Please keep working with your dog on all of the activities you learned in the course. You can keep working and check back here any time.
If you haven’t already signed up for membership, consider doing so because it is a great way to stay motivated. One thing members get is access to Grisha’s ABBA Facebook group. You can post videos and ask/answer questions in a discussion with your fellow ABBA members. The group is moderated by our teaching staff to keep the conversations on track.
The ability to keep arousal low and respond without frustration are more important than tricks and other showy things. Focus on skills that improve your dog’s quality of life.
Keep filming your training sessions so that you can look back to see how far you have come. As you review your videos over time, focus on where your dog has improved, how you have improved, and what your dog can do now that wasn’t possible at some point in the past.
Distress is minimized when there is both predictability and control. Help your dog understand what to do in specific situations by reinforcing that behavior in a timely way and also by giving a specific and clear cue for the situation.
There are more cues than just your words or hand signals. Your body language, the location, the odors, the equipment around, what you are wearing, all of that is part of the context for the dog. It all helps him know what kind of behavior you’re looking for in that particular situation.
When your dog offers the ‘wrong’ behavior, it may be because of an unclear signal. So maybe you have always said, “Sit” and moved your hand at the same time. In competition, you try saying only. “Sit,” and your dog does nothing. He’s not stubborn, it’s just that the word “sit” is not the signal your dog has been paying attention to; he’s been looking at your hand.
Similarly, if you reinforce multiple behaviors with the one cue, that’s also confusing, particularly when you are picky sometimes and other times generous. If you make your signals more reliable, your dog will be less confused and more responsive.
“WHAT WORKS HERE?”
As I mentioned earlier in this course and even in this lecture, controllability helps reduce stress and frustration. Knowing when something is out of your control, when no reinforcer is possible, for example, is also useful. That’s where our All Done cue comes in handy. It tells dogs when reinforcement is no longer available.
HOW TO ADD PREDICTABILITY TO YOUR DOG’S LIFE
Look at things from your dog’s perspective this week. What things do you think she is not sure about, in terms of what is going to happen or what she should do?
You just got up from the couch. Are you leaving the house? Going to the kitchen?
Are we going for a walk?
Or am I staying home?
Am I going outside?
Is it mealtime?
For the love of Dog, when are you going to feed me?!
Are you trying to escape through the bathroom or will you be coming back?
Is it my bath time?
Do I get to say hi to that dog this time or not?
May I clean out that bowl?
May I get up on the bed tonight?
Some of the times we can handle the predictability by just never having that event come to pass. For example, you could say that your dog will never get to greet other dogs when on leash or will never clean off your dinner plates. But if you are going to allow it some of the time and not others, help your dog out by giving her a crystal clear signal of when it will happen and when it won’t.
When we act in a consistent way, our dogs are able to predict when good things will happen to them, when aversive things like blood draws must happen to them, and when they do and do not have control over these events.
A lot of the frustration behavior that we see from dogs comes from an inability to predict what will happen to them, and when. There are multiple types of predictability, including temporal predictability (an event happens at a certain time of day or after a set duration) and signaled predictability (a stimulus precedes the event).
When animals are given the option of choosing between predictable and unpredictable aversive or appetitive events, the opt for predictability. This doesn’t mean there is no stress if they know shock is coming, but they are able to handle it more easily, in the short term, if they know it’s coming. In particular, what seems to be the most useful is to know when something IS NOT going to happen. This applies to both appetitive experiences (like snack time) and aversive experiences (like cleaning a bird’s cage).
Bassett & Buchanan-Smith (2007) have an intriguing collection of information in their survey paper discussing predictability and humane care. One thing that jumped out at me was a summary of Carlstead’s 1986 work, which demonstrated that unreliable signaling can lead to frustration behavior at mealtimes. Here’s an example at mealtime with pigs. Does it sound familiar?
Carlstead manipulated the signalled predictability of feeding by changing the reliability of signals (in the form of a bell) announcing the arrival of food to pigs. Food was delivered, from an automated hopper, on an unpredictable temporal schedule with the bell being the only information available to the pigs concerning the onset of feeding. The animals initially received food preceded by reliable signals. However, when these signals became unreliable, low predictability was found to be associated with frustration, which led to aggression and increased competition for food.
In a second experiment, pigs consistently receiving unreliable feeding signals showed a significant increase in aggressive interactions, mainly following unexpected disturbances in the environment. The author suggests that this increase was because pigs exposed to unreliable feeding signals treated these unexpected environmental noises as potential feeding signals. The failure of these ‘signals’ to be followed by food led to increased frustration and aggression. This did not occur in pigs which received reliable signals, however, as there was only one unmistakable signal associated with feeding, and therefore unexpected noises were not responded to as unreliable indicators of feeding time.
Also of note: when something is predictable and then stops being so, it’s even more frustrating than if there is no predictability in the first place. Ponder that in terms of rehoming, board and train, or people who attend classes and then stop doing so.
If you are a trainer, really get that message of predictability across to your clients. If you learn nothing else from this course, please learn this big: help your dog feel a sense of control and predictability, and you’ll eliminate most, if not all, of your issues.
Here’s a list of recommendations from Bassett & Buchanan-Smith (2007). [Click here for their full paper, “Effects of predictability on the welfare of captive animals.”]
Recommendations for animal management and husbandry
There should be a thorough evaluation of both positive and negative husbandry and management routines in terms of temporal and (often unintentional) signaled predictability, and welfare should be assessed prior to positive and negative events.
If possible, negative (aversive) events should be made temporally predictable, and any unreliable (often unintentional) signals should be removed where feasible.
A unique and reliable signal to indicate the onset of an aversive event should also be introduced to decrease stress, but the beneficial effects should be scientifically demonstrated before widespread practice is adopted. Care must be taken to ensure the signal only refers to the individual for whom the event will take place, and not be a (unreliable) signal for the whole group.
Training animals can be a useful management tool to provide improved care of captive animals. Positive reinforcement training increases the control and predictability the animals have and should be used to provide welfare benefits. [This is where the More Please Signal comes in]
Every effort should be made to avoid delays to events occurring on a (usually) reliable temporally predictable schedule, as delays (loss of temporal predictability) have a negative impact on welfare.
Food-Anticipatory Activity (some of which is undesirable) is primarily seen with animals which are food restricted (and fed on a predictable schedule), constituting an additional welfare concern to this practice.
If possible, temporally unpredictable feeding should be introduced (although note that the benefits have only been demonstrated in a limited range of species). Unreliable signals relating to feeding should be eliminated if possible, and a unique reliable signal introduced.
The good news is that means we don’t have to feed at the same exact time every day, we just need to have a way for our dogs to predict when it’s happening. The more control they have over the process, the better. For example if your dog gets that food by foraging in the yard or by waiting patiently in a stay as you prepare the meal, it will be less stressful than just hopping around and barking in frustration.
Another piece of information on predictability that might be interesting comes from a study of fish (Vindas, et al., 2014). The smaller fish in the group are generally “submissive” in the sense that they give others priority access to food or other recourses if there is a conflict. The smaller fish were split into two groups. The experimental group was basically frustrated before an encounter with a larger fish in a contest for food. The frustration was created by having a signal that normally predicted food NOT lead to food that time. The control group was not frustrated in this way prior to the encounter. There was significantly more aggression from the smaller fish who had been frustrated first.
Keep this in mind in terms of resource guarding between dogs. Predictability is your friend in multi-dog households. When you’re handing out treats, for example, say the name of the dog who is going to receive it. This becomes a signal to that dog that food is coming, but is also a signal to the others that the food is not for them. It’s predictable.
Resources
Bassett, L., & Buchanan-Smith, H. M. (2007). Effects of predictability on the welfare of captive animals. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 102(3), 223-245.
Vindas, M. A., Johansen, I. B., Vela-Avitua, S., Nørstrud, K. S., Aalgaard, M., Braastad, B. O., & Øverli, Ø. (2014). Frustrative reward omission increases aggressive behaviour of inferior fighters. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 281(1784), 201403.
Continue conditioning relaxation and training the On/Off Switch as time allows.
Practice Silky Leash with your dog. Use the back of the harness for the attachment rather than the collar shown in the videos. Use either Slide or the light steady pressure shown in the video (just enough to lift the leash clip). Work at your dog’s pace.
Do a BAT Set-up with your dog, using something/someone that your dog wants to get to as the trigger. If you can’t get a dog or person helper, you can use a treat bag or toy on the ground or a table. I recommend filming and looking at your dogs body language. Actually write it out for yourself. Pay attention to where you use Mark and Move versus the “regular” BAT 2.0 set-up. Think about where there is room for improvement in your technique, especially any times you accidentally lead your dog toward the trigger.
Be sure to not mix up your BAT practice and Silky Leash practice. You should not need to move the dog around much during your BAT set-up. Most of it will be done just by following your dog, and if you do a Slow Stop, you will then Relax the Leash right away, not waiting for her to do so as you would in Silky Leash.
TRAINING: SILKY LEASH TECHNIQUE FOR LOOSE LEASH WALKING
Silky Leash is not part of BAT, it is a technique for leash walking. It teaches a dog to pay attention to the feeling of very light pressure on the harness. Any time we can use body language or verbal cues to get the dog to move with us, that’s better, but sometimes there ends up being information passed down the leash, and this technique helps it happen clearly, without pain or pressure.
Here are some clips of me doing Silky Leash many years ago. Now that I pretty much always use harnesses when walking any dog, I would do this technique on the back of a harness instead. You can also do this with Slide on the leash versus doing any actual gripping of the leash. That may help you use the appropriate amount of pressure, which should be so tiny that it barely puts the leash in a straight line between you and your dog.
The feeling of the leash should not be something the dog is working to avoid. It should be so light that he notices it and only happens to move in the direction you want. As he is reinforced for the movement, your dog will learn to move that way on purpose.
For the videos below I talk about using a flat collar for this. This is an older video. I prefer that all dogs walk on harnesses now, so I’d recommend doing this on your dog’s harness. You can also use the Slide leash skill from BAT, and reinforce when your dog notices.
