Katrina wrote a really fantastic blog post called Why You Should Run From Engage/Disengage. Quick caveat, it’s not because she doesn’t like the protocol.
In this episode, Katrina and I discuss:
- Contingencies in training – what they are and how to analyze them
- How the execution of open bar/closed bar and engage/disengage can actually create unintended consequences for reactive dogs
- How to determine whether or not your procotol is working
- Why and how high value food can be coercive for dogs
- And so much more
About Katrina:
Katrina is a professional animal trainer with more than 15 years of experience supporting dog and horse owners across Canada.
Katrina blends an academic foundation in psychology with extensive continuing education through organizations such as IAABC and CASI, and has trained with respected industry leaders including Hannah Branigan.
Katrina’s unique background as a former pain-science focused Registered Massage Therapist gives her exceptional insight into biomechanics and body language — allowing her to recognize subtle physical changes that may influence behaviour and helps her to design elegant solutions for even the most complex training challenges.
Katrina has been featured as a guest on the Lead a Horse to Water podcast where she discussed cross-species behaviour and practical training strategies. She lives in Ladner with her Pembroke Welsh Corgi Maeve and her Haflinger horse Samwise
Transcript
[00:00:00] I’m Jessica Wheatcraft, and this is Rethinking Reactivity, a podcast designed to educate, empower, and equip the modern handler of reactive dogs. Whether you have a reactive dog or you help people with their reactive dogs, you’re in the right place.
Jessica: Katrina Per-Carruthers has a dog school in Vancouver, British Columbia, with Sarah Shapiro Ward, who you might remember from a previous episode we did on thresholds.
Katrina wrote a really fantastic blog post called Why You Should Run From Engage/Disengage. Quick caveat, it’s not because she doesn’t like the protocol. In this episode, Katrina and I discuss how the execution of popular protocols for reactive dogs, such as open bar/closed bar and engage/disengage, can [00:01:00] actually create unintended consequences, like increasing a dog’s reactivity, if we aren’t taking a closer look at what is actually happening.
We also get into some touchy subjects in the positive reinforcement dog training world, like how the use of high-value food rewards can be coercive, and we also talk about negative reinforcement and how we use it in our cases. If you work with reactive dogs and you’ve ever wondered why you should choose a specific approach or protocol or what the function is of these protocols, I think you’re going to get a lot out of this episode.
Let’s dive in
I’m so excited to have this conversation with you.
Katrina: Oh, I’m so glad. Thanks for having me.
Jessica: Of course. Yeah, when Sarah said, “Hey, I have a friend that I think you should really talk to,” and then described the stuff that you guys nerd out [00:02:00] about, I was like, “Uh, yeah, i- definitely want to have a chat with her.”
So I’m glad to- I
Katrina: find that so surprising, ’cause I’m not sure there’s very many people that are into the level of nerd that we get into.
Jessica: Yeah. No, I, I am definitely one of those people. Um,
Katrina: yeah. Excellent. Welcome. And- I’m so glad to be part of the right group of people.
Jessica: Yeah, same. Well, we’ll just start talking. I think we should start with- Helping listeners understand what contingencies are, because maybe not everybody knows, or maybe they have heard the word contingency, or they have heard it with a real estate deal, you know?
That, like, we’re gonna do the-
Katrina: Right …
Jessica: buying a house, and here’s the contingencies. But maybe they don’t think about it for other things, like when they’re working with their dog, that there are also contingencies in place. So I’m curious how you just describe this to people.
Katrina: I mean, I have a very layperson version of this, which is just, like something that [00:03:00] depends on something else.
Jessica: Love it.
Katrina: So if something is dependent on something else happening, there’s likely a contingency occurring. Yeah. Um, and there’s more formal definitions, but I actually quite like this, because if you have a thing and something else needs to happen to make that thing happen, it’s contingent.
Yeah. And so I, I feel like that’s the most simplistic yet robust enough definition for me. Um, how about you? Like, where would you go with that?
Jessica: Agreed. I think that’s a- Okay … fantastic definition. Yeah.
Katrina: Yeah, I like to keep things as simple as possible. Like, I’m a little bit reductionist in how I like to think about things, and I feel like if you can reduce it to one thing, you’re good to go.
Jessica: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So. I love it. And how this is gonna relate to leash reactivity, What we’re really gonna kinda dive into and unpack is why we might intend for one contingency to happen, right? So we’re thinking, “This is what I’m trying to [00:04:00] do,” and yet we might actually inadvertently be having something else happen.
Yeah. And that is perhaps why a dog might be stuck in management mode for a very, very long time, or years even. Yeah. Or- Yeah … why somebody could even say this training method just doesn’t work for me- Right … or my dog.” And-
Katrina: Yeah …
it’s like a, it’s a misunderstanding of what you’re actually looking at.
And so I think what’s even more interesting than, like, just understanding the definition of contingency is understanding how to analyze those contingencies, and how to, like, apply a really critical investigative lens on what is happening in front of you, and figuring out how to parse it out in a way that is removed from the emotional state that you’re in when you’re trying to solve it, like, in real time.
Jessica: Mm-hmm. And
Katrina: I think if you can do a contingency analysis, you are way ahead of the game. Very [00:05:00] true. In terms of being able to find cool answers to complex problems.
Jessica: Yes. Yes.
Katrina: So. Do
Jessica: we wanna go through the ABCs and analyzing some things briefly, just so that these other things are going to then make sense, uh- Sure
when we start to, to dive into the- Yeah … actual protocols that I wanna unpack?
Katrina: Yeah, I think it’s probably important. So I think what we should probably go over is what is ABC, and how is that a contingency, right? So A stands for antecedent, which is all the stuff that happens before the thing. Mm-hmm. B is for behavior, and that is the thing, usually.
And your C is your consequence. So it’s the thing that affects whether or not the thing, your behavior, increases or decreases over time. And that, that part’s important. The over time is important in the C part. And so what we’re looking at is, like, what happened directly before the behavior, what is the behavior, like truly, parsing it out, and then what [00:06:00] happens immediately after the behavior, and then taking that big chunk, so that ABC chunk, and figuring out, okay, is this whole picture increasing or decreasing our behavior in the middle?
And then what can be even trickier is figuring out which pieces of what belong in which column, but we’ll get into that later, I think. Yeah.
Jessica: And Is
Katrina: that fair?
Jessica: Oh, totally fair. Love it.
Katrina: Yeah.
Jessica: I, ’cause I use the thing too, ’cause I also think …
Katrina: It’s like the thing, capital T.
Jessica: How this relates to leash reactivity, if we were gonna do ABC with a dog reacting to something, right?
Mm-hmm. So the thing that happens before is a dog At 20 feet away, looking at your dog and also in motion towards you. And the behavior is your dog lunges, hits the end of the leash, is vocalizing. And the consequence is [00:07:00] that the handler guides the dog and, goes across the street, leaves the scene.
Is the outcome consistent over time that the behavior itself keeps increasing, because the dog is always being guided out of that situation, right? So they essentially are getting to the, they get removed. The thing goes away- Right … to some degree.
Katrina: Yeah. So we could say that so if the behavior increases over time, so if your behavior of lunging and barking over time is increasing, then we have some sort of positive contingency happening where we are adding something that’s creating an environment where the behavior’s increasing. So we would call that a positive contingency, um, because your behavior’s going up, positive meaning up, not good.
