Cognitive learning is learning that takes place without a reward or training, but when something motivational presents itself, such as learning how to open a gate, how to not chase squirrels, or my favorite example of all, when a friend of mine went unconscious on a nature trail, his dog took his shoe and started running up to people with it. When they went to look for the owner, they found my friend just off the trail. His dog saved his life!

 

The canine demonstrates the cognition to know what to do without practice, with zero training, without drill, and without ever demonstrating it before. So, in fact, they are observant and learn like children without you being aware of it. ​

 

Learning is not the same thing as training. It’s like a hobo dog that never needed training to know how to be good in public and knows how to ignore dogs while it’s with the owner without ever being trained to do so. It’s an experienced old soul. It’s like the old show The Littlest Hobo or Lassie.

 

People often use dog training to suppress and control a dog, and it makes it more difficult for them to pick up on new things because they don’t often have the ability to make mistakes or observe them on their own. ​ People often control a dog and over manage because they are afraid the dog will be in danger. When that happens, training has to be maintained and always practiced like a drill for the rest of a dog's life. If you don’t keep up on the training, the dog will regress. If that happens, the dog reverts to being more aloof and naive, making puppy-type mistakes because the puppy never learned it on their own latently as they were growing; they got sidetracked by obedience commands. ​ The puppy was never allowed to explore or express themselves as well as make mistakes because everything they do is controlled and managed.

 

​ The goal is we want to raise a dog not train a dog. Imagine a mother duck being followed by her babies, and one of them didn’t pay attention to know how all the others got to the other side of a fence. The mother doesn’t race back over to help; she helps by staying nearby to let her baby know that she’s safe, and she waits patiently for her to figure it out. She then focuses on her mother much better and ignores fatal distractions in the future.

 

So if you wanted to get a dog off leash “without training,” you teach the same lesson the same way as a puppy. ​ You play hide and seek, you play chase, but you’re the only one that runs away; they have to always chase you. Then Tada! You have a hobo dog! ​ Traditional training can’t duplicate this . A trained dog only comes to you when you call them, and it always has to be reinforced somehow.

 

So when raising a puppy we want to teach tasks that are symbiotic to us through daily interactions and chores, similar to a service dog that makes them feel helpful, so they grow up doing things that helps them feel useful and appreciated.