Bullying or punishing a dog for inappropriate fearful behavior

My preference is not to use physical manipulation when working with dogs, but I will gladly employ emotional manipulation. One of the things a fearful, anxious or shy dog’s brain is good at is reacting in a fearful way. The practice of bullying or punishing a dog for inappropriate fearful behavior only helps their already adept-at-feeling-scared brains, keep feeling scared or aggressive. By tapping into their brain’s reward system we not only help them learn new behaviors, we can begin to manipulate them emotionally. We start helping their brains get better at feeling good.
Our brain’s reward system has so much control over our behavior that we can end up doing too much of a good thing. Eating, drinking, smoking, exercising, sex, even working can all be rewarding to people and taken to unhealthy extremes. When working with dogs the most obvious reward we can start with is food and no need to worry about them raiding the refrigerator at night for that last piece of cheesecake. When we control the rewards that our dogs value, we become part of the ‘chain of feel good’ that we use to train and modify behavior.
By systematically creating conditioned reinforcers (reinforcers increase the likelihood that a behavior will be repeated) we have a grab bag full of ways to change how our dogs feel. A conditioned reinforcer is anything that has been associated with a primary reinforcer (food and play are both primary reinforcers). I like to start with a clicker with dogs that are not sensitive to the sound. Click/food, click/food, click/food. Down the line the clicker morphs into a great training tool, but to begin with it helps to change how a dog feels. Saying a dog’s name and tossing them a treat turns their name into a conditioned reinforcer. Praising a dog and tossing a ball, makes praise a conditioned reinforcer. Studies have shown that the ‘anticipation’ of a reward causes more dopamine (our brain’s ‘feel good’ neurotransmitter) to be released than the reward itself. That’s pretty cool beans if you ask me.
If you are adverse to using food when working with fearful dogs, or any dog for that matter, I recommend that you read The End of Overeating, by David Kessler. The first half of the book looks at studies done with animals regarding food, motivation and performance. Written to address weight loss, the book makes a case for just how powerful food is for controlling our behavior. If we control our dog’s food, we control the behavior.
There is a new book out called The Compass of Pleasure which looks at the neurobiology of our brain’s reward system. I’m looking forward to reading it, which is pretty rewarding. You help fearful dogs by giving them things to look forward to, rather than worry about.

How we behave with dogs

Yesterday I attended a seminar with Suzanne Clothier to learn more about her Relationship Assessment Tool. It was, as expected, informative and thought provoking, but that’s not what I’m going to write about. I’ll save that for another post.
The seminar was held at the Monadnock Humane Society in Keene NH. It’s a pleasant facility with lots of outdoor space for dogs and an open, cheery entry way, which happened to also be full of cages of cats. Even for a ‘dog person’ it’s hard to see so many beautiful animals, some struggling to engage with visitors, stretching their paws out of cages, mewling and making what felt like pleading eye contact, others seemingly resigned to their lives in captivity. There were play rooms full of cats as well. Too many cats and kittens. I was told that many would be adopted but others might live there for years. But this is also not what I was planning to write about either.
Outside of the dog kennels were containers of treats (good treats in some cases, not just dry biscuits) and on the containers were the instructions- PLEASE FEED ME TREATS EVEN IF I AM BARKING. Huh? Feed them treats even if they’re barking? Won’t that just reinforce the barking behavior? I mean that’s the way it works right? Dogs repeat behaviors they get rewarded for, so giving them treats even if they’re barking means everyone who approached the cage would be teaching the dog to bark, right? Wrong!
What the good folks at the shelter understand is that dogs in shelters, and other stressful situations, are most likely behaving out of anxiety and stress. Some may be concerned about people approaching. The treats are not being used to address the behavior the dogs are displaying but rather the emotions the dogs are experiencing. Feeling a bit nervous about people? What better way for a dog to feel less concerned about people than to pair their approach with something the dog enjoys. Wanting out in a bad way and feeling frustrated and trapped? A treat may not be the perfect solution but it sure beats nothing. Some of the dogs were obviously fearful of having people approach their cages, but none so much that they couldn’t gobble up treats tossed to them. Many then sat and looked expectantly for more.
One of the big challenges fearful dogs face is their handler’s inability or unwillingness to acknowledge that every behavior has an emotion attached to it. We are always addressing the emotion when we handle or train dogs. Sometimes we use their enjoyment and excitement for a reward to get them to perform behaviors, withholding rewards until we get or improve behavior. Sometimes we see that the behavior is driven by fear and use rewards to change how the dog feels realizing that when the fear subsides the behavior attached to it is going to change as well. And importantly, for the handling and training of any dog, understanding we are also causing emotional responses to certain behaviors. How we behave with dogs, whether we shout, yank, hit, ignore, shock, praise or reward, affects how they feel about particular behaviors, not to mention how they feel about us.

