Setting Goals: Not Baby Steps, Micro-Movements
Given I was just talking about my lack of patience a couple of posts ago, you might find this a little ironic. But really, it’s about those times when your patience (or stubbornness) is burning out, or you feel like it’s not working fast enough, or you realize that progress isn’t linear. It’s about succeeding despite all of that, instead of giving up.
I first heard the term “micro-movements” reading about a woman with a catastrophic spinal injury. She was told she’d never walk, control her bladder or bowel movements, or do anything from the armpits down. I don’t remember how long it took her, but eventually she could do all of that. Eventually, no one could tell she’d been a paraplegic. When asked how she did it, given she couldn’t even feel her toes and “baby steps” were beyond her, she said she did it via micro-movements. (I believe it involved a biofeedback machine, for those of you who are curious!)
There’s many times when baby steps are too much, especially for a dog showing aggression or extreme fear. I have this video of harnessing a dog named Champion. Champion was so scared that I couldn’t even touch him, much less get a harness on him! So I didn’t focus on touching; that would be a baby step. I just focused on entering his x-pen; a micro-movement.
I shifted the camera angle to get a better look at his body language:
I don’t know if I use the words “micro-movement” in these videos, but I’m definitely DOING it. If I had been aiming for “baby steps,” I’d have been trying to get into his pen, show him the harness, give him treats through it, and see if I could put it over his head. Those are pretty small steps, but often — even when the dog doesn’t have fear issues — those steps are STILL too big.
Another, written example:
I wanted to teach Doc to go jump up on his favorite chair and stay there when I told him to, so that I could answer the door, work with a dog, and more without having him in the way. Then I started “shaping” the behavior: working by baby steps and micro-movements.
The first baby step: I said, “Go to your chair!” and tossed a treat in it. He ran over and, without putting a single paw in his chair, he ate the treat and came running back. Not remotely what I wanted, but I rewarded him for it anyway.
The second micro-movement: I said, “Go to your chair!” and pretended to throw a treat. He ran over to get it, it wasn’t there, and before I could do anything he ran back to me. I tried to stand close enough to be able to throw a treat in the chair before he came running back to me, but it wasn’t uncommon for me to fail. That’s okay! Even with those failures he started to realize that he should keep sniffing, a treat was coming.
The third baby step: when he got to the point where he’d stay there, sniffing, I said, “Go to your chair!” He ran over and started sniffing, and I walked over, encouraged him to jump the rest of the way up, and gave him a treat. If he didn’t stay there sniffing, I didn’t give him a treat. He figured out quick to run over and jump into the chair, at which point…
The fourth micro-movement: I tossed the treat, instead of walking over and giving it to him. If he jumped out of the chair, I didn’t toss the treat.
At this point it became a matter of waiting longer and longer before tossing the treat. As long as he could wait, then telling him to go back to his chair and tossing it when he got there.
Next micro-movement? Doing it from five feet to the right. Then five feet to the left. Then from ten feet farther away.
The next baby step? Doing it from another room.
My ultimate goal was to get him to go run and jump into his chair and stay there when I said, “Go to your chair!” But I didn’t start with that; I started with something much smaller, just getting the behaviors a smidgen closer to what I really wanted every time. Because I didn’t practice every day, sometimes not even every week, and rarely more than three or four times in a row, it took months.
This is part of the trick of dog training: I only ever asked for a tiny thing that we could do. I didn’t ask for the whole thing. I made the goal a micro-movement, and it was success when we did it. On days when it had been too long or he hadn’t slept well or whatever, and he couldn’t do what he could do last time, then the micro-movement was to improve from wherever we were at. Not even to get to where we’d been; just to improve on what was happening that moment. That’s it!
When training feels impossible, like your dog will NEVER stop barking out the window at passersby, don’t make that the goal. Make the goal that they bark less. Or that they come to you when they stop. Or that they glance at you when they stop. Make it attainable, so you don’t burn out.
(Wondering what happened with Champion? There’s a third video for this specific harnessing issue, and in the months since I saw him he’s let go of most of his fears! Go, Champion!)
