Behind the Behavior

Greta Kaplan, CPDT, CDBC

Our afternoon at the Entlefest involved participating in an experiment:  For the first time, a breed-specific European-style working temperament test was administered to Entlebuchers as part of a three-part breeding fitness exam.  (The other two parts involve structure and movement.)  Because so many owners wanted to participate, we divided the duties.  My wonderful assistant Jett judged the second half of the test, while I judged the first half.  The club committee had set up the test grounds very efficiently and practiced the choreography to move dogs through as quickly as possible.  In the end, about thirty dogs participated (nearly twice the number originally signed up).  We quit right after the sun had disappeared below the California horizon.

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Greta Kaplan, CPDT, CDBC

Last week I traveled to Lake Tahoe to give a half-day presentation on Control Unleashed at the Entlefest.  I realize this requires some translation.  The Entlefest is the annual national breed club meeting for the National Entelbucher Mountain Dog Association.  An Entlebucher (Entlebuch Sennenhund) is one of the four Swiss Mountain dog breeds.  Many are familiar with the two bigger members of this group, the Bernese Mountain Dog and the Greater Swiss Mountain Dog.  The smaller members, the Entlebucher and the Appenzeller, are much less common and less well known.  The Entlebucher is rather low slung and powerful, and was specially bred to gently but firmly herd prized Swiss dairy cattle without knocking them off the numerous cliffs.  Entles in the US do not do much herding, but enjoy lives as pets, obedience dogs and sports companions (there are a few very fast flyball Entles).  The question most often answered by Entle owners is, “Is that a Beagle/Rottweiler mix?” (more…)

Greta Kaplan, CPDT, CDBC

When we talk to clients about what we’ll do at our initial consultation, we explain that we’ll take some history about the situation, discuss management that needs to be put in place to ease tensions and help the training work better, and then talk about and actually start training your dog to exhibit more desirable behavior.  I imagine that clients are often eager to get to the training part, thinking that that’s the “meat” of what we do.

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Greta Kaplan, CPDT, CDBC

First, we love TWAAW because it is very funny.  Food Lady is just a funny writer and her great photos really give her lots of opportunities for humor.

Second, we love TWAAW because there are lots of great photos of dogs being dogs.  Food Lady does not hide the fact that Piper is, well, a bitch.  We love Mad Teeth ™.  We love the bizarre lip configurations when dogs shake off.  We love the photos of the Woofs interacting with strange dogs, too.

Third, we love TWAAW for a reason that is a little harder to describe.  There are lots of great dog photos (though fantastic quality photos of dogs out just doing their doggie thing are rarer), and there are lots of great writers who tell us truthful things about dogs, and there are lots of people who are very funny about their dogs… but almost no one is all three. (more…)

Greta Kaplan, CPDT, CDBC

On one list I belong to, someone recently noted that her shy, reactive dog is much more barky and reactive when he is with her than when he is with other people, e.g. her sister and her pet sitter.  She was wondering why.  I suggested five possible reasons, and I’ve come up with a couple more since.

First, dogs who really dislike being alone may exhibit unusually affiliative behavior with anyone who relieves their solitude – and if they are dogs who also have anxiety around strangers, their need for company can trump their fear of strangers in some cases.  I once fostered a dog who turned out to have clinical separation anxiety (among many other quirks).  He was scared of me when we first met and he was in the company of another foster parent.  But the second I got him to my house, he was all charm, wiggling like mad and wanting to sit on my lap.  He can’t stand  being alone so … any port in a storm

Second, some dogs resource-guard their owners.  This isn’t protectiveness; the dog isn’t responding to some perceived threat to the owner.  Instead, the dog is treating the owner as a valued possession and is (more…)

Greta Kaplan, CPDT, CDBC

Most animal training is a mechanical skill.  We can take some basic scientific knowledge about learning, about operant and classical conditioning, as well as about the relevant instinctive behaviors and motor patterns of the species we are working with, and we can accomplish most of our training goals with good timing, criteria-setting, and rate of reinforcement.  So, training is science… except when it’s not.

