Cuteness can be a curse, especially if you’re a dog. I’m sure that all of us have been asked by strangers for permission to pet our dogs – particularly on public transport. It’s hard to say no because, let’s be honest, it is nice that other people find them cute. Moreover, I personally feel like they should be rewarded for asking (instead of just reaching out for them, as if dogs were objects…). And yet, I say no. To everyone. Even to the grandmas. Even to the children.
Because dogs can’t escape the outstretched hand in that situation.
Because dogs– just like people –have the right to choose who touches them and when.
Because even if they’re used to it, public transport is still challenging for dogs – full of sudden movements, smells and unknown objects – and I don’t want to make it harder.
I’m starting a series of shorter blog posts focused on “dog training 101” – so far I’ve planned posts about praise, rewards, equipment, and body language. If there’s anything you’d like to read about, be sure to let me know!
Let’s start with good, old-fashioned praise. It’s a really simple tool that’s always at hand, and can make a big difference in your relationship with your dog. Praising your dog means saying things like “good boy/girl”, “well done”, “yes” etc. Dogs obviously have no idea what these words mean, so the most important thing is the tone of voice you’re using (soft, pleasant or high-pitched if you’re cheering them on).
Common misconceptions
Sadly, most of the dog owners can be divided into two groups: those who never praise their dogs and those who seem to think that praise alone is enough. Both groups are somewhat wrong – let’s take a closer look.
Many people don’t praise their dogs, seemingly expecting them to just know the rules of the human world by themselves. Unfortunately, domestication did not make dogs experts on arbitrary human expectations such as stopping before a road, walking nicely on the leash or not eating food off the ground. They are uniquely interested in what we’re doing but they still need to be taught everything we want from them.
Other people seem to think that praise is high-value currency in the dog world because dogs love us so much and crave our approval. Actually (as you probably noticed), once you go outside pretty much anything is more interesting than us, and that’s completely normal. But in most cases praise alone is not going to cut it.
What’s the point of praise?
Praise can be rewarding
Some dogs truly crave our approval and for them praise can be rewarding. It may also work in well-known environments (at home, in the car) where it’s easy for them to pay attention.
Praise is always informative
Even if it’s not intrinsically rewarding, it still contains the information to the dog that we liked something they did, which makes it a valuable training tool.
Praise is always readily available
We’re all just human and we forget treats from time to time. With praise you can let your dog know that you appreciate their effort and you can do it immediately, way before you have the time to find that piece of sausage.
Praise can improve your relationship with your dog
Last, but not least praising is fun. If you make a conscious effort to praise more, you’ll learn to see all these awesome behaviours (and stop taking them for granted). Then the “misdemeanours” will just be a few instances among many great successes.
In return, you might find your dog checking in with you more often, which – let’s be honest – is pretty rewarding to us.
I know that walking a dog that pulls on the leash, jumps around and barks can be exhausting and frustrating. But trust me, they are not doing it to spite you. Contrary to what we like to believe, many dogs struggle with interactions with their peers, especially if they are on the leash1. In this post, we will explore the main reasons behind this problem and look at possible solutions.
At the same time, every situation is different, and this can be a tricky issue to train so it is always best to contact a competent, non-violent dog trainer who can help you personally.
Causes
In general, dogs “overreacting” to other dogs are mostly motivated either by fear or by excitement. In both cases the problem is the inappropriate level of arousal: the dog is not in control of their actions which also means they can’t listen to us then.
Just like people, dogs need to learn social skills and the experiences they make when they’re young can determine their behaviour later on2. Other contributing factors are their personality, stress levels, age and health. While you can’t change your dog’s personality or age, you can make sure that they’re healthy and not stressed out.
One of the most important things to remember is that each behaviour serves a purpose and it is crucial for us to recognize what that purpose is.
A dog that loves playing with other dogs probably pulls on the leash (or barks or jumps) because they learned that their human will eventually give up and let them approach.
A dog that is fearful has probably learned that pulling, barking and jumping makes the other dogs go away.
Basically, they are trying to either decrease or increase the distance to the other dogs. They behave the way they do because it was a successful strategy and we “simply” need to teach them a different one.
Recognizing your dog’s motivation is key for further training because it will determine the reinforcement you use. In these situations typically food or play can be used to help the process along but your dog can only be efficiently rewarded with something that they want in a given situation (that is: getting closer to or further from the other dog) 3.
