Free Bones Would Rain from the Sky: Deepening Our Relationships with Dogs by Suzanne Clothier Page B

other,
darker ways to motivate. Waving cash in someone's
face may be a good way to motivate them (if cash
is a meaningful reward for them); waving a gun in their
face is also motivational. A dog may be
motivated pleasurably or through pain, fear and
deprivation. Pain is delivered in any number of
ways: collar "corrections," remote-control
shock collars and, of course, the human hand. Fear
is another great motivator, and it is possible
to make a dog more afraid of one thing than another.
For example, a dog may break his sit
stay because he's afraid of being left by his owner.
If the owner dashes back, shouting imprecations, and
shakes the dog to "correct" him, the dog can
quickly learn to be more afraid of the consequences of
getting up than of being left behind. Deprivation of
food, social interaction and even water are also
used in dog training. Though depriving a dog of
water is rare, social deprivation is not. A
hungry, thirsty or lonely dog is "highly
motivated" to please the person who controls these
critical resources. Take great care to find out
what the motivation actually is when someone claims
to be a motivational trainer, and be sure to carefully
consider just how your dog is being motivated in any
situation.
It is possible to progress no further than the
motivational phase and have a good relationship with a
dog, especially if there are no real conflicts and the
level of achievement is agreeable to the trainer.
If through motivation you can get where you want to go, why
go any further? Understanding how to motivate a dog
(through pleasant or unpleasant means) can result
in successful training, though not always in a great
relationship. If the motivation used is largely
positive (i.e., reward-based training), it is
also possible to be quite humane.
Many training problems can be resolved when the training
shifts to a purely motivational level. But not
all problems will yield to a romping game of ball
or a fistful of tasty treats. While Wendy was
able to improve much of Chance's performance in training
when she incorporated food rewards, his bolting
behavior could not be altered by this approach. And as
Chance proved, new problems may arise from the
training technique itself if pain, fear, and/or
deprivation are used as motivation. While the
motivational level offered Wendy some answers, there
were other questions that could not be satisfied because the answers
did not lie in technique but in the dynamics of
two hearts in relationship. Like Wendy, many dog
lovers go just this far and, failing to find the answers they
long for, assume that there is nowhere else to go. As
Wendy nearly did, many resign themselves to making the
best of what they have been able to achieve.
The motivational or psychological level is where
I got stuck as a trainer for so many years. It was
easy enough to do, especially when the majority of dogs
I worked with were successful and happy in their
training. Two things kept me searching for something more.
The first was that I knew something more was possible. There was
no denying the beauty and joy of what I experienced
with my animals. Though I did not yet know of
Sloane's essay on levels of relationship,
what I was experiencing in those lovely moments was the
third level, and I wanted more of that experience. The
other driving force of my search for more (that indefinable
thing!) were the dogs that I could not reach and the dogs who
only partially succeeded. While it would have been easy
to blame the dogs or their owners for the failures or
incomplete successes, it would not have been honest or
fair. Nor would I have been motivated to continue
my search. The sense that I could help these dogs if
only I knew another way nagged at my heart,
and it still does. If I could go back in time and bring
with me what I have learned, I would go to these dogs and
apologize for what I did not know, and ask for a
chance to try