Episode 10 - Challenges and Frustration: How much is too much?

1/30/2024

Today’s question comes from a breeder, but it’s a topic that is applicable to anyone who owns a puppy or dog:

“How much frustration should a puppy have before changing the game a little to make the session successful?

Did the barrier challenge for the 1st time today...he was continually going to the wrong side to a closed section...At the 3-minute mark, I pulled the food bowl so a small portion went beyond the barrier, then placed him back at the starting point again. He was able to complete the challenge then.

Should I have waited him out? I am second guessing myself.”

‌In this episode I cover:

How do you know how much challenge is enough and not too much in any given training session?
Why is so important that we try to guess right about the amount of challenge the puppy or dog can handle?
What do you do if you guess wrong and make the challenge too difficult?

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To read the transcript for this episode, click the link below.

EPISODE 10 - TRANSCRIPT

I'm Jane Messineo Lindquist, and this is a Puppy Culture potluck podcast. You bring the topics, we bring the conversation.

Today's question comes to us from the Puppy Culture Discussion group, and it is a breeder writing in, but it raises a question that, it's important to any puppy or dog owner. Before I read you the question, I just want to position it for you.

The question refers to the barrier challenge. And what that is, is we take a piece of exercise pen, so it's just like a wire fence basically. It's a little two foot by two foot piece of wire fence. And we set that up with the food dish on one side and we put the puppy on the other side and we put the food dish right near the edge of that two foot wire fence so that the puppy, it's not too hard.

The puppy can just go around it and get to the food dish. And it's just a very basic first problem solving exercise for puppies. So here's the question How much frustration should a puppy have before changing the game a little, to make the session successful. We did the Barrier Challenge for the first time today. Some of the pups went right around and some took longer.

Then came Klaus. Klaus is the runt tube fed baby. So whining for resources is a tad bit of a habit for him. During the approaching of the barrier, he was continually going to the wrong side to a closed section, and after 2 minutes I placed him back where I first placed him. I had to do this a few times.

At the three minute mark I pulled the food bowl, so a small portion went beyond the barrier and then placed him back at the starting point again. He was able to complete the challenge then. Should I have waited him out? I'm second guessing myself.

So I can answer this in one sentence. To paraphrase Maria Montessori, never help a puppy with a task at which he feels he can succeed.

Which is the answer, except how do you know if a puppy feels he can succeed at a task? The short answer is if he's still trying, he's thinking he might still succeed. Unfortunately, that's not the most helpful metric, because the only way... if he's still trying, yes, he still thinks he can succeed. But you can't, you don't know if he ultimately is going to be able to succeed until he gives up. Right? Either he succeeds or he gives up.

So what we really want to do when we're setting up any challenge for these puppies or your dog is you want to set up the challenge so that you can say with the utmost certainty the puppy can succeed. The puppy thinks he can succeed and in fact can succeed. Why, though, why is it so important that the puppy be able to succeed without you modifying the exercise?

Because if you let them try, until they feel it's hopeless and they can't succeed, you have no good options. You could help the puppy. Okay. If the puppy gives up like you know, the puppy no longer feels he can succeed. You can go in and help him and then you're teaching him. If I give up, I get bailed out.

That is the opposite of what we want to teach these puppies, okay? But then what's your other alternative at that point? Let them fail. But that only teaches them that trying is hopeless. So what this all kind of swirls down to is you have to make it easy enough that you're sure they can do it on their own The first time.

If there is one thing that I consistently see breeders getting wrong with any of the Puppy Culture protocols, it's that across the board they try and make them too hard out of the box. They try and make it too difficult for their puppies. We are conditioning the puppies. We're not evaluating the puppies. This is teaching, not testing. The goal with any of these exercises is to instill this small, quiet word in the puppies brain that says challenges are surmountable.

Why do we care to instill this word in the puppies brain? Because, when the puppy is frustrated in life, which he is going to be frustrated, he will be more likely to problem solve and less likely to react if he has that problem solving success in his tool kit. He'll be more likely to think about things and less likely to have big feelings about things.