And then we’re also looking at, okay, well, what is the consequence? The consequence is the removal of the thing, which is quite complex, right? So what’s being added? Distance.
Jessica: Yeah.
Katrina: So distance is being added, and that is [00:08:00] increasing the behavior over time, which is really fascinating, right? Mm-hmm. Um, so it’s just, it’s a really interesting thing.
So the behavior of lunging and barking, it has a function of getting distance from the thing from the dog. So your antecedent is dog shows up at 25 feet. Behavior, dog lunges, barks, hits the end of the leash. Consequence, we get removed from the situation. Behavior increases over time in this case.
Sometimes it’s not always the case. Yeah. Depends on your learner. But that would be a very basic, quick functional analysis of that contingency.
Totally fair.
Jessica: And I wanted to highlight that because when we think of, well, what is reactivity, right, w- I mean, that’s- Mm-hmm
reactivity, I’ve said many times on many episodes, it’s just a label. It’s just something that we use to describe behaviors, but everyone’s definition could be different. Mm-hmm. And this is an analysis of what’s actually happening with-
Katrina: Yeah …
Jessica: with a reaction, but also why is it that some dogs, [00:09:00] become reactive and become more so with time, but also why it can be really difficult to modify because- Yeah
there is that reinforcement of- Yeah … I react this way, and these-
Katrina: And the thing goes away.
Jessica: Yeah, the thing goes away. And so that’s why it is- One of the trickiest behaviors to modify because of the- Yeah … environment that it usually happens in, you don’t have control over, um, because of the consequences that often happen even if you’re trying to do your very best to avoid it.
Um- Mm-hmm … and so I think looking at it through a little bit of that lens can help people really see it for what it is. Um- Yeah … that like, oh, this is why this happens.
Katrina: Yeah. And I think, too, it’s really interesting because different dogs are gonna have different reactions over time, which is also why a blanket statement of like “This doesn’t work for reactive dogs,” or, “This works for reactive dogs,” is a real mistake.
[00:10:00] Because if you haven’t done the analysis on that learner, that individual dog, you can’t make those blanket statements. Each individual dog is going to have its own contingencies and its own function for the behavior, and some follow patterns, and you can look at, like, this kind of dog that has this kind of reaction frequently doesn’t respond well to X intervention, but that is a very different statement than, “This never works,” or, “This always works.”
Jessica: Yes. Yes.
Katrina: This is so nice. I love doing a contingency analysis because it takes you out of the box of which camp do I live in?
Jessica: Mm-hmm
Katrina: Does that make sense?
Jessica: Mm-hmm.
Katrina: So, like, instead of living in a camp where it’s like, “Oh, yes, well, I’m in this quadrant camp. I’m gonna wave my flag and this is my camp,” you can go, “Okay, well, maybe my camp is not the appropriate lens from which to observe this behavior.”
So it’s just, it’s a really, it’s a really nice way to parse out that piece and maintain your ethics.
Jessica: Mm-hmm.
Katrina: Yeah, interesting. Which I think
Jessica: [00:11:00] is cool. Yeah,
Katrina: absolutely. Um, so I really like to analyze behaviors this way because it just gives you such a lovely neutral base. There is none of that weight of all of your own learning history that you can shove onto it, or your own assumptions.
Jessica: Yeah.
I think it’s also helpful because we’re gonna unpack some common approaches for leash reactivity. We’ve got open bar, closed bar, engage- Mm-hmm … disengage. I mean, these are a lot of things that are really popular, both in the dog- Yeah … training world. Also, if you go on Reddit, they have a really fantastic group for reactive dogs.
People are talking about these all the time, and I go on there, and it’s kind of fun to be on Reddit because nobody knows who you are, and I don’t really ever say anything anyways. But I just go in this, like, reactive dog group, and there are some really smart dog owners in that group who really know what they’re talking about and really understand these sorts of things.
Also then sometimes find that people will [00:12:00] hear about a protocol, and-
Katrina: Yeah …
Jessica: and on the surface, of course it makes sense. Of course it’s like, yes, this could work really well for a dog. Mm-hmm. And a lot of these protocols have, uh, you know, there’s always an acronym, that’s attached to them, so it’s, you know- Yeah
easy to remember. Yeah. And, uh, and it’s gonna be this. And then some people will think I’m just gonna only use this protocol.
Katrina: Yeah.
Jessica: Or think, like, this is the thing that’s gonna be the answer, without really understanding why. Why would you want to go with that particular protocol over something else?
And what are those little nuances, which essentially are what are the contingencies in those that are, make it particularly relevant for an individual dog and their handler, and also their environment? Because that’s- Yeah … a big piece of- Why open bar, closed bar could really work well for a dog where it’s very easy to maintain distance, and you have a lot of control over the degree of [00:13:00] exposure you’re giving your dog, why that could work so well compared to a dog who lives in a city, and you- Yes
just don’t have control, and there’s a lot of surprises. So why is- Yeah … that the case?
Katrina: I think one more definition we probably wanna go into right before- Okay … we jump into this is understanding something called the WTF principle, or, like, what’s the function? So-
Jessica: True, true.
Katrina: Yeah. Thank you. So I think, yeah, I think just for the listeners who are new to this, and we’re throwing a lot of new words at people, so what-
what the function of the behavior is is really important in determining how we’re going to analyze it. So the analysis helps us determine the function, because if the behavior’s increasing or decreasing over time, we can then make an assumption about the function, or at least a good guess about the function of the behavior.
So in the rest of, I think, the examples we’re gonna go through, those functions are gonna be really important. So that’s that’s where I wanted to go with that. Open bar, closed bar is one of those protocols that is [00:14:00] older, and it’s really, it’s gone out of fashion, I would say. Yeah. It’s not used that often anymore.
However, it is still really common in vet offices. Have you, you’ve seen this this is, like, a really common one in veterinary-… care, right? Yeah. You feed the dog a bunch while the dog gets a needle.
Jessica: Yeah.
Katrina: And then, you stop feeding, feed it a bunch. Um, and then in reactive dog training, I feel like I don’t see it that often anymore.
I don’t know about you.
Jessica: I still do. Okay. I still do. I
Katrina: still- That’s unfortunate. I’m sorry.
Jessica: Because I work with a lot of trainers, and I talk with a lot of them. I feel like so many of my friends are dog trainers. I do have, other, what I call, like, normal friends that are not trainers, you know?
Like, I’ve got a few of those. Right. I can think of a few. Maybe only one or two.
Katrina: So actually, no, you don’t have other friends. That was just a lie. I
Jessica: know, right? Um, anyways, the reason why I say that is I feel like I talk to a lot of trainers all [00:15:00] the time, and I feel like there is still a lot of people who will incorporate a version of open bar, closed bar- Yeah.
Okay … in addition to other things. But I still see and hear it frequently, so yeah.
Katrina: Mm-hmm. Okay, cool.
Um, well, why don’t you go ahead and define it then? ‘Cause I feel like your definition’s gonna be more robust and a little bit more practical boots-on-the-ground knowledge than mine is of this one.
Jessica: With open bar, closed bar?
Katrina: Yeah.
Jessica: To me, the way I understand it is that it is a classical conditioning, well, classical counterconditioning, um- Yeah … protocol where it’s important that the dog stays under threshold, and meaning- Yeah … under threshold is that the proximity between them and the thing that they’re worried about, so this could be dogs, people
I tend to just say dogs, because I feel like a lot of reactivity is dog-directed, but it could be, the thing that they are worried about. And that when they notice the thing and are also in the presence of the thing, you are feeding continuously. Yeah. [00:16:00] And you should be using high-value food, so they make an emphasis on, you know, it should be chicken or, like, really amazing food for the dog.
