Behavior & Training

Shelter priorities are to decrease input and increase output. Animal Shelters, Rescue Groups and Humane Societies have done wonders over the past few decades in terms of reducing the number of animals surrendered and the number of animals euthanized but there is still a long way to go.

Obviously, overcrowding in shelters cannot not be resolved without reducing shelter input. Reducing input allows shelter staff and volunteers more time to work with resident dogs and make them more adoptable, thus increasing output. Behavior problems are the #1 reason why people surrender their pets. Consequently, educating prospective and current puppy/dog owners in the community in order to prevent the development of behavior, temperament and training problems is always the main priority, so that more puppies grow up to be good-natured and well-behaved adult dogs and hence, stay in their original homes and out of shelters.

Imagine … if people consulted dog trainers before getting a puppy or immediately after acquiring one. The world would certainly be a much better place for dogs and their human companions. Trainers have the know how to prevent the development of behavior temperament and training problems but they don’t have the early access to puppy owners like breeders, veterinarians and pet store personnel. Instead, many puppy owners wait until their puppy has problems before searching for a trainer. Many puppies even develop problems well before they attend puppy class necessitating that much class time is rehabilitative. Sadly though, some owners wait until the dog is six months to two years old before consulting a trainer and by then, most problems are much more time consuming, difficult and sometimes dangerous to resolve.

Pet store retailers have prime access to most new puppy owners at a crucial phase of puppy behavioral and social development. Generally, new puppy owners visit pet stores either immediately before or just after acquiring their new puppy. Consequently, pet store personnel can have a huge impact on the success of this Puppy Raising Initiative. Please implore your new puppy clients to maintain errorless housetraining and chewtoy-training (which also prevents excessive barking and separation anxiety) and to continue safely socializing their puppy with people at home so that the puppy does not become fearful or aggressive as an adult.

Much of the essential puppy raising and training information for prospective and new puppy owners is available for free download in the form of two of my eBooks — AFTER You Get Your Puppy and BEFORE You Get Your Puppy. 

Veterinary practitioners play such an important role in the wellness of puppies and they have “access” to puppy owners at such a crucial time in the puppy’s life. Consequently, the success of any puppy raising initiative absolutely depends on support from the veterinary profession. Veterinarians see nearly all puppy owners when their pups are eight-weeks old — the optimal time for an educational “vaccination”. Additionally, the veterinary profession is the most respected in the animal world; clients believe what you say and so, please implore them to maintain errorless housetraining and chewtoy-training (which also prevents excessive barking and separation anxiety), to continue safely socializing their puppy with people at home so that the puppy does not become fearful or aggressive as an adult, to contact a trainer right away for an in-the-home visit and to register for puppy classes.

Behavioral health is equally as important as physical health and conformation. A “pet-quality” puppy is not a failed conformation prospect, on the contrary, the title “pet” is the very best accolade that you could give to any animal, signifying that it has been raised, socialized and trained to enjoy living with people and taught how to live in people’s homes according to human rules. Many people suffer the misassumption that purebred puppies will automatically grow up to be perfect adult dogs. Not necessarily so. Obviously, breeders strive to breed for physical health, temperament and trainability but regardless of breed or breeding, puppies still need to be taught household rules and taught to continue to be confident and safe around people. Housetraining, chewtoy-training, settle-down-and-shush-training and home-alone-training do not just happen by magic.

The purpose of the "Sit Test" is to provide an objective assessment of performance-reliability for basic obedience commands. Why? So that instead of reprimanding the dog for “misbehaving”, the trainer steps back and reflects on the real reasons for the dog's “disobedience”, i.e., lack of basic training, proofing and reliability-testing. Many trainers have an inflated view of their dogs' reliability because during practice, performance reliability is assessed by subjective means and the trainer tends to remember the good and forget the bad. Moreover, following an objective assessment of reliability during obedience trials or any kind of standardized testing, failed exercises are frequently dismissed as bad luck. In reality, no dog is perfect. Each dog fails a certain percentage of the time.

"I don't want to bribe my dog" is a frequently cited criticism of using food in training. Neither would I. I would no more want to bribe a dog with food, than I would want to bribe it with toys, games, attention, or affection. In fact, I wouldn't want to bribe a dog at all. Bribing seldom works. And when it does, it seldom works for long.

Lures, rewards and bribes have all been used to attempt to modify the behavior of animals and humans. Whereas bribes are ineffective, lures and rewards have many highly specific uses for teaching any animal almost any exercise. Moreover, lure/reward training is simply the fastest way to train any animal.

Lures

People are fond of extrapolating popular, but misunderstood and bowdlerized accounts of wolf-behavior to dog-human interactions and training methods. The assumption is that the dog is out to dominate us and as a result, far too much training advice is unfeeling and adversarial with a sickening reliance on physical domination. So many pop-psychology training books have been written as if people are wolves, rather than humans with supposedly superior brainpower. If only the fall-out from this absurd view were not so unpleasant, the whole premise would be utterly laughable. People seem to be hung up on the questions, “But WHY did he do it?” “Why does he act that way? Why don’t we simply teach dogs how we would like them to act. If we find a dog’s behavior to be inappropriate or unacceptable, we must take a little responsibility here because we are the dog’s teacher and so, why don’t we just change the dog’s behavior to our liking.

The wicked witch of Wycombe paused to howl at the full moon before ripping another mouthful of flesh from the freshly killed rabbit. Lycanthropy — a temporary transformation of witch into wolf? Or perhaps a form of madness, wherein the patient imagines himself as a wolf and develops a growly voice and a depraved appetite for raw red meat. Unbelievable? A dog becoming a person? A person becoming a dog? Not necessarily. Many people treat their dogs as humans in furry suits. Some trainers fancy domestic dogs to be wolves and yet other trainers go the whole lycanthropic hog and imagine themselves as wolves inflicting wolfy-punishments to dominate dogs and convince them to tow the line.

For dogs that jump-up to greet owners and visitors at home or strangers in the street, a variety of dog training texts recommend the owner shout at the dog, squirt him in the face with water or lemon juice, swat him on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper, yank on the dog's leash and/or halter, hang the dog by his choke-collar, squeeze the dog's front paws, tread on his hind paws, knee him in the chest, or flip him over backwards. Surely this is all pretty crazy for a dog that's only trying to say hello. Confucius once said, "No need to use an axe to remove a fly from the forehead of a friend." Indeed, why not just train the dog to sit, or lie down, when greeting people?

Reasons Why

Years ago, I read an article describing the successful rehabilitation of a fearful dog for the Show Ring. The article prompted the following response from the president of the national breed club: "...such a shy and unstable temperament is so untypical of the breed that one would hope this dog is not displayed as championship caliber, either for showing, or certainly for breeding".

Survey results are often accepted unquestionably without considering the representative database, the validity of the results, or even, whether or not the findings make sense. Because it is written down, it must be the gospel truth. Quite frankly though, I have yet to read even a single published survey on the breed incidence of biting, which would receive a grade better than F in a kindergarten midterm examination. More disturbing, once these hopelessly unreliable and unrepresentative surveys are edited, expurgated, bowdlerised and summarized to an hundred words or less for popular consumption by our ant-brained tabloid media, the remaining newsprint is hardly fit for paper-training puppies. It would not be so bad if the surveys were merely frivolous.

Dogs act like dogs. However, rather than teaching them how to appropriately act like dogs when living with people, many owners try to eliminate the dog's natural tendencies altogether by punishing the poor dog every time he acts like a dog. However, since the dog's behaviors are both innate and habitual, the punishments are often ineffective. Unpleasant? Often! But ineffective nonetheless.