Perhaps the most interesting- and challenging- part of the seminar was hearing about Suzanne’s training philosophy, and the way she implements it. There wasn’t an official session on what she considers “Humane Training,” but I think I have a decently accurate picture based on her general themes and random comments. I hope so, anyway! I’d hate to misrepresent her in any way.
Suzanne seems to define humane training as knowing the difference between asking your dog “will you do this?” and “can you do this?” This really resonated with me since Maisy is the kind of dog who will try her heart out for me. I’ve asked before if Maisy’s willingness to do something is an indication of her actual ability to do it, so I greatly appreciated Suzanne’s statement that the goal of humane training is finding fun things to do with your dog while keeping her physically sound, intellectually sane, and emotionally safe.
So, why did I find this so challenging? Largely because her implementation of this philosophy is different than mine. Throughout the weekend, regardless of the issue or the dog at hand, there were two recurring themes: responsibility and consequences, both of which I struggle with.
Responsibility is a bit easier for me to swallow, although Suzanne’s emphasis that it must go both ways was a new way of thinking to me. Both the handler and the dog have a responsibility to the other, but sometimes, I think I focus more on the handler’s responsibilities. I definitely put more responsibility on myself than I do on Maisy, as I firmly believe that training problems lie in my failure to adequately communicate. I think Suzanne would agree that our dogs are generally doing the best they can- as she said, dogs want to be right.
Where I often fail, however, is in giving Maisy responsibility for what she’s learned. Sometimes, I work so hard at setting her up for success that she can’t really make any choices. This isn’t so bad during the learning stage, but in my effort to be all positive, I sometimes lean a bit permissive.
Which leads to consequences, the more difficult of the two themes. The first time Suzanne said the word, I had a visceral reaction to it- I’m pretty uncomfortable when people begin to discuss consequences because it often implies physical corrections. And I don’t do physical corrections. Still, Suzanne was clear that consequences need to be tailored to the dog, and that you should always use the least amount of force possible, but she did say that for some dogs, a well-timed physical correction can be useful. She’s even okay with shock collars under very specific circumstances. At the same time, you can’t do this with very sensitive dogs. Often a firm word is enough (or too much!) for them. She went so far to say that such dogs need our support, not our criticism, and so the way we approach them will be very different.
I was very glad that she made this distinction, although I do not agree with her regarding physical corrections. Do they work? Certainly, but even so, I don't find them acceptable. I suspect that part of my adamant opposition to physical corrections is due to the fact that I have one of those sensitive dogs. Regardless, it was good for me to consider the idea of consequences. As Suzanne pointed out, sometimes a consequence is simply saying, “No, thank you,” to a particular behavior our dogs exhibit, and as I mentioned earlier, I do tend to trend a bit permissive with Maisy.
So, how do we humanely use consequences? First and foremost, we need to teach the dog how to be right. Suzanne said that in her experience, people don’t build strong enough foundation skills. I know I certainly fell into that trap, and I think training classes in general could do more to help teach people how to build stronger foundations. She also stressed that while building foundation skills, it’s important to give the dog choices, but to set the situation up in such a way that the dog can make the right choice. This gives the dog more responsibility for her behavior, while also helping her learn.
Gradually, we make the choices harder, rewarding heavily for correct decisions while imposing consequences for the wrong one. Again, the consequence depends on the dog. She gave the example of teaching a dog to walk on leash. It is the dog’s responsibility to stay nearby. If the dog fails, we may not use a leash pop, but we might use some collar pressure to make things a bit uncomfortable. It’s not given as a punishment, but it is a consequence of the dog’s behavior.
I’ve struggled with good loose leash walking skills with Maisy. She doesn’t pull, but she likes to stop and sniff interesting rings, and I’m afraid that this is transferring over to the obedience ring. Because I haven’t wanted to use anything aversive, even if it’s only mildly uncomfortable, I’ve stopped and called her name. In essence, I’ve nagged her, which has only taught her that if she ignored me, she could sniff longer.
Suzanne would say that she needed a consequence for ignoring me, so I took her advice and started a new program: Sniffing is only allowed when I explicitly cue it. Furthermore, she must disengage and come with me when I tell her sniffing time is over (I’m using the cue, “let’s go”). The first time I said “let’s go,” she didn’t make an effort to move. It was very hard for me to just start walking, and I did end up pulling her for a few steps. When she caught up with me, I praised her effusively. By the end of the walk, though, she began to choose to disengage and move with me when I said, “let’s go!” We’re still working on not sniffing unless I cue it, but it’s getting better.
