Slow and Steady Wins the Training.
Today, I did my dogs’ nails. I do it every other week or so, to keep them nice and short and healthy. Since Rivet was a puppy, I’ve been working on teaching her to accept nail trims; being a Husky mix, a breed famous for their distaste for being maintained in any way, I knew the importance of starting early and keeping nail trims positive.
Today, I got screamed at by aforementioned Husky mix, and immediately knew why. I also figured this was a good teachable moment to share with my students, so I finished the nail trim and headed to my laptop.
When Riv first came home, I started slow with nail trims. First getting her used to the sound of the Dremel, then the feeling of having her paws handled, then the back of the Dremel vibrating on her paws, then a quick touch of the Dremel to a single nail… Tiny, itty bitty baby steps long before she ever got her first full nail trim. And with every step came tons of food rewards, the highest value treats I have on hand, to reinforce that this is a fun and wonderful thing to be celebrated and enjoyed.
We’ve been at this for about two years, and today I was in a rush and wanted to get everyone’s nails done while Matt was taking a nap. Did you catch the part where I screwed up?
Yep. I was in a rush. That was my first, and most significant, mistake. While Mishi and Tucker are fine to do a quick nail trim with no griping about it, I shouldn’t have tried this with Rivet. She’s more sensitive about handling, and doesn’t tolerate it like the other two do. She still needs more rewards and praise to accept nail trims without a fuss.
I got to her second nail, and there it was: the Husky Scream. One sharp “YIPE!” delivered straight into my earhole. And it’s on me! I made this mistake, I asked more than she was ready to give me. She was at one point, and I was at the opposite end… And I did not meet her halfway.
This is a common mistake: going too fast, and making the jump from “all the treats!” to “no treats” way too fast. There’s a few problems, here. First, the action I’m asking for is not fun on its own. There is nothing she gets out of nail trims. The Dremel’s motor is, by dog standards, kinda loud. The feeling of a vibrating thing on sensitive paws isn’t awesome. And the smell of powdered toenail is no one’s potpourri. Why should she enjoy them?
So I need to make something that’s sucky into something that’s fun, make sure that she gets something out of it. To date, that has been treats and praise; today, she lost one of those things, and wasn’t having it. She made her point known, to be sure.
Second, I changed the pattern. Dogs, much like a lot of people, thrive on pattern and routine. When she was expecting a reward and nothing came, not only was she in the unenjoyable position of having her nails done, but now the way we’ve always done it is different. Of course that would be disorienting for her!
What I should have done is continued what I have been doing: reducing the number of treats from one every touch of the Dremel, to one every completed nail, to one every other nail, to one every completed paw, to one every other paw, to finally one at the end of the nail trim.
Did this set us back? Yep. Tomorrow, I’ll get the Dremel out again, and we’ll start back at square one, with a reward every time she lets me touch it to her nail. The good news is, once we’ve gotten back on track with that, we already have a solid foundation of trust built and sustained, so it’ll be easy enough to zip through the rest of the steps to get back to where we were, at one snack per completed paw.
A lot of owners (and a lot of trainers) don’t know how to slowly wean off treats. Your dog shouldn’t be chasing them down and ONLY listening because you bribed them with a treat. Treats are the starting point, but you do need to slowly wean them off. Way too many dog owners just drop treats all-together after one lesson because “he should know it already”. Point here is, it doesn’t matter if your dog “knows it”. YOU as their owner have to give them a reason to do it, or you’re just fighting them and annoying the both of you.
The phrase “slow is fast” gets thrown around a lot in training, and for good reason. We’re asking a creature that doesn’t speak our language and can’t be expected to understand human rules to live in a human world. Dogs are dogs, and if it were up to your dog, they’d probably be running around feral in the forest barking at squirrels, chasing deer, and peeing on every square inch of dirt that smelled vaguely interesting. We have to work with them slowly to help them understand what we expect from them, they’re not going to just accept that things like baths and nail trims and walking politely on a leash and not jumping on strangers and not kicking up the neighbor’s front lawn are just the way of things. Help them, and in turn, help yourself. Go slow. It pays off, promise.