What is the Nothing in Life Is Free program?
NILIF is a simple and effective way to control our dog’s behavior, by controlling his most desired resources.
To implement NILIF, all we have to do is ask our dog to do something for us first, before giving him something in return. For example,
- If our dog wants to go out to the backyard, ask him for a Sit first, before opening the door.
- If our dog is looking for affection, ask him to Go Bed first, before scratching him on his favorite spots.
- If it is our dog’s meal time, then ask him for a Down-Stay before starting to prepare his food.
The Nothing in Life Is Free program is not a command or a single technique, rather it is a general strategy for dog behavior control.
With NILIF, we teach our dog that the best way to get what he wants, is to first do what we want.
Why Apply the Nothing in Life Is Free Program
With NILIF we teach our dog –
- To work for the things that he wants most.
- That people are the source of food, toys, play, and many other good things.
- That he gets the most resources by working together with us, staying calm, and following house rules.
This helps to build a strong bond with our dog that is based on cooperation, positive outcomes, and a good work ethic. It is an effective and non-confrontational way to achieve control.
Dogs have needs of their own. They are not mindless satellites that revolve around us, and that only live to serve us. With NILIF, we channel a dog’s energy into positive activities, and reward him well for his good works.
How to Apply the Nothing in Life Is Free Program
While applying NILIF on my dogs, I learned that it is very important to be consistent, firm, and fair.
1. Consistency
I set up a consistent set of rules, a consistent routine, and a consistent way of communication. My dogs understand what things they get rewarded for, and there is always ample opportunity for them to work for their supper.
Clear communication is also very important, so I identify good behaviors with a yes-mark (Yes or Good) and bad behaviors with a no-mark (Ack-ack). Similarly, they have a good dog name and a bad dog name.
Finally, dogs do not come with a ready-made human rulebook in their heads. For health and safety, we must teach a dog our very human rules. These rules will likely make very little sense to him, which is why we want to tie them to the things that he values most.
2. Firmness
If my dog fails to perform a command or only puts in a half-hearted effort, then I do not reward him for his lackluster performance; no matter how cute he looks.
For example, my Shiba Inu will sometimes only perform a half-down when I give him the command. When he does this, I just give him a look and wait for him to do it properly. When he sees that he will not get rewarded unless he does a good job, he puts in the extra effort.
He works even harder when I do group obedience sessions and he sees that my Siberian Huskies are being rewarded well for their good performance.
3. Fairness
All my dogs follow the same rules and get similar rewards. Their rewards are not always identical because they each have different temperaments, and are motivated by different things.
For example, both my Siberian Huskies are very motivated by food, especially Shania. My Shiba Inu is less motivated by food and more motivated by freedom, new objects and experiences, as well as chasing games.
Husky Lara likes to chase, jump, and weave between a person’s legs. Husky Shania loves meeting people, getting tummy rubs, and licking faces. A big part of being successful with NILIF involves understanding our dogs, and identifying what motivates them most.
I always try to set my dog up for success. In particular, I give him tasks where he has a good chance of completing. For example, I start by teaching him simple commands such as Look and Sit. I wait until he has mastered more basic commands before moving on to Fetch, Come, or Go Bed which are more complex commands, that include a sequence of actions. The more successful he is, the more confident he will become, and the more quickly he learns that working with me is a very rewarding activity.
Instead of throwing my dog into a situation that I know he cannot handle, I start small and we take small steps together. He works for each step, and gets rewarded for it with food, play, affection, and more.
I make sure to only reward good behaviors, and not give him anything for bad behaviors, including my attention and affection. Instead, when he does something undesirable, he may lose a reward or privilege.
In this way, a dog learns to repeat good behaviors because he gets what he desires most. Similarly, he stops bad behaviors because it gets him nothing, or he loses something that he desires. With NILIF dog training, we build a relationship that is based on trust and respect, rather than one that is based on confrontation and fear.