So, was that positive punishment? Yes, and that makes me feel bad. I feel slightly dirty just writing about it. But… did it hurt her? Was she confused about what I was asking from her? Did it cause her to feel unsafe? No, I don’t think it did, which means it was an appropriate and humane consequence.
There’s more, of course. Suzanne said a whole host of interesting things about clicker trainers… but I’m afraid you’ll have to wait for my next post to hear about those! In the meantime, I’d love to hear your thoughts on consequences. Do you use them, or do they make you feel a bit weird like they do to me? How do you use them in your training, and if so, how does Suzanne’s criteria for humane consequences sit with you? Let me know!
Showing posts with label definitions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label definitions. Show all posts
Monday, April 19, 2010
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Attentive Heeling
The nicest thing a judge ever said to me was, “your dog looked so happy.” I don’t remember my score or placement, but I remember that compliment. For me, training and trialing is all about having fun with Maisy, so when I watch others compete, I’m impressed not by technical perfection, but by the teams with the alert, happy dog. Picture this dog with me: He’s in heel position, and while he may not be perfectly aligned with his handler’s hip, his tongue is hanging out, his front feet are prancing, his tail’s wagging loosely, and above all, he is so into the game that his eyes never leave his handler’s face.
It’s a beautiful picture, isn’t it? I think so, and indeed, so many people want that focus and attention that they purposely teach their dogs to make eye contact when heeling. You might expect that I would teach eye contact as part of my heeling criteria, too, but the truth is, I don’t. It’s not that I don’t want her attentive and happy, because I do, but I have two reservations about constant eye contact heeling, and both are rooted in the fact that she’s short.
First, in order to maintain eye contact, the dog needs to move forward far enough that he can look up into your face, which can create forging. Of course, it’s not impossible to keep a short dog in the proper position and still maintain eye contact. They can do it, although they often either go wide or they have to lift their heads much higher, which leads me to the second (and more important) reason I don’t want to teach constant eye contact for heeling: the possibility for injury.
In the March 2008 issue of The Whole Dog Journal, there is an article on canine chiropractic. In a discussion of cervical problems in dogs, the article quotes veterinary chiropractor Dr. Sue Ann Lesser as saying, “and then there are all the problems that come with always heeling on only one side… any unilateral activity creates muscle imbalances that can profoundly affect the dog’s gait.”
Now this would be enough to concern me on its own, but last summer, I noticed that Maisy had a slight, subtle limp. We never figured out what caused it, only that because of her conformation (long back, short legs, and her hips are higher than her shoulders), she is prone to back and neck issues. As a result, I have decided that eye contact, no matter how flashy, is not part of the picture I’m trying to create with Maisy.
So, what is my criteria for heeling? To be honest, for a long time, I didn’t think about it much. I knew that Maisy needed to be on my left, that she needed to be in the proper position (which I define as having her collar line up with my pant seam), but I didn’t worry much about where she was looking. As a result, she’s learned that she can look around or at the ground, and she sometimes finds other things more fascinating than me, especially if I’m not handing out treats. This does not make for great scores.
Earlier this week, I created a training plan, and quickly found that I had conflicting ideas about what I wanted. I originally said I wanted to reward for eye contact, but not the entire time. Just that I wanted her to pay attention. But I couldn’t define what that meant, only that I knew it when I saw it. Well, that really left the criteria pretty subjective, and ultimately, that means that I’ll likely be inconsistent and confusing. So, after a lot of thought, I think I’ve nailed down what “attentive healing without eye contact” looks like.
When sitting in heel position, I do want Maisy to make eye contact. Sitting in heel is often a predictor that I’ll be cuing a new behavior, so I do need her focused on me and watching for my signals. Like this:
Pretend she isn't forged in all these pictures, okay? It was hard enough to get the head position right that I wasn't paying attention to her body position!
When we take the first step of heeling, I want her to maintain that eye contact. This isn’t because I’ll be cuing a behavior, but rather because she has a tendency to rush off. She almost always forges the first 2-3 steps of heeling, even though I’ve spent a lot of time clicking for perfect position in that first step. I suspect this is because she gets so excited that we’re Going Somewhere! that she forgets to pay attention. So, this week I started clicking for eye contact during the first step. It’s still too early to tell, but I think it’s working. She seems to be much more focused for the duration when we start with eye contact.
