Training animals as an art form

Training animals is an art form and it can be a creative outlet that you were looking for!

I've been a dancer since I was 10 years old. I loved it fully and completely. Since I was about 15, I was dancing hip-hop and my favourite form became freestyling. It was the very first time where I felt I could get really creative and it was giving me so much joy! At age 18, I injured my knee (at a dance class, go figure). I healed but injury kept coming back. It was never quite the same.

I recently was thinking about animal training videos I watch from my favourite trainers and how it looks like an art form. It's not just about teaching dogs skills but learning to communicate with them, get feedback and adapt to them. It can be like a dance with the animal that is filled with communication. Every single move matters and both you and your dog learn tons every time you do a training session. Animal training* involves an incredible amount of mechanical skills. Where you put your hand, where you stand, how fast you give your reinforcers, what do you do in between (even in split seconds) your dogs' reactions - it all matters. Your behaviour is influenced by the environment that you're in (eg. if the sun is shining on your eyes, you might miss a behaviour happening in front of you) as well as by your dogs' behaviour. You are changing what you do based on what your dog did. You might adopt very fast or you might not have this skill yet. If you don't, the fact that you're not adopting fast will change your dogs' reactions too. Your behaviour influences him and his behaviour influences you.

Photo by Joséphine Menge on Unsplash

Isn't that much more exciting than saying "I have to teach my dog a recall" or my dog "has to know how to sit"? It's a completely different story and to me, it makes it much more exciting to learn with and from my animal instead of feeling that I have to teach him something or that "he just has to do it". You can use the training time to learn and enjoy the time together! It can become a creative outlet for you that you were looking for. If you always wanted to do something creative but thought that the only options are to start playing an instrument, sing, dance or draw, I would like to invite you to see animal training as an option too. You don't even have to have a dog to do that! As you can read in this blog, it can be a fish and many, many more species.

Why it might seem that the training is not working?

If something is not working and the environment is not distracting, there is a big chance that there is a skill missing. It goes both for your dog and for you! Your dog might not be able to do this behaviour YET. What you can do is to break it down into smaller pieces and teach him the missing skill that will allow him to do the behaviour you originally planned to teach. It can also be that your skills are not yet developed fully. It's ok to not be able to do something. Training animals requires not only knowledge but also mechanical skills that need to be practised. If you've never played the piano no one would expect from you to start playing Chopin piece the first time you try. It's the same with learning how to train your dog. It's not just reading about it, getting information in, it's also (even more importantly) getting good at using mechanical skills and adapting them accordingly to what is happening around you and to your dog's behaviour. If you've never done it, you can't expect from yourself to be as good as experienced trainers (hey, guilty of it, multiple times! Don't worry, you're not alone if you expect too much from yourself but there is hope as with experience you get better and better).

I believe that the more we see animal training as an art form, as a process that never has an end line and as mutual exchange learning with and from the animal, the bigger the chance we will be constantly improving. There is always more to learn, even for the most experienced trainers. Enjoy the ride!

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*Interchangeably I was using word animal and dog. The training can be done with any species but I often have dogs examples first in my head. I also assume (maybe incorrectly) that thinking about dog training first can be easier to imagine for some people. If it was, I would like to propose going back through the text having a cat in mind instead. Can you imagine this possibility? How about a hamster or a sheep? If it seems impossible to you, what would change this perception?

Thank you for engaging with this thought experiment with me. I would love to hear from you, how was it?