Sunday, September 30, 2012

What I think veterinarians need to know about dog training: Part Two

In addition to understanding dog body language we also need to recognize the influence that breed has on the dog’s personality and behavior. Different breeds are not just dogs that look different. Selection has acted upon a great many of the natural characteristics of the dog, enhancing certain traits for the benefit of man.  However some of these characteristics also influence how well the dog adapts to living with humans. Take guardian breeds for example - german shepherds, rottweilers etc. They have been selectively bred to look after a “flock” of some type. It would be a pretty poor guardian that, when faced with something unfamiliar and potentially risky, just discounts it as not worth worrying about. However this illustrates the importance of strong leadership and extensive socialization in this type of dog. The former creates deference to the leader in dealing with a potential threat and the later allows the dog to recognize things that are familiar and not worth alarm.
Notice that I said leadership. Distinctly different from dominance. People respect a leader; they fear and are intimidated by someone who is overly dominant. Dogs perform behaviors because they are reinforcing in some way. They live in the moment and if they can do something and get reinforced for it they will. Much of a dog’s response is a manifestation of emotional state – aggression is often coming from a place of fear and insecurity. Training and behavior modification methods that address the symptoms rather than the cause are merely suppressing the behavior and creating a potentially more dangerous animal. However in talking about breeds and traits in individuals it is also important to recognize that, sadly, it is NOT always about how the dog was raised. Indiscriminate and irresponsible breeding must take its share of the blame for a great many problems, including problems in temperament and behavior.
This leads into the last section – “how dogs learn stuff”. Dogs learn in one of two ways – classical conditioning and operant conditioning.
Classical conditioning – the dog learns to make an association between an event/stimulus and another stimulus. For example Pavlov’s dogs learned that the ringing of the bell was associated with food. A primary conditioner is one that the dog reacts to without conditioning. A secondary conditioner is one in which the stimulus has no initial meaning – such as Pavlov’s bell.
Operant conditioning – the dog develops an association between a behavior and a potential outcome.  Most of us rely on operant conditioning in order to train dogs (and kids and husbands for that matter). However there is a vast variation in HOW people take advantage of operant conditioning.
Operant Conditioning: the options and their pros and cons: 

REWARD
PUNISH
POSITIVE
(we are adding something)

POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT
(i.e. dog gets a treat for a behavior). Requires good timing, the reward has to have value over other options, dog has to be in correct mental state to see association (not over aroused or stressed), satiation may occur with food.


POSITIVE PUNISHMENT
(i.e. a bad consequence happens as a result of an action)
Requires good timing , alternative behavior is often not clear (suppression only), can be associated with other things beside the behavior (place, person), hard to control the scale, dog has to be in correct mental state to understand association, inhibits independent thinking 

NEGATIVE
(we are taking something away)
NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT
take away something bad that is happening (i.e. release stimulus from e collar when dog performs correct behavior). Causes stress, inhibits experimentation, difficult to keep dog in mental state to understand association
NEGATIVE PUNISHMENT
Remove something that is good. The good has to have a very high value.


Following my “Reader’s Digest” version of dog training and behavioral modification I spoke for a bit on how all this applies to police dog training. Steel happens to think K9 demos are just an opportunity for people to celebrate his birthday (after all everyday is his birthday!). So he was only too happy to demonstrate his drug detection skills and, true to character, elicit a few laughs in the process. If anyone thinks that dogs don’t have a sense of humor then they have never met Steel who stands a little bit taller and smiles a bit bigger when he gets a laugh from an audience.
Behold the scary police dog during his last K9 demo to a group of 5th graders:

Friday, September 28, 2012

What I think veterinarians need to know about dog training: Part One


Recently I was asked to give a presentation to the Mississippi State Veterinary School’s Behavior Club. I spoke to about 90 vet students on dog behavior and training. It was a challenge to distill down into two hours the things that I think are most important about dog training and behavior. This a topic after all is one that I can, and have, spent days talking about! Having worked at a vet school for a great many years I also know that there is a surprisingly very wide range in the degree of animal knowledge and skill amongst veterinary students. This is especially true in regards to their understanding the non-medical aspects of our interactions with animals. In the first part of my talk I wanted to make a brief overview of training and behavior and then get to police dog training and demos.
So here is what I consider most important for the former part:
First, dogs are not wolves. Comparing dog behavior to wolf behavior is a flawed way to understand dogs.  There is a very wide genetic divergence in the canid family tree between wolves and dogs. Dogs have been selectively bred for a great many characteristics and traits that make them compatible with humans and pretty poorly functioning wolves. Much of the wolf observations that have led people to apply wolf behavior to dogs were based on observations of captive wolves. These were often unrelated animals existing in an artificial environment.  Don’t get me wrong; I think wolf behavior is fascinating, but it should not be depended on to interpret domestic dog behavior.
Second, people are not dogs. We cannot interact with dogs as if we were a wolf or another dog – they can learn our communication skills and we can learn theirs. We can find some common bonds – I can understand their distance increasing signals and they can figure out sarcastic humor. However we have to acknowledge that, no matter how good our communication skills are, we are still interacting as two different species. I suspect that dogs regard some of us who try to emulate dog body language as akin to the person who goes to a foreign country and tries to speak the language very slowly and much louder than necessary. Just hang a big “I ain’t from around here” sign on your neck.
Third, it IS extremely important to understand the dog’s body language. But learn this from a person with a proven knowledge base, not a self declared expert without real credentials at training or behavior modification. Veterinarians especially need to understand the behavioral and physiological effects of stress. At a minimum they need to learn to recognize distance increasing signals – behaviors that dogs exhibit in order to avoid a confrontation, the “please don’t make me have to bite you” behavior. A good resource is Brenda Aloff’s Photographic Guide to Dog Body Language; it is excellent and should be on every dog trainer’s book shelf.
To Be Continued….(See I said there was a lot of information! I had to talk really fast!)

