Mat Work

Many of the dogs I work with have trouble with emotional regulation. This could be a result of genetic fallout from modern breeding practices, lack of early socialization, lack of physical and/or mental enrichment, a trauma history, a tendency toward overstimulation in exciting situations, or just individual temperament. Regardless of the catalyst, it’s clear that many of our American dogs “go to eleven” on the dysregulation scale. This agitation can manifest in a number of ways, including over-excitement, hyperactivity, reactivity, and lack of impulse control. 

A dog that is bananas-happy-crazy, bouncing off the walls in excitement and a dog that explosively errupts into Cujo-esque snarls at the sight of another dog may outwardly behave differently, but they actually have quite a bit in common. Both dogs are using their limbic system to react to their environment. Love/hate, fear/excitement, rage/ecstasy are really just both sides of the same limbic coin.

For a long time, dog trainers operated under the psychological presumption that if you wanted a change in behavior, you needed to change the emotions eliciting that behavior. In other words, if a bicycle-reactive pup gets a treat every time they see a bicycle, they will begin to feel differently about the bike, which will in turn change how they behave around the bike. In other words, in order to change a dog's BEHAVIOR, we can focus on changing the dog's FEELINGS.

We operated under this presumption because systematic desensitization and classical counterconditioning works. We weren’t at all wrong in our thinking. What has come to light, however, is that the opposite approach—focusing on behavioral change to elicit emotional change—also works. Using the same bike example, a dog that is systematically taught the behaviors of self-regulation would be able to alter their own emotional state when faced with the presence of a bicycle. In other words, in order to change a dog's FEELINGS, we can focus on changing the dog's BEHAVIOR.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! When you guide a dog through interactions with a trigger using both strategies simultaneously, a dog can learn regulation around a trigger faster and more efficiently than either approach on its own. Going back to the bike, a dog that is systematically taught (and actively rewarded for) self-regulation (at slowly increasing levels of difficulty) will be able to feel AND behave differently around bicycles.

The relatively recent trend of human “mindfulness” uses these same principles. For example, let’s say that a person is absolutely, preternaturally scared of spiders. (Yes, that person is me.) Showing this person a spider at a (very) slowly increasing proximity and giving them things they enjoys (chocolate would be fine) and also teaching them specific breathing exercises, mantras, and coping strategies, will eventually create… not a person who necessarily likes spiders (never), but a person who is emotionally regulated and in control of their behavior while in a spider's presence (i.e. no longer screaming and trying to walk out of their skin… for example).

The cool thing about combining operant conditioning (choice-based learning) with classical conditioning (associative learning) is that the methods allow for a dog to opt-in to their own training experience, making otherwise stressful situations feel far less intense. In Fired Up, Frantic, and Freaked Out, trainer Laura VanArendonk Baugh uses the human example of going to the dentist to illustrate the point. Even if you fear the dentist, she says, you can still find the courage to get into your car, drive to the dentist’s office, and get yourself into the dentist chair. In this situation, you have agency over your own experience and are therefore better able to stay in control. Even though we kinda have to go to the dentist, our sense of perceived control makes all the difference.

Now imagine what would happen if, at the time you were planning on leaving for your appointment, some dude showed up, manhandled you into a car, drove you to the dentist, and then forced you into the dentist's chair. This would, naturally, turn the experience from an intense-but-regulated experience to an intense-and-dysregulated experience. 

Simply put: autonomy leads to emotional regulation.

A great way to allow your dog to opt-in to their experiences is through “mat work.” Pioneered by trainer Leslie McDevitt in her Control Unleashed program, mat work teaches a dog to lie down and relax on a mat. Once you have the mat serving as your pup’s “regulation zone,” you can slowly and gently introduce triggers into their environment, allowing them to practice impulse control and self-regulation while in the presence of otherwise arousing events. Mat work also has really cool applications, such as “cooperative care” for grooming or veterinary procedures, facilitating regulated and polite greetings when people visit your home, and training dogs in multi-dog households. 