The Spirit of NILIF
Some people interpret the nothing in NILIF in the most extreme way. In particular, they give a dog access to some resource if and only if he completes a requested task. At other times, the dog is kept in a kennel or crate, so that he does not have his freedom, which in itself is a desired resource.
Confinement also prevents the dog from getting other desired resources on his own, including sticks to play with, or objects to chew on. In short, the only way he gets any and all resources is through us.
This may be one of those instances where we are trying so carefully to follow the letter of the law, that we end up defeating the spirit of the law.
The spirit of NILIF, as it is widely used today, is to build a strong bond with our dog that is based on trust and respect rather than on confrontation and physical force. We would hardly be doing this by keeping our dog locked up all day, with short bursts of freedom to hero-worship us. Such a strategy focuses purely on the human, and leaves nothing for the dog.
I train my dogs and use NILIF, not to boast about my dog training prowess, or to follow random rules for no reason. My ultimate goal is to provide my dogs with a good quality of life. Constantly depriving them of freedom and activity would hardly achieve this goal. Common sense dictates that this extreme interpretation of NILIF is not only untenable, but also unproductive.
When I implement NILIF, I reward my dogs for good behavior. It does not matter whether I asked for a behavior or not; if they behave well, they get rewarded. They are still working for their resources by behaving well, therefore they are not getting resources for free. However, I see absolutely no need to explicitly control every single action by my dog.
If my dog follows house rules, then he gets to roam freely in the house, play, rest, drink water, chew on toys, or whatever else. If he breaks an important house rule, then he may lose a reward, or very temporarily lose the privilege of his freedom.
Sometimes, I also reward my dogs with food and affection when they are resting calmly together. They get rewarded for sitting while greeting people. They get rewarded for staying calm while out on walks, and much more.
Isn’t the ultimate goal to get our dog to behave well on his own? Isn’t that much better than dictating his every move – like a robot controlled dog? It is extremely unhealthy to set ourselves up as the sole focus of our dog’s world, and take away all of his freedom and options. It is unhealthy for us, and unhealthy for our dog.
I like giving my dog options and helping him fulfill his needs. In my book, that is what trust and respect mean. That is also what love means.
We can nitpick on terms until the cows come home, and twist words to win online debates. At the end of the day though, what matters is not the terms used but what we do, and how we strive to give our dogs what they deserve – a good life that is safe and filled with happiness.
Hiya, love your website and have spent the last few weeks reading through your articles which have been very helpful but I was wondering if you could help and elaborate a bit more for me.
I rescued an abused puppy going on 8 months ago he was very, very nervous of everything and anything (once he got chased off by a cat.) He has got more confident but still reacts with people, especially men, on occasion. He’s a corgi cross german shepherd and is extremely loving but has that aggressive bark and growl to try and warn people off but if they come closer he usually licks them or at worse have a little accident.
I’ve been implementing NILIF, or attempting to, in the hope to strengthen our bond (when we’re outside he tends to totally ignore me especially if he sees another dog or worse a seagull to chase.) The only thing that gets me confused is when it comes to breakfast and dinner does he have to work for each piece of kibble or can he do a sit, down, paw and high five for the whole bowl…or should it be in a kong…
One more thing that I am absolutely desperate to get advice on is the situation at my parents house. We live on our own and to be fair Buster will bark when someone knocks on the front door and comes in but will usually after a maximum of 5 barks stop and want either a fuss or goes and lays in his crate. At my parents house, which we go to every weekend, he is totally different. Luckily my dad picked him up with me so there is no problem there but if my mum or brother wants to come into the living room then they have to deal with Busters barking. The last few weeks has seen Buster get halfway to accepting my brother, sometimes he wont bark at all, sometimes he’ll bark when he leaves and sometimes he does bark when he comes in. My mum however has sort of created a rod for her own back in a way because when he has barked at her she has either run off or taken to hiding behind the door. I got some advice about it from my trainer saying that we should go for a walk together but my mums disabled and spends the majority of time in bed unable to move. Buster can’t sit in with her as she is allergic to dogs. I want to know how I can make it so that both my mum and brother can walk around their house without having to worry about Buster barking at them…he doesn’t seem to do it when I’m not there so I realise I might be the problem. So any advice you might have on how to better the relationship or at least get him to stop barking when anyone enters the room would be greatly appreciated.
