our dogs.

SPEAKER_01 35:11

And that's really only just so far. We talked about different values, like treats, ball, whatever, but there's also how you deliver the reward. Like if you reward and you have no emotion, like yes, and you just produce a treat super calm. That's very boring. Like today, I had a client come to me with a Malamoine, he's he's not food motivated. He's like, let's see. Go into some tossing and doing some get it's now there's like prey movement involved, even just with food, and next thing you know, oh, it turns out the dog's pretty food motivated. Yes. How you deliver the reward matters as well.

SPEAKER_00 35:48

Yes, and that's one of the ways that we can build a more food-motivated dog. And that's kind of why I had an issue with some of the science is it's like, is this dog food food motivated? Yes or no. Okay, well.

SPEAKER_01 36:04

Who's training? Who's delivering the food?

SPEAKER_00 36:06

How are we? How are we delivering the food? What breed of dog? Like, there's just so many factors that kind of come into play in the research, and it that is just not taken into account because you can tell the research is done by people that are not doing the training, which makes sense, you know. But I think that's why I am so passionate about this, is because I have my science background, and then I spent the past eight years doing hands-on with thousands of dogs. I see what is happening and why it's happening, and have kind of like learned all of this anecdotally. And now it's like, okay, I can go back and read the research and it's like, yeah, no shit. But also how some of these studies are set up, it's like, okay, well, you're not taking into account so many factors. The breed of these dogs, like how they were bred. Are they rescue dogs? Are they what are the trainers like? You know, like there's so many factors that are just not considered in any of this stuff.

Dopamine Anticipation And Marker Timing

SPEAKER_00 37:18

Anyways, before I go on a tangent with that, so the next little piece of like science behind motivation that we definitely need to mention is the research on dopamine and anticipation. So when a behavior is followed by a reward, the brain releases dopamine. That is the thing that creates the reinforcement loop, which is the neurological reason behavior gets stronger. But here is the interesting part. The research shows dopamine actually spikes in anticipation of the reward, not just when the dog gets it, when they expect it is coming. I have talked about this about 10 million times. And this is the entire foundation behind marker words and making sure that we're using our marker words correctly and in a timely manner. You know, I see people say yes and reward their dog at the same time all the time, but that means we're not getting that key piece right there, which is the anticipation. So wanting is part of the motivation, the buildup, the moment of engagement before the reward arrives. That anticipation itself is driving the behavior. And this is why the energy you bring into a training session matters. The dog is reading you, and if you are flat and going through the motions, you are dampening that anticipatory response. If you are engaged, the dog feels that and their brain starts lighting up before the reward even arrives. A good example of this for me, I think, is I will always start my session by hiding the reward with muffin, right? And I use a double marker system with her. So I start my session with Muffin barking at me. I'll typically kind of look at her, I'll give her a look that is a cue of like, hey, I want you to bark at me when we get started. She starts barking. I say, Are you ready? She's like, Yeah, bark, bark, bark, bark, bark. Yes. I don't have food in my hand. I don't have a toy in my hand. I don't have anything. She hears that first yes. She goes, Oh my gosh, she has a tug, right? While I go to take out the tug, I'm taking it out really slowly. I'm pulling up my shirt. I'm taking I'm taking the tug out really slowly. I'm kind of teasing her with it. Wow, I got the tug. Yes. She gets the tug. Play, play, play. That's the reward itself. But all of that buildup, literally like five seconds of build-up of me slowly reaching for it, that is what gets her jacked up and motivated to train with me. That like moment right there. You know?

SPEAKER_01 40:24

For sure. It's funny because when you read that definition, um your initial thought was just like, all right, mark reward, right? Mark, pause, produce the reward. Um we'd maybe have to read the definition again, but my brain went towards let's say focus healing. Yeah, reward, produce a toy, but maybe miss, miss, back to focus healing, or focus heal, are you ready? Bark, bark, bark, back to focus heal. Where like the dog's like, Oh, I'm gonna get paid, and you're like, psych, like, psych, work harder. Yeah, and that really builds like more intensity.

SPEAKER_00 41:05

That like frustration of like, oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 41:07

That's it, and then like right back into it. And then you get some like maybe three more steps of like bah bah bah, the most intense healing you've ever seen, and then boom, now you get paid for the toy.

