What growth teams can learn from an expert dog trainer | Mac Namara, Dog Trainer

How do I make the animal successful in this moment, at this time?

Yep.

In alignment with my ultimate goal and not to the exclusion of doing some of that analysis. If you're not making progress. So every training session, you should see the needle moving a little bit. If I'm not going in the right direction, then I'm going to use that momentary pause to rethink it.

Hi, everyone. I'm Kristen Berman, and this is the Irrational Mind. On this podcast, we explore how to create meaningful behavior change, whether it's in product design and growth or in our own lives. And today, I'm thrilled to bring you a conversation with Mac, an expert dog trainer and owner of SF Puppy Prep. They use the science of positive reinforcement to transform behavior in both in dogs and in their human companions. My biggest takeaway from this interview was just how deeply connected the principles of dog training are to product design, behavioral science, and behavior change. Like, for real, we're kind of just like dogs and they're like us. Okay. There are some similarities, but Mac's approach highlights the importance of setting up environments for success, rewarding desired actions, and being patient with the process. This likely sounds familiar because these aren't just strategies for training a puppy. They're the backbone of how humans form habits, make decisions, and respond to feedback. For example, Mac talks about the power of timing. Reinforcement has to happen immediately for the behavior to stick, whether it's with a dog learning to sit or consumers learning to use your new product. In the product world, we tend to say things like time to value. We could also think about it. Like Mac, we just need to tighten the feedback loop and give your users a reward for their behavior. They just went through your annoying signup flow and took a risk on your product. They need a reward. Nahia Bier, who has created multiple viral apps, says you need to onboard people to the aha moment within three seconds. Spotify will back them up. Apparently, there's a 24% chance that listeners skip a song within the first five seconds. Mac agrees. They say you need to give some type of positive reinforcement once every six seconds. Mac also shares insights on breaking down challenges into smaller, manageable steps, like teaching a dog to carry a toy when guests arrive instead of jumping. This mirrors how we approach any kind of behavior change. Start small, build momentum, and celebrate progress. So in this episode, we'll dig into the specifics of positive reinforcement, why punishment can be counterproductive, and how to think strategically about managing behavior over time. We'll also explore how to approach ingrained habits. What separates a Great trainer from a good trainer and get real world examples from max training and practice. I thought looking at behavior change through the lens of how we train and develop the minds of a complete, completely different species was a fresh perspective on how behavior is shaped not by sheer willpower, but by systems, by the environment, and by a little patience. So let's jump in. This podcast is sponsored by Irrational Labs, a top applied behavioral science consultancy. We help companies design products people use and love. If you're looking to understand your customer psychology, improve your funnel, change your pricing, or just do overall behavior change, email me@hello rationallabs.com or you can go to irrational labs.com and read our case studies with Lyft, one medical TikTok, credit karma and others to see some fun results. Matt, great to have you here. This is wonderful.

Pleasure, thank you.

Uh, let's just dive right in. So maybe you could start by scene setting. What is the underlying behavioral philosophy that you use for training dogs?

Yeah, great question. Um, I'm a positive reinforcement trainer and you're going to see, you know, a lot of us around and we all are very willing to self proclaim and.

So what does positive reinforcement mean?

So essentially it means that I am adding something that you, that an animal, you species being like to increase the frequency of that behavior in the future. So as least technical jargon as I can get. There you go.

Perfect. And so you have positive reinforcement. And then what would be the alternative? Or like, what is the name for like if you're not doing positive reinforce, what are you doing?

What are you doing? Yeah, and so, so this will go back to like Skinner and 1938. We're way back. That's when that work actually happened. It would be positive punishment. And in, in our meaning, positive doesn't mean the way we think of positive right now, more colloquially. Right. It means I am adding something and punishment. That's a very familiar phrase. It still applies. Like trying to decrease the probability of behavior in the future. So if you're not positive reinforcement, I'm adding something you like to get more of what I want and less of what I don't. I'm adding something you don't like to diminish that behavior or the likelihood of that behavior in the future.

Okay, so we've got like positive reinforcement which I'm going to take as treats.

Or some level of possibly one of the many options.

Right, we'll talk about the many options. And then not positive reinforcement is positive punishment, but more punishment, which is kind of saying, and correct me no. Or shot collars or something that tells the dog that don't do this.

Right. We're trying to stop behavior. We're trying to encourage behavior. And so if we take the positive out of it, that tends to be the thing that is most confusing. We're either reinforcing or we're punishing if we want to be that simplistic about it.

Okay, so maybe we just walk through step by step, what this actually looks like. So we could probably take a puppy or we could take a dog that you're trying, that you know already has habits ingrained, and you're trying to get them to do something different. Do you want to pick one of those and maybe just walk through a behavior? Like, what does positive reinforcement look like in the wild?

Yeah. Well, let's talk about puppies because they're so much fun and puppies aren't doing anything. You know, hopefully they haven't had a negative history. Right. They'll. They'll come with something. But if I were looking. Okay, what's the most common puppy issue? Well, first of all, let's train it not to pee in the house.

Totally.

