It’s been a big week for Aaron and I, welcoming a new puppy to the family!
Lobo is a 15 week old seeing eye dog in training, and we will be caring for and training him for the next 6 months.
Anyone who has lived with a young puppy will understand what I mean when I say it’s been a challenging first week!
Lobo is settling in well now, thankfully, and his gorgeous puppy eyes get us every time.
We are learning a lot from him, and we’ve started to notice many parallels with behaviour change in dogs and humans. As a behaviour change coach, this is very interesting stuff.
Not only are there similarities in behaviour change methods, but as the human training and living with a dog, we need to change our behaviour as well.
So as new puppy carers, we’re in this position where we need to build new habits while also helping the puppy build new habits.
In this article, I’m going to share 3 of the similarities I’ve noticed so far with behaviour change in dogs and humans.
First, how do you change a dog’s behaviour?
While there are many different training techniques out there, Seeing eye dogs in particular are trained using 3 rules:
- Reward the behaviour you want
- Ignore the behaviour you don’t want
- Set up the environment for them to succeed
Funnily enough, these 3 rules are exactly what you can use with yourself when you want to get yourself to change your own behaviour.
3 ways behaviour change is similar in dogs and humans
1. Reward and celebrate any time you do the thing you want to do more of
Celebrating wins can include things like positive self-talk (the most effective for your brain because it’s immediate) or doing something fun/relaxing as a reward (less immediate but also helpful!) When we give ourselves rewards, our brain notices that we feel good and signals us to do more of the thing we just did. Even just telling yourself “yes, go me!” is enough to create this effect.
Note: While food is an effective reward for pups, I don’t recommend using food as a reward for yourself.
2. Ignore the behaviour you don’t want
Stop punishing yourself or beating yourself up for making mistakes. It’s ineffective and makes the change process that much harder. Much like dogs, humans don’t operate well from a place of fear. Instead, when you make a mistake simply move on and try to find an opportunity to learn from it so you can improve for next time.
3. Set up your environment to make success more likely
Take advantage of the times you can adjust your environment to suit your goals. This will probably be mostly your immediate home environment, but could also include your office space. What aspects of your environment are helping you reach your goal? What aspects might be encouraging you towards old habits? When your environment is set up for you to succeed, it’s like an accelerator button for your goals.
Dogs are much simpler than humans (thankfully, for those of us trying to train them!) but there is still so much we have in common when it comes to behaviour change.
Wish us luck on our journey training young Mr. Lobo! 🐾
For more information on the amazing work done by Seeing Eye Dogs and Vision Australia, click here.
