Rev It Up, Cool It Down: Using Arousal Levels in Training

A lot of trainers make the mistake of thinking that the more revved up a dog is, the more the dog enjoys training, and the further you'd go. I touched upon this a little bit in my last post Off Switches: Just Breathe! That post was about how I taught my dog to relax. Now, most people think that it makes sense to teach your dog to relax when you aren't training and then to teach them to be crazy when it's time to train, but... that's not quite right either.

There are theories about arousal (how excited you are) and its affect on motivation. The Yerkes-Dodson Law is about optimal states of arousal. Too low and performance suffers because the dog is disinterested in the task and will find something more interesting to do. Too high and the dog's performance will suffer because the dog is now too frantic. Depending on the task, there are different levels of optimal arousal levels.

I have seen dogs trained who find training to be boring and would rather opt out. They need more excitement to truly enjoy training and most people can understand that and they work on making training more and more exciting. I have also seen dogs who are so overaroused from training that they cannot relax once their owner gets the treats out, the toys out, or even the clicker out. You want a dog who doesn't spin out of control when they see anything that says "training." Likewise, your dog doesn't have to spin out of control when you come home, when you feed her, when you have guests over.

The history of all of those interactions will tell her how to behave. If you feed her when she's crazy, she'll be crazy when you feed her. If you have guests come over and she's crazy and you don't help her calm down, then she'll be crazy when guests are over. If she gets crazy and offers a thousand behaviors when you get the treats out, then she will be crazy when you get the treats out. That's how it is.

And, you can control how aroused your dogs get in different situations and you can teach her how to control herself by teaching the dog how to relax herself and by asking for thoughtful, confident behaviors and only rewarding clear-headed behaviors. Feed a calm dog, not a crazy one. Help your dog relax when guests are over. And reward your dog for thinking, not for reacting while training her.

So, what are some ways to change arousal states in training? Increasing arousal is easy enough. Instead of food, use play as the reward. And, if using food, instead of feeding in position, toss the treat for your dog to chase and/or catch. You can use very high value treats as well to increase excitement for the task. The more your dog moves, typically, the more excited your dog is.

What about lowering arousal? To lower arousal, use lower value treats in the training or use food exclusively. Use calmer treat deliveries. You can also ask for behaviors from the dog as well as reward the dog for thoughtful rather than frantic responses. 

Look at this video of Pip working on heels and fronts. I'm feeding in position for the heel for precision. However, notice how I'm tossing treats for fronts and asking her to move around a lot. I keep the game very fast paced. Now, the reason I'm tossing treats here is because I want a very flashy heel from her, eventually, and heelwork usually bores a dog unless you make it fun. However, if you always and only rev the dog up, the dog will start to make mistakes and will stop working well. In this case, more excitement doesn't mean better performance.

Now compare to this video with tugging with Pip. I'll revisit this video in a tug-centric post about teaching good tug play that will be easy to use in training, but for now, I'll use it to illustrate a situation where lowering arousal is important. It's very easy for her to get overaroused in play. You'll notice that her out gets really chompy when she starts to get too excited. Also note that her sits aren't as clean as usual when too excited by the play (that's okay as I'm focusing on the outs). Watch how I lower the arousal level a tiny bit by asking for a behavior and how the next out was perfect again.

Eventually, I know she can be super intense and still listen. Underneath her fears and craziness, is a dog with a fantastic temperament. Next blog post on this topic will be about flow in dog training and how to use it.