So, yeah, most people like baseline. That's, you know, at a minimum, that's what I need from my puppy as an adult dog. Ignore everything else, but at least don't pee and poop in the house. Okay, so let's take a look at that. So we have. We have choices, right? We can see the puddle on the floor and trying to punish the dog for the puddle on the floor. Or, and this is where I lie, I'm going to set this puppy up. I'm going to set up my environment, and I'm going to reinforce it when they go in the right place. And so I'm going to get more of going in the right place and less of what I don't want, which is going in the place which to the puppy isn't wrong, but for me is not preferred. And so there's a couple of pieces of the equation. I don't know how sciency or technical you want me to get.

Go deep.

Let's go deep. Let's dive. Okay, so where there's A, B, C. Right. Antecedents, which would be setting my environment up for success. Behavior, that's up to the dog entirely. But I get to set the stage to help the behavior that I want happen. And then the consequences I apply. And so the consequences, in my case for puppies, treats is just one. Play is another. Praise is another tactile. If the puppy likes it whether or not something's reinforcing has to do with whether or not the likelihood is going to increase in the future. And that's up to the puppy to decide. Oh, is that reinforcing or not? I need to know that. I need to figure that out. So you can give, you know, salmon to a puppy all day long, but if they don't like it, it's not reinforcing. It's not going to reinforce behavior. Okay, so.

So, yeah, and so let's go to the first one, which is setting up the environment. And this is like classic behavioral science talk, which is basically the environment. We say the environment determines our decisions. So if The M&M's are close to me, I'll eat more. If the M and Ms. Are far from me, I'll eat less. I like M and M's, but it depends on how close they are if I eat them.

Right.

So it seems like this is kind of the same thing. You have to set up the environment for the dog to succeed. So what does. Let's just take the potty training. Puppy training. Potty, puppy training for what does an environment look like?

Yeah. So I'm gonna look for some confinement.

Right.

I'm also setting me up for success. So I want some proximity to the place that I do want them to potty. Right. If I have to pick up my puppy and run down six flights of stairs, that's a lot of work for me. I'm gonna be like, no, I know the puppy needs to go every 30 minutes, but I'm gonna just miss some of those. Right. So missing the environment for my success. Also for puppy success, it's gonna look like confinement, which doesn't mean anything horrible. It means I'm gonna teach you to love this area in. And that's going to help set me up for success. And so. So there's that piece, and then there's having the M and M's close at hand. Now, if we're not feeding dogs chocolate, it's toxic. But I'm going to have some kind of reinforcement that's easy for me to access and easy for me to give the puppy for potty training because it's such an important behavior. I really want a lot of reinforcement available, and I'm going to have more than one kind, so I'm going to have some food reinforcer. But it's also going to mean freedom for the puppy after they do the right thing in the right place. So let's just Dr. An example here, if that's okay.

Yeah.

And I'm going to say, all right, we're in a, let's say two story home, typical sort of San Francisco Bay area home. Two story home, most of the living, perhaps on the second story. So, okay, I've got one flight of stairs. So what am I going to do? I'm going to set up my home environment where I'm going to limit puppy's ability to roam. So a confinement space with an exercise pen or blocking off a kitchen, something like that. And then I'm going to also set up for success kind of with a mental timer, which is if puppy's awake, really if they're eight weeks old or super young, I'm like, every 15, 20 minutes in their waking time, I am going to be taking puppy down the stairs. So literally picking up to prevent any accidents along the way, take Puppy to the space I ultimately want them to go in. And it can get a little, you know, you can even do some spatial management there too. Put puppy down, wait for the right thing to happen. When they go, you pause just a minute, let them finish. Don't interrupt that dropping that you're looking for. And then praise party galore, out come the treats. And then I become more fun than I've been in hours.

Right.

All of a sudden it's, you're just full on, you know, happy talk. And then if you're able to do it, my gosh, you know, some freedom for puppy after either outside where you might be or just even play in the house. And more like, I know your bladder empty. Okay, great, we, we can have some more freedom. And all of those things are, you know, multi layered reinforcement for what puppy did when they did it.

Great. So. Right, right, Totally. And so I'm catching a few things. One, you're, you're basically helping them succeed by bringing them to the area that they would succeed in.

Right.

So you're not assuming that they would go find it themselves or know that if they've been there once that they know to go there. You're constantly helping them get to the right area. So make it easy. Then right after it happens, you're giving them exciting things. And it seems like maybe that's, maybe you can talk about how immediate does that have to be? So let's say you're doing this and you know, it's you, you see them go in the right area, you wait a few minutes. Is that okay?

Too long for.

Okay.

Just like children, it's got to be pretty quick. And we like to say sort of the, the closer in time, the better. We're talking seconds.

Seconds.

We're talking, you know, you know, three seconds or less, ideally. Yeah. For it to really have an impact. Because what we're looking for is the puppy to place the B and the C. Right, right. Okay. The consequence for this specific behavior. And, you know, puppies behave a ton. There's a lot going on for a puppy. They may have, you know, they may do six other things in the five seconds that follow that finishing of their elimination. So you want to catch it. So they make that strong association between what I just did and that reinforcement coming.

Okay. And so how long would this take.

Somebody to do to potty train a puppy?

Totally. Yeah.

Wow. So it really differs. There's a huge range. We've got some breeds that are notoriously difficult to house train. And we can talk about growth. Right. I think that has somewhat to do with the growth of the dog, but it really is, for me anyway, comes down to mostly how amazing are we as humans at getting that right thing right in our purview to happen, and how many accidents do we have along the way? Because every accident is going to set us back a little bit. And so it was really an issue of puppy parent compliance.

Yeah, Compliance puppy.

Well, it's never the puppy's fault.

Right.

They're responding to a bodily urge. And so, yeah, you know, we used to say, well, roll the newspaper up and hit the puppy. It's like, roll the newspaper over, hit.

Yourself, and it's time.

Right.

So what happens if there is an accident?

Yeah. So if you catch it in the act, you can gently interrupt it. There's schools of thought on that. Some people just won't even do that. And that's fair. We. We're working to try to avoid it. I will gently interrupt it and pick puppy up right place and hope that they finish. A lot of people find that once you've interrupted puppy, like, they're gonna stop for a while. But if you can, and my dogs are large dogs, so generally I'll get further elimination that I can then reinforce. Right. Tiny, tiny dogs. You're probably gonna miss it anyway. And it's just like, what do you do? Well, you get your favorite Enzymatic cleaner, and you clean it up and you smile and you go, oh, oh, yeah. You know what? They were up for 20 minutes. And I guess I should be doing this at 15. Note to self, do it better in the future. And that's really all needs to happen there. It's so much more about making it reinforcing for puppy to go in the right place and creating a behavior pattern that's going to last.

Yep. And so let's go into why. Because I think that breaks people's intuition that basically if you do something and you tell people that's not the right behavior. And by the way, this happens in work culture all the time. You maybe your employee does something, you're like, let me give them immediate feedback that this is not correct. Right, Right. And so our intuition is to tell people when not to do something. And so if you tell the puppy, no, you should not have done that, like, what. Why does that break? Like, why is that not going to get the results that. That. That positive reinforcement would.

Sure. So for one thing, they don't speak English, so they don't come out of the box. Right. Knowing, like, what does know mean? But they can certainly read our tone and all of that sort of thing. But we're trying to build a relationship with a species that is unlike our own. And that relationship, for me, first and foremost, is most important. And so if we're doing something that the puppy is going to find slightly aversive, which is what the intention is there. Right. It's like, we don't want you to do that. How do I get you to know that doing that is not okay? I'm going to impart something that is going to be received as aversive. And plenty of folks will say, well, but that's what we want, and that's okay. And I will say, it's not necessary. And if it's not not necessary, then why. Why do it?

Yeah.

And I would propose that even that gentle interruption while it's in the act is slightly aversive. Right. And there'll be trainers that go, don't do. I can't believe you call yourself a positive reinforcement trainer. And you'll still do that. Yeah. And it's like, well, I want to do it. I want to do it very gently. And. And I want to stop the rehearsal of behavior that I, you know, I don't like. And I'll have a bunch of reasons. That's just my comfort level, where I lay on that sort of spectrum. So there's. There's that part of I don't want to do anything aversive. I want puppies to think humans are awesome, and I am awesome. And. And it's not an innately wrong or bad behavior. And so to punish it just seems so very counterintuitive to me. But also, we know that if. If it's extreme, you can actually create an aversion to puppy eliminating in the presence of you or in a. And that'll generalize quickly to presence of other humans. So, you know, if your reaction is over the top and perceived by the puppy as maybe even a trauma, you get a dog that just won't go in front of you. Well, now you have a puppy that's like looking escape, avoidance, like I'm going to try to go somewhere craftily while you're not looking. And then.

But basically what you're saying is if you say no, they could interpret that as no, I don't want, I shouldn't be doing this in the kitchen, I should be doing the living room. Or no, I should be doing this in front of you. I should be doing it, you know, not in front of you, not in front of it. So the idea of no doesn't actually tell people what, or the dog what to do. It just says don't do the thing you just did. And then they have to extrapolate what the thing is.

Well, I think it's a little more complex.

Yes.

And yeah, you know, wow. They don't know what the meaning of no is. So I mean I'm having to impart that in a, in a, in a consequence and it got to be an unpleasant consequence if it's going to be akin to what the human know would be. Yeah. Right. And so right there it's, it's just, it's an aversive thing.

Cool.

And yeah, so it's an interesting.

Because it's like basically what I, I like that when you're saying this as a human, you have to diagnose what went wrong and then you change the environment to make sure next time it goes correct. But the dog is almost unable to do that. They're not able to like quickly diagnose what went wrong. They're like, oh, something bad happened. What went wrong? I don't, I don't know. I mean a lot of things could have gone wrong. You know, like I, I, I did this in front of you, I did this in the kitchen, not here. And so but the feedback loop for the human is pretty clear was basically once they do something wrong, you take it on yourself. What could I have done better to set them up for success, Right. In the future? Yeah, yeah.

For dogs it's not wrong or right for dogs. Is it safe? Is it dangerous? Did it predict a pleasant outcome for me? Did it predict a not pleasant outcome for me? Yeah. And so for, for us it's more complicated and there's more layers. Like, what did I do wrong? There are a million options. Dog isn't going through that.

Yeah.

I was like, I had a natural urge. I expressed that urge. And by the way, I'm reinforced for it because feels good to pee. We know. But yeah, humans, right. And so I was like, well, okay, so if I got punished for that, the consequence was, oh, don't pee. Okay. Don't be here. Don't be. You know, there are many options, but I don't think the dog is actually thinking through them. I guess he's like, oh, not safe. Don't do that.

