Dogs And Overcrowded Shelters

J. Calhoun (1962) did an interesting experiment on brown rats. 

Apparently rats like to eat alone. They take a bite of something and then they go over in a corner somewhere and eat it. So instead, they created some kind of rat cafeteria. All the rats of the colony had to go to this one location, and they could nibble or lick at the food, but they had to do it next to one another, and it was not possible to take a piece of food and eat it in private. And eventually all the rats died of stress.

There have been numerous studies of various mammals in artificial, overcrowded, abnormal social situations. 

Guess what happens to a lot of dogs in animal shelters. The story doesn’t have a happy ending. 

Plan accordingly.

Dogs In Movies

I generally don't watch movies that feature dogs. 

First, because most of them are dumb.

Second, because if someone kills the dog, then you know that person is going to end up dead. Too predictable... My one exception is Hondo. Love John Wayne movies. But I still hate that the dog dies.

Third, if the dog dies for any reason, I'll probably never watch it again, and not watch it if I know the dog is going to die. 

So, if we are going to watch a movie... 

Plan accordingly. 

Dogs And Unique Events

Science can't predict or explain creativity or unique events. 

Every once in a while I will witness, or hear from a student about, a dog doing something that can't be explained by the dog's previous experience or training. 

First example.

It's bed time. The owner opens the backdoor and tells the dogs to go outside and potty. Both dogs go outside and eliminate. The first dog, the older dog, is a well trained male adult Portuguese Water Dog. The second dog is about a year old female Standard Poodle, less trained. She calls the dogs inside. The older dog comes in. The Poodle decides to romp and run around, just for the sake of running around. After several times calling her, the owner is irritated. She tells the older dog to "get her". He runs back outside, and literally forces (chases) the Poodle back into the home. We had never trained this dog to do anything of this nature. 

Second example.

Adult male Australian Shepherd/ Border collie mix. We had mostly finished the first round of Basic Obedience. The owner also had sheep. As she was loading up the sheep into her vehicle (you can guess the destination), one of them hops out of the vehicle and starts running down the alley. She tells the dog to "get her." The dog takes off, practically tackles the sheep, and drives it all the way back to, and into, the car. We never trained that dog to do that.

Third example.

Past student. Adult female Australian Cattle Dog. "It absolutely amazes me how much my dog understands. She “tells” me when she needs help finding her ball. We just checked my room. I told her to look under the bed and pointed so she got down and peeked underneath the bed, sniffing the whole time. It wasn’t there, so we checked the bathroom. It wasn’t there either so I said, “It must be outside.” She ran to the back door. I let her out and she immediately spotted it, grabbed it and ran back inside." We never formerly worked on this, but this owner has an excellent relationship with her dogs.

I can give other examples, but you get the point. What I can say is that I spend a lot of time helping owners develop a working relationship, and proper communication, with their dogs. I can only guess that this type of work was the necessary condition to cause these incidents. If we were to try and do these things again, let's say as a test, I'm betting that they wouldn't just happen. The owner or dog had an urgent need, the dog picked up on it, they communicated with each other, and boom, the intentions turned into useful but unique responses.

Plan accordingly.

Dogs And Discovering Potential Talent

I am not an “old school” dog trainer. Here’s what I mean by that. Old School: You might have worked with the dog a bit to understand Sit, Down, Heel, and Come. OK, that is a good start. But then there is the switch. The mentality changes and then if the owner gives a command, that dog better well do that command or else. And then some kind of punishment is used... (MORE)

Does Your Puppy Have Separation Anxiety?

There is a lot of dumb stuff on the internet. It seems that the internet is a magnet for fools to say foolish things. I saw a post about puppies and separation anxiety. In this case, the young puppy vocalizes a distress call and tries to be wherever the owner is. The so-called dog trainer said, yep, that is separation anxiety, and the owners are at fault. Then, this person wants you to start being aloof, distancing your relationship standing tall and confident, and disciplining the puppy.

Buzzer. Ding, Ding, Ding. Wrong answer... (MORE)

Dogs And Forced Calmness

Forcing a dog to lay on a dog Place (bed, cot, mat) isn't the same thing as teaching a dog calmness. Calm, as in: no activity, no emotions, no goals, no interest in social interactions, no desire to play, no motivation to do anything at all when you tell the dog to stop. Just lay there like a carpet for as long as you tell them to.

In fact, you can't teach a dog calmness. 

You can calm dogs by exercising them until they are restful.

You will see dogs be calmer when they are no longer puppies.

Dogs will relax if there isn't something they want to do. 

You can avoid stimulating dogs in some circumstances so as to not trigger behaviors or feed expectations of activity. 

Do not buy into the idea that it is a good idea to force calmness in a dog. Learned helplessness isn't the same as calmness. You will find training programs that promise you can calm a dog on command.

Let's try this in a different context. Do you think you can force a 2 year old kid to be calm without causing harm? Try searching Google for "the terrible two's"... see what you find out. Do you think you can make 2 year old kid to be calm at your command?  

Plan accordingly.

Dog Training Should Be Fun

Often dog training is just too serious, and the dogs pick up on that and that interferes with motivation and adds stress... (MORE)

Do You Want A Calm And Submissive Dog?

Have you ever considered what these terms mean? ... (MORE)

Dogs And Preventing Food Guarding

Leave your puppy, or dog, alone when they are eating.

Plan accordingly. 

Dogs And Multi-Level Marketing

Years ago, I was invited by some friends to have dinner at their house. When I arrived, there were a lot of other “friends”, and the entire living room was set up with rows of chairs, a podium and speaker system up front, and a viewscreen against a wall. Once everyone arrived, the presentation was made. And then the hard sell. The social proof, the swaying effects of the cheering crowd (and the “plants: in the crowd to influence the mood and emotions), was part of the way used to persuade people into buying.

At about the same time, I was getting calls offering lavish vacations for free. So, you showed up at the travel office, and they were hard selling timeshares. You had to agree to listen to a 4-hour presentation to get the free trip. 

Eventually, when I got invites over to friends’ homes, I would ask if it was just us or were they doing a multi-level marketing system. My so-called friends were using me, buttering me and others up to get us to sign up. It spread through the churches, especially, you thought you’d made a friend, instead you were fresh meat. 

These things were more about making the people rich than the quality of the products or services they were offering. Sometimes the products and services were good, many times they were not. You had to do your due diligence and not rely just on the power of their marketing materials and the relationships they had with you.

I’m warning you here that it might happen in the dog world. The difference here is that if a system isn’t good for the dogs, then dogs will break. Is that “Method” such a program, or is that Method just a well-designed program to train dogs in an orderly manner? Most trainers have a method, but I’m referring to something else. Ask yourself this: does this system serve the wellbeing of the dogs?

Plan accordingly.

Dogs And The Problem With Science

It’s about Utopian ideas of control. But you can’t control life.

Here’s what I mean. 

About a century ago, attempts were made by Hull and others to discover the ultimate formula, an algorithm, to explain all behavior. Psychologist/ scientists spent decades trying to find this Holy Grail. They proposed if they could find that secret formula, they could control society.

B. F. Skinner, beyond all the good he did, took society on a similar ride by taking his operant conditioning theory too far. Without any direct scientific experiments to back up his proposals, he took what experiments he had done… and proposed his ideas about Utopia… ranging from politics, to religion, to parenting, crime, biology and so forth. His goal also was to control society, and many were all too willing to try it out.

Others, in the past few decades, then took his work even further. Their proposal was that humans can’t ever know the truth because all we know and do is a result of reinforcement and punishment, and that those in power control those processes, so those not in control are just victims of that control. The “truth” is therefore not truth, but a facsimile of truth because of conditioning. Like Hull and Skinner, these Utopian goals are what is driving this movement. This extrapolation of operant conditioning by critical theorists has been used to attempt to tear down society and replace it with another system of control. We are living in that mess right now. 

