Be.

When you have a reactive dog, life is full of difficult emotions.

There is sorrow over mistakes that we think we made. There is embarrassment stemming from yet another barking outburst. There is jealousy that our dogs cannot do the things our friends’ dogs can. There is anger that this is happening to us. There is fear that we are not doing enough.

In this way, we are wasting what little precious time we have with our dogs.

Life is not about doing. It’s about being.

Whether that is hanging out at home, hiking in the woods, or competing in a trial is immaterial. The place does not matter. The activity does not matter.

Being together is what counts.

It’s not worrying about the past. It’s not about figuring out what went wrong. It’s not about assigning blame. It’s not about “should have” or “could have” or “if only I had.”

We cannot change what has come before.

It’s not about planning for a different future. It’s not about wishing for something we do not have. It’s not about “someday” or “when this is over.”

Tomorrow may not come.

Life is about now. When we decide that the present is unacceptable, that it should be avoided, we lose the only thing we ever truly have- this one moment.

Be present.

Take in the sight of your dog’s sweet face. Feel his fur beneath your hand. Experience the joy that comes from chasing a ball. Listen to the symphony of your footsteps mingling with the jingling of your dog’s tags. Lose yourself in the smell of rain… or dirt… or fresh-mown grass.

Bask in the small moments.

Life is not perfect. Dissatisfaction is always possible. You will never have everything you want… but you have so much. See that. Feel that. Live that.

Be.

Patricia McConnell Seminar: Emotions in Dogs

Do dogs have emotions? While I'm confident that my regular readers will agree that, yes, dogs most certainly do, I know there are people out there that claim this is baseless anthropomorphism. I always have to shake my head a bit when I run across someone like that- have these people even met a dog?

Still, their skepticism is warranted. After all, B.F. Skinner, the father of operant conditioning, concentrated on external behavior because it is impossible to know the internal state of animals. Well... it was. Science today is closing that gap through the use of medical imaging technology and very clever research. At the seminar, Patricia spent some time to share a bit about emotions in dogs.

First though, a definition is in order. Patricia favors Damasio's definition: Emotions are the internal changes in the body (hormones, adrenal gland activation, etc.) that cause changes in expression (external behavior), and the thoughts and feelings that accompany them (an internal, subjective thing to be sure).

We know through imaging studies that dogs have many of the same brain structures, hormones, and neurotransmitters that humans do. What's more, we've learned that emotions are centered in the limbic system, also known as the mammalian brain (so named because all mammals share that particular structure). So internally, dogs meet the criteria for having emotions.

We also know that emotions serve to drive a lot of behavior: fear, frustration, and anger are the causes of many, many actions among humans and animals alike. In fact, emotions are needed for even the simplest of decision making; Patricia told us that things like deciding where to file a piece of paper is impossible without emotions. Our dogs don't file (unfortunately), but they do make plenty of decisions every day, and their behavior is definitely suggestive of different emotions. Therefore, we can only conclude that dogs meet the second criteria.

As for the third... well, while we'll probably never know exactly what a dog is thinking, we're getting closer to understanding what's going on in there, thanks to some very clever researchers. Here are the emotions science is pretty sure that dogs feel:

Disgust, Fear, and Anger
These are all very basic emotions. Disgust is considered the most primitive emotion of all since it is realated to whether or not something will kill you, especially in the sense of “ew, this is too gross to eat.” Anger is also pretty basic- Patricia shared that anger is mediated by the amygdala, and if you have one (and dogs do), you can get angry.

As for fear, well, we talk about fear in dogs all the time. Again, it's a primitive emotion necessary for life; if you don't fear danger you will die an untimely death. Our brains are very quick to make fear associations- an evolutionarily advantageous trait to be sure. A wild dog will live much longer if he learns to fear cars, for example.

Like with anger, the amygdala plays a key role, as well as the hippocampus. In fact, these systems can become overactive, causing the amygdalar pathway to bypass the cortex entirely, meaning that the animal will literally react without thinking. Since this is what happens with people who have Post Traumatic Stress Disodrder, this has caused Patricia to wonder if dogs can suffer from some sort of PTSD, too. The sypmtoms include anxiety, increased emotional arousal, irritability, being easily started, avoidance, trouble concentrating... sound familiar?

