{"id":6395,"date":"2021-12-01T14:24:34","date_gmt":"2021-12-01T13:24:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/illis.se\/en\/?p=6395"},"modified":"2024-12-30T21:48:03","modified_gmt":"2024-12-30T20:48:03","slug":"foundation-behaviours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/illis.se\/en\/foundation-behaviours\/","title":{"rendered":"The 6 foundation behaviours"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I\u2019ve recently revised my introductory animal training course<\/a>, and one thing we do in the course is discuss which behaviours to start teaching an animal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 6 foundation behaviours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not only are these the behaviours that the animal learns first, so they are the ones that he\u2019ll tend to revert back to and offer when he doesn\u2019t know what else to do, but they also teach him about this game we\u2019re playing together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The foundation behaviours teach the animal what training is all about.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That it\u2019s fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
The foundation behaviours teach the animal what training is all about. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

That the trainer is a good person to be around \u2013 interesting things happen next to that person, which builds their relationship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

That \u201cif I do this, that happens\u201d. He learns that his behaviours have outcomes, that he can make things happen in the environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He learns that he has control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh, and by the way, this is one reason why training is so important: control<\/a> improves welfare. <\/em>Training isn\u2019t about teaching the animal cute tricks (as we will see in a minute), but rather, it\u2019s a way of giving control to the animal, improving his welfare, and giving him the opportunity to be an eager and active participant in his own care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When done right, these first training experiences can have massive impact on the animal’s confidence and behaviour – not to mention the quality of his relationship to humans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, when doing that course revision, it occurred to me that it would be interesting to see which foundation behaviours other people train their animals, and whether it would be different for different species. So I polled my Facebook crowd, and my email list. And I didn\u2019t specifically ask about the first behaviours people would teach, but rather, if they had to settle for only 6 behaviours altogether \u2013 which would those be?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

74 dog people replied, and 14 horse people. So, this is a small sample, which includes both pet owners and professionals working with animals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, without further ado, here\u2019s what my crowd of people would teach their animals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dog Foundation Behaviours<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

The most common behaviour to train with dogs was a recall, a whooping 80% would include this as one of the 6 most important behaviours they would train. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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How 74 people would prioritize which foundation behaviours to teach their dogs<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The second most common behaviour was some version of \u201cimpulse control\u201d, including disengagement<\/a>, leave it (nicely reframed by Sarah Owings from focusing on the animal behaving well to the trainer teaching stimulus control in this blog post<\/a>), and look-at-that.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

People also prioritized loose leash walking, or staying next to the person without a leash, followed by some version of stationing (staying in place, on a mat, bed or in a crate).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I found it interesting that 1\/3 of people who discussed handling mentioned that they would use some type of explicit consent, such as a start button behaviour<\/a>; their animal having a way of agreeing to the handling \u2013 or not agreeing to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note that none of the behaviours that at least 5% of the dog people mentioned would be characterized as teaching \u201ctricks\u201d. Rather, they\u2019re all behaviours that somehow makes it easier for the animal to live with humans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among the behaviours chosen by less than 5% of the dog people, we found, to mention a few, on-off cues, pressure release, “all done”, trade, fetch, responding to one’s name, mands<\/a> and emergency recalls<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Horse Foundation Behaviours<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

57% of the horse people who answered the poll would teach them a targeting behaviour (touching something with some part of their body) \u2013 note that the dog people also mentioned targeting, but not to the same extent. And the most important dog behaviour, the recall, is only on the top-6 list for 20% of the horse people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
How 14 people would prioritize teaching foundation behaviours to their horses.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In other words, the list of Foundation Behaviours is going to differ between different species, because they live in completely different contexts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dogs are often with us in public spaces, sometimes off leash, and having a solid recall is vital. That\u2019s typically not an issue with a horse, for them controlling their movement is a higher priority since they\u2019re so large and potentially dangerous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, stationing can be considered a type of targeting: moving to a specific location or a specific stimulus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bowing (the lowering of the head) is considered to be calming for horses; hoof lifting is the most common type of hands-on handling that\u2019s needed. Notably, one person who trains her horses for haltering explicitly called it self-haltering (so the horse is actively pushing into the halter rather than passively accepting to have it put on). Love that tweak; gives the animal control!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The graphs show that there\u2019s more variability in the horse community about what\u2019s considered important, compared to the dog community. It might be because the sample size is much smaller and therefore less robust, but it might also be that since horses typically don\u2019t live with us humans 24-7, what we choose to teach them is more a matter of interest rather than dictated by living conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interestingly, more horse people explicitly mentioned the importance of the horse-human connection. I don\u2019t think this means that dog people don\u2019t care about their connection to the animal, rather I\u2019m guessing that most dog trainers take it for granted. The horse trainers who took this poll, and who I\u2019m assuming are all positive reinforcement trainers, have probably transitioned from training with negative reinforcement, and as crossover trainers they\u2019re more likely actively rethinking their human-animal bond. In my experience, there are more crossover trainers (or more recent crossovers) in the horse training community than the dog training community, as compared to trainers who\u2019ve trained only using positive reinforcement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More uncommon behaviours that people would train their horses were “all done”, pressure release, side passes, and sitting (!), to mention a few. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anywhoo, those were some of my reflections when looking at this small data set. What are your first thoughts when looking at the graphs?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Thank you everyone who participated in this little poll, I really appreciate your playing along, and got some great insights – for example the value of teaching an emergency recall in addition to an “ordinary” recall! I also have one mouse, one boa, five cats, one parrot, and one tortoise on the list, but I would like more data (say, at least 10 people per species) to do any meaningful analysis on those species. So, if you want to add data to my collection, please let me know below which 6 behaviours you could choose to train if you had to limit yourself \u2013 and don\u2019t forget to mention the species! I\u2019ll be sure to update this post to include an analysis of \u201cyour\u201d species once I reach that threshold of 10 votes!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I write the occasional blog posts, do silly experiments and polls such as this one, I offer free mini-courses and masterclasses, as well as massive online courses about animal behaviour, learning and welfare. Sign up below, and I\u2019ll keep you posted on any such future event!<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve recently revised my introductory animal training course, and one thing we do in the course is discuss which behaviours to start teaching an animal. The 6 foundation behaviours. Not only are these the behaviours that the animal learns first, so they are the ones that he\u2019ll tend to revert back to and offer when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/illis.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6395"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/illis.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/illis.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/illis.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/illis.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6395"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/illis.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7807,"href":"https:\/\/illis.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6395\/revisions\/7807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/illis.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/illis.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/illis.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}