The chair creates at least five more ways for Danger to get himself into trouble

Last week,  Sue had me and Danger meet her at a local shopping mall to have a go a working from a wheelchair. Needless to say, this makes everything more difficult and meant Danger had to stay close and avoid pulling, lest we end up on a Nantucket sleigh ride through the mall. Going through doorways, up and down ramps, and through peopled areas were all twice as complicated as they normally are. The takeaway: A good service dog has to be calm, precise, and utterly unflappable. Danger was quick to learn how to press the handicapped access button on the door and equally quick to hump the leg of the indiscriminant petter who smothered him just afterward. I’ve since recovered.

All right, wise guy, you gonna let me eat this sausage, or what?

I’d always had this impression that Labs naturally held things—birds—softly in their mouths. To some extent it’s true that a dog can be predisposed toward having a so-called soft mouth or a low-pressure bite. Mostly, though, it’s a skill that must be trained like any other. “Hold” means you’ve got to keep this object, whatever it may be, balanced between your teeth and not chomp or chew on it. I don’t care how soft a dog’s mouth is, if he doesn’t know a hold command and you put a pork sausage in his mouth, it’s gone. Sue and the ADW trainers taught me this sausage trick as a way of illustrating what’s called stimulus control. That is: Because I’ve given the “hold” cue, Danger should view the sausage not as a treat for completing a task, as he would ordinarily, but as an object to hold as he’s been taught. The treat, his normal dog food, comes after he’s held the sausage for what must be an unbearable length of time.

How to work up to this one slowly: Teach your dog the hold command with a wooden dowel. Click just for light but steady pressure on the dowel being sure to maintain control of it until your dog will hold it—even for a fraction of a second—without rolling it in his molars. Add the cue once you’re getting a consistent hold of a few seconds. Then, once he knows the command, very slowly raise the criteria with objects that he’s more likely to chomp down on or treat like a chew toy. Finally, when your dog can hold actual chew or squeeky toys calmly, introduce a frozen sausage. Then slowly let it thaw as you train. Mike and the Wildrose gang use a similar progresion for hunting retrievers, starting with a frozen game bird and then then gradually letting it thaw as several young dogs make retrieves with it.

Cute, but Brutus is a toy-hoarding monster

Q. My dog, Brutus, loves his toys to the point where he attacks other dogs that try to play with them. And it’s not just his toys. Say we’re at the dog park and there is a dog that is playing with a tennis ball: He will steal the tennis ball from the other dog and get very mean if that dog tries to take it back or even share it. At home, I have to take his toys away and put him in “time out” which is him being sent to his crate. I don’t think it’s a matter of lack of exercise; I let him run next to my scooter until he’s tuckered out, which he absolutely loves. Any suggestions on how to stop this possessiveness/obsession?

A. Possessiveness is an entirely natural behavior for dogs and, in the case of dog-dog interactions, a difficult one to modify. From Brutus’s perspective, his behavior works—and every time he successfully steals a toy or defends one from another dog, his obnoxious behavior is rewarded. I know of no way to decrease his interest in toys—I expect that “time outs” will have the opposite effect—and I don’t want to deprive him of what are obviously a great source of joy in his life! But here are some thoughts on improving his etiquette around other dogs:

1. I suspect you’ve figured this out by now, but… Don’t give your dog toys when he’s around other dogs.
2. Train your dog to drop toys (or anything else that’s in his mouth) on cue. When your dog has a toy, offer him another, better toy or treat.  As he opens his mouth to take the new thing, say “drop”  and praise him enthusiastically when he does. If he likes to retrieve, you can throw the toy for him as a reward. This is going to take a lot of training with every toy he has before it becomes automatic. Make your dog think that whenever you say “drop,”  an even cooler toy or fabulous treat will appear. You will get lots of use out of this command, and you can use it when Brutus steals another dog’s toy. We’re working on this one with Danger at ADW, now.
3. Train your dog to have solid leave it and come (recall) commands, and use them to prevent stealing other dogs’ toys. This is especially important if your dog is inclined to get ugly with other dogs. As your letter indicates, you recognize that he lacks self-control around toys, so it’s your responsibility to provide that control.  Just like you wouldn’t let a son (or daughter) bully other kids at the local playground, you can’t let your pup bully other dogs at the park for their toys!

Danger with the object of his torment

In operant conditioning, you often hear about positive reinforcement: the dog earns some reward for performing a desired behavior. But there are three other ways to influence behavior that fall under the same training theory. The four ways, broken down simply are:

1. Give your dog something good–a treat for a sit
2. Take away something good–a timeout for bad behavior
3. Give your dog something bad–the shock of an e-collar
4. Take away something bad–releasing the pressure on a choke collar for a sit

In general, we try to keep our training to the first two items both because they’re more effective and because they produce fewer unwanted side effects like bolting and loss of the dog’s confidence in the handler. But certain dogs just won’t avoid temptation by positive reinforcement alone.