Treatment for fear in dogs, PTSD or not, typically involves avoiding triggers and counter-conditioning, a plan which Patricia feels might be lacking. While it does help address what is going on, it doesn't do much to change the internal state. She suggested looking to diet, massage, anxiety wraps, aroma therapy, homeopathy or chinese medicine, and anti-anxiety meds for a well-rounded treatment plan.

Guilt
Many pet owners believe their dogs experience this emotion, citing the way they “just look guilty” after doing something they shouldn't have. But are the dogs actually experiencing guilt?

Alexandra Horowitz set out to find out. She had dogs and their owners participate in an experiment in which the dogs were left alone in a room with some food with a researcher to watch over them. Sometimes the dogs ate the food, and sometimes they didn't But sometimes the researchers engaged in a bit of subterfuge- they would tell the owners that the dog ate the food when he didn't, or that he didn't eat it when he actually did. When the owners returned, they were instructed to either scold their dogs or greet them normally depending on whether the food was there or not.

The researchers found that the so-called guilty look was actually a combination of nine different behaviors: avoiding eye contact, lying down and rolling to side/back, a drooping tail, low, quick wagging, lowered ears or head, moving away, raising a paw, and lip licking. What's more, whether or not the dog ate the food had no significant effect on these behaviors. What mattered was the owner's response. Scolding resulted in behaviors associated with the guilty look, and the most were seen if the dog was obedient and didn't eat the food, but was scolded anyway.

A similar study confirmed these findings. This time, Hecht and Gasci studied the behaviors associated with the “guilty look”, and found that there was no difference between dogs who ate the food, and those who didn't. And while it appeared that owners could tell if their dog ate the food or not, upon further study, it was determined that the owners weren't relying on behavioral cues, but rather on past experiences and expectations.

Jealousy
Dog owners believe their dogs can feel jealous- one study even asked them about it. 81% of dog owners agreed that their dogs did, and all of the examples given included a social triad with another person or dog involved. The behaviors described were what are generally considered to be attention seeking behaviors (nosing, pawing,etc.).

But does this pan out in the lab? It seems that it does. A recent study showed that dogs understand the concept of “reward inequity,” or to put it in plain English- they can experience jealousy. Here's the deal: the researchers worked with dogs in pairs. Each dog was asked to “give paw,” but only one was reinforced. The dogs were also worked with alone, where they were asked to perform the behavior without any reinforcement. The results showed that the dogs stopped responding sooner and required more prompts when they saw the other dog getting a reward than when they were alone. In both cases, the dog got no reinforcer, but simply being treated unfairly caused the dog's behavior to deteriorate quicker.

Patricia also teased us by telling us about some of the ongoing work into the concept of “fairness” with dogs. There is some really interesting science going on, and I can't wait to see some of the resulting studies.


So it would seem that dogs have emotions. I know that I certainly think so. Of course, I believed that even without knowing about the science, but it is interesting to see it studied in a controlled, systematic way, and I love that it gives us something to point to when we run across one of those people who don't think animals have emotions.

What about you guys? What emotions do you think dogs have? Do you have any great stories that illustrate one of the emotions above (or perhaps a different one)? I'd love to hear about your experiences!

If You Want to Know More

• For the Love of a Dog: Understanding Emotions in You and Your Best Friend, by Patricia McConnell
• Patricia's Blog: What Emotions Do You Share with Your Dog?
• Patricia's Blog: Survey Results on Emotions in Animals
• Patricia's Blog: Yup, Dogs Can Be Disgusted! 
• Patricia's Blog: Anger and Anger Management 
• Looking for Spinoza, a book by Antonio Damasio
• Disambiguating the “guilty look”: Salient prompts to a familiar dog behaviour, a study by Alexandra Horowitz
• ...and the press release
• Do You Think I Ate It? Owner Perceptions and Behavioral Assessment of the “Guilty Look” in Dogs, by Hecht and Gasci (scroll to page 14 of the document)
• The absence of reward induces inequity aversion in dogs, by Range et al
• Video of the experiment
• Secondary emotions in non-primate species? Behavioural reports and subjective claims by animal owners, by Morris et al

Clicker Expo 2011 (Chicago): Closing Session with Patricia McConnell- Emotions and Dogs

Patricia McConnell made us cry. Even people who had heard her talk on the subject of emotions and dogs before, who knew what she was going to say before she said it, didn't escape with a dry face. Yes, for all that we talked about theory and science and data at Clicker Expo, when it comes right down to it, we were there because we love our dogs.