Mat work is an excellent way to throw a bone to our dogs. (Ha.) Even a dog that is bursting with frantic joy would most likely appreciate some tools to calm down; living in a limbic state for too long is exhausting and discombobulating. And a dog that is exhibiting intense fear or anxiety, of course, doesn’t want to feel that way. That is absolutely no fun. Mat work gives our dogs tools for emotional regulation, which they can then use to self-interrupt and manage limbic behavior. 

This is a great time to introduce the psychological concept of “shaping,” which is the process of reinforcing behaviors in small, successive steps toward a desired goal. It involves rewarding behaviors that increasingly resemble the target behavior, gradually guiding the learner to exhibit the desired behavior. This method is often used when the target behavior is complex, allowing for gradual progress.

Think of shaping like the process a novice potter goes through to learn the craft. It wouldn’t be reasonable to expect a newbie to flawlessly and gracefully transform a lump of clay into a beautiful vase. Instead, a novice potter must first learn to wedge, then compress, then center, etc, slowly zeroing in on what the final result will look like.

When we shape a behavior, we start with easy goals and then gradually raise the bar as the student is successful. 

In teaching mat work to dogs, then, the ultimate goal is a dog lying relaxed on a mat, but that’s not where we start. Instead, we might first teach a dog to “target” a mat (or to move their body in relation to the mat), first by looking at the mat, then by moving toward the mat, then by putting two paws on the mat, then four, then lying down on the mat, then putting their head down, then taking a deep breath, etc etc etc. (And this is just an example: every shaping experience will be different for every dog, based on the behaviors they are presenting and the specific steps that allow them to progress successfully.)

Another cool thing about shaping is that it turns dogs into a proactive learner. We get to watch our dog actively figure out a goal behavior, and have fun doing so.

Here’s how to make it all happen.

Tools Needed

• Medium/high value training treats
• Mat (preferably one that is transportable, ie not a big bed)
• Recommended: clicker

Focus

Before we get to the specifics, here are four basic principles to apply to any skill you’d like to teach your puppy:

Set your puppy up for success.
Meet your basic needs and your puppy’s basic needs before you begin training. Make sure both you and your puppy are feeling safe, comfortable, and secure in your surroundings. Work in a place where both of you can focus and at a time of day that works for the two of you. Make sure you have all of the tools you need.

Remember that your dog is a very good dog.
Dogs are an entirely different species from humans, with a different set of social rules, environmental affordances, developmental milestones, and genetic mandates. It is imperative to remember that most human rules are not inherently reinforcing for our canine companions.

Teach your puppy to love the behavior you want to see.
The fastest way to teach a puppy what is acceptable in our human world is to teach them to genuinely love our rules. Help your puppy love goal behaviors by rewarding those behaviors with things your puppy already loves.

Start at the beginning.Start easy, and gradually work through challenging but achievable goals. When training is easy and fun, your puppy will love to learn and to build on their skills.

When to Train

If either you or your dog is feeling dysregulated, do not work on this behavior. Do mat work when you are sure both your needs and your dog’s needs have been met, and ideally when you both are relaxed and calm. Skills must be learned before they can be used. 

Where to Train

As with all skills, start in a very easy and familiar place, like your living room. Gradually add more challenging locations as your dog is successful, always starting the process from the beginning when you change locations. If your dog gets confused or distracted, chances are you have made the situation too difficult. Take a step back in training and then increase the difficulty in a more gradual way. 

How to do Mat Work

Note 1: It’s easiest to do the exercises below with a marker word or a click before delivering the reward (likely a high-value treat). For the purpose of this tutorial, we will use the shorthand “C/T” for “click and then treat,” but feel free to substitute a marker word if that works better for you!

Note 2: I’ve organized collections of shaped behaviors into mini-games below. Different dogs will use different strategies to earn rewards, and will proceed through the games at their own unique pace. These games can be played one after the next if you have a particularly keen pup, or a dog that has experience with shaping. For some pups, you may just play one game at a time, separated by several hours or a day’s time. For other pups, you may skip some games, and play other games just a little or a lot. (This is something I can help with during coaching sessions!)