As I have mentioned above, the main issue is that your dog is too aroused to control their own actions. Regardless of their motivation, further increasing the arousal level will only make the situation worse. Shouting, jerking the leash, smacking your dog (or any other aversive action) will not make your dog calm down. What they can achieve is:
increase your dog’s stress level
make them fear you
destroy their trust in you
make them less likely to want to be close to you – which is the opposite of what you want in this situation
Aversive trainers often claim (quick!) success with their methods. But what they do is behaviour suppression, not behaviour modification. Many of these dogs either get more and more stressed out until they snap and “bite out of nowhere” (sounds familiar?) or they fall into the state of learned helplessness. 4 I can’t imagine you want any of that for yours.
learn to read canine body language, so that you can assess your dog’s emotional state, as well as the other dogs that you meet
train only in situations that you can control – your dog can only train when they’re not too excited
invest in a harness – constant pulling on the leash while wearing a collar can lead to tracheal damage; the dogs pulling and wheezing are not suffering from asthma, they just have trouble breathing.
eliminate as many stressors as possible from their life – have a look at your dog’s routine: do they get enough of down time? are there other things that freak them out? is their day predictable enough to feel safe? (learn more about relaxed and yet engaging walks)
DURING THE WALK:
remain calm – it’s easier for your dog to keep their cool if you keep yours
always have treats on you – if your dog is into food you can distract them before they notice the other dog- drop the treats early enough and they might just focus on them instead of freaking out5
support your dog – if they are fearful help them maintain a safe distance from other dogs
make sure all interactions are chill and positive – if you have the “lovingly-excited” dog you don’t want to prohibit all interactions with dogs, which would be punishing. Instead, find a friend or two with calm, well-socialized dogs and hang out with them, or join a social walk organized by a competent trainer.
always tell your dog when they’re doing well. here is a list of behaviours you can reward:
slowing down
approaching other dogs in a bow
looking away
turning away
looking at you
sitting down
lying down
sniffing
When off-leash, dogs can communicate clearly: Leus (on the left) approaches the other dog in a curve, a little tensely. The dog sprints at her, she jumps so that they stand in opposite directions and turns her head away. Tension dissolved, the other dog gets re-called and both dogs shake themselves off.
But what if a dog off-leash approaches us?
The default is: dogs should meet only off leash. If you see someone approaching with a dog on a leash, you should leash your dog too and keep a safe distance. If you keep your dog leashed, the other dog owners should do the same for you. If they are unwilling to do so, you can resort to these two tricks:
You can stop the approaching dog by throwing a lot of yummy treats – make sure that they can see it, make a fuss if needed. More often than not, the dog will pause to retrieve free food and you can quickly retreat.
You can motivate the owner to respect your request and leash their dog/move away by telling them… that your dog has fleas or other parasites. Seriously.
When off-leash, dogs can communicate clearly: Leus (on the left) approaches the other dog in a curve, a little tensely. The dog sprints at her, she jumps so that they stand in opposite directions and turns her head away. Tension dissolved, the other dog gets re-called and both dogs shake themselves off.
Myths
Last but not least, let us look at four common myths that might be slowing your progress:
Your dog pulls because they’re dominant and trying to control the situation –NOT TRUE Quite the opposite, it’s a sign that they’re overwhelmed.
A harness will make your dog pull more (because they won’t be “corrected” [=punished] for doing so) – NOT TRUE You really can’t do anything wrong by looking out for your dog’s health; also, the tightening collar restricts access to oxygen, which in turn increases arousal (stress) instead of decreasing it.
All dogs love playing with each other – NOT TRUE Watching dogs play is a delight but studies of free roaming dogs have shown that adults dog rarely engage in play. Like people, dogs are individuals and vary in their sociability.
You should never pick up a small dog – NOT TRUE You should learn to evaluate when your dog needs help and when they don’t. Let them handle as many situations as they can but if it’s too much, by all means do pick them up, this way they’ll know you’re on their side.
Many dogs seek attention, follow us around, bark, howl etc. when they’re afraid. Owners are often afraid that if they pet/comfort their dogs, the situation will get worse because they’ll be “rewarding” these behaviors. Let’s look at this from the scientific perspective.
No, petting can not make fearful behaviors worse.
Firstly, when your dog is afraid all those “bad” behaviors are symptoms of their emotional state. Fear is an emotion that tells us that we are in imminent danger and I think it is safe to assume that it is universally unpleasant[efn note]The brain parts responsible for basic feelings like fear are virtually identical in humans and other mammals. 1. As Patricia McConnell2 once wrote: “no amount of petting is going to make it worthwhile to your dog to feel panicked”.
Secondly, what you’re thinking about here is the principle of operant conditioning – that you can make a behavior more likely to occur by rewarding it.
The thing is, we established that these fearful behaviors are symptoms of stress. That means that the assumption that the dog behaves that way in order to get petted/get attention is false and so you cannot reinforce these behaviors with petting because petting is not what the dog is after. The dog wants to feel safe.
Moreover, operant conditioning is used for training voluntary behaviors and what your dog is doing during the thunderstorm is involuntary.
Another thing: refusing to comfort them may result in them looking for some other, much less desirable outlets for their anxiety such as chewing stuff…
And no, your dog will not “just get over it”.
What we mean by “getting over something” is called habituation in scientific jargon. It is the process of getting used to something until it becomes nothing more than background noise. But this can only work if the stimulus is not intense enough3 to make us very uncomfortable.
If the stimulus is very intense – as is the case with fireworks – exposure to it will achieve the opposite 4 and the dog will end up either properly terrified (for example: urinating, destroying stuff) or will shut down completely.
The only way of making these behaviors better is to reduce the level of fear/stress that your dog is experiencing. You can read about it in my post about fireworks’ and storm phobias.
Many dogs suffer from firework and storm phobias. Both storms and fireworks are pretty unpredictable, which makes training tricky. Dogs will sometimes do crazy things out of fear: from hiding in the bathroom, through peeing themselves, to running away – and 40-50% of those who did run away never make it back! So our first priority is reducing the amount of fear they experience.
Bear in mind that each dog is different, not all of them can be cured and not all of us have what it takes to go through a rigorous counter-conditioning program. It is vital that we are honest about what we can achieve at the given time and just strive for the best possible scenario.
You need to recognize how stressed your dog is in the given situation1. It will determine how much work there is for you. This is a list of common signs of stress starting with the milder, more ubiquitous symptoms.
panting
pacing
yawning
drooling
licking (especially paws)
vocalizing (whining/barking)
attention seeking
shedding
hiding
shaking
urinating (this one can go both ways – the dog can urinate out of fear or they may be so stressed that they’re incapable of elimination)
2. Ahead of time: decrease the overall stress level
Stress is not a one-off event, it accumulates over time. That means that even if you can’t quickly cure your dog of firework phobia, they will have an easier recovery if they’re overall doing well.
If you know that fireworks will happen or that a storm is approaching you can:
Avoid doing anything that makes your dog scared or uncomfortable (car rides, restaurant visits, the vet…) but also limit high-adrenaline activities such as playing ball. It might also be wise to skip your agility class for a while. Instead go for calm walks in places where you don’t have to control your dog all the time, offer them lots of opportunities to sniff, gentle massages, take them for a swim… you know best what makes your dog go all soft and chill.
Other options include:
prescription medication – consult your veterinarian on whether this is an option for you
3. During the event: manage the situation as best you can
walk your dog before the fireworks begin
secure your dog either with a safety harness or with a combination of a harness and a collar
use a GPS tracker if you have one
if your dog has a favourite hiding spot, you can make it extra cozy for them
turn on music or house appliances during the fireworks – the noise from outside will be less distinct then
provide comfort if your dog asks for it
There is a popular belief that you shouldn’t “fuss” over your dog when they’re anxious. This is partly true – you’re not afraid of fireworks, don’t behave as if you were. But it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t pet your dog or provide companionship! However, if they do want physical contact pay attention to its form: do not pet your dog with these short, nervous pats on the head or roughhouse with them. Choose calming forms of contact instead: cuddling together, a gentle massage, slow, long strokes.
rewarding them each time they choose to settle down on their own
The usual method used in dealing with fears is classic counter-conditioning (CCC). Let me quote Jean Donaldson, one of the pioneers of modern day training methods: Counterconditioning is about changing associations. It’s called counterconditioning because the dog already has an unpleasant emotional response [CER] to the thing we’re trying to condition. So we counter that by establishing a pleasant CER2.
For example: your dog hates the vacuum cleaner. Your aim could be to have your dog calmly leave the room when you take out the vacuum cleaner instead of barking at it wildly.
Start with either a recording of the vacuum cleaner or someone can start vacuuming at the other end of the flat3. Your dog decides what is too much.
Pair it with something your dog loves: feed them something delicious, play their favourite game or give them a gentle massage. Your dog should not show signs of stress!
You gradually increase the intensity of the stimulus until your dog starts liking the vacuum cleaner or at least stops being freaked out by it.
Once they’re not freaked out anymore, you can start working on an alternative behavior, for example resting in another room.
Counter-conditioning might seem easy but it is actually really difficult to plan and execute properly. If you want to help your dog, I’d strongly advise you to work with a competent trainer!