But do our dogs love us? Do they have emotions? Trisha said that the evidence points to yes.

Here's the deal: emotions are primitive things. They integrate the body and environment. They are as important to us as is rational thought, and in fact, actually allow rational thought. Emotions enable us to make decisions, and without them, we would be unable to do things as simple as filing a piece of paper. It stands to reason that animals would need emotions to make decisions, too.

What's more, the limbic system- the part of the body that regulates emotions- is present in all mammals. Although some areas are bigger in some than others, we share all of the same brain structures. We also share many of the same hormones, such as oxytocin, which is critical to process of bonding and attachment in mother and young.

Still not convinced? Well, Trisha said that we often share external expressions of emotions with other animals. Things like fear, happiness and anger look similar among species. She showed us a great slide show demonstrating this; if you'd like to see the pictures, check out her book For the Love of a Dog. (And then read the whole thing- it's fabulous.)

The truth is, most biologists agree that mammals, including dogs, have emotions. However, there is a great deal of controversy over which ones they have, and how they experience them. Generally speaking, it appears that dogs can feel disgust, fear, anger, happiness, and “seeking.” They probably don't understand more complex emotions like jealousy, sympathy, or guilt.

But do they feel love? Well, it certainly seems so. Who hasn't spoken of the “unconditional” love of a dog? But is it truly unconditional love, or is it that they can't talk back? Their nonverbal status certainly enhances the primal connection we often feel with our dogs. They also elicit nurturing behaviors and empathy. Who hasn't cooed at a puppy, after all? These behaviors result in the release of oxytocin, which helps us bond to them even stronger. Perhaps that hormone also leads to the perception of unconditional love.

There's one thing we can all agree on though: No matter how they feel about us, we certainly love them. Trisha made us all cry when she shared the story of her beloved dog's death. Even now, I tear up just a little, knowing that I will (hopefully) outlive Maisy. I have such a hard time imagining life without her, and I have no idea how I will survive.

So go. Turn off your computer. Spend some time with your dog. Train if you wish, but don't worry about the result- you're a good trainer, and you could teach almost any dog to do that behavior. Instead, enjoy the process. Revel in the beauty of the relationship you have with your dog. Simply enjoy being together. Love him. And if you can, let him love you too.

CU Seminar: Developing Better Communication

With my attention elsewhere, the probability that Maisy will have a reactive outburst increases substantially... but why?
(Photo by Robin Sallie.)

I love going to trials, but I find them exhausting. Maisy needs constant management in order to stay calm. If I keep my full attention on her, I can see and respond to her stress points so that she does not lunge, growl, bark, or otherwise act poorly. However, if I shift my attention elsewhere for even a moment- to check the rule book, for example- she tends to lose it.

After our last two trials, I realized something needed to change. Not only was I finding the experience to be more frustrating than fun, but I also felt like a hypocrite. After all, I had been writing about whether or not reactive dogs should be allowed to trial, and if so, what skills they need or behaviors they ought to exhibit, and here I was with a dog who lost her mind both in and out of the ring.

But I love going to trials, and Maisy appears happy in the videos. Stressed or not, I don’t think she needs to stop going. She may not care about going one way or the other- I fully recognize she’d be just as happy going hiking at the state park- but at this point, I don’t think that it’s wrong to take her to trials. Even so, I knew that we needed to get some of this reactive behavior under control so that we can both enjoy trialing more. The problem was, I had no idea how to do that.

Fast-forward to the seminar this weekend. I went with my friend/trainer, Robin, which was awesome. Not only was she excellent road-trip company (thanks again for driving!), but she also sat next to Maisy and I at the seminar. We had the same issue that we have at trials: Maisy’s fine as long as I’m paying attention to her, but when I look away, she behaves reactively. The interesting thing was what Robin saw…

As way of explanation, you should know that Maisy has been trained to play the Look at That game. The way we use it is that when she sees something that stresses her out, she looks at it and then whips back to look at me for her treat. I notice this, reassure her that the scary thing isn’t a big deal, and then Maisy’s fine. But if I miss her cue, she growls (or lunges or barks).

When Maisy did just that this weekend, Robin said that she growled while still staring at me, not at the trigger. Which means that the problem wasn’t that she was being reactive, but instead, that she doesn’t know how to communicate with me when she can’t make eye contact! In fact, she was doing exactly what I’ve taught her to do- look at the trigger and look back. When that failed to get her the reassurance she needs, Maisy, being a smart dog, found another way to get my attention.

