In our house, Mother’s Day (and Father’s Day) consists of each of us receiving one or more cards from our four legged children.  And the “thank yous” for being a good pet parent that each of us makes up to write in the cards for the other, can bring a tear or a chuckle just as readily as if they were written by two legged children.

So we wanted to do something special for all puppy Moms (and Dads) for Mother’s Day.  Through the month of May, “gently used” copies of our award winning book “Raising a Behaviorally Healthy Puppy” will be on sale for ONLY $4.97, with no minimum number required to receive this discount.  At a 100+ pages, it would cost more than that for you to make copies to distribute OR to purchase individual behavior brochures from a variety of sources to cover all the topics in the book.

These “gently used” books are like new.  To tell the truth, these are books returned to us by a large pet store chain in excess of what sold at a retail price of $15.95.  The books have an extra pricing sticker on the back, and some covers may have a crinkled corner, but they’ve not been read or used by anyone.

“Raising a Behaviorally Healthy Puppy” provides a Five Step Guide to create healthy behaviors, with detailed plans for housetraining, crate training, introducing puppy to resident pets, managing chewing and puppy biting, preventing “chaos at the door” through controlled greetings, teaching basic “manners” (sit, down, come, give, walk nicely) using methods puppies can easily understand, and socialization. 

Veterinarians and groomers will especially appreciate the chapter on teaching puppies to enjoy handling and mild restraint.  Everyone will appreciate the common sense chapter about social roles and relationships that exposes the “dominance” myths and substitutes common sense instructions for enjoyable, daily interactions that build on puppies’ inherent willingness to cooperate and avoid conflict.  CLICK HERE for a more complete description of the book.

You can’t make a better $5 investment in your puppy’s behavioral health or for those puppies you see as veterinarians, trainers, or other pet professional.  So take advantage of this special Puppy Mom’s Day Offer good through the end of the month.  But don’t wait too long – when our supply of these ‘gently used’ books at the special Mother’s Day price of $4.97 are gone, they’re gone.

Click the Add to Cart Button NOW and choose your quantity in our shopping cart.
 

Even more behaviorally useful terms such as “fearful” or “defensive” require descriptions of the context, the dog’s body postures and other behaviors to really be sure those interpretations are correct.

When we jump immediately to interpretations without first carefully describing what the dog is doing we are more likely to mis-understand why the dog is behaving as he is, or attribute motivations to behavior that aren’t accurate.  Dogs labeled as “stubborn” are often in reality confused about what is expected of them, and rather than risking a behavior response that could result in punishment, they instead choose not to respond at all.  That’s why “stubborn” requires a behavioral description – perhaps the dog continues to bark while his owner shouts “NO”.  In that case, it’s simply a case of the motivation to bark being much higher than the motivation to stop.

Trainers, behaviorists, and behavior consultants also have labels assigned to them without first hand observations of what they do.  Trainers may be labeled by themselves or others as an “all positive trainer”.  Without either observing the trainer, or asking her what she actually does, that label is open to interpretation, much like the label “stubborn”. 

“All positive” could mean the person uses positive reinforcement and positive punishment.  If “all positive” is supposed to mean ONLY the use of positive reinforcement, that doesn’t seem likely.  Negative punishment is almost always the other side of that coin.  Many “positive trainers” we know also use head collars.  A head collar can be used to negatively reinforce NOT pulling on the leash OR to positively punish pulling on the leash OR viewed as a response prevention tool.  

“Force free” is another label applied to trainers.  Some of the “force free” folks have defined their term –

"No Shock, No Pain, No Choke, No Fear, No Physical Force, No physical Molding, No Compulsion Based Methods are employed to train or care for a pet”. 

We don’t think we could comply with this definition because anyone who has ever put a leash and any type of collar or harness on a dog has used “physical force” (no matter how slight) to control the dog, and if we turn our dog’s head so we can look in her ear we are apparently using “physical molding”. 

Now we come to the “balanced trainer” label.  One definition we found was

“Generally, a balanced dog trainer uses both corrections (punishment) and reinforcement (rewards) to teach dogs”. 

Mmmm – so “corrections” equal punishment.  We don’t know whether it’s positive or negative punishment.  And, this particular site gives this example of what “balanced trainers” do:
 “You ask your dog to roll over. He’s not 100% sure what “rollover” means and he also knows that guessing is not the best option. So he doesn’t move. And what happens? If you believe in balanced training, you’ll punish the dog for his incorrect response.”

