It took me a LONG time, much diligent training and careful management to teach my Kelpie mix Vinnie not to chase my cat Ted, and to get a tug toy instead when he gets the cat-chasing urge. We enjoyed a lengthy stretch of peace at home; dog and cat could both chill out in the same room in close proximity to one another without problems.

Vin Settled With Ted Nearby

I was overjoyed. There’s almost nothing I like better than the company of both my critters at the same time. And the dog-cat harmony at home was no small achievement. Vinnie is a herding mix with high energy and an intense desire to herd moving critters.

But that was then.

Lately Vinnie starts whining in frustration and his eyes light up in that, “I’m dying to chase you now!” way whenever he sees Ted. Vinnie has also taken to following Ted so closely, he’s practically standing on top of him. Ted is not amused.

At first I was puzzled about the change in Vin’s behavior. Then I remembered that of late, our garden has been overrun with feral cats. There always seems to be at least one feral kitty lurking in the shadows. (I don’t leave food or garbage out there. A well-meaning neighbor has been feeding the ferals daily and ever since, the surrounding yards have become a feline playground.)

No wonder Vin’s interest in Ted has revived. Vinnie’s had plenty of recent opportunity to chase the feral cats outside. And chase them he does!

For Vinnie, chasing cats is a self-reinforcing behavior. Chasing cats is tons of fun for him. He’s rewarded powerfully whenever he does it; chasing and herding cats must feel incredible to him. Herding is after all, what he’s hard-wired to do.

Animals aren’t static entities or robots. They’re living organic creatures who respond and react to their environments. In other words,behavior changes. It can change for a host reasons such as an illness, a health problem, or as a result of natural development and maturing (transitions from puppyhood to adolescence to adulthood to the golden years).

Ted

Behavior can also change as a result of environmental factors. These run the gamut and include changes in diet, in amounts and types of exercise and mental stimulation, in life routines, a move to a new home, the addition of a new pet or family member, or the death of a loved one to name a few.

Vinnie’s in perfect health and the only recent change in his life has been the feral festival in our yard and the many opportunities he’s seized to chase those cats. Behavior that’s rewarded increases in intensity and frequency. The more Vinnie chases cats — a rewarding behavior to him — the more he wants to chase cats, and the more he wants to chase cats, the more he chases them. This explains his changed behavior and attitude towards Ted.

One of my instructors at the SF-SPCA Academy for Dog Trainers always said, “If you want the animal to change its behavior, change your behavior.” So true.

If I want to curb Vinnie’s desire to chase Ted, I need to change my behavior. Relying on my pre-feral cat training plan won’t suffice. I need to manage the environment to prevent Vin from chasing the outdoor kitties.

I can’t block them from my yard and it doesn’t seem fair to suspend Vin’s yard privileges. My management plan is to go outside and get any feral cats to skedaddle before Vinnie is allowed into the yard. I also need to ramp up the training – more recall and leave it practice away from Ted, lots of practice calling Vinnie to come inside from the back yard, and stupendous rewards for those behaviors.

If your dog’s behavior has changed suddenly and it’s not to your liking, try to figure out what may have caused the change. If it’s not due to maturing, rule out any physical problems with a vet exam.

If there are no health issues, consider whether there have been any changes in your dog’s life or routine. If he’s been getting less physical or mental exercise, increase it. If the environment has changed, depending on what’s changed and how intensely it’s affected your dog, he may just need some time to adjust.

If you’re concerned and/or your dog’s behavior doesn’t improve, it’s best not to let the undesirable behavior continue as it will most likely worsen.

Do your best to prevent your dog from doing the behavior and consult with a good positive reinforcement trainer. Deciphering behavior puzzles and crafting a plan to address them is what dog trainer geeks like me relish.

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.

As a professional dog trainer, I sometimes have to deliver news that clients aren’t eager to hear. One of the most difficult things to impress upon some people is that training is a process, and sometimes it’s a long one. We live in a world of instant access to information, sound bites and instant gratification. We’re increasingly expected to accomplish more tasks more quickly at work, sometimes all at the same time. We’re all busy. It’s no wonder that so many people want their dogs to master basic obedience immediately, or want behavior modification to happen overnight.

Puppy Vinnie behind baby gates

Without this understanding folks become frustrated and upset with their animals, their relationships with their pets suffer, and often, so do the pets. The rowdy adolescent dog is banished to a yard or basement. The avid barker gets a shock collar. The anxious submissive urinator is given to a shelter.

Believe me, I empathize with how exasperating it can be to live with a pet who has an ongoing behavioral issue. For the past two years, my home has been divided into feline and canine zones separated by baby gates. Ever since we adopted Vinnie at the age of 4 months, in true herding dog style he’s been compelled to chase my cat, Ted. Ted, always a nervous skittish guy, has been compelled to run from Vinnie. You see the dilemma? A dog who simply must chase a fleeing critter. A cat who simply must flee from the dog. Definitely not an ideal combination.

It’s been a challenge preventing Vinnie from having opportunities to chase Ted, supervising closely whenever we allow them to be in the same room together, and making sure Ted’s quality of life continues to be good now that he no longer has free run of the house. A certain undercurrent of tension stems from having to negotiate and manage all the pets’ interactions with each other.

Ted in the sunshine

It’s been a long-term project to train Vinnie to focus on and come to me when he sees Ted instead of chasing him. Very often it’s felt like one step forward and two steps back. However, more and more often these days I’m reminded that though training is sometimes a long process, if you stick with it, it’s a process that yields positive results. Behaviors can indeed be modified. Some behaviors just take longer to change than others.

I’ll never forget the night that a once-seemingly unbelievable scene first unfolded before my eyes. Picture this: me sitting on the floor of my living room. To my right was Ted, rolling around with his favorite catnip mouse. Not six feet away lay Vinnie happily playing with his blanket. I looked back and forth at each of them, unable to completely take it in.

Was I dreaming? Could it be possible that I was sitting there with both of my pets in the same room just a few feet apart, and we were all basically. . . FINE?

Sure, both animals were keeping an eye on each other. But they weren’t focused on each other. They were relaxed. There was no conflict. There was no chase. I was overjoyed.

Even now as I write about that night, I get chills. For all the times we had setbacks, for all the times it felt like we’d reached a stalemate, for all the times I was ready to give up on training and resign myself to living permanently in a Cold War-like home, we’d been making progress. It was incremental, it was slow, but the overall trend was upward and positive.

That first night was no fluke. My critters co-exist tolerantly more and more of the time. Vinnie and Ted may never be friends. But they’re well on their way to becoming peaceful housemates thanks to the training process.

∞

An earlier version of this article first appeared in www.InCirclePets.com.