Enter punishment. Specifically, we’re going to talk about positive punishment–the sort that’s generally associated with rolled up newspapers, e-collars, and the likes. When it comes to greeting other dogs, Danger has a long history of lunging out to “say Hi!”, which he evidently finds enjoyable. Further, Grayson’s yanking on his lead isn’t changing his behavior. He just ignores the nagging. So we’ve got to find some way to get him to stop. In Danger’s case, we discovered that his aversion to water could be an advantage. I had Grayson and Danger walk across the room past another dog. When Danger pulled out to greet, Grayson gave him a quick squirt of water in the face and that ended that.

But positive punishment (the proverbial stick) is dangerous territory for both dog and handler. The punishment has to be severe enough to actually stop the behavior and not so much as to actually injure the dog physically or mentally. Steve White, a well-known police dog clicker trainer, has come up with eight rules for punishing your dog. They underscore just how hard it is to get punishment to work properly without undue fallout. The best reason to avoid punishment is that it tends to be reinforcing to the punisher–the owner feels some satisfaction in “getting even” with the dog, and turns to punishment more and more often to change behavior . Not good.

The Eight Rules

1. The punishment must be something the animal dislikes and something the animal does not expect;
2. The punishment must suppress the unwanted behavior, otherwise it’s just plain abuse;
3. The punishment must be of the perfect intensity. Too much and the dog will shut down. Too little and the dog develops resistance to punishment;
4. The punishment must happen immediately after the behavior;
5. The punishment must be associated with the behavior, not you! Otherwise your presence is a signal that punishment may occur, and your absence is one that it will not. The result? A “sneaky” dog;
6. The punishment must happen every time the behavior occurs. Otherwise, you may put the undesirable behavior on a variable schedule and make it even tougher to break;
7. There must be an alternative for the dog. Give him an opportunity to perform an acceptable behavior in order to escape or avoid the punishment;
8. Punishment must never be used to the extent that punishment outweighs reinforcement … from the dog’s perspective.

If you can’t follow all eight of these rules, you’re probably better off avoiding the use of punishment. Heck, even if you can follow all eight rules, it’s better to try positive reinforcement before resorting to punishment.

Danger's ready for a loose-leash walk

Every dog must learn to walk on a leash. Mike covered informal heeling off-lead, using a slip collar. Here’s how the ADW trainers do it with their service dogs.

The Ideal Scenario: ADW teaches loose-lead walking (and heeling, once you unsnap the lead) with a clicker and treats. It’s incredibly simple. Say your walk cue, Let’s go or heel, and set off. As long as the dog is in the heeling zone next to your knee, click and treat frequently. Then gradually lengthen the amount of time and distance required for a treat. Most dogs are pretty quick to figure out that their place in relation to the handler is what draws the treat. I also like to look for frequent eye contact. You can promote this by clicking when you’re getting a good heel position and the dog looks up at you. Eye contact means the dog’s focus is on you and not what’s going on in the world. The nice thing about this method is that it doesn’t require any force, a must for service dogs who will be handled by people with disabilities.

The Problem of the Outgoing Dog: With Danger, I’ve found that as soon as I give him his treat he suddenly speeds up and is out ahead foraging and looking for people and other dogs to greet. Like most training issues, the tasks are easy; the self-control is hard.

1. Start with a preemptive leave it when obvious distractions are coming down the path toward you. Most problems of pulling can be fixed with a well-conditioned “leave it.”
2. Some of the books I’ve been reading lately explain the dog’s urge to go ahead as an attempt to become a pack leader. Others explain it simply: Because it works. Whether it’s the former or the latter doesn’t matter; you can’t give in. When he goes ahead, stop, get him to come back whatever way works best. Then make him wait. Then set off again. Don’t let him pull you even a little. Just a few inches of give can reinforce the behavior.
3. Like anything, loose-leash walking is much easier to teach if it’s started at a young age. Train it in as a good habit early, rather than trying to fix a bad habit late.
4. If all else fails, use punishment. We’ll go over punishment in another installment.

A Good Exercise

1. Walk Toward a Goal: In this one, Sue set out a bowl of food at the end of a hallway. Danger and I set off toward it and as long as he was walking at my knee, we could keep going. As soon as he moved ahead we had to go back to the starting line. This is a great one to teach a dog self control because calmness and patience are the only way to ge that big reward. And you don’t need to use food, either. We repeated the exercise with another dog that Danger really wanted to meet as the reward on the other side of the room. As long as he walked at heel he’d get to greet the other dog.