So what is Silky Leash? That’s the name I’ve given to a technique first brought to my attention by the online posts of Shirley Chong, an amazing clicker trainer. For the Silky Leash method, think of guiding your dog along with a single strand of silk. The basic idea is to put the tiniest bit of pressure on the leash and reward the dog for moving toward the leash. Dogs, like human toddlers, have a strong opposition reflex: if you pull on them, they will pull away. Silky Leash isn’t about pulling the dog around, but it teaches her that any light pressure on the leash is a signal to move in that direction, rather than a trap from which she must escape.
Silky Leash has several steps. You will need to really follow this technique to the letter to teach your dog to notice the lightest flutter of your leash, even around big distractions. Until things are going really well using the Silky leash method, clip your leash to the front ring of a harness for your walks or attach a double-ended leash to the front ring and the collar, using only Silky Leash flutters for the back of the harness.
There are two students here—you are learning to give instructions by leash very softly and your dog is learning to listen to them. If things aren’t working, examine both students! Stay at each step below until your dog is responding quickly.
As your dog gets better at this, you’ll start to practice on real walks, but at first, you will set up the whole situation so you have full control. In the meantime, walk your dog in a harness or some other type of temporary gear on any walks (or parts of walks) where your dog might pull.
Step 1. Sitting in a Tiny Room—dog takes one step. With a hungry dog in a tiny, non-distracting area, like a bathroom or exercise pen, set up a chair for you and have the clicker in your hand and treats accessible. I usually have treats in a pouch and the clicker and leash in the same hand (my right). The leash is attached to harness–whatever you eventually want to walk your dog on. The room should be small enough that when you sit in the chair, your dog cannot pull—the walls are closer than the length of the leash.
If a friend had a collar around your neck and she wanted your attention, you wouldn’t want her to yank on the leash. Your dog agrees! Pretend that you have a raw egg in your palm, with the leash wrapped around it. Say the amount of pressure your normally put on your dog to stop him is 100; what we’re looking for here is about 1 (so one percent of what you’d use to stop your dog).
Put a tiny, tiny bit of pressure on the leash, just enough to straighten it out. Keep the pressure low and wait. If your dog pulls away from the pressure, let your hand go with him, so that the pressure stays constant. Eventually, as your dog is not a frozen statue, and the room is small, he will move in the direction of the pull and the pressure will lower.
The clasp of the leash will probably dip down. Click and treat. If you are tired of waiting, you may vibrate the leash, just as a tiny chick’s heart flutters. After each click/treat, give your dog a few seconds to pause and then put pressure on the leash again. I hesitate to use the word “pull” here because that sounds a lot more forceful than what you should be doing. Repeat, repeat, repeat.
Step 2. Sitting in a Tiny Room—dog takes two or more steps. Now you raise your criteria. Instead of just one step to ease off the pressure, we want more, about twice as far as your dog moved before! Remember that you are not trying to drag the dog around, but rather saying to the dog, “Move this way until I signal you to stop.” You aren’t putting enough pressure on the leash to make the dog move, just enough to signal that you’d like him to.
What you’ll do is just apply pressure a little longer than before. So you pull lightly on the leash (no harder than before, remember, this is your friend!) and when the dog moves toward the pressure, move slightly away from him, so the pressure stays constant. As he takes the second step, stop pulling away. The leash pressure will become zero again and you’ll click/treat. Repeat many times.
Shirley Chong wrote, “At this stage, it may well take the dog a while to notice the cue and respond. That is perfectly okay. For dogs who have been pulling for a period of time (YEARS for some of them!), it is going to take them awhile to re-calibrate what it is that they pay attention to.” Be patient with your dog!
Remember, we’re teaching your hands to be gentler, too. How are you doing? J
Step 3. Sitting in a Tiny Room—dog walks in a circle. If your dog is tall, you may have to stand for this step, but sit if you can. The goal for this step is to get your dog to move in a full circle cued only by leash pressure. Repeat Step 2, but now just wait longer and longer before clicking—ease off on the pressure later and later. Try both directions.
Step 4. Sitting in a Tiny Room—dog walks in a figure 8. Now we make the dog work a bit harder (and you!) by trying for a figure 8. Remember, you still want to have the finish be that the dog successfully got the pressure to go away and you click/treat for that. The main lesson here for the dog is that the pressure means something and that something is—go in the direction of the pull until it stops. Dogs have a natural reflex to go OPPOSITE of pulling, so we’re fighting against that.
Step 5. Walking in a Slightly Bigger Room—Follow the Leader. You’ll take turns playing follow the leader. Remember, we still don’t want a sudden jolt of pressure, so you may need to follow your dog (gasp) during this time. This is the one situation where I allow dogs to pull. The room should still be fairly boring, so they don’t want to pull a lot and small enough that you can follow them with constant pressure.
If things go awry at this stage, you probably didn’t practice the earlier steps enough times.
So you follow your dog for a while (no pressure) and then put a tiny bit of pressure on your dog. Click/treat when he eases up on the pressure (right away—no figure 8’s yet). If he walks into the pressure (i.e., pulls), follow him so that the pressure stays constant. Remember, this is supposed to be a smallish, boring room. Alternate back and forth between following him and then using a feather-light pressure to cue him to follow you. Gradually extend the number of steps your dog has to do before you allow the leash to go slack and then click and treat.
Step 6. Walking in a Slightly Bigger Area—Follow the Leader continues. This is where you head out to the yard. If you don’t have a yard, you might ask to use someone else’s house or an exercise pen that you’ve set up at a park, at least for the distractions. You want an area that you can still keep up with your dog in, so that may require cardboard boxes or ex-pens or something to make the area smaller. You can get fairly cheap temporary construction fencing from hardware stores.
Now you’ll be “practicing having your dog do turns, zig zags, serpentines and circles while you walk relatively straight within the confines of your area.” You are still clicking and treating your dog, as we’ve raised the criteria. If this setting is too distracting, practice more of this on Step 5 first. Don’t worry if your dog is distracted some of the time; that gives you a chance to flutter the leash and click/treat for him heading in your direction.
Remember that we’re imagining the leash to be a silken thread. It takes two to pull! You’ll still need to follow your dog if he heads off so you can keep the pressure constant and occasionally flutter.
You should still be walking your dog using a front-clip harness if your dog might pull you strongly. If he is at the end of a walk and is not likely to pull, go ahead and attach the leash the spot where you’d want to eventually walk all the time, like the back of the harness.
Step 7. The Real World. Now you’re ready for the big time. Continue to have soft hands, flutter your silky leash, and click/treat whenever your dog follows your cue. I would start with adding a few more distractions at a time, and walk in a place where it’s easy to go in any direction, rather than only two. In the best of all worlds, you’d be able to walk right past any distraction. At first, though, you may have to do a lot of “Transitions.”
Transitions are turns and speed changes.
Big distraction up ahead? Flutter the leash and take a right turn, take a wide arc around the distraction, or gradually turn away and retreat. Click/treat your dog for following each cue. Super-big distraction? You might want to clip the leash back to the harness for that one.
Over time, you’ll need to make fewer transitions and you’ll be clicking less and less as your dog gains confidence and skill. You’ll also be using more “real world” rewards, like squirrels in trees. The less your dog has practiced pulling before you started, the faster this process of weaning off of the treats will be.
More from Shirley Chong: “When walking your dog, remember the training principle of determining what your dog wants as a reinforcer and using that thing. If your dog wants to investigate the tree that the squirrel ran up, go there using transitions as needed; when you finally arrive, encourage your dog to investigate the tree.”
Keep it up, wean off of the treats, and do NOT let your dog practice pulling on the goal attachment (like the back clip) in between sessions. Remember, your dog is always learning. Shirley writes, “And then everyone will tell you ‘well, it’s easy for you, your dog just never pulls!’ You can just smile and mentally add the truth: your dog never pulls because you never pull.”
When I first developed BAT (that’s BAT 1.0), the technique was done differently based on two categories, where the functional reward here is the consequence gained by showing the reactive behavior:
Functional Reward = Moving toward the trigger
Functional Reward = Moving away from the trigger
I came up with the term “Frustrated Greeter” for those dogs whose functional reward was to approach the trigger and when they got there, they were friendly (but maybe inept). Having joined the No Labels movement, I now no longer use that term, but when I speak of dogs whose behavior fits that category, I say “dogs with frustration issues” or I talk about the barking/lunging from a distance as a “frustrated greeting.”
The BAT 1.0 technique for frustration was then to basically do Mark and Move (a BAT 2.0 term) but rather than moving away from the trigger, you’d mark and take a step closer to the trigger, since that’s what the dog most likely wants. This was indeed reinforcing (it’s the Premack principle, after all) and it worked in many cases but in some cases it would cause more arousal for the same reasons listed above where I say we shouldn’t lead the dog toward the trigger. I find that the current way of doing BAT for frustration is mellower and works more quickly.
As I’ve said before, if you want your dog to look like any other “boring” dog around various triggers, she needs to practice being boring (not bor-ed, though). So BAT 2.0, which is the relaxed exploration of an area, even with a trigger in the space, fits that model perfectly.
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Training: Silky Leash Technique for Loose Leash Walking
BAT SET-UP FOR FRUSTRATION
The BAT set-ups for frustration look pretty much the same as they do for anything else. Work in an enriched environment and follow the dog, but a Slow Stop or walk to the side if the dog starts to walk directly at the trigger or is on the verge of overarousal. For example, if the dog is wearing a heart rate monitor and I see the rate going up, I might walk to the side, do a Slow Stop, or reduce the level of exciting activity from the Helper.
Here’s a reminder of what BAT set-ups look like.
[vc_video link=”https://vimeo.com/121320538″]
[vc_video link=”https://vimeo.com/135890732″]
There are small differences, however, when you’re focusing on frustration. When I’m sure that the motivation is frustration, I will do Mark and Move for longer during greetings. Here’s an example of Mark and Move.
I’m more likely to switch to working mode, meaning that I might use more of the other techniques that we already spoke of in this class: On/Off Switch, Premack principle, and straight clicker training for attention, heel, etc. But even with dogs who have frustration, I prefer working without all of that extra clutter, if possible, so the dog is clearly learning about the social situation at hand. He’s learning to pay attention to the signals of the other dog or person, for example, and navigating using social behavior.
I am likely to use Mark and Move for longer with frustration, because that last 10 feet or so is extra “magnetic,” by which I mean that the dog is really, really interested in getting in for a sniff or to play and has a hard time being casual unless there’s another obvious motivator for moving away or being relaxed.
