Between now and the next Pause to Practice, we will cover Needs:

• What does your puppy need and how do you know?
• How needs lead to problems
• Frustration Tolerance
• Food puzzles
• Training: Targeting a Post-It or yoghurt lid
• Training: Crate

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“You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes, well you just might find
You get what you need”

– The Rolling Stones

WHAT DOES YOUR PUPPY NEED and HOW DO YOU KNOW?

When we bring a dog into our home, we become his caretaker. Simply by having the dog in human society, in our homes or on our property, we have taken away many of the ways that dogs are able to meet their own needs. Just like caretakers at a modern zoo, our roles as canine caretakers is to provide ways for dogs meet their needs. In this lesson, I have split dogs’ needs into the following categories.

• Safety and comfort
• Survival of the species/social group (reproduction)
• Food/Water Intake
• Food/Water Outlet
• Family / Social Interaction
• Other Environmental Enrichment

After this video, I’ll comment a bit on each category above.

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Safety means both physical and emotional safety. With our puppies, that means only having them in situations that they can handle, and working as quickly as possible to help them feel comfortable in a variety of situations. It’s our responsibility to provide and prepare our dogs for grooming required for health and comfort (like tooth brushing and nail trimming for all breeds and fur brushing or even trimming for some breeds) and veterinary care, including vaccinations to prevent disease. Vaccines save lives, but they are not entirely benign. Don’t skip necessary vaccines, but also look into whether a particular vaccine is really needed for your dog’s lifestyle and location.

Physical exercise is primarily in the safety category, because insufficient exercise is a health risk. We must do so in a safe way, however, like training a solid recall and using a leash and harness near traffic. It also means not letting them run off leash toward on-leash dogs, and also removing the leash (if it’s safe) or leaving the area if a loose dog comes to them. I cringe whenever I see a poor puppy on a leash surrounded by dogs. No matter how friendly the dogs are, it’s quite scary for the puppy, who has nowhere to go. He’s like bait on a rope. If the area is enclosed and the dogs are friendly and well socialized, you might choose to let your puppy off-leash. Otherwise, it’s probably best to move on and avoid the stress.

Part of physical safety is protection from the elements, with my preference being that the dog lives indoors, with the family. Puppies need more sleep than adult dogs. Adults may sleep 12 to 16 hours each day, so a 3-month old puppy would need more like 15 or 20 hours per day. Puppies need a chance to consolidate memories made, so please set up your puppy’s world so that he gets plenty of rest. That means paying attention to where his sleeping areas are, keeping children out of there, etc. After exciting play times, don’t just leave the puppy all revved up. Do something to help him relax afterwards.

The individual dog needs to be safe, but the species and the family also need to survive. Humans know that dogs are doing pretty well as a species, and in fact we have more dogs than we can care for. Not every dog needs to breed. But it is our responsibility to encourage breeders to select mentally and physically sound dogs that thrive in human care. I’m on my soapbox here, but we owe our dogs a good future as a species and that means we need to stop breeding for looks at the expense of sanity and health.

Food and water need to go in and out of your dog’s system on a regular basis. Nutrition is beyond the scope of this course, but do pay attention to the food that goes into your puppy’s body. A dog’s diet has an effect on energy levels, overall health, lifespan, receptivity to training, and even can contribute to anxiety and other behavioral issues. Water should be available to your puppy and never withdrawn as punishment. Make sure you have water available when the puppy is alone, rather than taking it up to avoid the need to urinate.

For food and water to get out of your dog’s body in a way that you don’t mind, your dog needs regular walks or access to the outdoors. Leaving your puppy outside all day, however, may introduce him to certain things he’s not able to handle, like teasing children. He may learn to bark at passersby because he is afraid of them or is trying to get their attention. The same applies to a dog door. It’s better than an accident on your floor, but it’s less risky to take the puppy out regularly, have someone stop by to give potty walks, or have pads or papers near your door for times when the puppy can’t hold it.

According to the Association of Zoos and Aquariums article on enrichment, environmental enrichment is “the dynamic process for enhancing animal environments within the context of the animals’ behavioral biology and natural history.” Environmental enrichment is basically about giving the animals a chance to make choices that matter.

