We’ve been told (and I’ve repeated in my books ) that it takes about 21 to 28 days to learn a new habit. That doesn’t sound like too long a time, but the research also found that people tend to drop out a new behavior after about 2 weeks if they don’t go out of their way to keep going. But a new study from psychologist Phillippa Lally of University College London found it took an average of 9.5 weeks to get students to incorporate a new habit into their daily lives. Two and a half months — oh my, that’s a serious chunk of time. Good for us to remember when we are working with our dogs. There’s little question in my mind that one of the most common mistakes we make with our dogs is to get a good behavior started, and then stop reinforcing it too soon.
Of course, we have to be careful to about making assumptions from human research to canine behavior. Indeed, we have to be careful about generalizing the results of one study on college students (96 of them, asking them to form a new healthy habit like drinking a glass of water before eating lunch) to the rest of human behavior at all. This happens far too often: many psych studies are done on college students, who are at a unique age and stage in life. How much of their behavior is similar to that of someone in their 60’s? And what about the habit one is trying to form? Surely that makes a difference. (Question: I wonder how it was determined that a habit was “formed?” I haven’t seen the original study yet, will look it up.)
Prediction: Teach Trish to form a new habit of eating dark chocolate after every meal because it is good for her. Time required for habit to form? One day. Good Trisha. Food for thought (sorry.)
By the way, speaking of learning new things, Willie is making huge progress learning to associate the word “Scorch” with his scorpion toy. His responses are not 100%, but they are becoming impressively consistent. I’ll write my next post at the end of the week about the method we are using (and explain the “model-rival” method of training word associations.)
MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Willie and I just got back from the barn. I’m still laughing. Sort of. Things got a tad, uh, interesting in the flock. It started when I put a new dog jacket on little white boy. It’s supposed to go below zero and get windy later on this week, and although well-fed lambs are hardy critters, that’s getting bit nippy for the little guy. In spite of gobbling up his extra grain and feeding off of mom, he still seems a bit thin compared to the other two (who, granted, look like well-fed ticks). So when Katie asked if I wanted to try Lily’s (Willie’s Dogo friend) puppy jacket, it seemed like it was worth a try. After all, he’d worn a smaller one earlier, and had done well with it. Now it was too small, so the larger one seemed like it might be a good idea.
I had two concerns. One was that it wouldn’t fit. I wasn’t so much worried that it would fall off, or not keep in any warmth, but more that somehow it would slip and end up strangling him in some tragic farm accident. Such things happen. I had a ram who got his head stuck in a bucket; he wasn’t injured, but he could have been. (Okay, truth in lending here: coming home to find Beavis the obnoxious ram trotting around the barn pen with a black bucket over his head was a highlight of the week.) I had a young lamb manage to hook his lip on the dull end of a plastic bungee hook. I found him snagged like a trout to the pen wall. I still can’t figure that one out. I’ve had sheep with their heads stuck in an old fence (since replaced). None appeared to be injured, but I doubt they enjoyed it and each time it led to a Lucille Ball-worthy ten minutes of me trying to pull them out. But it can be serious: I have also had a ewe die when she strangled herself on an electric fence that shorted out. So I had reason to be concerned.
Since the larger coat had been worn by a dog last year, I was also concerned that the lamb would be rejected by his mom because he didn’t smell right anymore. So I put on the coat while his mom and sister ate grain, and carefully watched how the two moms responded. They both sniffed white boy, sniffed his new coat, seemed unperturbed, and went back to eating more grain. Great. Smell not a problem. Next question, would it stay on? I let them all out into the main flock and fed them all hay, hanging around to see if the coat stayed on while he fed. At first all the sheep put their heads down and began to chomp on the flakes of hay scattered on the fresh snow. But suddenly the entire flock took off as if shot, and began running panicked circles around the pen. They ran around like crazed circus animals, around and around they go!, except they looked terrified and no one was clapping. I have never, ever seen my sheep run so fast. Before Willie and I could stop them, they bolted out of the gate and streamed up the hill into the woods. By this time it was clear they were afraid of little white boy (or the smell of his coat). Even Truffles caught the fever, and the faster she ran away from her lamb, the faster he ran to keep up, bawling his head off. Now they’re running into the woods, little white boy scrambling to keep up with his terrified mother, who is running faster than I have ever EVER seen a sheep run.