I do not require sustained eye contact, though. After that first step, she may move her head into a more comfortable position, as long is she’s still attentive. A lot of small dog handlers talk about teaching their dog to be attentive by looking at a different body part than eyes- their hip or their knee, for example- but I’ve never quite figured out how to train this; it’s more difficult to determine where the dog is looking when it’s not making eye contact. It’s just not something that I can easily observe, which makes it hard to click.
So, what does attentiveness look like? Attentiveness requires her head to be held higher than normal. Maisy normally walks with her nose pointing to the ground. If you were to measure the angle of her snout, it would be pointing down roughly 45 degrees. From the top, you can see her head, but very little of her snout:
When she is attentive to me, though, her head is held higher, so that the angle of her snout is 90 degrees or even angled slightly upwards. She will often lift her head and make eye contact, and I think she’s “checking in.” From the top, this head position allows me to see most or all of her snout. It would look more like this:
So. That’s what heeling means to me. What does it mean to you?
It’s a beautiful picture, isn’t it? I think so, and indeed, so many people want that focus and attention that they purposely teach their dogs to make eye contact when heeling. You might expect that I would teach eye contact as part of my heeling criteria, too, but the truth is, I don’t. It’s not that I don’t want her attentive and happy, because I do, but I have two reservations about constant eye contact heeling, and both are rooted in the fact that she’s short.
First, in order to maintain eye contact, the dog needs to move forward far enough that he can look up into your face, which can create forging. Of course, it’s not impossible to keep a short dog in the proper position and still maintain eye contact. They can do it, although they often either go wide or they have to lift their heads much higher, which leads me to the second (and more important) reason I don’t want to teach constant eye contact for heeling: the possibility for injury.
In the March 2008 issue of The Whole Dog Journal, there is an article on canine chiropractic. In a discussion of cervical problems in dogs, the article quotes veterinary chiropractor Dr. Sue Ann Lesser as saying, “and then there are all the problems that come with always heeling on only one side… any unilateral activity creates muscle imbalances that can profoundly affect the dog’s gait.”
Now this would be enough to concern me on its own, but last summer, I noticed that Maisy had a slight, subtle limp. We never figured out what caused it, only that because of her conformation (long back, short legs, and her hips are higher than her shoulders), she is prone to back and neck issues. As a result, I have decided that eye contact, no matter how flashy, is not part of the picture I’m trying to create with Maisy.
So, what is my criteria for heeling? To be honest, for a long time, I didn’t think about it much. I knew that Maisy needed to be on my left, that she needed to be in the proper position (which I define as having her collar line up with my pant seam), but I didn’t worry much about where she was looking. As a result, she’s learned that she can look around or at the ground, and she sometimes finds other things more fascinating than me, especially if I’m not handing out treats. This does not make for great scores.
Earlier this week, I created a training plan, and quickly found that I had conflicting ideas about what I wanted. I originally said I wanted to reward for eye contact, but not the entire time. Just that I wanted her to pay attention. But I couldn’t define what that meant, only that I knew it when I saw it. Well, that really left the criteria pretty subjective, and ultimately, that means that I’ll likely be inconsistent and confusing. So, after a lot of thought, I think I’ve nailed down what “attentive healing without eye contact” looks like.
When sitting in heel position, I do want Maisy to make eye contact. Sitting in heel is often a predictor that I’ll be cuing a new behavior, so I do need her focused on me and watching for my signals. Like this:
Pretend she isn't forged in all these pictures, okay? It was hard enough to get the head position right that I wasn't paying attention to her body position!
When we take the first step of heeling, I want her to maintain that eye contact. This isn’t because I’ll be cuing a behavior, but rather because she has a tendency to rush off. She almost always forges the first 2-3 steps of heeling, even though I’ve spent a lot of time clicking for perfect position in that first step. I suspect this is because she gets so excited that we’re Going Somewhere! that she forgets to pay attention. So, this week I started clicking for eye contact during the first step. It’s still too early to tell, but I think it’s working. She seems to be much more focused for the duration when we start with eye contact.
I do not require sustained eye contact, though. After that first step, she may move her head into a more comfortable position, as long is she’s still attentive. A lot of small dog handlers talk about teaching their dog to be attentive by looking at a different body part than eyes- their hip or their knee, for example- but I’ve never quite figured out how to train this; it’s more difficult to determine where the dog is looking when it’s not making eye contact. It’s just not something that I can easily observe, which makes it hard to click.
