“Life’s great mysteries tend to become clearer once you’ve seen them through” – Ivan Doroschuk 

My experiment is complete.  It began in frustration, with the admission that I had been wrong about how to train and live with dogs.  The methods and ideas that seemed to work well enough for my wife and me for decades had turned a wonderful puppy into an aggressive and fearful dog.  Something needed to change. We needed to change. Not just how we trained our dogs but how we thought about them and how we related with them. When we got our dog Tiramisu as a puppy almost 16 years ago, we resolved to make that change.  And the experiment began.

It began with learning.  We discovered Jean Donaldson’s book The Culture Clash in 2002 and it opened up a whole new world of animal training based on behavioural science and modern approaches to animal learning.  It was the first of many books. There were great books by Karen Pryor, Pam Reid, Patricia McConnell, and many others. We attended seminars and conferences like ClickerExpo with talks by professional animal trainers and behaviour researchers.  We learned a great deal in a short time and when Tiramisu came to us in February of 2004 as an 11 week old puppy, we were excited to try out this new way of training to see what it would produce.

But my enthusiasm for this new kind of training was tempered with skepticism.  In the past there were books and classes. What we had learned back then had gone terribly wrong.  I decided to take a practical approach with this new puppy. The new books and seminars made some pretty bold promises.  So I committed to not falling into the same trap and failing another one of my dogs. I would use this new training exactly as the experts described it.  No shortcuts or compromises. And the moment it did not deliver on the promises made by the experts, we would move on to something else.  

The Beginning

“Clicker Training”, as described in the books, was remarkably simple.  Watch your dog and when they do the behaviour you want, mark it with the clicker (a small noise maker), and reward with food.  The only real skills needed were the ability to notice when my dog did what I was looking for and having the coordination and timing to mark that moment accurately with the clicker.  I got pretty good at observing and clicking in a very short time. I followed the directions provided in the books and got to work teaching Tira.

To say that I was astonished at the progress I made with my puppy would be an understatement.  Tira learned to do a “Sit” in only two short 5-minute training sessions in the same day. Over the next few months we added new behaviours to her repertoire every few days.  By the time she was 6 months old, Tira had learned at least 30 different behaviours. This new kind of training certainly made teaching my dog easier and she was learning fast.  But that wasn’t the most remarkable aspect of this new kind of training for me.

Mark and Reward Training (“Clicker” Training uses a clicker as a marker) is to be done in short, fun sessions with the dog.  Training is set up to make the dog successful at least 70% of the time and you should end before the dog becomes bored or fatigued.  In a matter of a few short weeks I noticed Tiramisu actively seeking me out to do more work. She liked this training game!  She would enter a room I was in and begin to spontaneously start offering behaviours.  When she would see a clicker, she would poke it with her nose or pull it onto the floor with a clatter.  

Training my dog was no longer about “getting my dog under control” so much as it was a game of “what do you want to learn next?”  And Tiramisu was definitely enthusiastic about playing the training game!

The Middle

As the years went by, Tira and I worked together every day.  Most often we just practiced well known behaviours. We competed in dog agility.  But Tira was eager to work. She would look at me with that “What are we doing now, dad?” look in her eyes.  I realized that we had developed an easy, clear communication between us. It wasn’t something that had been spelled out in the books and it wasn’t something I expected.  But I had a rapport with Tira that allowed me to manage her with ease in even the most challenging situations.

To be sure, we had our challenges on occasion with recalls or barking, but we had developed a wonderfully cooperative relationship.  She would easily move where I directed her. She happily rode in the car for long journeys. We had even worked out a way for me to ask her to “do her business” on cue when time was an issue.  For my part, I learned to read Tira’s body language very well. Tira could tell me she was uncomfortable or eager to play with just a glance.

That ability to read Tira was never more important than when, at the age of 8 years, she developed hypothyroidism.  The changes in her behaviour were subtle but, because of the observation habits I had built as part of Mark and Reward training, I could see the changes clearly.  It allowed us to get her into veterinary treatment quickly. Our vet was surprised when she saw the blood work that showed Tira’s condition because, the vet said, she was not presenting any of the “classic symptoms” of hypothyroidism.  

I knew Tiramisu better than I had ever known any of our other dogs.  Mark and Reward training and behavioural science had taught me to be aware of my dog and to understand her in ways I had never realized were possible.  We enjoyed a remarkable relationship.

The End

By the time she was 13 years old, Tira was retired from agility and we settled in to joys of her later years.  Tira told me through her body language and our relationship that it was time to be less active. Instead of agility trials and lots of travel, it was long walks in the woods and cuddle time on the bed.  It was in her 13th year that I discovered the most surprising aspect of this behavioural experiment.

Tira woke us up in the middle of the night.  She was unable to stand up. She was having a vestibular episode that caused her to feel like she was spinning.  Tira was understandably terrified. She was trembling and struggled to understand why she couldn’t find her balance.  Fortunately, that episode passed in just over an hour but it was not the last one we would see. Over the next 8 months, Tira would have 5 more of these vestibular episodes, each one lasting longer than the previous and taking longer to recover from.  The last of these occurred on her 14th birthday and lasted 4 days.

Amazingly, Tiramisu adjusted very quickly to these episodes.  By the third episode, Tira knew to just find a comfortable spot and lie down until it passed.  She managed to find a way to balance herself well enough to walk around during these episodes, eat, go outside to do her business, and just try to carry on as normal.  We didn’t ask her to do these things. We just helped her when she needed it.

This was the remarkable thing.  Here was a dog who had every right to be terrified by a health problem beyond her understanding but she was smart enough and confident enough in herself to learn to cope.  As time went on and her physical health declined, we could see her continuing to adjust and deal with life as best she could. Her eyesight and hearing deteriorated but she still knew her way around the house and found her way to us for cuddles.  She remained an engaging and wonderful personality even through that last difficult day when we took her to the vet to be released from this life.

A Life Long Experiment

It would be foolish to think I could sum up Tiramisu’s life with us in this one short article.  What I can do is tell you what the experiment that was her life with us has taught me. Modern dog training methods based on behavioural science and animal learning theory can produce incredible and profound results even when practiced by a beginner.  I started this experiment knowing nothing and I didn’t have expert skills when Tira was a puppy. The direct results of this kind of training produced a dog that knew dozens of behaviours and would respond enthusiastically to my requests. But there were lots of unexpected and wonderful indirect benefits as well.

This kind of training allowed me to get some insight into the emotional life of my dog.  Dogs communicate primarily with body language and Mark and Reward Training taught me to really see my dog and what she was telling me.  In turn, that created a cooperative relationship between Tiramisu and me. By responding to my dog, she became a partner in our training and our relationship.  I allowed her to have a say in what we were doing and how much we did. I’d like to think that giving her that ability contributed to her quality of life and her sense of well-being.

It was an interesting thing to learn about dogs, behaviour, and modern training and to watch how it played out over the lifetime of a dog raised with it from the first day she arrived with us.  That moment when this kind of training did not live up to expectations never came. In fact, I would say that it succeeded in ways that I could never have imagined when I first began all those years ago.  Everything we learned about training and working with our dogs touched so many different aspects of our lives together. Looking back, it’s hard to imagine how we could have done things so differently in the past.  

Psychology professor Dr. Susan Friedman has talked about “a data set of one” when referring to animal training.  Tiramisu’s life is certainly that; one life, one set of experiences, one experiment in trying something new. Her life taught me things I will use for the rest of my life.  I will be forever grateful for the time we spent together and for all the wonderful books and ideas and people that journey brought into our lives.

Thanks for reading.

Eric

I remember being at an animal training conference 15 years ago.  Many of the attendees were accompanied by their amazingly well trained dogs.  On the second day, animal trainer and author Karen Pryor made an interesting observation.  She said that she saw so many wonderfully behaved dogs waiting patiently for their people until seminar sessions concluded.  But when the sessions ended, people would just get up and start walking out to the next session without telling their dogs about it. Attendees would just stand up when the session was over and start walking.  The dog was expected to figure it out or get a tug on their leash as their owner moved away. That was the only information they received about what was happening next.

I’m not sure if this was the first time I heard Karen Pryor talk about what she called “informational cues” but that short talk changed the way I interacted with my dogs from that time forward.  As Karen described it, an “Informational Cue” was different than a regular cue because it is not asking the dog to do anything. It is just information. The dog gets to decide what to do about it.

Basic information

One of the first informational cues I taught my dog Tira was simple and practical.  When I’m sitting with my dogs somewhere and everyone is just relaxing, I will sometimes need to get up and get a glass of water or something.  I will not be gone for more than a few moments and I plan to return to sitting with the dogs. So I began saying “I’ll be back” to my dogs before getting up.  My intention is to let them know that there is no reason for them to get up and follow me because I will be coming right back to my seat.