With any BAT set-up, we want to work in an enriched environment to help keep arousal down. Even if the emotion is frustration and not fear or panic, I still want to avoid it, to help the dog make clear choices. Your best option is to find a natural environment that has plenty of interesting odors. Walk at the edges of the field instead of the center or find an area with trees and bushes in it. You can also do a more artificial “parallel play” type activity by have mellow activity stations in the area, like dog-friendly spices/odors on the grass, boxes with treats inside, or parmesan cheese Sprinkles. That way, the dog can choose to do that other activity instead of being solely 100% driven to get to the other dog.
Set your dog up for success by exercising your dog in advance and doing something calming before and during breaks like finding treats (hidden in advance) or doing a massage (good time to use your relaxation cue if you have one). When I filmed the new BAT 2.0 Set-Ups DVD, I worked with a dog that had a very hard time settling. We did a series of recalls up and down a hill and then walked him a bit before the BAT set-up to him relax. That worked wonders.
Move slowly. Set the tone by being relaxed.
If the slow pace frustrates your dog, make the local area more interesting for exploration and/or move the trigger farther away. If that still doesn’t work and the dog has already had exercise, You can switch to doing Mark and Move for a bit. When reinforcing, scatter the treats so that the dog investigates the area.
When you start to get up close with a live trigger, switch into following versus having a stationary trigger, at least at first. Use Mark and Move when they get to the point of sniffing the other dog or person. Gradually allow longer and longer greetings before you Mark, Move away, and reinforce, then allow the dog to return if she wants.
Even though a purely frustrated dog (if there is such a thing) does not always want to go forward. When you first start working, you can do really big zig zags with your dog toward the trigger until he notices it. But once your dog is aware of the trigger, be sure not to lead your dog toward the trigger, even doing Mark and Move. This is the same as with any other kind of BAT.
“Even with frustration? WHY?”
Well there are many reasons especially relevant to frustration, but here are 4:
Dogs who only want to approach the trigger without reservation are few and far between. A lot of “frustration” cases I see are actually a mix of frustration and fear.
If your dog is paying attention to the other dog, her timing of when to move forward may be better than yours. She’s a native speaker in that conversation.
If your dog actually IS showing some self-control and is pausing instead of rushing at the trigger, you’ll probably just override that by moving forward. You’re a bad influence, so to speak.
You’re getting her to move forward without really thinking, exactly when we are trying to teach a thoughtful approach.
Write out your dog’s top 3 “problem behaviors” – behaviors you want her/him to stop doing. What needs or wants do they satisfy for your dog? Is there another way your dog could get those needs met? Put this list on your refrigerator and make any changes that might be helpful.
Practice the On/Off Switch training using the Premack Principle.
Practice Speed Training on your walks.
The next lesson discusses BAT set-ups for frustration. You might want to schedule a set-up with a friend or trainer now so you can do it next week.
TRAINING: ON/OFF SWITCH WITH THE PREMACK PRINCIPLE
Your All Done cue is permission to go be a dog. Thinking in Premack terms, if there is something that your dog already wants to do in the environment, your All Done cue is permission to go do that. In other words, you can use All Done to reinforce behavior. Playing with a food puzzle or eating treats off the ground is a high probability behavior, so those of you who have carefully timed your All Done to when your dog is paying attention to you have been applying the Premack principle.
For your On/Off Switch training this week, work around a moderate distraction. It should be
Something your dog can go freely engage with (like another person, squirrel in a tree, etc.)
Distracting/valuable enough to your dog so that your dog will choose to do that instead of stick around with you once you’ve said All Done
Not so distracting that your dog won’t work with you for a bit
Go through this sequence:
Have 5 treats available. Value should be enough to keep the dog with you but not overpowering the activity so much that he won’t go to it when released. Have your dog work on something that involves focus with you. You can do the same attention activity that we’ve been doing or you can do something like a trick. For the last correct behavior, release him using All Done. If he just stares at you, help him understand that he can now go do the activity by walking in that direction.
Let him enjoy the distraction for several minutes. Repeat the above exercise with fewer treats each time: 4, 3, 2, 1, and then 0. A true use of Premack’s principle is to only have access to the activity as a reinforcer (so not the treats), but doing it this way allows you to get repetitions in more rapidly. If your dog is too excited to eat, work farther away from the distraction. If that’s not possible, keep him from getting to the distraction (fence, harness/leash, etc.) and then ask for a simple behavior and release/reinforce with All Done, granting access to the distraction.
TRAINING: SPEED TRAINING FOR LOOSE LEASH WALKING
One of the needs (or wants) that our four-legged friends have is to simply just walk faster. Humans are terribly slow. If you have walked off leash with your dog, then you know what her normal pattern of walking looks like. Dogs run, walk a bit, run, stop a bit, walk, and run more. If we recall Premack’s principle from above, being able to walk at the pace that your dog wants to walk is a big reinforcer.
So keeping in mind that your dog may also want to slow down or stop, let’s assume he wants to go more quickly than you on average.
This is meant for walking along a sidewalk or trail, not your meandering BAT walks in a field. The closer your dog gets to heel position, the faster you go. If you can run or jog with your dog when she is right beside you, so much the better. When she starts pulling ahead of you, slow down. If you’re close to losing your braking distance, use a Slide and Slow Stop so that she doesn’t suddenly come to a stop. If she just pulls on ahead, call her name or otherwise get her attention and then change direction. Let out some line as you go so that you don’t pull her.
So if your max speed is 100%, then when she’s in heel, you are at 100%. If she’s half of the leash length ahead of you, you are at 50%. If she stops, you are at 0% and if she starts pulling, you switch to -10% or so (going away from her), then when she comes along, that’s your new “forward” and you do the same as above.
If she stops to sniff or appears to want to walk more slowly, then by all means, let that happen.
Warning: I lost a good amount of weight doing this with Peanut, since it turned out that he was really great at heeling on hills when he was a teenager. You may also accidentally get into shape using this technique.
I’d like you to think about your dog’s unmet needs and also think about what needs ARE being met, but by behavior you don’t especially like.
[vc_video link=”https://vimeo.com/121209646″]
As you read through the following information from the Empowered Puppy Raising course, think about the times when your dog would be nodding along. Make two lists:
Needs that are not met at all
Needs that my dog meets in a way I don’t like
Put those up on your refrigerator and ponder ways to help meet your dog’s needs while still meeting your own.
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
I’ll comment a bit on each category above.
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, because it helps meet their social needs. 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 common needs that dogs 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)
Overexcitement, trouble concentrating (not enough exercise, not enough sleep)
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.
Training: On/Off Switch with the Premack Principle
Training: Speed Training for Loose Leash Walking
[vc_video link=”https://vimeo.com/126983905″]
USING THE PREMACK PRINCIPLE WISELY
Even though access to any high probably activity will reinforce any low probability behavior, we should be careful when we are trying to teach the dog a new behavior to replace one we don’t like. I think it’s easier to avoid frustration and craziness by choosing consequences that serve the dog’s original purpose. Use the reinforcer for the behavior that you’re trying to get rid of to reinforce the new behavior.
So yes, we can use toys to reinforce a dog for standing when you walk in instead of jumping up. Playing with the toy is a high probability activity and it will reinforce the lower probability behavior of standing. But if your dog was jumping up to get information about your day by sniffing your face, then the toy doesn’t meet his needs, it just redirects him to do something else. Permission to sniff and gather information is the main reinforcer to use here. I talk about this as a “functional reward” in the Ahimsa Dog Training Manual.
If you can find a high probability activity that is also a functional reward for the behavior that you want to change, use permission to do that activity as the reinforcer.
To recap: Look under the behavior to find the basic need or want that it satisfies. Use that to help you decide how and whether to use the Premack principle in a given situation. For example, with a dog who runs up to another dog to play, the need is to approach the other dog. Running directly at the other dog is not usually something we can allow, because it’s rude in dog language and the arousal level is too high, so the most obvious use of Premack’s principle doesn’t work.
But running is just one way to get closer. So while running there would probably be even more reinforcing, you can teach your dog that when he is on leash, approaching other dogs only happens in a polite arc at a slow pace that keeps the leash loose. Approaching the other dogs is the functional reward. Permission to do so can be granted if and only if your dog shows relaxed body language.
Begin to teach a More Please Signal for some grooming or vet care behavior (or something else you just want to do to your dog that dogs don’t usually like, like kissing her on the forehead).
Use Mark and Move on your walks this week. If you are already using a 15-foot leash, a clicker is too much to hold, so use a verbal marker, like Yes or a cue (Touch works well if it’s already trained up).
SEC On-Switch: I recommend that you combine Mark and Move with the SEC On Switch work that you did in the last Pause to Practice. Here’s what that looks like:
Casually hang out near your dog, like sitting on a bench reading a book. Occasionally have something visually change about the environment (person, other dog, etc. – see previous homework for a big list). This is the “trigger.”
Choose one of the following to mark (picking the most that your dog is capable of in that moment):
Engagement with the trigger (ear flick, eye turn, head turn, etc.)
Disengagement from the trigger (head turn away, movement away, etc.)
Attention to you (working mode)
You can mark with a verbal marker or clicker, but you can also mark with a cue, like the attention cue that you trained in the first On/Off Switch lesson. If you do that, use the cue to mark when your dog first looks at the trigger, then mark again with a verbal marker or clicker when your dog does that behavior. Move away and reinforce with something like a game of Find It. Go back to being casually near your dog.
If/when your dog looks at you after the treats, release with All Done (assuming it’s safe to do so). Wait at least a few minutes before repeating so that the trigger is at least something of a surprise.
David Premack was a psychologist and primate researcher who discovered a new kind of reinforcement in, shared in 1959. This principle is called Premack’s principle but is usually referred to as “the Premack Principle” in dog training. It’s also called the “relativity theory of reinforcement,” which I actually really like as a name. Everything is relative.
Here’s a small version of David Premack’s principle (“behavior” can replace “activity”).
High probability activities reinforce low probability activities
Or as I like to just say: “permission is a reinforcer.”
It turns out that having to do an actiivity that’s lower probability will punish the first behavior as well (make it less likely in the future). Like if every time you were on Facebook, you had to do your taxes, you’d probably be on Facebook a lot less.
There are other pieces to the principle but the bit about reinforcement is the part that we use the most in training. Premack’s theory is simple and yet very powerful, when put to use. Left to his own devices, what would be your dog’s most likely activities? Those are the high probability activities.
