This post is part of the series in response to Dunbar’s 2012 Australian seminars. See index.
Dunbar-style puppy classes aim to teach puppies bite inhibition, allow one (of many) venues for human socialisation, and teach owners to control their dog off leash. They should be conducted offleash, inside on hard (sanitisable) floors, and with big and little dogs in the one class.
These dobermanns are playing offleash – an important learning experience for them and their owners.
Bite inhibition
By puppies playing with one another, they are learning rules for dog-dog interactions and also the appropriate force of bite while playing.
Socialisation
Puppy classes only form part of the socialisation picture. While socialisation happens in puppy classes, it is too little too late. There is a lot of work the owner needs to do before puppy class, and puppy class won’t make up for undersocialisation.
Control Offleash
Often the lead can become a ‘crutch’ for dog owners, and they cannot get the behaviours they want without this level of control. By training off leash from the outset, the puppy and owner learns to work with distractions and use them to their advantage. Our control needs to be independent of a collar and lead.
Dunbar is often credited as the father of puppy classes, but he has become concerned about how puppy classes are currently run. Particularly, most puppy classes are on lead, and most puppy classes use too much food and never phase the lure. To Dunbar, 10 minutes of offleash play is simply not good enough for a puppy class. Puppies need to learn to remove themselves from play, and humans need to learn how to engage in dog play and make dog-dog play a valuable reinforcer.
Of course, we use food to train puppies, but the food should be faded immediately. Furthermore, off leash behaviour will allow an experience trainer to note puppies with problems and start to address them sooner-rather-than-later.
Dunbar stressed that puppy classes are only part of the socialisation picture. The next post will talk about what puppy buyers should be doing immediately on bringing a puppy home.
Hi Tegan. Have you attend those type of puppy classes?
It’s unfortunate that we don’t have this here. But I firmly believe that puppies should have time to socialize with each other because it teaches them dog manners and etiquette.
Huggies and Cheese,
Haopee
Haopee – we do have puppy classes here, but I think they’re the ‘disappointing’ type that Dunbar referred to. A lot of them are run by vets, which are more like mini-lectures on vaccinations, worming, and desexing. There are some better ones which concentrate on socialisation, exposing the dog to weird and wonderful things. However, these are normally on lead. I don’t know of any off lead puppy classes near me.
This might be slightly off-topic since my dog is 14months old. You mention that food should be faded immediately. In my current class (“dog manners 1”) we were told that if we fade the food too fast it will be more difficult for the dog to learn the behavior. I vaguely remember reading something along those lines in a couple books as well. How do you determine when to fade the food?
Hey Kim and Kip. 🙂
In lure reward training, initially food is used to lure the behaviour. After doing it 2-3 times, you can then drop the food and use ‘pretend food’ to lure the behaviour. This is what Dunbar means by dropping the food reward immediately.
BUT this doesn’t mean fading REWARDS immediately. The dog is still rewarded for the behaviour once it is completed – sometimes with food, but also with life rewards, like playing with other dogs, playing tug, or ‘going to sniff’, or anything else the dog finds desirable.
Dropping a food lure early will not make it difficult for a dog to learn, but not rewarding a dog at all for performing behaviours may mean that they are disinclined (unmotivated) to continue training and working with you.
Hope that makes sense!
Ohhh! I see the difference and that definately makes sense. Thanks for clearing that up for me!
I am teaching a puppy class where I feel like one of the puppies might be developing some aggression issues. During off leash play time he will go beyond just bullying and will chase the other dog while snapping and growling at it, even after the other dog is clearly tryng to get away. While on leash he will sometimes lunge and snarl at other dogs. He is a Jack Russell mix and less than 4 months old and I could use some advice on exercises I can teach the owner to curb this behavior now. She is thinking of returning him to the shelter and is very concerned with the behavior as am i. I feel like it goes way beyond puppy bullying. He is not aggressive toward people at all.
Hi Denise. I’m no means an expert on this, but I can give you some suggestions as per what Ian Dunbar would suggest.
1) This dog should not be given the opportunity to bully other dogs. Not only is the JRTx learning bad habits, but he is potentially damaging the other puppies, too. Ian Dunbar would suggest following this puppy during off leash play, and giving verbal feedback all along, “Good good good… Ah-ah, gentle, gentle, gentle, good boy, good boy, goood…” etc. That is, preventing the puppy from engaging in bullying, and rewarding the dog (verbally) for appropriate interactions.
2) This dog should have the opportunity to interact with older dogs that will teach it manners. These older dogs should be screened for having good bite inhibition and dog skills, but still be assertive enough to tell this pup when he is stepping out of line.
3) Classical conditioning should commence so the puppy begins to associate dogs with good things.
Terrier mixes are not known for being dog-social. I would commence classical conditioning with this dog immediately, but I would also perhaps acknowledge this dog is probably genetically hardwired to be aggressive to other dogs (especially given his young age). This can be managed, but it will probably never be a dog that is going to be happy and social off lead – which is not necessarily a bad thing. There is more information of dog-dog aggression from Dunbar here: http://leemakennels.com/blog/dog-behaviour/dog-dog-aggression-dunbar/
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