Obedience Doesn’t Fix Behavior Issues

For some reason, people think obedience is a cure all for any dog behavior.  Like teaching him to sit will make him not lunge at the neighborhood children anymore.  I’m not sure where this came from or how it happened, but I hear it all the time.  And it’s important to know, that taking a reactive dog into a class setting can be counter productive.  Let’s just say there’s a dog named Boo.  And Boo doesn’t like people.  So what sense does it make to throw Boo into a confined space surrounded by people?  That’s like saying if you are scared of bugs, you should go book yourself a nice get away at a remote forest in a tent, but learn how to stand on your head.  Would you really even be concentrating on learning on how to stand on your head?  Not really.  And this is the same for putting a dog into a situation he is uncomfortable with and wondering why teaching him to down didn’t work to fix the aggression problems.

Now, I need to clarify that I am a big fan of teaching a dog obedience cues (as well as manners, and life behaviors too).  However, there is a right way to use obedience cues in a training plan.  What I see is a lot of people think obedience training fixes aggression problems.  (UGH!!!)  And usually what happens is they start to kill obedience cues by pairing them with the situation that triggers reactivity.  So, the dog generalizes that “sit” means the adverse stimulus (aka: the “icky thing”) is approaching, and in turn, kills the cue “sit” by changing the emotional response by classical conditioning.  AKA: “sit” = icky thing.  There is a HUGE difference between using sit (or whatever obedience cue you want) to bridge the gap and encourage some sort of interaction with the trigger, and accidentally poisoning the sit cue.   A lot of times I’ll use “target” to get an animal to interact with the environment.  (Target is: touch a body part, usually the animal’s nose or paw, and physically contact an object like your hand or a target stick).  So, if the dog Boo knows target, I could get Boo to target something like a pot holder, under threshold, as he’s approaching a person.  Knowing that target always offers a reinforcement (which could be a treat, or walking away from the person you’re actually trying to approach), connects the icky thing – the person, with the good thing – doing a target.  And thus you can counter condition using a known cue (in this example, “target”).  You could do this same thing with sit.

The two main problems I see are being over threshold and poor timing.  When an animal is over threshold, it doesn’t matter what you have to offer him, it’s just too much to ask for.  Sorry.  That’s just how things work.  And people are no different with their behavior either.  If you are scared of spiders, and I whip out a tarantula, and walk right over to you, I will get to a point where I am just too close for comfort.  I could offer you the moon on a silver platter with a two week cruise with Mr. Right to Perfectville and it still wouldn’t be enough.  Now let’s add on other thresholds like how many spiders, how fast am I approaching you, at what direction(s), for how long, etc.  There are always multiple thresholds in every situation.  And putting a dog who doesn’t care for people in a class setting, with numerous people, for an hour, who are working close to him just isn’t fair, or frankly very logical, and extremely over threshold.

Poor timing is the other major oops I see a lot.  Whenever you’re trying to change something, you want to focus on the consequence of the behavior.  So it’s “icky thing” = sit.  NOT sit = “icky thing.”  And having bad timing can create this very quickly.  Even using the cue “sit” with poor timing can poison it.  Besides that, you want to make sure that sit means something.  Sit has to bring on a desired reinforcement to have any effect.  So, you need to be aware on how to use reinforcers as well.  AKA: sometimes food isn’t always the best thing to use.

To oversimplify this, obedience is a good thing, and you can use cues from obedience in a training plan.  However, teaching obedience doesn’t modify behavior.  And in order to modify behavior you need to understand several things such as timing, reinforcers, and thresholds – plus when and how to apply each of them.  It is a very real possibility to change something you didn’t like before into something you do like now, and vice versa.  Using the science of learning and the art of training can get you there.

My Pet Loves The Vet

One of the first things I do when I get a new pet is I schedule a “non-veterinary vet appointment.”  Basically I want to bring my pet into the vet hospital to see the sights, and smell the smells, and hear the sounds.  Why?  Because I really want the very first impression of the vet’s office to be positive!  As my dog or cat is soaking up the atmosphere from the strange new environment, I’ll give him treats, praise him, pet him, do some TTouch, etc.  I’ll do anything in my power to reinforce being there.  Most vets are happy to help out.  What I did is I called my vet and asked to book an exam room, meet & greet the vet, and pay the regular office visit.  Then in a few days, come back for a “Joe Normal” veterinary visit.  (I also do the same thing with the groomer).

While I’m there, I ask every single staff member to please give a treat to my pet.  Basically, I’m showering loads of rewards in an effort to classically condition a positive association with the vet’s office.  I don’t stay too long, just a half hour or so.  And I let him explore as much of the equipment as possible.  I ask the vet if my pet can smell the stethoscope, sit on the scale a few times, etc.  I also bring a toy in hopes my pet will relax enough after the meet & greet.  It only takes about 5 – 10 minutes to meet everyone in the office, then I have up to 20 more minutes in the exam room to calm and relax my pet.  If my dog seems relaxed enough, I’ll break out a tennis ball and let him roll it around the floor.  If I have a cat, I usually use one of those kitty teasers and let him bat at it.

