Like a lot of blunt instruments, Nothing In Life Is Free exists for a reason. It's a catchy one sentence framework that can fit on a sticky note. It highlights how to focus, and on what. It's very good at teaching new dog people to see training opportunities, and to set/reinforce boundaries. It's easy to get buy-in and owner compliance on. I get why. It has the feel of truthiness about it. We've all had to work for what we want.
The more I have grown as a behavioral scientist, a practical detection trainer, and a person, the more suspicious I have become of anything that resembles a NILIF framework.
Why is most obvious in extremes. I've recently met more than one dog trainer who was ready to die on the hill that Nothing In Life Is Free reflects some kind of inescapable natural law. As a behavioral scientist I find this view particularly bizarre.
Most of whatās meaningful in life is free, in that it isnāt ā and canāt beā bought. It has to be built.
Relationship and connection are built, not doled out.
I'm not saying I donāt pay dogs for specific behavior. I do, generously.
But I also pay my humans for their expertise and performance. (Though 'payment' is often delayed and abstracted, like how family trades off on hosting to share the load and also the reward.)
I also show up with ice cream when they're blue.
I send them links to thinks on the Internet that I think will delight them, and buy them dinner because it makes them happy and I wish to share their joy.
There are certainly folks who do not relate this way. This reflects differences in personality, emotional-relational skills, and values around relationship present in larger culture. Some people do view relationships transactionally.
In nosework, my area of interest and expertise, I see tendrils of this mindset most frequently as handler reluctance to reward their dog, sometimes to the extreme of refusing to reward for anything but found hides.
Handler rationale varies. Sometimes they insist this will confuse the dog. Sometimes they are concerned about incentivizing tapping out of a search, or false alerts. They are often deeply committed to this point of view.
I haven't seen their concerns play out.
I have seen a consistent pattern of those folks capping out at the exact juncture where uncertainty becomes less an event and more the river you swim in; think unknown variables, weird environmentals, teaching alerts to threshold amounts of specific substances.
I think it's a direct consequence of belief systems about performance and relationship, both implicitly and explicitly held.
A common example of this pattern: the seasoned nosework dog who definitely knows what the game is sticks a paw over the edge of their ability. The dog struggles. The person ends their turn or practice, or tries something easier. At best they give a little praise, or ask for a simple behavior the dog knows and reward that so they can 'end on a high note.' At worst they're visibly frustrated and critical of their dog.
What has this dog learned from that interaction? 'I don't know' means nothing all that great happens, at least in relation to nosework.
Folks that train this way do make progress. They increase complexity in the search by showing their dogs incrementally different permutations of similar problems, building pictures of what their dogs might see over time like a large puzzle coming together piece by piece. Handlers aggressively manage uncertainty, which looks like being very concerned with not over-facing their dog.These incremental progressions of challenge just tap the edge of their dog's ability with a toe. If they find themselves in the weeds, dog or handler uncertain, the experience becomes unpleasant.
The problem with this framework (and mental model as a whole) is that the ability to progress becomes directly linked to the ability to externally manage and control complexity and uncertainty in the types of problems they face.
If you are a working detection handler with a job to do, or if you've reached a certain level in sport, you stop being able to control so many variables in training. How much the dog is challenged and how uncertain they feel will be out of your control. Your progress then depends on how you both reckon with 'I don't know.'
At this juncture, there is a step-change in the nature of the task at hand. Paying for behavior stops working, because 'collaboratively problem-solve' and 're-engage' and 'remain optimistic and open and curious during uncertainty' are not behaviors, but complex emotional-relational skillsets.
Nosework at a high level of skill is a fundamentally relational-communicative endeavor, and strict reward structures and incremental permutations on hides do not teach those skills.
So what does?
Think about how you think about joy, fun, meaning, and belonging. What do you believe about those concepts, really? Do you feel that you need to earn those things? Might bad things happen if you try to earn them and fall short? How might that shape your willingness to try hard things? Do complexity and uncertainty feel inherently dangerous? How do you feel saying 'I don't know' in front of a group?
Our culture has gifted virtually all of us with some form of implicit belief about relationships being transactional. Unpacking that baggage is life's work, but we can set it down and take a load off immediately. It just takes a little introspection. Research shows that just being aware of our implicit beliefs reduces their impact on our feelings and behavior.
When you've done that, take a look at how your implicit beliefs about joy, fun, meaning, and belonging (in otherwords, reward) might shape what your dog has (or has not) learned about the nature of in uncertainty and complexity.
What do you do with your nosework dog who has hit a wall?
I like to have a nice tug about it. The point isn't just giving myself a moment to think about how I might help my dog get more data or a different perspective on the problem, or letting off steam, though those are good, important facets. The point of the reward at that time is to shape my dog's beliefs about uncertainty.
wonderful things happen in places of uncertainty and confusion, we de-risk working at the edge of our abilities. The edge of our abilities is where the greatest learning can take place.
I want my dogs to know uncertainty as opportunity, so I reward my dogs for effort and engagement.
I tug with them when they are frustrated because it teaches them to turn to me when they need me to lend some prefrontal cortex, and because it's a connected way to work through those feelings together.(And because it's fun.)
We get to share that pulse of joy when they look at an odor picture a a slightly different way and all the data fragments resolve into a coherent picture.(Which was only possible because they were emotionally capable of sticking with it, which was only possible because I shaped my dog's implicit beliefs about challenge, uncertainty, and complexity).
They find the thing, and we celebrate and process and learn again a richer iteration of the essential truth that we together -dog and human- can do things neither could alone.
You can't buy that.
You can build the skills and relationship that gets you to the point where uncertainty is just another place to begin, though.