Super. Now what? They could run themselves into a broken leg in a minute up there, it’s steep and slippery and the logs and downed wood are buried in the snow. The lamb could exhaust himself . . . etc etc. Should I send Willie? Tricky: ewes with new lambs are understandably aggressive to dogs and I’ve kept Willie off them since the lambs have been born; this did not seem like an ideal time to get that sorted out. But there was no way I could get in front of the flock, and I had split seconds to make a decision, so I called to Willie and he and I dashed toward the woods, and luckily, oh so luckily, a ewe without a lamb saw him and turned the flock and ran back into the barn pen, followed, amazingly by Truffles and her panicked lamb. He continued to run after his mom, who continued to run in terrified circles with the rest of the flock until I could manage to run in with a bucket of grain, lure little white boy into the inside of the barn and pull off the offending coat.
If the flock had a Facebook page, it would say:
ATTACKED BY HUGE DOG TONIGHT, BARELY ESCAPED WITH OUR LIVES.
Here’s sunrise a few days ago, before the latest 5-6 inches of snow fell. It’s good we got the snow, temperatures as low as are expected can be devastating to plants, who need the snow to insulate them from the bitter cold:
Veronique says
Thanks, the lamb story made me laugh really hard! So funny! Luckily nobody got hurt!
About the topic of animals getting themselves in trouble. Years ago when we got our third cat Yuna as a kitten, we once got home to a weird banging noise. We followed the noise to the bathroom. There we found Yuna with her head stuck in a big can of catfood, banging against the pedestal sink. We laughed really hard, AFTER freeing Yuna. Too bad she never learned from the incident. She’s our one cat that is on a perpetual diet.
Jennifer says
My family had a small flock of sheep when I was a teen-ager. We bought a black ewe and her lamb one year, and introducing the two of them to the flock had much the same reaction! It took a while for the rest of them to accept the two of them really were sheep, just a different color. Once they were integrated though, everything was fine. Sheep are weird
Kat says
I shouldn’t laugh but I grew up on a farm and I totally understand those insane moments when things take an unexpected turn. I can just picture the poor little lamb haring after his mama as all the sheep stampede away from him as fast as they can go. I’m very glad everything ended well.
Here’s a story of the unexpected from my growing up years. We had a mean Hampshire ram. Gorgeous animal and I was always sorry I couldn’t show him as my 4-H project–that grand champion rosette would have been mighty nice but as I say he was mean and aggressive toward people. We also had a Shetland pony and the pony and ram would often be seen grazing in adjoining pastures side by side separated by a wire fence. They showed every indication of being comfortable with each other so Dad decided to maximize our limited pasture area by putting the ram in with the pony. We penned the ram and with him fighting us every step of the way transferred him in with the pony. The pony saw something new and interesting and came running down off the hill to investigate. Poor old ram saw a monster bearing down on him and took off running. Pony thought a game of race around the pasture sounded fabulous and went after him. She showed every indication of being simply delighted to have someone to run with; he was clearly terrified. After about five laps around the pasture we started worrying that the ram might run himself into a heart attack since the pony showed no signs of getting tired. I went in to call off the pony and hold her while my Dad collected the ram and took him back where he had started. I think a two year old could have walked the ram back to the other pasture he was so docile. Interestingly he was never aggressive toward my father again although no one else could trust him.
Joan says
Trisha,
Your description of the sheep-run-amok just made my day(which has been a less-than-stellar one). Thanks for the laugh!
Karen Brandson says
We had exactly the same sort of thing happen once when we put a bell on one ewe. The rest ran in a panic, she ran to keep up, the bell clanging madly all the way, which of course made the rest of them run faster:)
I have made lamb coats out of polar fleece. Basically cut like a horse blanket, sewn together at the front, with a wide belly band sewn on one side. Put the coat on the lamb and quickly sew the other end of the belly band to the other side of the coat with a needle and extra strong thread. Since the fleece is stretchy you can get it to fit snugly, and it will grow a bit with the lamb.
Have you ever worked the sheep with a coat on Willy? They’ll probably react like they did to the dog coat on the lamb:) Instant panic at our place if Luna goes in with the sheep wearing a coat (which I put on her sometimes when doing morning chores so there isn’t quite as much water and mud to clean off when we are done.
DeAnna says
The whole story had me chuckling, but I laughed out loud at the idea of your sheep having a Facebook page. They should totally have one!! Imagine all the interesting things they would post about 🙂
Deanna in OR says
About habits….