Access to those activities reinforces any behavior that’s not so likely in an untrained dog: waiting at the door, walking on a loose leash, sitting on cue, etc.
So any time you want to reinforce without food, think about Premack’s principle. If you can let your dog do an activity that they already do with greater frequency than the one you are trying to train, you’re in business. Grandma was using Premack’s principle when she said, “eat your peas and I’ll let you have dessert.”
We’ll talk more about this principle in the next lesson, but I want you thinking about the possibilities this week.
TRAINING: HAND TARGETING
Touch: With the Touch cue, your dog touches her nose to your hand. Touch is useful for getting your dog’s focus, for moving her from one place to another, for getting past distractions, and even getting your dog to come to you. Think about it. In order for your dog to touch her nose to your hand, she has to turn away from what she is doing and bring her nose to your hand. This automatically brings the rest of her body with her. It’s possibly THE most useful skill for a dog to have.
To teach Touch, start out with a treat and the clicker in one hand. You can have your target hand a flat hand or whatever you want, but I like to use two fingers as a target. Make a fist with your other hand, except put your pointer finger and middle finger out. That will be your visual cue for Touch. Present that hand to your dog. Your dog will then probably go toward your hand, expecting a treat. Ignore any pawing.
When she touches the hand with her nose, click and treat. While she’s eating, put your hand behind your back and then present it again when you’re ready to click and treat again. For some reason, it makes your hand brand-new and interesting again.
Do this several times before saying a cue. Once she’s got the hang of it, and you’re relatively sure she will touch your hand, start saying Touch right before you put your hand out. Continue to click and treat for touches.
If your dog stares at you and doesn’t touch the hand, then either wait her out or put your hand behind your back and bring it back out again. Don’t lean into her or stare (that’s a bit scary). Your hand may also look like a hand signal you’ve already been giving her. If that’s the case, change this to a new signal—hand flat, only one finger, etc. If she is biting your hand rather than gently touching with her nose, make sure you aren’t clicking for the bite. Click sooner to reward her before her mouth opens, or click later, waiting for her mouth to close before clicking.
Begin to move the target a bit, so your dog has to walk a step or two to touch your hand.
Your exercise this week is to alternate between Touch and Find It. So when you click for your dog touching your hand, say Find It and toss a treat on the floor for your dog to find. Start with an easy location and build up to tossing it several dog-lengths away. I do this for two reasons:
It moves the dog away and sets you up for another Touch, automatically building distance into the Touch cue.
Find It is probably my second favorite cue for dogs to know. You can use it as a distraction, to reduce stress, and for physical and mental exercise.
Note: if your dog is not familiar with Touch, keep quiet and don’t say the Touch cue until the behavior is reliable. You can, however, immediately use the word Find It, because that is already a highly likely behavior and you can make it happen by walking near the treat or tapping it with your foot if your dog really isn’t getting it. Try not to do the dog’s work for her…let her find it!
If your dog already is great at the Touch cue, increase the difficulty level by practicing around a bigger distraction. After 5 marked/treated Touches, mark the last one and release your dog go check out the distraction, using your All Done cue (and then maybe walking or pointing toward the distraction, if needed). Pop Quiz: what principle are we using here?
In short, you basically mark some behavior (click, yes, done?, etc.), move away, and give a reinforcer.
Mark and Move has an added benefit for dogs with frustration issues who want to run over to other dogs, for example. It reinforces the behavior that was marked, but also reinforces moving away from the other dogs, because the reinforcer comes AFTER the movement away.
Training: Mark and Move and other Survival Skills (brief review)
SCIENCE ON CONTROL
What is control? An event is said to be controllable if “there is a difference in the likelihood of it occurring depending on an animal’s behavior” (Bassett & Buchanan-Smith, 2007). The whole point of behavior is for it to have an effect. When behavior does something that produces an effect that we like, we do more of it. But even just having your behavior do SOMETHING is important. Control is a primary reinforcer. Take, for example, the studies of infants and mobiles.
The concept of a “natural deprivation” of contingent reinforcement during human infancy was first proposed by Watson (1966). His hypothesis was that eliminating this deprivation would lead to intellectual gains. This would be done by making infants functionally aware of contingencies by setting up situations in which infants’ behavior could be reinforced. In other words, by creating scenarios in which the infants had some control over their environment, they would be “smarter” in some way. It’s learned industriousness, the exact opposite of learned helplessness, and it can have a powerful emotional effect.
In 1972, Watson and Ramey did a study with 10-week old infants. For simplicity, When a baby in the experimental group moved his or her head on the pillow, a mobile above the crib would turn. The babies in the first control group had the same amount of movement in their mobiles, but their behavior had no effect on whether it would move or not. A second control group had stationary mobiles. The experimental group should significantly more head movements by the end of the experiment than either of the control groups. In other words, the movement of the mobile was a reinforcer. More broadly, even 10-week-old babies will work to have some control over their environment, given the opportunity.
Even more interesting is that a similar result holds for premature infants, as well. Sokoff and Cotton (1975 – click for full text) did a similar experiment to the one described above, except that a string was tied to the baby’s feet to produce contingent movement of the mobile. They found that all of the babies, including their experimental group, demonstrated less foot movement over time, but that the control group lost that movement more slowly. That is, because their foot movements had an effect on their environment, they were slower to give it up than the other groups. So while it didn’t fully maintain the behavior as the babies aged, it was probably still a reinforcer.
Here’s an excerpt from the conclusion:
These findings…suggest the importance of artificially creating contingency environments, especially for prematures, whose “natural deprivation period” is much longer than that for term infants. In this way, a group of infants most vulnerable to early stimulus deprivation will be provided with an opportunity to learn that their behaviors can produce immediate environmental feedback thereby creating a more varied and “interesting” stimulus world for them.
Here’s a more recent study by Hains and Muir (1996 – click for full text) on contingency, pointing out that infants pay attention to whether their behavior has an effect. That’s the whole point of behavior, after all, to do something, to make something change.
Infants gazed less at TV-noncontingent than either live- or TV-contingent displays, and there was evidence that noncontingency had a long-lasting effect on gaze. They were equally attentive to both contingent displays, but smiled more to live than to televised displays. An order effect revealed that smiling depended on the nature of both the current and prior interaction.
Deer mice, which tend to avoid bright lighting, will turn off a light if it turns on at regular intervals. But it gets more interesting, as summarized by Bassett & Buchanan-Smith (2007):
Their preference for control appears to override their aversion to bright light, as they will also turn it back on if it is automatically turned off. Kavanau concludes that the animals find it rewarding to exercise a degree of control over their environment. The degree of behavioural control that an animal has over a stressor is also thought to regulate the behavioural and physiological impact of that stressor.
So let’s bring this around to dogs. Dogs aren’t human babies, but if even tiny human babies and deer mice do something, it’s likely that dogs do, too, because we all share the mammalian brain structure. Interpreting the results above for dogs (and, say, looking at all of the research on animals), what it means is that control is a basic need. Not the “taking over the world” kind of control, but the “what I does changes something about the environment” sort of control. By looking at our dogs’ other needs and helping them learn to use their behavior to get those needs met, we are also meeting that other basic need: control.
Want to geek out a bit more? I have some more information about controllability and fear in the “Technical Aspects of BAT” article in the 2014 APDT Chronicle of the Dog. Click to read.
MORE PLEASE SIGNAL
The More Please Signal is a great way to add controllability to your dog’s life. I highly recommend it for anything where you need or want to do something to your dog that is not consistently reinforcing.
Below, I describe the More Please Signal in general and give some specific examples. This part of the lesson is from the Empowered Puppy Raising course. Note: I’d highly recommend using More Please Signals for any husbandry or vet procedures that your dog has trouble with, as a way to reduce his overall level of frustration or anxiety. There are videos on the More Please Signal in the Member Video Library.
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Humans can get an impressive amount of control over dogs by using the various training techniques. Force free training can be applied to all sorts of problems, but it really excels when it comes to teaching the dog to DO something. We can teach them to do showy behaviors that impress our friends. These tricks give the dogs some mental stimulation. They also help us communicate to our dogs, at least in the sense that we can say a cue and they’ll do a behavior. We feel listened to. That’s fine if there is a lot of time in the day for all that training and the rest puppies need, but I’d say a better use of our time during puppyhood is to teach our dogs to cooperate in their own care.
Here’s a video by UK trainer Chirag Patel. He trained his dog, Cody, help make the vet visits go smoothly, from blood draws to checking on his teeth. Notice that Chirag does not open Cody’s mouth using pressure. This is a targeting exercise, where Cody is actually targeting the fingers with the inside of his mouth.
Teaching a dog to actively participate in exercises that help him get used to grooming, vet care, and other daily activities creates a chance for satisfying and useful 2-way conversations. It’s what the best zoos do. My favorite trainers, including Ken Ramirez and Chirag, have been getting the word out to pet owners about how to bring this training into our homes. It fits in well with the empowered puppy raising philosophy and of course I always like to give things my own spin, too.
Let’s say you want to get a dog used to a sound, like a shotgun. It’s helpful to just associate the sound with food by playing the sound and feeding. That’s a popular technique for “classical counterconditioning.” But it’s even more powerful to teach the dog to control the sound, because it gives you more specific information on how you are doing with keeping the dog relaxed during this process (for the trainers: I mean “below threshold”). And control itself is reinforcing, so that’s another positive thing to associate with the sound. This way is a more empowered version of counterconditioning.
We basically teach the dog a way to say “play that sound again.” Let’s call that a More Please Signal (MPS), the canine version of a keep going signal. Pick a behavior that will be your dog’s way to communicate with you, something you don’t mind them doing a lot. Next, get a recording of the sound. You will play it back at a low volume so that it does not scare your dog.
Play the sound and then feed a treat (just a quick check that we are at a good volume, where the dog can hear it, but is not scared). Pause and just be boring for about 15 seconds in between. Repeat three times and observe body language. If the dog is scared at any point, reduce the volume by at least half.
Use the sound as a marker for the behavior you picked as your MPS. Let’s say that behavior is Sit. Just wait with your treats in your hands and soon your puppy will sit. Play the sound as the marker, then praise and treat. If you do use sit, toss the treat so the puppy is up and ready for the next repetition. Repeat until the puppy is clearly asking for you to play the sound. If your puppy is already very clicker savvy, continue past that to at least about 10 times. Then move to a new place and repeat the activity with a slightly higher volume.
