I read a tragic news article:  “Puppy Owner Pleads Not Guilty for Choking Animal to Death,” Associated Press, February 26, 2010.  According to the article, the owner admitted holding the 10-week old Labrador puppy down for 20 seconds after the puppy bit the owner’s girlfriend on the nose, causing what the Animal Services officer called “a minor scratch.”.  According to the officer, the puppy was taken to an emergency vet where he “couldn’t walk, was breathing poorly and had reddish saliva and blue gums.”  The puppy died.

Without further information, of course, we do not know what motivated the owner.  Perhaps he was really angry and lost his temper, badly enough to kill the puppy.  Certainly, this does not match the description given.

If we accept the description given, the owner deliberately held the puppy down, using quite a lot of force.  It appears this holding-down maneuver was intended as a consequence for a bite to the girlfriend’s nose.  It’s reasonable to conclude that the owner believed two things:  First, that the bite to the nose was a seriously unacceptable, even aggressive act that justified severe discipline; and second, that holding a puppy down with severe force is an appropriate way to discipline a dog, including a ten-week old puppy.

Both of these propositions are false.  First, puppies this age bite.  It’s developmentally normal and almost never “aggressive.”  (Serious aggression in puppies this age is so rare that it causes a flurry on trainer email lists if observed; many trainers simply never have seen it.)  Second, holding a dog or puppy down as a form of discipline is dangerous and unnecessary.

The danger can be to the person if the dog is an adult, particularly a large one.  Holding a large adult dog down puts the person’s face near the dog’s mouth, and a dog who panics, or decides not to put up with the human aggression, is very likely to target the face simply because it’s nearby.  It can also be dangerous to the dog, as in this case, where the size and strength disparity was extreme.

This type of discipline is unnecessary.  Dogs simply do not use “holding each other down” or “rolling other dogs over” as a way of punishing or enforcing status.  Wolves may do it, but they do so extremely rarely; but in any case, dogs are not wolves; and even if they were, we are not wolves and do not remotely understand how and when to apply this type of serious, dangerous consequence.  There are numerous other safer, saner and more effective ways to influence your dog’s behavior.

Where, then, would an owner get the idea this was a good tactic?  One popular dog training book by The Monks of New Skete advocated the “alpha roll” in its first edition, about three decades ago.  The second edition, much more recent, retracted that advice with an apology.  However, the original edition is still out there; I recently saw a client who’d done a few alpha rolls on her young dog, based on that very book, which she’d picked up secondhand.

Realistically, though, not many people read that book any more.  On the other hand, every week, millions of people watch a television star who often performs maneuvers very like the one that killed this puppy.  You can watch, on YouTube and the National Geographic website, as this entertainer grabs dogs and pushes or slams them onto the ground.  In some clips, you can literally see the dog’s tongue turning blue after some time on the ground.  No wonder many pet owners might get the idea that this is a potentially appropriate response to perceived aggression from the dog.

And, this same performer often delivers this type of consequence for behavior described as “dominant.”  I don’t doubt that he might describe normal puppy biting as “dominant.”  So again, it’s no wonder that a pet owner might be led to perceive normal puppy biting as “dominant,” and to respond in a way he’d seen repeatedly modeled on TV.

I do not know whether the owner of the dead puppy, who is being charged with felony animal abuse, has watched “The Dog Whisperer” on TV.  However, I don’t know one competent behavior consultant who did not immediately, on seeing this tragic news story, make the same guess I did.  This type of human behavior is repeatedly modeled by a charismatic, persuasive, and apparently effective role model on an extremely popular television show.  It is inevitable that someone was going to “try this at home” with disastrous results; and this puppy’s death might be that disastrous result.

When I got Nickel, my oldest dog, I heard about flyball and decided to take him to class.  He seemed to enjoy it, and did all right, and I had fun.  Since I knew little about structure, sports training, or related topics at the time, it took me a while to figure out that Nick actually was not cut out to dedicate his life to performance sports.  He’s plenty smart, but low-key, and his structure isn’t so great, so he’s not that fast or efficient.  He was satisfied after a few minutes and could not see the point in doing it another ten times.  We wanted to adopt a second dog as a companion for him, and so I gave myself a crash course in dog structure and started identifying traits I hoped to find in a dog who would really love to do flyball with me.