I took a Psych grad class in Applied Cognition last year, applied to humans (hoping to get some good ideas for teaching my human engineering students as well as my human dog-training students AND the dogs). We read, critiqued and discussed a number of different areas of human cognition. One of the interesting topics, to me, was about the acquisition of a skill to the point of being an “expert”, where the skill is performed with “automaticity” or automatic motor performance. It seems like this would define a “habit”–something that is done fluently, without much conscious attention.
There has been a lot of research into how people acquire this expert level or habit-level of skill, especially in the area of motor skills and sports. (A lot of this research was done with college students, I’m sure, but not all of it.) I think this research could possibly be applied to dogs and their learning of new behaviors to the point of becoming a habitual behavior, in many situations. Or at least, the human research could lead to interesting research questions about dog cognition and automaticity.
Some researchers have said that it takes humans about 10,000 hours of practice to achieve this automatic level of performance. Ouch!…for those of us interested in getting our dogs to acquire behavioral habits, this would be a huge investment!
I’ve also read, somewhere, that it takes 1000 repetitions of a behavior to create a habit, or to get an automatic response to a cue. I don’t know how true this is, but I use it in my beginning obedience & puppy classes as a starting point. It sounds like a huge commitment, but if you frame it as “20 sits, 2 times a day, for 25 days” to get automatic sits, it sounds more do-able. And if it is part of a set of puppy push-ups, you can probably get 20 each of sits & stands & downs all done in 5 minutes or less, twice a day, and make it a fun part of meal times. Doing it quickly like that gives the human partner lots of practice to have a consistent cue each time, too.
So are 1000 canine repetitions of a simple behavior equivalent to 10,000 hours of human practice of a complex behavior, to get to automaticity (habit), equivalent to each other? Is canine skill acquisition comparable to humans?
At the very least, it seems like you could use the research in human cognition and expert performance, to create a consistent definition of what a habit is.
This seems like a very rich area for research, in how dogs acquire expert or automatic levels of skill and responses, especially in more complex canine behaviors involved in working–herding, search and rescue, assistance dogs, and so on.
Alexandra says
Oh my goodness, I’m sure it was not even remotely funny at the time, but I laughed really hard at your sheep story.
I grew up in a rural area, and while we didn’t keep livestock, many family friends did. One day when I was about 13, I was riding one of the horses in from the pasture bareback. The resident farm clydesdale decided to follow and was clippity-clopping along behind us with his big dinner plate hooves. So far, so good. Well, we came over a hill and somehow the sheep had gotten into the horse pasture (electric fence had shorted out) and completely panicked when they saw the horses appear out of thin air. There were about 5 tense minutes where there were sheep running all over the place and both horses also panicking and dodging sheep with me trying my best just to hang on. Everything sorted itself out, and my dad and his friend who had been watching from a distance could hardly stand up they were laughing so hard. Sigh.
Roberta Beach says
I read about the 10,000 hrs in relation to the Beatles – how they played sets forever in Germany before making it “big.” Well, huge. Same for pianists. I know I stop too soon with my training – all I had to do was watch a few of your videos, Trish – oy, vey.
One day, when I had horses (gone now and sorely missed), I was mucking stalls. I put the manure outside the pasture in a pile – it made great humus after a year or so. One time, I forgot to close the gate behind me – I came out of the barn with a wheelbarrow full of manure to find the dogs in the pasture and horses outside by the creek. I had no trouble getting my Thoroughbred back in but his pet, an Appy mare, had found some loose lying barb wire – her foot was in it. My heart sank. I was very, very calm with her – and so was she, thank God. I got her foot out and her back in the pasture, too. Whew.
The sheep stampede frankly sounds like a James Herriot story – only he would not have had a Willie – or maybe he would have. Glad all’s well that end’s well.
Melanie S says
Yep, your tale was very Herriotesque. Enjoyed it immensely, but I know what it’s like to be in one of those kinds of stories and it’s anything but funny at the time!
It’s amazing how the addition of a coat is so very significant to prey animals. My horse Calypso (deceased) had no problems with my dog Tango (English Bull Terrier x Kelpie, also deceased) except when Tango was wearing her winter coat. If she wandered into Calypso’s paddock wearing her coat he would chase her and strike at her. Confusing for Tango I’m sure because I don’t think she made the connection “I”m wearing my coat, better stay out of Calypso’s way” (it’d be a big ask to expect her to make that association).
Mary says
OMG! I’m sure it’s a very serious business and there could have been big trouble, but you had me howling with laughter! All I can see in my mind’s eye is this lamb in a dog coat, bawling after it’s mother at top speed, with all the other sheep running like there’s an axe murderer after them!
