The Allure of Finished Behavior

In my last post, I talked about a furniture project I’m working on. 

I shared about the shame I feel around the projects in my house. And I shared about how the stories that have shame at their core aren’t true or helpful. My strategy for overcoming the overwhelm around this particular project was to do one little thing almost every day, like finding the painter’s tape. 

My “just one little thing” strategy is working. It’s working slowly, but it’s working. 

It never fails. When I point my phone to take a photo, all available dogs jump in front. Miles and Tycho were available this time. Tycho is sitting on the mirror. Thank goodness the paint is dry.

I’ve accomplished a lot in two weeks! I asked for help moving the drawers downstairs where there’s more room. I mixed the paint. I put one coat of paint on the drawers and the mirror supports. And, I’m halfway finished with taping the mirror itself. 

I started thinking about how good it will feel when this project is finished. And then I thought, “Maybe we will get a puppy someday and they will chew on the legs just like Thelma did.” 

That random thought horrified me. I pushed it out of my mind as fast as I could. 

Later, I was sifting through my backlog of email and I came across a marketing promo from a paint company. I can’t remember which company it was, and I’ve sadly since deleted the email. (I’m on a LOT of paint company mailing lists. You should see my Pinterest feed. All paint, all color, all eye candy, all the time.) Anyway, this email read, “Your paint is made for wear and tear.” Let me tell you what, that one little sentence felt like a revelation and I’ll tell you why. 

When I’m teaching online dog training classes, I almost always have a dog with me to help demo the behaviors I’m teaching. If I plan ahead, or am merely lucky, the dog that I demo with will have already had some training on the behavior. And that’s when I get to say, “Here, I’ll show you the finished behavior and then I’ll show you how to get there.” And my dog will usually demo a brilliant or adorable behavior, sometimes even on a verbal cue only. It looks flashy and it feels finished. 

But, behaviors are never really finished. They are susceptible to changes in environment, to emotional and physical changes in the animal, to handler ambiguities in signaling and cuing. Behaviors can also change due to fluctuations in reinforcement, whether it be changes in reinforcement schedules, or in the value, type, or magnitude of reinforcement on offer. The strength or weakness of a behavior can be measured by how frequently the behavior is performed, the latency between the cue and the behavior, and whether the behavior can be performed in a high distraction environment. Motivation to perform behavior waxes and wanes based on factors such as satiation, time of day, and the particulars of surrounding stimuli. 

And yet, we tend to think of our dogs’ knowledge as static, as something to be acquired. As if learning happens and then it’s complete. Finished.  

Think about something you learned in the past, maybe quite some time ago. Maybe you learned to calculate the unknown angle of a triangle in geometry class. Or maybe you learned how to play a musical instrument or drive a tractor. Could you still do the task today? Could you do it well? Could you do it without any Googling or relearning? 

The expectation that our dogs’ behavior is “finished” is just as unreasonable as holding that expectation for our own knowledge and behavior. I got an A in geometry in the 10th grade, but I couldn’t do a geometry problem now if my life depended on it. 

Nevertheless, the idea of finished trained behaviors is alluring. It motivates us to keep putting our energy into training, to pursue titles, and seek out moments of performative perfection. It’s dreamy to think that behavior could be entirely reliable, that we could get to an ephemeral place where the pressures of the learning process do not apply. But, the reality of behavior is quite the opposite. 

Behavior is made for wear and tear.

Behavior is functional, it exists to be used, and that includes trained behaviors.

Well-worn behaviors are practiced frequently and reinforced frequently. Their learning histories are riddled with mistakes and adjustments and flourishes. Trained behaviors sometimes need touch-ups, repairs, and fresh coats of paint. And when we feel like it’s finished, there’s life, ready to introduce a new variable.

The allure of “finished” may still be there, but the plasticity of the wear and tear is just as fascinating and important. 

XO,

Joan and all the dogs