At first, the cue means nothing, as with any cue.  To begin with, Tira would get up and come with me anyway.  But over time, she noticed that there was no reason to get up, follow me 20 steps to the kitchen and then back, and watch me sit back down.  She wasn’t told to “stay” and I didn’t tell her she was wrong if she followed me. It didn’t take long for Tira to decide that it was easier to just stay where she was when she heard “I’ll be back.”   She seemed to decide that “I’ll be back” means “getting up and following dad right now is a waste of energy so don’t bother.”

Ideally, an “Informational Cue” just provides my dogs with information they can use to make their own choices as to what they do.  There is no reward. There is no punishment. There is no right or wrong response. I’m just letting my dogs know what’s going on and they can do with that information what they will.

Making chatter useful

Over the years we have come up with several “Informational Cues” for our dogs.  “Let’s go out” is their signal that there is an opportunity to head outside to do their business.  “Dinner time” or “Breakfast” is the signal that meal preparations are starting. “Time for bed” is their signal that we’re going to bed.  Anything that could help our dogs anticipate what is happening around them becomes an informational cue. It seems like we are talking to our dogs all the time.

That’s true of most dog owners I know.  We talk to our dogs a lot. The trick to making informational cues work is being consistent in what you say and what you do.  Fortunately humans are creatures of habit and I’m sure most dogs have discovered their own informational cues about their owners.  But it’s likely that the owners weren’t teaching them deliberately. Our dogs are always watching; trying to make sense of their world. Our dogs can sometimes develop what we may see as annoying habits when they are really just responding to our unintentional informational cues.  

One example of this happened in our family.  A relative of my wife had a dog that would bark as soon as she got out the food bowls for the dogs’ dinners each evening.  In order to stop the barking, the owner would hurry through the meal preparations and put the bowls down. Her dog had learned that “when you see the bowls, start barking because it gets the food to come faster.”  If you’re a dog, that’s good information to have.

Consistent comfort

Being intentional in creating and using informational cues can also provide a less direct but more important benefit.  It gives them a way to make their life more predictable and less chaotic. Consider that your dog is a different species of animal with different instincts and intuitions about the world.  When they come into our human lives, their first priority is to figure out what works well for them and what does not. They want to do what’s right and avoid doing what’s wrong. Any help we can give them in making sense of life with us has to be useful and can lower their overall stress at learning to live with us..

Consistency and predictability are things that dogs prefer.  Any good dog training method will tell you that you should always be consistent – yes means yes and no means no.  But that consistent approach can be just as important in our everyday life. One of our frequently used informational cues is “Watch the house.”  It’s something that we say as we are leaving the house to let our dogs know that they will not be coming with us but that we will return shortly. When our dogs hear that cue, there is no running to the door to be the first in the car for a ride.

I like to think of our informational cues as providing an agenda for our dogs.  They don’t have to guess what is happening at any given time. We have found that a lot of our dog’s unwanted behaviour in the past seems to have been connected to them trying to figure out what to do next.  The pacing, barking, unwanted pestering, and other behaviours were really just their way of trying things to see what was going on. Without clear indicators for when we were doing something and when we were just relaxing, it only makes sense that our dogs were, in their way, asking us for information.

Too familiar

It can be all too easy to think our dogs know what we think and what we are doing.  Dogs do display an amazing ability to know what’s going on with us. While some people can attribute this to an uncanny ability of dogs to “read our minds”, it is far more likely that these observant creatures are just reading our actions and our habits.  They are paying far more attention to what we do and how consistently we do it than even we do ourselves. It’s very possible that we assume too much from our dogs.

Science has determined that a well trained dog has the intellectual capacity of a three year old child.  If we consider our dogs in those terms, it only makes sense that we keep them informed with as many cues as we can, as often as we can, to help them stay on track and navigate their day.  Regular routines, specific phrases, and even physical gestures to let them know where we are going can all make their world more predictable and easier to navigate.

I guess in some ways, I see these informational cues as being polite.  For all the things my dogs give me each day, it only makes sense that I try to be considerate of their point of view.  Informational cues are a small courtesy that I can show my dogs to help them out through the day. These cues are so easy to train and they take little effort to use.  I find that they are a great way to show my dogs respect and make their lives easier. Chances are, your dogs have picked up some informational cues from you already. If you’re like me, it won’t take much effort to add some informational cues in everyday life to make things easier.  I’m sure your dogs will thank you for it!

Until next time, have fun with your dogs!

Be sure to check out our Canine Nation ebooks on Amazon, Google, Dogwise, and other ebook sellers.  Join our conversation on Facebook in the Canine Nation Forum!

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Curious- copyright Alexandra Johansson 
Pug- copyright Eddy van 3000
Relax – Public Domain
Couch (Featured Image) – copyright the paw pad 

Behaviour is a funny word.  What does it mean when our dog “behaves”?  The most common use I see is when dog owners use it to mean that their dog is not getting into trouble; the dog is “behaving” itself.  For those of us who are into more formal dog training, “behave” might mean an action that my dog performs. An example would be if I asked my dog to “shake a paw”, the behaviour is that she raises her right paw.  So when we teach our dog a behaviour, we are really teaching it to perform a specific action that we can see. They either do it or they don’t.

We teach lots of behaviours to our dogs – Sit, Down, Come, Shake A Paw, and many more.  But from time to time we need to teach our dogs to “not do” something like picking food up off of the floor or running out the door before we are ready.  It’s easy to understand what we mean when we ask a dog to DO something but what does it mean for a dog to NOT-DO something? Is there a way we can see it when our dog chooses to NOT-DO something?

Marking a choice

When I was learning Mark & Reward training, one of the most difficult concepts for me to understand was marking the choice my dog was making.  If I was training my dog to sit, I could mark the moment when my dog put her butt on the floor but it would be even better for the training if I could mark the moment that she DECIDED to put her butt on the floor.  Seeing the movement of my dog’s body is much easier to do that seeing her make a choice to do something. But, like most things in Mark & Reward training, learning to see my dog making a choice is a skill that I learned to get better at over time.

Sometimes it was a look in her eyes, sometimes it was a twitch of a muscle that signalled that she was responding to my instruction, but there were always small outward physical signs that my dog had decided to do the thing I was asking her to do.  It was just a matter of improving my observation skills and learning to read my dog.

I suppose the underlying message here is that “making a choice” should be considered a behaviour in itself.  After all, choosing to do something is a thing that my dog does just like sitting or lying down. While it might sound a bit like splitting hairs, to me it is just as important that my dog is choosing to cooperate with me.  Just getting the result I want is not enough.

Choosing to refrain

If all of our dog’s observable behaviours begin with an internal “choose an action” behaviour, can our dog also choose NOT to take an action?  This can be tricky for us in dog training because we can’t really be sure we see the results of our dog choosing to NOT do something. How can we know that they have done the “choose an action” behaviour?  This is what the behaviourist approach to learning calls “The Black Box” problem. We cannot know the internal working of the dog’s thinking. We can only see how the dog behaves.

In the 1960s, researchers at Stanford University wanted to get a better understanding of why some children were impatient while others could wait patiently.  They devised what has been called “The Marshmallow Experiment.”  In short, the experiment involved offering a child the choice between one small reward provided immediately or two small rewards if they waited for approximately 15 minutes.  The reward might be a marshmallow, a cookie, or a pretzel; something the child would enjoy. The adult tester would leave the room and then return. Interestingly, a majority of the children in the original study could wait for the additional reward.

Essentially, the children were presented with a reward but were asked to “not-do” something in order to get a greater reward.  That sounds a lot like some of the things I need to teach my own dogs. The interesting research resulting from the original Stanford study showed that the children who were able to wait for the additional reward, to delay their gratification, went on to have greater successes in life including better career outcomes, higher academic test scores, greater achievement in education, and healthier lifestyles.  So learning to refrain from doing things can have a positive impact on life skills. But the research did not stop there.

Don’t-Do behaviours

What does it look like when my dog is refraining from behaviour?  Well, the easiest and most obvious thing most dog owners teach their dog is a “Wait” or “Stay” behaviour.  When we go to the front door, we don’t want our dogs running outside because there could be traffic. So we teach them to “wait”, to not go anywhere until I tell them it’s ok to head out.  I say “Wait” and open the door. My dog should stay in place, not do anything, until I give them the ok. In reality, my dog CHOOSES to not do anything; a behaviour in itself.

Like the “Marshmallow Experiment”, I have to teach my dogs that there will be reward for refraining from behaviour when I ask.  After all, the great outdoors are right THERE; why would my dog wait? In my case, the promise is that if you can wait for a short time, you get to go outside AND get a nice food treat.  It’s a system that has worked with dogs for centuries. There really isn’t anything revolutionary about teach a dog to “wait.”