Okay, so I'm gonna start training my toddler pretty soon. Potty training. And so this does resonate where I'm gonna have to figure out how to get her to a toilet at frequent intervals. I'm going to have to reward, I think, parents. And I don't know this specifically, but do the Eminem thing where you're basically really pairing an actual treat when going in the toilet. And so I will remember to blame myself and not her. That will be my. That will be my takeaway. Okay, so let's maybe talk more about the kind of treat philosophy. So, you know, if you're rewarding, talk more about the types of rewards. But also just specifically, you said a variety of treats. How many? Like, play it out. If you're playing with a dog, trying to get them to maybe walk beside you, what does it actually look like to reward them with treats?

Sure. So, so reinforcement would be a more scientifically correct word, but not reward.

Reinforcement.

Reinforcement. Right. Because we're looking for behavior to increase, probably, you know, increase in the future. So. But the, the, the reinforcement menu is really. It's like, what's reinforcing for this dog in this moment at this time? And there's going to be a number of fact. Yeah, I have a bunch of tools in my toolkit. And it's going to be dependent on what's the dog's level of satiety right now. Are they ready to, you know, are they ready to work? Are they ready to train all those kinds of things. You're setting that up for success too.

And so if you're going for a walk, let's say, I don't know, 30 minute walk, how many times would you give them a treat during that walk?

Yeah. Wow. Depends on the stage of learning.

Yeah. Let's say early stage. You're really trying to get in there and, and change.

So you're really trying to get in there and change. I'm Going to say that a 30 minute walk is going to be way too long.

Okay.

Right. And so ultimately isn't that interesting. I was like, matt, call me out on these things.

Don't do that.

So if I'm doing okay, let's. We're going to go for a stroll because puppy needs some exercise and we're going to find a safe place to do it. We're going to go for a stroll. I am going to do my very best to limit rehearsal of the things I don't like. I can't treat a puppy every step for 30 solid minutes. Right. So I'm going to have to sort of juggle between. I'm going to encourage this behavior that I want and then I'm going to give you some freedom. And so ideally, I'm not going to give more than 20% of a daily intake. And that's going to vary by puppy. Right. If you have a bichon, it's going to be very different than if you have a Labrador. Right. So I can't give you a how many. Because if it's a bichon, it's not going to be the same, you know? So let's go with no more than 20% of daily intake. What if it's how.

How many times is that giving?

I see what you're saying.

Yeah.

So you're. The real question you're asking is what's the rate of reinforcement need to be exactly for the puppy to actually do the thing that you want?

Exactly.

So for training, I'm looking at 10 reinforcers in a minute.

Wow.

Wow. Once every six seconds.

Wow.

In feedback. Now, that doesn't mean treats necessarily, but it could be like, great job. Yay. A happy tone that puppy responds to. But that is my ideal. And that's why I'm like, that. 30 minutes is way too long. We're training in one minute segments. And then take a break.

Yep.

Come back to it for a minute. Take a break. So if I'm looking long term to develop a behavior of I want to be able to walk for two hours with my dog with minimal feedback to the dog in the way of positive reinforcement, I'm gonna start working in these tiny one minute segments that go, here's where I want you to be. Here's the most reinforcing place for you to be. Also, if you pull ahead and the leash goes tight, I just go nowhere. So I'm not reinforcing what I don't want.

Can you talk about the idea of reinforcing choices?

I love that.

Yeah.

Yeah. So it's the choice point. So you, you watch your dog make a choice. They look at something and they choose otherwise. And if that otherwise is in the direction of where I want to go, I'm going to mark and reinforce that. So I get to mark it with, yeah, great job. Or, or a click if you're clicker savvy. And then reinforce it with whatever you got. Treats, praise, play.

And so that looks like, just tactically, it's like the dog is about to jump because they get so excited, they decide not to jump four feet on the floor.

Excellent.

And you would reinforce that mark and reinforce it. Okay.

The moment, if you can, the moment they made that choice of, you see the urge and they, for whatever reason, choose otherwise. Yeah, those choice points are really important. And same thing with counter surfing. You know, all of those things. We set it up and, and of course the dog is still going to be like at some points.

Great. Telling you earlier, I have a child and she is getting into hitting stages. And so this idea is very powerful. And the fact of she's really winding up to go for the hit to either me, my husband, or another child. And there are many times where she decides not to hit. She decides to be gentle. And this is where we've really saw some interesting gains where we like go crazy, get very excited when she makes the decision not to hit.

Nice.

And this was a learning from you in the past. So I appreciate the ability to train my child with reinforcing choices.

That's fabulous. You know, and the science is we are not excluded from it.

Yeah. So can you talk about the difference between variable and consistent rewards? So at what point do we want to be really consistent with our, you know, reinforcement versus versus variable?

I feel like I've punished you.

No, easy. I'm learning. You've told me what to do. I'm now doing it.