If at any point, the puppy wanders away or does not sit, then you may need to reassess. Possible causes:
The sound was too loud
Your puppy just isn’t familiar with Sit being a magical way to get humans to feed her (so be patient)
Your timing is too slow (she is not hearing the sound right when she sits or chooses to sit)
She doesn’t like your treats
You are scaring her with your body language or maybe are praising too loud
The sound is too quiet, so it’s not marking the behavior
Your body language is confusing (too active, making her think she is getting treats randomly)
With this way of doing things, versus simply playing the sound and giving her a treat, you get more information and I usually see puppies learn more quickly. I also see people paying more attention to whether they are desensitizing at the right level of exposure. People tend to try to rush things and end up playing the sound too loudly when the puppy doesn’t have a say in the process.
This way also teaches your puppy how to learn from you via marker training. If you are experienced with shaping, you can even double up by shaping a trick using this new marker signal.
Basically anything that we want to do to our dogs can be used as a marker if we think creatively. And while any behavior will do as a More Please Signal, it helps to pick an MPS that is also not obnoxious and is incompatible with behavior dogs normally use to get us to stop. So barking, biting, and avoiding are probably not good choices for More Please Signals.
Examples
Brushing.
Many puppies chew at the brush or bite the human. Targeting a yoghurt lid or a Post-It note is incompatible with that. Targeting the inside of a muzzle is another good More Please Signal for grooming and vet care. But unless you are really, really good at not messing up and pushing too hard, I recommend training the muzzle separately at first. I wouldn’t want to risk doing this wrong and having the muzzle associated with stress. I think all dogs should be taught to love a muzzle, so that if a muzzle is ever needed in an emergency, it doesn’t add extra stress to the situation.
But back to grooming…
Let’s say you have Target as your More Please Signal. Train your puppy to target up to the point of being able to hold her chin or nose to the target for several seconds.
The brushing is the marker, and just like the sound was above. Gradually turn up the intensity of on the brushing as your dog is successful at each step, just like we did with the volume of the sound.
Keep a relaxed and happy attitude throughout. Don’t be super excited or you may cause your puppy to want to bounce around.
I’ll break it into some steps below, but you may need to split things up even more. Your dog may be sensitive to the changes between the steps I’ve written or need more before to get set up. Work at each step 10 times and then pause to prepare yourself with what you will do at the next step. The only thing you will change is the intensity of the brushing during each session. I recommend being in a sort of grooming position before you get started, so you are sitting down at your dog’s level or you have trained him to be comfortable on a grooming table.
Note: If you are an advanced trainer and want to use this to shape a behavior at the same time, you could also for the dog to hold her nose to the target for longer and longer, for example. But then you have a little bit of confusion as to whether the dog doesn’t like the brushing or doesn’t understand the behavior. So I’d recommend sticking with just one set behavior unless you are very sure the dog is comfortable with each step.
Touch puppy with your hand (hold brush in the other hand behind your back – the touching hand is also your feeding hand, if you are alone, so you may need to let the puppy sniff your hand each time before touching)
Brush comes out from behind your back, not approaching the dog (allow dog to sniff the brush at any point that she wants)
Brush moves slightly closer to the dog (however many steps you need to get to the next step smoothly)
Brush touches the dog (different location each time) – bristles up
Brush touches the dog (different location each time) – bristles down
Brush slides along for 1 second (different location each time) – bristles up
Brush the dog for 1 second (different location each time) – bristles down
Brush the dog for 2 seconds (different location each time)
Brush the dog for 3 seconds (different location each time)
Brush the dog for 4 seconds (different location each time)
Brush the dog for 5 seconds (different location each time)
5 seconds is a long time for a puppy, so you may want to stick with 5 seconds as your upper limit for a while before you have to ‘feed the meter’ again. Your treats don’t have to just be food. If your puppy enjoys massage, that can also be the treat a good deal of the time.
Try to use calm reinforcers so that you get calm behavior during grooming and vet care. That said, with a dog who truly cannot stand what you need to do, then any reinforcer that she’ll work for is fine. For example, I have messed up nail trimming enough times that Peanut really doesn’t like it. He knows it’s a risky business. But he still happily cooperates with me, putting his paw out for filing, because I toss his toy to him when I have done each nail. We use the same for blood draws.
Do not try to do this all at once! Do about 5 minutes per session. In each session, you can work your way more quickly to the bottom of the list.
Standing on a rug or other object (this is a type of paw targeting) is another good More Please Signal for brushing. As long as your puppy is on the rug, she is willing to trade brushing for treats. If she leaves, pause the brushing. Use the same gradual approach as above.
This is a nice use of the More Please Signal! Nella was one of our Empowered Puppy Raising students. Her mum Katey Aldred made this little video to show Nella’s continued progress.
Video is great for showing us how we can improve even more. After seeing the bit of jumping at the click and the slightly tucked tail, Katey will begin using a release cue as the marker and also work on making it even more “worth it” to Nella.
Nail Filing.
I prefer filing to clipping because I’m less likely to get it wrong. I also think that clipping is sudden and probably feels like being bitten, whereas nail filing is more gradual.
Use nail files meant for artificial nails, as they have the best filing surface. I also use a Dremel tool, because it is a lot faster, but it is also easy to mess up and injure the dog or yourself.
The paw shake is a perfect More Please Signal for nail filing or clipping. You’ll need to get a paw shake with all four paws. Work up to being able to hold your dog’s paw with a grip on the toenail. Grip it tightly but keep it in the natural shape of the paw, rather than pulling the toe back. Holding the toenail firmly will dampen the vibration when you file or clip it.
The process for nail filing is essentially the same as for brushing, but most dogs dislike having their nails done, so be ready to need more steps here. Your MPS can be something like paw-to-hand targeting (front paw) or paw lift (back paw), which you first train with the clicker or marker word, using the steps in the training section below. During clipper training, when your puppy does the MPS, you’ll use the nail file as the marker. Gradually turn up the intensity of the filing using something like the list below. Always watch for signs of stress or hesitation, and make things easier if need be.
Reminder: Do not try to do this all at once! Do about 5 minutes per session. In each session, you can work your way more quickly to the bottom of the list.
File comes out from behind your back, not approaching the dog (allow dog to sniff the nail file at any point that she wants)
File moves slightly closer to the dog (however many steps you need)
File touches the toenail
File for ½ second (different toe each time, work your way around to all toes)
File for 1 second (different toe each time, work your way around to all toes)
File for 2 seconds (different toe each time, work your way around to all toes)
File for 3 seconds (different toe each time, work your way around to all toes)
File for 4 seconds (different toe each time, work your way around to all toes)
File for 5 seconds (different toe each time, work your way around to all toes)
As with brushing, 5 seconds at a time may be the maximum for your puppy. If you choose to clip instead, then work your way up to the clipping in a gradual way as well. For example, you can trim a toothpick near the paw in order to copy the sound of the clippers.
As you can see, this concept can be extended to many things that we need to do to our dogs. For example, we can do the same with cleaning the ears. Targeting a Post-It could be the MPS for that as well, or targeting the cotton ball with the nose. If you have other kinds of grooming or things that must be done to your dog, use the More Please Signal to get cooperation there, too.
Food for thought: What could you use as a More Please Signal for the examination of a conformation (show) dog?
Resources for this section:
Bassett, L., & Buchanan-Smith, H. M. (2007). Effects of predictability on the welfare of captive animals. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 102(3), 223-245.
Hains, S. M., & Muir, D. W. (1996). Effects of stimulus contingency in infant-adult interactions. Infant Behavior and Development, 19(1), 49-61.
Solkoff, Norman, and Candice Cotton. “Contingency awareness in premature infants.” Perceptual and motor skills 41.3 (1975): 709-710.
Watson, J. S. (1966). The development and generalization of” contingency awareness” in early infancy: Some hypotheses. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly of Behavior and Development, 123-135.
Watson, J. S., & Ramey, C. T. (1972). Reactions to response-contingent stimulation in early infancy. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly of Behavior and Development, 219-227.
Making and reviewing a video of your work helps you learn more. You can even play it back in slow motion! It also gives you something to look back at later to see your own progress or if you need to share with someone to ask for help, you have an easy visual to refer to.
Condition a relaxation cue as described in the earlier lesson, with an essential oil or a verbal cue. In your video, look for signs of relaxation or distress and see if you need to change anything.
Condition a verbal relaxation cue by cueing your dog to relax just as you see him about to settle down at home (like as she circles to lie down for a nap, while she’s looking out the window but you can tell she is about to give up. Say your cue calmly and be quiet or praise very calmly. This is practically impossible to film so just do it without filming.
SEC on switch. Practice as in the previous lesson. Is your SEC too startling? Too close/loud? If so, try to tone it down a bit.
Here’s a variety of other suggestions to either use now or file away. It’s a lot so don’t expect to be able to do it all right away. Some of this may help your dog, some may not, but all of these suggestions are helpful to SOME dogs.
Aromatherapy may be of more help for *you* to calm down than your dog, but I’ve had success using valerian, lavender, ylang ylang, and other aromas with dogs. Blackwing Farms is a good site with some commercial blends, like Bitch Balm and Calm Balm that I’ve found to be helpful (note, we are not affiliated).
Calming music can be quite helpful for both you and your dog. The Through a Dog’s Ear series by Joshua Leeds and Lisa Spector has a few varieties. Here are some links: Volume 1, Volume 2, music for the driving with your dog, and even a version to comfort senior dogs. We play this sort of music in our puppy camp to help keep the dogs relaxed. This music is already calming, in my experience, but see below for a way to supercharge that by associating this music with a relaxed state of mind.
DAP (Adaptil) and Pet Remedy both have plug-ins that can reduce anxiety if that’s part of what’s happening with your dog. I prefer the spray for Pet Remedy because it is very smelly in the plugin form. My cat adores the spray and always rolls in it when I spray it in a room.
TTouch® (Tellington Touch) has a variety of tools that help dogs learn to calmly be ‘in the moment,’ including touch, body wraps, and ground work I like their proprioception exercises where the dog has a chance to pay attention to different parts of her body. This can be very helpful for reducing arousal, getting dogs used to harnesses or other kinds of touch, physical ailments, and a lot more. I highly recommend the Tawzer DVDs by Lori Stevens on this topic, as she also has a solid background in canine anatomy.