I ask myself if there is any need to put more lab rats in puzzles. I don’t think so. The studies of this type have pretty much exhausted the possibilities of gaining anything new and useful. What is left are novelties that aren’t going to cause any serious breakthroughs. Similarly, the quest for a chemical/ neural answer isn’t going to find a Holy Grail, either. The quest for societal control, using medical experimentation, has never turned out well. Yes, there might be some medical cures along the way, but the variability of life can’t be put into a Cartesian graph, or some new life predicting/ controlling formula.

The more I study, the more I ask why these scientists aren’t now in the field, spending more time and money working with live animals and people, rather than going down these rabbit holes. These various schools of behavior/ learning/ psychology are still stuck in their silos. Besides, it is now almost impossible to do animal experiments, other than farming them out to corrupt third world countries where there is no oversight of what they are attempting. Furthermore, they are diving headlong into control experiments that we only saw when reading science fiction books. It’s not about the betterment of animals or society; it is about control. 

What does this have to do with dogs? Well, maybe it is time to “ask” the dogs what they need rather than trying to count how many angels can fit on the head of a pin. Might it be better to go into nature and discover what it has to say or get a dog and see what develops. Variability, random and purposeful, is a fundamental property of life: it can’t be fully discovered or controlled, either in a test tube or in the real world.

Just sayin’… 

Plan accordingly.

Dogs And Landscaping

The new year is here, and it is time to evaluate if your yard is safe and useful. 

1.) Remove excess rubbish and junk.

2.) Which nuisance and toxic plants need to go?

3.) Is there sufficient shade?

4.) What is the condition of the lawn?

5.) Time to look at that sprinkler system, making repairs.

6.) What about lawn furniture? Has your dog damaged them, or do you need to add more? For some dogs, it is a good idea to plan a Place for them to lay when outside.

7.) How is the condition of your fencing, walls, gates and locks? You don't want an escape or an intrusion.

8.) How about some security cameras? Motion detection and other security systems?

9.) Let's take a look at that swimming pool. Is it safe for your dog? Do you need to add better steps? How about a cover? Shade? Solar heater? Is it clean, or is it a toxic green mess? How about a motion detector so you can be alerted in case your dog falls in? Pump and tools: are they inaccessible to your dog? How about installing a pool fence that is dog and kid proof?

10.) Screen doors. Time to fix those?

11.) Does your dog need a digging mound?

12.) What about your dog's potty area? Does that need replacing? Do you even have a designated area? Will your dog like going there? Artificial turf can be too hot for some dogs to step on, do you have a shady area? Many dogs won't potty on artificial turf, what are you replacing that with? 

13.) Do you have an outdoor kennel? If so, is it well made (I do have an article on that)

14.) Is your hose protected and rolled up to keep it away from your dog? What about any exposed electrical wiring and systems?

15.) What about lighting? Some homes that back up to wildlife passageways can be visited by predators; they are more likely at night to run off if you turn on the lights and go out there with your dog when it is potty time. 

16.) Have you considered predator defenses in your yard? Ask your fish and game department as to what is advisable and legal in your area. 

17.) Are your planters in good repair? I've seen dogs that were injured jumping up and off of crumbly or poorly designed planters. 

18.) Do you have a shop? Can the dog get in there and mess with things it shouldn't?

19.) Garage. How is that working and do you need to make any changes?

And ...

20.) Does your yard provide space for training and exercise for your dog? 

Summer isn't that far away... 

Plan accordingly.

Aversive Tools In Dog Training

There are many stimuli that are perceived by a dog as aversive. It can range from something startling, a danger clue in the environment, the behavior of another, or some sensation.

The latest garbage by online dog training gurus is that an e-collar isn't aversive. It is. There is no honest way to claim otherwise.

If it isn't aversive, then why use it at all?

If I run a city and hire a police officer to give out tickets to speeders, those penalties dished out are aversive. They aren't pleasant. If I was to use an e-collar to teach a dog to avoid a snake, alligator, boa constrictor or Kiwi bird, the sensation from the collar is unpleasant. That is the entire purpose of using aversives in any type of training, whether animal or human. 