I should have my M and M serio. So we want to be on a really consistent one to one schedule when we're learning the installation of anything new. And then ultimately, of course, we don't want to be feeding every single step. And if we do, that becomes the expectation. And we're going to see it. You know, we're not going to get to the behavior that we want, again using the walk beside me kind of example. And then we want to get on a variable schedule once it's. It's a fluid behavior. So once it's very easy for the dog to do. Having said that, when I say when, I'm talking about, okay, we want to fade it. I'm talking about a big fade, meaning we go from paying every step to every block. There are million stages in between that. So I don't mean to misdescribe what I'm trying to convey. So, yeah, puppy starts very first day. I'm putting puppy by my side and the treats are coming every like second. And then it's going to come every step. But I'm very quickly going to push that criteria a little bit. So I'm every step, but I may only do that for the first 10 steps. Then I'm going to go, okay, every other step and I'm going to push to every three steps. Then we're going to take a break and we're not doing that anymore today. When I come back tomorrow, I might drop back to go, okay, once every two steps. But I'm not going to keep going to the once every step because then we'll create that expectation and we'll never get to this ultimate vision I have of I want to go for a two hour walk with my dog and they're just happy and content to be beside me. No longer need a ton of. They might need some encouragement from time to time or good job. Like I will naturally do just being with my animal. But they don't need that. We're not training it. Quote, unquote. Installing it would be a correct phrase.

So very consistent in the beginning, but kind of quickly fade. But don't fade off a cliff. Yeah, so don't. Yeah. I was rewarding you all the time yesterday and now I'm just going to hope that you remembered and exactly continue.

And knowing that it takes a long time. Right. So we're still on a. Most people are paid on a. Every couple of weeks at work. Right. There's a, there's a ceiling to that. Right. So people that get paid once a month, I'm sure that there's some. It doesn't work as well because the reinforcement is too thin. And so it is with dogs. Like if humans can only last, you know, a month to get a paycheck. Yeah. Right. Imagine how it is for a dog that doesn't have our, you know, layered complexity. So, you know, that whole notion of, well, and now I'll never need to feed it again or I'll never need to. Well, you may not need to feed it, but you're going to have to reinforce it somehow.

Right. And then any thoughts on when you give one treat versus 10 treats at a time? You know, Jackpot. Jackpot. Yeah. Talk to us about jackpots.

Yeah. I don't know if there's a ton of science behind jackpot working, but most of us will do it. Yeah. And, and my man, most of the trainers that I know, most of my positive reinforcement cronies, so to speak, it is when the dog has done something particularly spectacular. And so it's like, okay, if my criteria is puppy walks beside me, gets a treat every five steps. That's the current criteria I'm on. And. And then I think that it's going so well, I'm going to push to like 15 steps just for once and see if puppy can do it. I'm not advocating for doing that on a matter of habit, but they pull it off. Jackpot.

Right.

Wow. Or better scenario, I'm feeding once every five steps, but I'm in a low distraction and all of a sudden a deer appears on the horizon. Puppy looks at the deer but maintains position. Jackpot.

Yeah.

Right. And that's when I'm going to be like, boom, boom, boom, boom. It just keeps coming. And also my praise up. And I might even then stop the training and pull out the toy and play some tug. Yeah, those kinds of things. Like that's a multi layered, you know, reinforcing event because something spectacular just happened. They really made a choice to go and go, oh, I'm holding position. It could have been an accident. Yeah. Doesn't matter. I want to say this in the sight of that was really important. And bam. I'm hoping to make it more memorable. Yeah, right. Would be the antithesis of the trauma.

That's great. And so maybe talk a little bit about where you train. So are you doing it in a no distraction zone or are you doing it in some place where there may be people, other dogs, deers, like, when do you do? Which.

Yeah, great. So back to the a antecedent arrangement. Right. And setting up the environment. Success. If I'm just learning. Puppy is just learning. Then I'm going to be doing that in my kitchen.

Yeah.

Right up and down the hallway. An environment that puppy's really familiar with. There's no novelty at all. I'm the most interesting thing in the room. There aren't children and other dogs playing in the dining room, that kind of thing. And it's going to graduate over time. I want certain amount of fluidity in the behavior. And then I want to start to enter distractions gradually for success. I'm not going to start a puppy in my kitchen and then go, great, now I'm going to Chrissy Field and I'm going to have the same expectation I had in my kitchen. Yeah, I'm going to do both, but with many more steps in between. And every time I add something new that's going to be harder for Puppy. Maybe I'm going to go to 15 steps, maybe I'm going to add a distraction, I'm going to drop my expectation of other things. So if I'm pushing to 15 steps, I'm going to make sure that whatever level of distraction I was at prior, it's going to be lower now.

Yep. So this reminds me of two things. Kind of from a, like a gaming perspective. If you're to start like a pretty hard game game, they're not going to throw you into the deep end right away. You're going to get some training about, you know, what the gem means and what kind of the dynamics of the game you'll learn. And then they'll throw in monsters.

Right.

And so at some level, this is kind of how gameplay works, where it's progressive disclosure, you're helping people understand the rules of the game so that they can, can get better. It also reminds me of just onboarding for employees. So it's like you're not going to put somebody presenting to a large team of 20 on their second week. You're going to basically, you know, work with them to understand the culture and the norms and have them do presentations one on one or talk about their concepts one on one versus throwing them in the deep end. And so this seems very natural, but I could imagine that you'd want to speed it up if you have a dog and you want to go to Crissy Field right away.

Well, absolutely. And also because humans learn so much, they learn to generalize much, much more quickly. Right. So we, we try to make the leap and then we make it with puppy and then puppy can't do it. And instead of us examining the process and maybe we push criteria too quickly, what have you, we start to go willful, stubborn, dominant, all of these sort of mythological red herrings, if you will, as opposed to, oh, I get it, it's a flaw in my technique, if you will, or my, my ability to use positive reinforcement. Effective.

