Shaping

Is it possible to cope with a stubborn animal?

We have all, at one time or another, been confronted with an animal that is more difficult than others. A dog that doesn’t learn anything, that really causes us problems and makes us want to give up, throw in the towel or resort to more… coercive methods. An animal that we would be quick to describe as stubborn, narrow-minded, stupid and a whole host of other words that make us feel better in the moment, but which neither help us find a solution nor enable us to fundamentally understand the reasons behind the animal’s behaviour.

So, let’s take a closer look at this issue. What exactly happens in this type of situation?

Several things to consider:
– The animal’s emotions, as I have said many times before: emotions that are too strong inhibit learning abilities.
– Communication and clarity of information conveyed from humans to animals.
– The human’s ability to quickly adapt the protocol for learning with this animal.

And today, we are going to focus specifically on this last point.

✨ Shaping ✨

Shaping is the act of building a ‘big’ (complex) behaviour by implementing lots of small, progressive sub-steps. To put it simply, we visualise our ultimate goal:

“I would like my dog to know how to get into his transport cage on his own,” for example, and we will break down this big final goal into lots of smaller steps to help the animal better understand and learn what is expected of him.

Basically, shaping is a technique for reinforcing a final behaviour through successive approximations.

And it works, hell yeah!

In what contexts is it used?

✅ Behavioural modification: changing problematic behaviour into behaviour that is acceptable to everyone
✅ Cooperative care: teaching animals to take an active role in their own care or to do it themselves!
✅ High-level enrichment implementation: did you think your pet ‘doesn’t like this or that toy’? That’s because it was poorly implemented!
✅ Rehabilitation & recovery: teaching our parrots to fly again, sports training, motor rehabilitation, etc.
✅ Performing tricks: simply performing tricks is already contributing to your pet’s well-being, an activity that strengthens your bond and contributes to your pet’s sense of success and accomplishment.

As you can see, shaping is everywhere, all the time, and we can think about implementing it in each of our goals, whether they are rehabilitative, educational or related to well-being!

The benefits?

• No frustration for the animal: we go from victory to victory!
• No giving up or discouragement
• No getting angry or resorting to violence to teach the animal something.

And to talk about this in a very concrete way, I’m going to tell you my own story, the difficulties I faced and how I managed to overcome them (and where I am today)!

Marion and her macaws

I was terrible at English, but really terrible, nada.

Basically, I learned English just so I could study behaviourism. But I left school with an average grade of 6 in English (boo, you dunce!).

Well, yes, and I dare say it.
On the other hand, German is perfect, I’m practically bilingual (and if you’re looking for logic, know that my brain doesn’t have any).

At school, I was bombarded with hurtful comments: ‘She’s useless anyway…’ ‘She’ll never amount to anything.’ And then it turned out to be true, so it was factually accurate.

I have to admit that I had a real mental block when it came to English, and it wasn’t a question of ability (as is always the case when it comes to learning… Even with our children, isn’t it? – big thing I learned in the process -), but rather a mental impossibility.

I believed I was worthless. Therefore, I was worthless. A hopeless case, in other words. This is the whole issue with labels and constraints, and one of the adverse effects I have discussed on numerous occasions.

And then, when you say ‘hopeless case,’ you mean that the people around you have given up on you. But above all, you have given up on yourself.

(And I should point out that, for me at least, it was a completely unconscious process).

→ It’s a vicious circle: you give up, so you don’t succeed, so you’re useless, and that only confirms that you were right (and it also proves the others right).

Except that the thing is: I wasn’t useless.

I was simply failing this subject for many different reasons (too numerous to list). And as the years went by and I fell further and further behind, it became a mountain to climb that seemed simply impossible to overcome.

What happens in cases like this? You simply give up. At a certain point, I had long since thrown in the towel.

At this stage, iron will alone is not enough (especially when your only reward is a number on a piece of paper, which is clearly not motivating enough for me!).

So, what did I do to break out of this vicious circle?

How did I manage to be able to do training courses abroad, have an English mentor, read pages and pages of scientific studies without batting an eyelid, read dozens of books in English, but above all, overcome my fear of speaking in front of a native speaker and an audience?

I’ll be honest: there is no magic cure or sudden revelation.
It’s a process that took several years, which I began unconsciously on a microscopic level and then consciously nurtured and completed (and am still working on, as there’s still work to be done!).

What if I told you that, looking back and with everything I’ve learned, I realised that I had ‘self-shaped’ myself (I love Anglicisms)? What if I told you that this unconscious process can be done perfectly consciously and in just a few minutes?

To save time… Extremely valuable time?

This is where our adventure begins!

Learning to cuddle with a parrot

STEP 1 : Setting the stage

Prepare the scene, manage the background, in short, prepare the ground to allow the behaviour to emerge.

Because my behaviour of ‘learning English’ was clearly not going to appear out of thin air, and because I would not voluntarily put myself in that situation (no, no, no), I was rather in the opposite situation, where I was employing real avoidance strategies.

For me, this stage looked like this: playing international online games.