On one hand, you see so-called "all positive" trainers say they don't use aversives in training. But they do, they just use ones that aren't typically used in their dog training lectures, whether they recognize it or not. If they really did believe in their rhetoric, they wouldn't talk like Karens, with scorn laced voices, to virtue signal to the world. 

On the other hand, online dog training gurus who claim that aversives (pick your flavor... voice, exposure, e-collars, tables for bite work, leash and collar, touch, boundaries ... including doors and gates, or even negative punishment) are not unpleasant, they are selling a lie. It is a marketing gimmick.

Let's all have a little honesty here. 

There is a place for aversives in all training. Everyone uses them, regardless of their rhetoric. They are used because they have a place in trial-and-error learning. Even failure is aversive, so even if you are free shaping a dog with a clicker and treats, each time the dog tries something and it doesn't get the click and treat, that is aversive. 

Plan accordingly.

Do Competition Titles Prove You Are A Master Dog Trainer?

Yes and no.

Yes, because you have some kind of results to demonstrate. It is inspiring to see these dogs!

No, because the competition field is not a full demonstration of skill level. Imagine a dog that grows up in the Truman Show. Or those dogs that are developed to demonstrate artificial abilities? What isn't seen is these dogs outside the staged events. You wouldn't do to your dog what they do to their dogs.

Let's use a human example. Let's remember some great athletes in history who ended up destroyed outside the sport, Use your imagination.

Plan accordingly.

Dogs And Dopamine

There is a lot of talk about dopamine. Let’s break it down a bit... (MORE)

Dogs And Resource Guarding (Part 2)

If your dog is "resource guarding" you, does that mean that your dog sees you as an object, and that you are not being your dog's leader? (I'm not referring to a grumpy dog that just would rather be left alone, I'm referring to a dog that is full on going to stand up to a confrontation regardless of the person who is approaching.)

No.

That's a ridiculous diagnosis. 

First, dogs aren't so dumb as to think you are the same as a bone or a tennis ball. How could anyone think otherwise? Second, if a dog is "resource guarding" you or any other thing or living being, to the dog the loss of that thing or being is an existential threat to them. Bullying the dog at this point will only increase their insecurity regarding that situation and can escalate, with some dogs, into a dangerous confrontation that was unnecessary. It will also be ineffective. 

You can't let others fix it for you. Unless you are willing to have that other person (whom the dog wants to stay away when your dog is with you) break the animal abuse laws and fight your dog, even to the death, to get that dog to permanently relate to them in a submissive manner (and believe me, you wouldn't like how that looks), then don't go down that rabbit hole. Even a 50 lb. dog, in a full fight with a 200 lb. man, has a good chance of permanently disabling or killing him. Is that the fight you want? Do you want the law involved if someone finds out what happened? Do you want to go down that rabbit hole? Furthermore, you should assume a male dog will never submit to a female human, so figure that one out, too. Do you not understand the male/ female hierarchy in dogs? And now each additional person that approaches you will have to defeat your dog, as well. 

Second, bullying your dog and being aloof isn't going to fix your problem. Driving the dog away from you isn't going to fix this, either. And if you bully your own dog, that doesn't mean your dog is now comfortable with this other person coming towards the both of you. "Being your dog's leader" has nothing to do with the root problem here. 

There is so much garbage on the internet these days about dog training. Don't believe everything you see. 

There are better ways of diagnosing what is happening and better ways of dealing with that. 

Plan accordingly.

Dogs And Marriage (Part 1)

More than a few times, I have found out on a first lesson that a spouse got a dog without the full acceptance of the other spouse. 

What I mean by full acceptance is that the other spouse may have agreed, but didn't want the dog in the first place, and now that the dog is there, resents that the dog is there. And the conversation often veers into "why can't we make the dog an outside dog"? 

Let's take these in backwards order.

First, pet dogs are not outside dogs. They are not wolves or coyotes, they do not have the physical characteristics, support of a pack to protect and socialize and feed them, and they will not be provided sufficient resources to safely survive outdoors. In AZ, the wildlife present a very real fatal risk to any outdoor dog: Africanized bees, rattlesnakes, raccoons, coyotes, wolves, black bear, mountain lions, bobcats, jaguar, hawks, owls: just to name a few. Dogs are also completely vulnerable to a human invader, and they will not survive in these circumstances. This "outdoor dog" business is a roundabout way of beginning the process of getting rid of the dog.