Yeah, that's a really nice insight too that basically we, when we see a behavior we don't like, we project the identity on somebody. We're like, oh, they are stubborn or lazy or angry. And it could be actually the environment that we set up for them produces some level of, of behavior and that is, you know, not them. It's the environment.

Oh, my gosh. So relatable. And how guilty am I from time to time?

Yeah, maybe I've set up the environment for my child to hit. I'm gonna. I'm gonna sleep on that one. But she's not an angry child.

Right?

Right.

This is just an expression. Max is gonna be a fantastic dancer or a gymnast or a boxer.

Yeah. Okay. How do you see dog owners mess up? Because we're kind of talking about the people role in this. So where do people fail?

So I think if I were to say, okay, what's the most common. It's exactly what we just talked about. Having a greater level of expectation than the dog is ready for at a given time. Pushing criteria much too quickly. And many trainers do this as well because we're all pretty greedy. Or doing it for too long. I want a training session, then instead of doing one minute and really sticking to that and giving the dog brace, like, I want to do it again and do it again and do it more and do it more. And those kinds of things, I think, are really the common. The most common. Pitfall. Pitfall. Yeah.

So folks just have to be patient. A little patient.

It's a little patience, and it's a little of, I'm gonna do that minute, but I'm gonna reevaluate. Right. And. And it's. Is puppy failing? Is the dog not doing what I want it to be doing? And before I place judgments and projections and all kinds of things, things like, is there a way I could help them be more successful? And so I think that. That it's. It's the thinking there and the expectation that they should learn as, you know, as quickly as we do. In some cases, by the way, they learn more quickly. And that comes back to bite you as a human. But it's really that taking a step back that can be so beneficial to that training relationship.

And then if you were to look at, like, good trainers versus great trainers, what's the difference between their behavior?

Amazing timing. Timing is so, so important. You asked about the sort of latency between behavior and payment. Really good timing. A very keen ability to respond to body language. So reading the dog really, really quickly. And very careful arrangement of those antecedents to set the dog up for success. Making sure there's no stress in the environment. They tend really great. Trainers aren't putting stress on the animal, pushing too far too fast or not ignoring body language. Signs that are clear, like, I'm in stress. I'm in stress, but you're, you know, Asking me to act anyway. Those kinds of things really set great trainers apart.

That's great. So the immediacy is so important, and probably that comes through the body language. So you're kind of actually pairing it, like, you know how and when to reward. Because you're paying attention to the. The body language.

Yeah, you're paying it. You're reading the body language, you're paying attention, but you're also adhering instead of kind of being hacking away, kind of guessing. Can I push the. You know, you're maybe adhering to. We call it push drop stick. Right. It's like, when to push my criteria. Well, you can do that kind of by gut feel, if you will, but it's not very science. Like, let's be as sciency as we can. Yeah. Right.

And so before people go out to do a. A training exercise, should they be writing down their criteria? Like, should they be or should they. Like, how would you suggest people prep for this? Because you say the word criteria a lot. Yeah. For you, it may be intuitive. You're like, my criteria is this for the civilian. What do they do?

Yeah. How about we make this more relatable, Mac?

Well, I mean, I think it. It may be relatable again to, like, prep for a business meeting. When we're prepping for our own behavior change or helping somebody else do behavior change may not be as intuitive.

Right. Absolutely. Yeah.

That we have to prep.

Yeah. And we have to. And so some people will find it really helpful to kind of go, okay, these are my main criteria steps. I also don't want to throw up barriers. Right. Because just interacting and working through a training process with your animal is so reinforcing for the dog and for you. I don't want to throw up too many barriers if I have to sit down and write a plan. Yeah, it's not going to happen. I'm just going to wait and wait and wait because I'm never going to get the perfect plan. So I don't want to make it so complicated. But at least having in mind, because we're only training little bits at a time, what are the, you know, what do I think my dog can do right now that I could be reinforcing? Great. When they get good at that, what might I go to next?

You know?

Oh, okay. So if it's five, five steps, one treat, I think I'm going to jump to seven. Great. And now. And then to 10. Cool. Now I have my plan. I'm going to do my minute of training. I'm going to stop for a second and kind of reevaluate it. And so it doesn't have to be, but some pre thinking that even takes 5 seconds, 10 seconds is going to help you.

That's nice. I like the idea of making it easier. Like plan does feel really heavy. Pre thinking think feels much lighter.

Yeah.

Yeah. In fact, one of my thought exercises was I go to dinner parties and I don't like walk in with any like, conversation topic on my mind and I just kind of like let it happen. And so for a few times I've just pre thought right before I go in, I'm like, what would be an interesting question to ask the people that I'm going to spend a couple hours with? And it turns out that when I do that, actually the, the outcome of the dinner is much more interesting because I've pre thought about things that I'd love to know. This makes good sense. Yeah. So I'll take pre thinking. Pre thinking. Okay. Can you tell me about a time that a dog was maybe particularly more challenging than your average dog or just different than an average dog and how you address those behavior questions?

Sure. So we're always chain, you know, always training the dog in front of us. And every dog's an individual. So as much as we talk about the application of all of the science and techniques and stuff, we're still looking at that individual dog and dealing with who that dog is in this moment and the individual in front of us. So I'm going to talk about, let's call the dog. It wasn't his name, but let's call him Charlie.

Charlie.

