Leslie McDevitt > Quotes

“Arousal is not drive. Drive is a primal force at work, such as prey drive or sex drive. Dogs given a job that channels their drive are satisfied and eager to work.

Do not mistake the intense eagerness of a dog in drive for arousal. Arousal is a behaviorist's word for excitement. When I say "overaroused," | mean overexcited.”
― Leslie McDevitt, Control Unleashed: Creating a Focused and Confident Dog

“...teaching relaxation is the foundation for all behaviour modification programs.”
― Leslie McDevitt, Control Unleashed: Creating a Focused and Confident Dog

“Arousal is not drive. Drive is a primal force at work, such as prey drive or sex drive. Dogs given a job that channels their drive are satisfied and eager to work.
Do not mistake the intense eagerness of a dog in drive for arousal. Arousal is a behaviorist's word for excitement. When I say "overaroused," I mean overexcited.
As the Goldilocks Rule states, dogs that are overexcited-in other words, past their arousal threshold-cannot think as clearly and will not perform as well as those that are under threshold. Some handlers think they can shape the extreme excitement of arousal into agility drive. Actually they cannot get a clear-headed performance from an aroused dog until they teach him to relax and help him lear to think through his excitement.”
― Leslie McDevitt, Control Unleashed: Creating a Focused and Confident Dog

“When teaching something new, make sure it doesn't look like something old.”
― Leslie McDevitt, Control Unleashed: The Puppy Program

“Since you don't always notice your dog's trigger before he does, reframing a trigger as an environmental cue to reorient to you is very helpful.
By creating a structure where the dog self-interrupts at the beginning of a reactive response (noticing a trigger being the first step of the response), we empower the d to control his own reaction. What a great coping skill to teach!”
― Leslie McDevitt, Control Unleashed: Creating a Focused and Confident Dog

“Don't let anybody push you into something you
feel is wrong for your dog.”
― Leslie McDevitt, Control Unleashed: Creating a Focused and Confident Dog

“You are going to see this concept pop up time and again in this book. The Premack Principle is simple and powerful and plays a critical role in my training methods.
It states that what the dog wants to do (called a "high-probability behavior") can be used to reinforce what you want the dog to do (called a "low-probability behavior").”
― Leslie McDevitt, Control Unleashed: Creating a Focused and Confident Dog

“As agility students become more indoctrinated into the competitive culture of dog sports, however, they become more focused on what the dog should or should not be (the dog should be in drive, the dog should not care about the environment, and so on).
Somehow it becomes less natural for students to just look at their dog and wonder, "What's wrong?”
― Leslie McDevitt, Control Unleashed: Creating a Focused and Confident Dog

“Can you see how this technique will take pressure off a dog that stresses as opposed to forcing a dog to keep training that instead wants to sniff and disengage? Which style is going to help the dog learn better? Which one will teach handler focus faster?
One way, you are demanding the dog continue working while his mind is drifting away. The other way, the dog is demanding that he continue working.”
― Leslie McDevitt, Control Unleashed: Creating a Focused and Confident Dog

“Done with the necessary timing and precision, shaping is a dance that fosters a sense of awareness and connection between dog and handler as both team members solve the puzzle together.”
― Leslie McDevitt, Control Unleashed: Creating a Focused and Confident Dog

“If your dog is overly aroused or upset, he is just not going to learn as well.”
― Leslie McDevitt, Control Unleashed: Creating a Focused and Confident Dog

“I've come to see many behavioral issues in terms of a dog's level of stimulation. To make a generalization based on experience, many overstimulated dogs are reactive, environmentally vigilant, or unable to think. Conversely many understimulated dogs tend to disengage, wander off, and sniff.”
― Leslie McDevitt, Control Unleashed: Creating a Focused and Confident Dog

“There is a strong reverse psychology component operating in the premack principle as well. The more you tell the dog to do what he wants, the less he wants to do it! Therefore, not only have you patterned the dog to pay attention to you as part of his going away and sniffing, but sniffing is no longer the big deal that it once was because there's no conflict. Nobody is telling the dog it's not allowed.
In fact, I keep telling the dog to go away from me, and the more I do it, the more he starts wanting to re-engage with me. "But wait, I wasn't done staring
at you yet!”
― Leslie McDevitt, Control Unleashed: Creating a Focused and Confident Dog

“Never, during the Whiplash Turn game, use the leash to make the puppy turn to you. Do not take his collar to turn his head to you either. Let the puppy figure it out. Let him learn that his behavior causes new opportunities to arise. Let him get addicted to paying attention to you because the body movements associated with attention behavior, such as turning his head in your direction, cause awesome things to happen.”
― Leslie McDevitt, Control Unleashed: The Puppy Program

“Is all stress bad?
For the purpose of this book, when I describe a dog as "stressed" I mean he is in a state of distress that needs to be alleviated through the various tools I offer. It should be recognized, however, that stress is a normal part of learning and living, and that not all stress is the bad type of stress we call distress. There is also a good type of stress, called eustress. This type of stress is what my sister-in-law, who is a serious runner, feels when running a marathon. I imagine that dogs that live for agility experience the good type of stress running a course. Dogs also experience stress when learning something new, and it is up to us to teach them in a manner that leaves no room for distress.”
― Leslie McDevitt, Control Unleashed: Creating a Focused and Confident Dog