Second, not always is an agreement an agreement. If someone feels coerced into an agreement, then you didn't ever really have an agreement. Yes, when people give their word, especially to the other spouse, they should follow through. However... how many people give vows at the marriage ceremony only later to say they didn't mean it? And then someone eventually hands paperwork over to the other spouse saying they have filed for divorce? Agreements are dependent upon the people involved, not just the paperwork or verbal agreement they entered into. Some people are great salespeople and can bully or deceive others into an agreement. Some people agree too quickly. Some people don't see an agreement as an agreement. These things should not be rushed.

Third... "I only agreed to have this dog because of ______, but I never wanted the dog in the first place." If you can't get past that point before the agreement is made, you aren't going to have a lasting agreement in most cases. The dog is doomed. Unless there is a change in heart.

Plan accordingly.

Dogs And Thorndike

Edward L. Thorndike (1874 – 1949), a member of the philosophy department at Harvard, made his mark by doing experiments with animals. His most famous experiments were those involving cats and dogs in trapped in puzzle boxes... (MORE)

Dogs, Kids and Prey Drive

If your dog chases your kid while running around in the backyard, is the chasing an indication of prey drive? Same question regarding your dog chasing your other dog at the park, is that prey drive?

No.

What are the behaviors exhibited when prey drive is triggered? Well, let’s consult an actual expert:

“Actions such as chasing, scare-tactics, pointing, carrying, or retrieving, tracking, trailing, and a typical shaking-to-death that dogs do while playing with a rag-as well as pouncing upon, biting, and pulling down towards them-fall into the category known as prey drive behavior. In order to gain insight into what triggers this behavior, one must observe the actions and movements of a hunted prey animal. Prey always moves away from the dog; fleeing from him in panic; and it is always on the move. The instinctive reactions which have been triggered by the prey's behavior, are as follows: he hunts the prey down, pounces on it, bites into it, and pulls it down.” Helmut Raiser, Der Schutzhund

Is THAT what your dog is doing to your kid or that dog?

Dogs aren’t cannibals. They don’t hunt other dogs, and because they are domesticated and adopted by humans, they don’t hunt people as prey. Your other dog and kid aren’t on the menu tonight.

Plan accordingly.

Dogs And Fetch And Tug

Should you play fetch or tug with your dog? What if the dog has problems with chasing other animals?

Of course you should be playing fetch and tug with your dog. Those activities are used to train hunting dogs, primarily the use of these tools playing fetch. 

What is a Labrador Retriever or German Shorthaired Pointer doing when with the hunter? Basically a well trained version of fetch. Tug is also used, if you know what you are doing, to teach the dog to deliver to hand and not destroy the game. Are these dogs in the fields and forests causing havoc? Are they coming home and hunting your children? No. In fact, the entire sequence of training these breeds is all about these activities.

Fetch and tug will NOT make your dog worse around prey animals. Instead, when taught properly, they will make your dog more controllable around prey animals.

Furthermore, contrary to the claims of novices who really shouldn't be pontificating about dog behavior, neither fetch nor tug will make your dog neurotic. There is a large body of experimental research into the artificial creation of neurosis in dogs. Not one involved using object play. Are hunting dogs neurotic after hunting birds or rodents, or any game? No. Furthermore, playing fetch or tug does not increase your dog's propensity to kill and eat prey animals. Prey drive stops when the prey is dead, whether with a rubber ball or the killing of a rodent. Silly uneducated claims like that make life worse for dog owners, not better.

Go play with your dog. It will make your dog a better dog. If you don't know how to do it properly and your dog is doing it in away that concerns you, stop and get some help. Furthermore, if you have a working dog, or even a pet that needs enhanced off leash obedience abilities, fetch and tug are invaluable activities.

Plan accordingly.