But let's talk about Charlie who, you know, had a real propensity to jump and nip when owners would come through the door. And many puppies will do this. Charlie did it with great intensity level, let's say it that way. Right. So, and, and I'm going to give you. I'll walk you through what we did and what we chose, but it wouldn't be any different for a puppy with less intensity. It's a great alternative to, okay, what do we think about? We don't want the jumping and nipping. And we do like to focus on what to do as opposed to how do we just punish the jumping and nipping. Forget about that. Let's just teach them what we want them to do instead. And Charlie's great thing was grab a toy. And we started off with a very specific rubber chicken, this toy that he really liked. And so we simply worked on Charlie gonna grab the rubber chicken and present the toy at the door. And we shut down all of the behaviors we didn't want just by focusing on what we did want. Bring us a toy. Bring us a toy. No more jumping. I don't know why he could have jumped with the toy. For him. That worked not for all dogs at woe, but brought the toy. No more nipping. Give me a to do. And immediately reinforcement interaction with toy instead of owners that, you know, are like, ugh, push away. Don't even want to walk through the door, not happy with the dog. To be like, oh, this is a great moment of engagement. And it changed all of the. All of the grieving and certainly made people a lot happier.

Nice. And so the. The lesson there is basically, you could have said we're going to focus on decreasing jumping, but instead you're like, we're going to focus on the behavior you would want Charlie to do in this case. Likes toys. Let's go with that. Let's pick a toy and focus on that. And does that have to be paired with, like, opening the door or how do you. How do you pair that idea of Charlie, go get a toy with the trigger of, you know, what would cause him to jump or be more aggressive than you would normally want?

Right. So how do we break it down to train it? You can't just start with high arousal. Owners have come home after a day of work and he's all amped up. Absolutely. So you train the. Carrying the toy independently. And of course that gets broken down into, you know, tiny little successful steps along the way. And then you're absolutely right. You start to train the. Okay, we're pairing the door handle. The sound of the door handle or wherever he starts to get amped up, typically with, oh, that's the cue. That owner's about to come home, grab the toy, and we reinforce that and kind of go from there. Does that make sense?

Yeah, definitely. So it comes back to basically reinforcing at every single step and then being gradual about it. So not jumping into Chrissy field when you should be just walking. And then really, I like the idea of even knowing it's not just opening the door. It's. It's the small little sounds of opening the door that would get. That would kind of trigger the behavior. So really breaking down kind of the context and environment and rewarding. Sorry, Reinforcing.

Right.

Based on that.

Yeah. And. And this is. I mean, this is the common theme of. Of the day and frankly of all dog training, it's not, you know, it's how do we make you successful? What can you do right now? Oh, you can pick up the toy when the door isn't charged and all of those things. Great. We reinforce that a few times. Now, can you do it if you start to hear the door jiggle? Yep. You know, and for other dogs, it might need to be when you hear the car pull up, you know, and it's just a matter of, okay, where. Where do we see it from this individual? What are they capable of at the moment? And again, sample of one. But also, that dog changes day to day. Yeah. So as humans, we like to go, but you did it yesterday. You should be exactly in the same place. Except that today the dog didn't sleep all night and they're uncomfortable or something else is in the environment. Right. And. And all of a sudden now we have to back up 10 steps. But. And we see that as a failure or training's not working. It's. It's. It's not. You know, it's like, we want to examine all those things, but also just train the dog where he's at. So today he could handle the door opening. Tomorrow I just jiggled the door, and he can't hold the toy.

Great.

So we're going to start working where the dog is at two steps before that. That's what he's capable of at this moment. And we build from there. You get there in the long run, you just get there faster by reinforcing those little successful moments.

Yeah, I really like that. That I think humans do have a tendency to read into things to say like, oh, we've moved backwards, or much be a bigger issue. It's like. Or just today the dog is doing this and we should start here and.

We will move on.

Instead of kind of trying to maybe diagnose something that isn't necessarily true or there. It's just, here's where we're at today.

Right.

Let's move forward.

How do I make the animal successful in this moment at this time?

Yep.

In alignment with my ultimate goal. And not to the exclusion of doing some of that analysis if you're not making progress. So every training session, you should see the needle moving a little bit. If I'm not going in the right direction, then I'm going to use that momentary pause to rethink it, but not dive into tons of projections. And.

And then how many. How much time would you spend? Let's just use that use case of I am trying to get my dog not to go. Nazo. When the door opens, like Is this a. Every month for 10 minutes a day sort of thing? Is this a three month process? Is this a two week process? Like, I know every dog is different. I know for you, I remember all the compliances are. And you may, your, you may have your spouse that gets in there and tries to mess things up. And so humans are going to. But like, okay, let's just do a range. So like what could people expect? Because I think the comparison here is how long would it take a human to change your behavior?

Oh my God.

And how long would it take? A lot of folks listening would be product managers. How long would it take their users to change behavior?

Yeah.

So this is just kind of a data point for folks.

Right. And history, how far is the history? If this was a young puppy with not a ton of history of rehearsing, I'm going to say, oh, we can get there easily to a really good solid behavior in. Okay, I'm going to throw it in every. Okay, we can get there in a month. I can train a 16 week old puppy to run to a dog bed if that's the alternative you've chosen, no matter who's coming through the door in a month. But this is a very plastic puppy. As a quick learner who hasn't got a huge history of being reinforced for jumping and nipping when we come. Like there's all of those variables. Right. I think what's important is it, it's going to depend, yes, on the individual, but also that it's really a doable thing. Yeah. If you, if you put the, the ducks in order. And again, keep in mind all of those other pieces that you're talking about, the spouse and getting everybody inside. How do we set it up for success? But it's, there really is very little we can't, we can't make some headway on. Cool.

