When ignoring isn’t ignoring.

Posted on October 6, 2014 by admin

sam7There is a misconception that surrounds positive reinforcement training that I think needs to be addressed.  It is something that trainers need to apologize to dog owners for.  You see we have deceived you slightly into thinking that if your dog is doing something wrong then you need to ignore that behaviour.

I remember very early in my career one of my clients advising me that their Bulldog had clamped their teeth on her leg (no puncture, just a good hold) and my client said that she remembered that she had to ignore bad behaviour so she did nothing.  I was floored, I expected whole heatedly that if your dog had grabbed your leg that common sense would tell you to at least remove the dog.

At this point I began to change this message slightly and remind clients to reinforce the behaviour that they want to see – sitting over jumping up, toileting outside over punishing for toileting inside and giving a place to dig over stopping digging – reinforcing anything that wasn’t the bad behaviour that they did not want to see.

The truth is though we don’t really ignore bad behaviour, it is an overly simplistic and confuses the general public about the steps they actually need to make when their dog is displaying a behaviour that they don’t want.  Saying, ignore the behaviour gives people permission to do nothing – they then don’t change the behaviour and get frustrated with training and give up cause it is not working for them.  So it is time that we became clear in our language, to help dog owners progress with behaviour modification.

Proactive Correction:  Let’s address this word “Correction”, it isn’t what you have been lead to believe, a correction is just something  that rectifies an error or inaccuracy.  In “traditional” training this may have meant a jerk on a lead, a kick to the abdomen, a noise designed to startle (throw cans, chain-links, yelling a word or a imitation growl, a tssst sound),  The issue with attempting to use violence and intimidation as a correction is that it fails to provide the actual information that corrects the error, at best it may stop an action, but it is like teaching someone to spell by only telling them they are wrong and waiting for them to somehow, eventually get it right.  It relies on the dog to find a different option, with out information about what actually is the better choice it is also a very reactive form of training as you wait for the dog to step out of line.

So Force Free trainers do correct behaviours, except we attempt to do it pro-actively through management rather than re-actively with intimidation.  Management is simple and practical steps that rid the dog of the opportunity to practice the behaviour in the first place while we train what we want, our aim is to set the dog up to be successful as much as possible.

Our interactions with trouble makers should be dealt with the 3Rs of dog training – these are remove, redirect and reinforce.

Remove:  Remove the dog from the environment or things in the environment from the dog.  Dog eating your shoes?  Remove your dog from when the shoes are (puppy pen) or move your shoes to a place where your dog can’t get to them.

Redirection: Remove the dog and give them something else to concentrate on.   Give your dog enrichment based toys to play with rather than them digging up your plants.

Reinforcement: Remove the dog, redirect and start rewarding either incompatible behaviours (you can’t jump up if you are sitting) or anything that is not the behaviour that you don’t want (standing quietly is not barking at the postman)

These 3 concepts allow dog owners to understand the steps that they should be taking to deal with problem behaviours, and not without the tools and know-how when dealing with problem behaviours.   They allow you to plan your reponse to problem behaviours, which are generally normal dog behaviours, and not to be a victim to your dog where you have to try to startle or intimidate them into line.

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Never gets Shocked

Posted on August 1, 2013 by admin

A number of years ago when I was working in a pet shop, I was unpacking some boxes and placing the unpacked items in a metal shelving unit – the shelving unit was one of those galvanised metal shelves that you would usually see in a a garage or shed that in a cold room.  Never the less, I had packed this shelve several times, and would do again in the future, but on this particular day how I felt about the shelf changed, and it would never be the same.  I know that may sound a little melodramatic – but it is the truth.  You see that day while I was packing the shelf I cut my finger – sliced it deep and painfully.  Blood spouted from my finger, I had to try and find something to stop the bleeding and the bruising – while my co-worker was busy serving customers.  It shouldn’t have really been a big deal right, but somewhere in my brain it was a big deal and it stuck!  Every time I went near that shelf again, i felt a sense of dread, my brain would play over the finger cutting incident.   I would try to suck it up, and get on with my job – but that feeling was there and it wasn’t going to move.

I think of this event any time someone tells me that they have done something to their dog, but they only did it once.  A common statement for people who use electric fences for their dogs – “oh he only got shocked once but now he never gets shocked”.  You see your dog doesn’t have to physically be shocked to relive the memory of being shock (including the pain and fear that it invokes).  Tools that are aversive in nature mean that the dog only needs a reminder of a potential threat to feel scared.  Just as I did – my fear wasn’t limited to just that one location, when I moved stores and was stacking on new shelves with rounded edges where cuts were improbable, I still experienced the same fear reaction.

