Can We STOP Our Dogs From Chasing?

As we all well know, canines are predators. As such they all come hard-wired for chasing after their food.

Even our domesticated pampered dogs come hard-wired for hot pursuit even when a warm dinner awaits them - day in and day out. How close to the surface are these hard-wired behaviors varies from dog to dog.

Here is the sequence of behaviors that make the predatory sequence:
Search (find prey, mainly by sense of smell)
Stalk (sneak up as unnoticed as possible)
Rush (move suddenly towards prey)
Chase (run after the fleeing prey)
Bite/hold/shake/kill the prey
Dissect and eat the prey
From Jean Donaldson, The Culture Clash pg. 21

While at times it is perfectly fine for our dogs to chase, most times its the last thing we want them to do. Chasing wildlife, for example, is one of the main reasons why dogs get hit by a car or wonder so far away that they are de facto lost!

So is it possible then to teach dogs to stop chasing anything that moves?

The answer … (drum droll please…) is that it is actually quite possible if we work hard at building a very reliable STOP! behavior. A STOP! cue means exactly that: stop in your tracks. If practiced consistently and daily it can become reflexive under similar circumstances.

By reflexive I mean that after ions and ions of trials – with most of them being paid very handsomely, your dog could literally stop in its tracks versus chasing when asked to do so because he has practiced so many times that when you ask for “real” he won't even think about it, but will just do it!

Now, if you ask your dog to STOP while he is already chasing… that really adds to the level of difficulty. At this point your dog truly cannot hear you. He has tuned you out and everything else except the “prey”.

So, how does this STOP training look like?

What I do with my dogs on an ongoing basis (as well as teach my clients) is to engage in games that always double as training sessions by which the dog learns some very much needed impulse control.

Impulse control translates to your dog being able to stop chasing the ball, playing with the whippet, tug, etc. until you release him back to play the game once again.

As you can see, all these games have some elements of the predatory sequence described above (more on this next week) :) and that is why they are so energizing and fun for dogs.
However, we must use them as opportunities to really flex our dog’s self-control muscle.

It is this capacity of self-control that will be needed when we request in a real-life scenario that our dog forgo the chase and stops in its tracks. Yes, of course, there is more to it than just self-control. Your dog has been reinforced HEAVENLY by engaging in a game(s) he loves thousands of times. And that, my friends… builds behavior!

It goes without saying that there are no guarantees when it comes to behavior, but what I can tell you is that the chances of you being able to recall your dog back away from prey will increase substantially if you are committed to giving your dog “legal” outlets for predatory behaviors as part of his daily exercise.

In next week's post I will address some of the specifics needed in turning an "exercise routine” into a training session where your dog can learn self-control.

Jean Donaldson's Top 10 Dog Behavior Myths

Does owning a pair of shoes makes you a shoemaker? You know the answer to the question! Does “owning/adopting” a dog make you an expert in [all things] dog??? I will let you chew on this one for a bit.

The truth is that there is a myriad of information out there about any topic you might think of and the worlds of dog behavior & training are no different! There is an industry joke that goes something like this: Ask a room full of trainers the same question and you will get all different answers! And this is the “professional group” …

How then, can one separate truth from fiction when it comes to the “real” nature of dogs? And what is the benefit of really learning about them?

I would argue that learning about dogs would benefit both parties.

I was telling my brother just the other day about how sometimes it is relatively easy to help someone with a situation with their dog. It is all a matter of having an understanding of how dogs “function.” If one understands what makes them “tick” it is waaaayyyy easier to get results: The life of the dog improves and the problem for the owner is minimized or gone altogether.

And there are those times, of course, where the solution is not that simple. In part because dogs are complex individuals and their relationship with us humans is also at times very complex.

The real value I think lays in acknowledging that learning about dogs requires rigorous study. Thanks to the close relationship that we have established with dogs there is a lot of information about who they really are as a species and yet… there is so much that is still a mystery.

Jean Donaldson, a professional dog trainer for more than three decades and the person that I had the honor of studying under at the San Francisco SPCA Academy for Dog Trainers, has made her life’s passion (my words) to learn about dogs from a scientific perspective. I came across and re-read this article of hers where she comments upon some of the “myths” that have colored our lives with our canine companions. Perhaps your favorite one made the list – read on!

1) Dogs are natural pack-animals with a clear social order.

This one busts coming out of the gate as free-ranging dogs (pariahs, semi-feral populations, dingoes, etc.) don't form packs. As someone who spent years solemnly repeating that 'dogs were pack animals', it was sobering to find out that dogs form loose, amorphous, transitory associations with other dogs.

2) If you let dogs exit doorways ahead of you, you're letting them be dominant.

There is not only no evidence for this, there is no evidence that the behaviour of going through a doorway has any social significance whatsoever. In order to lend this idea any plausibility, it would need to rule-out that rapid doorway exit is not simply a function of their motivation to get to whatever is on the other side combined with their higher ambulation speed.

3) In multi-dog households, "support the hierarchy" by giving presumed dominant animals patting, treats, etc., first, before giving the same attention to presumed subordinate animals.

There is no evidence that this has any impact on inter-dog relations, or any type of aggression. In fact, if one dog were roughing up another, the laws governing Pavlovian conditioning would dictate an opposite tack:

Teach aggressive dogs that other dogs receiving scarce resources predicts that they are about to receive some. If so practised, the tough-dog develops a happy-emotional response to other dogs getting stuff - a helpful piece of training, indeed. No valuable conditioning effects are achieved by giving the presumed higher-ranking dog goodies first.