We teach our dogs other “don’t-do” behaviours as well.  “Leave it” is our all purpose cue for our dogs to not investigate or pick up something.  It could be food or a toy or even a dead mouse. Another behaviour many owners teach is “settle” or “wait on your mat” behaviour where the dog will be asked to lay down on a mat or in a specific spot and not get up until given the ok.

Trust me

A later version of the original Stanford experiment was run in which half of the children who were promised the extra reward got it while the other half were lied to and told that there was no extra reward at the end of the experiment.  When the researchers ran the experiment with the subjects a second time, those who received the promised extra reward in the first round again waited patiently. But those who were lied to in the first round immediately ate the reward they were given and did not wait.  Apparently trust is a major factor in being willing to refrain from a behaviour. If you don’t trust that the waiting will produce a good outcome, you won’t wait.

Dog trainers often talk about the importance of being consistent with your dog in training in order to get the behaviours you want and for the dog to do them reliably.  It also appears that being consistent is a critical factor in whether your dog can refrain from doing unwanted behaviours as well. Don’t-do behaviours may be even more sensitive to inconsistent rewards than the behaviours where we ask our dogs to do something.

Learning to refrain

Waiting for that extra reward isn’t easy for our dogs.  But the Stanford Marshmallow experiment is important because it was done with children.  The results of this research are relevant to the limited intelligence of our dogs. Like the subjects in the study, our dogs often come into our lives not knowing how things work and they have to trust us to give them what they need to be successful in our world.  So while there may be a biological component to how well my dog can control her impulses and urges, the science shows that there is a lot I can do to help her develop the skills to be a patient and calm learner and to refrain from behaviours when asked.

There are a few simple guidelines we have found useful in teaching our dogs these “don’t-do” behaviours.  The first is to start small and make it easy to succeed. I can’t begin to teach my dog that it will pay off to wait if I start by making her wait for 30 minutes for a reward.  There is just too much time to start to question if the payoff will ever come. So we start by asking only for a few second before the reward and then gradually increase the wait time.  We are always careful never to let our dogs get uncomfortable or frustrated with the waiting because that can erode the trust we have tried to develop with our dogs. We have found that it’s best to take it slow and keep the success rate very high.  Occasional mistakes are quickly and easily forgotten this way.

Another important factor is to be realistic.  It’s important to stay aware of where my dog is in her “don’t-do” skill development.  I don’t want to ask her to refrain from a behaviour when the alternative is too enticing or rewarding.  There are going to be things that my dog just can’t resist at her current level of training. It’s better that I don’t put her in a difficult situation.  If an unexpected situation happens, it’s better for me not to ask them to refrain and do more training work later.

Can a dog learn to “not-do” something?  Of course they can. It’s a concept they learn as part of life skills like not pestering the older dog or you will get snapped at.  Can I TEACH my dog to “not-do” something? Yes I can. It’s not hard but it requires me to be consistent, honest, and generous in my rewards.  I need to be careful not to ask my dog for more patience than they have learned at any given point. In the end, my dogs will “not-do” all kinds of things just because I asked and not because they will be punished if they do.  Teaching my dog to “Not-Behave” in particular ways has made life better for both of us. It’s just a matter of keeping the right expectations and teaching the right skills.

Until next time, have fun with your dogs!

Be sure to check out our Canine Nation ebooks on Amazon, Google, Dogwise, and other ebook sellers.  Join our conversation on Facebook in the Canine Nation Forum!

These Canine Nation ebooks are now available –

Available from Dogwise!

 Photo credits –

Boxer- copyright Cuatrok77 2014
Ball- copyright Alexander Day 2016
Smile- copyright  Sonja Lovas  2007
Stay (Featured Image) – copyright Eric de Boer 2018

While out for a walk I stopped to watch a woman with a boisterous retriever puppy.  The little guy is understandably excited by all of the sights and sounds and smells on his big adventure.  The woman seems to be training her dog. She tugs up gently on the leash and pushes on the dog’s bottom all the while chanting “Sit! Sit! Sit!” As soon as the dog puts his bottom on the ground the woman shouts with glee, “Yay!  What a good dog!” and showers the puppy with affection who wags and wiggles with apparent delight. I smile because this is a familiar sight. This is the way I learned to train a dog to “Sit” nearly 40 years ago. Simple and effective.

Knowing what I don’t know

As I watched this woman and her happy pup, a hundred thoughts raced through my head.  I worry that she doesn’t tug too hard or push too hard or she could frighten the dog. Her vocalizing “Sit! Sit! Sit!” was probably distracting to the young dog and was making it harder for the dog to learn.  The puppy’s eagerness and excitement meant that the relationship with his owner had been well managed.  I watched to see if the timing of her praise matched the behaviour she was trying to teach.  Several other dog training thoughts came and went as I watched. They all flashed across my mind in a few seconds almost automatically.  There was no intention to be critical of this woman and her pup.

Twenty years ago, this woman working with her puppy would likely have triggered only one thought, “What a cute dog!”  But I have changed.  My own training mistakes many years ago set me on a journey to learn more about dogs, behaviour, and animal training.  Now I am  better informed about dogs.  Dozens of books, hundreds of hours of instruction, and years of experience have given me a different perspective. Perhaps the most important thing I have learned is just how much there is to know about living and working with dogs and just how much I have yet to learn.  Psychologist David Dunning had me pegged perfectly when he said “the incompetent are often blessed with an inappropriate confidence, buoyed by something that feels to them like knowledge.”

I don’t think I was an “incompetent” dog owner all those years ago but I was certainly much less skilled and I understood only a fraction of what I understand today. Just as research by Dunning and his academic partner Justin Kruger proposed in their exploration of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, my confidence that I had solid expertise training dogs was unreasonably high.  I knew all the simple methods one needed to raise a happy and healthy dog. Now decades into my quest to learn more about dogs and training, I see the same dog training challenges with a very different kind of simplicity.

Simple and simple

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, “For the simplicity that lies this side of complexity, I would not give a fig, but for the simplicity that lies on the other side of complexity, I would give my life.”  Before you understand the full scope and complexity of something, it may appear simple.  But that is very different from how simple that same thing can seem once you have studied and learned and practiced. There was an uneducated simplicity in how I approached dogs decades ago. I knew what I knew and it worked.  I was confident in what I knew.  My dogs were happy. I was that arrogantly underinformed kind of dog owner who thought dogs were simple.

Watching that woman working with her puppy, I experienced a different kind of simplicity.  The simplicity that comes from understanding a topic more deeply and seeing the connections between many related and important ideas and concepts.  I find that it is just as Justice Holmes said, the simple conceptual understanding I have after learning about behavioural science, canine ethology, and modern animal training science is infinitely more valuable than the uninformed “easy answers” I had come up with all those years ago.

The ill-informed expert that I was years ago couldn’t see many of the things I see today when I watch dogs and their owners.  Back then I would watch a dog sit or stay when told and I would be impressed that the owner had gotten the dog to do as it was told. I thought it was just that simple.  Today I watch to see if the dog is happily performing something it knows how to do well or if it is trying to avoid some perceived punishment if it does not do what it is asked.  I watch the owner to see if they are being clear with their signals and fair in what they are asking of their dog.  I watch for other things that tell me more about the relationship between the dog and the owner.  Things that the dog owner I used to be would never have thought to look for or even knew existed.  Seeing these extra things seems simple to me now but it is a different kind of simplicity.

Easier than you think

I don’t want to give you with the impression that it took nearly 20 years for me to understand and appreciate the simplicity that comes from understanding the complex nature of dogs and training.  In fact, most of my important learning came from a couple of good books and a few seminars from professional animal trainers. In less than a year, I learned to discard a lot of myths and lore I believed about dogs and training.  I replaced it with a better understanding of behavioural science and canine learning.  From there it has been a process of improving my skills and refining what I have learned.

To be honest, I began as just a dog owner who wanted to know more.  After almost being bitten by my own dog, I realized it that I didn’t know everything I thought I needed to know about dogs and training.  Philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote, “There is nothing more dangerous than the deep slumber of a decided opinion.”  For many years I was firmly decided that I knew enough about dogs and that’s all I needed to know.  The hardest thing for me to do was to let go of the opinions that had been passed down to me. Especially when those ideas and techniques produced acceptable results with my dogs.  If it wasn’t broken, I wasn’t going to fix it.

I could have stayed comfortable in my ignorance. I didn’t need to read up on the latest research on dogs and cognition.  I didn’t need to spend money to attend seminars and workshops.  I didn’t need to spend the money to pass the tests necessary to be certified as professional dog trainer. But I did all of it anyway.  I did it because I want to be a better dog owner.  I want to understand dogs and training.  I want to be a better caretaker and partner for my dogs.

Where to go from here?