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

I hear voices.....


One of the things I like about dog training is that even though it is not exactly rocket science, there is an art to it. You are constantly learning and tweaking what you do and trying to figure out better ways to do something. All dogs are different, for most tasks I have a certain process for training them but it can’t be so set in stone so as to not be flexible based on the specific dog I am training.
One of the things that can be maddening about dog training is all of the above…  Even after a great many years of dog training, at relatively high levels in a number of venues, there are still lightbulb moments. Moments when some brilliant observation pops into my head while training. Immediately following that is the other voice in my head (what? You only have one??) that says “Well duh! Took you long enough to figure that out!”

Working with Jill has provided some perfect examples of this. Jill initially started out her career with me in training to be my next SAR dog. However since I took my new job and am not doing SAR, she needed some other outlets for her drive and energy. One of those is competition obedience; she has been to a total of 7 trials now, qualifying in all and placing in all but one. Most importantly she LOVES to do it and seems to enjoy trialing.  She has been interesting to train because she is my first personal dog who came to me as an adult. While she had very little training and no formal obedience, she does have a VERY high desire to work and to please. The combination of her being an adult and so eager to please makes it easy to assume mastery immediately after she learns something and performs it well. She skips steps on her own and you can chain behaviors together faster that with a younger dog. Every once in a while however I notice a spot where I need to go back and reinforce a single aspect of the exercise a little more heavily  - such as the automatic sit while heeling. For a while I noticed Jill was treating it as an afterthought. She did it but it was not sharp and did not match the crispness and enthusiasm of her heeling. Then I realized I was treating it as an after thought too. Then the voice in my head called me names and made fun of my training. Well no…not really on that last part. But close….A few sessions of heavy reinforcement for the sit then gradually decreasing the rate and now the automatic sit presents the same animated picture as her heeling in motion.

I hate it when the voice in my head is right……

Sunday, September 16, 2012

Their greetings match their personalities....

I rarely leave my dogs for any length of time. Actually, up until these past few weeks, I NEVER leave my dogs for any length of time. However with the exception of Amber I would have been surprised if anyone had any issues being left with Dawn. First of all they are used to going there often, so often that Dawn should start charging us rent. Dawn also works from home and has the skill and experience to manage them along with all of her dogs. They are also easy going, low maintenance dogs (again except for Amber) so I was pretty certain they would adjust just fine; which they did. Their responses upon my return however were quite different - which should not have surprised me, given the difference in personalities.

Jill of course was over the moon with happiness. Her greeting was effusive and prolonged. She did not let me out of her sight for the rest of the night, slept on top of me on the bed and is still, several days later, making sure she stays as nearby as possible. Her demeanor is not upset or needy, just very very happy. So happy in fact that she nailed a first place competing in obedience today, after us not having trained in practically a month.

Jilly Bean with her first place medallion


Calix's response was also typical to his personality. He is the loving but rather self centered GUY of the group. He came racing over, jumped on me, vocalized his happiness and then went about his returned-to-normal life. As a friend described it, it is a bit like when you lose your wallet and then find it. Your are happy and relieved and then you pop it back into your purse or pocket and go on with your life. I think I am a wallet to Calix.....



"You mean it's NOT all about me??"


Amber, unlike the rest of the gang, has trouble coping with normal everyday life. She tends to cling to routine and look for predictability in her day - something that is rare in my life. She needs careful management in order to avoid developing separation anxiety or other behavior problems. I have to keep her mental state in mind but not cater to her issues. She also isn't comfortable with people outside of her inner circle and while she had met Dawn it was only in association with me. She was pretty freaked out for the first few days and then adapted to looking to Dawn for her needs and decided that Dawn could be trusted. She was VERY glad to see me, however if I am away for a few hours I get the exact same greeting.


The little weird girl.....

Steel, had a hard time with the greeting because there was something else in the room that was almost as good as my arrival. He apparently developed a strong attachment to Dawn's boyfriend, who was kind enough to pick me up at the airport. So he was like "MOM'S HOME!" "But MARK'S HERE!" but "MOM'S HOME". As usual it was as if we planned all of that especially for him, Mr "Every-Day-is-My- Birthday".  He did come sneaking up to me at bedtime and press his forehead against me to get some snuggling. After all, when you are a big tough police dog with muscles you have to maintain an image in public. It is hard to be tough when you work for your mother though....


Momma's Boy, just don't tell anyone.....





Thursday, September 13, 2012

Almost home....

Flew two hours from Brisbane to Sydney. Then 14 hours to Los Angeles. Then shuttle to hotel, overnight, shuttle back then fly to Atlanta then to Roanoke. Now driving with dogs back to MS. Jet lag? What is jet lag?

All the dogs were happy to see me. However I think Jill was happier than all the other dogs combined. She was like:


She finally settled down and stopped mauling me. But she wasn't going to let me out of her sight.


"What do you mean you won't be able to sleep with me on top of you??"

"How about I just watch you from here then?"

"Zzzzzzzz"