And you are feeding continuously as long as the thing is present, and then you stop feeding when the thing goes away. And it typically involves a lot of stationary behavior- Mm-hmm … because you are somehow stationary when the things are moving around you, um- Right … which is one thing that I always thought was a little confusing to execute because sometimes it’s hard to be stationary when you’re in the environment and around, uh- Yeah
what the dog is uncomfortable with. Um, and essentially, what your end goal is the result that this is supposed to do, or the function of the behavior or this protocol, is that the dog’s feelings about the thing are supposed to change, because-
…
Jessica: They have been kept at a distance that they’re comfortable with.
The presence of the thing that they’re worried about is far enough away. You’re presenting with something they really [00:17:00] like, which is the high-value food, and that is supposed to create a positive association, so that you’re getting, like, true counterconditioning that is supposed to be taking effect.
And then therefore your dog is supposed to really, you know, feel good about the things that they’re seeing. And then with time, you start to close that distance a little bit more.
Katrina: Okay. So that, that’s, like, a beautiful definition of, I think, open bar, closed bar, and I think it’s a really generous description of how it should be applied.
Like, I think it’s a really … That is the ideal way in which this works. Yes. I think in a practical sense, we end up with a dog who is hyper-focused on the high-value food- And where we can’t accurately judge distance from the trigger as being under threshold or not.
Jessica: Mm-hmm.
Katrina: And there’s some real interesting pieces in there that can get messed up along the way, uh, which could cause this not to work, right?
So if we’re looking at it as like ABC, A, thing appears, [00:18:00] B, you eat this delicious thing, C, thing goes away, D, food stops, right? Or B1, B2, I guess. Doesn’t really matter. Somebody with ABA analysis is gonna come back to you and write a nasty email. But anyway, you get what I mean. Um, I’m trying to not be too pedantic, but I know that there are pedantic people out there, and if they’re out there listening, don’t come after me.
So, so in that scenario, the thing appears, the dog gets the food the thing then disappears, right? Like, we’re gonna strip it down. And if at any point that dog goes over threshold, we aren’t necessarily gonna know. Because we have made the thing disappearing contingent on eating the food. It’s the unintended- Unintended consequence of this. And I’m not saying that that happens to every dog, because it doesn’t. Mm-hmm. But I have seen instances where this technique has been used and dogs become more reactive over time, [00:19:00] and I’m sure you’ve seen this too, where they become more sensitized to the dogs in the environment, and you need to use higher and higher value food.
So that’s scenario one that version of dog. And the other version that I see is the dogs that come in, they will eat the food no problem. You think that the dog can approach at a closer distance, and they get to a point and then the dog lunges out of the food eating.
And we have this, like, weird, “Hold on a second, what’s happening here?” moment. And it’s almost as though those dogs act surprised that the environment has triggered them, because everything seems fine. They’re continuously eating the food, the distance is decreasing. Ideally, their emotional response to that thing should have become neutral and/or positive, and now they go out of that feeding, continuous feeding loop to target the issue, the dog, and then they go back to wanting to eat.
And so in those cases, our [00:20:00] intent, our intended contingency, is clearly not working. And I think this protocol unfortunately sets up a situation where we don’t give the dog a lot of choice, or we don’t give ourselves a lot of opportunity to figure out whether or not it’s working or not. We don’t allow this to, like, this doesn’t really test out our contingency very well, if that makes sense.
Like, it’s a poorly- Yeah … set up experiment.
Jessica: Mm-hmm.
Katrina: Because the continuous delivery of food masks a lot of other things. It’s incompatible with escape behavior, and it’s incompatible with biting the other dog, or lunging towards the other dog, in theory. And so it’s a differential reinforcer, but it’s not necessarily changing the relationship to the trigger, despite our best intentions.
Jessica: Does that
Katrina: make sense?
Jessica: Absolutely. Absolutely. So then let’s zone in on the two things that you brought up that I think are probably most relevant here. The constant feeding is one [00:21:00] part- Yes … of it because- Yeah … the dog is consuming food at a pretty fast rate. Yeah. So there’s not really a lot of breaks to make observations about what the dog would do if the food wasn’t present.
So there’s that. Then there is- Yep … you were describing that because these are protocols that we often do when the dog is stationary, we’re, we’re really taking away their ability to move away from the thing. Yeah. And that might be the type of reinforcement or the motivator that they really, really want, right?
They would be more- Mm-hmm … motivated by the ability to leave, and we’re taking that away from them. And I think the third thing that I, that I’ll throw in there, which you also described so eloquently in your blog post, is that the dog doesn’t think that… we can’t always tell exactly what they think, right?
But our goal is that they’re developing this positive association, when in fact [00:22:00] they might be thinking, “Well, as long as I just keep eating this food, then the dog will eventually leave.” And- Correct … that’s not what our goal is, right? We ask anybody- Not
Katrina: at all …
Jessica: how do you want them to feel about being around these things? And the the whole narrative is you want them to be, you know, to be relaxed and responsive and happy and feel good and so forth. And that can be really hard to read within that context of behaviors that are all-
Katrina: Yeah, because eating food is a behavior in and of itself.
Jessica: Yeah.
Katrina: Right? And so if we think of food eating as a behavior, and we are saying, “You need to eat this food before the trigger goes away,” and you’re really bothered by the trigger you truly don’t like that thing, and no amount of the most delicious food you’ve ever had in your life is gonna change that in that moment because you’re already too triggered just by its existence, then the trigger going away is contingent on you swallowing that food.
So [00:23:00] that behavior of eating food is the thing you’re reinforcing, you’re not changing the emotional state underneath it necessarily. And it’s important to be really mindful of the fact that if you look at it in a contingency analysis, you can see this happening in real time with these dogs. And, like, we’ve seen these kinds of dogs.
Or if the rate of eating changes dramatically when the trigger is present, like you’ll find dogs take food really hard, or you’ll find them take it really slow, or you’ll find them gobbling it down at full speed. Um, you get these different food eating behaviors that are present when your dog is over the threshold of where it’s actually working on what you think it’s working on.
The difficulty with emotional states is that they’re private events. Yeah. And we can’t always see what they are. And so trying to modify private events can be really tricky, unless there’s a expressive behavior happening that you can observe and then change And [00:24:00] if you’re masking all of that expression with, “Eat and swallow this food,” you’ve lost a lot of your ability to read your dog in that moment.
Jessica: Mm-hmm.
Katrina: So it can be tricky, ’cause, like, we wanna add food because adding food is positive reinforcement, or so we think. But if you slide food into that B column, and the consequence is really trigger goes away that’s really the thing maintaining the food eating behavior. It’s not changing the reactivity.
Does that make sense?
Jessica: It sure does. It sure does.
Katrina: Okay.
Jessica: And, you know, as you said, what we’re really looking for is the w- over time aspect, right? Yes. That’s the key here, because there is gonna be somebody listening to this who’s gonna say, “Actually, this worked really well for my dog.” Yeah. And we’re not criticizing anything that we’re talking about today- If
Katrina: it works, it works
Jessica: right? Yeah. We’re not criticizing. Yeah,
Katrina: that means the contingency that you s- that means that the setup that you set up for that dog worked, right? If the dog’s behavior changed over time, your reactivity decreased, your food [00:25:00] eating behavior was not part of the circle of behaviors that was being maintained with distance, you’re fine.