My beautiful dog Tiramisu is nearly 15 years old now.  She is the first dog we raised from a puppy with this new understanding of dogs and behaviour.  A part of me is sad that our learning adventures are coming to an end. I have so much to be grateful for from this wonderful dog.  Over the course of our life together she has taught me so much about how dogs learn, what motivates them, how to be an effective communicator with dogs, and more.  Perhaps most importantly she taught me how all of the various aspects of living with a dog matter and the importance of forgiving the small mistakes and accidents both my dog and I have made.

I always try to write these essays from my own personal point of view.  I think it’s best to talk about what I have learned and how I have tried to fit the science and learning together with living with my dogs.  I haven’t invented anything or come up with some novel training system. Everything I know I have learned from dedicated and talented people who have been kind enough to share their knowledge with me in print or in person.  I cannot thank them enough for changing how I live with my dogs.

I think the best thing I can do is share my experience with others.  There aren’t any magic tricks or special techniques for working with dogs as far as I’m concerned.  There is the “simplicity that lies on the other side of complexity.”  The simple understanding that comes from learning and knowing more.  The easy, simple facility to know what to do and when to do it with my dogs.  That has come with a quiet satisfaction and a passion to continue learning.

Dunning and Kruger were right.  May I never call myself an “expert” and always remain open to learning more about dogs, behaviour, and training.

Until next time, have fun with your dogs.

Be sure to check out our Canine Nation ebooks on Amazon, Google, Dogwise, and other ebook sellers.  Join our conversation on Facebook in the Canine Nation Forum!

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 Photo credits –

Sit- copyright Drew Smith 2004
Eyes – copyright Jennifer 2010
Dogs – copyright  Bob White  2014
Huey (Featured Image) – copyright Andy O’Donnell 2009

As I walked by, I overheard the exasperated Lab owner tell her friend, “I just want him to be polite when we’re out.”  That’s a phrase I hear a lot from dog owners – “I just want…”  It seems that we want a lot of things from our dogs.  The woman at the park just wanted her dog to be polite which obviously meant that her dog should sit quietly at her side in public.  Puppy owners just want their young dogs not to jump up on people.  Dog sports people just want their dogs to focus on them and attend to the cues in a highly distracting environment.  And so on.

It seems that when humans say that they “want a dog” in their lives, there is a lot of wanting that comes with that.  Many times dog owners don’t know that they want something from their dogs until they don’t see it or see something in their dogs that they don’t like.  A busy working woman may WANT her dog to go out and do his business quickly each morning before she heads off to work.  A family with young children may WANT their dog to be a calm and patient playmate for the children.  We ask a lot of our dogs.

Classic compliance

The fact is, we all have lives.  When we decide to bring a dog into our life, we will need to show our dog how life with us works or we will need to adjust our lifestyle to accommodate the new dog.  It’s likely that most of us will do both.  There will be some training to help the dog fit in and some changes in our routine to deal with doggy needs.  The one thing that is certain is that each household will have its priorities for how life with the dogs will work.

When my wife and I got our first dogs, we were encouraged to get them off to “obedience class” as soon as possible.  We were given the sound advice that we should teach our dog basic “manners.”  Back then, we just signed up for the classes offered by the local dog club.  It was a lot of repetition of the same few behaviours – Sit, Down, Heel, Stay.  The instruction was focused on how to get our dog to do these behaviours when we said so.  We were told how important it was that our dogs knew we were in charge and that they did what we told them without hesitation.

There was a lot of leash yanking.  There was a lot of “NO!”  There was a lot of getting my dog to do what I wanted.  Looking back on it now, there was not a lot of instruction on how to watch my dog to see how they were doing.  Unless a dog acted out in some extreme way, we were just told to work through the disobedient behaviour.  “Don’t let them get away with that!” was a common admonishment.  We asked the dog for what we wanted and it was imperative that we get it from them.  That same mentality followed us home from class.  We wanted to be able to take toys or food away from our dogs on a whim.  We wanted them to “be polite” when out on walks.

Wants and Needs

When I decided to change the way I train many years ago, one of the most important things I had to do was to take a hard look at why I wanted to train my dogs.  There were the simple answers I discussed above like managing our life with our dogs.  But it really came down to a deeper consideration about what I wanted versus what I needed from my dogs.  Back in the day, I was taught that my dog was supposed to sit when I said “Sit!” because I said so; because that’s what I wanted her to do.  But learning about behavioural science and modern training methods made me reconsider everything I was doing with my dogs.

I had to consider why I wanted my dog to sit.  When I looked at it, there many different answers.  In some cases, I just needed her to wait a moment while I did something else.  In other cases it was about grooming or trimming nails.  In still other cases it was about keeping her safe from strange people or dogs.  Clearly I didn’t need my dog to sit just because I WANTED her to sit.  Once I started to see things from this perspective, it became clear to me that I didn’t need my dog to do a particular behaviour, what I needed was for her to cooperate with me to do what we needed to do whether it was allowing me to do something, grooming her, or keeping her safe. 

What I found was that I didn’t necessarily need my dog SIT to accomplish some of those things.  Simply waiting in place was enough to allow me to load packages from the car or get the mail.  Standing still would allow me to do grooming or nail trimming.  Moving away from strange dogs or people would keep her at a safe distance and out of harm’s way.  What I wanted and what I needed were very different things.

I know what dogs want

I thought I knew what I needed.  I needed my dog to do a behaviour because I wanted her to do that behaviour.  And those classes all those years ago impressed on me the importance of getting what I wanted.  Don’t let your dog disobey, that’s a recipe for disaster.  But my reading and experience with modern reward-based training was showing me a very different story.

From the time she was a very young puppy, I trained my dog Tiramisu using Clicker Training; one form of Mark & Reward training.  At the time I was fairly new to this kind of training so I followed the instructions from various books and websites very carefully.  One part of this training that was stressed over and over again was that it was important to watch the dog.  That careful observation served two purposes.  First, it was important to see the behaviour I was trying to train in order to mark it and reward my dog.  But secondly, it was important to watch my dog for signs of frustration, confusion, or fatigue. 

It didn’t take long for my old training style to bump up against my new training style.  There was a training session where my Mark & Reward training was working very well and little Tira seemed to understand the behaviour I was teaching her.  I was proud of the work we had done and I asked her for the behaviour once, twice, and even a third time.  She did it brilliantly and I marked and rewarded her.  But then I wanted to see her do it a fourth time and she paused and did the behaviour again but more slowly this time and I marked and rewarded.  When I asked her to do the behaviour a fifth time, she looked up at me for a moment and then wandered out of the room.  That’s when the light bulb went off and I understood.

What the dog wants

I realized that I wasn’t programming a machine.  I was working with a thinking animal that had thoughts, ideas, and emotions of her own.  Modern training and behavioural science has shown that the best training takes this into account.  It’s not all about getting my dog to do what I want her to do just because I said so.  My dog is more eager to learn and work with me if her needs and wants are taken into account.  That opened up a whole new set of possibilities for me and my dog.  If my dog had lots of needs and wants, then there were rewards I could provide her other than just food!

Over the months and years that followed, I discovered that Tira loved to play tug, she loved to run, she loved to chase our other dogs, and had other favorite things beyond just food treats.  I used all of those things to train with her and we developed a wonderful partnership.  There were also things she didn’t like.  She didn’t like to be cuddled.  She didn’t like to be picked up.  She didn’t like to do the same thing over and over until she got bored.  And she certainly didn’t like being forced to do something.  I used those things in her training too.  When I noticed that she was getting bored or was feeling pressured to do something, I could just change what I was doing.  Giving her a break or giving her what she wanted was also a reward.

Looking back on it now, I don’t know why I got so focused on that because I said so mentality.  If my dog is reluctant to do a behaviour I know we have trained, there is probably a good reason.  I have found that it is in my best interest in those moments to consider what I need rather than insisting on getting her to do the behaviour I asked for.  I can change the reward, I can ask for a different behaviour, or I can most move on to something else and make a mental note to do some additional training.

Is it important that I get what I want from my dog?  Sure.  I have changed how I think about that.  I want her to be a happy and enthusiastic partner with me.  It turns out that the best way to do that is to give her what she wants some of the time.  It certainly makes her more willing to cooperate with me.

I think Mick Jagger said it best when he said, “You can’t always get what you want.  But if you try sometime, you just might find you get what you need.”

Until next time, have fun with your dogs!

Be sure to check out our Canine Nation ebooks on Amazon, Google, Dogwise, and other ebook sellers.  Join our conversation on Facebook in the Canine Nation Forum!

These Canine Nation ebooks are now available –

Available from Dogwise!

