Category Archives: Dog Behaviour

04/24/12

Ian Dunbar on Punishment

This post is part of the series in response to Dunbar’s 2012 Australian seminars. See index.

Ian Dunbar chooses to look at punishment in a different way to most modern trainers.

 

When we look at things that are punishing (or are supposed to be punishing) then we can ask two questions:

  • Is it punishing (does it reduce the behaviour’s frequency)? and
  • Is it painful or scary?

 

 

From here, there are four possible scenarios:

  • Punishment that is painful or scary, and changes behaviour, is effective but undesirable (that is, it is not desirable to hurt or scare dogs).
  • Punishment that is painful or scary but doesn’t change behaviour is abusive.
  • Punishment that is not painful or scary and doesn’t change behaviour is nagging. It’s annoying, a nuisance.
  • Punishment that is not painful and not scary, but is effective, is desirable. This is where Ian Dunbar chooses to work.

 

Rhodesian Ridgeback puppy climbing into dishwasher.

A dog shouldn’t be punished for wrong doings when you haven’t taught them it’s wrong!

In this way, Ian Dunbar advocates verbal punishment.  Verbal punishments can be used to enforce trained behaviours, and is more about tone than volume. Continue reading →

04/14/12

Messages for Dog Trainers from Ian Dunbar

This post is part of the series in response to Dunbar’s 2012 Australian seminars. See index.

There were a few gems of advice throughout the seminar on things dog trainers should acknowledge and do when working with clients.  They can be summarized as:

 

  • When you’re working with an owner, don’t get slugged down with data transfer, explaining things, and ‘telling’.  Don’t waste good dog training time talking about dog training, instead: Do some dog training!
     
  • Use and promote the resources on DogStarDaily (especially Before You Get Your Puppy and After You Get Your Puppy).
     
  • The ‘best’ method for dog training is normally the quickest, easiest, and most effective for a pet owner.  (Explaining learning theory is normally not quick, easy, or effective.)
     
  • The 6 Es of dog training: Easy, Efficient, Effective, Enjoyable, Efficacious (do its job but not produce side effects), Expedient (techniques should be suitable for pet owners).
     
  • Use games.  Games are fun, they motivate everyone (the dog, the owner, spectators, and the trainer).  They allow a way for you to quantify a dog’s performance without the ‘pressure’ of performing, and owners often comply more with games than standard instructions.  (Owners will do almost anything for a ribbon!)
     
  • Remember that the dog owner has zero years of experience and none of your dog training skills.
     
  • To be successful in dog training, you need to be a people person – especially in order to motivate people to do what you ask.
     
  • Start taking stats on dog training – and use your stats in marketing and use them to motivate clients (it shows that their dogs are doing better!).
     
  • Use ‘the Bozo Game’ to help you practice correct responses.  The Bozo Game entails getting your dog training buddies together, and your goal is to create appropriate responses that keep the owner on side, despite the ‘bozo-y’ things they are saying.  For example, “I rub my dog’s nose in it’s mess when it poos inside.” or “I can’t walk my dog unless I put it on a prong collar”.  Your job is to respond in a way that means you don’t lose your client!  (And the implications of that is, potentially, they’ll use a trainer that is less refined as you, and the dog won’t improve, and the dog may end up being euthanised.)  Answers to these statements could be, “It must makes heaps of mess when you rub the dog poo into the carpet! I’ve got a cleaner way for you to housetrain your dog.” or “After attending my classes, you might be able to find other ways to walk your dog.”  If you come up with an inappropriate response (e.g. “You’re so cruel to your dog!” and “You’re an idiot!”) then you have ‘lost the dog’ and lost the game.
     

 

04/10/12

Dog-Dog Aggression (Dunbar)

This post is part of the series in response to Dunbar’s 2012 Australian seminars. See index.

Dog-dog aggression is harder to prevent that dog-human aggression, but luckily it’s more ‘livable’.  That is, a dog that hates people is hard to live with.  A dog that hates other dogs will probably be perfectly fine and happy living at home with minimal or no walks (and arguably, most dogs live like this anyway).  For this reason, Dunbar believes that socialisation of a puppy to dogs is less important that socialisation to people.  In the period from 9-12 weeks, dog-dog socialisation is not a priority.

In an off-leash puppy class at 3 months, most dog-dog issues are easily ‘fixed’.  If dogs are struggling with dog interactions in a couple of weeks, they can go to extra classes with a younger group of puppies (i.e. a scared puppy can learn to be confident around younger, small puppies) or with older puppies (i.e. a ‘bully puppy’ will soon be put in his place by older, larger puppies).  That is, a large facility running numerous puppy classes of different ages, can probably find the ‘right’ group of puppies (or young adult dogs) for a nervous or confident puppy to interact with, in order to teach that puppy appropriate interactions.

