Dog Behavior & Training

No More Excuses, New Years Resolutions for Dog Training

Christine Hibbard, CTC, CPDT A Young Teacher And A Special Pupil

The Association of Pet Dog Trainers has declared January to be National Train Your Dog Month. Too often, owners relinquish their dogs to shelters because an untrained puppy is no big deal, but an untrained dog begins exhibiting behavior problems if the unwanted behavior is allowed to continue. How many phone calls have I received from owners complaining that their dog is attacking people at the front door or won’t come when called resulting in the dog getting into all kinds of trouble? When I ask these owners if they’ve taught their dogs what to do instead, I often hear a description of punishment for bad behavior instead of a description of how their own dog training efforts failed. [Read more...]

Temperament Testing Dogs at the Entlefest

Greta Kaplan, CPDT, CDBC Entlebucher Puppy

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.

[Read more...]

Control Unleashed Presentation at Entlefest

Greta Kaplan, CPDT, CDBC Enttlebucher

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?” [Read more...]

Dog Park Safety Tips

Miles Bensky, BA, CTC

Ideally, dog parks are urban oases where dog lovers can get away from the hustle and bustle of city life. A place for owners to converge to spend time with their free-running canine companions. A place where dogs get a chance to run around and socialize while owners watch and chat with one another about what makes each of their furry friends so special. And for many people this is exactly what happens, but unfortunately not for everyone. At least not every time. For many, a trip to the dog park is a proverbial crapshoot between dog owner bliss and a stressful fiasco.

The problem is you never know what you are going to get when you arrive at the park, and it does not take much for an enjoyable time to turn sour. Nothing kills the mood faster than a dog altercation and there are a lot of different elements that can lead to one (see my colleague Christine’s article about dog/dog aggression). Sometimes it’s due to an inattentive owner who is not controlling their bullying dog. Sometimes it is an owner bringing a dog to the park who really does not have the proper skills to deal with such a hectic environment. Other times a dog, be it yours or another owners’, is simply having a bad day. I have supervised enough dog groups through my work at dog daycares to know that even the most social and mellow dogs can be grumpy on any given day.

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Why Is My Dog Worse With Me?

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 [Read more...]

The Art of Dog Training

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.

[Read more...]

Genetics, Learning, and the Whole Dog

Christine Hibbard, CTC, CPDT

I went to a place called Fido’s Farm with my Aussie named Conner: http://fidosfarm.com. We went for an “instinct test”. I had no idea what to expect since I know absolutely nothing about herding.

The instructor did a wonderful job of explaining what she was going to do with Conner and what to expect. She introduced the “flag” to him and explained to me how its used. Her timing was impeccable. She showed him the flag and when he did his typical Conner “yeah, so?”, she jiggled it. He took a step back and she took the flag away with a “gooood dog”. Lovely!

We went into the round pen and she had me hold Conner on leash. She walked over to the sheep and had the sheep follow her. I’ve never seen Conner so over the top for something (he’s a laid back guy). Then she told me to drop his leash. I was expecting him to crash into the sheep, send them flying, and [Read more...]

A Fundamental Skill: Learning To Read Your Dog

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 [Read more...]

Chicken Camp, Part 3

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 [Read more...]

Chicken Camp, Part 2

Greta Kaplan, CPDT

In the first session of Chicken Camp, “Discrimination,” we taught our hens to choose and peck a colored target. Since the hens had done this before, they already had learned to peck a specific color. So, we tested them by placing the three identical targets (other than color: red, yellow and blue) in front of each hen. My hen pecked yellow, so I removed it. Then she pecked red, probably indicating that she had, at some time in the past, been reinforced for pecking yellow. Blue therefore became my new “hot target” and my job was to teach her to peck only the blue target. Our goal was to see if, eventually, she would refuse to peck the yellow and red targets *even if the blue target was not on the table, for 20 seconds.*

Certain rules applied. We could not use lures to get the behavior: No hiding a grain of food behind the blue target to get her interested in that part of the table. However, I could remove the blue target to permit her to [Read more...]

No More Excuses, New Years Resolutions for Dog Training

Temperament Testing Dogs at the Entlefest

Control Unleashed Presentation at Entlefest

Dog Park Safety Tips

Why Is My Dog Worse With Me?

The Art of Dog Training

Genetics, Learning, and the Whole Dog

A Fundamental Skill: Learning To Read Your Dog

Chicken Camp, Part 3

Chicken Camp, Part 2

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