Single Event Learning in Dogs Explained: The One-Time Experiences That Shape Behaviour

Hello, dog peeps. Jack here. Just a quick one before we get into this episode. You may or may not be aware that when I'm not talking dog stuff with Max, I in fact interview people who are incarcerated in prisons across the United States on a show called One Minute Remaining Stories from the Inmates. And that show has been nominated for an award in America. And I would love your support if you've got 60 seconds to click the link in the show notes of this episode and just vote for my show. That would be amazing if you could. Thank you very much indeed. Oh, and don't forget to verify your email address. Otherwise, the vote does not count. Thank you.

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It's the Dog People Podcast with your host, Jack Lawrence.

Secretly, I decided to start this podcast for some free dog training advice. You know, Malinois seem to be like the dog at the moment. Like, I think people see them on Instagram doing these incredible things. Yeah. Go, oh my God, that's awesome. And then I get one like, oh my God, what the fuck? And Max O'Neill.

You would not believe how many people I meet and I go, what made you want to get, say, an Aussie Shepherd? They go, I don't know. I go, had you met one before? They go, no. If you want to ask me how often I walk my own dog a week, it's only twice a week.

It's the Dog People Podcast, a podcast hopefully giving you a no-nonsense approach to dog training so you never have to shout, he's okay, he's friendly. My name is Jack Lawrence, not a dog trainer, although somebody asked if I was the This morning, Max O'Neill, of course, Down Under Dog Trainer. Max, before we get into this, we're going to be talking single event learning, but I just want to have a quick rant. It's not worthy of an episode, but it is just worthy of just mentioning. I was at my kids' football thing yesterday. Oztag, I think it's called. Anyway, lots of kids around, stack of kids. Families, whatnot. Very, very busy. We're on our way back to the car and there's a lady with two two dachshunds, not on lead, just running around. Whatever. There's a few dogs off lead, but everything was pretty under control. Anyway, some other lady was walking past the dachshunds and she was sort of one of one of them sort of came up to her and she's like, "Oh, hello!" Blah blah blah. Tapping that one and then she went to pat the other one and the lady panicked and just went, "Oh." No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, don't, don't, don't, don't try and touch her. She's very, she's just, she can be very unfriendly.

Yeah.

I'm just like, you're in an area where there's a lot of children, lots of families.

Yeah.

You've got both of your dogs off lead. Someone's gone to pat your dog and you're freaking out because your dog may, by the sounds of it, bite that person. Why is your dog off lead?

Seriously,

why are you like— I just, I just, it just infuriates me because I just don't understand people like that. Like, if you've got a dog that you know can be aggressive, can bite, you need to take precautions.

100%.

You can't just let them off lead and just let— just because it's a dachshund and it's small.

Yeah, I 100% agree. It's like, if you're doing— look, even like, you gotta— number one, you gotta do all the right things, right? You gotta pop that thing on a lead, you know, Be very good at like stepping in and advocating for it as soon as you can. Maybe even popping a sign on the lead or a jacket saying like, I don't like to be patted because people might sneak up behind you. Like,

I mean, just a lead. That's a lot of what I'm saying is like just a lead. Like, fair enough. If you want to have the dog around, lots of kids around, you're going to have to be on your guard because we know kids, kids. I mean, I've taught my kids, you do not touch dogs you don't know. But, you know, I know that's just, that's not real world. Some kids will just go up and try and, especially small dogs.

Yeah. 100%. That's the other part of it. As much as I'm like, you know, stand up for your dog and not everyone should come over to your dogs and people should know. But I'm like, if you're also going to an environment where like the likelihood that someone will come and touch your dog without being asked, or even if you ask them no, because you're around a bunch of children, if your dog is a significant bite risk, I actually don't think you should be there in the first place. I know when we're working with dogs that are reactive to people, reactive to kids, and even have like a, you know, will bite and have low bite inhibition is We do so much work where we know, okay, the dog's at the stage where they're probably not going to bite now before we start going out in public. Because what if a kid comes over that either doesn't listen or is non-English speaking? You go, hey, don't pat my dog. Hand straight in the face. So it's like, as much as I get it, like, yeah, you want to be, you know, do the bare minimum as an owner and do what you should be doing. I also don't think that person has any business being there at all, to be honest. Not saying not at all, but just not to a kid's—

No, that's it. It's just, it was a kid environment and it was the off-lead thing that got me. I'm just like, you know, I'm just like, what are you doing? It's just unfair to everyone.

Unfair to the person that's going to get bit, unfair to the dog.

Oh, no. Yeah, totally. The dog's going to probably bite because that's what she knows it's going to do. And if it does and it bites a kid, I mean, all sorts of issues.

One-way ticket to heaven.

100%. Anyway, that's my rant over. I know all the people listening to our show wouldn't be doing something as silly as that.

Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating. You put your phone down instead of firing off that text. You say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments, but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like, and that's exactly what Grow Therapy is here for. Grow is therapy that works, covered by insurance. Sessions average $21 with insurance, and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality licensed therapists across the Offering both virtual and in-person sessions nights and weekends. You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability, and you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as 2 days, not the national 48-day average. See if you could pay as little as $0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com/startnow. That's growtherapy.com/startnow. growtherapy.com/startnow. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan.

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Let's talk something very useful, and that's, uh, well, very useful to know about is single event learning.