Dog is my copilot

The folks at Dublin Dog have built a custom cruiser with doggy sidecar for a raffle. The money will be used to help a North Carolina woman (”Terry”), who has cereberal palsey, pay for a service dog from Canine Assistants. Raffle info at Dublin Dog Foundation.

Mike’s wife, Cathy, sent out a link to a Phoenix news story on a boy with type I diabetes, who’s school is raising money to train him a diabetic alert dog from a Wildrose pup. Oddly enough, some of the best service dogs are also the best hunting dogs and vice versa. When I went in for my first dog/handler interview with Jill from ADW, she asked what sort of line Danger was from. When I told her he was from a hunting line, she was quick to clarify: Hunting or field trialing?

The distinction is as important to service dog trainers as it is to hunting dog trainers. Labs have only been around as a breed–used primarily for waterfowl retrieving and hauling fishing nets–for about 130 years. Service dog programs weren’t formalized until the 1990 passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act (though they’d been used before that). Most service dogs are trained out of hunting litters for the simple reason that the desired characteristics are the same: Calmness, temperment,  intelligence, a good nose, and loyalty to the handler.

But in the last 50 years or so, breeding goals have diverged. In the U.K, breeders prefer a slightly smaller (maybe 65 pounds) animal and value calmness and temperment above raw athletic power and retrieving drive. Maybe it’s the old British stereotype, but they just prefer a dog that’s more civil. These dogs, whether imported directly from the U.K. as Mike’s Wildrose stock is, or bred for those characteristics here, are known as British or U.K. Labs.

American field trialing dogs are selected more like thoroughbred race horses. Breeders look for strength, speed, retrieving drive, and huge water entries. These 90-plus-pound dogs are the ones you see at the Teva Mountain Games flying 25 feet off the end of the dock or lining 300 yards for a duck they can’t see. They’re something to watch, but they’re hardwired for that explosive energy. Don’t expect a field trial dog to sleep by your chair while you read a book.

Show Dogs: Would it be impolite to call them dumb, overbred,  more prone to hereditary diseases, and otherwise a terrible waste of working dog genetics? I’ve never understood why working dog breeds end up in dog shows. It’s like having a beauty pageant for longshoremen. More astounding is that the Westminster Kennel Club was started by a pair of gun dog enthusiasts.

So the first question you have to ask yourself when you go to get a dog is, What do I want? In a lot of cases, you can find a dog that meets your needs at an animal shelter. In others, you’ll want to go to a breeder. But just know that there’s a lot of variation even within breeds.

Danger opens the fridge to get himself a snack

After learning push, tug came easy for Danger. Ever tried to wrench a favorite sock from your dog’s mouth? The instinct is to tug back. Dangle an enticing rag or rope in front of your dog and you’ll get the same response. But tug as a service dog skill is a bit more nuanced. You don’t want your dog to rip or yank as hard as possible, rather you want him to have a bit more tact. How you click and treat to end up with a crisp, gentle tug depends on your dog’s disposition.

1. If your dog is the sort that really loves to play tug and hates to stop, click only for a gentle tug at the outset. If your dog is less forceful to begin with, just click when he grasps the rag in his mouth.
2. Now shape the kind of tug you want. Danger has a soft mouth; in the first step all he’d do was hold the rag in his mouth. To get him to tug, I pulled sharply on the rag—just as hard as I wanted him to tug—while he held on. I clicked when he held on. This produced the right level of force. If your dog is more of the tugging type, be careful to avoid clicking for the sort of tug that involves head-shaking and growling.
3. Now, if there’s a specific place on the rope or rag that you want him to tug—say, the tip for more leverage—click only for that. Make sure he’s successful 80 percent of the time before you move on to the next step.
4. Once he’s consistently giving you the desired tug you want when presented with something to pull on, add the cue.
5. After a few more training sessions, you’ll be ready to generalize the skill by tying the tug rope onto different objects like doors, drawers, and the fridge. A great exercise to work on is combining push with tug. The dog opens and closes a door, resetting his own training drill and receiving a treat each time.

But Danger, I feed you

At times, it seems like Danger is trying to willfully unhinge me. Frantic outbursts, lunging for my arm and then dangling from it by his teeth, swiping sticks of butter off the counters and then swallowing them whole like horse pills–these are all par for the course. Getting a dog to not do something can often be harder than teaching complicated behaviors. Most guys I know resort to some combination of shouting, “Cut that $@&# out!!!” and the dog’s name over and over. I’m guilty of this, too, though less now than I used to be. Here’s a primer on what works and what doesn’t.