Really?  We’ve used positive punishers in the form of Snappy Trainers®, head collars, Spray Shield® (the citronella spray), a squirt of water, Bitter Apple® , and even told our dog to “Stop It” (which she does!).  And anyone who knows of our work knows without question that our focus has always been on teaching people to think first of “how can I get my dog to do what I want so I can reward him”.  So yes, in addition to copious positive reinforcement, we’ve also used positive and negative punishment, BUT we would NEVER positively punish a dog for not rolling over when asked.  So would we be characterized as "all positive", "balanced", "force free" or something else? Our answer is definitely something else.

The point is that arbitrarily assigning someone to a big group with a label attached can be just as misleading as putting labels on dogs and their behaviors.  Particularly when the label is as poorly defined as the term “balanced trainer”.  And it’s even worse to do so when the person doing the labeling hasn’t bothered to observe the person being labeled or even directly asked the person how he or she would describe their training approach.  In our opinion capriciously putting labels on others – especially without first-hand knowledge of their work – is unprofessional, disrespectful, rude, and promotes additional conflict in a field that already has more than enough. 

Just like with dogs, let’s instead use behavioral descriptions – find out what someone is actually doing in their training, and then decide if you approve or not. Stick to descriptions, because interpretations are often misleading and sometimes just flat out wrong.  For a document that describes some of the behaviors you should look for in trainers, behaviorists, and behavior consultants,

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When we think about how we want our pets’ behaviors to be different primarily in terms of stopping a behavior, we are talking about suppression of behavior.  If all we are thinking about is behavior suppression, we’ve put on some very dangers blinders in describing how we want our pet’s behavior to change.

We’ve seen dogs that have been subjected to very severe and harsh treatment with the goal of getting them to stop doing something.  And you know what?  These procedures have sometimes successfully suppressed the behaviors owners didn’t like.  But these dogs were clearly terrified by their suppression experiences. 

Take the example of pulling on leash and lunging at other dogs.  If a dog is yanked back with the force that say a 175 pound man can exert on the dog’s neck using a leash and a pinch collar, it likely won’t take long for the dog to learn to be quite afraid to pull on the leash.  Behavior suppression has been accomplished. 

Is that the only goal we are really after?  Let’s take a look at what else might have happened.  When tightened with sufficient force, pinch collars hurt – that’s why they can suppress lunging and pulling.  Ask any veterinary professional what dogs are likely to do when they are in pain – they bite.

We consulted on a case of a Doberman that had become aggressive to other dogs on walks. The dog would bark and growl and had once even attempted to bite his owner when he saw another dog approaching.  The behavior history revealed that several weeks prior to the appearance of the aggression the owner had begun using a pinch collar to stop the dog from pulling.  The pinch collar stopped the pulling, but it also elicited the aggressive response.  We switched the dog to a head collar, implemented a counter conditioning program and the aggression disappeared. 

The second question to ask ourselves is what is the dog’s demeanor or said another way what is the dog’s “body language” saying after the behavior suppression has occurred?  Is he relaxed and happy walking next to his owner on leash, tail wagging, ears up, clearly enjoying his walk?  Or is he tense and anxious, panting, overly vigilant, afraid to make one false move that will cause something bad to happen?

At least two recent research studies have shown that most pet owners have difficulty knowing when their dogs are stressed, anxious or afraid.  In fact, most people pay attention to the wrong features of the dog’s body and are likely to confuse stress and anxiety with a “happy” emotional state. 

This article isn’t really about pinch collars or pulling on leash.  The take home message is a much bigger picture than that.  When you set a training or behavior change goal for your pet, think about what you want him TO DO, not just what you don’t want him to do. 

Rather than “how can I get my dog to stop pulling on leash” set the goal of “how can I get my dog to be relaxed and happy walking by my side with minimal pulling”. Rather than asking "how can I get my cat to stop urinating on the rug" ask "how can I create a litterbox that my cat will use?".  That may require addressing other issues – maybe the cat won’t use the box because another family cat harasses her.  So then the question becomes "how can I help my cats get along better".

How you think about what you want will influence how you choose to go about accomplishing your goal.  It’s not ONLY the behavior we’re after when setting a training goal, but the accompanying emotional state.  And it’s usually the case that we can’t have one without the other.  If we have a terrified dog walking next to his owner without pulling, something bad is ultimately going to happen. 