PS he doesn’t have his crate at my dads but he has his bed. Thankyou for reading this really long message.
How do you implement NILIF when puppy is young and doesn’t know any commands yet? For example, if I want to give my puppy a toy and they don’t know “sit”, they only know yes or no marks, how would the puppy give me something first for their toy? This is just an example, but how would you start early on implementing NILIF if they don’t know commands yet?
Also, how do you introduce your puppy to kong toys and to use them for food?
LOVE your blogs!! Very helpful and informative. 🙂
I know this comment is 2 years after your original comment, but my suggestion with a puppy like this is to teach them ‘sit’. That involves with a puppy making sure you issue the command then put their bums on the floor, then treat and ‘good boy’ or whatever your approval word is. Repeat a few times, and see if they start to get it. Then you can build on teaching ‘sit’.
Your advice for gentle touch was helpful. Took Samson an hour to learn. Still wants to bite,even draws blood. Jumps at you,pulling at your cloths and tearing them.Also will bite your; hands,legs,feet and sides.Tell him no sit,keeps coming at you,put him in time out. Then play and train,and then he start,s all over again.His bite is a lot stronger and it hurts.
I deal with my puppy biting by doing three things-
1. Bite inhibition training.
2. No-bite conditioning.
3. Structure and impulse control.
I talk more about what I do here.
How to teach my 4 1/2 month Lab to stay.
https://www.aspca.org/pet-care/virtual-pet-behaviorist/dog-behavior/teaching-your-dog-stay
I love your website. I feel like I have obtained more helpful information here than I have from 2 dog trainers and a plethora of popular media resources. I’m very thankful for the NILIF description and will be implementing this with my dog, as positive reinforcement alone led to a dog who thought he could do anything he wanted, and aversive training is now leading to a dog with leash aggression who turns on me.
One thing I would love to know a little more about is how NILIF works when a dog breaks a rule. For example, let’s say my Ari knows not to pick up my slippers or sweater off my bed but does- what do I do then? Or he’s in the backyard and I tell him to come but he doesn’t, what could be a good consequence for that situation? Or should I already have had him on a leash the entire time he’s in the backyard so I could control him coming to me?
Thank you for this website.
Thank you SV and big hugs to Ari!
Prevention is usually best with my dogs. My youngest Husky loves shoes because she loves her-people scent. When she is home alone or everybody is busy, she will sometimes pick up shoes and play with it and sometimes chew it. Having something that smells a lot like her people helps to calm her down.
Therefore, I give her old blankets that smell like people for her to cuddle in. At the same time, I put away all my good shoes so she can’t get to them. In this way, I set her up for success and give her alternatives for people-smell and calming herself.
I set up a fixed routine for my dogs, a consistent way of communication, and a consistent set of house rules. I also carefully manage their environment so as to maximize success. Structure and management gets me most of the way there, because it minimizes the number of “corrections” that I need to make.
For example, I manage my dog’s excitement level with play breaks so that she is less likely to get over-excited and lose control. When my dog tries to jump or bite on me, I start by giving a no-mark and then follow-up by telling my dog what to do instead. In this way, I can redirect my dog into doing something positive and then reward/reinforce that positive behavior. I give my dog many chances to redirect into a positive behavior, and I only slowly escalate my response if my dog escalates her bad behavior.
http://shibashake.com/dog/how-i-trained-my-husky-puppy#bite-training
Only when necessary, I do “corrections” by taking away a valued resource, e.g. access to people, freedom in the house, freedom in the backyard, access to daily walks, etc. What resource I use, will depend on the behavior I am trying to correct and the surrounding context.