 

Two border collie puppies playing.

It’s important for puppies to socialise with other dogs and puppies to learn appropriate interactions from an early age.

Continue reading →

04/7/12

Fearful Dogs (Dunbar)

This post is part of the series in response to Dunbar’s 2012 Australian seminars. See index.

In the seminar, Dunbar asked us what we were afraid of. People called out common fears like spiders, enclosed spaces, and speaking in public (along was the less common fear of “tree roots”), and from these suggestions Dunbar presented a scenario:

Imagine you are going to take an elevator that is damp and smelly, and made of tree roots, and full of spiders. It’s going to take you to the highest floor of the building, where you will deliver a public address – naked. And then base jump.

Now, if your fear is not spiders or tree roots, incorporate your own fears into the story. I am terrified of bees, and imagining getting into a lift of bees is a terrible idea to me.

And then consider: Fearful dogs are living with this very real fear, everyday. It’s not fair when we accept dog fears as “Oh, he’s scared of men” and “Yeah, she doesn’t like visitors”. It is not fair to ‘let it be’, for dogs to experience these very real fears on a daily basis. Instead, a dog’s fears should demands fixing. The solution is normally classical conditioning.

 

Rottweiler being hugged.

Hugging dogs is a bite risk, so dogs should be desensitised to the sensation. Photo © Ruthless Photos.

Treating Fear Issues

Treating fear issues in dogs is much the same as prevention protocols – That is: A bunch of classical conditioning. However, for an adult dog, it takes more time and is more dangerous. Dunbar believes we spend too much time trying to diagnose ‘why’ with aggressive dogs, but the majority of aggression problems are fear based. For that reason, he suggests the same treatment protocol and that we should ditch trying to figure out ‘why’.

Food is crucial when treating aggression. Normally, aggressive dogs do not find being patted or spoken to rewarding (especially if people are the source of their fear!), so classically conditioning with food is, what Dunbar called, “the only way”.

For Dunbar, treating a fearful dog involved giving them a bunch of food for interacting with people, and for tolerating their body to be touch (desensitisation).

Dogs often bite when they are touched on their collar, ears, mouth, feet, anus, when given a hug, or given a ‘kissy face’ (staring a dog in the eyes while holding their cheeks in your hands). For safety reasons, dogs should be desensitized to these interactions in order to reduce the likelihood of bites. This goes for all dogs, not just those that are fearful.

 

Further reading: McGreevy on Classical Conditioning

04/3/12

The Importance of Bite Inhibition

This post is part of the series in response to Dunbar’s 2012 Australian seminars. See index.

Imagine you are at the dentist and he slips with his little scratchy-hook tool, and stabs your gum a little bit.  You respond by biting down on the dentist’s finger and punching him in the face.

Or you’re asleep in your bed and you partner wakes you as she hops in.  This terrifies you, so you grab your gun from under the mattress, and shoot her.

 

Red Dobermann puppy chewing person's foot.

Puppies need to be guided to learn to not use the full force of their bite as an adult dog. Photo © Ruthless Photos.

Ian Dunbar used similar human-aggressive examples in his seminar to make a point: Dog-human aggression is never okay.  Just like humans don’t (shouldn’t) hurt people that accidentally hurt them, and don’t hurt people that scare them, dogs shouldn’t hurt people in response to pain or fear.

There are simply no excuses for a dog to be human aggressive – it is never appropriate and never acceptable, regardless of the context.

First, appropriate socialisation should aim to build a confident puppy that is never fearful enough to bite as an adult dog.  Second, a puppy should be taught how to inhibit (i.e. make less forceful) their bite so that, if for some reason they are motivated to bite in their life, the bite is less severe.

Dunbar didn’t go into much detail about teaching bite inhibition at the seminar, but basically the process involves teaching the puppy to bite less forcefully and then teaching the puppy to bite less frequently (and eventually learn that they are not allowed to put their teeth on people).  Alongside this, you add a cue that means ‘let go’.  (It seems that the Dunbar seminar Crystal, at Reactive Champion, attended did talk about teaching bite inhibition in more detail.)

Furthermore, puppies that attend the Dunbar-style puppy classes, with offleash play, mean that they learn how to appropriately control their bite when interacting with other dogs.

The plan is that, after teaching bite inhibition to a puppy, the adult dog will be more likely to bite in an inhibited way.  That is, the depth and seriousness of the bite will be less severe.  A puppy that is well socialised, but does not have bite inhibition, makes for a dangerous dog.

 

Continue reading →