AZA writes, “Environmental changes are made with the goal of increasing the animals’ behavioral choices and drawing out their species-appropriate behaviors, thus enhancing animal welfare.” Enrichment includes natural social groupings to promote social interaction, as well as sensory enrichment, food enrichment, and training. We can do a lot of this with our dogs. For example:

• Having more than one dog in your home (not always possible or advisable)
• Play dates or walks with other dogs
• Learning to understand our dogs’ behavior
• Early socialization with many dogs outside of the family, so that your dog understands how to communicate with his own species (and wants to)
• Not continuously training (allow natural behaviors and choices whenever possible)
• Going for walks in places with interesting smells, surfaces, etc.
• Food puzzles of various complexity (more on that later in this lecture)
• More odors, puzzles, sounds, etc. if dog is housebound
• Training that serves a purpose for the dog (focus on behaviors that help the dog)

Those are all needs that dogs might have. In the moment, your dog may have a particular need or even a want. We already spoke about 2-way communication in the first lesson. Have these needs in mind when you observe your dog’s behavior or ask him a question. Teach specific behavior that helps him communicate his wants and needs.

HOW NEEDS LEAD TO PROBLEMS

My laptop is stubborn. It insists on shutting down, even though it knows how much I appreciate it working and that I need it to stay on while I type this lesson for you. I can plead, shout, and buy some time by turning down the brightness, but in the end, only plugging my computer into power will stop this unwanted behavior. Fortunately, I have alternatives. If I leave it plugged in before I use it, I can work for hours without this problem behavior. By meeting the computer’s needs in a way that works with my schedule, we’re both happy.

We can do this with our dogs, too. I believe that most of the problems people have with their dogs is due to unmet needs.

I created the need categories by listing all of the problems that people have brought me over the years as a dog trainer. Let’s take a look at each of the categories and what kinds of “problem behaviors” are really just attempts to meet that need. These are not the ONLY ways these behaviors arise, and some problems are neurological, but you can pretty much always track a behavior back to some need not being met.

Safety

• Pulling away or toward something
• Lagging behind on walks (toward home)
• Barking, growling, biting, etc. (dog feels unsafe, in pain, or just hasn’t had enough sleep)
•  “Ignoring” owner during training (sniffing ground when given a “command” – happens less with cues)
• Overexcitement, trouble concentrating (not enough exercise, not enough sleep)

Survival of the species/social group

• Pulling / running away
• Mounting
• Aggression
• Barking at the door

Food / Water Intake

• Chewing
• Resource guarding toys or food
• Stealing human items
• Chasing cats, squirrels, etc.
• Barking at owner

Food / Water Outlet

• Eliminating inside
• Pulling on leash

Social Interaction

• Jumping / Licking
• Other attention-seeking behavior
• Pulling toward other dogs or people
• Boredom barking (repetitive woof, woof, woof…, woof, woof, woof,…)
• Howling, lack of appetite, and/or exit destruction when alone

Other Environmental Enrichment

• Puppy biting
• Chewing / “Stealing”
• Pulling toward smells or other interesting things
• Running away
• Stereotypic (repetitive) behavior
• Shut down (non-behavior)

The behavior we consider to be a problem is just the dog’s attempt to get what he wants or needs. If he knew another reasonable way to get it that would also make us happy, he would likely do it. We might also be able to get rid of the need instead of meeting it, as with neutering males who wander to find females in season. There’s a section in the Ahimsa Dog Training manual on Functional Rewards. I’ll summarize it here:

Teach appropriate behavior by blocking the reinforcement for behavior you don’t want and reinforce behavior you do want with the consequences the dog is looking for, not just random reinforcers.

By directing our training and care toward helping dogs meet their needs, we can avoid a whole giant list of problems. A lot of what we teach them meets OUR need to feel that we are communicating with or controlling our dogs. Historically, people have come up with harsher and harsher punishments when the dog is “stubborn” or (better) come up with higher and higher valued reinforcers to motivate change. But dogs already want things; that’s where most of the problems come from in the first place. If we teach dogs good ways to control their environment (including us, some of the time), we actually end up having more control than if we constantly have to work against the flow.

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