The problem is when it doesn’t work, why doesn’t it work?
Jessica: Yes. Yes.
Katrina: Right?
Jessica: It’s not about that food won’t work for my dog, and so- No, it sure will. Or I l- my favorite line is, “Treat training doesn’t work for my dog,” that’s always my favorite line- Yeah … uh, that I hear and it’s never about just that.
Katrina: No, your, your application of treats was wrong because you didn’t put it in the correct contingency.
Jessica: Thank you.
Katrina: But it doesn’t mean that you can’t add food in this. You can, and we’ll get to this, like, we, you absolutely can add food to your contingency. It’s just you have to be mindful of where you put it, what column it’s sitting in, and what the function of the behavior is.
And I think it can be difficult in a real life setting to have all of your variables under the right threshold.
Jessica: Mm-hmm.
Katrina: Right? So all of these protocols require that your dog stay under threshold, and that the distance is [00:26:00] maintained safely or what have you, and in real life, dogs are gonna show up on the sidewalk.
You’re gonna have a loose dog that comes running at you. You’re gonna turn a corner, and the dog’s gonna be there. You’re gonna get out of your car, and some goofball’s gonna have their off leash dog run at your dog. Like, there’s so many scenarios in which this isn’t going to be functional, and even if you set this up perfectly, like you’re at the park, you’re at a perfect distance, that trigger can move.
It can move towards you. It can not be in the environment long enough for your dog to notice. It could be too far away. Like, there’s so many factors that if you don’t have access to, like, a football field, one dog, and a private environment, it can be really hard to set this up for success.
Jessica: Yeah, and that’s why when I gave that example of if you lived in a very rural environment- Yeah … this could be something that could work well for you. Um, but m- Yeah … most of our clients, at least mine, don’t live in those environments.
Katrina: Right.
One of the things that I’m so passionate about is teaching [00:27:00] people about first principles of training rather than protocol-based training. Because if you understand the first principles, like, if you understand what’s happening, A, B, C, you can figure it out on your own, you can play around with the variables in your head.
You’ve got an understanding of it. You can pick the right protocol. But if all you know is protocols, you’re a bit stuck, ’cause you don’t know why they work or why they don’t work, or under what conditions these things are absolutely going to fail.
Jessica: Mm-hmm.
Katrina: And then you end up with these generalizations.
“Oh, well, treat training doesn’t work. Oh, well, this, I have to use this aversive, or I have to do this.”
Jessica: Yep, exactly.
Katrina: It’s my soapbox. Anyway.
Jessica: So let’s pivot into a breakdown of engage/disengage, because that is one that’s more common, especially more recently. I would say maybe the last 10 years or so.
I can’t remember exactly when Alice Tong put that out, but I think that it’s super helpful. Um, I have developed, [00:28:00] like, my own version of it over the years to find ways that I felt worked better for my clients. Yeah. And what was really interesting is that when I was talking to Sarah about how I do this that’s why she had wanted to connect us, ’cause she said, “Oh, well, you know, Katrina has such a great way of thinking about, engage/disengage,” and also, why sometimes we might have, you know, unintended consequences with this.
I’m gonna use, I think, the title of your blog post, Why You Should Run From Engage/Disengage, which was, like, such a clever, cheeky way, and people are gonna hear this and be like, “Oh, my God, she doesn’t like it.” No. It’s actually, it’s very-
Katrina: No, I actually love it …
Jessica: cheeky way of adding in the run part.
So yeah, let’s dive into that.
Katrina: So in this scenario, I think it’s really important to realize that what my blog post is really talking about is dogs whose the function of their reactivity or the function of their [00:29:00] behaviors, undesired behaviors that you’re witnessing are distance-seeking and fear-based, right?
So these are dogs that have a, like, a deep fear or a deep desire to get distance from the thing, whether that’s making the thing go away or them leaving. It doesn’t matter, but that’s what the function of the behavior is for the dogs that I was talking about in the blog post. So in engage/disengage, we are doing much like open bar/closed bar, where we’ve got a trigger in the environment, you’re gonna feed, let the animal look at the trigger.
When they look back up at you, you feed, and you do this a bunch of times, and then you leave, and then you come back, right?
And what’s interesting is that we have a potential problem with this where we end up with what I call trigger hunting dogs. So dogs who see the trigger in the environment, know that if they look at their handler, they get a treat, and if they do that enough times, they get to leave.[00:30:00]
So, like, the behavior of leaving is contingent on finding the triggers in the environment. Does that make sense? So that’s one version.
Jessica: Yeah.
Katrina: Uh, and then we end up with the same problem that we had with open bar/closed bar, where we put this behavior of eating or engaging and disengaging contingent on the trigger, and then leaving is really the, the overarching motivating operation, the thing that’s motivating all of this behavior.
And you can end up with some really odd- danger seeking conflicty kinds of behaviors, in some dogs where it’s really clear that the MO is distance. And so, like, this is the kind of dog that, like, I feel like I’m gonna generalize here. I’m just gonna say it out loud and we’ll just deal with it later.
But I feel like terrier types are notorious for this. The I’m going to go up to the thing, get upset, and then leave. Okay, like, if I go up to the scary object that I would really like to go away, I’m gonna go up to it, I’m gonna yell at it, I’m gonna go back to my [00:31:00] owner, I’m gonna get fed, and then we get to leave.
Jessica: Uh-huh.
Katrina: Right? And it’s tricky because now what do you do, right? ‘Cause, like, this dog has built in this big chain of behaviors of seeking out these dangers in the environment, and they become hypervigilant in their own neighborhood, and over time they start to notice these triggers at, like, insane distances.
We had one dog come to our dog school with reactivity like this, and they were triggered by dogs, like, through the window across the street and down the road. Probably 200 feet was this dog’s threshold. And so when you’re dealing with, like, a dog that can spot a dog 200 feet away and immediately have a reaction, and, like, a full-blown reaction, engage/disengage becomes really hard.
Because the dog is engaged at 200 feet. Like, this is not functional, right? And so because distance is the motivating operation of, like, getting the thing to go away, we have a real issue where it’s, like, okay, well, we looked at the thing, we looked [00:32:00] back to the owner. Great, they disengaged. I can reinforce that disengagement.
But because the looking away means the trigger really is gone now, we’ve just reinforced distance, like, dis- we’ve made the dog find triggers at 200 feet. And then it’s 250 feet, and then it’s 300 feet, which is an incredible skill on the dog’s part. Right? It’s really impressive. Really problematic, ’cause now the whole world is unsafe.
And it’s not d- Engage Disengage’s fault. That protocol is great. The problem was that this dog had learned that if they look at the thing and look back to the owner, they get a high value treat, and then the trigger disappears. So they learned to start seeking out those triggers a really long ways away.
And then the problem we were having with that dog is that if anything came within that 50-foot zone, it was, like, really dangerous and really problematic, and you had redirected aggression, all sorts of behaviors because the dog was like, [00:33:00] “This game that I have developed to keep myself safe is no longer working.”
Jessica: Yeah.
Katrina: You know, it’s a really interesting case. Now, I’m not saying that this happens with every dog. It certainly doesn’t. But you can create reactivity-like behaviors with this protocol, because you are teaching dogs to look at the thing as contingent on the thing leaving. And it also is another example of a game that can be a little bit static. So you’re still in one place, and you’re feeding in one place.