But the patio is off limits for a week while the finish dries.  We don’t think Coral is very happy about that.  Her outside time is limited to leash walks and while she’s buried a few treats in the bed covers, she’s also walked around the house with a toy in her mouth as if searching for a place to “hide” it.  Suzanne thought she was going to try to “bury” one in a wastebasket!

This got us to thinking about what’s important to dogs, including habits, routines, and the ability to be able to control some aspects of their environment. 

Many of Coral’s habits and routines are different at this house compared to our primary residence in Denver.  In Denver one of her consistent routines is to sit on a little rug in the kitchen in front of the sink and whine (or even bark) when she wants us to come give her a treat from the container on the counter (We know – might be annoying to some, but it works for us!).

There’s a similar set up here in Arizona – a rug in front of the sink and a treat container on the counter – but of course the physical appearance is totally different.  And for Coral her “treat routine” and her ability to know how to ask for and receive a treat – has gone away. 

A few days ago, we started working on helping her re-establish this routine here in the townhome.  And now Coral is beginning to come and paw at us (another aspect of the “treat routine” from home that we’ve allowed and encouraged) when we are standing on the rug in the kitchen after dinner. 

The “treat routine” is something we’ve all enjoyed (We think we can speak for Coral!) and we didn’t realize at first how much we missed it.  In fact, it didn’t even hit our radar for the first week that Coral wasn’t asking us for treats at the normal time.  Instead, we realized she was more likely to be in another room sleeping – probably not a good sign.

There are several lessons here, for us at least.  And they all really boil down to how important it is to be keen observers of our dogs’ behaviors.  Those of you of a certain age may remember words to a Joni Mitchell song “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone”.  We didn’t realize how many of Coral’s endearing habits we weren’t seeing.  What made us aware of what was gone was the increase in her resting and sleeping at times when we wouldn’t expect her to be. 

There can be many reasons for a change in behavior frequencies, including medical problems.  And sometimes the change is so gradual we don’t realize they’ve happened.  But this is an aspect of behavior that is definitely worth monitoring.
 

We’ve become more and more interested in hearing about pet owners’ experiences when they do work with a professional – and sometimes more than one – because the problem persisted despite expert help. 

Many pet pros we work with who offer behavior and training services express significant concern and frustration about pet owners not following through with the recommendations or “homework” they are given.  We know there are multiple, and probably complex reasons for this.  But we want to try to discover what the professionals might be able to do better, or do differently, to improve pet owner compliance. 

So – if you are a pet owner who has turned to a professional – trainer, behaviorist, behavior consultant, veterinarian – or other pet pro – for help with your pet’s behavior problem, please complete our 10 item questionnaire about your experiences.

CLICK HERE to complete the survey.

Ashley was a beautiful, sweet, friendly dog who was also easily excited, a definite food-aholic, quite tenacious when it came to getting what she wanted, naturally curious , into everything, and in her younger years seemed to be in constant motion unless she was asleep.  (Keep reading for info about a FREE LIVE webinar!)

Despite the temperament differences between these two dogs, (and the four others we’ve had throughout our married life) we followed a handful of basic, yet powerful techniques to bring out the best in all of them.  Granted, bringing out Coral’s best behavior is significantly easier than it was to tap into Ashley’s best, but our go-to procedures were still effective – we just had to be as consistent as Ashley was persistent.

We’ve come to believe from both our personal experience, and our professional experience of working with literally thousands of pet owners over the course of 25+ years, that what pet owners need is a set of relatively simple “what to do when” or “what to do always” procedures.    We’ve used these procedures to prevent behavior problems and they are our default techniques if a behavior becomes a problem.  Admittedly, some behavior problems require additional techniques to resolve, but virtually every behavior can be improved with these go-to procedures. 

That’s why we are presenting a LIVE, FREE webinar event called “Bring Out Your Dog’s Best Behavior in Five Easy Steps: no matter what you’ve tried before and if you think you have the worst behaved dog ever!”  on Wednesday, December 5th at 5pm Mountain time.

One reason why we think the misguided “be your dog’s pack leader” model of human-dog relationships still remains so popular is because it’s simple.  Always be in control, never let your dog do a long list of supposed horrible interactions that, if allowed, will turn your dog into an uncontrollable tyrant, and be a STRICT disciplinarian. 

We’ve violated virtually all the “pack leader” rules with every dog we’ve had and still managed to acquire obedience titles (years ago), and have dogs that were responsive to us, reasonably well behaved, friendly, and safe to take out in the community. 

