Is your dog hard to motivate?

Just got home from agility class with Kili and it got me thinking about this. Is your dog easy or hard to motivate?

I'm going to show you guys a video that epitomizes how things are with myself and Kili. She is not HARD to motivate... she is EXHAUSTING to motivate. It is not that she is usually difficult to get excited and hot. It's that the energy expenditure required from me to do so means that I am out of breath before we run. Which kind of sucks.

Motivating Kili goes something like this. I release her from her crate and I take off as fast as I can, screaming and hooting and hollering, waving a toy and generally acting like a dumbass. Inevitably she will catch me at some point and then commences the game of give and take. I play keep away with the toy, let her have it, try to steal it back, and so on. Then ask her to let me have it and we will run our sequence. She completes the sequence well and is rewarded with more tug from a very out of breath and very tired momma.

So in this video... the first clip is me trying to be more energy conscious for me and totally failing to really get her engaged which leads to a pretty **** poor performance where she decides it's okay to just trot along through the course. Next go around I bring out the tug toy and run myself into the ground. This causes the new problem that she at first decides we are still playing keep away and wants to run to my side where she last saw the toy... which is the wrong side for the course. Go back to the start and stuff the toy in my pocket to remind her we're playing a different game now. Notice that if I slip even a little, I see an immediate change. We broke the sequence in half the second time around for her. When I put her back into the tunnel for the second half I am standing mostly upright and stationary when she comes out of the tunnel and she instantly slows down and disengages. So back we go to try it again. This time when she comes out of that tunnel I am crouched down with my arms poised like I'm about to take off... and the difference is noticeable. If I'm not giving her 110% she just figures it's not worth her while I guess. lol

[YOUTUBE]ogWnyz0ZRw8[/YOUTUBE]

I seriously wish I could motivate her and expend less energy. What are your dogs like?

Merlin is not hard to motivate, Merlin is hard to FOCUS. He gets hyped with so much as a "let's go!" but is easily distracted. It's getting better with age surely.. but still.
Training sessions with him have to be short, and semi-frequent. When I wish I could just set aside a few hours for it...but that's not how he learns.

Merlin loves agility, but instead of the problem being his motivation, it's keeping his HEAD ON while he is too busy having fun. When Merlins brain says "YAY TUNNEL TIME!" it's really hard to reel him in...

That was a neat video to watch Krissy, I'm really happy you joined Chaz.

Traveler and Didgie are super easy to motivate. Both love food, praise/excitement and toys. Overstimulation and impulse control is the biggest issue we run into while using those. Dialing back the happy, especially with Traveler.

But I'm lucky, it's very easy to find things to reward and motivate with.

My dogs are all very easy to motivate. Keeva can be the trickiest but she's still fairly easy to turn on and getting better and better with age - it's been a long time since she checked out on me. Mackenzy is a ridiculous chow hound and also loves tennis balls, very easy to work with.

Blossom... LOL. If there's such a thing as too motivated, that's her. I spend most of my time managing her drive to keep it at a usable level instead of "OMFG TOOOOOOOYS AAAAHHHHHHH TELL ME WHAT TO DO" *frantic flailing*

But I have tons of respect for people who work successfully with dogs that are more difficult to motivate and I enjoy working with those dogs on a sometimes basis in classes and privates. I have group class clients with Shiba Inus and I really love working with them and figuring out what makes them tick. I think that kind of dog teaches you a LOT.

FWIW I think it looks like you're doing a great job with Kili! I have no greyhound experience but I love that you're willing to meet her on her terms and do what she enjoys to engage her. It took me a while to learn that lesson with Keeva.

I can tell you're working your butt off! Can you shape her activating you? Meaning, does she like food and can you c/t for pestering you? And c/t to add value to the obstacles?

My dogs are the opposite but I have worked with dogs like that.

Arnold agility, this may at least help a bit. lol It's a spoof but really, he was hard to motivate so I sympathize.

It's tough. Jackson is super easy to motivate most of the time. More so with food than toys.

But my dads Dachshund mix Buddy is soooo hard to get motivated with anything. And then when you finally do, the energy only lasts in extremely small spurts. It's very frustrating to me. He won't even follow a lure when you have food in your hand and it makes me want to smash my head in. :doh:

Maisy can be. Although since we've been skijoring more and I've started shaping more, she's getting easier.

The boys are easy to motivate but can be hard to focus. Pip especially wants to OFFER ALL THE THINGS and it's hilarious and adorable but sometimes we don't actually get much done.

Meg is incredibly difficult. I used to joke that I should just bring pom-poms on course with me, because she NEEDED the constant cheerleading. And like with with Kili, any time I didn't really bring my a-game acting skills out...she could tell. And I'd get lackluster performance. You do an amazing job with Kili, in my opinion. I will offer the (conditional) ray of hope that Meg got easier and easier as time went on. She's only one dog, so I'm not sure that always holds true, but it did for us. I still can't run her if I'm really down and not into it (and I don't even try), but she cuts me a little more slack these days and doesn't require *quite* so much hip-hip-hooray from me.

Gusto is much easier, although not entirely easy. The motivation part isn't too hard. A squeaky toy or tug generally has him relatively ready for action. But I think for a long time I expected too much from that, and created a cycle of stress where I wanted more and more "go" for less and less payment. I now cheer him on nearly as much as I do Meg, and we have parties and I throw my hands up and tell him he's a genius. And he is so, so much happier.

I went to one agility seminar that was a freaking nightmare for me. The trainer insisted that I not play with/amp up Gusto at all, because "it is his job to get himself to the startline ready to go" (are you kidding me?!). Gusto hated it, I hated it, and if I'd been training Meg, I would have up and left the seminar. I love seeing people like you out training their dogs - as exhausting as I know it is, it makes ME more excited to play and work my own dog the same way.

Mira is...not difficult to motivate haha. She pretty much radiates motivation. Food, toys, just the opportunity to Do Work.

As Fran said, Kim is not difficult to motivate but she can be difficult to focus, though we've figured that out over the years and she does quite well now.

Webster was pretty tough to motivate for a long time. It took a lot of careful drive building and channeling with him. He's interesting in that me getting pumped up and running around and waving toys and such actually demotivates him and slows him down. In an environment like agility, he needs to clearly understand the rules and rewards, get precise but not overwhelming feedback that he is doing great (no cheering, just an enthusiastic "good!" and moving on immediately). Once he figured that out, I started intentionally, carefully making him mad...razzing him in the weaves a bit, testing his startline by faking him out...stuff he knew so that he recognized that I was trying to "trick" him and felt like he was on to me and outsmarting me which gave him more confidence that he was awesome and correct and brilliant despite my best efforts, and that's when his speed really picked up. But he needed that solid core understanding first, so that he could succeed.

Journey IS easy to motivate. But it can be harder to keep that motivation and focus up. She hates too much repetition, and if I am not being exciting enough, she either A) thinks she's doing it wrong and gets a bit discouraged (doesn't shut down, but finds other things to do or more exciting people to play with) or B) feels that if I'm not running around like a fool, then maybe it's not totally worth while. I don't really notice in every day life, but when we're at Flyball or Agility practice, I need to stop feeling self conscious and just party and have fun with her, because that's how she learns best. But all in all, she's easy to motivate. She just doesn't continue to work well for a quiet, boring handler. She needs to feel like we're both having the best time ever together.

Dance is easy to motivate if there is food involved. If there's no food, she will work for fetch, but tends to do things in slow motion because she's thinking too much about the toy. But as long as there is food she'll doing pretty much anything.

Keira is very difficult to motivate. If you get really happy and excited, she thinks there's something wrong with you and doesn't care. If you're quiet, you're not fun at all. She doesn't really play so has no desire to work for toys. And she is food motivated, but she doesn't really focus on what she's learning in the process for some reason. She'll be rewarded constantly and still at the end she's like "Oh, yay, hotdogs! Yum. What are we doing?" and didn't learn a single thing. Some days are better than others. I guess it kind of depends on her mood lol. She is super smart, but I think just never learned how to think when training as a puppy, so that's what makes her difficult.

Ripley is pretty easy to motivate. He's just a mushy boy who wants to do anything for his people, be it for food, play or praise. He doesn't learn as quickly as the fuzzy two, but he still learns relatively quickly and has fun.

Is there food? Is there a squeaker? Am I talking excitedly? Is there a kitty?

Basically, yes.