SPEAKER_00 41:17

Yeah, I think I don't think I touch on it in this, the research that I did, but something that we should also look into is failure. Like failure is also a form of motivation that we use in training. And I think about, you know, my friends Bobby and Daniel, they're people trainers, they work with athletes, and failure is motivating not getting it every single time. And I mean, I guess that like makes sense. It's like the slot machine thing, you know. The dog is like, there's a bit of frustration there. We say yes, or we like pause and get them barking, and they're like, No, I should get paid. And it's like, nah, nah, give me some barking, give me some more energy, and then you'll get paid. Or like, miss miss, oh, you didn't get it. Okay, go back into behavior, try it, try harder next time.

SPEAKER_01 42:13

Guarantee you that next time you present the ball, boom, they're hitting it with full force.

SPEAKER_00 42:17

Yeah, that is that's very good. We can definitely use failure as a way to motivate the dogs as well, or just a lack of winning, I guess would be the motivation there, you know.

SPEAKER_01 42:29

You almost had it.

SPEAKER_00 42:30

You almost had it. Gotta be quicker than that. Okay.

Flow State Agency And Productive Challenge

SPEAKER_00 42:36

One more concept. A 2023 paper in Biological Reviews explored whether animals experience something like the flow state that humans describe, that state of complete absorbed engagement where the task itself is motivating. The idea is that flow happens when challenge and skill are balanced. Oh, look, I do have research on it. Too easy and it is too boring, too hard and it is too overwhelming. In the sweet spot, the animal is fully engaged and intrinsically motivated by the work itself. I actually did not even put this together at all, of thinking of it as kind of like failure, but this is exactly what I'm talking about. So, what they found is that dogs given more choice and more control over their training showed higher motivation and faster learning. Agency matters when a dog feels like their actions have an effect when they understand that what they do changes what happens, they engage more deeply. Of course. And this is operant conditioning as well. But I want to go back to kind of like Like finding that sweet spot. We need to push our dogs to do something that we know that they're capable of, but maybe they don't know that they're capable of just yet. And this is where I think a lot of owners fall short. We see this with the treadmill, right? We just we got treadmills. They did not ship us the treadmills, by the way. I don't think I've mentioned that on this podcast, but I ordered dog pacer treadmills literally like a year and a half ago, and then the company went bankrupt. So me and Toma have been on Facebook Marketplace scrounging around for treadmills. We have three treadmills now, which is a game changer, I have to say.

SPEAKER_01 44:43

It's been nice.

SPEAKER_00 44:44

But we're reintroducing all of these dogs to treadmills.

SPEAKER_01 44:48

Hey, wait, wait, wait. If you guys got a treadmill in California, oh yes, send us the treadmill.

SPEAKER_00 44:53

We'll buy it from you. Um, anyways, uh, so what we're seeing is I know that these dogs can do treadmills. The owners don't really know that. So they walk their dog on the treadmill, the dog panics for 0.5 seconds, and the owner's like, oh, never mind. Okay, my dog doesn't like the treadmill. It's like, no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 45:14

Let's overcome this little thing.

SPEAKER_00 45:15

Let's work through this or our stairs, for example. The stairs in the facility, they're the stairs that you can like see through. They're just wood planks. So it freaks a lot of dogs out. The dogs don't believe that they can go up the stairs. I know that they can go up the stairs. You know, I wouldn't make them do anything that was unsafe or that I didn't think that they could do. So we just use a little leash pressure. They learn, okay, I can't move back down the stairs. I need to go up the stairs to turn the leash pressure off. Amazing. They moved through the stairs. A couple years back, I did a uh, I think it was like a three-week, maybe two-week long shadow program. And one of the girls had her dog that was it would this dog would not go down the stairs. Like she got the dog upstairs. You remember this?

SPEAKER_01 46:03

Bailey's dog.

SPEAKER_00 46:04

Yeah. She got the dog upstairs, and then the it was uh, he's like what, an XL bully? Like he's a big dog. Yeah, got the dog upstairs, and he's like, Oh hell no, I'm not going down the stairs. Literally regular stairs, like in a house, not see-through, very normal picture, just a picture that the dog has never seen before. So the dog was like, I'm not doing that. We got cheese, we got ham, we got like whatever we could to bribe the dog down the stairs. He would not go down the stairs. She is crying. She's upstairs, she's like, Oh my god, like my dog is never like we're stuck here. This is it, right? She's panicking. She's like, I'm a horrible dog trainer, losing it, spiraling. I come upstairs and I was like, You gotta, you gotta leash pressure him down the stairs. Like, you just gotta do it. And she was like, Okay. I was like, I don't remember. I gave her a pep talk. I was like, You're not a bad dog trainer, but like you have to make your dog do this thing, they don't want to do it.