STEP 2 : Motivating operations

I (unintentionally) associated English with a positive and empowering activity. In other words, in order to practise this ‘positive’ activity, I needed some basic English skills. As a result, this new way of approaching the language began to slightly change my perception of the practice.

Is that enough to explain why I learned it voluntarily and consciously? Clearly not, that alone would never have been enough! My history with English was particularly negative, so I had a real emotional aversion to it. Just creating a positive association at that stage would not have been enough.
In practical terms, at this stage, I still don’t understand much. However, something absolutely fundamental is happening: I am no longer avoiding English, and I am beginning to change my perception of the language.

STEP 3 : Management

Do not expose yourself outside of pleasant sessions.
In other words, not being confronted with a difficult situation in relation to English, which would otherwise have caused all my inhibitions to resurface.

Does this ring a bell? (Yes, we talk about this kind of thing in the webinars on responsiveness and separation anxiety available here!)

For me, having left the school system, it was much easier because I was no longer forced to be exposed to this (oh, and management can also mean removing toxic people who constantly put us down from our lives! In my case, leaving the ‘school’ environment allowed me to avoid this type of judgement).

I had pets, and I became interested in animal behaviour. There was nothing – or almost nothing – that was sufficiently advanced in France. So I looked elsewhere, and at first, with a great deal of apprehension.

Books, studies, training courses? Okay, but that’s a lot to take on. Maybe it’s not for me after all…

So, at this stage, in concrete terms:

• I have my environment
• I created motivation
• I changed my perception

All that remains is to begin the learning process.

And here, at this precise stage, there is a big step that you really need to be careful about. Just getting your head above water doesn’t mean you’re out of the water yet, you see. If you try to go too fast, you risk messing up, not understanding anything and getting discouraged.
#RetourALaCaseDépart

Except that now I had extra motivation and a little less apprehension about practising the language thanks to my previous experiences with young children.

So… SHAPING TIME BABY

And here are my steps, which, in my opinion, take more or less time depending on the person, their needs, their starting point, their history, their perception, their time, and a host of other variables that I don’t have time to list here:

1/ Watch series in Vostfr
2/ Read comic books in English
3/ Buy special edition novels for learning English (with complex words translated in the margins).
4/ Take an English course that does not require oral expression
5/ Watch webinars/videos in Vosteng
6/ Books in English with my dictionary next to them
7/ Take other English courses that require extensive written expression.
8/ Start tentatively expressing myself in written English with English speakers (sending emails, managing suppliers, etc.)
9/ Start reading technical and specialised books in English
10/ Do mentoring in English (speaking in a safe place)
11/ Read scientific studies in English
etc. etc. and many others that I’m forgetting here.

And I continue to set milestones for myself today.

Obviously, these are just my own steps. Given my environmental and technical constraints, we could easily have added a correspondent to the list of steps, but that was not something I could technically do. Everyone has their own steps tailored to their needs, BUT ALSO to what is possible for them.

✅ My own success factors:

CONTINUOUS MANAGEMENT: It should be noted that, in addition to this, I had very little exposure to English with French speakers (management), which was absolutely crucial to my own success.

A MEETING: There is a phrase that was uttered by someone (I don’t remember who, but I am deeply grateful to that person) that truly changed EVERYTHING for me and helped give me courage because it changed my perspective: ‘After all, the purpose of languages is to make yourself understood.’

Yes. YES! The purpose of a language is to make yourself understood.

Not being perfect.

Don’t make mistakes.

And I latched onto this idea because it changed everything: from schoolwork that had to be perfect or else, we suddenly moved on to: the goal is to communicate with other people, other cultures.

LINGUISTIC INTEREST: As I learned, I also watched videos on linguistics, which drastically changed my perception of languages and left me amazed by their richness and diversity. I used to hate languages. Today, I love them all.

What’s the point of all this?

Learning… Must always depend on the learner. Not everyone has the same needs, the same logic, or the same understanding. Not everyone starts at the same level. This notion of learning at the learner’s pace is precisely what shaping is all about.

I could have… Never done it and stayed there.

Going at the learner’s pace means avoiding getting stuck at one stage forever, avoiding discouragement, giving up and frustration.

So is it possible to succeed even with a hopeless case? Honestly? Yes.
It is impossible that ‘it doesn’t work, I’ve already tried everything with him’.

No, there must be a parameter that has not been taken into account, a step that has been skipped.

Motivation/willpower, which we tend to idolise and put on a pedestal as if it were something you either have or don’t have, can be developed, just like any other variable.

We’re coming to the end, I still have a lot to say, but I’ll save it all for next time.

Psst, did you notice? We did some shaping to teach you… shaping (it’s the INCEPTION of shaping!)

I’ll give you some time to digest all this information… If you think you’ve been shaping, intentionally or not, whether it’s yourself, your children or your pets, I’d love for you to share your story and your feelings in the comments!

Thank you for reading. Writing this wasn’t easy; revealing a little bit about yourself is never easy… See you soon! <3

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Marion
Certified Professional Bird Trainer
Certified Separation Anxiety Trainer
Fear Free Certified Professional