Dog's Dance

I was reading a blog recently written by a woman who confessed that though she had not always been a dog lover, she now had to greet every dog she saw. If that is truly the case I hope we never cross paths. My dogs don’t necessarily want to greet every human they meet. Even my fabulously social and cuter-than-buttons cocker spaniels began to hide under my chair when sitting at an outside cafe in Provincetown and they couldn’t take one more person cooing over them. I understand that people’s behavior is coming from a place that is essentially good, but it’s also often only essentially good for them.
At a large pet event I watched as a dog trainer, who seemed like a lovely, kind person, took the leash from a woman who had brought along a young dog she was fostering. Walking away with the dog the trainer began to gently manipulate the dog into heeling position and a sit. This was occurring in a function room with high ceilings, hundreds of people, tables, chairs and even ferrets. I watched as this sweet, stressed dog complied with the requests being made of her. Even if the trainer and dog had met before it could only have been the equivalent of a first date and here the trainer was asking the dog to hop into bed with them. The dog to her credit did the best she could. I was desperately trying to figure out the point of the exercise.
Was the trainer trying to impart some skills to the foster care giver? To the dog? It sure wasn’t a teachable moment as far as I could tell. Was the trainer trying to show off their skills? Even if only gently pushing down on a dog’s hind end and lifting up their tail to get it to sit works, I was far more impressed with the dog than the trainer. It was loud enough in the room that I had to lean closer to people speaking to me and crowded enough that people brushed by as they maneuvered past. I can’t imagine what the dog, with senses more sensitive than my own, was experiencing. But I tried. I tried to imagine the world at that moment from the dog’s perspective. A dog who had not only never been in a place like this before, was a dog in transition.
The experience likely did not cause any damage to this resilient and tolerant dog but I continued to wonder why two people who were obviously caring, kind, gentle dog lovers, would take the risk of putting a dog into a situation in which she might be continuously pushed toward being overwhelmed. The only conclusion I could come to was that they were unaware of what the dog was trying to say. I’d like to think they’d care, if they had taken a moment to pay attention to what the dog was asking for with her slight resistance, look-aways, attempts at avoidance, or in one case flopping to the ground.
Fortunately most dogs are resilient and adaptable. They manage to learn and cope despite how we handle them, not because of how we handle them. Some of that handling may even contribute to their ability to cope with extremes, but some dogs may not benefit and become anxious or negatively reactive. If we really and truly love and care about dogs why don’t more of us inquire as to whether a dog would like to add us to their dance card or sit this one out before we drag them onto the dance floor?

Helping fearful dogs

During a seminar I suggested that people with fearful dogs reward their dogs for moving away from what scares them. Did I mean reward them for trying to flee? For many this flies in the face of what their goal for the dog is. Don’t we want to get dogs closer to what scares them? Well, yes, and no.
Working with any dog is a process and throughout that process the dog’s behavior changes, at least that’s what we’re hoping for. But sometimes the changes are not necessarily what we’d like. As a fearful dog gains confidence we may see happy, eager to engage behavior toward a trigger. Or we may see a dog who with some confidence discovers that they are more willing to be assertive and express what they truly feel, which for some dogs is, GET AWAY FROM ME! It’s that ‘get away from me’ behavior that can become dangerous for a dog and whatever they are concerned about.
Unless you know with surety that a fearful dog is going to end up loving a trigger, you take a risk whenever you encourage them to get closer to it. Early on with Sunny I used to take him for off leash walks on a wooded trail near town. When people appeared he would run off into the woods, sometimes barking. As time went on he became bolder and I remember thinking how much progress he was making when he no longer chose to run off into the woods, but instead followed after people for a bit. But I also remember having a flash of doubt at what was really going on. Was he truly just investigating them? Was that head lift toward the jacket tied around their waist a sniff or had he tried to get his mouth on it? Because he had never shown any aggressive behavior toward me or my husband, nor had any of the people who had handled him previously mentioned aggression, it was not a consideration I kept in the front of my mind. I do now.
I am not suggesting that we never work with our dogs to increase their comfort level when in closer proximity to their triggers. It’s how we go about it that matters. Suzanne Clothier’s treat/retreat technique provides dogs with the opportunity to practice moving closer to a trigger while never removing the option to move away from it. When we take the option to move away from something scary, a dog may hunker down and suck it up, hating every second of it, some may be ok with it and figure out that it’s not as horrible as they expected it would be, but there will be some who will respond aggressively in order to make the exposure end. Don’t ever eliminate ‘move away’ from a dog’s repertoire of behavior choices.
Ultimately our dogs need to learn skills for dealing with what scares them, if only peripherally. But how we get them there matters. The ability to decrease proximity between themselves and a trigger is not necessarily proof of success. You may be willing to go into work and pick up your paycheck and still hate your boss. Or the work you do. People are not the only animals that can go ‘postal‘.