SPEAKER_01 46:59

Also, just I guess disclaimer, you say leash pressure, that doesn't mean yank the dog.

SPEAKER_00 47:03

Yeah, I'm not like cranking the dog down the stairs, it's literally just like constant tension on the leash. We're not like dragging the dog down the stairs, it's just like you have to go. Anyways, the dog went down the stairs and it was like a big moment for the dogs and the owners. But I think that is a huge missing piece of motivation and training in general is that we never work our dogs through even slightly difficult things.

SPEAKER_01 47:31

Can you read that definition again?

SPEAKER_00 47:35

Um, which one?

SPEAKER_01 47:36

That we've been just talking about. Uh, because we're obviously right now you mentioned like overcoming fear basically with a little bit of pressure.

SPEAKER_00 47:44

Uh so this last study explored whether animals experience something like the flow state, as humans described, and that is a state of complete absorbed engagement where the task itself is motivating. The idea is that flow happens when they challenge happens when challenge and skill are balanced. Too easy and it is boring, too hard and it is overwhelming. In the sweet spot, the animal is fully engaged and intrinsically motivated by the work itself. So obviously not really flow state there, but like goes into like working through.

SPEAKER_01 48:21

Here hear me out. I I when you read that out the first time, I immediately thought about detection. So if you see like the detection class, especially like we're training the pets, um the dogs have never searched, period. So initially we're hiding, we're making them search for treats, and every couple feet they're finding a little pile of kibble, right? So the dogs run run on hope. They're hitting every couple feet, they're like, Oh hell yeah, this game is fun. And then very quickly you can fade, you know, you give the search command, and they don't need to find something every like four feet. They can go searching for a lot longer without finding anything. And we built up enough hope that they're maintaining, like, they're they're hopeful that they're gonna find something, right? You go a little too much and you only maybe the dog like it's not even that you like didn't hide enough treats, maybe the dog missed missed a pile and now they've gone a minute without finding anything, and you see the dogs check out because like they didn't find anything, like, oh this sucks. So that's kind of going over a threshold where they lose hope to lose interest.

SPEAKER_02 49:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:37

Um and then on the flip side, a really, really advanced dog, like my dream type of detection dog, he can search for like 45 minutes. Like the the Spaniels are like that. They search, they search, search, they finally find something. They give the final indication, they sit, you reward them with the ball.

SPEAKER_00 49:58

But the behavior itself is the thing that's way more rewarding, so they spit the ball out and they go right back to searching.

SPEAKER_01 50:03

Like, man, we've just done like an eight-hour shift and you don't even care for your ball. Yeah, like straight back to searching. So that's the flow state where the behavior becomes like intrinsically rewarding.

SPEAKER_00 50:16

And I think we see that a lot with like reactivity too, you know, for sure. Being reactive is a rewarding behavior to a lot of like they're literally putting themselves into flow state, you know. So, anyways, yeah, I I agree, and we see that in our training sessions

Short Sessions That Protect Engagement

SPEAKER_00 50:36

too. I think our goal with all of the people that come to us for training and classes is to get them into that flow state. You know, that is kind of the goal of our active training sessions, is getting the dog motivated, getting the dog tuned in with the owner. So we do a bit of like treat chases.

SPEAKER_01 50:55

The get it game is huge.

SPEAKER_00 50:57

Why do we do the get it game? Because it makes the the reward dynamic, makes it more motivating. The dog is chasing the food. We tap into prey drive there, get the dog chasing, we'll get the dog engaged on us. Well, they check in, we say, yes, we shuffle backwards, move backwards, pull the dog into us, pay, pay, pay, and then we can go into behavior. We get a couple reps of behavior. Awesome. Go back into get it, get the dog back up and motivated. We're constantly looking at the dog's state in that training session. And I think it's also helpful to note that our training sessions with the dogs are very short.

SPEAKER_01 51:36

Yeah, yeah. A good like flow state engagement session, you'd literally keep the dog engaged on you the entire time.

SPEAKER_00 51:43

Like there's not there's no downtime. You there's no asking us questions. There's no, okay, whoa, Winnie. No, save it for after the session, keep working your dog. When the dog, when we're done, we go put the dog up, we say all done, put the dog up, and then we can talk about the session.