So, what does attentiveness look like? Attentiveness requires her head to be held higher than normal. Maisy normally walks with her nose pointing to the ground. If you were to measure the angle of her snout, it would be pointing down roughly 45 degrees. From the top, you can see her head, but very little of her snout:
When she is attentive to me, though, her head is held higher, so that the angle of her snout is 90 degrees or even angled slightly upwards. She will often lift her head and make eye contact, and I think she’s “checking in.” From the top, this head position allows me to see most or all of her snout. It would look more like this:
So. That’s what heeling means to me. What does it mean to you?
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
On Thresholds: Figuring out what to do when Maisy reacts
Since learning that Maisy is a reactive dog, I’ve learned a lot about how to work with her, both to keep her from reacting, and to help her calm down once she does. One thing that still confused me, though, was about thresholds. Specifically, about what I should do when she goes over-threshold.
First, a quick lesson: a “threshold” is the point at which your dog can no longer remain calm in the face of a trigger. These triggers are not static; they can change dependent on the situation, such as location, time of day, or even the dog’s mood. They can also “stack” on one another, where two mild triggers together become a single, scarier one. For example, Maisy tends to find men carrying bags of dog food on their shoulders scary. She also finds a particular PetSmart more stressful than others. She can handle being there just fine, and she can handle seeing men carry bags of dog food when we are at other pet stores. But if she sees that happen at the “scary” PetSmart, she is almost guaranteed to react.
It is important to learn to identify a reactive dog’s thresholds to different things because once your dog reacts, she can no longer think rationally. During a full-blown reactive response, the part of the brain that processes learning is shut off. This means that once your dog has gone over threshold, your sole purpose is damage control: you need to prevent anyone from getting hurt, and help your dog calm down.
The reason I’ve struggled with how to best manage Maisy when she’s become reactive is that there are conflicting opinions on what to do. Some people say that once your dog has gone over threshold, you should immediately remove them from the situation and help them calm down because they are no longer capable of learning. Others say you shouldn’t do this because if you do, your dog is learning they can get out of something by demonstrating reactive behavior. I can see both points.
Further complicating the matter is that Maisy seems to have two motivations behind her reactive behavior: truly emotional and over-threshold responses, and learned behaviors in which she appears to be over-threshold, but isn’t. I can tell she isn’t actually emotionally upset because her body language is fairly relaxed, and because she will self-interrupt herself, and return to me for a treat. This is a very clear example of a behavior chain but it’s not really reactivity any more. It just looks like it.
This means that when Maisy demonstrates reactive behavior, I need to quickly assess her body language and decide if she’s truly upset or not. I’ll talk more about Maisy’s reactivity as a learned behavior and the way I respond to those instances in the future. But what should I do when she really is upset?
I already know that I don’t want to force her to stay in a scary situation (also called “flooding,” something which can have dangerous side effects), but I do want her to learn to calm herself down in the face of a trigger. As a result, in the past I have settled on having her move away from the trigger a considerable distance to a location where she could still see it, on the theory that this reduced the intensity of the trigger while still allowing her to learn to calm herself in the presence of a visible trigger.
Over the weekend, though, I had two very similar experiences where she became emotionally reactive and either went over threshold or was very close to doing so. In both instances, the best way to move away was to go out of sight. I was astonished by how much more effective this was. In both cases, the intensity lessened much quicker while we were out of sight. Even better, when we returned to the situation, she was much calmer than she has been in the past when we’ve re-approached a trigger which had remained in sight. I found this interesting because we both did pretty much exactly the same things we usually do in order to calm down.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that it was easier and faster for her to calm down out of sight of the trigger; she’s always been very visual. However, I am surprised by how much calmer she was upon returning to the situation. As a result, I’ve decided that when I know she is truly emotionally upset, I will honor that, and allow her to leave. If I can’t tell if it’s emotional or learned behavior, I’ll err on the side of caution by allowing her to leave anyway. In order to prevent this from potentially reinforcing the reactive behavior, once she’s calm, I will have her return so that she also learns that she can remain calm and control her emotions, even when there's something scary nearby. I think this strikes a nice balance, and I’m excited to continue working with her with this new, best of both worlds approach. As always, I’ll keep you updated on how it goes.