After a careful search, I found a tremendously athletic, drivey, and beautiful female Aussie in rescue.  In addition to these traits, I discovered, Cedi was also quite anxious and dog-reactive.  Between that and various other life circumstances, a couple of years passed before we were really ready to dive into flyball.  She had no trouble with the physical skills — running, jumping, box turn, ball carry.  The mental skills, staying focused on me and unreactive when there were a lot of dogs zooming around and barking, were much more difficult.  I got tremendous lessons in helping a reactive dog as I took her first through some basic obedience classes (no running, no balls), then some agility classes (running dogs, no balls!), and then back to flyball classes (running dogs carrying tennis balls).  She became a stellar athlete, running any position in our club’s “A” team, participating in the team’s record time that stood for a couple of years, and often double-running the whole weekend with nary a mistake.  One year she was even among the top 250 point-earning dogs in NAFA: North American Flyball Association.  Flyball reduced her reactivity.  She could walk around a tournament without a growl, and even just once-weekly practice took the edge off so she could live a comfortable life.

When she was six, she and Nickel and I moved from California to Oregon.  I’d planned to join a team an hour from the house I bought, but this turned out to be a challenge.  There was no competition-oriented team closer to me, so I started one myself.  I then realized that no one in the area seemed to know how to teach a good box turn.  Though I’d only assisted at my old club’s classes, I felt I had something to offer in this new market, so I started teaching classes.  Meanwhile, it was time to add a puppy to my family, so I brought home Mellie, a Border Collie from a carefully researched breeder.  I knew so much more now; it was so much easier to teach flyball to Mellie!

Flyball is now one of the main things I do for fun.  My club, the Portland Tail Blazers, has grown slowly with a solid core of members who get along reasonably well and share goals of training well and competing with dedication and integrity.  Flyball is a team sport, and attending tournaments can be grueling.  Tournament days can be long, eight to ten or sometimes even twelve or more hours.  In our region, the majority of the tournaments are held in British Columbia, at least a five or six-hour drive from Portland.  Tournament days are a combination of “hurry up and wait” punctuated by several ten-minute intervals of intense excitement when your race comes up on the schedule.  Exhaustion and stress can make it harder to get along even with people you get along well with!  Having a wonderful group makes all the difference.

I should add that there is also some “non-team” flyball now.  The newer league, United Flyball League International offers singles and pairs racing in addition to the regular four-dog format.  Unaffiliated dogs can race, and the singles format allows for very accurately timed speed trials, making for some fun statistics.

In addition, we get to do some fun stuff closer to home.  We receive quite a few requests to do demonstrations at events such as dog park fun days, and every year we participate in a number of these.  Our favorite demo opportunity is half time at Portland Trail Blazers games.  The staff get our equipment onto the court and set up in about two minutes; then we race six or seven rapid-fire heats; and then we get out.  We often make the races a little closer for entertainment purposes, and put a little verve into our tug and disc rewards in the runback.  A little showmanship doesn’t hurt!  We’ve played to a full house a few times, but even when the game is not sold out, it’s exhilarating to feel the energy of around 20,000 spectators.  The dogs seem totally unfazed.  They see their jumps and box and know what to do!  The more social ones often get to pose for pictures with Blazer Girls, and Spam, the tiny Staffordshire Bull Terrier, invariably gets a huge amount of attention as she looks like a toy pit bull. (Spam is the model for our club logo, and one of the reasons we take a firm anti-BSL stance.)

Although flyball seems far removed from my “real work” of being a dog behavior consultant, it’s actually been a big help for me.  In flyball contexts, I work with some very intense, aroused, high-drive dogs.  I’ve learned to tug like a pro, and how to use and control tug (and other intense play rewards) in a safe and positive way.  Flyball directly presents the issue of a dog being able to focus and behave safely in the immediate presence of things that often trigger reactive or aggressive behavior:  Running dogs, growling or barking dogs, people who run, yell, or wave stuff around, and so on.  A flyball dog must pass another teammate nose to nose with both running near top speed, in a lane two feet wide.  Being able to do this really helps dogs stop worrying so much about a dog invading their space!  All this experience has built my confidence in working with dogs that intimidate many people (including some trainers) and has given me tools to help them more effectively.  I just talked to a new client who specifically sought me out because I had experience with high-drive, reactive working dogs.

Of course, as Nickel taught me early on, flyball is not the right sport for every dog. In my next blog, I will talk about another specific type of dog that, surprisingly, may not be a good candidate for this sport.

Do you participate in flyball with your dog? What is it like to train your dog for flyball? Do you enjoy competitions? What is your favorite thing about this sport? What’s your least favorite? I can’t wait to hear from fellow flyball enthusiasts!

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.

The test first involves a series of exercises to see how bonded the dog is to the handler and how the dog responds to social pressure.  We had the dog and owner walk through a crowd, walk along alone together, play together with and without toys, and sit quietly while a circle of people closed in.  We then had a helper hold the dog’s leash while the handler went to hide behind a tree at least 80 feet away.  We noted the dog’s responses both when separated from handler and when released to find the handler.  Most of the dogs watched intently as their handlers walked away (peering through a forest of knees) and made straight for the handler on being released.  It was quite windy and these dogs uniformly followed an arcing path downwind of the handler’s actual footsteps. It was neat to see such obvious nosework in action.

In the second half of the test, the dogs were exposed to a series of visual, aural and tactile challenges.  Most of the dogs handled these quite well, with perhaps an occasional startle if a sound came from behind.  Last was the defense test:  First a scary stranger approached while the dog sat with his person; second, the handler disappeared and scary strangers ran around waving sticks while the dog sat tethered.  Again, most of the dogs were remarkably stolid about this.  One moved into position between handler and stranger, and one (whose owner has been working on his reactivity for years) did some barking in both situations.  These Entles seemed less reactive and more thoughtful and quiet than many herding breed dogs of my acquaintance.  I was impressed.

This test was based on the test used by the Swiss Entlebucher club.  There, dogs must pass the test to earn breeding privileges.  Here, it is being used as a tool to help owners understand and evaluate their dogs.  No one passed or failed; each owner got a copy of his or her evaluation sheet with comments including training recommendations.  Only a very few dogs displayed really troubling temperament issues (fearfulness).  I found myself wondering, “Why is that dog intact?” in some cases, and “why on earth is that dog neutered?  He’s wonderful!” in others.  Of course owners have all sorts of reasons to neuter or not neuter other than breeding so I kept my questions to myself!

I see a breed club faced, early on, with a choice that has plagued many other working breed clubs.  A few of the dogs we saw were real working dogs: high in drive, tough, intense, intelligent and persistent.  They are not always the easiest pets!  Many were much lower-key and would not make good workers, but were wonderful companions.  Should breeders try to breed for versatility? Split the  breed into two lines?  Give up on working ability since it’s unlikely this breed will be called upon to work in the US?  Acquiesce to a split with the Swiss club’s breeding goals?  Aussie, Border Collie, Doberman, German Shepherd, Lab, and other breeders struggle with questions of this type all the time and I don’t know that there is any one right answer.  I wish these dedicated Entlenuts good luck in figuring it out.

At dinner, immediately after, we enjoyed yummy food and ice cream sandwiches for dessert (I swear, this was just a happy accident).  After covering some club business, our hostesses re-introduced us to the gathered Entle fanciers.  We were stunned and blushing when polite applause turned into a standing ovation.  After that, we went to bed feeling very cheerful!

The drive home was a lot like the drive to Tahoe… minus the police stop.  We rested in Tulelake to run the dogs in a schoolyard.  There, a group of preadolescent kids joined us on their bikes and after showing some initial timidity, got interested in throwing tennis balls for the dogs.  They were amazed by the fetching and had a positive dog experience.  When we drove away, we spotted this little “gang” a couple of streets away and we all waved goodbye at each other.  I spent the rest of the drive thinking that I could look up the significance of this or that geological formation “if only I had an iPhone!”  We ran into some intense snow showers passing over the Cascades and made it home an hour or two after dark.  All in all, we had a great time, but were exhausted and we’re still recovering.  (The dogs are fine.  They do not need any more recovery time, please!)

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?”

I was honored to be asked to present.  CU author and developer Leslie McDevitt personally recommended me to the NEMDA members who inquired many months ago.  Committee members Linda Planting and Leelee Stefanki were very patient with me as we worked out scheduling, programming, and accommodations.  I was even more excited when they asked me if I could add another activity for the afternoon of the same day:  Judging a European-style working temperament test for the dogs in attendance.  I will write about that separately.

Along with able assistant Jett Wyatt, her Aussie, Kiva, and my Border Collie, Mellie, we drove the 600 miles from Portland to Lake Tahoe the day before the presentation.  It was tiring and I’m very grateful to the nice policeman who decided not to ticket me for speeding near the Lava Beds National Monument.  We were hoping to arrive at the lake before dark so the dogs could have a good run, but we didn’t quite make it.  We stopped in Carson City to buy a good flashlight and the dogs got a short ramble on the beach before we collapsed.