SPEAKER_01 52:04

What I what I see a lot of as well is we get great engagement, like you said, twofold. You get great engagement, get it, get it, get it. Now what? I was like, why are we pausing? Like you just lost engagement, or get it, get it, yes, yes. And because we have the indoor training facility, people run out of space and they go from like great engagement to okay, we gotta just casual pet walk back to the middle of the room.

SPEAKER_00 52:28

Yeah, they always think that you need to walk back and like reset at the other side of the room.

SPEAKER_01 52:32

And then when you reset, the dog's not checked in, it's like you can turn around and keep that engagement, keep backing up, you know? Yeah, that's a big one.

SPEAKER_00 52:39

And I also see I see this more so with like the trainers that come is too long of sessions where you're working on like everything in one session, you know. So while I'm doing a session, let's say I find a hole in my training. So um what have I been working? I've been working on down in muffin muffins. Down in muffins. Down in motions with my Malinois muffin. And basically what that means is I'm healing with her. So she's in heal. I tell her down as I continue moving forward. She needs a down. She's been moving slow. Okay. So let's say I'm like, okay, I'm gonna work on my down in motions today. I walk, walk, walk, I say couche. She kind of crawls into a down. I go, okay, our down emotions are a little bit slow. My downs are slow. I'm not really gonna work on that right now, but I am gonna make a little mental note to work on it later. But what I see a lot of is somebody goes, oh, okay, my down in motions are slow, so I'm gonna work on my down speed right now. So then we rip out down a whole bunch, and then we try to plug it back into our down in motion, and then another problem comes up, and then we address that problem in the same session, which leads us to another problem, which leads us to another problem. And then you the main goal of your session, you got lost in the sauce. You're no longer following what you originally wanted to do in that session. And we can change, but it gets confusing for the dog. They don't know how to win the session, they don't know what you want them to do because you don't even know what you want the dog to do.

SPEAKER_01 54:22

Yeah, you can definitely like find a hole in your training session and adapt and change the goal of your session, but keep it like simple. Then you don't need to like go back to more stuff. Yes. Keep it short. People have like 25-minute sessions, and it's like, okay, maybe not not yet.

SPEAKER_00 54:38

Yeah, like I I don't know. I think very few dogs actually stay motivated in long training sessions like that. And that is, I would say our job as dog trainers is quite literally building motivation. That is a majority of our board and train.

SPEAKER_01 55:01

For sure, you know, and sometimes that means like you pull the dog out, quick session, put the dog back. Like, you gotta think about it like uh what is it, a hit workout where it's a high intensity short interval.

SPEAKER_00 55:12

Yeah. So that the next time that I pull that dog out to work them, they're like, okay, yeah, I really want to do this. This is something that we watch for in every training session where you look to see is the dog engaged, are they offering behavior? Are they in that zone where they're working with us? If not, we have to figure out whether we have them like calibrated correctly, whether I'm asking too much or too little, and whether I have found their motivator, whether the conditions support the work and support our training.