And this is the most important part of this. I know it's difficult to believe, but it only takes the most infinitesimal challenge to get this concept across to the puppy. The puppy does not need to climb mountains. The puppy does not need to navigate hay mazes. The puppy just needs the smallest challenge and he needs to be successful at that challenge on his own.

Thus you can never go wrong by making a challenge too easy, but you will always go wrong by making it too hard. So let me ask you another question then. What's so bad about making the problem easier if the puppy seems to be struggling? So, you know, you're in there, you see, I don't think this puppy's getting it. Let me. I'll make it a little easier.

What we want to avoid is making the problem easier while the puppies struggling, because then the puppy is learning how to train you to lower your criteria. I mean, when I used to do dog training seminars, I encountered this all the time or every seminar, I would have a student approach me confidentially, say, you know, my dog really is... can't do free shaping.

He gets stressed, my dog gets stressed. And and I would ask them, what does your dog do? And inevitably it was, well, you know, he'll try two things and then he'll start barking at me. So you know, I would have the student out and I would have them try and free shape something. And as the student said, the dog would do throw out two behaviors and then just bark and give up.

And the owner would say, You see? He stressed. I said, Well, give me give me the clicker and the food. I would take that dog. He would bark at me twice, look at me, and then just go solve the problem. And I would always tell the people it's not that I'm a better dog trainer than you, it's that your dog has trained you to lower criteria.

Your dog, I mean, it's not like your dog is stressed or doing something wrong. Your dog thinks this is what we do. I mean, I but I try a couple of things. If I don't get it right, right away, I bark. You make it easier for me. End of story. This is what we do. So this is sort of why I think even though this is a breeder question about a specific kind of breeder protocol, it's really an important concept for everyone.

Okay? Is that whenever you're setting up a training session or a challenge or a protocol, you always want to be staying in a place where you really think the puppy or the dog is going to be successful because you can always make it harder. But if you, if you've gone over the limit and you've made it too hard, you have no good options.

So above all else, you want to set a criteria and you want to stick to it because it's a fundamental part of training success and a key principle for both you and the puppy. So circling back to the original question before I directly answer what I think she should or shouldn't have done in the situation she found herself in.

To me, for most puppies there is zero wrong with starting with the food dish half way outside the edge of the barrier or even, you know, maybe just a little bit in inside the barrier. So in other words, there's no, you'll never go wrong starting where she ended, which is having the dish sticking out the side. Listen, I know in Puppy Culture, the bull terrier puppies, I didn't start it that easy, but, you know, bull terriers, I found out in the subsequent years, you know what I mean?

Behaviorally, they're extremely persistent. Most breeds are not as persistent as bull terriers are. Most breeds are not as committed to problem solving as bull terriers are. So in sort of a way, the puppies in Puppy Culture are a little bit of fake news for a lot of breeds because it's just it's, what seems very effortless for the bull terrier puppies might be difficult for a less persistent breed.

So again, my direct question to this is I would advise people just to always start with that dish sticking a little bit out, just a little bit out. They're not going to you're not going to mess up your puppy. You'll do zero harm by setting it up that way. And you can go wrong in oh so many ways otherwise.

So just make it easy for the puppy. You can always make it harder on the next round. You know, here's the thing about this. Any time you set up a training session or a protocol, you're bidding, right? You're bidding on what you think that puppy can do on on what the sweet spot is between, you know, enough challenge and the dog's going to give up.

So if at any time it just doesn't look to you like that puppy is zeroing in on it, I want my puppies to be able to solve any challenge within the first 60 seconds. And honestly, if they're not sort of closing in on it in 30 seconds, I don't think I've set it up right. Okay. But when you get to that point, I mean, you just have to take your lumps and help the puppy, okay?

It's not you're not going to fix it now. You bid wrong. And for myself at this age, I would always prefer that they do solve the challenge, even if I have to step in and help them because I feel like the puppies at this age are very behaviorally honest. And if they've given up, then it's truly in insoluble problem for them.

