[00:00:00] Guess what? You lured your dog today.
[00:00:04] So did I. Probably a few dozen times, if we're counting. And I know that for some people, that statement lands like an accusation. And that's exactly what I want to talk about today.
[00:00:29] Okay, so luring.
[00:00:31] Luring has turned into kind of a dirty word in some corners of dog training.
[00:00:36] And I want to be really clear about what it actually means, because I think the word gets used a lot, a lot more than it gets defined.
[00:00:44] Luring is when you use something your dog wants, like a piece of food, a toy, your hand, your body, your motion as an antecedent, something that happens before the behavior to produce the movement that you're after.
[00:00:59] And that's basically it. That's basically the whole definition. It happens before, and it causes the movement.
[00:01:05] Now hold it in your head and think about what you actually did on the last agility sequence or course that you ran with your dog. You rotated your shoulders and your dog turned. You decelerated, and your dog slowed down and turned. You put your arm out, and your dog came to your hand. You ran a line, and your dog took the obstacles on that line because your motion, your body, told your dog where to go.
[00:01:34] That is luring, start to finish, every step of it. A front cross is a lure. A rear cross is a lure.
[00:01:43] You are luring at speed in a sequence on dirt, turf, grass, or whatever, with a dog who's hopefully absolutely thrilled about it. In agility, we never fade ourselves out. As a lure, your body is not a temporary crutch on the way to something better. Your body is the cue system.
[00:02:07] You might layer fancy verbal discrimination skills on top of that cue system, but your physical cues are the foundation.
[00:02:15] You will still be using your body as a lure at nationals. You will still be using your body as a lure on the world championship floor. Nobody has ever walked up to the line and gone, okay, but can he do it? If I stand completely still, that's not a thing. That's never been a thing. Maybe someday. But honestly, if it ever becomes a thing, I know I personally will probably lose interest in the sport because my physical involvement is part of the joy of dog agility, the allure of dog agility, and the challenge of the sport.
[00:02:45] So when somebody tells you that luring is a shortcut and that it creates a dog who can't work without the prompt.
[00:02:51] In our sport, the prompt never goes away. That's not a flaw that we're just putting up with. That's the game. That's the whole sport. The real challenge Tends to be to figure out how to get our dogs to prioritize verbals over our physical cues when 95% of the time the physical cues are enough. And that other 5% when we need the verbals, our physical cues are usually at odds with what we want the dog to do. And the verbal is the key in those cases.
[00:03:18] But you, your body, you as a lure that just never fades away.
[00:03:24] And if it does and you're no longer present with your dog in body on the same plane of existence together, well, where's the joy in that? Now, I want to be fair here because there are some valid concerns underneath the worry about luring, and I don't want to minimize those. But those concern concerns don't mean luring bad. Never lure.
[00:03:43] So lure dependence can be a real thing. If you teach a two on, two off with a cookie in your hand, and that cookie never leaves your hand, you have a dog who does a two on, two off when there's a cookie in your hand, and that's a genuine training failure or limitation at least.
[00:04:00] So the worry about luring isn't made up. But the fix isn't never lure.
[00:04:06] The fix is being deliberate about it, not labeling it as evil or bad, and something to be avoided altogether, removing yourself further and further from your physical involvement with your dog.
[00:04:18] And here's what I didn't have for years that would have made all of this easier for me that I have now. And it's something that I'm passionately evangelical about. And that is a solid reinforcement structure with my dogs that involves multiple verbal reward markers.
[00:04:35] I teach it in my online course, no games, which you can
[email protected] but I'm not going to go too far down that particular rabbit hole in this episode. So think about what that cookie in your hand is actually doing. It's doing multiple jobs at the same time. It's guiding your dog. That's the luring part. But it's also the thing telling your dog they got it right. The food in that case is the information, which means your dog has to see it to know anything at all. And that's why the cookie can't leave your hand. Not because luring is bad, because your hand is carrying the whole conversation by itself.
[00:05:11] And a verbal marker system can split those multiple jobs apart.