The PLOS One Study And Predictability

SPEAKER_00 55:51

Now, I want to talk about the research that gets cited most often when people argue about training methods, because I think it is really important that we look at what the science actually says, not just what headlines say. There's a study out of Portugal published in, I'm gonna say PLOS 1. I don't know if it's an acronym or not, but whatever. We're gonna say PLOS 1 in 2020. This it this study is the bane of my existence. 92 dogs followed across roughly three years. Researchers compared dogs being trained at reward-based schools versus aversive-based schools. They measured stress behaviors during training sessions, cortisol levels in saliva, and then ran the dogs through a cognitive bias test to assess their longer-term emotional state. What they found is that the dogs in the aversive trained group had higher cortisol after training, showed more stress behaviors during sessions, things like lip licking, yawning, lowered body posture, and in the cognitive bias test, which I will talk about here in just a sec, they showed more pessimistic responses. When put in ambiguous situations, they expected things to go badly. So that pessimism, pessimism, cannot speak, finding is worth sitting with. When a dog develops a generalized expectation that things are going to go wrong, they stop engaging, they stop offering behavior, their motivation to try collapses, and that is a serious consequence. So here is the part that almost never makes it into the conversation around this study. The same paper references earlier research on what actually drove the stress response, and the finding there was not that aversives cause stress. It was that unpredictable aversive aversives cause stress. The variable that mattered most was not whether a consequence was used. It was whether the dog could predict it and make sense of it. The lower the predictability of the aversive, the higher the cortisol levels. Dogs who received corrections that were random, that seemed to come out of nowhere, showed the most stress. And dogs who received corrections that were consistent, clear, and tied to specific behavior showed significantly less. Now, I had some questions about this study. First, what was the cognitive bias test in this study? So I mentioned earlier that they used a cognitive bias test to see how the dogs would respond to like an ambiguous situation. Okay, so this is a test designed to measure an animal's underlying emotional state, uh, essentially whether they're in a positive or negative mindset by watching how they respond to ambiguous situations. Here's how the one in the PLOS 1 study worked. The researchers set up a room with two positions for a food bowl. The dog learned that one position always had food in it and the other position was always empty. And the dog reliably understood that running to the food side, ignoring the empty side, the researchers started placing the bull in intermediate positions, in between, or this is our ambiguous. So the question was: how does the dog interpret that ambiguous bowl? A dog in a positive emotional state tends to approach it optimistically. They run toward it as if it is probably has food. A dog in a negative emotional state tends to approach more slowly or not at all. They expect it to be empty. The researchers measured how quickly the dogs moved toward the bowl in the ambiguous positions. The aversive train dogs moved more slowly. They were more pessimistic. They had developed a general expectation that things were not going to go their way. The reason that this matters is that it is measuring something beyond just, quote, was the dog stressed during training? It is measuring whether that stress has generalized into the dog's whole outlook. A dog who hesitates at ambiguous bowl is a dog who has learned at some level that uncertainty usually means something bad that affects motivation, engagement, willingness to try, and the relationship with the handler, all outside of the training context. Okay, so I really like how they set that up. But I was like, were what what was really like controlled in this? Okay, so in the study, they took dogs from a training facility that quote uses aversives, which let's clear up what that is. So what is considered aversive in this study? Positive punishment were, and this is flipping crazy, leash jerks with choke chain or pinch collars, shock delivery through e-collars, slapping the dog, yelling at the dog, and leaning toward the dog in a threatening way.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:18

This is an e-collar specific study.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:21

This is the use of aversives. This is this is the study that is constantly quoted. So not just e-collars or prong collars or properly used balance training, but we are taking dogs from a dog training school where the trainers are doing all of these things. All of that is lumped together, okay? And then the negative reinforcement in this context is pulling the collar upward and releasing only when the dog sat, pulling the collar downward and releasing only when the dog lay down, and hanging the dog by the choke collar until it calmed down. All of that was counted together as quote aversive methods. Well, one category, and the schools classified as high aversive, we're using something from something from that list on 76 to 84% of all training interactions. So when people cite this study as evidence that e-collars cause stress, what the study actually measured was a category that includes slapping dogs and hanging them by choke collars applied at extremely high rate by schools in Portugal found through an internet research on dogs of unknown breed composition. That is a very different claim than e-collars used by skilled balance trainers cause stress. But that distinction is almost never gets made when the study gets reference. It's flattened into very simple headlines.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:09

Yeah, that's wild. Because let's be real. If you need to use aversives 80% of the time in your training session, you need to make your training session easier and set the dog up for success first.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:20

Well, and also their teaching behaviors like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:24

Yeah, that's wild.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:26

So the dogs don't know what to do to avoid. They're just getting cranked, right? Which goes back to the stress is coming from the unpredictability of the punishment. Yep. We're gonna get into this more in depth next week, but another question that I kind of thought was or a little, you know, note in my mind. I think it should also be noted that the dogs going to the school with aversive training probably have more severe behavioral issues.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:01

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:03

You know? Yeah, if people are willing to the dogs that can go to a force-free class, they're cuppy cakes. They're cuppy cakes, right? Like they we're not taking into account different the different types of dogs that are gonna go to different trainers.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:19

Yeah, it's a huge huge validity.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:22

So in the like cognitive bias tests, where they're like, oh, the dogs that were trained with, or that not even that were trained with, the dogs that came from this school that were trained with these methods are more like show more fear, they're more pessimistic when it comes to like approaching an ambiguous situation. Those dogs are probably just like that because they're nervy, they're fearful, they're behavioral dogs, you know, whereas the dogs that are able to go to a force free training class are probably not those dogs. So I would love to see this study redone with more control. Way more control, right? Like I would love to see it from the same school, you know, do a study on dogs that we just do positive reinforcement with that come out of the same litter as dogs that we're doing good balance training with.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:28

