The Dog Blog

As a dog trainer there are two questions I get more than any others:

“How do I get my dog to stop doing (insert annoying, yet often natural, behavior here)?”

“How do I punish my dog when he’s just being bad?”

There are also a few statements I get more than any others:

“She knows better!”

“She’s just being stubborn.”

“He doesn’t respect (me, my wife, my children).

Anyone see a pattern here? I’ll give you a second…

Yesterday the air filled with the sound of laughter and applause! I looked around. Was I at the Oscars? Were we in a theatre or at a show? No. I was in a schoolyard surrounded by young adults, a head teacher, and a dog.

Welcome back to the Coco Academy!

Now that I’ve got a dog again after a year of being dogless, I’ve had the pleasure of revisiting the market for interactive food toys. One of my long-time favorites, the Kong, doesn’t seem to work for very long; for some reason Sierra seems to believe that although she can lick a bit of peanut butter from around the lip of the Kong, if she can’t stuff her entire muzzle in the hole, she’ll never get the food out. No matter how easy I make it, she gives up pretty quickly. My other tried and true choice, the Molecuball, works with dry treats only. Sierra is glad to knock the ball around, but as I don’t feed dry kibble, I use this ball for treats, not meals.

Someone donated a very fine book called “The American Book of the Dog” to our veterinary school. I was the immediate recipient and eagerly unwrapped the anticipated package when it arrived. Edited by G. O. Shields and Published in 1891 by Rand, McNally & Company out of Chicago and New York, this book is a 19th century equivalent of today’s “The Complete Dog Book” put out by the AKC. It is a large brown, leather-bound tome with over 700 gilt-edged pages and many fine full page or text illustrations. It tells of the origin, development, special characteristics, utility breeding, training, points of judging, diseases, and kennel management of “all breeds of dogs” as appreciated almost 120 years ago, the year Thomas Edison patented the motion picture camera and while Queen Victoria of England was on the British throne.

Why is it that the word “positive” can strike such a chord in a dog owner’s mind? Having been involved in the dog world since 1972 and spending the great majority of my adult life working with dogs, it has been an uphill battle to increase awareness in the theory of learning for dogs. There has been a vast increase in awareness of this theory for children, but the dog owners are still lagging behind. Although, giving credit where it is due, it is leaps and bounds better than in the middle 1980’s, when dog training took a surge from being a novelty to a necessity.

Laboratory study has revealed a variety of reinforcement schedules. Puppy training has revealed that most of these are notorious ineffective, or impossible to administer in practice, with the notable exceptions of variable ratio and especially, differential reinforcement. Yet educators and trainers persist in using these relatively ineffective schedules of reinforcement when trying to teach children and employees and when attempting to train husbands and dogs. Wake up! Puppy training has taught us that most of this stuff doesn’t work too well.

Continuous Reinforcement (CR) — the dog is rewarded after every correct response, for example, the dog is rewarded after every sit

Just finished up a 6 week series of Puppy Kindergarten and Puppy Next Step with the next series slated to begin next month.

Shy dogs learning to play and overcome some fears; over the top pups learned to tone it down and play nice; people learning a peaceful, fun and non violent way to train.

Spring is definitely afoot. Sunshine, melting snow, blue skies, chirping birds -- an assault on all the senses. In a good way.

View this hilarious clip from Charlie Murphy which says with laugh out loud humor the real secret to the Dog Whisperer. An assault on the senses. In a bad way. Shout it out -- positive training works!

These days, many trainers eat and breathe learning-theory. The Little Book Of Learning Theory (LBOLT) is creedally accepted by one and all, even though little of it works in practice. Please don’t stone me. I am not being heretical. Learning theory is a real and valid description of how computers train animals but the LBOLT offers little for when people teach people or train animals. People are not computers and have neither the consistency, computing power or timing. LBOLT has many constraints in practice. To make matters worse, the really useful principles that LBOLT has to offer are ignored by many trainers, for example, that consequences are binary — from the dog’s point of view either things get better, or worse. Instead, trainers will debate for hours, which quadrant they are in, even though it’s all really a moot debate.

Off-leash puppy socialization and training classes caused an unplanned paradigm shift in dog training. The off-leash format was ideal for socialization with people and puppies and produced confident, friendly, good-natured and well-behaved dogs. Also the off-leash format was ideal for teaching off-leash verbal control at a distance in an extremely distracted setting without the continued need for training aids. The field of science-based, pet dog training exploded and other fields of dog training (obedience, protection, search and rescue, bomb/drug search and hearing-ear dogs) followed suit, because pet dog trainers were training puppies to off-leash control within a tenth of the time that it took on-leash trainers. Basically, teaching a dog what to do is quicker than teaching a dog what not to do, because … there is only one right way compared to the infinite number of wrong ways.

Forget loose leash walking.... I've decided to teach my dog to pull, pull, pull!  Okay, so I'm not going to let her pull all the time... and I do continue to expect a loose leash in many situations... but I am also working to perfect her pulling technique!  Lately, I've been more and more drawn to activities that allow my dogs to do things that they really love to do.  Nose work is one new pursuit that is bringing us all a lot of joy.  I think that activity is what prompted me to allow my Australian Cattle Dog, Myrtle Mae, to pursue another of her passions... pulling!