The next time I come back to the vet, my pet is far less stressed.  I still have every single staff member give my pet treats AFTER the exam & shots are finished.  Remember, you always want the good stuff to come last.  The consequence of getting an exam & shots is treats; not treats at this location means I’m about to give you a shot.

Over Achieving

Dogs routinely go out of their way to go over and above what we expect.  It is always amazing what lengths a dog will go to when he’s trained with positive reinforcement.  And it always puts a smile on my face to see a truly happy dog who’s having fun by working hard.  A week or so ago I was looking at I Has A Hotdog (one of my favorite sites for a good laugh), to add some fun to our Facebook Page and came across the picture below.  Besides busting out laughing, it made me think about the effort dogs put into everything in their life.  Ever notice when they play, they PLAY. And when they work, they WORK. And when they cuddle, they CUDDLE. It honestly doesn’t matter what they’re doing, they just do it with 110% of themselves.  So, I leave you with this thought, “If your dog is fat, you’re not getting enough exercise.”

see more dog and puppy pictures

Let There Be Sit!

Dogs are born with the ability to stand, sit, down, roll over, lift their paw, and many other behaviors that we take credit for teaching them.  However, we say it all the time.  “I taught my dog to sit.”  No… not so much.  The dog came knowing how to do this physical motion.  We just put it on cue.  It’s not like the dog had no idea how to sit, so we showed him the motion.  Or the dog slapped his forehead in some euphoric moment of awakening barking “Eureka!  I didn’t know I could do that!”  No… not really.  The dog already knew he was perfectly capable of sitting.  What we teach is that it can pay to sit on cue.

This brings me to the dog conformation show ring.  I can’t tell you how many people I have met that tell me, “please don’t teach him to sit, I don’t want him to sit in the ring.”  (Yes, sadly many people honestly think this.)  To which I smile and try to explain that you DO want to teach stand/stack, sit, AND down on cue.  And by teaching all the various common body positions on cue, you’ll have a dog who understands exactly what you want & when you want it by using the cue.  Keeping a dog ignorant or punishing a natural behavior like sit makes zero sense to me.  Wouldn’t you want your dog to understand the different body positions?  Wouldn’t you want to put them all on cue?  Don’t you want to have a confident dog, with less stress in the ring who knows exactly what position you want?  Sometimes the best learning happens when you can compare the differences between behaviors, and really set each one apart.  This is also the theory behind teaching opposite cues together like bark & quiet, or forwards & backwards.  By understanding one, learning the exact opposite behavior is easier to understand.

I have seen a few dogs sit in the ring, and they are punished for it.  The handler usually physically stands them abruptly, with an almost knee-jerk reaction because it’s not good ring etiquette.  No harm physically comes to the dog, but mentally this could affect all future training.  (Sitting is bad in general, don’t move (shut down) around people, when the dog looked at the judge he was “man handled”, the dog learns he doesn’t like being touched, etc).

So, my question is why?  Why not teach sit on cue?  Why not teach every single body position on cue?  If a behavior is taught on cue, and the dog understands he can be rewarded for preforming the desired behavior, then the dog won’t want to sit in the ring!  He’s understand that standing in a stack will earn the rewards.

Teaching a dog to sit or down on cue won’t somehow take away from teaching a dog to stand and stack on cue in the show ring. And thinking that keeping a dog in the dark (ie: don’t teach him sit) is going to make any situation any better is a little silly.

Just sayin’

Extinction vs Duration

Lately I’ve seen a lot of cases where a client was trying to extinguish a behavior but instead created a wicked duration with intensity.  The most common behaviors were barking, followed by the jump & hump, and finally the crotch sniff.  Yes all of these behaviors can completely get under your skin and annoy even the best of us, however just because these behaviors are “socially no-no” you shouldn’t treat them different than any other behavior.  Me personally: I like to always prevent the dog from being able to do the undesired behavior and heavily reward the alternative behavior I want.  However, we’ve had cases where we’re not the first trainer the client has gone to; and the advice given?  You guessed it!  “Ignore the dog.”

I’m not saying “ignore the dog” is bad advice.  It’s actually just fine advice.  My concern is that it’s not done right.  Part of the problem is the “ignore” isn’t clearly defined.  When you ignore a dog, you’re trying to not offer any reinforcement at all.  You’re withholding attention.