You might find it useful to get a heart monitor for your dog, so you have more data about her arousal level. The Polar equine heart monitor with Bluetooth can be used with dogs. Attach the leads to a harness to help it stay in place.
Karen Overall’s Relaxation Protocol is a step-by-step protocol for dogs who have trouble settling down at all. This is a very detailed protocol that is definitely not for everyone, because of the many steps. The people who have been able to go through it all find it to be quite helpful. Roxanne Hawn has recorded this protocol into daily MP3s, one per day for 15 days. Here’s the link. There is a bit that recommends restraining the dog and I DO NOT suggest doing it that way. Giving your dog the opportunity to relax; don’t try to force it into doing so. You should be able to do all of this without a leash at all if you are in a safe area.
TRAINING: CONDITIONING RELAXATION
I have found this protocol to be quite helpful. It is basically about making an association between a word, odor, or other stimulus with a state of relaxation, using classical conditioning. I first heard of this from Kathy Sdao many years ago and also have seen great explanations and videos by Ute Blaschke-Berthold from Germany. I think the term “Conditioned Relaxation” was coined by Kayce Cover from the US.
I use a very simple version of this, basically what Kathy Sdao taught me many years ago. Associate something (like lavender, a word, calming music, or a particular bed or rug) with relaxation by having that relaxed state follow the introduction of the stimulus. You can do this systematically, but for the verbal cue, you can also do it just by labeling what is happening.
For example, when you see your dog circle to settle down, yawn or calmly say your cue. I use “reeee-lax.” Then your dog relaxes (which she was going to do anyway). Also say that cue just before you do calm petting or massage. Eventually, the dog can hear that cue and begin to relax.
Alternatively, apply a tiny amount of lavender to the back of your hands for massage time, so that when your dog smells lavender, a calm massage is about to happen. Only do this if your dog will definitely relax with the massage.
Later, you can apply the lavender to the harness or a bandana to use in situations where your dog needs an added relaxation boost.
Here are two ways. Pick a time when your dog is already close to being relaxed.
Associate the presence of an essential oil (lavender or some other scent like ylang ylang or vetivir) and massage. Do 1-2 massages per day. Keep one hand in contact with your dog while the other moves around to massage. Stop occasionally to see if the dog is still interested.
Associate the verbal Relax cue (or yawn) with something calm, like massage.
If massage is not possible for your dog because he does not like to be touched, work on that instead. Emily Larlham (kikopup) has a great video on teaching dogs to be comfortable being touched.
I would combine that with the 5-second rule and the More Please Signal (where your dog does some behavior to say that this is worth his while). For example, your dog can touch your hand or lean toward you to say that he would like more petting. When you are done, give the All Done signal.
Also start to associate the verbal cue mentioned above at times when your dog is already about to relaxed, but this will be hard to film so don’t worry about submitting that.
TRAINING: SUDDEN ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE AS AN ON SWITCH
It’s helpful to teach your dog that if something suddenly changes in the environment, looking at you is a great option of what to do next (instead of, say, running over to the thing). So the sudden environmental change (SEC) becomes a cue to pay attention to you.
Examples of SECs (sudden environmental changes):
You are in a training hall and someone opens a door
You are in a training hall and someone walks through a door
You are in a training hall and someone walks through a door with a dog
Same as the first three items above, but in a field with a gate
Same as the first three items above, but in a house
In your home and a noise plays (you can do this with your phone, especially if you have a Bluetooth speaker)
In your home and someone drops something in another room or nearby
Set up a situation where there will be a mild SEC out of the blue. By ‘mild’ I mean that the dog is a little interested and definitely notices it, but is not scared or too startled. If is is a physical trigger that your dog may run to, have your dog on a leash and harness or have a fence/barrier between your dog and whatever is happening.
Ideally you would start this exercise with your dog just being a dog – sniffing the ground, relaxing, etc. However, if the stimulus is too interesting and you can’t reduce the intensity enough just to get a mild response, you may have to start with your dog in working mode before the sound. That gives you a better chance of getting your dog’s attention after the stimulus.
When your dog perceives the SEC her ear will flick toward it, her head will turn, or there will be some other small physical change. This tells you she has perceived it. If she barks, the stimulus was too exciting but carry on with the steps below for now.
Immediately cue her attention using the signal trained in the first lesson.
Just as in that lesson, mark and reinforce attention several times.
Release the dog with “All Done” and then allow her to go check out the stimulus (or go together). I’m assuming this is a safe thing to do. If it’s not safe, just have your dog do Find It or move away and go do something else together.
Wait enough time so that the SEC is a surprise again. This may be several minutes. The more of a surprise it is, the more likely it is that your dog will respond with reactivity, so take that into account.
Start with a very mild SEC and use that during your training sessions until your dog automatically starts looking at you when the SEC event occurs. Then build up to more and more distracting stimuli, like the sound of dog tags.
If you can’t find an SEC stimulus that is mild enough to avoid barking, or your dog notices something else in your environment as you work, you can click as soon as your dog notices the stimulus instead of cueing the turn and then clicking after. If it is a stimulus that you control, try to make it easier for your dog. Try muffling it if it’s a sound, having it be less of a surprise if it’s visual, by changing the speed or angle of approach, for example.
In the moment, if your dog barks just have the stimulus go away, or move away from the stimulus, and let your dog relax. Mark when she turns to you, as above. Take a break for a bit and figure out how to make things easier for your dog to turn to you next time.
When I mention exercise, people tend to think of fetching balls or toys. That’s a very intense exercise that tends to leave the dog tired, but still amped up. If you look at the life of a feral dog or a wolf, you don’t see that kind of intense chase-chase-chase. You see an animal seeking out a food source and acquiring it (in a burst of activity if they are hunting), consuming, then resting.
So it’s not that you can’t give your dog toys or even play a little fetch, but here’s a general rule of thumb:
seeking exercises are preferred to repeated chase-bite exercises
if you do an intense activity, help your dog calm down afterwards
By “seeking” exercises, I mean activities that put your dog in seeking mode, engaging the SEEKING system that Panksepp describes. When a dog is exploring her environment, she gets a cascade of dopamine, the neurotransmitter associated with euphoria. A long walk in an interesting area, for example, where you let your dog stop to smell along the way, is ideal.
The SEEKING system is that which impels us to seek our environment for information that will help us survive, whether the location of tasty nuts or a link on a new internet dating service. “It allows animals to go out in the world and enthusiastically look for the resources needed to live.” Dopamine-energized, this mesolimbic SEEKING system, arising from the ventral tegmental area (VTA), encourages foraging, exploration, investigation, curiosity, interest and expectancy. Dopamine fires each time the rat (or human) explores its environment. “I can look at the animal and tell when I am tickling its SEEKING system,” Panksepp explained. “Because it is exploring and sniffing.”
Want a video? Here’s Panskepp doing a TED talk (it’s about 17 minutes long):
Back to your dog. For another an example of an activity, hiding a tennis ball or food puzzle for your dog to find will tire your dog out and engage the SEEKing system, yet it builds up a lot less arousal. As they say, “A tired dog is a good dog,” but being physically exhausted and still hopped up on adrenaline is not ideal. Providing exercise that involves exploration, where your dog has to use her brain and senses to go find something, helps her truly get tired and relaxed.
If you do fetch with your dog, then finish up with something that’s more calming, like secretly scattering a handful of treats in your backyard as your dog goes to fetch. Then get the ball back and signal All Done and let your dog go find the treats on her own (don’t make it an exciting game where you chant “find it”). Alternatively, going to a forest or some other smell-rich location for a walk afterwards can also be calming. A calm massage session can also help your dog practice the off-switch.
Tug games should also be followed with a time of relaxation. I am of two minds about tug. It can be a great way to help your dog learn to alternate between excitement and relaxation, if you practice doing so. If you play tug and then leave the dog with that level of excitement, it is probably not helpful for her frustration later. I found that when I stopped doing tug and fetch with Peanut, his overall arousal level dropped nicely and he had more self control in other settings.
A treadmill is also a good option for exercise for your dog. I recommend that if you do this, you film so that you can watch your dog’s body to be sure she’s not walking in a way that’s uncomfortable or might give her some pain. For example, if you only ever stand on one side of the treadmill, she will walk with her head turned that way and that may lead to pain. Or if the speed is too slow or fast, she might walk with an awkward gait. This video from the Canis Film Festival is a good start on how to teach your dog to be comfortable with the treadmill:
In the next section, we’ll discuss more brain games as a way to help reduce your dog’s overall arousal and also help her have a more interesting and satisfying life.
BRAIN GAMES
While dogs, like people, will take food that is offered to them, that’s not what they prefer. In fact, decades of research on contrafreeloading indicates that animals prefer to work for their food rather than having it provided for free. Well, most animals. It seems that cats actually do like having staff. So instead of putting your dog’s food in a bowl each day, have him work for some or all of it by putting it into food puzzles.
Food puzzles and exploration of the natural world are both good for the brain and your dog’s overall welfare. As researchers on the “eureka” effect wrote, “opportunities to solve problems, make decisions, and exercise cognitive skills are important to an animal’s emotional experiences and ultimately, its welfare.”
Food puzzles come in many shapes and sizes and you can even make your own. For example, I made puzzles out of empty vegan ice cream containers for Peanut and Sagan:
You can get your dog interested in tennis balls, acclimated to the sound of metal, and entertain her, all at the same time, by making this easy food puzzle. Video is by Debbie Oliver CPDT-KSA of Miss Daisy’s Dog Camp:
<p”>Get creative! There are lots of great commercial food puzzles out there, but using some creativity will also help you check off your Rule of Twelve checklist at the same time. For example, letting your puppy knock around a plastic milk jug with kibble in it will help him with sound sensitivity. In that case, your dog is the one that makes the sound happen. We are usually less afraid of events that we can control.
Jolein van Weperen is a great dog trainer and author in the Netherlands who specializes in impulse control and environmental enrichment. I was very impressed with her wide variety of puzzles and toys for dog “brainwork.” I love the way she trains. It is available in in English and in the original Dutch.