Some people do use movement, but I think originally it was very much a static behavior, or it would be like bowl to bowl, or like spot to spot, but it would still be very much like a static type of behavior. And so we still have this problem of the thing going away rather than the dog going away.
Jessica: Yes.
Katrina: Like your dog going away.
Jessica: Yes. And only after the dog has eaten, which is also where was- Yes … when we were talking with open bar, closed bar, and how we might have this unintended consequence of the [00:34:00] food not bringing something more positive to the- Yeah … dog’s experience. It’s if I keep eating then we do finally leave at some point.
Yes. Um.
Katrina: Exactly. And in this case, it’s like when I’m done eating, the trigger leaves, thank goodness, right? And so you end up with, like, really weird food eating, seeking the trigger behaviors baked in if the motivating operation is distance, and if that distance is overriding what the food would normally bring to the picture in a very simple ABC contingency.
Jessica: Mm-hmm.
Katrina: This I think is more common in complex cases, right? Like, and that’s why they’re complex, is because the motivating operation of distance is really overriding the food. Right? Like, when we put food in the middle of the contingency, the food is not operating as an R plus contingency.
The food is just a behavior. Eating the food is the behavior. The thing that is the consequence is distance.
Jessica: Yes.
Katrina: And [00:35:00] so in those cases, no amount of food eating in the middle actually fixes anything because food eating is always the behavior, the consequence is always leaving. The only time that this works is if you swap them around.
So in this case, if you then flip your B and C around, so if your behavior is eating food and your consequence is leaving, if you turn that around and flip it so that the behavior is leaving and the consequence is eating, we now have a dog who seeks distance instead of seeking reactive aggression-type behaviors or, like, uh, directed behaviors.
Because we can teach them that by turning around and moving away, they get their reinforcer, and the reinforcer is actually the distance, and then we complete that with food at the end. So in the cases where the motivating operation is truly distance, this works because distance is the reinforcer. You put distance in the middle, great.
In the [00:36:00] cases where distance doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter because you put food at the end. So it’s a bit of like a fail-safe way of ensuring that you have Your reinforcers at the end of your contingency. Does that make sense?
Jessica: It makes perfect sense to me. And that was one of the things that I have done a lot of, is built in a lot of marking moving and then feeding.
Yes.
Katrina: Yes.
Jessica: I’ll just kind of chime in and share how and why I do this, even though if I maybe wasn’t thinking about, like, this is what exactly why I intended, but I actually I had some unintended consequences, but they were good consequences. So I’ll share a few things of how and why I do these things.
So one of them is when the dog notices another dog, I will call the dog away. Um, if the dog- Mm-hmm … doesn’t have the behavior of orienting on their own, um, I will just cue the dog away, and this is one of the things I teach all my clients, and I always, always mark [00:37:00] as they’re orienting away and moving towards me- Yep
and then always feed the opposite way. And I started doing this many years ago because it helped my clients get less stuck, because a lot of times they would call the dog and then feed right where they were, and-
Katrina: Right …
Jessica: we’re still just as close to the trigger, and that- Yeah … didn’t help us. And so for it just being a purely, like, useful or functional behavior in real life, okay, we’re gonna start feeding the opposite way.
We’re gonna-
…
Jessica: Teach the dog that they need to follow us for a bit before they get the food, and then I actually draw that out a little bit at times, so the dog- Yeah … learns to keep following a little bit to get the food. And the reason why I added that in was because sometimes I have clients who need to keep both hands on the leash, um- Yeah
until they get- For
Katrina: safety …
Jessica: to a greater distance. Yeah. Like we- Yeah … can’t feed right now. So we have to then teach the dog, you’ll eventually get this treat, I just need you to keep following me for a little bit.
From a purely [00:38:00] functional perspective, we didn’t have to feed right away, and we got the distance we needed, and it became a fun game of-
Katrina: Yeah …
Jessica: sometimes we just do this for fun when there isn’t anything that worries you around, and other times we do it when there is something that worries you and it’s around.
And that way the dog didn’t become suspicious of these cues, because that’s, uh, something else that I think we’ll touch on. We can also be an unintended consequence is if you only pull out a certain type of food when the thing that your dog has big feelings about is present, or you only cue your dog to do certain behaviors when the thing is present, very quickly the dog can start to become suspicious, and you can again, also create a reaction in your dog.
Um-
Katrina: Well, this is the, this is my rant on leave it.
Jessica: Ooh.
Katrina: Right? So it’s the same, it’s the same principle, right? So I’ll quickly do this for you. But it, with leave it, it’s the same thing. You only say leave it when there’s something really valuable in the environment. So what does the dog start to [00:39:00] do?
Immediately looks for the thing that you told to leave it so they can swallow it as fast as humanly or as fast as dogged-ly possible ’cause they know, oh, that’s that cue that the human says that means that whatever I have is awesome
Jessica: sure.
Katrina: And it’s the same thing Yeah
it’s the exact same reason that I find leave it really funny. So if you use leave it only in the context of something you’ve got big feelings about, it turns into an issue. Same thing with reactivity training. If you’re using name attention, or you’re using, um, a specific high-value treat only under the conditions in which the dog is stressed, you’re going to have really weird extracurricular activities that happen.
Jessica: Yes.
Yes. Yes. Um, so th- I think the last thing that I’ll say of where I found the marking, moving, feeding was also- Mm-hmm … when we were practicing with, yes, there’s gonna be a dog around, we’re doing some setups I’m gonna expose you, strategically to another [00:40:00] dog, and yet the vast majority of the time we’re almost always in motion.
Um, we’re gonna notice, we’re gonna mark, move, and feed, or we’re even gonna be doing, like, some loose leash walking protocols. You’re already in motion. This is a behavior- Yep … that is well-rehearsed, something the dog feels really good about, it’s familiar to them, we’ve built it to a degree of fluency in which the dog is like, “Yeah, I can do this.
Like, I know how to play this game,” and then there just happens to be another dog that’s over there. And as we’re doing our loose leash walking, oh, there’s the dog. Okay, we’re gonna just notice them. I am gonna mark either the noticing or the noticing and moving on, and, and then we just keep on carrying on with the loose leash walking part.
So it’s one of the things that I have found when I’m incorporating a lot of loose leash walking, is that because I already have a lot of movement built in, and it’s not frantic movement, and it’s also not super focused heel work, because I think that is, not saying that it can’t be [00:41:00] helpful, because it can for very short pieces of time, but if a dog is just doing a significant amount of pulling on lead throughout the entire walk, I do find that teaching them how to walk on a loose lead, making it a fun game for them y- obviously setting them up for success, it can build in so much more relaxation and connection with their handler, which is something that they need when they’re out in the real world.
But that way- Mm-hmm … I’m also getting in a lot of movement, in addition to occasionally we’re gonna see some things that you’re not super-duper comfortable with, and I might layer in a couple of other behaviors in addition to the loose leash walking. And so-
Katrina: Yeah, and yeah, you’re running, like, a really clever desensitization protocol, right?
Because You’re working on a pattern, you’re working on a well-known behavior, and then you have a distraction in the environment, right? And a distraction is a cue, right? So it’s something that cues another behavior. So what you’ve done is you’ve built a really clever setup where you’re teaching the dog that the environmental [00:42:00] cue is irrelevant, which is desensitization, right?
