During a recent consultation, a client mentioned that though her 6 month-old shepherd mix loved to play tug, she’d decided the game was taboo. She’d heard that tug would make him “aggressive.” I’ve heard this concern from loads of dog owners. But fortunately, it ain’t so.

Aggressive behavior is usually caused by fear, stress or anxiety, not fun and games. In fact, many expert dog trainers (such as Jean Donaldson and Pat Miller) maintain that that tug, if played by a few simple rules (see below) is a fabulous game to play with your dog for lots of reasons.

Tug is a wonderful energy burner for dogs and something you can do inside to burn some of that doggy energy. Vinnie’s an especially high-energy dog; I suspect that on rainy days, if not for tug, we’d both go a little bonkers.

Tug is a great legal outlet for dogs’ natural predatory instincts. Instead of shutting natural dog behavior down, tug allows dogs to redirect their energies to the game.  

If played by the rules, tug teaches your dog to control his jaws even when he’s really revved up, and is fabulous impulse control training. Your dog practices calming himself down when he’s in a state of high arousal.

Tug offers lots of lovely little real-life training moments for real life rewards – another tug match! It provides an appropriate safe outlet for puppies’ and adolescents’ natural desire to mouth and play bite. Perhaps best of all, tug is FUN for you and your dog and deepens the bonds you share.

Follow these simple rules to ensure you and your dog are safe whenever you play tug:

• Only play with 1 or 2 designated tug toys. They should be long enough that your dog’s teeth area far from your hand. Braided rope or fleece toys are best because they’re strong and won’t hurt doggy teeth or gums.
• Play begins only when you initiate the game by offering the tug toy to your dog. Don’t allow your dog to lunge/jump/snatch the toy from you. If he does that, say, “Too bad,” or “Uh oh,” matter of factly and put the toy away for 20 seconds.
• Take frequent obedience breaks. Ask your dog to sit (or do another easy behavior) every time you offer him the tug toy. After he sits, reward him by offering him the tug toy to grab onto.
• Teach your dog to drop the tug toy on your cue. Ask him to do so randomly during tug matches.
• Teeth on skin means an automatic time out. If his teeth make any contact with your skin even by accident, immediately say “Uh Oh,” or “Too bad,” and put the toy away for 20 seconds. This will teach him to be extra careful with his mouth during tug games.
• Avoid doggy injuries. Keep the tug toy level with his shoulders and don’t jerk it around. Move the toy side-to-side instead of up and down. Keep the intensity of tug games appropriate for his age and overall physical condition.
• Safety first. Don’t allow frail people or kids under 13 to play tug with your dog. Make sure that anyone who plays tug with your dog knows the tug rules and always follows them consistently. An adult should always supervise tug games between dogs and kids.

Sometimes in the midst of group training classes, I wonder if anyone’s taking in anything that I’m saying. It’s been a welcome surprise to learn that in the Teaching Love & Compassion (TLC) program – an anti-violence humane education class in which I teach kids to train shelter dogs – the kids really have been paying attention to the stuff I say in training class.

Here are a few sound training tips my TLC students have shared with reporters and one another:

Work at the dog’s pace. Like us, dogs learn at different rates. Just because Max learns to lie down in response to a hand signal in one class session doesn’t mean Muffy will or should. A soild training plan is also a realistic one. It increases the difficulty of an exercise only when the particular dog is ready to go to the next level. Another way of saying this borrowed from my instructors at the SF SPCA’s Academy for Dog Trainers is, “Train the dog in front of you,”. . . not the dog as you think he ought to be, or the neighbor’s seemingly perfect dog.

If your dog isn’t getting it [i.e., the full behavior], do baby steps. Sometimes a dog won’t do a full new behavior right off the bat. This happens often when training a dog to lie down as well as to do more complex behaviors. If that’s the case, break the behavior into small incremental steps and train one step at a time. If Max won’t lie down in response to your well-positioned food lure, you may need to click and treat for lowering his nose to the floor; then nose to the floor with a slight bend in the front elbows; then nose to the floor with progressively deeper elbow bends; then chest lowered to the floor and so on. Training in this way takes time and patience but with a consistent, careful training plan, Max should eventually learn to do the full behavior.

If your dog is tired of training, stop and spend cuddle time with him. Just because you want to train for 20 minutes doesn’t mean Max can last that long. In fact, it’s far more effective to keep training sessions short — anywhere from 3-10 minutes at a time depending on the individual dog and what you’re working on. As for the reference to “cuddle time,” I plan quite a bit of that in TLC classes. Why? I’ll segue to the words of another student:

Dogs need love and affection. Indeed! Dogs are highly social animals. They need companionship, touch, affection and attention. Dogs are not furry robots on the end of the leash, stuffed animals or rugs. Cuddling with your dog deepens the trust you share, feels good to the dog, and does wonders for you such as lowering stress, anxiety and blood pressure.

