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: