Oh Behave!

A new client dog who I’ll call Misty is very fearful girl with multiple fear triggers. Misty has growled, snarled and lunged at people in certain situations but hasn’t bitten anyone. Misty’s human definitely has her hands full. “I don’t want her to be the type of dog that bites,” she said when we first met.

I know what the woman meant but I explained to her that actually, all dogs are “the type of dog that bites.” Any dog in the right circumstances can bite.

Biting and other forms of aggressive behavior most commonly arise from fear. Dogs typically avoid engaging in physical combat including biting, because fighting is expensive behavior for the dog from a survival standpoint. In combat, dogs risk being killed or seriously injured. Rather than do battle when faced with an upsetting, threatening or scary situation, most dogs flee or use ritualized forms of aggression to diffuse the conflict and avoid fighting. In other words, most dogs try to get the heck out of dodge, or do things to get the scary thing to go away. Barking, lunging, snarling, and growling are some of the more obvious behaviors that in dog language mean, “Go away. Back off. You are seriously freaking me out.”

I think of bites as a dog’s last line of defense. It’s unusual for a dog to leap frog over warning signals and proceed to biting. Usually long before biting, the dog has been communicating his fearful upset state using subtle warning signals. Well-meaning humans are frequently unaware of the dog’s warnings. Humans don’t notice the signals or don’t know what they mean. But ignoring a dog’s warning signals is a good set up for a dog bite.

All dogs have bite thresholds – points beyond which they are likely to bite. Because every dog is a unique individual, bite thresholds vary from dog to dog.

A dog can be pushed over his bite threshold when multiple fear triggers are presented simultaneously. Think of each fear trigger as a rock. Exposing the dog to fear triggers is like putting rocks in a paper bag. The bag might stand up to the weight of one rock, maybe two, possibly even three. But the more rocks you put into the bag, the bigger the risk the bag will rip apart.

Misty is afraid of men, loud machinery, and strangers who reach towards her head. Misty could easily bite if a strange man tried to pat her on the head just as a noisy street cleaning machine was passing by.

Besides stacking several fear triggers together, another set up for a dog bite is to present a single trigger at a sufficiently high intensity. This is like “growing” the rock into a boulder and putting it in the paper bag. The bag may very well break. In the case of Sam who guards his bones from humans, Sam is fine if a human is 6 feet away while he’s gnawing on a bone. Put the human 4 feet away from Sam and he growls. Put the human 1 foot from Sam and it’s boulder time — Sam bites.

To avoid bites, take the time to “learn” your dog. Identify her fear triggers and pay attention to her body language and warning signals. Avoid putting her in scary upsetting situations in general, and avoid pushing her beyond her bite threshold at all costs. If your dog is showing signs of fear, listen to what she’s saying and get her out of the scary situation as quickly as you can.

Getting a dog out of an upsetting situation may calm the dog in the moment but doesn’t resolve the problem. Fears don’t dissipate on their own. Without positive training interventions, fear-based behavior often gets worse. An experienced positive reinforcement trainer — along with an owner’s diligent follow-through on training instructions — should improve the dog’s emotional response to and behavior around the trigger.

I’m opposed to punishment-based training, period. But I can’t emphasize this enough: punishment-based methods should never be used with a fearful dog, or to address fearful behavior. Punishment-based training will most likely to escalate the dog’s underlying fear and the resultant behavior.

Some excellent resources to address fearful dog behavior include:

• Help For Your Fearful Dog, by Nicole Wilde
• Click to Calm, by Emma Parsons
• Debbie Jacobs’ Fearful Dog Blog

As you can see from my scant February blog posts, last month was a whirlwind for me. I’ve had zero time to write and have really missed blogging. This post is a quick one but a good one.

When it comes to training dogs, it seems like everyone’s got an opinion about how to do it the right way. Visit a dog park and mention a dog training or behavior issue and it won’t be long before someone’s giving you advice. Google “dog training tips” and in milliseconds you’ll get over 15 million results that are just a few mouse clicks away.