 Photo credits –

Sit- copyright Crystal Rolfe 2008
Red Dog – copyright bullcitydogs 2012
Ball Dog – copyright  Stonnie Dennis Dog Photography  2013

From those very first days when I was just teaching Tiramisu what a marker signal meant and experimented to see which food treats she liked best, this new kind of training felt different to me.  The dominance style training we had done with our dogs always seemed like a challenge trying to outwit and almost “trick” our dogs into doing what we wanted.  This new reward-based training seemed almost magical by comparison.  It was easy!  And Tiramisu learned FAST.  In fact, she learned faster than I thought was possible.

The experiment that is Tiramisu is coming to an end.  She is going to be 15 years old soon.  She doesn’t see well and she is mostly deaf.  Remarkably, her mind is still sharp.  She watches our other two dogs and navigates our house and yard with care but confidence.  She still trots on her walks and her appetite remains strong.  There is very little left for us to do but enjoy each other’s company for as long as we have left together.  She has helped me learn a great deal over the years.  I thought this was as good a time as any to share with you some of the life lessons that Tiramisu has taught me.

TRUST

Of all the things I have learned in my journey with Tiramisu it is the importance of trust.  Early in our time together, I often referred to the Mark and Reward training I was doing with Tira as “The Contract.”  A marker in reinforcement based training is a signal to the dog that says “That’s right!”  All of my reading on this kind of training said that a marker is most effective if you provide a reward every time you used the marker.  So I came to think of that as a contract; a commitment to my dog that it would be the same every time.

I didn’t know then what I know now.  I thought I was just following good practice with my “contract” but it turns out that something far more important was happening.  The consistency of that contract actually taught Tiramisu to TRUST me.  Trust is not something I often hear when people talk about dogs but I have come to believe that it is the single most important thing we need to teach our dogs.

Trust in us as their caretakers and trainers is like a basic belief in us; a “faith” that we are true to our word.  That “yes” is YES and “no” is NO.  But it goes so much farther than that.  In my agility work with Tiramisu, I consistently rewarded her for her effort whether we succeeded on course or not.  In daily life she was not to pick up dropped food on the floor and was rewarded for “Leave it!”  On outings, being too uncooperative or snarky with other dogs meant she had to wait in the car.  Some might call this “setting boundaries” or “having rules” but in the end, for me, it boils down to Trust.

As Tira aged, the trust became incredibly important.  When she developed hypothyroidism at age 8, she trusted me to not push her to do more than she could handle.  She trusted me to help her feel safe and get her healthy.  And now as she reaches advanced age and cannot hear or see well, she trusts me to be there to steer her to safe places and give her the care that she needs.  Through it all, Tira has looked to me with confidence regardless of our activity or her needs.  That trust is priceless.  Without it, much of what we have done together in her life would not have been possible.

THE DOG ALWAYS CHOOSES

Training a dog is a funny thing.  We think we are “teaching” the dog to do behaviours but, in reality, we are just asking them to do things they already know how to do when we cue them to do it.  When Tira was just a puppy it became abundantly clear to me that training her was dependent on her choosing to do the behaviour I was asking for or choosing to respond to the cue I was giving her.  That realization completely changed the way I work with my dogs.

Back in the days when we used more force-based methods, it was just accepted that sometimes you had to make your dog do a behaviour; they couldn’t be allowed to “get away with” not doing something when asked.  I had always thought of training as teaching a dog to do a behaviour whether they wanted to or not.  Looking back on it now I understand that my dog was still making a choice.  It’s just that they were choosing to avoid whatever unpleasant response I might have to their not doing the behaviour.  They would sit to avoid the leash tug or being yelled at.  But it was still a choice.

Once I understood this, training became a matter of persuasion instead of a demand for behaviour.  That opened up a whole new world to me.  Recognizing that my dog was making choices led me to want to know more about what she liked and didn’t like.  What I was learning was WHO my dog was!  Every dog is different.  Each has its own preferences.  And life is so much richer when you know as much about your dog as you can learn.  The important lesson for me is that the dog always has a choice and the choices they make will tell you a great deal about who they are.

LISTEN TO THE DOG

Tiramisu always loved playing agility.  The day she stopped after the third jump on a course, lowered her head and walked slowly toward the exit looking over her shoulder at me was an important moment.  This was unusual.  I had to decide if this was my dog being stubborn and just being a pain in the butt when I wanted to play or if she really had a problem.  I chose to listen to my dog.  It turned out that she was indeed unwell.  This wasn’t the first time I listened to my dog.  Reinforcement training taught me that lesson many years before.

One of the great things about Mark and Reward training is that you have to very closely watch the dog in order to Mark the correct behaviour when it’s offered during training.   When Tiramisu was just a puppy, sometimes things didn’t go the way I expected and she offered alternative behaviours or nothing at all.  I learned to watch her closely and this helped me to see if she was bored or confused or frustrated in those moments where the training wasn’t going well.  This was so much better than “making her do it” the way I used to train.  Better for her and for me.

This translated to real life matters as well.  Tira became sound sensitive and watching for subtle signs of discomfort allowed us to manage her so that she didn’t have to become terrified when things got to be too much for her.  Learning to “listen” to her allowed us to help her.  Oddly, in her later years, Tiramisu decided that she didn’t like the sound of woodpeckers in the trees.  That meant that we had to choose new places to walk but it was worth it to see her happy.  It seems that there is a lot our dogs want to tell us if only we take the time to “listen” to what they are saying.

EVERYTHING MATTERS

One of the most important lessons I have learned over the years is that our dogs are always learning.  It’s great that we create time to teach them certain behaviours and do certain activities but in those moments where we are cooking in the kitchen or reading a book, our dogs are still learning.  They learn about our habits.  They learn what signals dinner is happening soon.  They learn what shoes we like to wear when it’s time to go for a walk.  They learn what makes us smile and what makes us angry.  There is no one on the planet that knows me better than Tiramisu.  She sees it all and she learns.

That can be a scary proposition.  What is my dog learning when I’m not paying attention?  Tira learned more than a few bad habits because I wasn’t paying attention.  Fortunately, behaviour isn’t carved in stone and we worked through most of her annoying habits.  But it’s a wonderful opportunity as well.  When Tira started staring at us before dinner time in an effort to get us to get up and feed her, we instead waited her out.  During that process, she decided to do a play-bow at our other dog Rizzo. We immediately got up and fed her.  Over the course of weeks, we carefully shaped that single play-bow into an adorable session of Tira prancing about and playing to signal us she was ready for dinner.  She still makes us smile with her antics to this day.

I have heard it said that “Everything Matters.”  All of the little things we do every day add up.  My life with Tiramisu has convinced me that you can make even the little things count.  Saying “Wait” at the door and calling her back inside if she should run out matters.  Looking in her eyes and giving her a smile and a scratch when she walks over to me matters.  Asking for a few behaviours before feeding her dinner matters.  Marking her behaviour and rewarding her when she does what she is asked matters.  Every small thing we do together matters.  Earning her trust by being consistent.  Recognizing and accepting her choices.  Listening to what she is telling me and giving her what she needs.

There are a thousand other lessons Tiramisu has taught me over the years and I can’t list them all in this one essay.  I’m glad that I have had the opportunity to share many of those lessons in other essays.  More than that, I am glad to have shared my life with such a wonderful, smart, sassy, and special dog such as Tiramisu.  I am grateful for her life well lived and will treasure her for as long as we are together.  I thank her for the lessons of her lifetime.

Until next time, appreciate your dogs!

Be sure to check out our Canine Nation ebooks  available at Dogwise, Amazon, iTunes, Google Play Books, and other online book sellers .  Join our conversation on Facebook in the Canine Nation Forum!

These Canine Nation ebooks are now available –

 Photo credits –

Eric and Tira – copyright Kristiina Ovaska 2010
All other images copyright Petra Wingate 2004-2018

This positive approach to training was very different from the way I used to think about dog training.  I decided that it would be a good test to just “do what the books said” in raising my new puppy using this new “positive training” and behavioural science.  I would do all of it exactly as described in books and videos by the experts.  But I would walk away from it the minute this kind of training didn’t work as advertised.

More than 14 years later, I’m still at it.  I’m still using everything I’ve learned and I’m still learning.    Not only does this kind of training work, it works in ways I never expected.  As a young dog, Tiramisu learned behaviours incredibly quickly.  She became an enthusiastic partner in the sport of Dog Agility and even earned a pile of ribbons and titles.  Even after being diagnosed with hypothyroidism at 8 years old, she recovered so well from treatment that she went on to earn several more agility championship titles.  She continued to play at the top levels of agility until she was 12.  I credit all of that success to what I’ve learned about canine behaviour and modern reward-based training. 

Time takes its toll and we retired her from competition before she turned 13.  Her joints were getting sore and she wasn’t enjoying it anymore.  As Tira has moved into old age, she has lost some hearing and some sight.  But her mind remains remarkably sharp. So now I am seeing some wonderful and unexpected benefits of this kind of behavioural training as Tira deals with old age as she nears 15.