This is why electric fences come with beeps and little flags – to illicit a response from the dog that inhibits their behaviour due to a past experience of pain.  It is why choke chains rattle, and some trainer condition a word “Ba” – to illicit an emotional response derived from a moment of pain or fear.

I get it, I get why as a dog owner you don’t want to hurt your dog, and I get why you would want to convince yourself that these products don’t hurt, especially if you are using one on your dog right now, but I think that honesty is a better option – that you are trading off your dogs sense of safety for your own sense of control.  It is often easy to scare an animal into compliance – but unnecessary almost all of the time.

Personally I don’t want my dogs to have to re-live fear or pain – I want them to be happy, confident as well as well behaved – there has to be a better way right?  Have I told you the tale of clicker training …

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Must Love Dogs

Posted on July 18, 2013 by admin

I am a dog lover, and being a dog trainer I don’t think that is a surprise to people when I say that – all though I think some people would classify me as more of the crazy dog lady than just a mere dog lover.  There is a secret to being a dog trainer however that some people don’t really think about – to be a good dog trainer you must love people.

People are the key to successful dog training – if they are uncommitted or unwilling to follow the training program then progress is not made and the dog will continue with it’s poor behaviour.  There is nothing more trilling for me as a dog trainer that to see an owner increase their bond with their dog through training – especially clicker training where we build focus and attention as well as obedience.

As a dog owner you have to figure out how to motivate your dog to be successful at training. For a dog trainer we have to think of ways to motivate both handler and dog to help them get to where they want to be.  Dog Training is a people business, the digs catch on pretty quick, the people can take a little longer – they have ingrained habits from years of dog handling – as a Dog Trainer we need to help some dog owners by guiding them to an easier way of interacting with their dogs.

So while I must love dogs, I also have to love people in order to get their dogs to thrive.

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But she knows she did something wrong…

Posted on July 14, 2013 by admin

I promised you this post, and I don’t want to leave you hanging – I want to talk to you about whether or not your dog know what it is doing is wrong, and I want to talk to you about it, because it is a statement that is often repeated by dog owners when they are attempting to convey just how naughty their dog is being.

I think that it is this look:

guilty

The “guilty dog look” that makes owners think that their dog knows hat it has done wrong.  Research into dog emotions actually tell us that owners are particularly bad at reading their dogs expressions and whether they are indeed guilty or not (you can read about that study here: Dog Guilt), and the guilty look is actually a set of signals given off to appease another animal that is threatening them.

So the scenario can be that you come home from work – you get in the door to see that your loving pet has eaten your favourite pair of sneakers – you with one hand on your hip and the other pointing to the evidence before you exclaim,  while staring at your dog “did you do this!” (as though there is a magical shoe eating fairy that possibly could have done it).  In response to this your dogs nose heads down, their eyes head up, their tail and bottom curve slightly towards the stomach ( the doggy equivalent of covering your eyes when you are scared) – and slightly hunched they start moving to the corner of the room.  Now you feel as though this look of guilt is empirical evidence that your dog feels bad – and you might for extra drama – grab the shoe while yelling “NO” at your dog.  There that should teach ’em.   Colour you surprised when 2 weeks later, the new pair of replacement sneakers are also devoured, after all your dog knows it was wrong to eat sneakers.

So why do we as people seem to forget that these wonderful intelligent  creatures actually don’t speak our language?  Is it because they seem so into us no matter what their comprehension of our actual attempts to communicate with them are?  (your dog thinks your super cool)  Is it because we as people actually find it hard to think of how other people feel or think, let alone to think of how another species feel or thinks.  This doesn’t mean that we don’t have sympathy for one another – we certainly do – and we have sympathy for the animals in our lives most certainly, but it is very hard for us to truly understand the way our dog thinks and feels on a daily basis.

We are not ruled by our nose – we don’t sit out on the grass casually sniffing all the information that the world has to offer.  As people scent is not our strongest sense so how could we possibly know what that canine world looks like?  We don’t get super excited at the possibility of movement being something to chase, sniff or hunt.  We don’t get so super excited at the prospect of our family coming home that we fail to be able to retain our senses enough to keep our feet on the floor.  Up until recently (actually with some trainers still today) we said that dogs don’t feel emotions, despite the fact that they have an amygdala, the emotional centre of the brain.  (To be fair to the trainers that state that dogs don’t have emotions, need to say this often to justify the use of discomfort and pain in training).  It is very difficult to really place your self in the shoes of a dog and have a good guess at how they are feeling.  This is the reason that trainers such as Jean Donaldson as us to focus on Observation (What is happening) and not Interpretation (Why is it happening) of behaviours.

