Why you should teach your dog to be a critical thinker:

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Some trainers unintentionally use forceful techniques where THEY make the dog complete a task rather than allowing a dog figure it out on their own. Now, more forceful techniques might get the job done short term but you aren’t creating a sustainable mindset. Critical thinking will take more time and requires much more patience but I promise you it is worth it. Critical thinking is taught when a canine is given the opportunity to learn by doing. Once we allow our canines to troubleshoot and accomplish activities on their own, they will not only be more motivated to learn moving forward but they will also become extremely capable and confident beings. Our job as trainers is really just to observe and offer feedback/ guidance so our canines make the right decision. When we change patterns/routine, our canines learn to adapt/modify their behavior.

For example:

This conversation was brought up when I met up with a new dog owner. This owner has a 12 week old Border Collie. Not surprisingly, this pup is already displaying tremendous intelligence and willingness to learn. The duo has mastered sit and now working on down. At first, we tried luring the pup down with a treat / slight leash pressure but only her head would go down. Now, we could have forced her into a down, but that would be a short term fix. Instead, I thought of a way where we could help encourage her to make the decision on her own: We took a stool and lured her underneath the foot rest. As the pup began to go down we said, ‘down’ and once her body was completely down we rewarded her. Not only has she made tremendous progress, she made the decision on her own. Accomplishing this simple command using creative techniques not only allows the owner to teach a number of other commands (such as place, crawl, etc.) but also has set the stage for her pup to be a critical thinker.

Here, my good friend and fellow trainer, Ivy talks critical thinking by using free-shaping:

"Free-shaping is a method of training that relies on your dog’s problem solving skills to eventually form the desired behavior. Done this way, you allow your dog to choose how to behave, and you reward them when they make the correct choice. This method will enhance your dog’s own intelligence and confidence. Unlike other methods, free-shaping is progressive and may consist of more small steps to get to the end desired behavior, rather than figuring it all out in one go, but this is exactly what makes it more effective than other methods. Using free-shaping causes your dog to learn how to think critically to successfully perform the desired behavior.

Another really important thing to mention is that this method also forces the dog to really focus on what it’s doing — it’s behavior and body movements — in that exact moment, rather than risking your dog solely focusing on the treat you are using to lure, for example. My dog is incredibly food motivated (like many are), and so she can get really overwhelmed in the presence of treats which can result in her only looking for the treat and not focusing on her behavior. Although free-shaping can take more time because it sometimes might mean you are “waiting your dog out” (waiting for them to perform the desired behavior), the learning will be more memorable and the dog will have a deeper understanding of the command because it’s like they thought of it on their own (which is what we want them to think!).

Think of the last time you started a new job — you were probably trained for a couple weeks and given loads of new information, but that information might not actually stick until you have to do it completely on your own in a real-world scenario. Even as humans, we typically learn more effectively when we complete a task independently, rather than having someone coach us every step of the way. The same is true for dogs.

With my own dog who definitely knows how to think critically to some extent — I notice that when i'm asking for a new behavior and she isn’t sure what it is, she will try a handful of different behaviors/movements/etc, as kind of a trial-and-error approach to figure out what exactly I want from her. This is a perfect example of her thinking critically and attempting to problem solve. A dog who isn’t familiar with thinking critically, may just stare at you until you tell or show them exactly what to do, or even worse — they might lose interest in you all together. Not only does thinking critically increase your dog's confidence, among other things — it also increases their willingness to work and please you which makes for a much stronger bond, another reason why the younger this is taught, the better.

One really good example of how I use this in my day-to-day with Rukka, would be with eye contact. Eye contact can be a tricky one to introduce because it's such a specific small behavior (really just an eye movement) you are looking for. If you tried to introduce this by giving them a command such as “look at me” right off the bat, you will probably just have a really confused dog. When first introducing a new command, at least for my own dog, I find that the less words I say in the beginning stages, the better. These words won’t have any weight yet, and will just overwhelm and confuse her because she has no idea what i'm asking for. In my experience, getting the desired behavior/movement to occur, then adding a command to this desired behavior is more effective and will allow your dog to really focus on the behavior before also throwing a foreign word in there. Teaching eye contact with this method is a perfect example of when you might have to "wait your dog out." To teach this, I simply started by sitting on the floor in front of Rukka. I paid very close attention to her eyes, and the second she made direct eye contact with me, I immediately marked and rewarded her. Your timing is going to be crucial here as well. Now, waiting for her to actually look at me can take some time, but after a few reps of this, I can almost guarantee your dog will start to offer the behavior more consistently and this is when you would start to increase the duration of the behavior as well. Rather than immediately marking and rewarding, have the dog hold eye contact for 2 seconds, then 3, and so on, before marking and rewarding. Once the behavior is being offered on it’s own, this is when a command can be paired with the behavior. (Of course depending on what you are teaching, these exact steps may be tweaked a bit.)

Teaching a puppy to think critically will result in an adult dog who can actively problem solve and figure things out on their own, and do these things confidently. This will make any future introduction of a new command much easier, and probably much more enjoyable for you and your dog. At the end of the day, training should be fun for both the owner AND the dog, and by teaching your dog how to think critically, training will feel much more like teamwork, and less like you just throwing commands at your dog and them obeying (or not obeying!). A dog that has solid critical thinking skills, will be able to problem solve and figure out a desired behavior much more quickly and effectively than a dog who has been micro-managed and told exactly what to do every step of the way. Our dogs are incredibly smart, and we have to give them credit for it! This is why it's so important we give them the chance to figure things out on their own, because most of the time we will find they are successful at it.

Your dog may really surprise you!"