There’s no point in yelling, cussing at or hitting your dog. That won’t teach him what you want him to do. A long time ago, someone who was trying to teach me to drive shouted at and berated me whenever I made a mistake, and was clearly angry and frustrated with me throughout the lesson. I was miserable, unable to focus on what I was supposed to be doing, terrified of making a mistake, and began to think driving wasn’t for me. I dreaded lessons with that person and eventually enrolled in a driving instruction class, which was a far more positive experience. (If you”re wondering, I became a very good driver!)

Similarly, getting angry at a dog, intimidating, scaring or hurting him are good ways to ensure that he doesn’t learn or doesn’t learn quickly or well. These tactics will likely cause the dog to fear the trainer, drive down the dog’s confidence, can cause behavior to worsen, and create a very negative association with training. Simply put, the dog won’t want to train.

In the TLC program I teach the kids to train the dogs using positive training, which rewards dogs for behaviors we like and want to see more of. It’s effective and fun for everyone involved and results in dogs who are eager and happy to train, and TLC students who as they put it, “had a blast” training their dogs.

January is almost over but for me, a couple of exciting things are about to start. First, I’m about to begin teaching a second round of Teaching Love and Compassion (TLC), a wonderful humane education program offered by the East Bay SPCA. My class will be made up of fourteen seventh grade students from a public school in Oakland, and seven East Bay SPCA shelter dogs. I’m very much looking forward to getting to know this group of young people, and teaching them how to clicker train their assigned shelter dogs. The last TLC class amazed me with their appetites for training and in our six weeks together, the kids taught the dogs far more than I ever thought they would or could. As I’ve written in an earlier post, the dogs helped the kids learn about compassion, kindness, empathy, and non-violence towards all living creatures.

The second thing that’s about to start is Clicker Expo in Portland, Oregon. Yes, it’s an entire conference devoted to clicker training!

I love training dogs and I especially love clicker training. My introduction to clicker training was – yikes! – twelve years ago when I adopted my kitten Ted from the City shelter. He had terribly aggressive behavior and bit me frequently and hard enough to draw blood, which earned him the nickname, ”Ted the Terror.” On the advice of some shelter cat behaviorists, I tried a number of “traditional” remedies – shaking a can of pennies at him, yelling and stamping, and squirting him in the face with a water gun. I didn’t know a thing about training or behavior back then, but none of those methods worked. In fact, it soon became clear that his aggression was escalating.

I began researching cat behavior and came across a book called The Cat Who Cried For Help, by Dr. Nicholas Dodman, a veterinary behaviorist who teaches at Tufts University’s vet school. One of the chapters described a cat who sounded much like Ted. I emailed Dr. Dodman and learned about Tufts’ remote behavioral consultation service called PetFax. The Tufts team recommended clicker training Ted, learning his body language, and starting a “say please” program with him, in which he had to train for food, play, attention and affection.

Ted

I knew zilch about clicker training, but I looked it up on the web, learned about Karen Pryor – a pioneer of clicker training – and ordered a clicker and a book on training cats to do show tricks. Despite the many naysayers who warned me that a cat couldn’t be trained, I began to clicker train Ted every day. A quick student, he learned to sit, come when called, wave, rise on his hind legs, and a few other tricks. He loved training! He’d start purring as soon as he saw the clicker. (He still does that!)

Shortly after we started training, an amazing thing happened. Ted’s aggressive outbursts began to wane both in frequency and intensity — a result of the training, the “say please” program, and my growing understanding of his body language. I was much happier with him and he seemed happier and calmer in general.

Ted, my first training success story, is still my best feline friend. He continues to be a very interesting guy who definitely has his grumpy moments – and don’t we all? – but aggressive outbursts are very rare. Now that I’ve studied animal learning theory and applied behavioral analysis, and accumulated a great deal of training experience, it makes perfect sense that Ted’s aggression escalated when I was punishing him. The same thing happens with dogs when trained with punishment, pain and force.

I have Ted to thank for starting me on the road to becoming a professional dog trainer and a devout fan of clicker training. It’s in large part due to him that I became fascinated with and passionate about how animals learn and how to train them using positive reinforcement.

With that, I’m off to Clicker Expo! I’ll be soaking up as much knowledge as I can, and return, eager to share it with clients and with you.