Game 1: What’s That Mat
The goal of this mini-game is to teach your dog that the mat is important, and that their orientation toward the mat earns them cookies.

• Put a mat on the ground close to your dog . C/T when they look at the mat. (Which they are likely to do because they are curious!) Toss the treat away from the mat to “reset” the game. Do this approximately 5 times.
• Up the ante. Now C/T when your dog points their nose toward the mat. Toss the treat away from the mat to “reset” the game. Do this approximately 5 times.
• Up the ante. Now C/T when your dog makes any movement toward the mat. Toss the treat away from the mat to “reset” the game. Do this approximately 5 times.
• Pick up the mat and act like the most boring person on the planet. Do not pay any attention to your dog . (We want them to love when you put that mat on the ground!)

Game 2: Two Paw Bingo
The goal of this mini-game is to teach your dog that having at least two paws on the mat earns them cookies.

• Put the mat on the ground, relatively close to your dog . C/T when your dog steps on the mat with at least one paw. Toss the treat away from the mat to “reset” the game. Do this approximately 5 times.
• Up the ante. Now C/T when your dog steps at least two paws onto the mat. Toss the treat away from the mat to “reset” the game. Do this approximately 5 times.
• Pick up the mat and act like the most boring person on the planet. Do not pay any attention to your dog . (We want them to love when you put that mat on the ground!)

Game 3: Four Paw Bingo
The goal of this mini-game is to teach your dog that having their whole body on the mat earns them cookies. 

• Put the mat on the ground, relatively close to your dog . C/T when your dog steps at least two paws onto the mat. Toss the treat away from the mat to “reset” the game. Do this approximately 5 times.
• Up the ante. Now C/T when your dog puts all four paws on the mat. Toss the treat away from the mat to “reset” the game. Do this approximately 5 times.
• Pick up the mat and act like the most boring person on the planet. Do not pay any attention to your dog . (We want them to love when you put that mat on the ground!)

Game 4: Down’s the Noun
The goal of this mini-game is to teach your dog that lying down on the mat earns them cookies.

• Put the mat on the ground, relatively close to your dog . C/T when your dog puts all four paws on the mat. Toss the treat away from the mat to “reset” the game. Do this approximately 5 times.
• Up the ante. Now C/T when your dog puts lies down on the mat. Toss the treat away from the mat to “reset” the game. Do this approximately 5 times. Don’t tell your dog to lie down on their mat. Let them figure out the desired behavior on their own, manipulating the environment to set them up for success. Encouraging your dog to use their brain to actively problem-solve is an important skill for them to have. 
• If your dog is not offering downs, you may need to split this action into smaller steps on the way to the right position. You can also lure them into the correct position by holding a treat between their front paws and only releasing it when they lie down. (Lures are only to jumpstart behaviors, so be sure to “fade the lure” as soon as your dog has the hang of lying down on the mat!) 
• Pick up the mat and act like the most boring person on the planet. Do not pay any attention to your dog . (We want them to love when you put that mat on the ground!)

Game 5: Catch the Mat
The goal of this mini-game is to teach your dog that their mat is a valuable object and to happily anticipate its presence.

• Put the mat on the ground, relatively close to your dog . C/T when your dog lies down on the mat. Toss the treat away from the mat and pick the mat up, moving to a different location.

Put the mat down again. C/T when your dog lies down on the mat. Toss the treat away from the mat and pick the mat up, moving to a different location. Repeat repeat repeat! This will help teach your dog that the mat is, in its own way, a cue for them to lie down. It will also teach them that they can only “win” the game when the mat is put out, and that life is boring when the mat is picked up.

✔️ Keep in Mind

• • Always work with the dog in front of you. Your dog may have a different progression than the one above, and that’s OK. They may skip steps, or you may have to split steps into a couple of smaller steps to get them moving in the right direction. For all you know, your dog may look at the mat and walk over and lie down on it because it looks like a nice place to rest! Rewarding successive approximations of the behavior will look different for every dog.
    