So that environmental cue of the dog popping up doesn’t matter because this other activity that we’re doing is the thing that is paying, it’s the thing that’s been reinforced the most. And if you do that at a nice low threshold, you’re working just great. And then with your bark, move away, feed, you’ve actually built in this motivating operation of distance from the trigger as being the major reason why that’s probably working in these cases, right?
Because if you’re getting distance and then the reactivity decreases over time, you’re essentially saying that the trigger in the environment is the cue for getting more distance. So it no longer has this weight to it, right? Yeah. You’ve taken out a lot of the oomph because now there’s an option to leave, and when the option to leave is reinforced all the time, that panicky, like, emotionally loaded, frantic movement piece disappears.
And I find [00:43:00] that really interesting, right? So then we know that if we were to test our contingency, if we were to do an analysis, the function of the behavior is clearly distance, right? It’s not murder. It’s not like- maybe in some cases, but very rarely. It’s usually, like, I just want the thing to go away, right?
And, or I have built up so many complex, weird behaviors around this thing, and none of them are serving a function at this point. They’re just ritualized. So if we can give them this differential reinforcement routine where it’s like, “Okay we’ll just leave then,” and the dog feels safe, it’s functional, everything is working, there’s really no reason to have those massive reactions, because they don’t serve a function anymore.
The function is being complete by leaving. And so that’s where it’s really the cheeky runaway from engage/disengage wasn’t don’t do engage/disengage, it was make sure you [00:44:00] incorporate leaving as the motivating operation in these cases, and I think it lowers your risk of having fallout from your protocol.
I think it’s safer to put distance into this routine first before food, because if you put food in the middle and the dog is over a threshold, or the food is overshadowing the escape behavior, or the dog is really food motivated and they really, really, really want the food, but they’re really, really scared of the thing, and then you end up with conflict behaviors.
So if you just move that to the other end, I think it’s a much safer protocol. I think it keeps humans safer, I think it keeps dogs safer, and I think it’s just a, a smart way to think about contingencies. Um, and I think it’s, in the real world application where you aren’t going to be able to monitor thresholds as beautifully as you can in a lab or in a big field, it works because you can attenuate that, you can get closer to the [00:45:00] trigger without causing huge fallout.
Does that make sense? ‘Cause you, there’s not a point where distance isn’t gonna work.
Jessica: Yeah, and by building it in early on, it becomes, like, the dog is, has come to expect it. Correct. And so I think that difference is when we’re thinking of when does something become where we’re still in this, like, positive reinforcement realm versus when it starts to tip over into negative reinforcement, really the answer is how aversive is the thing, right?
The thing that they’re worried about, how aversive is it to the dog? Because if leaving and getting distance from the thing is part of what is motivating that dog, then that is technically negative reinforcement. It’s being reinforced- Sure
Katrina: is …
Jessica: and I
Katrina: think we should be less scared of these words, right?
I am a very, um, I don’t know, how would I describe this? I like to be, like, a non-denominational trainer in the sense of, [00:46:00] like, I will put contingencies first because, like, I don’t like being at a camp, right? And I’m not somebody who uses aversives in training, and also I absolutely am going to use negative reinforcement in this scenario because positive reinforcement is not possible, and I mean that from the bottom of my heart.
If you put food in the middle of that contingency, you feed that dog when they’re too close to the trigger, the food is not acting as a positive reinforcement contingency. The food is just the behavior. It is impossible to complete R plus as a contingency when you can’t attenuate the trigger, and in real life, you can’t attenuate it.
It happens. It’s going to be unfortunate. Your dog is gonna be put in situations that you can’t control. That doesn’t make you a bad person or a bad trainer. It means that you have to think about the function of the behavior and the motivating operation in that moment, which is negative reinforcement.
That is the correct choice, and I think it sucks that we sit there, [00:47:00] like, beating people up for talking about that when, in real life, you can’t always control the trigger. Yes, the dog should be under threshold, ideally, but, like, you’ve worked in a city. Like, I’ve worked in a city. Or people living in apartment complexes, like, bless them.
Elevators, stairwells, like, you don’t have a choice. And a U-turn is a lot smarter, safer, and correct than feed the dog-
Jessica: Mm-hmm …
Katrina: in that situation. And it’s a hill I’ll die on. So, like, it’s just, it’s so important to stop being obsessed with that one quadrant, because it makes people who use intelligent positive reinforcement-based training look a bit dense when you don’t consider the fact that distance is important, because we talk about it in every protocol.
It’s the prerequisite. Have enough distance from the trigger. If it’s the prerequisite, it’s clearly part of it.
Jessica: Yeah.
Katrina: Yeah. [00:48:00] Get it in every protocol. Have enough distance from the trigger, make sure your dog’s under threshold, don’t work over threshold. Like, yes, and also, sometimes there’s gonna be situations in which you don’t have a choice, so isn’t it better to practice that in a controlled way?
Jessica: Absolutely. Because those two things are blended, right? If you’re doing- Yeah … the moving away, and then it’s followed by the food, you know? Yeah. Okay, so you’re essentially using both, but if-
Katrina: Correct …
Jessica: if you start with it, and you’re almost always moving away, unless you’re doing
Well, I guess you could move away and then do a scatter, I guess. Okay, so same thing. Yeah. I guess you can always add in movement and then feeding. Uh, but when you make it part of your training, and also incorporate it in the ways that we are describing, where a lot of times when you do this, the dog shouldn’t be already entering a state where they’re feeling really uncomfortable.
But sometimes the dog- Right … is going to be uncomfortable. And if we have this predictable pattern for the dog [00:49:00] of, “Oh, I know that this means we’re going to leave, and then also this,” I feel like- Yeah … if we’re thinking about what’s gonna make a bigger impact on the dog’s emotional state, it’s gonna be that.
So I think it’s an- Correct … argument to be using this, without automatically lumping negative reinforcement as something that has to be really further down on this hierarchy, when we think of, like, this hierarchy of humane training principles. I, I don’t buy that. There’s a lot of nuance with it, for sure.
Katrina: There is nuance,
Jessica: yeah. A lot of nuance with that. Um, but it’s .. I do have an issue with that, where this whole thing of, like, you should try all these other things before you try negative reinforcement.
Katrina: But if, if distance is your motivating operation, the most humane thing to do is to increase distance, and we know this because it’s written down in every protocol, right?
Step one, gain distance.
Jessica: Uh-huh.
Katrina: So why not use that to your [00:50:00] advantage? And so I think it’s just, you’re limiting your options by making something, like, wrong without thinking about it in context.
Jessica: Yeah.
Katrina: Um, that being said, I don’t think that you should be putting your dog in difficult situations on purpose, like, in such a way that they’re super stressed so that you can then practice negative reinforcement, right?
Like, that’s, that’s not what we’re arguing for.
Jessica: Exactly.
Katrina: And also, when you have a reactive dog everything is triggering, so you have to find a way to find some way to work … Like, you have to find a working threshold for what is practical, because you’re not gonna have access to 300 acres to go work on this.
Like, a lot of the work of, like, Jose and his colleagues is, like, incredible work, a big field, right? You have to have this huge space, and that’s why they have these, like, three-day-long weekend camp situations with these massive spaces, and it does work, but it’s really expensive, and [00:51:00] it’s really controlled, and it’s hard for people to apply in a city context in particular because even getting from your apartment to the car is often, like, you run into 12 triggers.