In general, however, I try to set my dog up for success through structure and management.
More on how dogs learn.
As for recall training, that is something that I want to make as positive and rewarding as possible. The goal is to get my dog to *want* to come to me, which means that I have to be more fun, more positive, and more cool than anything else around her.
When my dog comes to me, I make it extremely fun and rewarding for her, with her favorite treats (that she doesn’t get from anything else), with lots of super fun games, affection, and more. If every time she comes to me, she gets lots of rewards, and then gets to go back to doing whatever she was doing, then she will repeat that come behavior more and more often.
I set my dog up for success by starting in a low stimulus environment, and only calling her when she is not doing anything interesting and is more likely to come. In this way, we start with lots of successes and I can keep reinforcing the behavior. As my dog learns to come more consistently, then I can slowly increase the challenge in terms of competing stimuli.
One common mistake in recall training is to call a dog to come, give her a little treat, and then put her in a crate, end play, end backyard time, leave her alone, etc. In this way, many dogs learn to associate coming with the loss of play, freedom, fun, or some other resource. In essence, we are “punishing/correcting” this behavior by taking away a very valued resource. This in turn, will teach a dog *not* to come when called.
Instead, I call my dog to me many times during play, just as a play-break. We do some very simple commands and I reward her extremely well for it with great treats, play, affection, and more. Then, she gets to go back to playing. I keep repeating that many times. And very occasionally, when I call her, we do the same awesome rewards, stop play, and do something else.
This ASPCA article has a good list of recall training techniques.
What is the purpose of the GO BED command? What does this command mean the dogs?
I am not sure what you mean. I use commands to redirect my dog away from undesirable behaviors, and to get him used to performing people-positive behaviors.
If my dog is sitting or lying down, then he cannot be jumping on people. If my dog is at his bed during dinner time, then he cannot be disrupting the dinner table. Commands are a way to communicate with my dog so that he learns how to live well and be successful in a human world.
is there are best age to implement this training with our Shiba Inu pups?
I started training my puppies when I first got them home, which is usually around 8 weeks old.
A puppy is going to need more food and will have much shorter attention spans, so I make it very easy for my puppy to get rewards in the beginning. For example, I reward very well for even a little bit of attention, letting me touch different parts of her body, very simple commands, doing potty, etc.
Whatever food I don’t use in training, I put in very simple interactive food toys, and I help my puppy figure out how to get the food out. I make sure to make things challenging enough that my puppy starts to learn and grow, at the same time I make things simple and rewarding enough that my puppy is motivated to continue and can easily get all the food that she needs.
Two years ago we adopted a 6 yr old female maltese that was used for breeding only .We were told she does not like men. Well, she loves my husband and other people when I am not around. The moment I come in, she guards me, attacks my husband when he comes near me. If he stays away from me, she is in his lap loving him. I am at my wits in, because my son & his kids came for a visit and when my son got up to walk past me to the restroom, she charged and bit him. We have tried everything, to my getting up as soon as she shows the signs, to putting her in a kennel. We hired a trainer who told us to use those 2 methods, they didn’t work. We love her, but my son and his family are coming this fall for another visit and I am worried. No one can come near me except some women. never men. Please help me
There are three keys things that I do with my dog when trying to change behavior.
1. I start small and go slowly.
This is really important because it ensures that my dog is calm enough to listen and learn. It also helps him to associate a previously negative stimulus with something positive. The key is to maximize positive successful experiences, while minimizing bad experiences where he keeps practicing aggressive behavior.
More on how I desensitize my dog to people.
Changing Sephy’s behavior often took a lot of time, consistency, and repetition.
2. Prevent bad behavior
I carefully manage Sephy’s environment, use collar and leash, or other management equipment to ensure success. I do not expose him to situations that he is not ready for and where he will resort to aggression. The more he practices the bad behavior, the more likely he will repeat the behavior. Instead, I use desensitization exercises (step 1) and management techniques to teach him better ways of responding to the stressful stimulus.
