Pet dog training comprises raising good-natured, well-behaved and mannerly dogs that are under off-leash, distance verbal control (at home or in parks). Raising puppies is fun. Socialization is effortless and enjoyable and behavior and manners training is easy and effective. Similarly, living with friendly, confident and mannerly adult dogs is wonderful once all of the training has paid off and now the dog acknowledges household rules and fits in seamlessly with your lifestyle. Personally, I enjoy living with dogs more and more the older they get. I find the prolonged sunset years of the relationship to be magical. Unfortunately, not all dogs get to enjoy their sunset years in their original homes. For many dogs, adolescence stands in the way.
A puppy appears to be well-behaved, confident and acts like Mr. Sociable one month, yet by the next, behavior problems are rife, temperament problems appear seemingly out of nowhere and basic manners and off-leash reliability crash and burn. All of these problems are predictable; it’s not as though they have never happened before. And, all of these adolescent problems are preventable and so, it’s about time we prevent them from happening again.
For many dogs, housesoiling, destructive chewing, excessive barking and separation anxiety become the equivalent of terminal illnesses. As existing problems worsen throughout adolescence, the puppy/dog is banished from the house and progressively confined outdoors, to a garage or basement, to a kennel in a shelter and sometimes, to a black plastic bag.
Puppies must be housetrained, chewtoy-trained and taught to enjoy settling down quietly and calmly before they are eight-weeks old. Also, owners need to be taught how to continue the training during the puppies first few months at home. It is just too silly for people to purchase or adopt puppies that are not housetrained or chewtoy-trained, especially if they don’t know how to do it themselves. Failing that, adolescent dogs must be housetrained, chewtoy-trained, socialized and taught basic manners within the shelter prior to re-homing.
Adolescent dogs also become fearful and aggressive towards people, especially including children, men and strangers but also, towards family and friends. Fear and aggression towards people is unbelievably easy to prevent because development is so slow and all the warning signs of a future bite are apparent by three-months of age: “He takes a while to warm to strangers”, “He’s not overly fond of children” and “He’s a bit tricky around his food bowl or bones”. And my favorites: “His recalls are slowing down”, “He never comes when I call”, “He’s a bit hand-shy” and “He wriggles when I try to hold him”. How on earth can people miss these signs? The dog doesn’t want to approach his owner, ducks his head when the owner reaches out and struggles when handled and hugged. The poor dog is just crying out for help. When the bite eventually happens, (“when”, not “if”), we desperately hope that the dog causes no damage because he learned safe and reliable bite inhibition as a puppy during off-leash play.
Puppies must socialize with and be gently handled by at least 100 people, especially children and men, before they are eight weeks old. Additionally, puppies must socialize with and be gently handled by at least another 100 people, especially children and men, before they are three-months old and the Critical Period of Socialization hypothetically closes. There are no excuses; puppies may be safely socialized to people at home, provided household members and visitors leave outdoor shoes outside.
Moreover, socialization and classical conditioning must continue indefinitely. It is just too silly for people to purchase or adopt puppies that have not been prepared to live with people and especially have not been taught to enjoy being handled and hugged. It is even sillier to suddenly stop socializing a puppy/adolescent/adult dog, thinking that it is adequately socialized. Behavior never stays the same— either it gets better, or worse.
Dog-dog reactivity appears out of the blue very early in adolescence. After just a couple of scary scraps in the park, big dogs and little dogs especially are kept on-leash, which severely exacerbates reactivity. Walks decrease in frequency and dog-dog socialization zeroes out. Dogs fight because: 1. They are dogs, 2. Classical conditioning is non-existent after three or four months of age and 3. Socialization stops dead after a couple of scraps.
Perhaps the surest bet in dog behavior is that adolescent dogs, especially males, will get into scraps. Prediction approximates a 100% certainty and prevention requires non-stop classical conditioning from puppyhood, throughout adolescence until the dog’s sunset years. Of course a three-month-old puppy is a party animal. The goal is for your dog to remain sociable throughout adolescence and well into adulthood. Never take a puppy’s or young adolescent’s friendly greetings for granted. Every time your three-month-old, four-month-old, five-month-old, six-month-old puppy, or adolescent or adult dog greets or acknowledges another dog, say, “Good Dog”, smile and after the other dog passes by, give your dog a friendly pat or a piece of kibble.