Suddenly, all the pieces began to fall into place. Although I already knew that Maisy’s reactive behavior was fake- that is, that she was only acting reactive, not feeling reactive- I had misunderstood the motive. I thought that I’d created this mutant behavior chain of pretend to react/receive treat, so I’d been ignoring the behavior I didn’t like.

Truth be told, while this probably was part of the problem, it wasn’t the complete picture. Yes, the reactivity was fake, and yes, she probably did figure out she’d get a treat. But she also figured something else out: she could get my attention by doing this. So, while I had had mild success with the “ignore the behavior you don’t want” approach, it still left a huge void. In the absence of clear instructions on what to do, Maisy kept falling back on the only behavior she knew.

So, what’s the solution? Well, I do think I was on the right track. Ignoring the behavior does send her the message that it doesn’t work. However, I also need to teach her an alternate way to get my attention… something that is quiet and polite, but also quite obvious. Something that doesn’t require me to be looking at her. Something easy…

Something like targeting. I’ll talk about this in more detail soon, but a lot of the Control Unleashed exercises involve targeting, a point which Alexa made several times throughout the seminar. Going to place is a targeting exercise. Reorienting to the handler is a targeting exercise. Even Look at That is a (visual) targeting exercise.

Interestingly, Maisy has recently begun to do some of this herself. There have been a few instances where I’ve set Maisy up in heel position, and then turned to talk to someone. If I didn’t return to the exercise quickly enough for her tastes, Maisy took it upon herself to poke my leg with her nose, a gesture I interpreted as, “Hey, we’ve got work to do here!” What I need to do now is to capture this offered behavior, and teach her that it's a better way to get my attention than to growl or lunge.

So, here’s my plan: I’m going to start by doing some simple targeting exercises. She already knows how to touch my palm with her nose on cue, but I’ll transfer this behavior to touching my leg. Once that’s solid, I’ll begin giving her the leg-touch cue after her fake-reactive-outbursts.

Do I run the risk of creating an even more annoying behavior chain? Yes, I suppose I do, which is why I’m planning on ignoring the outburst, waiting five seconds or so, and then cuing the leg-touch (and then jackpotting the heck out of that leg-touch). By doing this, I’m hoping to minimize the attention she gets for the reactive behavior, and maximizing the attention she gets for an alternate behavior. If I’m lucky, she’ll just decide that it’s easier to just cut to the chase and offer the leg-touch instead of the growling or lunging.

Incidentally, I thought about adding the leg-touch as another step to her Look at That behavior, but ultimately chose not to because it would muddy up the criteria for her “look” behavior. I really like the way LAT works for us right now, and I don’t want to change that. Also, it would probably be annoying for her to leg-touch me that much.

Will this work? I have no idea, but I’m cautiously optimistic. Even if it doesn’t, I’ve still gained new insight into why my dog acts the way she does. At any rate, you all will be among the first to know how it works out for us.

Pat Miller Seminar: Functional Analysis

Last weekend, I had the good fortune to attend a single-day seminar with Pat Miller in Wisconsin. (No, I don’t spend all my time going to seminars, but yes, I’ve been lucky in the canine education department lately.) I had seen Pat previously, and the seminar was basically a scaled-down version of what I had seen a year ago. Even so, there were some very thought provoking moments, and of course, I want to share them with you!

Pat spent some time talking about operant conditioning, which I always enjoy thinking about. Of course, since I do spend a fair amount of time reading about operant conditioning, it was mostly review. (I’ll assume this is the case for most of my readers, but if anyone’s interested, I’d be glad to write an Operant Conditioning 101 post.)

What I found really helpful was Pat’s discussion of “Functional Analysis.” This is where we look at a behavior systematically using the mnemonic of “ABC” to remind us to look at the antecedent of the behavior, the behavior itself, and the consequence following the behavior, which either reinforces or punishes the behavior. The consequence is defined not by what we think should happen, but rather what actually happens.

In other words, if we do something as punishment, but the behavior doesn’t reduce in frequency or intensity? It wasn’t a punishment. If the behavior continues, it was simply aversive, and the dog has learned nothing. If, on the other hand, the behavior increases, our action was actually a reinforcer.