More on how I deal with my dog’s bad behavior.
3. Calm energy
My Shiba used to go crazy around me, and mostly only around me because of my energy. I was very stressed and a bit fearful while handling him in the beginning because of his crazy behavior. Unfortunately, Sephy is very sensitive to the energy of the people around him so he picked up on my stress, got stressed himself, and his behavior worsened significantly. After I changed my own energy, Sephy’s behavior also got better.
http://shibashake.com/dog/pack-leader-to-an-aggressive-dog
Note though that dog behavior is very context dependent. Here, I talk about my dog’s experiences and what works with him. However, each dog and each situation is different, therefore it is very important to customize training techniques to suit the particular dog and his surrounding context. This is why in cases of aggression, it is safest to get help from a good professional trainer.
http://www.apdt.com/pet-owners/choosing-a-trainer/
It is not always easy to find a good trainer – we went through a bunch of them while looking for somebody to help us with Sephy. Ultimately, I started reading up a lot on dog behavior and this was helpful not only in filtering out bad trainers, but also in being able to read Sephy better and understand where his behaviors are coming from.
http://shibashake.com/dog/where-to-get-dog-training-and-dog-behavior-information
I have a husky, the first of our dogs and oldest (we got her when she was about a year old), a small pit/lab/boxer mix, and another bigger pit/terrier/herding dog mix; they are all females. We have had issues in the past with pack order and them fighting before and corrected the behavior, but lately the two pit mixes are displaying dominant behavior and have been fighting each other lately, to the point I am worried we may have to get rid of one of them. The larger pit mix (she looks like a huge terrier with large stand up ears and a sort of curly tail, she weighs about 60-70lbs, she bites the whiskers of our smaller pit mix (brown dog, about 45lbs, thin face, looks more like a lab, acts like a goof ball) has been trying to hump the other dog all the time. The husky stays out of most of it, except she growls when Bailey (the brown one) tries to hump Clo-ee. Today, Bailey ran toward Clo-ee and attacked her, we had to stop it. Last week Clo-ee attacked Bailey seemingly over her food bowl. This behavior has to stop. We now have a 3 year old in our home and a grand baby on the way. This is one reason we were also thinking they may be fighting more lately (territorial over the child). We are at a loss and need advice. Please help if you can! Thanks!!! Our dogs are FAMILY and we certainly don’t want to get rid of any of them!!!!
Dog behavior is very context dependent. A dog’s routine, temperament, rules, past experiences, past training, and more, are all important in figuring out where the behavior is coming from, how to manage it, and how to retrain it. Changes in a dog’s environment and routine (e.g. new people in the house), can cause increased uncertainty, which can lead to stress and changes in behavior.
In cases of aggression, especially where there are children in the house, it is usually best to get help from a good professional trainer. In this way, we can make sure to keep things safe for everyone and start off on the right foot.
http://www.apdt.com/pet-owners/choosing-a-trainer/
With my dogs, it helps to set up clear dog-to-dog interaction rules. I supervise them closely during play-time and meal-times, and also whenever there are new changes to their environment, e.g. when there is a new dog, new people, new house, etc. I set their rules, I supervise, and I deal with possible conflicts early on, before things escalate into something more serious. I find that prevention is best.
I try my best to set my dogs up for success, keep things safe, and to ensure that their interactions are positive, so that they will view each other as allies rather than competitors. The more calm and positive interactions they have, the more confidence they build, and the more likely things will continue to be so. The opposite is also true. More on what I do with my dogs.
However, each case is different because each dog is different, the environment is different, and the context is different. When we had behavioral issues with our Shiba Inu, we visited with several different trainers. It is not always easy to find a good trainer, but I learned many useful things from the good ones that we found.
http://shibashake.com/dog/finding-a-dog-trainer