And I still see people look right at their pet, say a quick “no,” push them away, etc, etc, etc…  The key is to pretend your dog doesn’t even exist.  You can’t see him, hear him, feel him, or even notice he is in the same room no matter what he’s doing! It only takes one little eye contact for the dog to learn he’s getting somewhere.  And the second the dog is given eye contact (or whatever else that tells him you notice he’s there), he’s rewarded.  So think about it.  If you have a dog who’s barking, and you “ignore him.”  He keeps barking, and barking, maybe gets a little louder, or barks with more gusto, or just barks more BPM (barks per minute), and THEN we reward him.  Oops.  Now we’ve created a behavior of barking with duration that will increase in intensity.

What happens is now the dog has learned to just give it his all, and bark like he’s never barked before for two minutes straight.  For some reason I always think of a small child tugging on his mom’s shirt saying, “Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom.Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom.Mom. Mom.Mom. Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom!” until the mom turns around and says, “WHAT?!?!!”  Which has now taught the kid this works.

If part of the behavior plan is going to be “ignore the dog” you need to make sure that no reinforcement happens at all.  The other part to this training (which is unfortunately often left out), is you need to reward what you want the dog to do! Trust me when I say dogs are smart and will figure out exactly what works to get what they want.  And it might just be another obnoxious behavior.  Dogs aren’t given Human Handbooks, just like when you have a baby they don’t come with manuals either.  Just remember, the outcome isn’t changing.  The reward isn’t different.  The way the dog gets what he wants is.  So if your dog is barking at you for attention, you’re not changing the reward.  Think of it more like taking the desired outcome the dog wants and putting it on hold.  You don’t want to just withhold attention until the end of time, or think giving him a completely different reward will work.  That’s nonsense.  (And can actually cause a doggie road rage frustration.  It’s like, if I’m hungry I want food, not a hug – if I’m sad I want a hug, not food, etc.)  The whole reason the dog will be motivated to change his behavior is to get the desired outcome he’s been striving for in the first place, so you don’t change that.  Instead you would give him attention by doing a different behavior.  And in order for the dog to learn this quickly, you have to heavily reward a desired behavior, like sit for example.  So only when the dog sits he gets attention.  You have to be really black & white about it.  No grey area.  It’s vital to remember to reinforce the desired behavior.  Otherwise we’re basically taking away the car keys without any information on how to earn them back.  A trick before doing this is to have about a week of heavily rewarding for sit (or whatever behavior you want to replace the no-no bad behavior with), because then the dog will likely try this behavior first when he learns what he was doing (barking) just doesn’t work anymore.

The light bulb moment goes something like this:

• I want attention!  I’m going to bark.
• Hum… maybe I’m not barking enough! (ie: an extinction burst, which is where we usually fail at the ignoring part and say, “WHAT?!?!!!”)
• Gee… this worked before, now I’m confused.
• I think I’ll try sit.  That was just working a few days ago for other stuff.  Might work for this too.
• <dog sits> (AND WE NOTICE & REWARD)

Believe it or not, sometimes we human beings are so focused on the part we can’t stand that drives us crazy we forget to notice the behavior we actually want.  Sort of like when a puppy chews on his toys we don’t do anything.  But when he has our $500 cell phone, we dish out all kinds of attention & sometimes even teach a fantastic catch me if you can game.  So, make sure you pay attention and teach your dog what does work.  That’s the way to replace behavior.

Training Is (Not) The Answer

Sometimes we trainers are asked to train some very silly things.  One of my favorite trainer friends Steve Benjamin had a client with a dog who was constantly shredding the toilet paper. His solution? Close the door.

A little bit ago I had to move my cats into my parent’s house. And instead of trying to train them to stay on the second floor, we put up a gate with a curtain.  This way, they couldn’t jump over it and it was easy to manage.  Sure I could have done some training but why?  Why in the world put that much time and energy into something temporary? It reminds me of when we get calls around the holidays to train the family pet to stay away from the Christmas tree.

Another popular training request is to stop the dog from getting into the trash can.  Why when you can just get a trash can with a lid?  Again, there are loads of training things to do, but why?  I remember when I opened a small doggie day care, I didn’t feel like training each and every dog that came into it.  So I spent the money on a mac-daddy, butterfly lidded trash can that was about $75.  And I can tell you, this bad boy was Husky proof.  We actually had a Husky jump on it, and knock it over, and vola!…  nothing happened.  And after that, never tried again.

I think my favorite things are the simple things though. “My dog eats my shoes and chews my dirty socks.” And again, prevention and management is easier than training.  I’ll bet money that every single puppy class out there will tell you to pick up your shoes and put away your clothes.  When I had my puppy, there was nothing, and I mean nothing left out of any value that he could chew.   I really didn’t want him to learn how great it was to chew up my flip flops.  It doesn’t take much to learn a self rewarding behavior like chewing.