First, a quick lesson: a “threshold” is the point at which your dog can no longer remain calm in the face of a trigger. These triggers are not static; they can change dependent on the situation, such as location, time of day, or even the dog’s mood. They can also “stack” on one another, where two mild triggers together become a single, scarier one. For example, Maisy tends to find men carrying bags of dog food on their shoulders scary. She also finds a particular PetSmart more stressful than others. She can handle being there just fine, and she can handle seeing men carry bags of dog food when we are at other pet stores. But if she sees that happen at the “scary” PetSmart, she is almost guaranteed to react.
It is important to learn to identify a reactive dog’s thresholds to different things because once your dog reacts, she can no longer think rationally. During a full-blown reactive response, the part of the brain that processes learning is shut off. This means that once your dog has gone over threshold, your sole purpose is damage control: you need to prevent anyone from getting hurt, and help your dog calm down.
The reason I’ve struggled with how to best manage Maisy when she’s become reactive is that there are conflicting opinions on what to do. Some people say that once your dog has gone over threshold, you should immediately remove them from the situation and help them calm down because they are no longer capable of learning. Others say you shouldn’t do this because if you do, your dog is learning they can get out of something by demonstrating reactive behavior. I can see both points.
Further complicating the matter is that Maisy seems to have two motivations behind her reactive behavior: truly emotional and over-threshold responses, and learned behaviors in which she appears to be over-threshold, but isn’t. I can tell she isn’t actually emotionally upset because her body language is fairly relaxed, and because she will self-interrupt herself, and return to me for a treat. This is a very clear example of a behavior chain but it’s not really reactivity any more. It just looks like it.
This means that when Maisy demonstrates reactive behavior, I need to quickly assess her body language and decide if she’s truly upset or not. I’ll talk more about Maisy’s reactivity as a learned behavior and the way I respond to those instances in the future. But what should I do when she really is upset?
I already know that I don’t want to force her to stay in a scary situation (also called “flooding,” something which can have dangerous side effects), but I do want her to learn to calm herself down in the face of a trigger. As a result, in the past I have settled on having her move away from the trigger a considerable distance to a location where she could still see it, on the theory that this reduced the intensity of the trigger while still allowing her to learn to calm herself in the presence of a visible trigger.
Over the weekend, though, I had two very similar experiences where she became emotionally reactive and either went over threshold or was very close to doing so. In both instances, the best way to move away was to go out of sight. I was astonished by how much more effective this was. In both cases, the intensity lessened much quicker while we were out of sight. Even better, when we returned to the situation, she was much calmer than she has been in the past when we’ve re-approached a trigger which had remained in sight. I found this interesting because we both did pretty much exactly the same things we usually do in order to calm down.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that it was easier and faster for her to calm down out of sight of the trigger; she’s always been very visual. However, I am surprised by how much calmer she was upon returning to the situation. As a result, I’ve decided that when I know she is truly emotionally upset, I will honor that, and allow her to leave. If I can’t tell if it’s emotional or learned behavior, I’ll err on the side of caution by allowing her to leave anyway. In order to prevent this from potentially reinforcing the reactive behavior, once she’s calm, I will have her return so that she also learns that she can remain calm and control her emotions, even when there's something scary nearby. I think this strikes a nice balance, and I’m excited to continue working with her with this new, best of both worlds approach. As always, I’ll keep you updated on how it goes.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
So, what is reactivity, anyway?
In my previous entry, I told you that Maisy is “reactive.” What I didn’t tell you is what I mean by that. The short answer is that a reactive dog is one who overreacts to stimuli, usually by barking, growling or lunging. To a dog geek like me, though, the long answer is much more interesting…
When a dog is confronted by an experience, whether it’s something the dog has seen a million times before, like other dogs, or whether it’s a novel stimulus, such as the sudden appearance of a man carrying helium balloons, the dog must decide how it’s going to react.
Some dogs, the so-called normal ones, are relatively unconcerned by the stimulus. They may or may not be interested in whatever it is, but either way, their internal process can be described as, “Oh, another dog. I’ve seen those before. No big deal.”
Another dog might be momentarily unsure, especially if it’s a new experience, or a sudden change in the environment, but will recover quickly and go about his business. “Woah! What’s that? Oh, it’s a guy carrying balloons. Well, that’s a bit odd, but I guess it’s okay.” These dogs are also what we might call normal.