Jessica: Even just your typical suburban neighborhood where you have- Yes … families with other dogs. You’ve got dogs on the other side of windows, dogs on the other side of fences. Fences. And then- Yeah
other families with their dog walking around. I mean, it’s, it’s- You
Katrina: got your loose neighborhood dog, ’cause there’s always one.
Jessica: Always one. Yeah.
Katrina: Your s- your six feral cats, your raccoon. That’s that tree that always has two squirrels in it. You don’t know why. Like, there’s always something.
Jessica: There is.
There
Katrina: is. And I think it’s, it’s, um we’re doing a disservice to regular dog owners and to dog trainers by saying, “No, you can’t use negative reinforcement,” or calling it euphemisms, which always makes me giggle, like constructional approaches, which is [00:52:00] negative reinforcement. Um, it’s the R plus, like, it’s like anything but negative reinforcement, right?
Like, you’ll call it anything but what it is, or you’ll give it an acronym, and then you’ll just leave it alone, and I think it’s silly. Like, just, the words exist for a reason. They’re beautifully laid out. They work really nicely. You don’t have to be working in extinction just because you’re using negative reinforcement.
You can still use a differential, uh, reinforcement of other or incompatible behavior. You can teach all that stuff, and you can safely apply those protocols by gaining distance first and making your ABC make sense, and just watching that you’re not using food coercively, ’cause it is possible to do.
Jessica: Yes. I wanna touch on a few things, but since you just brought up- Okay … the thing of food being coercive, let’s touch on that, There’s a w- a lot of ways it can be coercive, but a lot of times when we start reaching for really, really high-value food with dogs, why that can be [00:53:00] even more coercive, and- Right
the unintended consequence. We’re thinking we’re giving our dog the greatest thing ever, and that might not be what we’re doing.
Katrina: Um, yeah. This is a big one. So- I’m just trying to think of the best examples that I have. I have a few in my head, but one of the more common examples of this backfiring is in horse training.
Ooh. And I train horses as well. So what you’ll see is a horse who’s terrified of getting into a horse trailer. It’s a big, scary box that moves. It’s dark. It’s tiny. It’s like the last thing a horse wants to get into. It makes perfect sense that they’re terrified of them. So you have a horse that won’t get into a horse trailer, and people will do things like not feed the horse the night before you have to get into the horse trailer, which we all know that this is not okay.
However, it’s common practice amongst a lot of horse people. So you’ll make the horse really hungry, and then you’ll bring out a bucket of extremely high value food, like grain, like the [00:54:00] best, like, stuff that you can find, and you shake the bucket at the front of the trailer. And in some instances, horses will reluctantly get in even though they really don’t want to, and then you have to be very fast to close the doors behind them, because if you’re not, what ends up happening is the horse dashes in, grabs a bite, books it.
Um, and it’s really common. And then what you’ll have happen is that the horse starts to build this very suspicious behavior around the bucket of food, and you’ll end up with horses that, like, won’t go near the trailer from 300 feet, or they hear the trailer and they go hide, and then you have to increase the use of aversives to get that animal into the trailer, even with the food.
And this is so obvious when I use the horse example that’s coercive, right? Like, you’re tricking the horse with food. You’re being like, “Here’s the fancy bucket of food. Like, I’ve made you really hungry, and it’s over here.” In dogs, it’s less obvious, so I wanted to start with a horse example because it’s so clear that’s not a cool way to use something like a primary reinforcer.
Like, that horse depends on food to live, and you’re making it [00:55:00] contingent on entering the scary box. So in dogs, it’s a little bit more subtle because what you’re doing is you’re, if you’re feeding continuously, and this is like that open bar, closed bar thing, you’re feeding continuously with high value food and there’s a stressor in the environment, there is no chance for that dog to leave because the food is incompatible with leaving.
And if you consider that we just talked about, uh, distance from the trigger as being the motivating operation, we’ve suppressed that behavior of escape. And so we’ve used food to suppress a behavior, not to teach a new behavior, not to reinforce another behavior. It’s simply used to stop the dog from leaving.
And that’s technically, it’s coercion, right? Like, that is, if you’re suppressing another behavior and you’re not allowing the animal to express its normal repertoire without [00:56:00] a different thing, then you are you are using that coercively. And if you were to lower the food value and the dog was to leave or to lunge or to bark, and the only reason it’s not leaving, lunging, or barking is because of the value of the food, then we really know we have a problem Because if you’re just using kibble, right?
Like, if you’re just using kibble, and the kibble isn’t working, and then you go and use hot dogs, and the hot dog isn’t working, so you go and get your, like, turkey liver, and that works, or your, the most disgusting thing you can think of, and that works, then you’re just using food to stop the behavior from happening.
Jessica: Yeah.
Katrina: And suppression is not training.
Jessica: Yes.
Katrina: Right? Yeah. Like, it’s, it’s fine, I guess, right? Like, sometimes we wanna use food as a distraction, and I get it, right? Like, you’re getting from point A to point B, it makes sense. But in the context of thinking that you’re training something, it’s not.
Jessica: Yes. I love that, because I was going to ask, what f- tips could we give people to know whether or [00:57:00] not the way that they’re using food is coercive or masking other behaviors? And you laid out the answer right there. If they’re not able to do it with other forms of lower value food, I would also add, and have a bit more space in between feeding- Yes
that, that you’re gonna get your answer right there. Yeah. And it is one of the reasons why I really stopped jumping to always using such high value food, for many reasons too. Also, because I have done a fair amount of stranger-directed aggression cases, and I actually don’t wanna have really high value food on my body, or
Yeah, on my body, when I’m coming and being around a dog who has stranger-directed aggression, because so many of those dogs are more than willing to take food from you. Um, but it does not mean that they actually want to be near me. And-
Katrina: Right …
Jessica: and it, it can land yourself in some really, really unsafe situations.
Katrina: You’re [00:58:00] creating this conflict between of the primary reinforcer and the motivating operation. And when you grind those gears together, you don’t always know what the output’s gonna be. Is it gonna be, I take the food, or is it gonna be, I tag you?
Yeah. Or is it gonna be, I take the food and then I tag you?
Jessica: Right? Most often that one. For the dogs who kind of
Katrina: get it, they’re like, “Oh.” Yes, I’ve noticed that one, yeah. It’s one of those pieces of
like, you’ll have a guest that comes over, and the dog seems fine, because the dog’s taking food out of that person’s hand. And the person stops feeding them, they’re sitting still, that dog is still too close. The person twitches, moves to get up, and then they get tagged. Um, and it’s like, “The dog bit him out of nowhere.”
And it’s like, no, the dog was conflicted about food, because really what the dog wanted was to leave. And so we can create really strange behaviors out of an animal when you’ve got the thing that they want with the thing that they want in competition.
Jessica: Yeah.
Yeah. I’m really glad that we brought this up because I think the thing that I’ll kind of end with just in regards to that specific topic is that if you [00:59:00] have a dog in that exact scenario that you describe where you’re out and you’re training and you’re practicing outside, and even if it’s not a super distracting environment, but your dog still cannot eat and you find yourself pulling out higher and higher value food rewards, you’re missing a bigger and more important part of the picture here, that- Yes
it could even be that your dog, even in that environment, is too overwhelmed- Yeah … and you’re not recognizing that, that you’re starting with a pretty high level of stress before you even expose your dog to the thing- Exactly … that they’re even more worried about, and that pulling out the higher and higher value food rewards is a quick little Band-Aid in that little moment, but it is not gonna lead to long-lasting change for your dog- Yeah
whether through getting them to be able to engage with you, um, and/or helping them feel any better about being out there. So I think that’s the other reason why I- Like,
Katrina: food [01:00:00] isn’t a magic Band-Aid.
