I had an interesting and “long” conversation with the driver on the bus coming home from the shelter the other day.
B.Driver: “Hey, man, I saw you the other day over here walking like five dogs! Was that you? You don’t see that every day, I mean you see that on t.v. but …”
Me: “Yeah, that was me. Just one is mine, I’m training the others”
BD: “Oh, you’re a trainer? Well let me ask you, do you think those pit bulls got a bad reputation because of us?”
Me: “Of course! Dogs only do what we allow/teach them to do.”
There was a lot more to it, but let’s move on …
We love dogs because they love us and their main goal is pleasing us. Our responsibility is lead and teach them right. Exercise, discipline, affection – in that order, is how we lead them properly.
*I had a pup picked up the other day who was just over for a stay (already done basics training), but the owner asked if I could do more work on her counter surfing and jumping on people.
So while she was here, as soon as she looked like she wanted to jump on counter, I “eh-eh”‘d, she would (almost everytime) immediately sit and look to me for what I wanted her to do. Well, I praised that and gave her some loving!
There were times where she’d walk up, look at counter, go right into a sit or down. Big praise and loving.
Of course there were times where she didn’t make the right decision, so I corrected her: “Off”/snap & point to ground (our signal for counter/furniture/people), she looks, sits, I get eye contact again, (min 3 sec) praise/pet.
She knows what to do. A puppy needs that leadership consistently. So when owner was picking her up she admitted that even after her last stay she (owner, the dad good) wasn’t good at preventing the surfing “…cuz it was cute when she couldn’t actually reach the countertop” – at the time not quite 20#, now almost 50#! My house discipline is BEFORE affection; owner affection first right? Not a recipe for success at home.
**I have a nervous dog at home right now I’ve had for about a month. She’s from the shelter I work at. We’ve worked on a lot of triggers as well as meeting people (her biggest fear). Her confidence is better and growing still.
Our main motivator/reinforcer at the shelter is food. I like it, I think it’s most primal, usually fastest for teaching new behaviors, but it can also work against you if not properly timed (like any reinforcer, correction, or equipment we use). It’s common practice for people to walk by and just chunk a treat into a kennel where a dog is scared and cowared in back, and just keep walking.
Theory: creating positive associations to people because the dog gets food.
Does it work? Probably sometimes. But like anything, we need to be smart with it because…
Alternate outcome (possibly why this particular dog is still freaked by people): instead of creating positive association, we were actually reinforcing her cowaring in the back. Why? Because the motivator/reinforcer was given while scared, scary thing left, scared dog then eats gets reinforcer. It worked! I stayed back, they went away, I get food.
Better way: (some of our volunteers do this) sit with them for awhile, not facing them, let their confidence/curiosity build, when/if they show interest that’s when we reward. If doesn’t show interest, that’s ok too! They don’t necessarily need a treat because again this is reinforcing scaredness. The fact that nothing bad happened is reward/positive association in itself.
***Another call I got this weekend is to go back to a past “leash-reactive” black lab (toward other dogs) client, who “was doing good … made a few friends, but is now getting worse, and the other day … jumped the gr.dane out of nowhere.” I can only speculate on this one, but I won’t be surprised if I found out the handler/leash on the lab at some point tensed up (if only for a sec).
Humans have bred and trained dogs for bad purposes – even with this knowledge out there, it still continues to be the dog’s fault. This is a huge stigma to overcome.
We allow and even reinforce behaviors when pups are small and cute, then get upset when they do the same thing when they’re older and bigger. We think THEY need more training.
We misuse motivators/reinforcers because “it works for most dogs”, quite frankly is a lazy way to think.
We unnecessarily add energy to situations because of things that happened in the past or what we think might happen.
Be fair to each dog, they’re individuals. Be prepared but don’t preconcieve (unless it’s that only good outcome will happen. I like to say everything is always a humans fault, but the dog will always suffer the consequence. Let’s minimize their consequences.