Even if you plan on doing behavior modification and are going to actually train your dog to do “THING X” one of the first steps is behavior management.  How many times have you heard, “The first step is to prevent the dog from doing ‘THING Z’ so we can retrain him to do ‘THING X’ instead.”  So, even if you’re going to train a different behavior, typically managing the environment is the first step anyway.  Why?  Because you need to prevent the dog from reinforcing himself over and over again and practicing the unwanted behavior over and over again.  Quite often you can change behavior just by changing the environment.

So remember, not everything is realistically solved by training.  And in fact, there is some stuff not worth training.  And there is nothing wrong with management.

MORE EXAMPLES:

• Using a crate so your shiny new puppy doesn’t chew up the electrical cords.
• Using a front clip harness (like an Easy Walk) to walk your dog without him pulling, because you own 20 acres and have back problems and just never practice walking your dog.
• Put up a baby gate so your dog just can’t help himself to the Christmas chocolate under the tree.
• Close the door to the laundry room so you don’t have to buy new underwear every week.
• Shut the lid if your dog drinks out of the toilet so he doesn’t ingest the pretty blue chemicals.
• Clean off the counter so your Great Dane just can’t help himself to the butter stick.
• Put the cat litter box somewhere inaccessible so the dog can’t eat the “kitty cookies.”
• Use a car barrier so your St Bernard puppy doesn’t learn your lap is where he should be on a car ride.

The Magic Wand Dog Training Center

I just got this from a trainer friend of mine Pen Brown (a great trainer in the DC area). I’m not sure who created it originally, but I’d love to give them credit and shake their hand!

Hello: This is the Magic Wand Dog Training Center, we are unable to come to the phone but please press or enter the number for your request, we will return your call as soon as possible.

Press 01 to tell me your dog has been asked to leave the local obedience club because he won’t sit, wait, down or come when called (even when on lead) so you thought you would try agility.

Press 02 if your Labrador is morbidly obese and you thought you would try agility.

Press 03 if you want 30 minutes of advice and have no intention of paying for it.

Press 04 if you describe your dog as ‘a little bit naughty’ when what you really mean is that the b*st*rd bites … hard.

Press 05 if you want puppy training classes but your Boxer is already 12 months old.

Press 06 if you believe that just by turning up to one puppy training class and doing no work whatsoever at home, your puppy will grow up to be a well adjusted companion.

Press 07 if your nervous, aggressive GSD has bitten and hospitalized Aunt Maude, the vet, and your child and you want me to re-home it.

Press 08 if you have three children under school age, an invalid parent living at your home, a partner who works away, are pregnant with twins and want your 8 month old Dalmatian that never gets a walk to stop chewing every thing in sight.

Press 09 if you want to tell me my advice has not worked even though you have not tried it yet.

Press 10 if you want to be dog trainer and behaviorist because you like animals better than people.

Press 11 if you are 15 years old and want to do work experience with me but would faint if I asked you to pick up dog poop.

Press 12 if your dog is aggressive with other dogs but you want to join one of my groups because it will be nice for him to have some friends.

Press 13 if you cannot afford my private rates and want a discount because you only have one BMW.

Press 14 if you are cancelling your lesson that is due to start in 30 minutes and have no intention of paying the cancellation fee.

Press 15 if you do not believe in rewarding a dog and know that clicker training does not work because your friend Beryl said so.

Press 16 if you think your dog knows he has done wrong when you tell him off and that he obeys you because he respects you and acknowledges you are a superior being.

Press 17 if you want me to wave my magic wand over your contacts/weaves/start line waits in just one session and will then tell me it did not work when you go to a show just two days later with no training in the meantime.

Press 18 if you have eleven Jack Russell bitches in a small flat and you want me to teach them not to fight each other.

Press 19 if you already know everything about your breed because this is the fourth one you have had and I cannot tell you anything new.

Press 20 if you want me to pick up your dear departed dog’s ashes from the vets and keep them at my house because you are too upset to have them in your home (true!).

Press 21 if you could not use a Gentle Leader, indoor crate, or harness because they are cruel.

Press 22 if you will not put a muzzle on your deadly aggressive dog because you do not want people to think he is nasty.

Press 23 if you want to leave an increasingly angry message for the third time this week demanding an urgent call back and yet again forget to give your name or number.

Press 24 if, having ascertained I am out, you wish ask my engineer husband for behavioral advice about your pet.

Press 25 if you wish to fill up my answering machine tape with an incoherent rambling message.

Press 26 if want your intact male adolescent dog to spend its days lying patiently on your front step on your unfenced property because dogs shouldn’t want to run away, should they.

Press 27 if you want me to teach your untrained border collie to play with sheep because you think he will like it.

Press 28 if your dog thinks its name is “NO”.

Press 29 if it is before 8am or after 10pm and you want to ask how to stop your 13 week old puppy from biting your 5, 7 and 9 year old boys when they play fight with it.

Press 30 if you have taken trouble to socialize and train your pet and want to make an appointment to learn even more fun stuff. No need to hold, I’ll put you right through!