Reactive dogs, though, are the ones that overreact. “Holy crap!” they shout, “I’ve never seen that before. I think it’s going to eat me!!” Of course, dogs don’t actually shout, so what you and I see is a dog who is growling, barking and lunging.
"But wait!" I can hear some of you thinking. "Isn’t that a sign of an aggressive dog?"
It can be. If you encounter a strange dog who is growling, barking and lunging at you, it can definitely look aggressive. But where the aggressive dog actually means you harm, the reactive dog typically just wants you to go away. The aggressive dog is probably reacting from a place of confidence, or acting offensively, while a reactive dog is usually reacting from a place of insecurity or fear, and thus acting defensively.
Author's update, April 2011: In the two years since I originally wrote this post, I've come to believe that reactivity and aggression are more like a continuum or a spectrum. Most experts I've spoken with don't use the term "reactivity," and instead call it "fear aggression." Indeed, much of what I've read since posting this suggests that the vast majority of dog bites are due to fear, not confidence. As a result, I no longer differentiate the terms based on the dog's emotions.
This shouldn’t be surprising. Dogs, like most animals, including humans, have a fight or flight response. The aggressive dog chooses to fight. The fearful one would rather pick the flight option. Unfortunately, our dogs so often don’t get to make such choices. Stuck behind fences or on leashes, they get backed into metaphorical corners. Since they cannot escape the scary situation, they may try to intimidate whatever they’re scared of, in essence saying, “See? I’m big and scary. You should be afraid of ME instead. Go away!” It’s an act of bravado; last thing the reactive dog generally wants to do is actually fight. (Don’t think this means the reactive dog is safe, though. If he feels threatened enough, he may bite.)
Not all reactivity comes out of a place of fear, though. Some dogs, especially young ones, get very excited when they see other people or dogs. When this happens, they may rush forward, eager to greet a potential new friend. When they find they can’t, either because they’re on leash or behind a fence, they often become frustrated and bark. “I want to come see you, but I can’t!” they say. What you’re seeing is a lack of impulse control on the dog’s part. Reactive dogs almost universally have issues with self-control.
Of course, we owners don’t like this behavior. If we perceive it as the dog misbehaving- after all, he knows better than to pull when on the leash- we might discipline him by yelling or giving a leash correction. And while some dogs understand that their person is telling them, no, don’t pull and rush toward that other dog, others get the message all mixed up. “Wow, I tried to be friendly to that other dog, and my neck ended up hurting. I don’t like that dog.” The dog may decide that other dogs are a Bad Thing to encounter, and will begin to bark and growl the next time they see another out of anxiety and fear that it will happen again.
On the other hand, if we are simply embarrassed by the dog’s over-exuberant and rude behavior, we might become worried, tense, and tighten up on the leash in our attempts to control or contain him. Dogs are very sensitive, and can discern even the smallest change in our body language, and may begin to wonder if they misunderstood the situation. “Wow, my person really doesn’t like that other dog. Maybe I shouldn’t, either.” Again, the dog might begin to overreact in anticipation of our response.
Thus, we can see that reactivity can be both an emotional reaction and a misdirected frustration response or lack of impulse control. No matter why the reactivity started, though, the dog continues the behavior because it worked. Maybe they got the scary thing to go away. Maybe you loosened your leash and released the pressure. Maybe it was something else that we can’t figure out, but the bottom line is: behavior only continues when it has been rewarded. It then becomes a pattern, an almost-instinctual way to respond. This habit is reactivity.
Genetics and early experiences (called socialization), greatly affect whether a dog is one of those normal ones or not. The way we react, or don’t react, also influences the dog’s responses.
In future entries, I’ll tell you about Maisy, what her reactivity looks like, and how it affects our lives. I’ll tell you what I did right, and perhaps more interestingly, what I did wrong so that you can learn from my mistakes. I’ll tell you what I’ve done to help Maisy overcome her fear, and how I manage her environment so that her fear doesn’t get the best of her.
Until then, enjoy your dogs!
When a dog is confronted by an experience, whether it’s something the dog has seen a million times before, like other dogs, or whether it’s a novel stimulus, such as the sudden appearance of a man carrying helium balloons, the dog must decide how it’s going to react.
Some dogs, the so-called normal ones, are relatively unconcerned by the stimulus. They may or may not be interested in whatever it is, but either way, their internal process can be described as, “Oh, another dog. I’ve seen those before. No big deal.”