Okay. One more topic would be this idea of not the puppy, but the dog that has some bad habits, if you will, and you're trying to retrain, redirect that dog. Is there anything, anything different as we think about, you know, starting versus starting with the blank canvas as your hobby's gonna be the blank canvas, which is a nice insight. Easier to change behavior if you've never done the behavior before. Start from a good spot. Most of us are acting from an area we've tried something before and so any, any different things you would approach that problem with?

Yeah, I would manage. So we talk about how do we put management in place so that the rehearsal of what we don't Want to happen doesn't happen anymore. It simply can't happen because we've changed the environment. So for this, let's use Charlie as the same example. And let's say we're not training. Present me with a toy, but go to bed. Well, while we're installing all of those other things, we need to prevent him from greeting. Well, it applies in the current example. We need to prevent him from going greeting, jumping, inviting at the same. So how do we manage it? Okay, cool. Well, we're gonna set it up for success. We're gonna set up an expan around the door so that he doesn't have the opportunity to jump. We're physically preventing that pathway. And yes, he's gonna be jumping and doing whatever on the other side. And then we're gonna put other things in place. Like, okay, we're gonna pause for a moment when he's four on the floor. We're gonna toss a few treats, and then we're going to make sure that we have a toilet. There's a bunch of things. Things. But the piece that you're asking about is we're going to manage the situation so that he doesn't rehearse that same behavior anymore. Yeah, that exact same behavior. It's gone.

Nice.

Same thing with barking and lunging on leash. It's like, okay, well, if this is what you do, you know, here, this is the. Where the behavior's been. We're not walking you right there anymore until we're at a level where you can do that differently. Yeah, it's like, I can't stop drinking Coca Cola until I stop drinking Coca Cola. Yeah, right.

I. I really like. Because that is. That is a theory of change. We're saying if you eat. Eat cookies, don't buy the cookies. You drink wine, don't buy the wine. Right. And so you're basically removing the temptation to do the thing that is inherently tempting. And why we're trying to change behavior. And we're replacing it with a behavior that we could consistently do instead of that.

Yeah, yeah. The cook's on in the house. Pick up the water. It's all you got.

Yeah, it's all I got.

You can't rehearse that behavior. So I can change. I have a hook to change it.

So, Matt, can you tell us about your practice and how people would get in touch with you?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. So we're SF Puppy Prep, and as the name suggests, we are really passionate about setting puppies up for success. Not unlike everything that we have just spoken about. Setting puppies up for success really has so much to do with appropriate socialization in a city like San Francisco or really almost any environment. My gosh, it's a big world for young, small puppies. And so we're super passionate about setting them up for success. That means also help supporting parents. Right. We're dealing with a foreign species often for the first time. Many of us have grown up. But your first own dog, wow. That's a whole different kettle of fish. And it's a whole different thing in a big, loud, busy, busy city. And so that's what we're most passionate about, getting that socialization piece. Right. So that all of the other things flow easily from there for. For puppies and. And their puppy parents. So all of those things. Things. And yeah. Find us on the web.

Great. And when should people drop their puppy off with you or give you a call? And what does it look like? Does it look like training for short bits or do you have something longer, like a day program?

Right, Absolutely. So we can help in a bunch of different ways, but the best starting point is actually before you get your puppy.

Got it.

It'd be really awesome. We can help you set up your environment, but we have a great day training program where you're dropping your puppy off. That can happen as early as a week after you get your pup, as early as eight weeks old, nine weeks old. We need some base vaccines on board. But we, we have a really safe environment so that we can help puppies before that socialization window closes. And you can do the day program, you can do private training with us. The best starting point really is that initial consultation, but that comes with our day school program if you sign up for that. So. So there are options. And there are other options beyond that as well, of course. But those are the main two that people find really most helpful.

I love it because when you're talking about all the training mechanisms, it kind of sounds like people could do this. But when I've watched you do it, it's hard to get it right. And it feels like a really important opportunity if you're starting from a blank canvas to get it right. It's like, you don't want to mess this up. You don't want to miss the opportunity for the blank canvas.

This.

That's. That's how I treat my infant too, you know, I can't mess this up on 0 to 2, 0 to 3.

Yeah. Well, we don't want to have to unwind behaviors and habits that we've created unwittingly or unintentionally. Right. And so that's really what. What it's all about. And I find that most people love the Head Start. And you're right, it's not intuitive. This is a different species. Yeah. I mean, even babies feel like a different species, perhaps to people, I don't know, but. But dogs really are. And we kind of need a help with that interpretation. But also, dogs read body language and we don't come by their body like, naturally. So, you know, that that requires some help. And we can really go a long way in terms of preventing a lot of the things that you don't want to have happen. That's really the reason, I think, that people come to us and appreciate us so much.

Yeah. You get to go on two hour walks there with your dog.

I love it with wonderful people like you.

Thank you for listening. If you like the show, go to irrationalabs.com to say hello to us or post a review on Apple or Spotify. Big thank you to the show's two Jax, Jack Buer, our writer, and Jack Steger, our genius editor. Until next time.