somerville dog

Pomp and Circumstance

After six weeks of perfect attendance, countless homework hours and heeling (uphill, both ways), Strummer graduated yesterday from the Adult Beginners Class at Canine University in Malden.

Actually, Strummer really enjoyed going to school. Though Canine University is not a place where dogs get a lot of doggy time with one another, it is a place where a dog's relationship with her owner is strengthened. The foundation of any relationship is communication. How does a verbal species communicate with a non-verbal species? With a clicker! According to most clicker training websites and books, a clicker is a child's toy that makes a cricket noise. (I don't know about you, but when I was a child, we played with things like barbies, matchbox and matches.)

Anyway, a clicker certainly puts the fun in dog-training. First, the dog learns that whenever she hears the click, she gets a treat. Then, the human uses the clicker to "mark" a desired behavior when the dog offers it. The dog sits, the dog gets a click and a treat. When the dog does not offer a desired behavior, nothing happens. Dogs like treats better than nothing. And this is why clicker training is both fun and produces results. When the dog hears the click, it knows exactly what it is doing that wins it a treat. Communication.

Training methods that rely upon correction when the dog offers undesirable behavior tell the dog when it is offering undesirable behavior. Think about it: the desired behavior is a sit. The dog looks at you; the dog gets a tug on the leash; the dog learns that looking at you is undesirable behavior. The dog looks to the left; the dog gets a tug on the leash; the dog learns that looking to the left is undesirable behavior. The dog backs away; the dog gets a tug on the leash; the dog learns that backing away is undesirable behavior. This could go on for hours before the dog actually offers a sit. What's worse, what happens when the dog finally does sit? Nothing! With a clicker, on the other hand, from the first sit, the dog gets a piece of critical information: sitting produces treats. This is fun in two ways. Treats are good, and, from the dog's perspective, she is training you: Sitting makes you click and treat. By the last day of school, Strummer and her classmates were not only sitting, they were wagging their tails while they were sitting!

In addition to sitting, in the Adult Beginner's Class at Canine University, I learned how to teach Strummer to lie quietly (no small feat in a room full of dogs), to stay, to "leave it," to come, and to walk on a loose leash.

The commencement speech was inspirational, albeit brief: "Good dog."

Bad dog?

One morning a few months ago I saw a woman walking a dog off-leash in my neighborhood. The dog was trailing. The woman went home. Then, a man came out and called the dog. After about two minutes the dog successfully completed the obedience task known as "the recall," or come-on-command. Admittedly, it was a pretty "sloppy" recall. But it was a start. It is a pretty common phase that dogs go through when learning to come-on-command. They understand that they are supposed to go to the trainer, but they haven't yet figured out that they are supposed to get there as quickly as their four legs can carry them.

Incidentally, it helps dogs to get through this phase if the trainer does not repeat the command. When the trainer repeats the command several times, he or she inadvertently teaches the dog to come the fourth or sixth or tenth time she says the word "come."

When training a dog to come, the final part of the exercise is to reward the dog: the dog arrives in front of the trainer and gets treated, praised or petted. You can imagine how shocked I was when this dog, who had successfully performed a recall, was immediately yelled at and told he was a "Bad dog!"

Ah. That explains it. It wasn't the repetition of the command that was responsible for the dog's slow performance, it was the fact that the dog was punished for coming when called.

Negative Punishment: Rehabilitation for Bullies

I got my copy of Jean Donaldson's new book, Fight: A Practical Guide to the Treatment of Dog-Dog Aggression, last week. Donaldson's discussion of the bite threshold in dogs, in her 1996 book, Culture Clash, is the most useful thing I have read for preventing dog bites. In Fight, Donaldson applies her behaviorist perspective to problems of dog-dog aggression: not only fighting, but also undesirable behaviors that are precursors to a full-blown fight, including fear and avoidance of other dogs, and pro-active lunging, barking, snapping and snarling. Donaldson's new book could be better organized, though the detailed table of contents is a great improvement over Culture Clash. And once again Donaldson could benefit from a good editor: whereas, in Culture Clash, her style was abrasive, here it is encumbered--and not just by the typos.

Anyone who has seen Strummer harass Mosley, a wonderful Golden Retriever at AAAS, will recognize Strummer in Donaldson's description of a "bully:"

Bullies . . . target certain dogs for harassment or attack. They rarely play normally with with these dogs yet play fine with others (80).

Indeed, Strummer's only "target" seems to be the lovable "Mo," who, at the park, wants nothing other than to play fetch with his person. Strummer likes to chase dogs who are chasing balls (frisbees, sticks...), and ordinarily the retriever and my meta-retriever work it out, and both enjoy themselves (though they seem to be playing two different games). But when Strummer chases this particular Retriever, their interaction is completely different. She engages in all the contact behaviors she typically employs to solicit play (i.e. she doesn't play-bow, but she nips at Mosley's legs, neck and flanks and hits him with her signature "left jab"), while he ignores her and tries to focus on his tennis ball.