Yeah. No, there's so many different variables.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:32

No, this study, this study is like bogus. Oh my gosh, it's so bad. And also I got into who funded it, and that's like a whole nother thing that I will I will cover next week.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:48

This is next week's podcast.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:49

This is next week's podcast, but I just wanted to touch on it because it definitely does talk about motivation. You know, like that's like a thing, is like, okay, these dogs aren't motivated to do anything because they're shut down. So the pessimism finding also connects to something called learned helplessness. When animals learn that their behavior has no reliable effect on their environment, positive or negative, they stop trying. They go flat, they disengage. So when we're really inconsistent in our training, whether with like our punishment or even in the behaviors that were rewarding, that is one of the ways that we kind of flatten motivation. So this happens in both directions. Inconsistent punishment creates learned helplessness, but so does inconsistent reinforcement. Confusing training creates learned helplessness. Any situation where the dog cannot figure out how their actions change, what happens, is the problem. The lesson is not never use consequences. The lesson is make your training legible to the dog. Whatever you're doing has to make sense to them. They have to be able to see the connection between what they do and what happens next. That is what protects them, and that is what keeps our motivation alive.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:15

You know, set that criteria, hold the dogs accountable. You're off to the races.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:21

Exactly. So the next thing that I, you know, we kind of briefly touched on, but we don't really get to pick

Learned Helplessness And Real Motivators

SPEAKER_00 1:08:30

the motivator. I think that this is a very underappreciated skill in dog training, being able to read the individual dog and figuring out what actually motivates them. One of the most common things I hear from owners is my dog is not food motivated. And what they usually mean is I tried treats, it did not work, so food must not be my dog's thing. But when I dig into what actually happened, it is usually one of a few things. Either the food was not high enough value for their particular dog in that environment, or the dog was full, or the environment was too distracting, and the food could not compete with what was happening around them. Or sometimes food genuinely is not that dog's primary driver. Those are completely different problems with completely different solutions. And you can only find the right solution if you are actually watching the dog. So let's talk about the four main categories of motivators that we work with. Food is the most commonly used and the most research. It works well for a lot of dogs, especially when food access at home is managed the way we talked about earlier. High value food is its own spectrum, though. Dry kibble is very different than a piece of chicken. So we have to kind of know the difference and use our high-value rewards very strategically. The next one is play. For some dogs, especially higher drive breeds, a tug toy or a ball is more motivating than any food you can find. The engagement and arousal of play activities, a drive that food simply does not touch. These dogs are often labeled as difficult or untrainable because trainers keep trying to use food and it keeps not working. So we can always bring out a toy. The next one, and I've talked a little bit about this in our pack drive episode, but social connection and belonging. Some dogs are deeply motivated by approval, by working in relationship with their handler, by feeling a part of the team or the group of dogs. These dogs respond strongly to voice, to eye contact, to physical praise, to the energy of the person they are working with. And this tends to show up more strongly in breeds that were developed to work closely with humans. For these dogs, your engagement is the reward. The last thing I'll touch on is the environment. So environmental access. The dog who wants to sniff, who wants to explore, who wants to move through the world, for these dogs, the environment itself is the reward. A walk is not just exercise. It is something that they will work for. Forward movement, access to a new area, permission to use their nose. These can be super powerful reinforcers if you know how to use them. Break break is our release word to the environment. So we can ask for a dog to do a behavior to access a reward, which we will get into in just a second of what is that called? So none of these things is the quote right motivator. These are all different. And a trainer who only works with one is not going to motivate all dogs to their full potential. We want to, as balanced dog trainers and balanced dog owners, be able to use an array of rewards. That is always so rewards, is like a tough word for me in our training to be able to motivate the dog as much as possible. And the science backs this up. A 2018 study that developed the canine reward responsiveness scale found that food drive and toy drive operate as separate dimensions. A dog can be high on one and low on the other. They are not the same thing measured on a single scale. They are different motivational systems. So I kind of talked about a flaw in those other studies was it's like, is a dog motivated? Yes or no? So this study actually kind of looked at that and was like, hey, maybe motivation is on a scale and maybe there's different kinds of motivation. Genetics can also play a role. So certain labradory retrievers carry a specific gene associated with significantly higher food motivation. I actually did not know that. Something that I learned. And this is part of why labs are so commonly used in service dog and detection work. It is not just that they are trainable, it's that food works reliably good for them in a way that holds across different environments and distractions. But genetics are not the whole story. Environment shapes motivation too. A dog who has always had free access to food develops a fundamentally different relationship with food as a resource than a dog who has learned that food is earned that can be changed. And we see it change all the time in the dogs that we work with.

