Cannot animate a rig/model with Unity's built in animations if it has an avatar defined

I may be missing the point of avatars or some of their functionality, but this is driving me up the wall. Currently I have a setup where I have an empty parent GameObject with the Model being a child of that gameobject. I did this so that I can animate things such as the player shaking in place without actually altering the GameObject’s actual position. However, when I create these animations in Unity and have the avatar set for the animator component, the model does not move at all. I have also tried creating yet ANOTHER empty parent for the model and animating that as moving within unity. Am I missing something simple here? How do I properly create in-unity animations for manipulating the entire model without moving the parent gameobject itself? Thanks!

Generic rig setup correct?

Is your animator component attached to the actual mesh/model, or the parent empty gameObject?