The presentation started at 8:30, and I spent the first 20 minutes arranging the participants so that their dogs were in the most restful spots possible.  A very big part of CU is learning to set up your dog’s environment to reduce arousal and stress.  Instead of allowing participants to put crates in rows along the tent walls, I had them spread crates out to minimize strange-dog proximity stress.  Then we got started.

We had anticipated about a dozen working dogs, but in the end, nineteen dogs’ owners wanted to participate.  I decided to arrange things so that every owner got at least one participatory slot.  I selected six dogs to work all the way through (three sections), and then divided the rest into thirds and assigned each third to one of the three sections.  The owners’ questionnaire responses were invaluable in helping me to select which section would most suit each dog.

I talked about theory for about 15 minutes and then we launched into the first working section, which was about body language.  As each dog entered the “box” (the working space in CU), the audience called out their guesses about how each dog was feeling.  I was thrilled that so many members readily identified sniffing and lip licking as signs of stress.  We added some more signs for them to recognize and apply:  stretching, shaking off, yawning, and so on.  The last demonstration was possible because one of the applicants for a working spot had an elderly dog who’d gone blind.  We had her interact with a stable younger dog so that the audience could see what the younger dog did when the older one inevitable was unable to recognize early body language and continued into the younger one’s personal space bubble.  The older dog handled herself fine and I hope the lesson was clear:  Dogs are communicating by tiny body language signals all the time!  A lot is happening before there is a growl or snap.

We then moved onto demonstrating the Give Me A Break game.  This game is hard to visualize from reading the book.  We had the usual range of dogs who were Velcroed to their owners to dogs who needed really long breaks.  The audience was getting good at telling sniffing for information apart from stress (displacement) sniffing.  All the dogs shortened their “breaks” on their own and the owners started to feel the value of allowing the dogs to choose attention rather than trying to compel it.

Last we examined the Look At That game.  Probably the best known of the CU games, it’s a very useful one.  We supplied distractions to suit each dog as best we could.  I ran around one dog who sometimes grabs running children.  (She was great, very hard to distract!)  We brought in Mellie to tug, walk, or run near some of the other dogs.  We banged a crate door and dragged a chair for one dog who startles at sudden noises.  Finally, we worked with a formidable titled athlete who is obsessed with tennis balls.  We showed how we could get him to “LAT Tennis Ball” as a way to get him to leave it alone.  After five minutes, he was looking at the ball as Jett and I rolled it back and forth between us just a few feet away.  His owner was impressed and could see how to expand this result to a more normal situation.

With this dog I also detoured for a few minutes to show how to teach a good Out with a tug.  He is a mature, powerful dog who has spent 6 years being very hard to get toys from.  In five repetitions I had him releasing his tug extremely readily and was starting to put a cue on it.  Once I recovered my breath (we were at 6200 feet!), I could see that quite a few audience members were busy taking notes.

We wound up when the lunch crew was busy setting up tables.  Our tent had become the lunch tent!  People had lots of questions and I finally had to defer so we could give our hardworking dogs a break before the afternoon activities started up.  We were thrilled to notice one of the attendees playing Look At That dog in the parking lot.  I’m certain he’s on the way to agility success with his beautiful, athletic young Entle boy.

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.

But sometimes, the most important piece of the session is the management piece.  That can happen for several reasons.  One, the behavior modification may really be very hard for the owner to accomplish.  Someone who *must* work a full time schedule out of the home may not be able to implement a full separation anxiety protocol; in that case, doggie day care, a management solution, might be the most effective way for dog and owner to get relief from the paralyzing anxiety of this condition.  Two, some behavioral issues are not really amenable to behavior modification.  We can change any behavior, but that doesn’t mean we can always change it enough to make the critical difference.  For example, we can generally teach a very predatory dog to recall off of chasing prey… but not to choose not to hunt prey when there’s no one around to call the dog!  In that case, keeping the dog from being around prey when unsupervised is critical.

Several months ago I saw a client who had two young adult dogs of the same breed.  The two dogs were fighting.  Doggie housemates who bicker aren’t uncommon.  What *is* uncommon is when one is trying to kill the other,  In this case, the female had been in numerous scary fights with the male.  In the next-to-last fight, she’d bitten his back foot badly.  In the last fight (before the owner called me for help) she’d slashed up his inner thigh.  The severity and location of the wounds, and the nature of the fighting (she was silent and extremely fast when she attacked him) told me that she was just trying to sharpen her skills so that she could kill him.  (Killing takes practice, especially when there isn’t much size difference between predator and prey.)  We talked over options, including the possibility of medication, but I had to tell the owner honestly that this kind of behavior was not really amenable to behavior modification.  We talked about how terrified the male dog must feel a lot of the time.  She started separating them and trying to add enrichment to relieve some stress, but we both knew there was only one real answer.  She found a new home for the female — who was very people friendly and was even appropriately friendly with strange dogs — in a mansion with a huge yard.

