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Goal setting, is very useful for coaching our puppies into adulthood, as well as for working on adult dog behaviors. As a coach, I have the experience and education to be able to use mental training skills, and to incorporate them as a natural part of the journey. By using goal setting, we can set a pathway to success for our dogs, helping them to learn skills to be the good dogs they want to be. An example is, when we’re working on loose leash walking. We’re given tools by reputable dog trainers, now we need to set up how our dog is going to get to the end goal, or be able to successfully walk on a leash without pulling.
If we use goal setting, we can break skills or behaviors down, and even use visualization in our planning. For example, the goal is that we want our dog to be able to walk with us in our neighborhood without pulling ahead of us, or lunging at other dogs, squirrels or other distractions. With this goal, there are steps that we can take.
First, she walks with us as we deliver treats that help her to stay close to us. Second, she walks with us through distractions. Starting from further away, and then walking closer as she is able.
Sometimes, we can have a tendency to be impatient when working with our dogs or puppies. We want everything done quickly. The thing is, that each dog is different, and will condition to training differently. We’ll always be working with our dog on loose leash walking in all situations, This is how we maintain her skills. In doing that, we need to make sure we’re using the tools that were used in teaching her, and to stay consistent. If we’re consistent sometimes and not others, our dog is not going to be consistent, because she will be rehearsing the way we don’t want her to walk on a leash. It will also take much longer than it needs to for her to have success if we occasionally allow her to pull.
Goal Setting Considerations
In coaching, we talk about SMART goals. However some of the sport concepts don’t apply to goal setting with dogs. I’ve modified them to better suit our situation. There are considerations that we need to take into account to create the best success. First, we need to realize that there’s a chance that they don’t automatically have all of the skills we’re teaching. You might have had your pup since he or she was 10 weeks old, or you may have rescued your dog as an adult. We can use goal setting at any age as we help our dogs master new behaviors.
By making the goals simple, and setting up a simple environment in relation to their current skill level, our dogs are much more likely to have success. By walking around the house with their leash on, it’s easy, because they know the environment, and there are less distractions.
Making goals measurable helps to determine if the dog has achieved the step that we’re working on. Working with a trainer to find out the markers that help us to see success at each stage of the skill, we can keep track our dog’s progress. It’s beneficial to get that feedback, because we know what we want our dog to know, but the feedback can be helpful if set by proven techniques.
In our goal setting with our dog, we need to make the steps achievable. This would refer to the environment, and the expectations that we put on them. Are we asking our dog to be able to loose leash walk past another dog before they’re ready? When my dog was first learning this skill, we would actually walk her around in the house on the leash. This was way more likely to set her up for success than throwing her into a situation that she wasn’t ready for.
We also need to consider what situations these skills are going to be most useful in. With loose leash walking, we want to be able to take our dog for a walk in the neighborhood, walk her on a busy street, in a dog friendly store or at an on leash trail with friends. We also want to save our shoulders from getting injured while trying to contain her if she is pulling. Here, I’m separating the reasons we want her to learn the skill from what the skill is. This helps us to stay focused on why we are spending so much time teaching our dogs how to walk “nicely” with us.
Not all goal setting will have time frames attached. In fact, I have never really thought by a certain date I would like a certain skill mastered. The time sensitivity for us dog caretakers, is more about prioritizing skills. There are some skills that we want our dog to learn sooner than others. For example, I want our dog to be able to refrain from barking at our guests when she wants attention. This is more of a pressing issue than her being able to pass a squirrel without even noticing. There might also be variables in the different stages of skills. Early on, my dog was not great at being able to walk by dogs and squirrels without interest, but we could manage as we were working with other skills. Having her walk on a leash without pulling, was the most important part of that skill for safety reasons.
One of the top priority skills when our dog was a puppy, was the ability to be left alone. For this reason, we spent a lot of our focus on enabling her to do that. And through progression and patience, we are now able to successfully leave her for 4 hours. She had even advanced at 8 months old, to not using the X-Pen while we were away.
Some Factors Effecting Goal Setting
There are some factors that will effect our goal setting with our dogs. One of them is age.
When my dog was a young puppy, our expectations needed to be lower because of her developmental age. With our goal setting, the first thing we needed to do was to make sure she felt safe in her new home. Simple was definitely important then. Now, she’s an adult dog, and has a foundation of skills to draw on, so she’s able to handle more complex behaviors. A puppy will require more attention than a dog that you have had from the start. You may also have an older dog, that has been rehearsing an undesirable behavior for a long time that you would like to change.
Some behaviors that we want to work on with our dogs, are more prevalent as they get older. When our dogs are really young, their arousal levels and testing of their environment are not as much of an issue. What a good puppy we often say as they greet people that we know or meet on the street. As they get older, their arousal levels might become more of an issue so we spend more time working with adolescent behaviors.
Breed will also have an impact on how we set goals with our dogs.: What we know, is that some breeds are higher energy than others. This will require that breed characteristics be a part of the process. It doesn’t mean of course, that some dogs are not able to learn some skills. It just means that when we are doing our goal setting, we need to consider that some breeds have different strengths than others, which is going to have an impact on our process.
Rewards, or reinforcement is a critical piece of the training or conditioning puzzle. Fortunately for us, most dogs are very food focused. This makes our training much easier, because they want the treat, so they will do what we are asking them to do. We need to be careful though that our dogs didn’t just eat their meal before training or the treats might not be so enticing. Treat focused dogs can be the easiest to train. There are also levels of value for food. For example, a dog’s every day kibble won’t be as valuable as a fish treat. This might effect their willingness to participate, if something else they see has more value.
The previous history of our dog will influence their willingness to remain focused on us during training. My dog for example, is a rescue dog that came from an anxious situation. We also don’t know what her first weeks of life were like, because she was a part of an emergency rescue with her mother and 2 other siblings. Some dogs come from very good situations. Many pure breads do because their environment is safe, and contains all of the new puppy tools and education that they require. There are also pure breads that come from puppy farms and questionable situations. All of this is going to have an impact on goal setting and can determine the rate of success.
So be patient and compassionate with your dog or puppy. They deserve it and are only doing the best they can.