“A lot of people assume their dogs are just being disobedience when they disengage. Instead the handler should look at both the dog and the training strucutre.”
― Leslie McDevitt, Control Unleashed: Creating a Focused and Confident Dog

“A dog that is strongly conditioned to watch his handler no matter what doesn't get the chance to learn to cope with his environment. If his handler is not around and has not done any work to address the dog's internal responses to seeing triggers, the dog will still react to his triggers.”
― Leslie McDevitt, Control Unleashed: Creating a Focused and Confident Dog

“Many attention problems that people bring their dogs to me to fix are about the hanlder putting too much pressure on the dog to learn things according to an arbitrary training agenda.”
― Leslie McDevitt, Control Unleashed: The Puppy Program

“A BEHAVIORAL PROGRAM
CU is not an agility class though it can help with agility-related behavior problems.
CU is also not an obedience program though it incorporates aspects of operant conditioning, which is the method I use in training obedience skills. CU is a behavioral program. Many of the core exercises are based on the principles of desensitization and counterconditioning, which are principles used in behavior-modification pro-grams, not in obedience classes.”
― Leslie McDevitt

“Let us never forget that biology and behaviour are bedfellows. You can't be solely to blame if your dog's neurons are misfiring.”
― Leslie McDevitt, Control Unleashed: Creating a Focused and Confident Dog

“CU operates within my philosophy of getting the best of both worlds. Training is a dance with two partners. You must meet your dog's needs in order to get the performance you want from him. Dogs need to sniff. Dogs need to greet other dogs. Dogs need to look at things. Dogs need to be normal. The CU exercises offer a structure in which the dogs can be dogs and still learn to be focused, working partners with you. You do not have to sacrifice your dog's "dogness" to create a great performance partner.”
― Leslie McDevitt, Control Unleashed: Creating a Focused and Confident Dog

“When the dog is allowed to look at what he wants or needs to look at (with reorienting to his handler as part of the rule structure), you get the best of both worlds. You free the dog from any possible conflict between being compliant and making sure things are okay. And ultimately the dog is rewarded for attending to you.”
― Leslie McDevitt, Control Unleashed: Creating a Focused and Confident Dog

“I know that most or all of you have been told by your instructors that to train your performance dog you must be the center of his universe, the most interesting thing in his life.

I understand, however, that you are not always able to be the most interesting thing in the world. I understand that sometimes your Westie might think a running rodent is more interesting than you. And that's okay! You can train your dog anyway.”
― Leslie McDevitt

“If you keep trying to war with the environment, either you or your puppy is going to lose. There will always be something novel in the environment that will engage your puppy's natural curiosity or appeal to his animal nature; that is when you will lose the war. Sometimes people control everything and put their puppy under severe restrictions so that he never gets a chance to experience anything but interaction with his handler as being rewarding. That, in my opinion, is when the puppy loses.”
― Leslie McDevitt, Control Unleashed: The Puppy Program

“To force a dog to engage in a sport when it is clearly inappropriate for that dog is inhumane”
― Leslie McDevitt, Control Unleashed: Creating a Focused and Confident Dog

“Whenever I train a dog who needs nep wads anon, use what I call the Give Me a Break rule structure. Give Me a Break is about giving the dog frequent breaks (using what I call the "quick dismissal") from short, highly rewarding, training sessions and then resuming the session as a reward for the dog's choosing to ask, "Can we keep working?" The goal is to increase the dog's attention and eagerness to work with you. Give Me a Break is simple and powerful.”
― Leslie McDevitt, Control Unleashed: Creating a Focused and Confident Dog

“I've seen people get so upset when their dog sniffs the ground. If a dog is sniffing instead of paying attention, it's time to rethink your training plan, not to correct your dog. If your dog is sniffing, is he distracted? Is he stressed? Is he just done for the moment? Dogs have good reasons for sniffing.”
― Leslie McDevitt, Control Unleashed: Creating a Focused and Confident Dog

“This is why I use the Give Me a Break game structure in so much of my training, because it gives the dogs the opportunity to tell me that they want to keep working. It gives them the choice to take on the pressure of social interaction and work, or to take a break. It makes the conversation between us much more dynamic and much less arbitrary. It is the best way I know of letting the dog tell me how much he is ready for and when he is ready for it.”
― Leslie McDevitt, Control Unleashed: The Puppy Program

“Any time you ask a dog to do anything, you are putting pressure on the dog. It does not matter if you are the most positive trainer in the universe; any social interaction puts some measure of pressure on the social beings involved.”
― Leslie McDevitt, Control Unleashed: The Puppy Program

“Using the premack principle and other tools explained in this book, you can get the attention you want from your dog without constantly feeling as if you are battling the environment”
― Leslie McDevitt, Control Unleashed: Creating a Focused and Confident Dog