Yeah, so single event learning is something that pops up a lot with my clients. So What it is, is when essentially one exposure or one repetition is enough for our dog to learn and like in what's called like an A equals B pattern. This leads to that. So, that can be, oh, my action led to this consequence, or it can be that thing led to this outcome. So, a couple of examples, right, like of single event learning is like a dog on a farm running into an electric fence. Okay. Generally, they only need to get that once and they know. Whereas if you're trying to teach your dog something like, hey, don't get on the couch, or hey, you laying down gets you a reward, can take anywhere from 10, 20 to 100 repetitions before they grasp that concept. Single event learning, it just takes one. So you've got things like that, like dog running into an electric fence, they're not going to hit it 100 times. Like it's going to happen just once for conditioning to take place. But it can also be massively positive things as well. So for example, we had this Labrador growing up, Gus, this big chocky lab obsessed with food. And one day on the way walking to the beach. I wasn't really concentrating, and he stuck his head in the bush. And when he pulled his head back out, he was eating like, you know, 3 slices of pizza that had just been dumped there. And every day for the rest of that dog's life, walking past there years later, he would check that bush to see if there's more pizza. The magic pizza bush.

Kira is the queen of single event learning with things that I don't want her to— like, I mean, I've spoken about it before, but like literally one night I was— because I sit and watch my iPad at night while my wife watches our big screen TV, I'm banished to the iPad and I have the headphones that I use and they come in a little case. And I, when you close the case, that clicking sound. Yeah. And then I got up and I'd open the back door for her to let her out. So now anytime I click close those headphones, boom, she's like races to the back door.

Going outside.

And it doesn't matter how many times. And like, I mean, I've tried to get her out of it by click it and don't move, click it and no, she goes, doesn't matter. Like, she might chill for a bit and then literally the next night, click it, bang, she's at the back door again. Like, just, I mean, just Instantly picked that up. And she does it with so many things. She only like, I mean, doors as well with sliding doors. I opened a sliding door once and there was a gecko in the trail of the sliding door and she went after it. So now every time I open a sliding door, what's she doing? Looking for a gecko. I'm like, mate.

And it's always the way, like it always happens against us. It rarely happens in our favor. Like if we could harness the power of single event learning within a matter of days and weeks, your dog would know everything. Absolutely.

Can't focus heel in one event, can you, mate?

But like, yeah, geckos in the door tracks, like, fuck, I'm gonna, you know, get up to speed real quick. So it's one of those things we want to be aware of. Uh, like we said, it can be for something the dog perceives as a big, you know, reinforcer, a positive, or a big negative, or something they find aversive. It can be their actions or something in their environment, but it is something to be aware of. Uh, particularly when you want to be aware of it is like if you're exposing your dog to something new and you're not sure how that'll go. So say you're going So you've got a puppy and you're like, let's take him to the groomers. And rather than starting small, you're like, nah, just get the hairdryer straight into him. Bang. That could be single event learning. Yeah. Like, I hate that thing. It's going to take a lot of time to convince me otherwise. And, you know, single event learning takes place. But it's, yeah, it's just one of the things to be aware of. It can be the cause of a lot of behaviour problems. Sometimes, unfortunately, one negative exposure to something or very positive to them can be enough where you all of a sudden you've got a dog who's Very, very, very in tune with your AirPods case closing and very in tune with every time that sliding door opens, huh?

Yeah.

Yeah,

it is. It can be frustrating. And that's the— I wonder why it is that, you know, we talk about like things like trying to teach Kira things. It's a lot of repetition, repetition, repetition. Is it because obviously that's not as high a reward for her as going for that gecko?

Basically, exactly. The more profound the reinforcer or the punisher, the less reps it's going to need. And for things where it's like, you know, the full picture for her, she's like, I got to really chase something and catch it and whatever. There she's like, she, you know, and it's— I don't— and from what we understand, you know, it's not really like a conscious thing. It's not like she chooses, cool, I'm going to hang on to that. It's just her brain goes, hey, we got a lot out of that.

Yeah.

Is we really need to like remember that quickly. And I've tried to kind of utilize this like with with Nelson, every Sunday we'll just give him like a whole chicken from Woolies. We'll go and get him like a big raw, you know, chicken, and he just smashes it. He loves it. And because like he knows when he sees that, he's like, holy fuck. Like, that's— he, he's very well aware of how valuable that thing is.

Yeah.

And we didn't quite have single event learning, but we tried to. Like, I was teaching him to retrieve his bowl to me, and he knows retrieve behavior, but anyway, whole new word and everything. And what I will say is like, yeah, with the more profound reps, the reward, because it was a chicken, we only did one repetition every single Sunday teaching him to fetch his bowl and he learned it very quick. But yeah, even when I tried to create single event learning, I couldn't. But almost always seems to work against you, unfortunately.

Maybe that's what I need when we're doing our focus deal is to find a gecko. Yeah. Put it in my pocket.

Tuck it under your arm.

Yeah. All right. Single event learning. If you've got any questions about it, don't forget we've got the Facebook page. You can get involved with that. Just search the Dog People Podcast. Ask your questions if you've got any. And we'll get them answered for you. The Dog People Podcast is a Mashed Pumpkin production hosted by Jack Lawrence and Max O'Neill. Edited, produced, and audio production by Jack Lawrence.

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