I, of course, don't enjoy watching Strummer be a bully: I distract her by calling her sharply and telling her to "play nice." When she persists in bullying poor Mosley, I put her on her leash and, if she fails to settle down and pulls on the leash, we leave the park. This is almost the regimen that Donaldson recommends for treating bullying behavior.

There is a disclaimer at the beginning of the book that advises,

the services of a competent professional trainer or applied behaviorist should be sought regarding the [book's] applicability with respect to your own dog.

Fortunately, Strummer's bullying of Mosley is not dangerous to the dogs or to the human handlers, so I am comfortable trying to implement Donaldson's treatment. Moreover, Strummer's "acquired bite inhibition" is excellent. Donaldson explains that

the most important prognostic factor in dog-dog aggression is the degree of acquired bite inhibition, which determines how much damage is done when the dog bites. This can range from bites that break bones, deeply puncture muscle and create massive tearing, to bites that leave saliva but no damage whatsoever (21).

Standard Poodles were bred for a soft mouth so that, as hunting companions, they can retrieve a felled duck without damaging the bird's flesh. Strummer's mouth is so soft that, when offered a treat, she will not close her mouth to hold it until you let go of it.

Donaldson recommends treating bullying with "negative punishment," the removal of a reinforcing stimulus.

Dogs that bully other dogs find both play and harassment/fighting to be reinforcing events, so timing them out for harassment and fighting is extremely effective at reducing these (82).

The method of applying negative punishment that Donaldson recommends to teach a dog to stop bullying looks like this:

1. Issue a Warning Cue
A. dog continues bullying
2a. Issue a Time-Out Cue
3a. Execute the Time-Out
B. dog stops bullying
2b. Acknowledge with a "Thank you"
3b. Continue monitoring the interaction

The command that the dog has to learn is the warning cue (Donaldson suggests "Enough," but "Play Nice!" should work just as well). The dog can either offer the desired behavior and stop harassing her target, or the dog can offer undesirable behavior and continue harassing her target. Once the dog is given the Time-Out cue (Donaldson suggests, "Too bad," or "You're out"), the dog has failed to offer the desired behavior and a Time-Out must be executed immediately.

The way this treatment works is that, if the Time-Out is executed properly, the dog learns the warning command, i.e. the dog is eventually able to reliably offer the desired behavior when the warning command is issued (scenario B). I'm not sure what purpose saying "Thank You" serves. Perhaps it merely addresses the human's need to respond to the dog's reaction, turning negative punishment into an opportunity for positive reinforcement.

In fact, teaching a dog not to bully by negative punishment is like teaching a dog the "Sit" command by positive reinforcement. The method of teaching a dog the "Sit" command by positive reinforcement (e.g. clicker training) looks like this:

1. Issue the command cue, "Sit"
A. dog does not sit
2a. nothing happens
B. dog sits
2b. Click and
3b. Treat

In both cases (negative punishment and positive reinforcement), scenario B is what the dog is supposed to learn. Whereas by negative punishment, the dog learns to prevent something bad from happening (the punishment, administered as a Time-Out), in positive reinforcement, the dog learns to make something good happen (the reinforcement, administered as a treat.) The difference is that in teaching a dog the "Sit" command, you can shape the desired behavior before teaching the cue, so that the dog already knows how to sit when you start teaching her the command. In teaching a dog not to bully, you can't really shape the desired behavior with the target before teaching the warning cue.

UPDATE January 25, 2005: There is two feet of snow on the ground, and who did Strummer meet at Triple-A-S this afternoon? Mosley! ...whose tennis ball was aparently lost within twenty seconds of his arrival at the park. After Moe showed the little Strummer girl how to bound through the snow, they had a great time chasing each other! Ah, snow. It brings out the best in all of us...

Separation Anxiety

NPR's Weekend Edition yesterday ran a feature story about a new CD, Ask the Animals: Songs to Make Dogs Happy! The album's producer, Skip Haynes, recommends the album as an aide in dealing with separation anxiety:

Our CD comes with instructions, by the way. What we tell people is: 'You should play this once a day for about two to three weeks, and, when you play it, be in the room, or have the animal with you, because they will associate that music with you and quality time, and then when you play it after you leave, it tends to settle them down and help with separation anxiety, and works.'

One of the songs on the album is "You're a good dog." Haynes would like customers to believe that "dogs like being told, 'you're a good dog,' and they understand what you're saying." This is just misleading: Dogs who like being told "you're a good dog," have been told "you're a good dog" repeatedly in conjunction with Good Things for Dogs: attention, treats, toys, head scritches, belly rubs, walkies...