No, it’s not. Right? And I think that that’s where it’s problematic, is we assume, as people who train using food a lot of the times, that adding food is always a good thing, and sometimes it’s not.
Jessica: Yeah.
Katrina: Sometimes it’s not. And, and I think to be a really effective R plus trainer, and a really effective rewards-based trainer, or whatever you wanna call yourself, to be … or an ethical trainer, like, to be really effective, you have to be willing to understand the limitations of your tools in those contexts, and then know exactly how to set up your environment or to set up your dog for success.
And if you’re smart about it, you don’t have to pull out your aversive tools, right? Yeah. Like, you just have to rearrange how you’ve set up your contingencies, which is really cool. So it’s not, “Food doesn’t work and therefore I need an e-collar.” It’s, like, it’s not that argument. Like, that argument doesn’t exist.
It’s if you set up your set-up, your antecedent arrangement, if you do that [01:01:00] correctly, then okay, maybe I can incorporate food, but just not here. Maybe it needs to be at the end of this other chain, or maybe I need to really think about, is this dog actually okay outside at all?
Is this- Mm-hmm … is this a case that needs a behaviorist, uh, like a veterinary behaviorist? Is this a case where I have underlying pain? Like, what is going on that is making it that this dog can’t have food in this environment? Ask more questions, right?
Jessica: Yes.
Katrina: And I think it’s that curiosity that you have to develop, rather than, “I must solve the behavior,” it’s more like, “Well, why, though?”
Like, what is happening here?
Jessica: Yes.
Katrina: Yeah And if none of your contingency stuff makes sense, there’s almost, there’s always an answer. We just don’t know what it is yet.
Jessica: Yes. So I think the last thing that I wanna end with is can you share more about this contingency analyzer that you have on the website, which I got to play around with before we hopped on this call, and as soon as I saw it, I was like, “Oh my God, this is genius.
How come [01:02:00] I’ve never seen anybody come up with this before?” Just share what it is. I’m of course gonna just put a link in the show notes and, uh, and share it on the social media so other people can go there. But how did this come up, and d- tell us about it.
Katrina: So I, in my deep dive about… Like, ’cause I was really struggling with why is this moving away, this click move away feed thing, why is it working?
And because I’m never satisfied with it works and therefore I can leave it alone, I went down this rabbit hole of contingency analyses, and I really thought about it super hard, and I was like, “Well, how can I explain this in a way that fits in with the science, et cetera, and how do motivating operations, like, act on the thing?”
And by the time I’d gotten through this rabbit hole, I had developed a concept of it’d be really fun if you had sliders and you could figure out, you could pick your motivating operations, you could pick which contingencies you were looking at, you could build your analysis, and you could play around with it and just see if it worked.[01:03:00]
And so I built this, it’s like, it’s online. It’s, uh, it’s like programmed, and you can click on whether or not you are looking at, like, food as your motivating operation, whether or not the dog is hungry, whether or not they are wanting escape, whether predation plays a piece in it. You can slide all these pieces around and see how they affect your assumptions about behaviors.
And it, it’s a teaching tool. And I just thought it was, like, a, a nice visual representation of what we’ve been talking about. And so that’s, that’s what it is. It’s just a coded, like a, it’s a little behavior engine that you can look at the protocols that we talked about and see how they’re affected by different MOs.
And there’s also a place for you to build your own contingencies. So you can figure out, if I set up this antecedent behavior and consequence, what happens if? And I think it’s, it’s a good way to learn how to think about things differently. So that’s what I wanted.
Jessica: So. I agree. Yeah.
Katrina: Yeah.
Jessica: And it’s very intuitive.
Like, it’s very [01:04:00] easy to use. Right. I, yeah, I wasn’t expecting it at all, to be totally honest. I’m like, “Oh, wait a minute. I just plug in this, and then I plug in this and this, and it spits out an answer?” I was like, “What?” So it is. It’s truly fantastic. I think, of course, it’s more geared towards dog trainer, behavior professionals, right?
I think your average pet owner, by all means go play around with it and learn some stuff. Um, but it’s really neat, and thank you for-
Katrina: Thank you … for
Jessica: making it. I think it’s gonna help a lot of people
Katrina: I hope so, and I would love feedback on it. So if anybody’s playing around with it, if you find, uh, like an error, let me know, or if you’re confused about what it spat out or it seems wrong, do let me know.
It is coded by a human, therefore there is likely to be errors in there somewhere. Um, but it is built on just, like, behavior principles, so it should, in theory, be correct in most cases, um, because it’s just based on the theory. So it takes out that emotional piece. It also should help [01:05:00] explain different pieces.
If you ever have a client that is really struggling to understand how that works, it might be a really useful visual. I’ve used it, um, in a number of reactivity cases where I’ve, like, pulled it up and been like, “Well, let me see. If we, like, make the dog really hungry, can you see how this overrides this?” Um, and somehow having it, like, on a computer screen with buttons seems to hit harder than if I just say it in words.
I’m not sure why. It’s I wrote it either way, it doesn’t matter . But somehow having it show up like that is really helpful. So I’m really glad you thought it was cool and useful.
Jessica: Yeah, I sure did.
Katrina: Great.
Is there anything that we talked about today that you want to expand on any more, or anything really relevant that you thought we missed in today’s conversation?
Katrina: I think if we missed anything, it’s just that when fear is present, putting food in the middle is almost always going to backfire for you. If you’ve got fear [01:06:00] of anything, whether it’s fear of a platform, fear of a person, fear of a surface, if you do things like lure your dog onto it, you’re using food in a way that is not helping that dog change its relationship to the thing.
It’s really counterintuitive. And so you don’t wanna be doing the, like, let me lure my puppy onto this scary surface, because the food then just becomes part of your coercive routine. It’s much the same as adding leash pressure over the scary object. You’re adding pressure in the f- like, in the form of food, or you’re adding pressure in the form of a leash, and so you’re way better off to do approach, retreat.
Yeah. And then food at the end. Approach,
Jessica: retreat.
Katrina: Right?
Jessica: Yes,
Katrina: yes. And so that’s, it’s the same concept, right? You come up to the scary object to where you’re, like, interested in it, mark, throw the food away, have the dog re-approach it. That sort of concept applies across the board, and I think it’s not just in reactivity.
Like, it’s in any fear-based or distance-seeking behavior. [01:07:00] And, uh, I know we’re on a reactivity podcast, but at, that’s, that’s just something that I wish more people thought of. ‘Cause I get very sad when I watch people drag their dog around with food at their nose, like, over scary things, and I just wish we stopped doing it.
Like, just chuck the treat away. Let them try again. And you’ll build more confidence and more resilience in your animals, and a better relationship with you, and a better relationship with the food. So I think that’s the only piece that I think we needed to add in there.
Jessica: I love it.
Katrina: Is there anything you wanted to add?
Jessica: No, I love that. A perfect place to end.
Hey, listeners. If you found this podcast helpful, there are a few different ways you can support the show. First, you can subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts, and if you’re feeling extra awesome, you can also rate and review the show to make it easier for other people to find it. Thanks for being here, and I’ll see you next [01:08:0