Although we can often correctly predict how the consequence will be perceived by our dog, we will sometimes be wrong. For example, Maisy thinks that getting squirted in the face with water is superawesomefun. If I were to use a squirt bottle as a punisher and didn’t pay attention to her response, I would be in for a pretty big surprise when the behavior I thought I was punishing actually increased. Since the dog’s subsequent behavior determines which of the principles we utilized, Suzanne Clothier is probably right: some of us trainers think too much.



Pat’s discussion on functional analysis yielded something else that was pretty cool: we actually have two opportunities to change behavior. You can manipulate the consequence so that behavior either increases or decreases, but you also have an opportunity to change behavior before it even happens. If we change or prevent the antecedent, we might be able to change the behavior. Doing it this way does seem a little iffier to me, but it’s definitely possible!

How? Well, management is one way. Although management has a high risk of failure at some point, it doesn’t always fail. And management is a good, useful, and sometimes necessary thing, not to mention often easier. I’ve written before about things I do to help manage Maisy’s reactivity.

For behaviors rooted in emotions, like reactivity, we can also prevent the behavior by changing the dog’s feelings about an antecedent. For example, if a dog always barks and lunges at a bicycle, we can change the dog’s feelings about the trigger through classical conditioning. (Again, I assume my readers are familiar with classical conditioning, but if you want a post on it? Just let me know!)

This discussion of functional analysis took topics that I already understood, and helped me think about them in a more sophisticated way. Has it changed the way I train? No, not really, but it has helped me understand why I do what I do a bit better, and I’m quite grateful for that. So, thank you, Pat, for the great discussion!

Attack!

This is not at all the post I was planning to write tonight. For one thing, I have several more Suzanne Clothier seminar recaps left to go, and for another, I had already started drafting one about the importance of routines for our reactive dogs. However, life has intervened, and I simply must talk about it.

When I got home from work today, I took Maisy for our usual afternoon walk. We generally follow the same path, and today was no exception. I headed up the same street we always take. The only real difference is that today I didn't have my iPod on. (Is it geeky to listen to dog training podcasts while I'm walking the dog?) I'm glad, too, because as we began to walk by a particular house, a large, dark grey dog came out of nowhere and bowled Maisy over. I didn't even see the dog coming- it was just all of a sudden there.

So, Maisy's on the ground, yelping, I'm holding on to her leash, which is inadvertantly jerking her around as she tries to escape, and there's this huge dog trying to do who-knows-what to her. I've got about a million thoughts running through my head: Should I drop the leash? How do I get this dog off? Is Maisy okay? How can I keep her safe? Does she know I'm trying to protect her?

In the end, I held on to the leash, though after an emergency call to one of my trainers, I decided that next time I'll drop the leash. She probably could have gotten away, and she has a darn decent recall; she would have come back. Getting jerked around on the leash only prevented her from protecting herself, probably hurt and/or scared her, and was probably not very helpful.

I also did something I feel awful about: I kicked the other dog. Hard. I'm really not one to use punishment, and I was pretty angry at the presumed owner for doing so just moments later... But it was a knee-jerk reaction, and it worked; the kick stunned the dog long enough that Maisy and I were able to get away. The probable owner then grabbed the other dog by its choke chain and briefly hung it off the ground. I wanted to tell him that wasn't going to help, but what could I say? I had just kicked his dog.

Did that help the situation? Or was I at risk of redirected aggression? Will that make the other dog worse in the future? What could I have done instead? Why haven't I bought that citronella spray yet, and even if I had it, would it have helped, or would it have stressed Maisy out even more? Did Maisy see my action as protecting or defending her, or did she see it as evidence that I might be a wee bit unstable? And, what else could I have done to help her feel like I had her back?

So far as the most important question, that of "Is Maisy okay?", well, only time will tell. She seems physically okay. She was limping slightly on her left rear, but she had a chiro visit yesterday with orders to take it easy for a week due to some issues we found, which means that that slight limp could have been unrelated to this incident. But I have no idea how she is emotionally. Her immediate response was pretty good; she bounced back quickly, and we walked away eating treats without too much stress. However, later in the walk, she froze and looked worried when she heard another dog bark. What kind of fall out will I see, and when?

And... was it really an attack at all? I'm not sure. It all happened so fast, and I'm just not that good at reading dog body language. Was it simply a very over-enthusiastic greeter? I suspect so, because if the dog had really wanted to do damage, he could have.