Vestibular Events

A major turning point in Tiramisu’s health happened when she was 13.  On a June night, my wife and I were awakened by a loud thumping noise next to our bed.  My wife quickly told me that Tiramisu couldn’t stand up.  Her back end didn’t seem to be working and she was clearly panicked. We quickly carried Tira out into the living room and helped her to stand.  Her heart was hammering and she was trembling.  She clearly didn’t know how to cope with whatever was happening.  But within an hour, she was taking treats and seemed to have regained her balance.  It took a couple more hours but she settled down and got back to normal.

The next morning, our research suggested that Tiramisu had experienced a “vestibular event” not uncommon in older dogs.  We were relieved that vestibular events were not life-threatening but it sure scared Tira.  Typically a dog will experience only one or two of these in a lifetime.  We weren’t so lucky.  Over the next 8 months, Tira would have 5 more of these events, each lasting longer and longer.  The last two episodes lasted for days, not hours. 

Through it all, we noticed a remarkable pattern.  These vestibular events are much like vertigo in humans.  There is a spinning sensation that is evident by the flicking of the dog’s eyes as they try to keep up with the dizziness.  Even though the dizziness of that last episode went on for days, Tira showed none of the fear or panic of that first very brief episode.  It seemed to us that each time one of these events happened, Tira was better and better at coping.  During her last event, Tira seemed determined to get on with life despite the spinning and nausea.  She would eat her regular meals, stumble as best she could to get out and do her business, and even attempted to play a few times. 

I attribute her resilience and adaptability to the positive training we had used throughout her life.  Many times we had asked her to adapt to new behaviours, new environments, new situations.  In each case, we never asked too much and we always rewarded her efforts to cope.  We can’t know for certain that it was just the training since none of our other dogs have had vestibular events.  But it seems to us that all of that training we did with Tira gave her a capacity for learning and adapting to new life situations quickly and easily.  Just as she had adapted to all the different places and things we had exposed her to throughout her life, Tira seemed determined to adapt to this new challenge as well.

Losing sight and hearing

The vestibular events left Tiramisu with pretty significant balance issues.  This was complicated by worsening arthritis in her joints.  On top of that, Tira was also losing her hearing and eyesight.  In the last year, we have discovered that she has difficulty hearing any but the loudest or sharpest sounds.  That means all of those carefully taught verbal cues are not helping us manage her.  And her failing sight means that she relies much more heavily on her nose to find her treats, her medications, and her meals.

It was a delightful surprise that even with her diminished sight, Tira would still respond to many of the visual cues we had practised so many times in Dog Agility.  The arm sweeps needed to be bigger and I needed to be sure she was looking at me, but I find that it is quite easy to tell her where I need her to go with a wave or a turn of my body.  She happily complies.

The biggest challenge for us is remembering that Tira needs this extra assistance.  So long as we take care to make sure she is getting our signals, Tira will move to where we need her or come along with us.  It just wasn’t that easy letting go of the verbal cues we had trained and used for years.  But I’m grateful that we have those visual cues to help us out.

The Cognitive Conundrum

One of our biggest concerns with Tira as she ages is her mind.  The older she gets, the greater the likelihood that canine dementia or Canine Cognitive Disorder sets in.  Trainer and author Eileen Anderson has an excellent book, Remember Me?, covering canine dementia in detail and in it she relates her own story.  Eileen also talks about her own challenges with her aging dog in this wonderful essay.

This is where our science-based training has really paid off.  After years of teaching my dog lots of behaviours and “tricks”, they have become an effective barometer for Tira’s mental state.  I can test her memory by giving her a visual cue to see if she can still remember what to do.  I can observe her motor skills based on the behaviour I am asking for.  And perhaps most importantly, I can assess the enthusiasm she still has for engaging with me and, by extension, her interest in life and living.

One of the great gifts of Mark and Reward training is that it produces “durable” behaviours; behaviours that are easy for the dog to remember even if they haven’t been practised for months or even years.  To be able to look down at Tiramisu and give her the hand signal to turn in a circle shows me that she remembers how to do that behaviour.  But it also shows me how well she is moving or if she is in pain.  And it tells me something about her eagerness to get that reward and her enjoyment of life.

Watching carefully

Tiramisu has mostly good days but some bad days as well.  We’ve put down a few new rugs on some slippery floor to help her keep her footing.  But we are a multi-dog household.  One of our most important jobs is helping Tira with the unpredictable movements of our other two dogs.  Rizzo, who is now 8 years old, has grown up with Tira and has been mostly respectful of her space.  But our youngest puppy, Six, is much more exuberant (and clueless) and needs to be managed more closely.

There is another aspect of having an aging dog in a multi-dog household.  We need to watch the other dogs around Tira because dogs seem to have a sense when other dogs in their social group are in decline or are seriously ill.  The younger dogs in the house can come to see these older or sicker dogs as an “other.”  Something to be shunned or even attacked.  Dog trainer and good friend Blanche Axton explains this very well in her essay The Not Dogs.

Fortunately, watching my dogs has become second nature to me and my wife.  This is another unexpected gift from Mark and Reward training.  From my very first days learning this kind of training with Tiramisu all those years ago, I learned that it was important to watch the dog to see if they were offering the behaviour I wanted to reward.  That process of monitoring her behaviour in training seems to have spilled over into everyday life.  Just as I would watch to see if she were moving in the direction I wanted in training, I could also see changes in her mood based on her responses.  Now as she ages, I can also see small changes in her day to day behaviour.  Is she having trouble with stairs?  Is she reluctant to eat?  Is she in pain or just losing her balance?  I can only know these things if I watch and take it all in.  Mark and Reward training taught me to always be watching.

Aging Gracefully

I have learned a great deal from Tiramisu over the years.  All of the books and seminars may have taught me how to do this positive training but it is Tiramisu herself that teaches me how it works.  It seems you can’t really understand this kind of training unless you do it as a partner to your dog.  Tira has taught me many great lessons about using Mark and Reward to best effect.  Perhaps the greatest lesson is that growing old is a process and that she can adapt to it with grace and courage.  She carries with her all of the learning of a lifetime and all of the skill and confidence that comes with that.

She is an amazing dog and I will treasure her for as long as she is with us.  And for many years after.

Until next time, enjoy every moment with your dogs!

Be sure to check out our Canine Nation ebooks  available at Dogwise, Amazon, iTunes, Google Play Books, and other online book sellers .  Join our conversation on Facebook in the Canine Nation Forum!

These Canine Nation ebooks are now available –

 Photo credits –

All images copyright Eric Brad 2016-2018

I’d like to share a secret with you –

Recently I began to wonder why all of our various dog training styles produce results.  At heart, I’m a science and technology kind of guy and many years ago I decided to look into the science of dogs, behaviour, and animal learning.  Eventually I stumbled onto two interesting fields of study, Evolutionary Biology and Behavioural Ecology. They seek to understand why animals have the physical characteristics they do and how an animal’s behaviour is shaped in response to their natural environment.  Both of these modern sciences owe their origins to the work of people like Konrad Lorenz and Niko Tinebergen whose work had previously been called by a different name, Ethology.  Looking at the dog through the lens of these sciences gave me some very interesting insights into what makes a dog a dog.

To say that we have a lot of “folk knowledge” about dogs would be a massive understatement.  Dogs have been our companions for so long that we barely made the effort to study them in any detail until recently.  Why would we? We live with them every day and we know all we need to know about them. Right? For hundreds of years, we just learned from the previous generation of dog owners who learned from the generation before theirs.  It all seems to work out well enough.

But scientists are discovering that while some of the assumptions we have always made about dogs are correct, many are not.  It seems to me a strange thing we humans can hang onto outdated and incorrect information even though we have evidence for a much better explanation of our dogs and their behaviour.  What makes that “doggie folklore” so easy to believe? It appears that it may be the dogs themselves that are helping us fool ourselves about their behaviour, emotions, and how they think about the world.

Dog Origins

Dogs have lived among humans for roughly 16,000 years.  Common knowledge in the dog world says that the dogs we keep as pets evolved from the Grey Wolf somewhere back in the mists of time.  And that is strictly true in a technical, biological sense. But “dogs” existed long before we had 400+ different breeds and obedience classes.  Somewhere back in history there was a kind of generic “dog”, one that hung around human settlements and survived by eating our garbage and waste products.  That generic dog still exists today in the millions. It survives in the dumps, back-alleys, and outskirts of our towns, villages, and cities.

It was that generic dog that somehow evolved from a wolf.  The pet dogs that live with us in our homes were selectively bred relatively recently from specimens of those generic dogs.  So when the original ethologists went looking for insight into the behaviour of dogs, they turned to what they thought of as the most immediate ancestor; the wolf.  But it seems to me that they skipped right over the best source of information about the “natural” behaviour of our dogs; those surviving populations of free-ranging generic dogs.  In his book, “What Is a Dog?”, behavioural ecologist Raymond Coppinger does a remarkable job of showing the behaviour, lifestyle, and life priorities of the most immediate ancestor to our pet dogs: the generic or feral dog.