The Premack Principle In Daily Life

SPEAKER_00 1:13:55

So this leads us into the pre-MAC principle. We know about the pre-MAC principle. Give us a give us an example of the pre-MAC principle.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:11

Um science-y terms.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:14

No, you can't read it. You can't read my notes.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:17

What's the pre-MAC principle?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:19

What's the pre-MAC principle, Toma? You we just gave an example of it. Dog doesn't want to heal. Dog has to heal to get to the environment. Hawk hawk doesn't want your tug. Oh, like the Hawk has to take the tug to get the reward.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:38

Yeah, so um, like abridged behavior.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:40

Abridged behavior. So David Primac was a psychologist who formalized this idea in 1965. The basic concept is a high probability behavior, something the dog strongly wants to do, can be used to reinforce a low probability behavior, something you want them to do, but they are less enthusiastic about. Another good example of this is like thresholds, a dog sitting at the door. Does the dog want to sit at the door?

SPEAKER_01 1:15:11

Nobody knows if I sit.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:13

If I sit at the door, I get released and I get to go play in the backyard or I get to go for a walk. I get to do all of these things. We use pre-mac principle in like that's pretty much how I train dogs is the pre-MAC principle. Like, you want to come out of the crate, you gotta offer me this behavior. You want to walk through the door, you gotta offer me this behavior first.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:35

You can even build like food drive with a very high, like toy-motivated dog. Like, for instance, hey, take this little piece of kidney.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:43

Take food and then you get the toy. Yeah. So, in plain terms, you use what the dog already wants as the currency. So you have a dog who loves a sniff, pulling towards every bit of grass, every fire hydrant, every corner. Instead of fighting that drive, we can use it. Loosh leash walking earns your sniffing. You are not taking the sniff away, you're making it something the dog works for. If you have a dog obsessed with greeting other dogs, that greeting earns a sit. The dog learns calm behavior is what opens the door to what they actually want. You have a dog who will do anything for a ball, returning it and releasing it earns another throw. The release is the behavior, the throw is the reward. What is powerful about the pre-mec principle is that you are not fighting the dog's drives, you are leveraging them. The things the dog most wants to do in the world become the fuel for training. And that is a very different relationship to build than one where you are constantly managing what the dog wants and trying to override it with a treat. At my force free people. So this principle requires something first, though. You have to actually watch the dog in front of you. You have to know what they value before you can use it. You cannot apply the pre-mac principle if you already decided what the dog's motivator should be. You have to let the dog show you. Make sense?

SPEAKER_01 1:17:23

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:23

Makes sense. We love the pre-MAC principle.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:26

So go for it.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:29

I'm gonna go ahead and end today by talking a little bit about where the science falls short in building motivation from nothing. And I think this will kind of lead us into next week's episode where I dive into the PLOS one study and really break down exactly what they did in that research and why it is not great evidence for force-free training. Okay, so let's talk about that gap. The space between what the research is currently studying and what actually is happening at our training facility. Science is measuring motivation as a variable. Is this dog food motivated? Score it on a scale. Is that dog toy motivated? Run an assessment, compare groups, draw conclusions. What science has not really figured out yet is the practical question that every trainer faces constantly, which is how do you take a dog that has no imparent motivation and build it? Those are completely different questions. And only one of them is useful when you are standing in front of a dog who does not want to engage with you in a training session. So let's go back to the 2021 Frontiers paper on working dog training. I mentioned uh some things from this earlier. I don't know if I mentioned the name of that. Because the researchers said something that I thought was unusually honest for an academic paper. They specifically called out what they called, quote, formalizing handler expertise. They acknowledged that the knowledge experienced trainers carry the ability to read a dog in real time, adjust to what they are seeing, and make moment-to-moment decisions about what to ask for and when. And that has literally never been studied or formally documented. They said it represents one of the biggest untapped areas for future research. And honestly, I really appreciate that because it validates something that I think every experienced dog trainer knows, and that there is a knowledge in this field that lives with practitioners, not in journals and not in articles. It is the real knowledge, and it is not just in a form that science has been able to capture yet.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:12