So, if it was just a dog being a dog, albeit a poorly mannered one, should I report this to animal control? The dog was off leash, and my city has pretty strict leash laws, at least on the books. But was he dangerous? If I report this, will his owners punish him again, or worse? Will they retaliate at me because I kicked their dog? At least they live several blocks away... I'll have to see if I can report anonymously, or at least have my name withheld.

As you can see, I have many, many questions, and very few answers.

Suzanne Clothier Seminar: The Trial Environment and Reactivity

In my last entry, I discussed how reactivity is often compounded by the personality of the typical performance dog. I also mentioned that we as handlers often fail to give our dogs the information they need in order to be successful in our environments, especially the trial environment. During the weekend, I picked up two main ideas from Suzanne relating to dogs who are reactive in trial environments, and both are absolutely true for Maisy and I.

First, Suzanne said that a huge mistake handlers make is in using management far too often. Although management is often useful and necessary, excessive reliance on it can create problems. For one thing, it’s often exhausting for the handler to micromanage the dog’s every action. I know that I find trials tiring for that exact reason: I spend so much time taking care of Maisy, there’s no time to take care of me. Beyond that, management will always fail at some point. It’s impossible to control everything all the time. Somewhere along the line, we will fail.

At this point, an audience member asked what she should do with her dog. If she doesn’t manage him closely, he’s snarky with the other dogs there, which is clearly not acceptable at a trial. Suzanne’s response really struck me: “Have you taught him how to deal with crowds? He might be missing a skill he needs.”

Maisy certainly has impulse control issues. She finds it hard not to try to go visit other dogs. The problem with a trial is that there are so many other dogs, it seems like she gets over-stimulated, tired, and then reactive. Perhaps gradually exposing her to longer and longer periods of time in chaotic environments would help her learn how to deal with the stress of a trial site. Beyond that? I’m not sure what other skills to teach her. How to walk by (and ignore) other dogs, I suppose, and maybe a relax or settle cue. I’ll need to think more about this (suggestions welcome).

The other big idea I picked up about reactivity in trials had to do with handler nerves. Performance dogs are often very sensitive to their handlers- it’s part of what makes them so good in the ring. The problem with that is that when we get stressed out because we’re nervous about being judged, the dog can’t understand that. We may know that it’s all in fun, and that the outcome ultimately doesn’t matter, but our dogs have no way of understanding that. We must, Suzanne stressed, learn to deal with our issues away from our dogs. After all, if you are at the center of your dog’s world and you fall apart, the dog has nothing to lean on.

This, too, really struck me. When Maisy and I went to our first trial just over a year ago, I had no idea what to expect. I certainly didn’t know enough to be nervous! I thought we’d go for the experience, and hoped that by the end of the year, we’d have just one qualifying run. Instead, we titled that weekend. Maisy did great. The next week, when we started our first reactive dog class, the instructor told me she’d seen us at the trial, and couldn’t understand what a happy dog like Maisy was doing in that class.

We went to a total of five trials last year, and at each one, Maisy became progressively more reactive. At the same time, I became progressively more nervous during each trial. I am quite sure that we were both feeding off the other’s negative emotions, and I'm worried that we’re at the point where I’ve conditioned negative feelings about the environment in general, even if I weren’t nervous. Of course, I am nervous, and not entirely sure how to conquer my ring nerves. Again… suggestions welcome!

A few weeks ago, my trainer asked me if I thought I was going to enter Maisy in the next rally trial. I answered that it depended on whether or not Maisy was ready. Then I stopped, and amended my statement: “It depends on whether I’m ready.”

Although I believe Maisy has some limitations due to her reactivity, I do have to wonder how much I’ve contributed to it. She is an incredibly sensitive dog, and while I’m often glad she trusts me as much as she does, I feel awful that I can’t be a better partner for her… which is probably why Suzanne’s words hit me as hard as they do. I don’t think there is any point in regretting the past- you can’t change it, after all- but it does challenge me to think of ways to improve in the future. And knowing is half the battle.

Suzanne Clothier Seminar: Answering the Questions for Maisy

In my last entry, I detailed what the questions are, but I really didn't personalize them. (Seriously, folks, I'm already pretty long-winded for a blog anyway, can you imagine how much worse it would be if I didn't break these things down?) Anyway, today I want to post a bit about how answering these questions have changed my perspective on Maisy.