What to Do

1. First, figure out what’s setting the dog off. In my case, the big problem has been his going crazy and lunging at me during field training. Yeah, that seems like the big problem, but, really, what he’s doing is trying to avoid structured training. Sometimes it’s easy to figure out what’s setting him off, like when he barks bloody murder whenever someone knocks a the door. Other times, it’s harder. In any case, try to figure it out and know that it could be something as subtle as the way you lean over him before signaling a retrieve.
2. Decide on an alternate behavior to replace the unwanted behavior with. For the door knocking problem, Sue is having me train Danger to go to his dog bed and sit rather than race toward the door. For other annoying episodes like barking, greeting strangers or strange dogs on walks, and sniffing when he should be heeling, eye contact is generally the best swap.
3. We’ll start with the eye contact swap and save the door rushing (harder by a long shot) for another time. The command that most people use to mean, “Stop whatever it is you’re doing, raiding, looting, humping . . . and look at me,” is leave it. Sue had me start by holding a treat out to my side in my right hand and a clicker and another treat in my left. Danger sniffed my closed right hand, tried to mouth it, and, finally, when he gave up and made eye contact with me, I clicked and gave him the treat from the left hand. It only took one or two tries for him to realize that trying to gnaw the treat out of my fist wouldn’t work, but that making eye contact would be immediately rewarded. The clicker speeds this process up drastically by marking that exact moment when he makes eye contact as the thing that earned the treat. Now it’s just a matter of slowly upping the level of distraction: First with a treat under my foot that I could step on if he dove for it, then dropping treats in front of him. When Danger was successful about 80 percent of the time in making eye contact when I dropped a treat in front of him, we added the cue, leave it. NOTE: Leave it is not a punishment. You don’t shout it or growl it; just say it like matter-of-fact like. (This is actually really difficult when he’s dragging you toward another dog on a walk.)
4. Now, with your new leave it command, you’ll need to train him with the specific problems you’re having. If you want him to ignore other dogs on walks, you’ll have to train with another dog. For this, I give Danger a preemptive leave it as the other dog approaches. He’s got to turn away from the other dog and make eye contact to get a reward. By this point, he knows exactly what is required to get a treat, it’s just a question of whether pulling toward the other dog is worth more than a treat in his doggy brain. If it isn’t, I’ll lower my expectations and increase the distance to the other dog until he’s getting it right every time. The goal with this, as with all training, is for the dog to be successful at least 80 percent of the time.
5. You may still encounter situations that are too enticing for your dog to ignore. Yes, physically remove your dog if you need to, but, no, don’t get mad at him. You just need more training for higher levels of distraction. The worst thing you can do is repeatedly shout leave it. Doing this will only weaken the meaning of the command.
6. Now the harder part: unwanted behaviors that aren’t caused by obvious things like approaching people and dogs. My specific problem is a playful lunging that quickly escalates to growling and biting. First, I’ve got to remove whatever stimulus is setting him off. It turns out that trying to overpower him, which is both doable and tempting with an otherwise sweet 60-pound Lab, is a big-time stimulus. When I do this, he only accelerates until I’m bleeding and we look like one of those cartoon dust balls with paws and arms occasionally flying out of it. Instead, I force myself to stay dead still and say leave it one time. He’ll usually keep it up for a few seconds, aiming for an arm or flap of clothing, and then quit, sit, and make eye contact. Then I mark the behavior and give him a treat or praise. (Note: My hunting buddies think that allowing the dog to disrespect me this way is crazy. Maybe, but it’s going to keep us both out of the emergency room.)

What Not to Do

1. In general, trying to force the dog to anything is going to set that arrangement as a precident. See another dog coming and you yank one way on the leash and he yanks the other? That’s how it’s always going to be.
2. The old rub his nose in . . . [pick one] turd, steak, trash and shout No! OK, on second thought, it’ll probably still make you feel a lot better, even if it doesn’t teach him a damn thing. Go ahead and shout No, just once, and then throw his ass outside. No rubbing his nose in it, though. You’ll feel bad once your need for revenge has passed.
3. Drive your knee into a dog that’s jumping up. This one’s still surprisingly common among a lot of trainers for one simple reason: when a dog is jumping at you, fending him off with your knee is often the first instinct. It was with me, even before I heard about it as an actual technique. It was also one of the factors that led to my current problems with Danger lunging at me. From my limited experience, it’s best to save your sharp knees for the Octagon than explain yourself to horrified onlookers and risk hurting your best friend.
4. This applies to everything in dog training (and life): Don’t lose your cool. It’s really easy to do when Danger is tearing off down the street, but I force myself not to chase after him or repeatedly shout his name. Whatever the problem is break it down into small pieces and train it out methodically.