You can't just put that in a chart.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:14

You can't just put that in a chart. You have to learn it from people who have been doing this forever, you know? So this is what that looks like from where we stand. Building motivation starts before training begins. It starts with our lifestyle, getting the food on the schedule, affection that actually means something, freedom that is earned. We talked about all of that at the beginning of the episode, but just kind of like bringing it again because that's the foundation of everything that we've been talking about. Structure and routine. Structure and routine. Then you build engagement before you build behavior. Before I ask a dog to do anything, I spend time just building a relationship with them where they want to be with me, eye contact, games, movement together, going for walks, play, finding what makes this particular dog light up. I'm not asking for behaviors yet. I am creating a dog who finds me interesting before I ask them to work for me. Then I watch. I watch for what they are offering, what they are leaning towards, what their tail is doing, what their body language is telling me, what they are checking in with me or checking out. A dog who is disengaged is not giving me attitude. They are giving me information. And my job is to respond to that information, not just push through it. The concept of establishing operations from behavioral science acknowledges that you can change the context to increase the value of a reinforcer. The research knows this is real. And what does not describe is what it looks like to apply it like systematically across a dog's entire life over days and weeks. That is what dog trainers know. That is what we see. We spend day in and out with the dogs, and that's what gets figured out dog by dog in real time by people who have done this long enough to be able to recognize the patterns of these behaviors. So I want to be very honest about something. The reason skilled trainers matter, and the reason no app or YouTube video or six-week online course is going to replace a professional who really knows what they're doing is exactly this. Being able to read a dog is a skill. Finding their motivation, building it when it is not there, knowing when to push and when to back off, knowing what reward to use for which dog in which context, knowing that what worked yesterday might not work today, and being willing to adjust that is not in the research. Not yet. So science gives us the framework. It tells us that reinforcement works, that unpredictability creates stress, that satiation reduces motivation, that variable schedules build persistence. All of that is true and it is very, very useful. But the application of it, the moment that you're working with a dog, you have a dog in front of you, that is very much an art as it is a science. And I think that that should be spoken more about in dog training.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:53

No, that's very true.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:56

It really is an art. And we see that in, you know, some of our friends that are really good dog trainers. We can watch them and be like, wow.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:03

This is a craft. Like this is a crazy crazy.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:04

This is a this is a craft. You definitely know what you're doing, and it's tough to teach.

Practical Takeaways And Next Week Preview

SPEAKER_00 1:24:13

So let me bring all of this home with a few things that you can actually take away from today. Motivation is the foundation of literally everything. Technique is irrelevant without it. Your leash pressure, your tools, everything is irrelevant without motivation. Before you change your training approach, look at the conditions you have created around your dog. The food, affection, freedom, those are all resources, and how you manage them determines whether your dog has a reason to work. You do not choose what motivates your dog. They do. Your job is to watch them and figure that out, to stay curious about who your dog actually is, not who you assumed they would be. Unpredictability is the stressor, not the consequence itself. Clear, consistent training, including consequences, is something a dog can learn from. It is something they can navigate. And the randomness, the unpredictability is what creates anxiety. So make your training predictable. Make your consequences predictable. Set the dog up for success. We have to teach them these things. Motivation is not fixed. It can be built. I watch it happen. I do it all the time. Dogs who come in with nothing and leave with real drive because the conditions have changed, and someone was patient enough to let it work and let it develop. And finally, the research on dog training is useful and important and worth reading. It is also very, very incomplete and it has a bias worth acknowledging. Read the actual studies when you can. Read them all the way through. The headlines and the papers are often telling very, very different stories. The gap between what science currently studies and what good trainers do is real. It is not to debash science. I love science. My whole background is in science. It's just where we're at in the industry. And that gap is exactly where professional expertise lives. So all of that is a little something to think about. And you know, next week we're gonna dive into these research articles a little bit more.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:56

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:57

We're gonna, I'm gonna go through this PLOS one thing that everybody uses. So, you got anything else to add?

SPEAKER_01 1:27:06

Love the framework of this podcast. Proud of you.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:09

Thank you. I worked very hard.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:11

It shows.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:12

It was nice. This is good. All right, guys. I will include all of my sources in the show notes of this episode if you guys want to go read the research articles for yourself. They are very dense and very boring, but you can get through it, I promise. Thanks for being here, and I will see you next week. Thanks, guys. Bye.