When a trainer is observing the body language of a dog that an owner would generally interpret as guilty, there is really a wide gap between what we are seeing and what an owner believes that the dog is feeling.  So if an owner is saying that their dog is guilty and a trainer is saying – actually these behaviours that you are describing are reflective of appeasement behaviours and more likely a result of the dog being anxious that you are upset with it than feeling bad – what we are actually asking is for the owner to look at their expectations of the dog, so that we can address the dogs behaviour.

Have you ever sent your partner, a friend of family member to get you lunch, and being particularly indecisive to the query “what would you like” and you have replied with “I don’t mind surprise me” – only to end up with the one thing on the menu that you would never have ordered in your whole life!  There is a little part of the human brain that some how expects others to read our mind and anticipate our desires – a little thing we call expectations – and with great expectations generally comes greater disappointments.

When people get a dog, they get it with expectations – some set by our culture (to many Lassie mov1ies) that the dog will automatically understand us with out any real effort.  That dogs are loyal and loving and finally that they will inherently know what it right or wrong after one good, said in the right tone “no”.

Of course when the “no” fails to show the results that we expect, the dog is now labelled – stubborn, wilful, disobedient, ignorant, untrainable – and then we break out the aversive training methods – spray bottles, coins in cans, metal chains, choke chains, prong collars, electric shock – as if these brilliantly adaptive, social animals that we have created to be our best friends, have no ability to learn through anything other than making their life uncomfortable and breaking their spirit.

But I digress, it is your expectation that your dog has figured life out, that is setting you up for failure. The idea that a dog has the same moral compass as people sets you up for failure.  For a dog to know that chewing on your prize possessions is a no-no, means that the dog must understand that the shoe has value to you and that by destroying the shoe you will be upset by this, and now they must feel bad for their actions.  In the dog world however the way that they know something that you own has value is that you actually hold onto it and perhaps guard it – if you walk away from it than it is community property until someone else is holding on to it.    I think that most dogs the notion of valuing a pot plant for example would be not only unusual, but mostly pointless.

I have seen one of my dogs make a choice of a dog toy to chew on over a shoe – not because the shoe was the wrong thing to eat, but because we had created value in the toy.  When there has been an item that saw an untimely demise – this is my issue for not taking the steps to manage the possible loss and not doing the training required to teach the better option.

How can your dog know it is wrong, when we have failed to teach them what is right? This is the crux of the matter – for the dog to know it has made a wrong choice it has to know what the right choice is and then ignored the right choice for the other option.

I guess this is the reason that I want you to re-think whether or not your dog actually know that it did something wrong – consider this my plea for the relationship between you and your dog.  When your dog does something that you find less than desirable, as your brain is forming the words “she knows that she did ______ wrong” follow it up with – “or maybe we just have some more training that we need to do to prevent this from happening next time”.

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Why your dog doesn’t know “No”…

Posted on July 10, 2013 by admin

There are 2 statements that I hear from dog owners all the time that I am going to address in my next couple of posts –  firstly the statement “he knows what “no” means”, and in my next blog post we will address “she knows it is wrong”.   I must admit as a dog trainer these 2 statements make me do this (on the inside of course):  

What the? What did you just say?

What the? What did you just say? So why do these statements cause me such confusion, when it is pretty straight forward isn’t it?  Well I would love it if it where that straight forward – but what it signifies to me when and owner says that their dog knows what no means – is there is a gap in owners knowledge about their dogs. how dogs think and their dog handling and most likely training.  


When I look up the definition of “No”it has a lot of meanings, including “not at all”  – but none of them mean the one thing that dog owners are trying to convey to their dog when they use it.  When dog owners say “No”what they generally mean is “Stop!” or “Don’t do that!” – we use it in many different scenarios and expect the dog to automatically understand can comply with our request.

Here is the rub – dogs don’t generalise, which means each thing that they learn in constructed and understood around the particular parameters of their environment.  They might stop chewing on your shoe when you shout “No” in their direction, but they haven’t learnt that “No” means stop what you are doing.  This is why when you leave the room the dog will be back on the shoe, chewing merrily away when you aren’t looking.