Good dog, Willie, good dog!
AnneJ says
How long does it take to learn a new habit? I don’t think there is an answer, it just depends on how much you want to do it and how easy it is. I was training Pepper yesterday, and getting her to drive the sheep to one end of the field, stop, then fetch them back. It took her about twice to anticipate that I would want the same thing again and it was a habit formed. Then I had to change the pattern so she wouldn’t become entrenched in one idea. Now, getting her established in the habit of waiting at the door/gate/ anywhere is taking a lot longer as she does not like to wait- she likes to GO!
Sheep motto “run first, find out what it is later!”
My sheep panicked the first time I put my new ram in the pen- it was dusk, a bad time to introduce him now that I thought about it, and he was black, whereas the ewes are white. They thought he was a dog and didn’t stop to look but ran round and round the field. And he was chasing after them, all excited to join a flock after his long truck ride alone. Poor guy.
After a few minutes they figured it out and then accepted him.
Steve Shaffer says
Great point on the chocolate! We’ve had our dogs learn some things in one trial (it was fun and followed by a great reward). Otherwise, it seems to follow what Brenda Aloff told us: 6000 repetitions.
Interestingly, Moshe Feldenkrais’ theory was that old ingrams could be broken and new ones learned in one lesson if 1) the lesson was pain free and 2) non-habitual.
Barb says
Oh my! Sheep at the loose! Brings back memories of horses running down the side of the road to their home farm . . . . Funny more in memory than in “it’s happening now!” Glad it ended well. Good job, Trish!
How long does it take to form a habit. What a question. I am often reminded by my girl that it takes longer for her than I might want it to take. And for me to start a new habit (not to mention acquire one) sometimes takes years!
I am glad to be reminded of the reinforcement frequency of new behaviors. It’s something that I and my students need to remember. Often a phrase “but she/he knows this” comes out of our mouths. In fact, the dog isn’t quite sure. The benefit of the doubt goes to the dogs.
Frances says
I once left my cats with my father for a long weekend. When I got back, come 6 o’clock, I reached for the gin and tonic. To my bewilderment, the Pshhht noise of the tonic brought both cats running – at which my father admitted slightly shamefacedly that he had been sharing a pack of chicken crisps with them, while he enjoyed his evening G&T! So if the reward is good enough, and the trigger clear enough, for cats it takes 3 or 4 repeats!
Alexandra says
Frances, your story reminded me that my cat comes running whenever I take out a package of strawberries because she has learned that whipped cream often follows!
mungobrick says
Oh, yes, it definitely depends on the reward. Daisy plays with two rescued dogs every weekend in the role of socialization assistant. They adore her (although the – neutered – male quickly runs out of play ideas and starts humping her, to her confusion – but he’s always very good natured about being removed). Their owners have started using a special whistle to call them to come. It took Daisy exactly one whistle to learn that whistle = treat (and, more to the point, a different treat than her usual), and she is always there immediately upon a whistle, even before Wibo and Raven. Now I just need to find one of those whistles for myself!
Good idea, the chocolate habit!
trisha says
To Deanna: I love how you broke 1,000 reps into a very doable # on a daily basis, good work! And 10,000 hours, yes, that’s the figure out there for total mastery of a topic. Malcolm Gladwell talks about how ‘mastery’ is more about time put in than inherent skill, and he uses that figure too. Related to that, I just finished Andre Agassi’s book, Open, in which his father had him practicing for 5 hours a day as a 5 or 6 year old. Seriously. But still… the same thing happened to Andre’s brother and he could never make it in professional tennis. Surely it’s a combination. I don’t think 10,000 hours of training would create a sheepdog out of a yorkie, and I guarantee you that 10,000 hours of practice would never make me a computer programmer. In truth, we’d never know. I’d have run away from home at that point and joined a circus as a fire eater.
Alexandra: Whipped cream always with strawberries? You know how to live girl…
And I am LOVING the farm adventure stories many of you are sending in. Thanks Veronique, Jennifer, Kat, Roberta, Melanie, AnneJ, Karen.. who did I miss? Keep ’em coming, I’m loving the laughter.