    
  • The first few times you up the ante in a shaping game can be confusing for a dog. They have just been rewarded for a specific behavior, multiple times, and now they are no longer getting a cookie for it?! What gives?! They may insistently or repeatedly demonstrate the behavior that previously “worked.” It’s important that your dog not get too frustrated at this stage, as they may decide that this game is too hard, and give up. But… usually… if you just wait a moment longer than you think… a dog will offer a better orienting behavior, even if it is only incrementally better than the one before. Click and treat jackpot! The more practice shaping with your dog, the faster they will offer alternate behaviors when the previous behavior stops working. 
    
    
  • While I generally think it’s helpful to toss the treat away from the mat to reset the game, you can experiment with where you put the treat after clicking, as a different method may work better for your dog . What happens if you toss the treat toward the mat? What happens if you place the treat in the center of the mat? 
    
    
  • Remember, every dog is different. There is no “one right way” to train a dog! Give both yourself and your dog the freedom to experiment. your dog will be shaping your training just as much as you are shaping their behavior!

Record scratch! Whaaaaat just happened. There are OPTIONS?! There is not ONE WAY to use “mat work” skills?!

OK, so here’s the thing: you always get to choose what your dog learns. You can choose what to teach, how to teach it, and the functional need a learned skill meets. At this point in the tutorial, the road branches, and you get to decide which route to take. (Note that you can train both options! Just not at the same time.) To help you decide which option to choose, ask yourself:

What is the function of teaching my dog to lie on a mat? 

Start with Option 1 if…
You want your dog to lie on a mat as an alternate or mutually exclusive behavior to a non-emotional and intentional behavior your dog is displaying. This option is for low-arousal situations when you need your dog to go to a particular place, multi-dog households, dog sports like agility; and as a cool party trick.

Start with Option 2 if…
You want your dog to lie on a mat as a way to emotionally regulate while in the presence of triggers that currently produce a reflexive and emotional response. This option is for high-arousal situations like people visiting the house, grooming or vet care, unbridled excitement, and anxiety or fear-related environmental triggers.

Option 1: Teach your dog a verbal or physical cue to prompt them to lie down on their mat.

If you have played the mini-games  listed above, this one’s easy. Just refer to the previous article, “Training Mechanics: Moving From Capture to Cue.” You can name this behavior anything you like: “place” or “park it” or “go to your spot” or “go to bed.” You can call it “cucumber” if you want. It doesn’t matter as long as you’re consistent. 

Option 2: Teach your dog that they can always choose to lie on their mat to earn a reward, without any prompting.

If you have played the mini-games listed above, pick up where you left off and work through the following games, setting your dog up for success every step of the way. 

Game 6: Stay Awhile

The goal of this mini-game is to teach your dog that choosing to lie down on their mat and hang out on it is The Best and Most Amazing and Wonderfulest Thing in the Whole Wide World, and also that it’s better than other choices.

Note: You will need to have an established cue for hand targeting as a part of the following game. If you don’t already have one, teach your dog to touch their nose to your hand by checking out the article, “Recall (Coming When Called).” Even if your dog does know this cue, you may want to warm them up on this skill a few times before continuing, just to jog their memory and increase the chance for reliability.

• Put a mat on the ground close to your dog. Click when your dog lies down on the mat. This time, instead of tossing the treat away, systematically place five high-value treats between their front paws, one at a time, dispensing each treat when they have finished eating the previous one. This should be THE BEST THING EVER for your dog.
• Cue your dog to touch their nose to your fist or your open palm off of the mat with your visual or verbal cue. Click when they do so, and give them one treat that is of lesser value to your dog than the treats you gave them for lying down. Toss the treat away from the mat to “reset” the game.
  
  
• Wait for your dog to lie down on the mat. (This behavior is probable, given the previous games. If they are not getting the idea, though, you can go back to shaping successive approximations of the behavior like moving toward the mat, putting paws on the mat, etc.) Click when your dog lies down on the mat and systematically place five treats between their front paws, one at a time, dispensing the next treat when they have finished eating the previous one. Your dog should think they are the luckiest dog in the world.
  