The dog has not learnt that the shoe is out of bounds, to a dog is a possession is not in your personal space, then it is well with in the doggy code to claim the shoe and do with it what they will.

So the next day when the dog is jumping up on Grandma, and you once again shout “No” (perhaps you clap your hands for added effect), the dog may stop jumping.  Yet it hasn’t learnt not to jump up, and it has not learnt the “No” means stop jumping up – but as an owner you have interrupt the behaviour so you tick the box that says , “my dog knows what “No” means”.

Now here is the rub, as the word “No” begins to be used in various situations, in an inconsistent fashion, for everything from licking their feet, growling over a prized possession to attempted to run out the front door  there is also a lack any real consequence, and your dog begins to ignore you.  That’s right, that quick fix “No” beings to become less and less effective overtime and dog owners begin to question their dogs loyalty (or even resorting to terms such as dominance)- after all the dog knows what no means, right?

There is a radical theory among clicker trainers – if a dog doesn’t respond to a cue, then there is a lack of training to that cue in that particular environment.  That is right, you read correctly – if the dog fails to respond the burden of the error falls on the trainer firstly and the dog secondly.

Everyone of my clients and students learns that dogs training is as a result of consequences – and as the dogs handler it is the application of reinforcement that helps a dog learn what they want them to do – and that is what we need to keep in mind when we are living with our dogs.

Do I expect dog owners never to utter the word No to their dog?  No, I don’t – as a matter of fact I can’t expect you to change your natural urge to do so – but I want you to realise what you are actually doing, and why it will over time become less effective.

What is a better and easier option however is condition a noise or a sound that says to your dog – stop what you are doing and come here – but does so with enthusiasm not out of avoidance.   A simple kissy noise or whistle paired with food – conditions your dog to think that there is a better option than what they are up to right now.   The hardest part will be changing your habits not your dogs.

As one puppy client commented to me this week – that kissy noise thing is the best – he comes back to me every time.   On a relationship level it make more sense for your dog to want to come towards you and stop what it is doing, than stop what it is doing and waits for you to leave so that they can get back to it.

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Puppy Raising, Part 2 – Snap, Snap, Snap

Posted on October 24, 2012 by admin

I said in my last post that I wanted to discuss biting – this is the number one complaint of puppy owners.  There is a good reason – those teeth are sharp and they don’t know how to use them – yet!

Most people concentrate on not letting teeth contact their skin at all – and while avoidance may have it’s benefits the one thing that it doesn’t do is teach your dog how to bite people.  – Hold it, did I really just say that we had to teach our dog how to bite people???  Yes I did, but it isn’t what you think.

Bite Inhibition is an important part of puppy socialisation – and an essential part of raising a dog that does no damage to people as a grown up.

We have all seen puppies playing with one another, and heard the occasional yelp that can come with this rough looking play.  That yelp is an important part of dogs communication when young – it simply says “hey – that was too hard!”.  The offending puppy then either loosenes their grip or lets go altogether.

We need to let our puppies the same rule applies for people to.  So we have a 4 phase plan of attack for puppy bitingbiting:

1. Try the “yelp” method – this must be high pitched and short most of the time – you can try to extend the yelp if the dog isn’t easing up.
However, for some puppies the Yelp will actually egg them on – and this is rewarding to the dog – they may bite harder and get more excited (think of your yelp being more like a squeaky toy at this stage)

2. If the Yelp method is not working, we move on to ignoring the dog – and walking away.  Dogs do this to puppies all the time – if a puppy is getting to much for them – their first port of call is to move away from the puppy, they do not provide ritualised warning signals (baring teeth or growling) unless the adult dog is not well socialised or is intolerant of puppies.  So this means if you are on the couch in the lounge room you need to get up and move away from the puppy.  Go in another room for up to 30 second and then come back to play with a toy that your dog enjoys – any skin contact during the game sees you drop the toy and leave the room again.

3. use a crate/pen and put the puppy in “time out” to help calm him down – puppies get excited at the most inconvenient times, if he is being to excited and this is leading to hard and persistent biting, remove your frustration by putting him in a safe and comfortable area, with a Kong with cream cheese in it to lick out – and take the time to relax yourself.  Once you have both calmed down then later you can come back to playing.  Remember “time out” isn’t really a punishment – no dog is going to sit their and think about what they have done, like we expect a child to do – it is an opportunity for a break and to stop the behaviour from being repeated and escalating – and for people to reassess if need be.