Here’s Emily Larlham’s video of Jolein’s puzzles:
Here’s some more. The “Treat Trapper” is an exercise that is meant to be done in a relaxed and thoughtful way, not just throwing it around. Watch how Jolein teaches this, in two parts. It’s pretty clear, even if you don’t speak Dutch:
Here’s another video by Jolein with one more puzzle idea:
Here’s another video I like, on how to make a Snuffle Mat, by dog trainer Lindsay Kinney of Kinney Canine Academy in Minnesota:
DIET
Nutrition plays a big role in the physical and mental wellbeing of our dogs. Their diet can influence their attention span, stress level, and frustration tolerance. If your dog doesn’t feel well or is full of corn and sugar, you’ll get a different response than if your dog is healthy.
Many dogs are allergic to common food ingredients, like chicken or grains. This can lead to itchiness, upset digestive systems, and other issues that might be part of the reason your dog can’t seem to sit still or is easily frustrated. Imagine having an itchy rash or an upset belly and then having to focus on doing your taxes!
I’ve found that for skin and gastrointestinal issues, a holistic veterinarian or licensed canine nutritionist is usually a better resource than a regular western veterinarian. If you have a dog who is taking pills for allergies, there may be some better remedies based on food alone.
Very high protein foods can also cause dogs to be hyperactive, so when you prepare or purchase your dog’s food, look for a moderate to low amount of protein, from a good source (avoiding words like “by-product,” “meat,” “animal,” and “digest.” Carbs should come from low-glycemic index foods, rather than ingredients such as corn, which are high in sugar. Dogs who are already high energy don’t need to be amped up on protein bars all day.
Practice the food puzzle version of On / Off Switch. Film it and take a look at your dog’s body language. Are you going at the right pace or are you causing frustration? Is the lesson clear to your dog?
Rehearse your BAT leash skills first before doing #3. Work in an enriched environment or add Sprinkles so your dog will be busy being a dog. Walk casually in BAT style with your dog, starting with the leash in ‘basic position’ – Handle, Braking Distance, hands relaxed, and about 2 yards/meters from the dog. Have about one time of Slide and one of Mime Pulling, but mostly just relaxed BAT walking. Watch your video of doing this this first before the next exercise. Do you have enough braking distance? Are your arms relaxed at your side when your dog stops? Are you following (as you should be unless you have to lead away from something) or accidentally leading? Look for leaning and subtle signs, not just obvious ones.
Outside on a 15-foot (5-meter) leash, practice On Switch / Off Switch by reinforcing your check-in cue once and then giving your All Done cue. Then use the BAT leash skills to follow your dog as your dog sniffs the area. Work in an area that your dog would want to investigate that’s not so distracting he can’t check in with you. Bushes are more interesting than open fields. If your area is boring, sprinkle parmesan cheese or something with odor (like sheep dung) in the grass first.
In this class we’ll work through some great training tools to reinforce attention to you around distractions. But that’s not the main point. My mission for this course is to get you to think in terms of needs. I want you think about how to empower your dog to meet his (or her!) needs, either through immediate action or patience.
This is not just a class about reinforcing behavior that you like. It’s about learning to pay attention and communicate back and forth with our dogs, so we can minimize frustration on both ends of the leash. The solution is to balance your needs and wants with your dogs. Setting boundaries clearly and humanely is an important start. It is equally important to anticipate your dog’s wants and needs and orchestrate a fulfilled lifestyle. You would never starve a dog and then complain that he whines from hunger. Similarly, we should not block a dog from getting his social, exercise, and other needs met and complain when he lets us know.
No wonder so many dogs are barking mad! Human behavior can be crazy-making.
TRAINING: ON / OFF SWITCH
I’d like to start with a very basic behavior of the dog checking in with you on cue, paired with a release to go be a dog. Checking in on cue in is a good immediate management device that can help dogs who are very focused on dogs, bicycles, or other stimuli in the environment. Looking at something and checking back in with you is also a way for a dog to communicate to you what he wants or needs in a way that’s comfortable for you as well.
For now, let’s work with the behavior on a verbal cue and then we will transfer it to distractions, so that the distractions themselves become a cue to check in for a bit.
You probably have already worked on attention with your dog, by specifically training his name or a Watch cue. But when you get the dog’s attention, you also have to make sure to then let the dog be a dog most of the time, too. Working with you for treats or play doesn’t satisfy all the social and mental needs of your dog.
Translation: don’t just teach your dog to be glued to your side. I firmly believe that teaching your dog to look at you whenever other dogs are around, no matter what, is not a humane option for dealing with simple frustration and certainly not a good idea with a puppy. It robs the dog all of the subtleties of just be a dog. But responding to a request for attention is still an essential part of being a dog among humans (and the reverse is also true).
What should you choose for an attention cue? The name is pretty straightforward for this, as it means “pay attention: what comes next is for you” If the dog has some negative association with his name, pick something else.
Let’s say you use the dog’s name as a check in cue with your dog. That starts a conversation of cues, with your dog paying attention to you to see what’s in it for him. From there you can reinforce attention until you are done needing it, and then specifically let him know he’s done using the All Done cue.
This is the end of session cue, a true “go be a dog,” not just an “okay, go do that and come right back right away because I feed your addiction.” This part is just as important as the name. Be clear when you are done with the dog to give him some predictability and avoid or cope with frustration. We talk about this in the Building Blocks lessons as one of the 6 most important cues to teach. Look for “6 Cue Words that Every Pet Should Know.”
Here’s a discussion for parents demonstrating the All Done / Finished sign in American Sign Language. I include this video to show you the hand signal, but I also like her discussion. Note that being able to ask or communicate “All Done” is something that helps reduce frustration in people for whom verbal communication is challenging: babies, people with autism, hearing issues, ALS, etc.
For the version of the On / Off Switch activity that I want you to do, there should be something that the dog is actually mildly interested in that is safe for him to explore. Have 10 treats that are better than everything else in the current environment. So for example, you can have your 10 crazy good treats in one bowl on your table and a food puzzle with so-so treats at the ready so the dog can go get it after the All Done cue. (Variation: just toss a handful of so-so treats instead of feeding a puzzle at the end).
When your dog is not looking at you, say his name (or whatever you pick for your check-in cue) and your dog will acknowledge your words in some way. Examples:
ear twitch
eye contact
head turn
body turn
Click and treat any and all of these in rapid succession, until you are almost out of treats. You may also want to step away from your dog after each click so that you can click when your dog chooses to follow you. For your last few great treats, click and toss them in one direction.
Set the food puzzle down for the dog the other direction (or scatter some so-so treats that way). Step on the toy so your dog can’t get to it yet.
Call your dog. When your dog looks at you one last time, praise him and say “All Done” and give the All Done hand signal.
Then walk past the food puzzle or scattered treats so that your dog encounters the odor.
As your dog enjoys those treats, go do something else – read a book, the Panksepp article above, whatever. But do not start training again. You can probably do it again in 30 minutes or an hour, if you want to, but not right away. The idea is to let your dog know he’s really truly off the clock when you say All Done.
As time goes on, vary the reinforcer so that sometimes you click and tug for a bit, sometimes you click and play fetch, etc. But at the end, you give the All Done cue and the dog is free to go be a dog. Coming back to you at that point does not work to get you back into training.
Try to work in natural settings as soon as possible, so the All Done cue just means to go back to sniffing on a walk, for example, or return to play with his friends.
It’s actually pretty simple. Frustration comes from behavior that’s supposed to work a certain way being blocked or not working. It’s unclear what he should do to get what he needs or wants.
We can be just as frustrating to our dogs as they are to us. So what do we do about it? One thing is to look at what needs the dog has that are not being met, and help him have ways to meet those needs. We’ll discuss that more in depth in lessons 3 and 4, but here’s a taste.
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
I’ll comment a bit on each category above.
Safety means both physical and emotional safety. With our dogs, that means only having them in situations that they can handle, and helping 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 dog 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, and gets enough sleep. Adult dogs rest 12 to 16 hours each day and a 3-month old puppy would need more like 15 or 20 hours per day. That means paying attention to where his sleeping areas are, keeping children out of there, etc. After exciting play times, don’t just leave your dog all revved up. Do something to help him relax afterwards, like scattering a handful of treats in your yard or doing calm massage.
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 dog at all times and never withdrawn as punishment. Make sure you have water available even when your dog 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 dog 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 being open when you are not home.
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. Have these needs in mind when you observe your dog’s behavior. Teach specific behavior that helps him communicate his wants and needs. We’ll discuss this more later in the course.
We have the lessons clustered into weeks, but don’t be put off by that if you need to take more time. It’s very common to spend 2-3 weeks on each “week” of lessons from here.
Week 1: What is Frustration?
Dictionary Definition
Human examples
What Does Frustration Look Like in Dogs
How Do I Know Whether It’s Frustration or Fear? Does it Matter?
Why is My Dog Doing This?
Course Overview
Training: Practice BAT Leash Skills
Training: On Switch / Off Switch
“DICTIONARY” DEFINITIONS
Here’s how the Google dictionary defines frustration. It is both a feeling and the event that causes that feeling.
frus·tra·tion frəˈstrāSHən/ noun
the feeling of being upset or annoyed, especially because of inability to change or achieve something. Example: “I sometimes feel like screaming with frustration.”
an event or circumstance that causes one to have a feeling of frustration. Plural noun: frustrations. Example: “the inherent frustrations of assembly line work.”
I would add that we feel more frustration when there’s something we expect to be able to achieve or change, and yet it does not work. While we can’t say that dogs feel frustration in the same way that we do, we do see their behavior change in ways that are similar to humans when they are “unable to achieve something,” i.e., when their behavior does not have the expected effect. Regardless of species, frustration is definitely an aversive emotional state.
Bean’s kick is a sign of frustration. Sneezing is another common behavior.
I found this Wikipedia article on frustration to be interesting. Some of it can’t really be applied to dogs, particularly since we can’t talk with them about it, but this part resonated with me:
“Frustration can be considered a problem–response behavior, and can have a number of effects, depending on the mental health of the individual. In positive cases, this frustration will build until a level that is too great for the individual to contend with, and thus produce action directed at solving the inherent problem. In negative cases, however, the individual may perceive the source of frustration to be outside of their control, and thus the frustration will continue to build, leading eventually to further problematic behavior (e.g. violent reaction).”