Question 1: Hello?
Due to our long association with one another, this one is easy. If I say Maisy's name, or any one of her nicknames (and there are many; I have no idea how she understands they all refer to her), she wags her tail. Immediately. Every time. She'll often do this when someone else says her name, too. It is safe to say that Maisy is quite willing to interact with me.

Question 2: Who are you?
and
Question 3: How is this for you?
I've combined these two questions because I think they're pretty bound up in one another, and I think my post would be far more disjointed if I didn't combine them.

For a long time, when I described Maisy, I described her as "fearful" and "reactive." Those are the two adjectives that came out of my mouth most often, though I often followed it up with "extremely soft." The problem with these descriptors are two-fold. First, they're primarily negative, and second, I'm not sure they're really all that accurate.

I've been watching Maisy's responses lately, and she's surprised me. A lot. For example, I've always thought she's fearful because she's a bit jumpy and startles easily. An unusual noise or unexpected event will make her jump backwards and perhaps tuck her tail and slink a little bit. But her resiliency is amazing; she'll often come back to that scary thing quite quickly. I've written before about Maisy's response to a wobble board. It initially startled her, but she came right back to it, and continued to interact with it. Is this what a fearful dog would do?

And in the past week, I've seen countless examples of her jumping in surprise, and then immediately calming down or returning to work. I'm beginning to think that a better descriptor for her is sensitive. The way I react to something will predict the way she reacts. Lately, I've been paying attention to Maisy's triggers, and making a huge effort not to stiffen up (this was the direct result of Suzanne's seminar, and I'll write about it in more detail soon). When I remain loose, Maisy might look at the trigger, and even take a few steps towards it, but when she sees I'm fine, she relaxes. When the trigger also startles me and I gasp or start breathing differently, or if I tighten the leash or tense my body, then she's far more likely to lunge, growl or bark. Interesting.

She is very sensitive to her environment, and to me.

I've also talked about Maisy as "not liking children," but I'm not sure that's true, either. Yesterday, she actually asked to go say hi to a strange child. We were out in the front yard, and I had Maisy off leash to work on heeling (the reward was throwing her ball), when I saw a mother pushing her toddler in a stroller. I called Maisy to me, put her back on leash, and as they came close, the mother asked if her toddler could say hi. I started to say no, reflexively, but then I looked at Maisy: She was loose, wriggling, and had a "helicopter tail." She wanted to say hi.

The important question of asking "How is this for you?" is about asking it every time the situation comes up. Will she always want to greet a child? No, but sometimes she will.

Some other descriptions of Maisy: she's funny, and loves to play. She's incredibly snuggly, and it's a rare morning that I don't wake up with a dog in my arms. She follows me everywhere, but is quite content to stay with other people she knows. In fact, although she can be a bit shy with people she doesn't know, once she meets someone, she's incredibly friendly. She's very visual, and I sometimes wonder if her sight isn't a stronger sense than smell. She's biddable, smart (too smart, sometimes!), and very willing.

And she's mine.

Question 4: May I...?
Generally, yes, I may. Although Maisy is pretty clear that she hates being groomed. Nails, brushing, baths, all of it. I try to make those times worth her while with lots of treats, but even so, she'd rather not, thank you.

Question 5: Can you...?
Most of the time, yes, she can. Intellectually, she's very smart. She learns quickly, which is both a blessing and a curse. If she's not understanding something I'm trying to teach her, it's pretty much always my fault. We used to really struggle with left pivots, until I began to hold my shoulder slightly differently. Then she nailed them every time.

Emotionally, she's getting better. She still does have some of that reactivity, but it's improving all the time. I'll have to do a separate post on this soon, but I'd say we're down from having a reactive outburst every time we're in public to about 20% of the time.

Physically... well, some days are better than others. She does have some back issues, and she sees a chiropractor and canine massage therapist who does massage, acupressure and reiki every month. These things help a lot, but even so, there are days where she's reluctant to jump. I'm learning to assess her before I ask her to jump, because if I ask, she'll do it, even if it hurts.

Question 6: Can we...?
Yes. We can. Maisy will always try for me. I am, however, aware that my reactions will affect her, and so when she fails to do something properly, I try to always look at myself first. I think our biggest obstacle to trials is my nerves, not the environment, and so I'm starting to work through those issues as best I can so that my half of "we" actually can do it.