  
• Repeat these two steps a handful of times, alternating between your dog touching their nose to your hand for a lower-value treat and your dog lying down on the mat for several higher-value treats.
  
  
• Pick up the mat and act like the most boring person on the planet. Do not pay any attention to your dog . (We want them to love when you put that mat on the ground!)

Game 7: Take it Easy

• Put a mat on the ground close to your dog. Click when your dog lies down on the mat and place five high-value treats between their front paws, one at a time, dispensing each treat when they have finished eating the previous one.

• Stop treating and… wait for it……… wait for it………

• Say “yes” when when your dog offers any one of the following relaxed behaviors and deliver a treat directly to their mouth:

  • A deep breath or a sigh
  • Head on the ground between their front paws
  • Rolling their back hip (moving from the “sphynx” down to a more relaxed position)
  • Lying down on their side with their head on the ground
  • Slow blinking/heavy eyelids
  • A tail that uncurls to rest gently on the mat
  • Splooting (back legs spread behind them like frog legs)
  • The carriage of the ears slowly relaxing, muscles loosening
  • Absolutely anything else that signals relaxation, even if it’s just a gut feeling you have that the energy has shifted

Game 8: Take it Easier

Say “yes” and treat when your dog offers a calm behavior, but also when they continue that behavior. Is your dog showing soft, sleepy eyes? Gently say “yes,” deliver a treat directly to their mouth, and then count to three. Is your dog still showing soft, sleepy eyes? “Yes”/Treat. Count to seven. “Yes”/Treat. Count to ten. “Yes”/Treat. And so on.

✔️ Keep in Mind

For this part of the exercise, the goal is to move into true relaxation. For this reason, I usually put the clicker away and instead mark the desired behavior with a calm and gentle “yes” before treating. (Often dogs find the clicker too stimulating when trying to relax.)

It’s ok for your dog to “fake it to make it.” Capture and reward all of the relaxed body positions and signs of relaxation, even if you know your dog is “playing you.” Because the more they fake these behaviors… the calmer they will feel.

Be sure to deliver the treat directly to your dog’s mouth. No need to toss the treat. (We’re in the chill zone now!)

Adding Triggers

The next step in the process is to systematically add your dog’s triggers to these relaxation games, beginning at a very low intensity and gradually increasing the intensity as your dog is able to stay (and rewarded for) relaxation. 

A trigger is anything in the environment that causes your dog to have Big Feelings. These feelings could be those of fear, panic, and anxiety, or they could be feelings of elation, excitement, and arousal. When your dog is under the influence of a trigger, they are acting with their “feeling” brain (limbic), as opposed to their “thinking” brain (rational). Examples of common triggers include doorbells, door knocking, the presence or proximity of unknown dogs or people, and many human-based sights or sounds like sirens, garbage trucks, car doors slamming, dogs barking in the distance, wheeled objects, fireworks, cars backfiring, etc etc etc.

When introducing a trigger to mat work, the goal is to first "split" the trigger into its component parts and work on the easiest and most basic part first. If a dog usually has an explosive, limbic reaction when a stranger knocks on the front door, for example, a good starting place may be to...

• wait for your dog to calmly lie down on the mat (this is their way to say "I'm ready!")
• hold up your knuckle so your dog can watch your knock
• knock... lightly... once... on a surface that is not the front door
• immediately C/T your dog for staying calm on the mat

Set up all training games so that your dog will be very likely to "win" each round, and have fun doing so. If your dog gets off the mat or reacts in any way, split the criteria and make each round even easier before ever-so-gradually increasing the levels of difficulty as your dog is successful.

For very thorough, detailed, step-by-step instructions for adding a trigger to mat work—using the door knock as an example—I highly recommend Chapter 5 of Fired Up, Frantic, and Freaked Out, by Laura VanArendonk Baugh. This is also a great time to bring in a professional dog trainer with experience in reactivity. Often just one or two sessions with a trainer will give you the tools you need to help your dog succeed.

This article is under construction. More info will be added soon!