Most dogs are easy to teach to “down.”  (Barring dogs with physical conditions, such as pain, that makes the movement difficult, of course.)  Typically, someone starting out training dogs trains a few dogs to lie down quite easily.  They lure the dog down with a cookie, give him the cookie when his elbows and butt are all the way down, and then fade the lure so that he follows a hand down.  Then the hand movement is condensed into a signal and perhaps a verbal cue is added.  Most dogs will learn down pretty easily with this sequence.

Then, there you are, teaching a puppy class at PETsMART, and three of the puppies in the class are small breed dogs, or have the short legs of a dwarfed breed.  You try to lure a down, and nothing happens.  The puppies do a lovely bow, but their butts never drop.  Or they let you wave the food around but their noses never go all the way to the floor.

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Greta Kaplan, CPDT, CDBC

I have been engaged in an effort to find an acceptable way to explain to my clients how to provide structure and predictability to their dogs in a way that would make their dogs comfortably willing to abide by human rules.  I explained that I’m uncomfortable when such programs invoke the concepts of dominance, “boss”, “alpha”, or even “leadership” — not because those concepts are wrong or unimportant, but because of the meanings and connotations that decades of popular dog writing have attached to these words.  I also commented that I was uncomfortable with many of the steps in so called “leadership” programs because they struck me as being based on false ethology and having no real training value once the supposed ethological meaning was stripped away.  Not much was left!

I attended the “Control Unleashed” seminar in Portland, Oregon presented by Leslie McDevitt, CPDT, CDBC, a very gifted trainer and behavior consultant from the Philadelphia area.  Leslie has worked closely with Karen Overall, one of the leading veterinary behaviorists in the world, and has a strong understanding of brain (more…)

Greta Kaplan, CPDT, CDBC

Some time ago, I received an email from someone who wanted to enroll her dog in my Feisty Fido class.  The dog was a young adult, male gundog mix.  I talked to Mrs. Owner, and determined that the dog had inflicted one significant puncture bite to another dog, so I decided he probably was not a good candidate for the class. We made a private appointment.  What a learning experience this turned into!

Mr. Owner came to the first meeting of the class, upon invitation, as it’s a good introduction to a lot of the concepts we’d be using in our private work.  He indicated that he knew how to train a dog, and the dog was trained, but they needed help with this dog (more…)

Greta Kaplan, CPDT, CDBC

My colleague Christine blogged recently about herding with her Aussie, Conner, and about dogs’ instinctive behavior as modified by human breeding decisions. She mentioned the frequency of dog-dog aggression among pit bulls. This topic has been on my mind lately, and frankly, I’m getting angry.

A very nice woman contacted me recently about bringing her dog to my flyball class. She asked if she could come and watch. Visitors are always welcome to watch my classes before deciding whether to sign up; I encourage it! So she brought her dog with her yesterday to watch class. In her introductory email, she described him as a terrier mix, about 40 lbs and muscular. I wrote back and said it sounded like he had some pit bull in him, and that (more…)

Greta Kaplan, CPDT

Amy and I had signed up for sessions 2 and 3 back-to-back. This was 12 days of class with a 3-day break. All this learning is tiring, and session 3 is the longest of the sessions at 7 days. Still, it was fun and stands out in my memory.

Our task was to create a fixed behavior chain which, at the end of the week, our hens would perform with no external cues or reinforcements until she crossed her finish line. The behavior chain was built around the hen proceeding over a gymnastic apparatus specially built for this session. The apparatus consisted of two towers, each with a platform around its post at about a foot above the table. The two towers were placed about three feet and a “balance beam” or catwalk connected them. Finally, a ladder led diagonally to each tower. The hen would climb one ladder, proceed around the *outside* of the post on the platform (more…)