Several times a week, I drive from San Francisco to Oakland to teach dog training in an exciting pilot program called Teaching Love and Compassion (TLC). My human students are fourteen Grade 8 students, and their students are seven shelter dogs from the East Bay SPCA in Oakland. The first of its kind in Northern California, TLC is a humane education program designed to teach kids love and compassion through a combination of classroom material and hands-on positive reinforcement dog training. The idea is that the children learn and practice empathy, compassion, non-violence, love and respect through their relationships with the dogs.

The drive is usually a nerve-wracking slog over the Bay Bridge and through rush hour traffic, and I’m often frazzled by the time I get there. But at the end of each training class I’m in another mood entirely. I hardly notice the drive or traffic on the way home. I can’t stop thinking about the successes of the day, the smiles on the children’s faces, and the kids’ terrific patience and kindness towards their dogs.

Sometimes it’s not clear who’s teaching whom. We’re now halfway through the program and already, these kids have impressed and reminded me of valuable lessons for dog training. . . and life.

Peluchin sits for his TLC Trainer

Some of the TLC dogs had a hard time adjusting to the change in routine, and relaxing around all the new people and dogs in class. I explained to the kids that helping dogs feel comfortable, while perhaps not as “sexy” as teaching one to roll over, is part of dog training too. Inside, I worried endlessly that certain dogs wouldn’t relax enough to train, and that the kids they were assigned to would walk away from the program feeling like failures, and/or that positive training was bunk.

I switched to yummier treats, put down comfy mats, set up visual barriers, and asked the kids to work on easy exercises. Happily, one week into the program all the dogs grew comfortable enough to train. My training interventions aside, the kids deserve enormous credit. Unlike many adults, none of my TLC students got upset with the dogs. No one called his/her dog stupid, stubborn or a dud. No one wanted to quit. The kids worked patiently with their dogs, talking to them softly, and gamely trying all my suggestions. These kids who are brand new to dog training have already moved leaps and bounds beyond many adult-dog guardians.

The kids notice and delight in the smallest signs of progress in their dogs; they aren’t stingy with rewards; and they’re infinitely patient with their dogs. We’ve talked a lot about how important it is to have patience when training dogs. But like so many things in life, it’s one thing to discuss patience and another thing to practice it.

Patience is a necessary virtue when it comes to dog training whether you’re teaching a dog to come when called, working to help a dog overcome a fear, or trying to quiet the bark fest that ensues when the doorbell rings. Depending on the dog’s training history (or lack thereof); history of reinforcement for a “problem” behavior; and how easy or hard it is to motivate the dog, carrying a training plan through from start to finish sometimes takes a L-O-N-G time. How long is always difficult to say. That depends a great deal on the patience, diligence and consistency of the human trainers.

Impatience arises in large part from unrealistic expectations about dogs and the learning process. People expect dogs to nail new skills immediately and to execute those skills perfectly under any and all circumstances. Unlike many adults, the TLC kids are still immersed in learning new things. I’d bet that’s why they understand and appreciate that mastering a new skill takes lots of time and practice, and approach dog training with that in mind. If you’ve ever taken salsa dancing lessons, learned to speak another language, or to play a musical instrument, you know what I mean.You don’t learn all at once, you learn in stages – how to do easy steps, then increasingly harder ones, how to put them together into whole dance routines, and how to perform them fluidly and gracefully.

We should approach dog training the same way – patiently and in small manageable steps. First train the dog to do a behavior reliably in environments with few to no distractions before asking (and expecting) the dog to do the behavior in increasingly challenging contexts. If your dog comes when called from anywhere inside the house, that’s a wonderful thing. She’ll still need lots and lots of practice and incremental training to come when you call her outside where other dogs, pigeons and squirrels are cavorting.

It’s often necessary to break a behavior into pieces that the dog can master before putting the whole behavior together. Training a dog to lie down is one example. If you can’t lure the dog all the way into a down position, break it into baby steps. Reward the dog for putting his nose on the floor. When he’s getting that right at least 80% of the time, reward him for putting his nose on the floor and bending the front elbows, then for moving his chest closer the floor, and so on, until he’s lying all the way down.

Training in this manner sets dogs up for success at every step of the way, boosts their confidence, and avoids frustration – for dogs and their humans. If you’re getting frustrated with training, do what my students do. Take a break and have some doggy play or cuddle time. Go back to training later when you’re both refreshed and re-energized. You’ll both have a lot more fun that way, and after all, dog training should be loads of fun.

We could all learn a thing or two from my TLC students. I’ll share more in upcoming posts.