She called me back recently because the male was exhibiting some breed-typical dog reactivity and other mild aggression.  (By the way, these were *not* pit bulls, but a relatively rare breed which I’m not mentioning to protect my client’s privacy.)  When I got to her house, I saw a dog I’d never met before.  The male was cheerful and playful with me, engaging in games of tug and fetch.  When I introduced him to my helper dog, he had one moment of a bad reaction, but pulled himself together remarkably quickly.  My assessment was that he’s really a pretty normal dog who has recovered extremely well from what must, essentially, be a pretty hideous case of post-traumatic stress disorder.  We went over how to work with the mild food guarding, dog reactivity, and handling sensitivity and I was able to normalize the dog’s behavior and reassure the client about the prognosis.

None of the behavior we worked on at the recent appointment had even emerged before.  At that time, this dog was afraid for his life and was very shut down.  And the only answer for that problem, a much more severe one, was management.  Some owners choose to keep both dogs when this happens, and to simply keep them separated (or struggle endlessly to re-introduce them).  I was, frankly, relieved that this owner decided against that quickly, because it’s an exhausting and heartbreaking process for all concerned.  (However, if owners I’m working with make that choice, I will support them to the best of my ability!)  But the payoff here is obvious: Her boy is a new dog, doing normal doggie stuff, and needing what is (from my point of view) relatively straightforward behavior modification to heal some of the wounds left by his traumatic puppyhood.

Sometimes we’re going to tell you that the best choice is management.  A 12 year old dog exhibiting extreme predation toward the cats is probably not a good candidate for extensive behavior modification.  The behavior modification will take the rest of the dog’s natural life.  Management makes more sense.  Part of what you’re paying us for isn’t just our ability to modify behavior, but to know when it does and doesn’t make sense to modify behavior.  We know which things are typically easy to change… which are nearly impossible.  We also have lots of ideas about management that may smooth the process and enrich your ideas.  It’s not just about knowing how to do it, but knowing what to do, and when, and when not to.

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.

Food Lady often puts words or thoughts in her dogs’ mouths (or heads).  And sometimes these are not thoughts a dog’s lemon-sized brain could generate.  But these are usually obvious; Food Lady knows, and lets us know, that she’s joking.

One great example is in the entry called Conversations with the Dogs (Sept. 19, 2008). Food Lady asks Tweed what is the matter.  Tweed says:  “I see dead people.”  We can be pretty sure that no one really thinks Tweed is seeing dead people… though he does look a bit spooked for some no-doubt legitimate canine reason.  Because Tweed’s expression does look like a dog might look if he could see dead people, and because we all know that Food Lady isn’t silly enough to think Tweed is actually seeing dead people, we can enjoy the wonderful humor of this piece without being bothered by fussing about misleading anthropomorphism.

And people who are reading the entry without having any concerns whatever about whether Food Lady is anthropomorphizing will still realize that she is making up a fun story, not seriously attributing a human and psychic act to Tweed.

I guess I love this because so much of what is written about dogs out there is, well, wrong.  And sometimes damaging.  As a professional dog behavior consultant who constantly deals with the fallout of faulty and damaging beliefs, and who rarely finds dog humor funny simply because it tends to contain these damaging beliefs (about which I am now highly sensitized), it is a tremendous relief to be able to laugh at dog humor that doesn’t promulgate harmful beliefs.  Yeah.

Go Food Lady!

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 working to defend his ownership rights from interlopers.  These dogs tend to move in between their owner and dogs and/or humans who approach, and may stiffen and snarl or bark if the interloper gets closer.  These dogs are often also food-guarders and their efforts will redouble if the owner is carrying treats.

Third, it’s not uncommon for owners to inadvertently reinforce barky, reactive behavior.  A dog who’s hysterically upset is not going to act more hysterical because he happens to get a treat while he’s screaming; he’s too panicky to learn from consequences like a small treat.  But a dog who’s feeling worried, but not hysterical, may experience a cookie that interrupts the barking as a reward for barking… and bark more next time.  It can be hard to sort this out, since owners who are doing this may simultaneously be forcing the dog into closer proximity with the trigger, thus increasing the intense emotional reaction, and this increased emotion may be driving the barking rather than the cookie reward.  An experienced pair of eyes can make all the difference in figuring this out.