So it's the right thing to do to help at that point. But you as a trainer, because that's what you are when you're doing this. Okay. I mean, some dog breeders are like the last Renaissance people because you have to be all things, you know, you have to be a veterinary nurse, a midwife, a trainer, you know, a nutritionist.

You have to do it all, right. And here you are. You have your trainer hat on. And as a trainer, you have to learn from that and lower your criteria in the future because the puppies do learn very quickly that, oh, if I quit, she'll help me or he'll help me.

So, now I want everyone to take a deep breath because now I probably have you all in a stew about getting it just right and you're going to mess up your puppy.

And what if you get it wrong? And here's what I'm going to tell you. You are going to make mistakes. You are not a machine and your puppies aren't computers. But over time you will become more accurate about predicting appropriate levels of challenge. Do not stress when you make a mistake. Mistakes are very valuable parts of life. Savor them because they are the absolute best source of new and important information.

If you are not making mistakes, you're not getting any better. Embrace your mistakes. Learn from them, move on. Your puppies are going to do just fine. So back to the original poster's direct question and I can't give a specific time length. Okay. That you should wait to see if your puppy is struggling and going to get it or not.

There's a lot of sort of subjective just watching them and seeing if you feel like they're zeroing in on it or not. But for sure, 3 minutes is too long. Without a doubt. 3 minutes is too long. In this case, great news. This puppy has amazing grit because that puppy tried for three whole minutes. So that that's great.

And she also great news. She stepped in before the puppy gave up. But again, just as a rule of thumb, I like my puppies to be able to solve any problem within 60 seconds. And I actually have become more conservative with this over the years. As I mentioned, when I made Puppy Culture, I didn't know. I don't think any of us really knew as much as we do now about the amazing diversity in breeds and developmental periods.

I mean, I knew that they differed, but in the years since, puppy culture has come out just to throw out two studies that have come out, one compared three breeds and found a 16 day average difference in when those breeds of puppies on average had their initial fear response. So you had Cavalier, I'm sorry, you had German Shepherds having their fear response, you know, at a certain time.

And the Cavalier King Charles spaniels, I mean, not on average having their initial fear response until 16 days later. Similarly, another study that came out found that 95% of German Shepherd puppies had a fear response and initial fear response by five weeks old and only 5% of Labrador Retrievers had an initial fear response at five weeks old. So, you know, this just gives you a feeling for the kind of variability that that's out there.

So if you if you're looking at Puppy Culture and you're saying, well, you know, my puppies aren't going around the barrier as fast as as the Puppy Culture puppies, I mean, you just have to remember bull terriers have almost psychotic determination and I tend to set my challenges maybe a little bit higher and maybe let my puppies try a little bit longer than perhaps would be appropriate for most breeds.

But as I said, even I have become more conservative over the years because I just I haven't found the downside to making it easier for them. Once you've done enough litters, you're going to become very intuitive about how to set up these challenges. But, you know, in the meantime you have to do a lot of litters to get to that point and you want to be successful with those litters.

So if you're not certain, okay, if you're not, if you don't have that good feeling and frame of reference to know what is an appropriate challenge for any given puppy, take whatever challenge you think might be appropriate and just cut it in half. Just cut it right in half. If you think you could put the dish four inches in on the other side of the barrier for the barrier challenge, put it in two inches.

If you think you could do two inches, let that bowl be halfway out. If you're doing a puppy party and you're setting up your equipment and you think, yeah, it's six inches, the high dog walk would be about right, do three. Okay. If you think that a teeter on a hard surface, a little wobble board on a hard surface is good.

Put it on a rug and put a towel under it. You cannot go wrong by making it too easy, but you can go very wrong by making it too hard. There's just no downside to making it easier. So if you are not certain, cut whatever you think that challenge could be in half. Your puppies will get all the benefits with none of the downside risks.

If you enjoyed this podcast, you'll love our breeder course at madcapuniversity.com. If you're a puppy owner, we have a puppy course for you at madcapuniversity.com. If you want to get started with puppy culture, check out our bundles at puppyculture.com.

Thanks for listening. Bye bye.