Continued socialization and classical conditioning to prevent fearfulness and aggression towards people and other dogs, however, acquired bite inhibition is much (MUCH) more important. The level of bite inhibition acquired in off-leash puppy class play sessions is the single most important prognostic factor for dogs that bite and dogs that fight. If they cause no damage, then they are not dangerous and so, rehabilitative socialization may safely continue. If, however, they cause injury to a person or another dog, then they are potentially dangerous and must be kept away from people and other dogs. Quality of life will take a nose-dive. Bite inhibition is easily learned in puppyhood but it is time-consuming, difficult and often dangerous to try to teach bite inhibition to an adult dog.
There is nothing in this blog that is not brutal common sense and I have written about Minimal Mental Health Guidelines for raising puppies and guiding them through adolescence many times before. I have scheduled just two more lectures on these topics for Orlando and San Francisco. (The latter will be videotaped by Tawzer Dog Videos.) Then, I plan to devote the rest of my US seminar-series to a sorely needed make-over of pet dog training.
My passion has always been devising easier, quicker and effective ways to establish off-leash, verbal control when the dog is at a distance, distracted, without the continued need for food lures, rewards, clicks, treats, leashes, collars, halters and harnesses and especially, without the need of any scary or painful training tool at all. Major foci of my program have always been how can we reduce and eliminate the need for punishment (a definition of training in itself) and how quickly can we phase out the necessity of training tools? Otherwise, temporary training tools quickly become permanent management tools.
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Avoiding Fights?
My dog Boots is a 15 month-old Golden/Bernese cross. She has excellent bite inhibition, and is well socialized (we go to off-leash hours every day). But lately she has been scrapping a lot, and it isn't just a quick growling tussle and it's over - she keeps at it until we pull the dogs apart. She is a big dog and it's hard to pull her away.
She has started when another dog took her ball, when she was wrestling and a third dog was yapping, and when a puppy was bothering her. No one has gotten hurt, but it's frightening. How do we get her to stop fighting? How do we end the scrap? What does rehabilitative socialization look like?
This post
<applause> <more applause>
As always, looking forward to your insights and more regarding the "make-over".
Mira Jones, CPDT-KA, CDBC
8 weeks?
Hi Dr Dunbar - I love this site and all the blogs but there is one thing in this article that confused me. The sentance reads "Puppies must be housetrained, chewtoy-trained and taught to enjoy settling down quietly and calmly before they are eight-weeks old."
Any reputable breeder will not let you take a dog before 8 weeks old, nor should they, so how can this be accomplished?
Also - Chicago isn't on your list for touring - maybe we can bribe you with really good Chicago Style pizza?
Thanks!
Timm
There is just so much to say
There is just so much to say about fighting that it would be impossible to cover a day's worth of seminar (Orlando and San Francisco) in Blog Comments. I strongly suggest you take a look at my Fighting DVD. However, Boots, the good news is that you have excellent bite inhibition and so, your scrapping is not serious. So tell your owner lots of classical conditioning and lots of training interludes whenever you are on walks or off-leash.
Mira, I am going to start blogging about the pet dog training make-over in a couple of days. My editor (Kelly) says that I have to blog more so that people realize that I have a bunch of new information.
Timm, I just booked a venue for a Chicago seminar next year — first week in June.