Another dog might be momentarily unsure, especially if it’s a new experience, or a sudden change in the environment, but will recover quickly and go about his business. “Woah! What’s that? Oh, it’s a guy carrying balloons. Well, that’s a bit odd, but I guess it’s okay.” These dogs are also what we might call normal.
Reactive dogs, though, are the ones that overreact. “Holy crap!” they shout, “I’ve never seen that before. I think it’s going to eat me!!” Of course, dogs don’t actually shout, so what you and I see is a dog who is growling, barking and lunging.
"But wait!" I can hear some of you thinking. "Isn’t that a sign of an aggressive dog?"
It can be. If you encounter a strange dog who is growling, barking and lunging at you, it can definitely look aggressive. But where the aggressive dog actually means you harm, the reactive dog typically just wants you to go away. The aggressive dog is probably reacting from a place of confidence, or acting offensively, while a reactive dog is usually reacting from a place of insecurity or fear, and thus acting defensively.
Author's update, April 2011: In the two years since I originally wrote this post, I've come to believe that reactivity and aggression are more like a continuum or a spectrum. Most experts I've spoken with don't use the term "reactivity," and instead call it "fear aggression." Indeed, much of what I've read since posting this suggests that the vast majority of dog bites are due to fear, not confidence. As a result, I no longer differentiate the terms based on the dog's emotions.
This shouldn’t be surprising. Dogs, like most animals, including humans, have a fight or flight response. The aggressive dog chooses to fight. The fearful one would rather pick the flight option. Unfortunately, our dogs so often don’t get to make such choices. Stuck behind fences or on leashes, they get backed into metaphorical corners. Since they cannot escape the scary situation, they may try to intimidate whatever they’re scared of, in essence saying, “See? I’m big and scary. You should be afraid of ME instead. Go away!” It’s an act of bravado; last thing the reactive dog generally wants to do is actually fight. (Don’t think this means the reactive dog is safe, though. If he feels threatened enough, he may bite.)
Not all reactivity comes out of a place of fear, though. Some dogs, especially young ones, get very excited when they see other people or dogs. When this happens, they may rush forward, eager to greet a potential new friend. When they find they can’t, either because they’re on leash or behind a fence, they often become frustrated and bark. “I want to come see you, but I can’t!” they say. What you’re seeing is a lack of impulse control on the dog’s part. Reactive dogs almost universally have issues with self-control.
Of course, we owners don’t like this behavior. If we perceive it as the dog misbehaving- after all, he knows better than to pull when on the leash- we might discipline him by yelling or giving a leash correction. And while some dogs understand that their person is telling them, no, don’t pull and rush toward that other dog, others get the message all mixed up. “Wow, I tried to be friendly to that other dog, and my neck ended up hurting. I don’t like that dog.” The dog may decide that other dogs are a Bad Thing to encounter, and will begin to bark and growl the next time they see another out of anxiety and fear that it will happen again.
On the other hand, if we are simply embarrassed by the dog’s over-exuberant and rude behavior, we might become worried, tense, and tighten up on the leash in our attempts to control or contain him. Dogs are very sensitive, and can discern even the smallest change in our body language, and may begin to wonder if they misunderstood the situation. “Wow, my person really doesn’t like that other dog. Maybe I shouldn’t, either.” Again, the dog might begin to overreact in anticipation of our response.
Thus, we can see that reactivity can be both an emotional reaction and a misdirected frustration response or lack of impulse control. No matter why the reactivity started, though, the dog continues the behavior because it worked. Maybe they got the scary thing to go away. Maybe you loosened your leash and released the pressure. Maybe it was something else that we can’t figure out, but the bottom line is: behavior only continues when it has been rewarded. It then becomes a pattern, an almost-instinctual way to respond. This habit is reactivity.
Genetics and early experiences (called socialization), greatly affect whether a dog is one of those normal ones or not. The way we react, or don’t react, also influences the dog’s responses.
In future entries, I’ll tell you about Maisy, what her reactivity looks like, and how it affects our lives. I’ll tell you what I did right, and perhaps more interestingly, what I did wrong so that you can learn from my mistakes. I’ll tell you what I’ve done to help Maisy overcome her fear, and how I manage her environment so that her fear doesn’t get the best of her.
Until then, enjoy your dogs!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)