Krista says
Oh boy, that must of have been terrifying, but I’m sure glad you shared it for our amusement! You made me so homesick for country life (now I live in the city)– though, it is a miracle that I survived my childhood. Once when I was about 10 I was riding my retired barrel race mare bareback in our yard. Turns out she was in heat. The stallion next door caught wind of her and started calling her. She took off through the woods at breakneck pace with me bumping all over her back and clinging to her neck for dear life, dodging tree branches. (Why didn’t I jump off?)
Another time I caused a cattle stampede by going for a walk with my Belgian Shepherd through a neighbor’s pasture (Hey, I was 10!). The dog, of course, pulled away from me and had a blast chasing all the cows around. Fortunately, no dogs, cows or soon-to-be-grounded kids were harmed in the mayhem.
Bonnie H. says
enjoying the farm-animal stories! Glad no critters got hurt.
As to the 10,000 hours; broken down to a full-time job at 8 hr/day, 5 days/week, is 2000 hrs/year (allowing for 2 wks off holidays, vacation, etc). Would be 5 years at the job before you would/could be considered ‘expert’. Sounds about right to me, at least in skilled and professional jobs.
AnneJ says
I had the perfect habit formation experience this week:
Tessa, my 8 month old Aussie puppy, liked to sneak in with me when I went to feed the chickens and then chase them all around. Obviously not a good thing, and it wasn’t possible for me to watch the door, collect eggs, and feed and water all at the same time. Also the door doesn’t latch from the inside. So I put a tie out next to the chicken coop and every day I first hook her up, give her a treat, do the chickens, then unhook her from the tie out. Well, that was about 2 months ago that I started doing it every day the same way. A few days ago I started noticing that she was beating me to the tie out spot and sitting there. So I tried it without tying her up one day and she sat there perfect as can be – I still gave her her treat, and an extra one. She has a definite new habit and will sit and stay in that spot until I’m done.
em says
Oh, I’m sorry for chiming in late, but this story of a ‘sheep in wolf’s clothing’ had me cracking up. I don’t have any sheep stories to share, but that ‘I Love Lucy feeling’ is all too familiar. When she was younger, one of my cats stuck her head into a mostly empty pop-up tissue box. The plastic around the opening easily allowed her head in, but then closed around her neck, sticking the lightweight box firmly onto her. She shook her head a bit, but it didn’t occur to her to try to pull it off. Instead she panicked and started running as fast as she could around the house with the tissue box still over her head. We scrambled after her, torn between hilarity and fear for her safety, because she was slamming into walls. Hearing our footsteps coming after her only made it worse, though, and she dashed away from us as fast as possible. We eventually nabbed her as she ricocheted off the sofa, slid the box off her head, and comforted her as best we could between bouts of hysterical laughter.
We’ve also had dozens of these “Keystone Cops” moments at the dog park. Because the park is home to a great deal of wildlife, including predators like hawks, fox, and coyote, dead animals appear on the trails or playfield (in varying degrees of consumption and/or decomposition) on a fairly regular basis. Otis is one of very few dogs at the park who is truly reliable about surrendering these goodies. Unfortunately, my first instinct when I see him prancing out of the thicket with a deer skull or half a rabbit is to immediately demand a “Drop and Leave it!”. This would be fine, if Otis were by himself, but with a group of opportunists around, Otis dropping the nasty dead thing often means a less cooperative dog snatching it up. Chaos ensues. This is a good group of very solid dogs, all very trusting and well-bonded with each other-they never become aggressive about toys or treats or smelly dead things, which is a godsend, but their general willingness to share doesn’t improve the odds of recovering the dead thing un-eaten. The dog with the prize tries to scoot out of reach of his owner, in order to bolt down the nastiness before getting nabbed, other dogs try to swoop in for a grab, other owners try to collar their dogs to keep them from swooping, I guiltily try to encourage Otis to either a)drive the errant pooch back toward a human or b) snatch the carcass back because I CAN get it from Otis (this almost never works, Otis just doesn’t take things from other dogs…the best I can hope for is that he’ll pick it up if the opportunist drops it, preventing a third dog from getting in on the action). The hardest part of this for me has been to train myself to be more aware of my surroundings when I respond to a ‘carcass incident’ to be sure that ALL the dogs in the group are under control, not just my own.
Amy in Indiana says
When I read, “So I put on the coat while his mom and sister ate grain” I imagined you in a doggie coat and laughed out loud!
That’s a great story. Silly sheep.
Alex Leontsinis says
How many days do you think it would take to train an older dog to sleep on her own in the kitchen?
her partner doggie of 8 years has passed on and shce screams all night on her own, eve though she is on medication