[00:05:16] Once your dog understands a marker, once a word or a sound means, yes, that the thing you just did, the actual food reinforcement doesn't have to be visible anymore. The reinforcement arrives in your dog's Ear first, because the moment they hear that well conditioned verbal reward marker, the reinforcement event has begun. And then the food can come from your pocket or from the ground or from a toy you throw 20ft the other way. It can come several seconds later, a couple seconds or more, which means your hand is then free to just guide.
[00:05:55] Once your hand is only guiding, you can start by making the movements smaller, and then you can start taking the movements away entirely. And your dog doesn't lose anything because the information was not in your hand to begin with.
[00:06:08] So here's kind of a brief example of what being deliberate might actually look like. One, condition your verbal reward marker on its own, first, away from whatever it is you're lowering, because that's its own skill.
[00:06:21] Two, lure a few reps, three to five, not 50, and then get the food out of your hand.
[00:06:30] Three, keep the motion, lose the food.
[00:06:33] Same hand, same path, just the hand is empty.
[00:06:38] Mark the moment your dog gets it right with your verbal marker and pay from your pocket and make the motion smaller and then smaller again.
[00:06:47] Four, get the cue on early, before the prompt is gone, so the word starts predicting the movement instead of the hand being the only thing that means anything. So that's, that's just an example of how you might fade a lure. The answer's not never lure. It's know what's a prompt, what's a cue, and know which one you want your dog to answer to. But having said all that, your body is still a lure on the agility course. And why would you want to fade it instead? In my mind, you want to refine it, get better at knowing your body, at what it does and how it moves, at what you're telegraphing to your dog, what you're communicating to your dog. Not what you intended to communicate, but how what you did is interpreted by your dog and what their response is.
[00:07:40] Now, of course, you can fiddle with their natural responses to your physical handling, your lures to refine things. And that's one of the wonderful things about the sport that is just endlessly interesting to me. How can I know myself better? How can I know my body better so that I can better use my body as an instrument of communication to and with my dog? Okay, so hopefully you can tell that I have strong feelings about all this. Which brings me to the thing I actually wanted to say. I get a little itchy when an entire category of technique gets ruled out on principle in every context, for every dog forever.
[00:08:18] Because at that point, that's not a training principle anymore. It's a purity rule. And my problem with purity rules is that somebody always pays for them, and it's usually not the person making the rules. I keep running into people who got a real result doing something completely reasonable, and then they felt terrible about it afterwards, because somewhere along the line, they've been told that people who do that thing, whether it's luring or using a certain kind of training tool or a method, those people are just lazy or unkind or they didn't try hard enough or long enough.
[00:08:54] And meanwhile, the dog who needed the help is still stuck, and the handler is learning to distrust their own eyes. The handler, maybe this is you, is wrapped up in shaming themselves preemptively before whoever instilled that belief in them initially even has a chance to do the same thing.
[00:09:13] That person or that group of people or that instructor might not even be around anymore to name shame or blame. And they don't have to be, because we humans are so good at carrying around those beliefs to berate and shame ourselves with. It's. It's just. It's wild.
[00:09:32] And I've been that person. I've spent plenty of time being quietly embarrassed about things that worked because they went against the popular narrative of the day.
[00:09:41] So, just like in the last episode, I have a question for you. And just like in the last episode, because I really don't want to just be talking into the void, I really am curious to know your answer.
[00:09:51] What's something. This is the question. What's something you were told not to do that you did anyways, and it worked. Send it to me. Email me at heretohelpaizipeel.com, long or short, doesn't matter. I'm not going to judge any of it. And honestly, I think some of your answers are going to be pretty good. And if you got all the way to the end of this episode, do me a favor and subscribe or follow or whatever your podcast app calls it. Leave a rating if you're feeling generous. I'm not asking for the sake of any algorithm or anything, but I'm asking because last time around, I really had no idea whether anybody was out there, and I talked myself into believing that nobody was.
[00:10:32] And then I let the podcast die, and I'd rather not do that again. All right, guys, go forth and lure your dog.
[00:10:41] You were gonna do it anyway. You've done it before, and you didn't die, and neither did your dog. And it's gonna be okay. I, Sam.