Animal behaviorists and trainers recommend systematic desensitization to reduce separation anxiety in dogs. As dog trainer, Jean Donaldson, explains in Culture Clash,

Systematic desensitization is the same technique used on people who are excessively afraid of spiders or flying in airplanes. The subject is first taught to relax and then introduced to the fearful stimulus at whatever level he or she can tolerate without anxiety while practising the relaxation exercise. Then the stimulus is gradually intensified at whatever rate the subject can handle, always building on success.

Donaldson recommends establishing a "safety cue," as one of the tools everyone who owns a dog with separation anxiety should have in her toolbox. In the course of a training regimen of systematic desensitization, the safety cue, like the radio,

becomes a signal to the dog that only short, non-anxiety producing absences are in store. It is important to understand that it is not the radio, per se, which relaxes the dog but its reliable pairing with tolerable levels of aloneness which establish it as relaxing. This effect can be quickly decimated by putting the radio on and leaving for longer than the dog can handle. Radios are frequently used without any desensitization procedure, usually to no avail. This is because when owners put the radio on to mimic the ambiance when people are present or to "keep the dog company" it immediately loses any power it had by coming to predict anxiety-producing lengths of absence.

A CD of "songs to make dogs happy" is really for people who think that problems can be solved by buying things. How well can a CD work to reduce your dog's separation anxiety if the songs make you want to leave the house?

Understanding Dog Behavior in Dog Parks

via BostonPooch*

Understanding Dog Behavior in Dog Parks

This seminar will help you understand the difference between good play and bad play; how to read dog body language to figure out if a dog is aggressive, stressed, or fearful; how to determine when enough is enough; good and bad greeting behavior; and what to do if a fight breaks out.

The cost is $20. Pre-registration required.

Tuesday, May 10, 7 pm
Especially For Pets (EFP)
81 Union Avenue
Sudbury, MA 01776
For more information: (978) 443-7682

Also offered Sunday, May 15, 11:00am, at EFP in Newton
1223 Chestnut Street
Newton Upper Falls, MA 02464
(617) 964-7387

*UPDATE 22 February 2006: The BostonPooch site is, alas, defunct.

Agressive Behavior in Dogs

via Boston Dogs

I recently learned of a yahoo discussion group for the issue of agressive behavior in dogs. The aptly named "Aggressive Behaviors in Dogs" group (agbeh) includes over 300 experienced dog trainers from around the world, who discuss with pet owners

how to modify the behavior of dogs which sometimes exhibit aggressive behaviors toward dogs and/or toward people.

Responsibility and Off-Leash Recreation

Tyler B. Reed, writing for the Framingham TAB, has a very balanced article about responsible dog-owner behavior as the critical ingredient for multi-use parks that permit off-leash recreation: "Teaching your dog to listen" (December 14, 2006). For his article, Reed interviews pet professionals whose voices were noticeably absent from the discussion about off-leash recreation at Callahan State Park at a public meeting in Framingham earlier this month.

Darlene Arden, a Framingham resident and member of the Dog Writers’ Association of America, Inc., observes that "the people who are really responsible with their dogs are suffering." She articulates a point-of-view that many responsible dog owners and responsible dog owner advocates share:

I love the idea of people out exercising with their dogs and having fun. [. . .] I have no problems with having areas where dogs can go on-leash and off-leash, but I want everybody safe.

Reed also speaks with Bryna Davidow, a trainer and owner of Framingham-based Must Love Dogs.

Davidow also supports off-leash recreation but is realistic about the necessary skills that dog owners must master before responsibly allowing their dogs off-leash in public open space.

It's certainly very scary when a dog is running up to a person who doesn't like dogs," she said. "I think being off-leash in a place where other dogs are also off-leash and having the dogs learn to play appropriately is a fabulous experience.

Is there a license that municipalities could use to reasonably assure that people have mastered the skills and the rules to recreate with their pets off-leash in public open space? In fact, there is. Arden points to the American Kennel Club's Canine Good Citizen certification program. Canine Good Citizen (CGC) certification has two requirements: 1) the owner must sign the Responsible Dog Owners Pledge, and 2), the dog, working in a team with his owner, must pass a test that covers ten skills that are necessary for dogs and their owners as upstanding members of their communities.

The Charles River Dog Training Club (CRDTC) is offering the Canine Good Citizen Test tomorrow evening, December 18, from 6:45 to 7:30 at University of Massachusetts Field Station, located at 240 Beaver Street in Waltham, MA. The CRDTC will offer CGC testing again on March 26, 2007 and May 19, 2007.