So whether you are a dog owner who wants a better relationship with your pet, or a pet professional who wants concrete alternatives to the “pack leader” mantra, join us LIVE on December 5th for this free event. AND SHARE with interested others!

Click HERE for a course description and to register.

But what if you don’t have that sort of documentation? 

Did your dog come from a shelter, a pet store or a previous owner, all of whom gave you their opinion about your dog’s breed, or mix or breeds, without any real way to know other than physical apperance?  Did the shelter tell you your dog was a Labrador mix, and your veterinarian said nope, she thought your dog was more likely a shepherd mix?  Do you think your dog might have some “pit bull” in him, even though his shelter or veterinary records identify him as a Boxer mix?

Recent research by Dr. Victoria Voith, a veterinary behaviorist, has shown that physical appearance is not an accurate way of identifying breeds, as this method has quite a low percentage of agreement with the results of DNA testing.

Turns out, breed identification may be more important than we think.  In a recent article* in JAVMA (Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association) the authors encourage veterinarians and animal shelters – and we would include ANY facility or business that houses, cares for, or trains dogs – to rethink their policy of identifying breeds based on visual inspection or owner opinions that aren’t factually based (i.e. the owner actually knows the sire or dam).

The reason for this is that identifying a dog as being of a certain breed, or mix of breeds can have consequences.  Certain breeds are banned in some cities, including Denver.   Although some states prohibit the practice, some insurance companies will deny coverage or increase premiums for ownership of certain breeds.   Some airlines won’t fly certain breeds, and some children service providers won’t place children in homes where certain breeds are owned.

As alternatives, the authors suggest use of the term “American Shelter Dog” (coined by Marder and Voith) or the “All American Dog” (as suggested by the AKC) or simply the term “mixed breed” for dogs of unknown parentage. 

Perhaps modifying terms for the latter could be added, such as small, medium, large or extra large, based on weight and/or height criteria established by the facility or business.  However, if the breed of one or the other parent is known with certainty, it’s important to note this for medical reasons at least.  Some breeds are predisposed to certain diseases, while others have genetic conditions that are breed specific.
Misidentification can also create erroneous assumptions about behavioral tendencies. In addition, the behavioral predispositions of hybrid animals can be completely unlike the behavior of either parent.

The current best practice regarding breed identification that seems to be evolving is to avoid identifying a dog as a mix comprised of specific breeds in any sort of permanent record based only on appearance or someone else’s opinion, when there is no first-hand evidence or documentation to support the ID.  Instead, generic terms as those suggested should be used to avoid unintended consequences.
 

*Simpson, R.J., Simpson, K.J. and L. VanKavage, 2012.  Rethinking dog breed identification in veterinary practice.  JAVMA 241 (9): 1163-1166.

By now you’ve probably seen the “shaming” pictures of dogs on the internet with hand-written signs about the “bad” things the dogs have done.  These include peeing on the owner’s leg at obedience class, slamming against the bedroom door to wake the owner up, eating feces or TV remote controls, and more.  We’ve included a couple of the cuter ones on this page.

(Right click for a larger image so you can better read the signs stating  the dogs’ transgressions.)

We can all get a good laugh at these, in part because our dogs have likely done something similar.  Publicly shaming kids on the internet is quite controversial, but we’ve heard no one complain about shaming dogs.

Obviously the dogs will never see their photos, so the “shaming” doesn’t create any direct emotional fall-out for them as it could for children who see their shaming online.  BUT, dog shaming isn’t necessarily the harmless event it seems to be on the surface.

The problem is that dog shaming perpetuates a common, and sometimes damaging myth about dogs, their behavior and how they learn.  Some of the dogs in the shaming pictures are showing what behavior scientists would call submissive behaviors.  Their ears are back, they are avoiding eye contact, their eyes are wide, and/or the eyes are drawn together making their brows appear wrinkled (giving that “worried” look).

It’s a good bet some owners are scolding the dogs while they are taking the picture, which elicits these submissive behaviors that people often mis-interpret as “guilty” looks.   Recent research has validated it is the scolding that brings out the submissive behaviors from dogs, not the emotion of guilt. 

When people believe their dogs show guilt, and know right from wrong, it provides justification for punishment after the fact.  From fundamental principles of animal learning, we know that the consequences of a behavior (whether good or bad) need to immediately (within about 3 seconds) follow the behavior in order for learning to occur.  Attempting to show the dog his “mess” (whatever that may be) as a means of connecting past behavior with later punishment not only isn’t effective at stopping the unwanted behavior, but often creates conditioned fears and aversions (dogs that stop greeting their owners at the door).  It’s certainly not fair to the dog, who can’t understand why he’s being scolded, and only teaches dogs not to trust their owners because the latter are so unpredictable. 