4. Finally and in conjunction with the above we teach and exercise called touch and we use a marker called a clicker to teach a dog that they are doing the right thing if he does not bite hands or fingers as we are gradually making them more tempting to his puppy ways (wiggling fingers, etc). Here is an example of step 4 from a trainer called Emily Laltham http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c77–cCHPyU

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Puppy Raising – part 1

Posted on October 2, 2012 by admin

We have recently become the proud parents of a new “fur baby” into our home.  The new addition to the Doggy Dogma family is a 8 week old Dalmation x Border Collie, full of beans and at the very early stages of developing and showing the personality of the dog that she is destined to become.

The first 3 days of Freya arriving at our house was relitively non-eventful, as with most puppies, and even older dogs, there is a period of time where the dog needs to get use to their surroundings.  It will vary between dogs – minutes, hours, days and weeks for them to feel comfortable in their new surroundings. 

I like to have a family rule at this time – the puppy is allowed to approach you, but you shouldn’t be all up in the puppies face all the time.  Allow your imprinting to happen by reinforcing the puppy with attention for attention.  Don’t panic however – this is just for this initial phase as your puppy becomes accustomed to their new surroundings, and realises that it is beneficial to give you some focus – as you really pay off!

Lots of basic puppy recall is a must, remember to reinforce with either food or a good game with your puppies faviourte toy.   Call your puppy from short distances under mild distraction only.   If your puppy is not responding, you can try a treat magnet – by getting your dgos attention by putting a treat at their nose and bringing them back towards you.

We have also begun work on self control – early indicators are that she is a little pushy when it comes to food – so we have begun leave it exercises now. 

In my next blog we are going to discuss biting!

 

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What does stress do?

Posted on June 19, 2012 by admin

Stress can come in many different forms – it can be good or bad – it can save your life or it can cause illness, disease and eventually death.

Stress is meant to be short term, that is how all mammals have survived.  A bunch of hormones that run through our brain and central nervous system turns off some parts of the brain and body, and turns on other parts (shooting in adrenaline and other hormones) to get us out of potentially dangerous situations. This is the good part of stress.

The bad part of stress is when it occurs for a long time – for days, weeks, months or years.  This is almost like a malfunction of all those hormones that are running through our body, and your dogs body.  If we look at the hormone adrenaline for instance, this naturally produce drug takes 48 hours to leave the body completely.  Adrenaline is produced each time your dog becomes alert – dog barking down the street, person walking by the house, mailman on their postie bike, car slaming across the road.  Adrenaline builds up with every little event, to the point where the dog finds in difficult or is unable to “bounce back” from stressful events.

This results is behaviour problems – excessive barking, escaping, digging, plus LOTS more.  It also can result in illnesses and disease as a result of Stress.

It is best to think of these problem behaviours as an attempt (although unconsiously) to get rid of some of that stress build up.  For people, we might come home an yell at our partner or the kids, we might go for a run, or smoke a cigarette to feel better, or eat a packet of Tim Tams all to ourselves.  We do what ever we can to feel better – and guess what so does your dog!

So what does that mean to a dog owner – who dog does not “chill out” – well we have to teach them! It isn’t rocket science, but it is science.  A systematic plan of counter condiditoning (changing your dogs mind) and desensitisation (making bad things seem ok) we are able to change your dogs life.  It doesn’t matter the breed or the age of the dog – just like us learning is an individual experience – so the time frame may change for each dog – but the “chill out factor” is the same.

 

 

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5 People Mistakes that encourage Jumping!

Posted on June 17, 2012 by admin
  1. Dogs jump for Attention – and people give it – even if they don’t mean it! By pushing or talking and yelling at their dog.  If your dog is jumping, they are already excited – and no one – not even a dog is calmed by someone yelling at them “stop it, don’t, down”
  2. Attempting to correct – people think that they are punishing their dog by pushing it or even kicking the dog when it jumps.  However if a dog is excited physical “roughhousing” will increase their excitement and act as a reward – not a correction.
  3. No Doggy Manners – if a dog doesn’t have a strong and generalised sit or drop upon greeting – then the will greet in a way that is natural for them.
  4. Failing to reinforce – when your dog finally does get it right we then fail to let the dog know that they are getting it right.  Ignoring your dog will only work if you then back it up with reinforcement at the right time.
  5. Inconsistency – by only occasionally accidentally reinforcing jumping – we then actually create a stronger behaviour. Like a gambler the dog longs and works for the reward.
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