4) Dogs have an innate desire to please.

This concept has never been operationally defined, let alone tested. A vast preponderance of evidence, however, suggests that dogs, like all properly functioning animals, are motivated by food, water, sex, and like many animals, by play and access to bonded relationships, especially after an absence.

They're also, like all animals, motivated by fear and pain, and these are the inevitable tools of those who eschew the use of food, play, etc., however much they cloak their coercion and collar-tightening in desire to please rhetoric.

5) Rewards are bribes and thus compromise relationships.

Related to 4), the idea that behaviour should just, in the words of Susan Friedman, Ph.D., "flow like a fountain" without need of consequences, is opposed by more than 60 years of unequivocal evidence that behaviour is, again to quote Friedman, "a tool to produce consequences." Another problem is that bribes are given before behaviour, and rewards are given after. And, a mountain of evidence from decades of research in pure and applied settings has demonstrated over and over that positive reinforcement - i.e., rewards - make relationships better, never worse.

6) If you pat your dog when he's afraid, you're rewarding the fear.

Fear is an emotional state - a reaction to the presence or anticipation of something highly aversive. It is not an attempt at manipulation. If terrorists enter a bank and order everybody down on the floor, the people will exhibit fearful behaviour. If I then give a bank customer on the floor a compliment, 20 bucks or chocolates, is this going to make them more afraid of terrorists next time? It's stunningly narcissistic to imagine that a dogs fearful behaviour is somehow directed at us (along with his enthusiastic door-dashing).

7) Punish dogs for growling or else they'll become aggressive.

Ian Dunbar calls this "removing the ticker from the time bomb." Dogs growl because something upsetting them is too close. If you punish them for informing us of this, they are still upset but now not letting us know, thus allowing scary things to get closer and possibly end up bitten. Much better to make the dog comfortable around what he's growling at so he's not motivated to make it go away.

8) Playing tug makes dogs aggressive.

There is no evidence that this is so. The only study ever done, by Borchelt and Goodloe, found no correlation between playing tug and the incidence of aggression directed at either family members or strangers.

Tug is, in fact, a cooperative behaviour directed at simulated prey: the toy.

9) If you give dogs chew-toys, they'll learn to chew everything.

This is a Pandora's box type of argument that, once again, has zero evidence to support it. Dogs are excellent discriminators and readily learn with minimal training to distinguish their toys from forbidden items. The argument is also logically flawed as chewing is a 'hydraulic' behaviour that waxes and wanes, depending on satiation/deprivation, as does drinking, eating and sex.

Dogs without chew objects are like zoo animals in barren cages. Unless there is good compensation with other enrichment activities, there is a welfare issue here.

10) You can't modify 'genetic' behavior.

All behaviour - and I mean all - is a product of a complex interplay between genes and the environment. And while some behaviours require less learning than others, or no learning at all, their modifiability varies as much as does the modifiability of behaviours that are primarily learned.
 

What Training Is

For some reason this morning while driving to my boot camp, I thought about animal training and what it entails. I attended the (former) San Francisco SPCA Academy for Dog Trainers, now offered as an online course http://www.academyfordogtrainers.com/ - the brain child of dog trainer extraordinaire Jean Donaldson.

Jean explains that [dog] Training … “At its very best (i.e. the” best” trainer training the “best” dog), will greatly alter the probability of behavior occurring.” Now notice that she mentions behavior changing, or in other words, the dog learning something else… as a great probability. I guess one can read this predicament as a “good news/bad news” statement. Yes indeed, if we train the dog the chances of our dog doing what we want just went up - way up but the bad news is that is just a probability- kind of a numbers game.

In my “Academy” (as the training program is fondly known in the dog training world) binder - next to Jean’s description of training I added a note that reads: “80% (change in behavior) is easy, every notch above 80% is hard.

Perhaps the statistics above should be embossed in all dog trainer’s business cards, websites, etc. in an effort to educate our clients and remind ourselves of the task at hand.

The problem lays I think, not so much with the 80% “rule” but with the (oh so very) human assumption that it is a piece of cake to change behavior in any living species. As we now know, nothing could be farther from the truth! BTW, I hear also that dogs are one of the easiest species to train!

Once we are aware of the implications in modifying behavior we can set realistic expectations for our dogs.

Yes it is true that any good trainer can teach a dog anything! However, it begs the question: how long will it take? Are we (or our clients) willing and able to control the environment so that the dog stops repeating the behavior we now want to modify?

Are we willing and able to be consistent (much easier said than done!) with consequences administered to the dog for exhibiting the “correct” behavior as well as consequences for failing to do so? Of course, by consequences I am NOT talking about aversive- another discussion all together… It also begs the understanding of when and where we want our dogs to perform a given behavior. Any training plan should ask: when specifically should the behavior take place? And where? In other words, we must take into consideration the context (environment if you will) where we need our dog to perform. It is not the same to request that our dog holds on a sit/stay for 2 minutes in the kitchen than the same behavior at the park where our dog is surrounded by interesting smells and sights.

Some behaviors, of course, do not need training. I am thinking of Rioja here, who after discovering last night in their toy basket the new stuffed octopus, she took it to bed with her. Really cute behavior with no training required! :0)