Dogs also don’t know “right” from “wrong” in an ethical or moral sense.  What they are quite capable of learning is under what conditions rewards and punishment can be expected.  For example, most dogs easily learn the rule not to get in the trash when someone is present.  But many dogs raid the trash when alone because it often results in tasty tidbits and no one is home to yell at them.  That’s quite different than concluding a dog knows it’s “wrong” to get in the trash, but tries to “get away with it” when no one is home.

So the take home message is, go ahead and have a good chuckle at some of the dog shaming pictures. But don’t let them mislead you into thinking your dog “knows better” and therefore deserves to be punished when you find evidence of his unwanted behavior. 

We hope you want to learn more about how best to have a well behaved dog and take a look at our many resources that will help you – from our Booklets “76 Ways To Get Your Dog to Do What You Want” and “What Dogs Need and How They Think” to our more intensive “Fundamentals of Animal Learning” Course or DVD.

And because many of these unwanted behaviors occur when dogs are left alone you’ll for sure want to get registered for our comprehensive 3 session course on "Help for Home Alone Dogs", appropriate for both pet pros and dog owners. 

Several recent news articles report that scientists in Colombia are breeding and training domestic rats to detect landmines so that they can be removed.  Thousands of mines have been laid in Colombia by guerilla groups and drug dealers over the years and hundreds of people are injured or killed by them every year. 

The rats have been bred to be tolerant of the outdoors conditions (after all they are laboratory rats, not wild ones) and they have been trained to recognize the odors of the metals and explosives used in landmines.  The training is similar to that used with dogs to detect landmines. The animals are trained first to discriminate the odors associated with landmines from other odors and then taught a signal which they give when they locate the odor.  The signal is that they stop and scratch the ground for five seconds when they locate the odor.   The advantage to using rats is that they are lighter than dogs and less likely to inadvertently set off the mines. It is also claimed that they are easier to teach than dogs and they are certainly less expensive to train and maintain.  Interestingly, the researchers also use the rat mothers to help train their offspring at the task by allowing the pups to follow along with their moms during training sessions.  

 A disadvantage to using rats is that they are easily preyed upon by birds, snakes and wild cats, foxes, coyotes and dogs. This is where the domestic cats come in.  The rats and cats are raised together so that they form attachments to each other.  Then the cats are trained to go along with the rats on their landmine hunting jobs to provide protection against predators. Did you ever think anyone would use cats as body guards for rats?

 While it seems strange to use cats to protect rats, there really is no reason why they can’t be used in this way.  Research from the 1920s showed that cats and rats are not born enemies and that cats have to learn who their friends are, and who they should prey upon.  Cats that were raised since birth with rats, didn’t attack them when they were tested for predation as adults while cats that weren’t reared with rats readily attacked them. So raising cats and rats together leads them to treat each other as friends and makes it easy to train the cats to protect them.  A similar technique is used in training sheep guarding dogs such as Great Pyrenees and Komondors.  The dogs are raised with the sheep from a young age and become socialized to them. Then as adults they become protective of their flock against predators.  (If you want to learn more about the socialization process in dogs and cats, and how it influences behavior, we have a two-hour webinar and summaries of scientific articles available on our membership site  the BehaviorEducationNetwork.com. BEN is the premier website for scientific information about pet behavior.)

 Colombia is not the only place where unusual landmine detector animals are being used.  In Mozambique, Giant Pouched Rats, which are native to Africa, and so are adapted to the environment, have been successfully trained to locate landmines. They are claimed to have cleared hundreds of square kilometers of mines. There is also preliminary research suggesting that honeybees can be trained to locate landmines as well. We are just beginning to understand how we can make use of the natural abilities of different animals to help us with pressing problems.  We just need to be sure that while these animals are serving us in these dangerous tasks, we are also looking after their welfare. 

         By the way, if you want to learn more about what’s wrong with dominance theory as it has been applied to dogs you can watch our DVD "The Dangers of Dominance" available at AnimalBehaviorAssociates.com.  Also you can learn more about the science of dog behavior from our audio program "Shining the LIght of Science on Canine Behavior" and how to interpret dog communication signals with our DVD  "Canine Body Postures" also available on the ABA website.