Fourth, shy or fearful dogs may shut down and essentially freeze up when they are seriously stressed.  Being separated from their familiar, safe person can cause them to freeze.  Their behavior looks calm; they don’t appear to be reacting to much of anything, so the barking stops.  When the owner is around, they are confident enough to bark out of frustration, communication, warning, etc.  With these dogs, the fact that they are barkier with mom is a good sign, even if it’s hard to live with!  This phenomenon is behind a lot of the “honeymoon period” behavior we see in recently adopted dogs.  It’s not uncommon for the dogs to just close up and simply not behave much at all until they relax and understand the rules in their new home.  Once they relax, the behavior they’ve been keeping under wraps may be charming or it may be difficult.

Fifth, we owners are at a real disadvantage compared to people who have our dog for an hour or a day.  It’s pretty easy to be clear and consistent about rules and expectations for limited periods.  It’s really hard to stay clear and consistent 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year!  Lack of consistency can make some dogs anxious, so they may trigger more easily, come down more slowly, and information-seek more often.  (Much barking is information-seeking.)  This is one reason it’s often very easy for a trainer to take your dog’s leash and get beautiful attention or quiet.  The trainer isn’t magically skilled, she’s just being clear for a short period so that the dog has no questions about what to do and not to do.  Even the best trainer would eventually see your dog’s “issues” if she took him home for a few months!  A variation on this theme is how well my Border Collie worked for my herding instructor.  He could control the sheep easily by where he stood, whereas (she figured out) I could not consistently control the sheep no matter where I went.  She was pretty much free to run the sheep as she liked, and she did!  Dogs who know you’re in control of the reinforcers are generally very cooperative dogs.

Sixth, owners may inadvertently increase their dogs’ stress with their own emotional reactions to the situation.  If an owner starts to breathe shallowly, tighten the leash, and let a certain screechiness or sternness creep into her voice, the dog accurately reads signs of stress and becomes more stressed himself.  This is a perfectly normal adaptive behavior since stress signs from a member of your social group can warn of danger before it’s too late to escape.  The now-stressed dog is then prone to start barking or snarling much more readily since he is producing adrenaline and looking for the threat.  The owners’ stressed behavior may be directed toward the dog as an apparent attempt to calm the dog – but if the owner’s body language is stressed, the dog will pick up on that rather than the soothing intent.  The owner’s stressed behavior may be directed toward the dog in the form of a punishment for the dog’s own increasingly stressed behavior: “Rover, knock it off!  How dare you growl at that nice Poodle!”  Or the owner’s stressed behavior may not even be directed toward the dog… but the dog will still feel it.  (Note that it is perfectly possible for owners to direct calming, soothing behavior at dogs that does not increase stress; and we know this happens when the dog is calming down rather than getting unhappier. If your behavior truly makes your dog feel calmer and better, then there is no reason to stop, even if someone tells you to stop coddling your dog.)

Seventh, some owners may inadvertently increase their dogs’ stress by repeatedly forcing them too close to triggers.  Even if the owner’s demeanor is cheerful and calm, the dog can still be hating life if forced to stand nose to nose with the neighbor’s overly friendly puppy, subtly threatening middle-aged male, or wobbly toddler.  Eventually one will snap, and if this type of interaction happens repeatedly, the dog will become agitated more and more pre-emptively (when they see another dog (or toddler) across the street… whenever they walk on a certain block… when the leash goes on…).

This seems like an awfully long list of ways we can freak our dogs out and make them bark and react more in our presence.  But it goes with the responsibility of having a dog.  In just the same way, it’s much easier to hurt a person who loves you, because that person is the one who cares about what you think, do, and feel more than one who is neutral toward  you.

Many dogs who are reactive are experiencing more than one of these phenomena, so a big part of our job is identifying how each owner’s behavior might contribute to the dog’s behavior.  Change takes place on both ends of the leash, so if you’re experiencing any of these problems with your dog, let us know. We love talking to our readers about their dogs!

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.

The more dogs you lure into a down, the more you realize that the exact hand motion of the lure makes a difference.  For some dogs, all you have to do is sort of wave toward the ground and they plop down.  The bigger the dog, the harder they fall, more or less, and bigger, heavier dogs typically slouch onto the ground very readily.  I’m sure that basic biophysics is at work here — it’s too much work for these guys to keep their front ends up while their heads are down following the treat, and they save a lot of energy by slumping to the ground.  Voila.  But little dogs, or very flexible ones, don’t experience nearly the energy savings so you have to work a lot harder to get them to see what a wonderful idea it is to put their chests on the  ground.