But whose advice should you follow? What tips are worthwhile?

As is the case with much of the data on the web, it can be daunting to parse out what’s the best most accurate information about dog training and what isn’t. Instead of spending your time plowing through website after website, here’s a tip on finding trustworthy positive reinforcement training information:

One of my favorite web-based resources for excellent information about puppy raising, dog training and dog behavior is www.DogStarDaily.com. And guess what? It’s free.

At the risk of sounding like a commercial, I must give Dog Star Daily it’s due. Whether you’re looking for the lowdown on exactly what’s involved in raising a puppy, or what to expect from your adolescent dog, or how to potty train a pup using positive reinforcment, Dog Star Daily has answers. The site’s “Training Textbook” covers scores of useful topics such as what you need to know before you adopt a puppy, how to puppy-proof your home, how to train your adolescent dog, how to train basic manners, and common behavior issues and what to do about them. Dog Star Daily’s information is spot-on and presented in a clear easy-to-follow format.

Dog Star Daily is one of the resources I recommend regularly to clients and students in group dog training classes. Check it out today.

One of the most frequent concerns among dog guardians is how to stop unwanted behavior. As Jean Donaldson explains in her phenomenal book, The Culture Clash, much of natural dog behavior is at odds with what humans find acceptable.

Dogs however, need appropriate outlets for their energies, which are usually significantly higher than ours. Without legal channels for behavior and energy, dogs become frustrated, bored, and stressed. In that unfortunate condition, it’s just a matter of time before dogs find other ways to vent. Behavior borne of frustration and boredom is often even worse and less acceptable to humans than the original unwanted behavior. Excessive barking, destructive chewing, fence fighting, and digging are just some of the behaviors in which frustrated and bored will engage. Besides all that, it’s not fair or humane to consign any animal to a life of chronic boredom, frustration or stress.

Enter, “Instead Of Thinking.” It’s not enough to find ways to shut down undesirable behavior. A far more effective strategy is to train your dog to do alternative behaviors that are acceptable and incompatible with the undesired behavior.

Let’s use jumping up as an example. Jumping up is a natural normal dog behavior. Dogs do it to greet us by getting closer to our faces. But most people don’t like it when Rover jumps on them. This is a classic instance of the clash between behavior that humans deem acceptable and that which is acceptable and common among dogs.

Well hello!

Typically humans think in terms of, How can I get Rover to stop jumping up? “Instead Of Thinking” asks a different question: What would I like Rover to do instead of jumping up?

Instead Of Thinking solves two problems at once: it stops the unwanted behavior while providing Rover with an acceptable alternative.

Sitting to greet people is an alternative behavior that’s acceptable and incompatible with jumping up. If Rover is sitting to say hello to people, he isn’t jumping on them. The training plan would be two-fold. You’d stop rewarding Rover altogether for jumping up, teach him to sit to say hello, and reward him with attention and lovies when he sits.

With consistent positive training, voila! Rover will learn that jumping up never works to get human attention but sitting does. If everyone who meets Rover follows the same plan, his jumping should decrease substantially and eventually stop. Instead of jumping on folks he’ll do lovely sits to say hello, and he gets a legal outlet for his exuberant greeting energy. Doing a short down stay or hand-targeting are two other examples of alternative behaviors that are incompatible with jumping up.

Rover won’t learn these things overnight, especially if he has a long history of jumping up and being rewarded with some kind of attention when he does that. Patient consistent practice will pay off so hang in there with your training plan.

The next time you find yourself wondering how to stop Rover from doing X, put on your Instead Of Thinking cap. Ask yourself, What would I like Rover to do instead of X? Then start training Rover to do the alternative behavior, reward him handsomely when he does it and stop rewarding him for doing X.

Rewarding Rover for desirable alternative behavior is a powerful tool in your training kit, and means he’ll do more of that behavior in the future.

Happy Training!