Emotional behavior prompted by the thwarting or interruption of goal seeking activity.
A term used in two ways. In one sense, frustration refers to any interference with the satisfaction of a motive. In another sense, frustration refers to the consequences or interval state resulting from such interferences with goal directed behavior.
HUMAN EXAMPLES
Technology can definitely lead to frustration. For example, you may have experienced a learning curve for this site, or when posting videos to YouTube. Whether that process is frustrating or not depends, in large part, on how effective your behavior is—i.e., whether what you try works as you expect. If you are familiar with YouTube and can easily upload your files and change settings, you won’t feel much frustration. If YouTube changes the process or you haven’t learned how to use it yet, there’s bound to be some frustration.
Here’s another tech example. I read through a review of a new smartphone recently. Frustration is on my mind, because of this course, and the person’s frustration jumped right out at me. If our dogs could share their experiences, it might be something similar. Here’s what happened with the phone purchase. First, the user had trouble installing applications, but was eventually successful. I’ll highlight some points in the review below.
I used the apps I was able to install, and I found myself befuddled a number of times. There’s no software back button support. Some apps have a working back button within them, but not all, and there were times I felt trapped in whatever I was using, like Gretel after the breadcrumbs were eaten.
Swiping was supposed to help, as was flicking your wrist, but the responses were inconsistent. I thought I was fumbly and inept until I shared my phone with an IT pro and he also found that there were times where he’d flick his wrist 3 or 4 times without success. You’d feel so frustrated you’d want to start shaking it uncontrollably, then fling it into the wall. I loved catching him in those moments, our frustration shared. Navigation that was effortless on an android tablet became convoluted and difficult. MANY things that felt effortless on a full blown android were obscured or disabled.
A phase swirled in my head, “you can’t get there from here.”
That review is clearly full of frustration. As I tried to get from Copenhagen to Madrid yesterday in the middle of a pilot strike, I have to admit that I had a complete frustration meltdown. Between the lost luggage, rerouting to different airlines and cities, and endless bureaucracy, my patience was running thin.
If I were a dog, I’d definitely have started biting at my leash.
Having already written part of this lesson, the line “You can’t get there from here” swirled in my head, too.
When behavior fails to achieve a desired response at the usual rate, there is frustration.
Back to the phone, frustration would have been avoided if the person had no expectations of being able to do certain things on the phone, or if the swiping had worked (i.e., the behavior had been effective). If it was clearly a gamble, that one just has to swipe a few times and it will work about every other time, then that would reduce the frustration. But the expectation was that it should have worked consistently. I should have been able to quickly get from Copenhagen to Madrid with my luggage, but I could not. Enter frustration.
Frustration is reduced when we have alternate behavior that’s likely to work. Say you are in the shower and it starts to get cold. You change the setting and even colder water comes out. You quickly realize you’ve made a mistake and you turn the hot water tap instead, setting the temperature back to what you want. It’s a bit frustrating, but it’s still under your control. Unless you have had a bad morning already or have low impulse control for some other reason, you’re probably not going to flip out when you just turned the wrong tap. Your behavior didn’t work as expected, at first, but it you still have control.
On the other hand, if you are in a shower in a hotel and can’t figure out how to warm up the freezing water, no matter what you try, it’s a lot more frustrating.
Think about some of the times that your dog melts down in frustration. Does it seem a bit like the shower scenario? Something was supposed to work and now it doesn’t?
WHAT DOES FRUSTRATION LOOK LIKE IN DOGS?
Behavior evolved to have an effect. That’s the whole point of behavior. It helps you get what you need or want and avoid everything else. Like people, dogs respond in many ways when their behavior is not effective. A tiny frustration occurs when he has another behavior that is likely to work and so he just calmly does that instead. Sit doesn’t get the treat, so he lies down and is reinforced. That dog is able to cope with the frustration.
The frustration that’s problematic is when the dog does not have another behavior that’s likely to work, either, and arousal spins out of control.
For example, when a dog tries to walk forward toward another dog and he’s unable to move, that behavior is “on extinction” meaning that it’s not being reinforced. The dog may try harder to pull forward (“extinction burst” or “invigoration”), whine, bark, jump, even turn around and snap at the handler. If any of those things work, that behavior becomes more likely.
When he tries to greet using a wiggling body and the behavior is ignored, he may jump up into the person’s face. When he is given one too many cues in a behavior chain without reinforcement, the dog shows frustration. The consequences aren’t as expected. The reinforcement was under the dog’s control in the past and then during this exercise, it wasn’t. Some dogs will calmly push through this, while others will shut down, whine or bark at the handler.
Examples of behavior in response to frustration:
whining
avoidance of trainer who is not ‘paying’ as expected during extinction trials (turn away, walking away, sniffing, lying down)
barking at the trainer
barking at the goal (treat pouch, squirrel in tree, other dog, etc.) Higher pitched barking at other dogs (‘puppy bark’).
rapid breathing
exaggerated form of previous behavior
biting at the leash
‘guessing’ at cues (inconsistent response)
circus dog (dog throws out random behavior to see if any will be reinforced)
Some frustration is just part of life and we do want to help dogs show patience and resilience in the face of frustration. But our work with dogs should maximize reinforcement and limit the amount of frustration they experience. I don’t mean it necessarily maximizes reinforcement from us. I mean that the dog’s behavior works as expected (or better). “Errorless learning” is more efficient and it also avoids increasing arousal.
It also avoids triggering the RAGE system in the brain. Thinking of the affective brain as being composed of different systems is discussed in Jaak Panksepp’s book, Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions. Click here for a description of that system and what happens in the mammalian brain when this system is lit up.
Here’s a nice excerpt from that article:
Regarding the kinds of stimuli that can access RAGE circuitry, Panksepp points to such things as body surface irritation or when one does not receive an expected reward. He explains that the most common triggers of rage “are the irritations and frustrations that arise from events that restrict freedom of action or access to resources.” He points out that “a human baby typically becomes enraged if its freedom of action is restricted simply by holding its arms to its sides.” Activation of RAGE circuits is “accompanied by an invigoration of the musculature, with corresponding increases in autonomic indices such as heart rate, blood pressure, and muscular blood flow.” According to Panksepp, the phrase “getting hot under the collar,” is accurate in that body temperature also increases during rage.
IS IT FRUSTRATION OR FEAR? DOES IT MATTER?
Many dogs have a combination of avoidance and attraction to other dogs. If they are off leash, they rush over frantically and then fall over themselves getting as small as possible. Or they run up to within a few feet and then stop, unwilling to go closer. When the dog is on leash, it looks like he really wants to get over there, but in fact, he’d really rather not. Using Panksepp’s terminology, the RAGE and FEAR systems may both be activated.
The good news is that BAT and the other work we’re doing here are useful for dogs in general. Both fear and frustration are aversive states and we want to help the dog not have to experience either very much (although we’d especially want to avoid much fear).
That said, if the dog is only barking from frustration, it’s going to be a lot easier to help bring things around than if the dog is also afraid. Once he has an effective way to get what he wants, the problem is solved. If the behavior is more emotionally driven, it’s still powerful for the dog to learn that his behavior is effective, but it takes time to build trust in other dogs, people, etc.
It’s important to not label your dog’s behavior as only frustration or fear or whatever else. Look at the dog you have in that moment. Watch for signs of distress and help him keep his arousal level low.
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HOW TO USE THESE LESSONS
Read through the lessons at your own pace. Every 2-4 lessons, we will pause to give you some tasks to practice. Each set of lessons with practice is meant to take about a week or so.
If you haven’t already signed up for membership, consider doing so because it is a great way to stay motivated. One thing members get is access to Grisha’s ABBA Facebook group. You can post videos and ask/answer questions in a discussion with your fellow ABBA members. The group is moderated by our teaching staff to keep the conversations on track. If you are a Pro member, you can cut your BAT set-up videos to short clips and share in the live BAT chats.
The agenda is listed with weekly lessons, but you can take whatever time you need. Most people actually take about 2 weeks per lesson. You keep access to the course on our site and can log in any time.
Week 1: What is Frustration?
Dictionary Definition
Human examples
What Does Frustration Look Like in Dogs
How Do I Know Whether It’s Frustration or Fear? Does it Matter?
Why is My Dog Doing This?
Course Overview
Training: Practice BAT Leash Skills
Training: On/Off Switch
Week 2: Reducing Arousal
Exercise (What to do and what to avoid)
Brain Games
Diet
Other Tips to Reduce Arousal
Training: Conditioning Relaxation
Training: Sudden Environmental Change as an On Switch
Week 3: Control is a Basic Need
Science on Control
More Please Signal
Premack’s Principle — Overview
Training: Hand Targeting
Training: Mark and Move and other Survival Skills (brief review)
Week 4: Meeting Needs
Using Premack’s Principle Wisely
What are YOUR Dog’s Unmet Needs?
Training: On/Off Switch with Premack’s Principle
Training: Speed Training for Loose Leash Walking
Week 5: BAT
BAT Set-Up for Frustration
History of BAT & Frustration
Training: Silky Leash Technique for Loose Leash Walking
Week 6: Predictability and Consistency
Why Predictability and Consistency are Important
“What do you want me to do?”
“What works here?”
How to Add Predictability to Your Dog’s Life
BAT Set-Up for Frustration
Collaborative, Empowered Dog Training for Pros and Families – Online!
David Premack
I’d like to start with a very basic behavior of the dog checking in with you on cue, paired with a release to go be a dog. Checking in on cue in is a good immediate management device that can help dogs who are very focused on dogs, bicycles, or other stimuli in the environment. Looking at something and checking back in with you is also a way for a dog to communicate to you what he wants or needs in a way that’s comfortable for you as well.
Click and treat any and all of these in rapid succession, until you are almost out of treats. You may also want to step away from your dog after each click so that you can click when your dog chooses to follow you. For your last few great treats, click and toss them in one direction.
It’s actually pretty simple. Frustration comes from behavior that’s supposed to work a certain way being blocked or not working. It’s unclear what he should do to get what he needs or wants.
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.
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:
“DICTIONARY” DEFINITIONS
That review is clearly full of frustration. As I tried to get from Copenhagen to Madrid yesterday in the middle of a pilot strike, I have to admit that I had a complete frustration meltdown. Between the lost luggage, rerouting to different airlines and cities, and endless bureaucracy, my patience was running thin.