New Year’s Resolutions Part 2: Shaping the Future

Last week I published a blog post about how shaping can help both animals and people stick with their new year’s resolutions! If you have not read that post, click here to check it out! This new post takes the topic a step further to focus on shaping the future of pets and their owners!

Pets of 2020!

2019 is coming to an end but a new decade is just around the corner! As we enter this new section of our lives, let’s take a moment to envision how this new decade will look for our pets! Taking into account what I covered about shaping in my last post, today I am going to talk about how to shape the future with our pets in mind!

Today animals are part of our families! We love to pamper them and include them in family travels, get togethers, and adventures! Even the world of working dogs has finally begun to be included in the world of positive reinforcement! But in 2020, let’s take this to the next level! What is that next level? Positive relationships. So, what does that look like? As I mentioned in my last post, in order to shape behavior, you must know what the behavior is that you want to reach. Imagine a future where animals and people can communicate effectively. People have pets who know the behaviors they need to be safe and happy in our society. Imagine pets who not only respond to their owners but seek out the opportunity to respond to them and learn from them! Imagine if it was normal for people’s dogs to willingly and happily walk into their crate when asked, drop something they shouldn’t have when asked, and sit politely when someone walks in the front door without being asked! That is the goal! This is the goal for the future of owning pets. This description can describe the pets of 2020!

From Positive Reinforcement to Positive Relationships

Over time both individuals and communities have shaped the world of pet owners into pet families! But this was just one step. The next step in this shaping of the future is to turn reinforcement into relationship. Now before you start imagining letting your dog have his own chair at the dinner table, let me tell you that there are many differences between relationships between people and relationships between people and their pets. But the similarity that I am referring to is grounded in habits such as good communication, trust, patience, and flexibility. These are the key parts of developing relationships that last and from which both parties can benefit.

Reinforcing our pets during training is just one part of having pets. This reinforcement must become engrained in the way we interact with our pets. In my last post I mentioned that using shaping with animals has opened my eyes to seeing opportunities in the mistakes and “unwanted” behavior. This took practice and willingness, and I still have bad days. So, I’m not asking people to be perfect. But I am asking people to add on the next stage. In shaping we start with one section of the desired goal, and when we reliably succeed at that step, we add on the next slightly harder section of the behavior. The first step in shaping the future was seeing that we were wrong about how we trained animals. The second step was developing better ways to work with animals. The third step was spreading the joy and effectiveness of positive reinforcement. Now we are at the fourth step, spreading the concept of reinforcement into every interaction with our pets. Just like I am not asking people to be perfect, I am not saying that pets of the future must be perfect either. But if we apply the concept of positive reinforcement to everything we do with our pets, they will develop a drive to learn and respond to cues. This is the future that we must shape. We must shape the drive to succeed, the drive to love, the desire to obey, as well as the desire respect those around us; we must shape relationships. Through positive reinforcement and positively conditioned boundaries, that goal is achievable. We can shape the future of our pet inclusive families!

Happy New Year!

So, with this goal in mind, and being armed with positive reinforcement and this next step in shaping our future, I wish you a happy new year and a happy new decade! I send out a call to action, a request for a new year’s resolution, to commit to this next step in shaping the future!