Of all the areas Coppinger covers in his book, the one idea that stood out to me was his description of the dog’s natural habitat.  It turns out that for all the diverse places around the world where dogs thrive, the primary common element that they need to survive as a species is – HUMANS.  The research of Coppinger and many other scientists shows that it was the availability of human waste products that created available food sources in the environment for dogs to thrive.  Strictly speaking, we can think of dogs as another form of vermin like rats or cockroaches or vultures. Like other vermin, dogs take advantage of the resources of human civilization to survive.  The difference is that we find dogs attractive and pleasant to have around so some of us keep them as pets.

Evolution has had an interesting effect on dogs.  In their transformation from wolves, they ceased to be the pack hunters that chased and killed game in order to survive.  Instead, the dogs became scavengers; opportunists who learned to hang around humans and make use of resources they find in the environment.  It is this opportunistic trait that makes the dog such an adaptable and sociable animal. The dog has learned to adapt and tolerate close interaction with humans and other species in order to gain access to the things that allow them to survive as a species – food, water, shelter, safety.  Clever dogs.

Calculating Cooperators

Roughly 70% of all the dogs in the world are feral dogs who survive by pillaging garbage, begging for scraps, or living off of whatever food they can find.  These dogs must perform very important calculations every day – is the risk worth the benefit. It should come as no surprise that, by their nature, these feral dogs are not fighters.  It is far easier for one of these dogs to just move on and find another bone to chew on rather than fight with another dog over a bone they have. A fight would expend a lot of energy and risk an injury that would take additional energy to heal.  To quote an old rock song, “Is the money you make worth the price that you pay?” That’s a formula that dogs are experts at working out.

Not surprisingly, our pet dogs have inherited this ability from their ancestors the feral dogs.  They are highly adaptable and their instinct is to find the easiest path to life’s necessities. They are experts at figuring out how to get what they need and “going along to get along” in our human world.  Selective breeding has made its contribution to the agreeableness of dogs as well. We prefer our pets to be cooperative and adaptable so we only breed the dogs that conform to our way of life. No one willingly breeds dogs that will be difficult or dangerous.

In the dog, we have a ready-made sidekick that evolution has created and that we have enhanced.  One that knows how to read us and how to adapt to various situations in order to maximize their own survivability and comfort.  One that we find cute and cuddly and eager to please. Even if they please us for their own selfish reasons.

All Dog Training Works

Given the biological and ecological realities of how dogs fit into our world, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that they can adapt to a variety of training from the highly technical and precise methods of professional animal trainers to the unsophisticated “No!” and “Good Boy!” of the average pet owner.  Dog owners will have different goals for their dog’s behaviour and somehow they teach them enough to have happy compatible lifestyles.

Thousands of years of development has left dogs needing humans for their very survival.  Failure to adapt and coexist with us would certainly mean the end of dogs as a species. In short, they are biologically driven to find a way to figure out whatever it is that a given human wants from them.  We are their natural habitat.

Regardless of the particular dog training method, professionals claiming to have the “secret” to teaching your dog are all starting with a distinct advantage.  The dogs NEED to learn from us. Their survival depends on it. Whether the training method uses punishment, rewards, or some combination of both, our pet dogs will look happy enough with their lives.  

As far as I can tell, this is for two different but important reasons.  First, our dogs are intelligent enough and motivated enough to learn the do’s and don’ts of our various requirements of them.  But second and perhaps more important, they learn to look happy about it. One of the first lessons any dog learns is that an unhappy human is far less generous than a happy one.  If they keep us happy, the food keeps coming. Simple.

So all training works.  Shock collars, treats, clickers, leash tugs, “No!”, “Yes!” – everyone can point to their dog and say that their dog has learned to sit or stay.  But I don’t think we can ignore how motivated our dogs are to figure out what we’re asking of them. Nature hasn’t given them much of a choice. We are their natural environment and they can’t just walk away from that.  For as clever or skilled or humane as we think we are being with our training, we are working with animals that are biologically programmed to learn what we are trying to teach them. Their very lives depend on it.

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Street Dog – copyright WikiMedia Commonsi  20011
Street Dogs – copyright WikiMedia Commonsi  20016
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Every so often while I’m out at some dog function or dog park, I cross paths with a dog owner with a dog that is standing next to her and barking its head off at me or my dog.  The owner will usually say something like, “I would let my dog greet you but he is aggressive with other dogs.”  I’m sure the owner has lots of experience with her own dog but to my eye the dog is clearly fearful and is just trying to get me and my dog to move away.  This is

I think that the first step in helping any reactive dog is to acknowledge and accept that the dog is reacting out of fear.  It is not acting aggressive for its own pleasure or benefit.  Too often I see people dealing with reactive dogs as if these dogs are trying to aggressively assert themselves in order to be “top dog” or “alpha” or to gain some advantage.  When I look at the dog, nothing could be further from the truth.  Most of these dogs would be happier if their owner just moved them away from the other dog or person.  They don’t want to fight, they want to feel safe.

A little history

Over the centuries the dog has become a brilliant scavenger species.  Dogs have learned to tolerate the presence of humans in order to get food and other comforts from us. It has enabled dogs to become a very successful species.  From a survival perspective, it makes little sense for dogs to have an aggressive nature.  Energy spent fighting over some food could be better spent just finding a different source of food.  Dog populations around the world generally thrive near human settlements where food is plentiful and populations grow to make use of the available resources.  The basic biological design of the dog makes them tend toward avoiding conflict if they can.  It just makes more sense.

The dogs we keep as pets have been bred from these free-range scavenging dogs.  The village dogs around the world are literally the most immediate ancestors of all of the wonderful breeds we see at dog shows.  So it only makes sense that much of the biological wiring from village dogs would remain in our dogs.  In fact, our domesticated breeds have become even more successful at tolerating humans than the village dogs.  They have gotten into the house and have regular mealtimes and other comforts.

What’s all the noise about

So what do we make of the dog that suddenly erupts in a fit of barking and lunging at the approach of another dog or person?  While it is not in the nature of dogs to be truly aggressive, it is possible for a dog to feel rewarded by their aggressive behaviour.  There are dogs that will seek out fights and derive pleasure from the conflict.  These dogs are extremely rare but it’s important to acknowledge that some do exist.  If the dog is barking and lunging, it is likely they will calm down as soon as the other dog or person turns and moves away.  That is not a dog looking for a fight.  That is a reactive dog.

A reactive dog is afraid.  The old saying that “The best defense is a good offense” is a good description of reactive dogs.  The reactive dog that is barking and lunging is making a fuss in order to get the other dog or person to go away.  The posturing and barking and lunging behaviours are all part of what veterinarian Bonnie Beaver calls “Distance Increasing Behaviours” in her book “Canine Behavior: A Guide for Veterinarians.”  The dog is simply trying to put more distance between themselves and  the thing they fear.  And if the owner is not going to move them away, they will try to frighten the others off somehow.

Many dog owners will respond to their barking dog by scolding it.  From my perspective, last thing a frightened dog needs is to have their owner become angry and upset.  But social situations and outdated thinking can lead owners to believe that their fearful dog is just “misbehaving” or “acting out” for one reason or another.  In that moment when their dog is reactive, an owner’s first response could be to just try to stop the unwanted behaviour without considering why the dog is behaving that way.  And that can make things worse.  Much worse.  Instead of scolding, we should be helping the reactive dog.

Fighting chemistry

A reactive dog just wants to be farther away from the thing they are reacting to.  That may sound almost ridiculously obvious but you might be surprised at the number of people who just stand with their frightened dogs telling them to be quiet.  When a dog is frightened, they are in “fight or flight” mode.  All of that survival circuitry in their brain is going off and sounding the alarm.  Chemicals like adrenaline and cortisol are busy filling their brain with automatic responses for survival. This is not the time to try to teach them something.

If I want to help a reactive dog to learn from any experience, the first thing I need to do is clear that fog of hormones and biochemistry that come with the “fight or flight” reaction.  The best way to help them learn is to engage them before that fear reaction, before all of those brain chemicals switch on the automatic responses.  But in order to do that, I need to know just how much is too much for my dog to handle.  Fortunately, my dog has lots of warning signs before they freak out entirely – how they hold their ears and tail, their body posture, widening of the eyes, stiffness in movement, and even growls or other low vocalizations.  The point at which the dog goes from wary and concerned into full blown reactive behaviour is often called its threshold.  Once my dog is over that threshold, any training I might be trying to do is bouncing off of their head.