With some dogs, it helps to push your lure a little toward the spot between their feet, under their bodies a bit.  For others, it helps to pull the lure a little outward as you lower it to the ground, closer to the trainer.  Those are the first two variations I try with a dog who isn’t getting it right away.  With some dogs, you can handle hesitation by waiting them out; with others, they lose interest quickly and wander off, so waiting is a bust.  With some dogs, especially little ones, luring them under your bent leg gets them to drop their bodies, which you can mark and reward.  This is a great idea, but in practice a lot of these guys are nervous about putting their bodies under someone’s leg and it’s easier to capture the down than to desensitize them to the weird body contortions.  With the really hesitant ones, I go straight to capturing.  I just wait for the dog to lie down, mark it verbally and reward.  This can actually work in remarkably few repetitions if you are paying attention.

Having trained hundreds of dogs to lie down, I can usually get a dog lying down pretty easily — a lot more easily than their owners or than a beginning trainer.  But if I really break down what I am doing, it takes a really long time to describe.  See, I just wrote five longish paragraphs about this!  And the major differences are one-inch variations in the position of the lure.  That’s starting to be art, not science.

This whole art thing really hit home when someone on a list asked how to train a flyball box turn.  This is one of my pet subjects.  The poster asked if you use a jump in front of the box, and if so, how far it should be from the box and at what angle.  Sounds simple, right?  Actually, I use a jump in front of the box with most dogs, but the distance and angle are very tricky little metrics that are never the same for any two dogs.  Actually trying to write down things like, “if the dog is confidently hitting the box with the front feet, but is not pulling the back feet over the jump, you could angle the jump closer to the box on the leading edge, and farther on the trailing edge, or you could try inserting a vertical barrier perpendicular to the box face that the dog must circle behind, or you can try luring in a different way” and trying to explain how to choose which tactic at which moment, is pointless.  Knowing just whether and when to do this takes tiny, fine judgments that no beginner could make.

I’m sure someone could break this down into an algorithm if we could measure the relevant factors — the dog’s size, build, stride length; his learning style; exactly where he is placing his feet right now, and so on.  But we’re moving into the realm where the human brain is processing information so fast and subtly that the process is mostly invisible, and trying to explain the reasoning process would take hundreds of pages of logic trees and diagrams.  It is a lot easier to propagate the knowledge by teaching people how to teach the turn, and letting other brains assimilate the art.

So when I go into someone’s home and wow them by getting their untrainable dog to down, stand still, or sit to greet, it’s really not that I have some magical authority and the dogs recognize me as the Big Alpha Trainer Who Must Be Obeyed.  It’s just that I’ve gotten a lot of dogs to do these things over many years and I’m adjusting my body language on the fly.  I know a bunch of tiny variations to try and most of the time my adjustments aren’t even conscious.  Now that it comes up, the idea that dogs respond to trainers because of “authority” is an interesting one for another day!

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 chemistry.  She works mostly with troubled dogs, but also with many sports dogs, including flyball and agility dogs with serious arousal issues.  In an earlier blog entry, I reviewed her book (also entitled Control Unleashed) and talked about how good I thought the program was.  In addition to the two seminar days, I was able to watch the following day which consisted of private lessons for “not ready for CU” dogs.

Control Unleashed was originally written as a series of articles for Clean Run magazine to help agility competitors with overamped dogs teach their dogs to focus and relax.  Most of the dozen dogs at the seminar were competition dogs in agility (one in flyball), and two were non-performance dogs looking for improved life skills.  The dogs’ stress reactions ranged from shut down to goofy to frantic.  Leslie worked each dog in a series of games designed to promote physical and mental relaxation, calm focus, and the ability to raise and lower arousal with ease.  Leslie uses lots of food, but she also makes extremely heavy use of the Premack Principle — the idea that a higher probability behavior will reinforce a lower probability behavior.  (Being allowed to chase a ball will reinforce a sit — if you have a ball crazy dog.)

As I watched, it occurred to me that a lot of the CU exercises are what Leslie calls “rule structures” that incorporate into daily life.  One lovely example is the reorienting exercise.  Leslie suggests that each time you transition to a new space, you have your dog reorient to you.  This involves having the dog sit in front of you, make eye contact, and pause.  Leslie uses this moment to check the dog’s breathing (stress panting or calm breathing?), attention (calmly looking at handler, or ears swiveling madly about?) and demeanor (cringing? about to explode?).  If the dog is not calm and focused, she will pause for some calming work before moving further into the space.  She uses this reorienting technique when dogs go out the front door, out of the car, into the classroom, or out of their crate in class.  The dogs know it’s coming and soon learn to relax themselves at each predictable transition.