This is exactly what I was trying to convey. Kili is not DIFFICULT to motivate but you have to spend the whole time being the most exciting person ever. If I try to bring it down a notch in the intensity I am no longer the most exciting person doing the most interesting thing.

Honestly she was the same as a puppy when we did rally. People always say not to talk to your dog a lot other than telling them what to do. But with Kili I babble to her through the whole course otherwise she finds more interesting thins to attach her attention to.

Part of it might be age. Sighthounds don't mature mentally until well after 2. So hopefully focus will improve then!

I'm totally spoiled with Cohen. She's easy to motivate, never quits, never shuts down and never leaves during work. She's been like that since she was a puppy, and I know how lucky I've been. Mostly she'll work for food, but more and more she's been interested in play. And best of all, she works for the joy of work. Relief of boredom is a powerful motivator.

Mega is pretty easy to work with assuming I have food. If the environment is distracting I may lose her for a second or two, but she comes back pretty readily. She's not exactly competition-ready, but she works well enough. Retention isn't spectacular with her, but she's always willing to try for a morsel.

Summer is very very easy however she doesn't have the stamina that she used to so she'll slow down if we work really hard for an hour or so. But in agility Summer is the kind of dog you can just repeat and repeat and she'll continue flying along. Right out of the box without much effort, she's raring to go. I love that abut her. But in class yesterday I am figuring out that if I put in more effort we have less scatterbrained-ness. Summer can be a little bit compulsive and just do and not think.

Mia is very easy some days and other days just not. She's very finicky. It depends on how many stressors are going on at the time and if she's flat she's VERY flat. I find myself frustrated with her sometimes then that feeds into each other.

In low stress environments, she just rocks. Shaping anything, she is all over that and almost over the top.

Watson can go from asleep to high as a kite in seconds. It's not hard to get him going and he's very food motivated. Less so toy motivated, but with a better trainer who built it up, he would be pretty toy motivated. The hardest part is keeping him interested in me vs the environment. He's so excited about everything in the world and is willing to give me a chance, but if I ask him to do the same thing too many times in a row he's going to be looking for something else to do. For him I think it's more about being challenged than my attitude. I can be calm and quiet (and I often am) and he'll be totally into it if he finds it interesting. Then I can cheerlead like crazy but if he thinks I want him to do the same thing for a third time when there are other dogs around, see ya. At home with no distractions he's very easy to keep working. He's definitely not hard to motivate though. He wants to be active and do something, anything, and if I'm providing an outlet for that he's generally going to be engaged with me.

omg this was totally hilarious LOL.

Juno is super easy to motivate as I would imagine just about every boxer is. She's always willing to do anything, and puts 110% into it. She's so peppy. Sometimes I wish she would tone it down lol. There's nothing lackadaisical about her.

I definitely understand what you're saying but I feel like I worded my post a little wrong as it kind of comes across like Journ gives up, when she doesn't really. I guess what I meant by what I said was not really that she'll leave or give up, but she becomes a little half hearted about things if I am not exciting. She lives to have fun, so if I'm not being super fun, she just doesn't really see the point lol. She'll do it, but you can tell her whole being isn't into it. At home it doesn't really matter. I try to be happy and upbeat anyway because it's more fun for her, but when we're training Flyball or Agility and all of her favourite people are around, if I don't stay exciting she thinks about heading off to visit her favourite people friends who are ALWAYS super exciting to her haha. But at heart she loves to work and learn stuff and is not lacking drive or motivation at all. But more importantly she loves working with her person, so of course if I am not giving it my all, then she doesn't necessarily feel she should either. And I can't really blame her for that. I don't like working with boring people either lol.

And then there are other times where she is so up that I have to bring her down a notch in order to get her to focus and think. Otherwise she's just like "yay! party! BARKBARKBARK!" and that's frustrating. Thankfully she's not like that 98% of the time.

Millie is incredibly easy to motivate. She doesn't have much toy drive at all, but for treats or even just a "good girl!" she'll work her heart out. She does have a tendency to lose confidence, though, and if she feels she's not doing things right she'll completely shut down.

Fable is pretty easy to motivate. She loves food, she loves playing, and she loves praise. She's very easily distracted, though, and too much repetition bores her.
Repetition for Millie is a good thing. It means she already understands what I'm asking her and she takes great joy in being able to show me things she knows. Learning new things is where she gets discouraged.