Oh Behave!

The other day I told the kids in my humane education class that they’re not just training shelter dogs, they’re saving lives. At first blush, that may sound like an outlandish claim. On closer examination, it really is true.

One of the primary reasons dogs are relinquished to shelters is due to behavioral issues that could easily have been prevented or curbed with positive training. Behaviors like jumping up that were seen as cute when the dog was a puppy become an annoyance when the dog becomes a bigger stronger adult. Problem behaviors are often punished making them worse, or overlooked until they become extreme and harder to modify.

Many guardians with a poorly-behaved untrained dog throw their hands in the air out of frustration. Many give up on their dogs altogether and surrender them to shelters. Once in a shelter, a dog’s future prospects are far from rosy. Given the severe pet overpopulation problem, current economic realities, and the common mentality that shelter dogs are “defective,” shelter dogs have a slim chance of adoption and a high chance of being euthanized.

However, dogs that are well-trained in polite manners have a much greater chance of staying in their homes. The same is true for dogs whose undesirable behaviors have been modified with positive reward-based training.

The best strategy for dogs and their guardians is a positive proactive one. If you have a newly adopted puppy or adult dog, start him off on the right paw by training him to behave in ways that you like. Dogs are creatures of habit. It’s far easier to teach a dog to behave politely from the outset of your lives together than to correct bad habits in full bloom. Even if your dog hasn’t had much or any training it’s never too late to start.

If you suspect your dog has or may be developing problem behavior, address it as soon as you can through positive training. Fearful or aggressive behaviors most often arise from underlying fear and/or stress and/or anxiety. If left unchecked or if punished, the dog’s fears/stress/anxiety worsen and so does the resultant behavior. This poses a danger for humans interacting with the dog, and ultimately the dog himself who may well find himself in a shelter or at the wrong end of a needle.

By training shelter dogs, the kids in my humane education class are doing so much more than training. They’re giving the dogs a leg up on adoption, improving their chances of staying in their eventual new homes, and giving the dogs a real second chance at a happy life, one click at a time.

Being proactive about your dog’s training and behavior may feel like a pain in our overly-busy lives. But a proactive approach is an investment that yields fabulous long-term results. A few minutes of positive training every day improves your dog’s quality of life, his happiness and your own, and may make all the difference between a future without your dog and forever future for you and him, together. When you think of it that way, training’s more than worth the effort.

We recently returned to Willowside Ranch for Vinnie’s first herding lesson. He started panting and pacing in the car as soon as we turned off of Highway 1 to Pescadero. The closer we got to the ranch, the more excited he got. By the time we parked the car, he was emitting short quiet whines and scratching at the window. I was certain he knew exactly where we were – the glorious place where he gets to herd sheep.

My husband gamely agreed to be the handler – the human who goes into the pen with dog, sheep and herding trainer. I watched, curious about how you train a herding dog to do his thing under human direction.

The first instruction from Marian Pott, the herding trainer, was that Vinnie had to sit before he got to herd. No way, I thought. He was too worked up. The sheep were too enticing. As we’d waited our turn to herd, Vin had been rearing up on his leash, barking, whining in a warble, and unable to focus on us or keep still. I’d never seen him in such a state.

Now that he was in the pen with the sheep, he was even more amped. The sheep were so close. Vinnie couldn’t take his eyes off them. My husband asked Vin, then kept stepping in front of him to block him from the sheep. It took a few minutes, but the unbelievable happened. Vinnie sat! The immediate reward? He got to herd!

My husband kept repeating the exercise and each time he requested a sit, it took VInnie a little less time to do so. Minutes later, not only did Vinnie sit, he stayed while my husband backed away from him and moved towards the sheep.

Ahh, the power of Premack, I thought. For non-dog geeks, Premack’s Principle, a powerful training strategy, states that more probable behaviors will reinforce less probable behaviors. In plain language, a behavior your dog really enjoys doing can be used to reinforce a behavior he’s less inclined to do. In Vinnie’s case, herding — an activity he adores — was used to reward and reinforce the sits and stays in the sheep pen. Once he was rewarded with herding time for sitting in the pen — something he was very uninclined to do — it was easier for him sit again, and even easier the next time, and so on.

Premack applies to humans too. People use it all the time without realizing it. Parents tell kids they must eat their veggies (something the kids are less inclined to do) before they get to eat dessert (something the kids are happy to do). It’s Premack at work when kids have to clean their rooms before they can watch TV. People motivate themselves to do things they’d rather not do using the same approach, like exercising 4 times a week for the reward of eating ice cream on the weekend.

There are abundant daily opportunities to use the veggies-before-dessert approach with your dog. Ask your dog to sit before you offer a toy to play tug, or to lie down before you toss a Frisbee, or before you take her for a walk. Every day presents plenty of these potential training moments. Take advantage of them — start Premacking ‘em! It’s great practice for doggy manners, and helps train and maintain doggy impulse control.
Not only that, more and more your dog will offer desirable behaviors when she wants something – the canine equivalent of saying please.

With a wee bit of time and effort on your part, “Premacking it” yields lovely behavioral results. And surely that’s preferable to jumping up, nipping, barking or whining for attention, play and other good stuff!

Happy Howl-o-ween! Hope you and all your loved ones and critters have a festive and safe one.

Here’s a picture of Vinnie in costume. Note his “natural” black mask . . .

To the Bat Cave!

. . . and one of Ted, who needs no adornment to look perfectly ghoulish. . .

Don't even think about dressing me in costume!

No Halloween parties for us this year. My husband, Vinnie and I are taking a few days off for some much-needed R & R in one of our favorite haunts in the universe, Mendocino County in Northern California. Although we’re just a few hours north of San Francisco, things are very different here. The air smells cleaner and sweeter, the light is often an eerie pearly lavender, and the landscape’s mostly wild and unfettered. Some locals say this is a place of ancient spirits. I’ll let you know if I run into any. In the meantime, here are some suitably spooky pictures of the natural landscape around here — no costumes necessary:

Ghostly Cypress Trees

What lurks in those dark depths?