So — the dogs have a rule to follow.  It involves exercising self-control, which is always a good thing, especially for dogs with “issues.”  It involves self-calming, which is great for dogs that are scared or reactive or just amped.  It involves a highly predictable behavior that has them interact and connect with their handler.  In short, it provides a highly predictable rule structure *and* valuable learning benefits *and* increased connection and teamwork between dog and person.  Doesn’t that sound like a good thing?

Control Unleashed is full of rule structures that can be incorporated into daily life with the same benefits.  Instead of artificial, arbitrary rules “just to have rules” or imbued with some doubtful ethological benefit (do dogs really think we’re in charge just because we eat first?), these rules actually ease handling and teach the dog useful skills.  And they provide a high degree of predictability and give the dog desirable ways to get what he needs.

I love this book so much that I’m considering ordering it in bulk to be able to get it clients fast!

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 aggression problem.

When I went to see the dog at his home, I was met at the door by Mrs. Owner and the dog.  The two young kids were also there.  The dog was nervous at the door, approaching me slowly with his weight shifted to the rear, ears back, big eyes.  I pretty much ignored him as I introduced myself to the family.  After a couple of minutes, the dog realized I had treats and approached to get one.  He relaxed a lot and engaged with me readily.  I introduced him to the clicker and he was a very quick study, obviously enjoying the interaction.  He was a very sweet, bright, pleasant dog once he got past that initial caution.

Later in the session, I brought my dog in with me.  She doesn’t particularly like meeting other dogs, but is happy to work if they don’t greet her.  We put the dog on leash and had them do down stays several feet apart.  My client dog appeared nervous, turning his head away from my Aussie, flicking his tongue, and then, as she got a little closer, lifting his lip.  He gave plenty of quiet warnings to express his discomfort.  We gave the dogs a break from each other and I talked to Mrs. Owner (Mr. Owner was absent).

First, I asked her if she had seen that her dog was uncomfortable. She said no!  I asked if she had observed his ears – no.  How about the head turn?  Nope.  And the lifted lip?  Not that either.  Then I asked if she noticed that he’d been afraid of me when I came in the house.  No!  She thought of him as very enthusiastically friendly to people and had never noticed the (to me) obvious caution in his body language when a stranger came through the door.

I brought my dog back over and repeated the approach.  I told her to stare at her dog’s head, eyes, ears and lips and not to look at me or my dog at all.  When I glanced up at her, I could see understanding flooding her expression.  The signs were there, and they weren’t even that subtle, but she had just never been looking at her dog when he gave them.

We talked about the incident where he had bitten another dog.  Here is what happened.  Mr. Owner had taken the dog on a hunting trip with a couple of other guys and a couple of other dogs, Labs.  One of the Labs was younger than my client dog, and had been very interested in socializing.  He’d initiated play many times as the hunters hiked toward their destination.  Finally, several hours into the first day, my client dog snarled and snapped at the young Lab.  Mr. Owner was angry and unhappy, so he flipped his dog onto his back and had the young Lab brought over to stand over my client dog.  At that point, my client dog broke Mr. Owner’s hold, lunged up, and bit the Lab on the mouth, slicing open his tongue.  The bleeding was bad (tongue injuries bleed terribly) so the men cut short their trip and headed home to get vet care for the young Labrador.

There is no doubt in my mind that my client dog had some normal social sensitivity to proximity before this incident.  The Lab probably had gotten on his last nerve by the time my client dog snarled.  Then, he was trapped into a confrontation; he must have been terrified!  I’m sure he thought he was fighting for his life by that point.  Yet, all the blame was laid at the feet of my client dog, who was the true victim in this situation.  No wonder he’d developed more reactivity to other dogs!

This case has a happy ending.  Once I explained that (a) their dog was just a bit nervous, and that they could see it all coming by watching him, that (b) his fear had been greatly and justifiably increased by the hunting trip incident, and that (c) his social caution was normal, they agreed to let him have his space.  They contacted me later to exclaim over how obvious it now was to them that he was nervous when visitors entered!  They chose to give him a safe space when the kids had friends over, instead of insisting that he cope.  The dog relaxed hugely and is now a loved, accepted family member.

All I did for these folks, when it comes right down to it, is this.  I had them watch their dog.  Ten seconds of watching his face did all the work!