Re: Housetraining ... Breeders must housetrain and chewtoy-train puppies before they sell them. If a puppy has been raised in an area where it is allowed to pee and poop anywhere and everywhere and allowed to chew anything and everything, that is exactly what it will do when it goes to its new home. This is simply not fair to owners. At the very least, puppies should be raised in a narrow long-term confinement area with a bedroom at one end and a toilet (with final substrate) at the other end. Via passive autoshaping, the puppies will grow up with a strong natural preference for eliminating in their toilet area (on dirt, grass or concrete). Similarly, puppies will grow up with a strong preference for chewing chewtoys. Check out the Errorless Housetraining section in the Training Textbook, or download BEFORE You Get Your Puppy from the Free Downloads page. When breeders are at home, every hour on the hour, they should wake them up and hustle them to the toilet area and reward each puppy for peeing and pooping, then a little bit of handling and gentling plus some lure/reward training (come, sit, lie down and roll over) before giving them stuffed chewtoys so that they can chew before falling asleep again. Each evening, the breeder may invite people (especially children and men) to help with the handling and lure/reward training. It is just so easy to produce well-trained and socialized eight-week-old puppies, that it is surprising that not every breeder does it. Sadly, when a prospective puppy owner buys an untrained and non-socialized puppy, they are so far behind before they even start.
Thank You
Thanks for your response! I will definitely look at the DVD and get out the good treats.
A trainer is going to come to the dog park with us to videotape Boots' interactions. That way I'll be able to get a handle on what she wants and when she's about to get fighty. I ask a lot of her as a city dog - get along with lots of dogs, don't get bored of the park, drop that delicious trash, leave that ball alone... I have to be extra involved and creative, I guess, because I can't exactly let her skip through fields or chase deer all day!
when adolescent and old collide
Hi Dr. Dunbar: My husband (Joe) and I are living with three dogs. There is Skinny, female, approx. 5 years old; she was a stray when we took her in 4 years ago; she is a Basenji mix, extremely independent, and has been the best teacher about dog behavior. She is very athletic and gets me on my bicycle every morning for about 30 min.
Liesl is about 9 now; she seems to be a Border Collie / German Shepherd mix, and we got her off death row at about 6 or 7 months old. Liesl has a lot of health issues, including arthritis, bone spores, szeisures and moderate lipoma; she used to be very insecure, but is now a very sweet, fun loving old "lady" that has a rough time moving around. However, she is also a bit dominant.
Skinny is our latest addition. She is a Golden / German Shepherd mix, about a year old. She was dumped in a local night-drop kennel on Christmas Day. We found her there the next day, when we wanted to donate some puppy/kitten chow, we fell in love and brought her home.
Introduction at home was not problematic. Three days later, we had her spayed and found out that she was pregnant. She's had the roughest time since; she turned extremely aggressive and became extremely dominant. She is a very bouncy dog, and her wound did not heal well. She finally had to spend a week at the clinic, where they sedated her to keep her still and allow the wound to heal.
Our once harmonious life with our dogs has changed. Bite inhibition was almost non-existent, and we are working on that; as you pointed out, it is time consuming, but very slowly, we seem to be making progress. The reason for my reading your blog and commenting is this:
Yesterday, out of the blue, Lilu attacked Liesl (the old one); grabbed the middle of Liesl's back and started shaking her ferociously. Needless to say, Liesl cried out, and that's when Skinny joined in and took Lilu's side, going for Liesl's neck. I was able to catch Skinny before she got a hold of the neck, and Joe was able to separate Lilu from Liesl's back. Lilu got some time out in her cage, Skinny got time out on the floor, and Liesl ended up very confused. There was no blood, and I couldn't find any broken skin. It looked horrible, but I know that those things can happen, especially when adolescent dogs meet older, weaker dogs.
After that incident, Lilu seemed changed; more of a follower than the one wanting to be top-dog. For once, she did not try to claim the bed, and she was still very easy to handle today. She is definitely a very, very good dog, very smart and eager to learn. We starte trick training, I take both Skinny and her out on our daily bicycle run, she exercises happily on the treadmill while I pedal away on the stationary bike, and we are starting to get somewhere with our basic commands. However, her recall off leash is still slow, and she cannot play with the other dogs off leash in our pasture, without pestering the heck out of them.
So, this is our drama in as few words as I could scrape together. Any suggestions on where to take it from here? We have never given up on an animal before, and we definitely don't want to give up on her. Somebody else already did, without realizing how dramatic that can be to a dog. Their loss, our gain.