It’s in the wires

If every dog worked the same way, there would be one book or DVD that could tell you how to cure your reactive dog.  The fact is there are hundreds, probably thousands.  Each different breed of dog has slight differences.  Each breeding line within a breed has slight differences.  In fact, each pup within a litter has slight differences.  And when you combine that with the effects of training and experience, determining what a dog will react to and how to deal with it can be a complex business.  You just have to watch your dog and learn to understand how they are feeling.

Something we have learned about in the last few years is that sometimes you can’t train your way out of a reactivity problem.  Much of reactivity has to do with brain chemistry and sometimes what a dog is born with can’t be changed through training alone.  Different dogs will have different brain chemistry.  Health and living conditions also play a role and things like chronic stress or hypothyroidism can cause lasting changes in brain chemistry that will change a dog’s behaviour to make them more reactive.  We have discovered that even working with a great training plan and a great trainer will not bring much progress if you are fighting the genetics and brain chemistry of the dog.  But there is hope.  Just as we have with humans, new classes of drugs are now available to help dogs with anxiety and fearful behaviours caused or exacerbated by chemical imbalances in the brain.  

Sometimes the best thing to do when dealing with a reactive dog is talk to your veterinarian.  Any training plan that doesn’t produce some improvement  in a relatively short time should be a red flag.  In many cases, a veterinarian may give you a clean bill of health and some suggestions on diet and exercise.  But many veterinarians also have connections with local behaviour specialists who can help you work through complex problems and many of those specialists work with the veterinarian if medication is prescribed for your dog.  Don’t be afraid to get your health and behaviour professionals involved.

Bottom line

Whenever I see a dog barking and making a fuss in our direction when I’m out at the local park, I try to be understanding and put some distance between us.  Chances are that the other dog is afraid and is reactive.  The kindest thing I can do is to give that dog some space.  Reactive dogs need understanding, not correction.  The first step to helping a reactive dog is helping them feel safe.  Only then can we begin to help them get over their fear and anxiety.  There are lots of training programs and techniques to help reactive dogs but they all depend on the dog being in a frame of mind where they can learn.  Learning to help my dog feel safe and protected is one of the most important skills I’ve learned.  

Until next time, have fun with your dogs!

Be sure to check out our Canine Nation ebooks in the Canine Nation store and Dogwise.  Join our conversation on Facebook in the Canine Nation Forum!

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Terrier – copyright Quinn Dombrowski  2009 from Flickr 
Nervous – copyright BigOakFlickr  2015 from Flickr
Safe -copyright Donald Lee Pardue 2013 from Flickr

I’ve always been fond of the old saying that we should “Work smarter, not harder.”  There are lots of pursuits where the results you get are directly related to the amount of effort you put into the job.  Training a dog is not one of those things, at least in my experience.  I know people who train much more with their dogs than I do and they don’t achieve results that are much better than mine.  Don’t get me wrong,  It’s not that they don’t get good results; some of them get great results.  It’s just that I seem to be able to get the similar results with much less effort.  Let me explain.

I knew a trainer years ago when I started training my dog for dog agility.  This trainer had a very ambitious agility  training routine for her dog.  At least 15 minutes of training in the morning, again at lunch, and then in the evening every single day.  By contrast, I only worked with my dog on agility training once a week for 10 or 15 minutes.  The simple arithmetic would be that she trained for 5 hours and 15 minutes each week compared to my 15 minutes of work.  Logically, I would expect her dog to have learned more than mine or faster than mine or be more fluent more quickly than mine given the extra training.  The truth of it was that they might have gotten great results but nothing that would look like she did 5 hours more training each week than I did.  There was just not that much difference in our results.

Motion does not equal progress

One of the advantages I had when I began training for agility is that I was new to science based training.  I was unfamiliar with many of the concepts and techniques involved. So I had to carefully consider what I was doing during training and to go slowly to be sure I was doing the training correctly.  One of the big lessons that I learned from Mark and Reward Training (Clicker Training) was that it was important to go into each training session prepared and to be efficient. It seemed like an updated version of a saying my grandfather used to tell me, “Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect!”  Sometimes doing more doesn’t necessarily produce more.

Over the years, the time I spent training agility came down to about 3 minutes per week and we still had great results (my dog has multiple agility championship titles).  Even at home, we spent less than 10 minutes per day working on learning new behaviours or practicing behaviours I had already taught my dog.  I began to wonder why I was able to spend so much less effort to get my results while others seemed to work so much harder and not be as happy with their results.  There are differences in dogs and training methods to be sure but maybe it had something to do with how I was doing it.  And then I ran across this great quote from B.F. Skinner, one of the great pioneers of reward based training, “The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount.”

You get what you pay for

I remember attending a lecture by Karen Pryor back in 2004.  She cautioned us during her talk about the dangers training for the sake of training; that kind of rote practice where we work with the dog each day because we’re “supposed to.”  Pryor explained that setting up a schedule and going through a training routine day after day can cause us to lose focus on maintaining good technique and criteria for rewarding the behaviours.  It’s easy lull ourselves into accepting small variations of the behaviours.  We can decide that “that was good enough” because we’ve done this a hundred times and we’re thinking about other things at the same time.  Then a month or two later, we notice this funny variation in the dog’s behaviour when we give her a familiar cue.  And then wonder where the heck that came from!

It won’t matter how much I train with my dog if I’m not focused on what I’m doing.  I think the trouble comes from the repetitive nature of working with my dog.  This is especially true for behaviours we have practiced many times.  It can be easy for me to fall into “automatic” mode where I’m not as mindful of what I’m doing as I should be.  Doing more training just means more opportunities for me to slack off.  I manage this by limiting myself to only so much training time.  I find that this makes me mindful and effective.  I have to pay attention to the details when I work with my dog if I want to get the job done.

The prepared mind

One thing that has been a great help in keeping me focused on my training is making sure I’m prepared before I begin working with my dog.  I learned early on that going in to work with my dog without having a plan can be a recipe for all kinds of problems.  If I’m not clear in my own mind what I am working on, how is my dog supposed to know?  The first books I read on Mark and Reward training were careful to stress the importance of things like criteria, training plans, and having all the tools for training ready before starting to work with the dog.  In her excellent book “Training Levels – Steps to Success Vol. 1” Canadian trainer Sue Ailsby writes, “Not being ready is worse than wasting your time and the dog’s.  Not being ready means that you may be teaching the dog things you didn’t want her to know…”  And everything unwanted thing your dog learns is something you have to get her to unlearn.

I have something of a simple checklist before I start a training session: What are my goals?  What are my success criteria for each step (what does “right” look like)?  Am I clear on the steps I want to teach?  How long will I work?  Do I have all of the prompts I need for this session?  Do I have my markers and rewards?  Being prepared goes beyond my own needs and desires for training as well.  I need to consider whether this might be the best time to train with my dog.  (Is she sleepy or not very hungry or tired from exercise?)  I also need to consider whether the environment where I want to train is appropriate.  (Is it too noisy or distracting?  Are there other things that my dog would find more attractive than working with me?)  Taking the time to prepare helps me focus on my dog.

Technique matters

Training can be a deceptively simple process.  See the behaviour you want.  Mark that behaviour you want.  Reward the dog for that behaviour.  Regardless of what you are teaching your dog, each of those simple steps is critically important and a good trainer will devote their full attention to each of them.  If I’m not paying attention, my dog may offer me the behaviour I want and I don’t see it.  If I’m not properly focused, the timing of my marker may be early or late and I could mark the wrong behaviour.  And if I’m not attentive enough to make sure I reward my dog properly, my efforts could all be in vain.  It can be deceptively easy to miss every now and then but it only becomes a problem if it becomes a habit.

The bottom line is that training is a mechanical process.  It is a set of skills that I can learn to improve.  Learning to do them well means giving attention to the details while I am using them.  I can’t be inconsistent in my performance and then expect my dog to be consistent.  I don’t help myself or my dog by slacking off on my technique.  Sadly, I can’t make up for it by just doing more training because that just gives me more opportunities to mess up.  If I don’t have the discipline to plan out and prepare my part of the training sessions, how can I expect my dog have great performance?

The answer to a training problem might not be doing more training.  It might not be changing methods or techniques.  For me, going back to basics and making sure I am doing the best I can to prepare and use the techniques I’ve been taught.  Sometimes that means having a friend watch or using video to evaluate how I’m doing during my training sessions.  Could I be working smarter instead of harder?  The answer is often “Yes!”

How we train our dogs is often more more important than how often we train our dogs.

Until next time, have fun with your dogs!

Be sure to check out our Canine Nation ebooks in the Canine Nation store and Dogwise.  Join our conversation on Facebook in the Canine Nation Forum!

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Smart Dog – copyright Bill Way  2013 from Flickr 
Puppy – copyright Dave C  2009 from Flickr
Training -copyright Andrea Arden 2013 from Flickr