I've learned a lot by stepping back and asking the questions on a regular basis, especially "How is this for you?" I've made assumptions that weren't true, like with the child yesterday. Have any of you guys tried asking your dog any of the questions? If so, what did you learn? Was it surprising, or just as you expected?

Behold! The Power of the Mat

A huge component to my reactive dog class is mat work. Once dogs learn about the mat, they tend to really like them due to the strong reinforcement history. Our class focuses on relaxed states while on the mat, so it becomes a cue for relaxation, as well.

However, I’ve been rather skeptical about Maisy feeling relaxed on the mat. She tends to lie on her side on the mat… with all four legs sticking straight out, and at least two of them (if not all four) are held rigidly off the ground. Even though she’s in a relaxed position, she’s not actually relaxed. Still, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that despite appearances, she has figured out that the mat is a relaxing place.

On Sunday, we went to visit Elizabeth and Beckett. Beckett, a true greyhound, promptly lay down on his mat and fell asleep. Maisy, however, being a corgi-possibly terrier mix does not voluntarily stay still. Not only that, but we’ve only been to Elizabeth and Beckett’s a few times, so she was a bit unsure about what she should do, and was pacing the living room and occasionally whining.

Elizabeth got one of Beckett’s many mats and brought it to me. I thanked her, but expressed that I highly doubted she would use it. Still, I set it down next to me, pointed at it, and told Maisy to “go mat.” She did, of course, but what really surprised me was her willingness to stay on the mat with only verbal praise. She even curled up in a little ball and snoozed a bit! Pretty relaxed for a high-energy ball of fuzz!

I’m pretty excited about this discovery. I’m going to start taking her mat more places to try to help that relaxation generalize. Although a friend’s house is a fairly low-key place, if we can build up to using the mat at trials, this could be a huge stress-reliever for her!

Have you taught your dog to go to a mat or place? What’s the most useful application that you’ve found for it?

Clicker Theory: No Reward Markers and Keep Going Signals

I apologize in advance to any readers who are not familiar with clicker training, or who are just beginning to learn about the learning theory behind it, as today’s post concerns more sophisticated clicker concepts.

About a week ago, someone on a mailing list I belong to posed a very interesting question: If the click means “yes,” then what does no click mean?

The poster, a teacher, mentioned that when she has her students play the“clicker game,” in class, they initially learn faster if they receive feedback for both yes, that’s what I want you to do, and no, you’re going in the wrong direction. In other words, a no reward marker. She went on to say that once her students understood the game, they learned that the absence of a click or verbal marker was basically the same thing as being told no. Once they figured that out, they could figure out the task just as quickly with only the positive marker.

She wondered: do our dogs understand the absence of a click the same way? Do they interpret silence as “no”? If so, why do they keep working in trial settings, where they receive neither clicks nor encouraging verbal feedback? Wouldn’t the silence inherit in a trial tell our dogs that they are doing it wrong? If so, this would have dire consequences on our performances.

The general response was that silence should not- cannot- imply that the dog made an error. Instead, we must teach our dogs that silence is a keep going signal- that they are on the right track, and that if they keep up with what they are doing, they will earn reinforcement. That is the only way that our trial performances will hold up.

So, if silence means “keep going,” then how do we tell our dogs they’re going off track? As Clicker Trainers, we don’t use corrections (defined here as anything that causes the dog pain or stress) to tell the dog they’re wrong. The logical response would be the use of a no reward marker- an emotionally neutral way of saying no, try something different… but some people on the list argued that this would actually slow learning down.

I disagreed. I shared with the group that when Maisy begins to get off track during a shaping session, I tell her “Nope! Try Again!” in a cheery voice. I wrote that I felt my dog learns faster this way, but that even if she doesn’t, it helps me feel better to be giving the feedback.

Still, in light of the conversation, I decided that I would test my theory, so I sat down with Maisy to work on a shaping project. First, I just worked with her like normal, not really thinking about what I say or when I say it. Although I did say “Nope! Try Again!” perhaps three or four times in the course of five minutes, I found that I said it more as conversation and less as information. Interestingly, I discovered that I was saying it at times when we were in the midst of a long period of silence. That “nope!” served to fill the silence until she finally got the click for doing what I wanted.

Next, I worked with her, but remained silent. I didn’t speak; I simply clicked or didn’t. Maisy continued on, doing well until we hit one of those long periods of silence. She kept trying things, but after about thirty seconds of neither a click nor a “nope!”, she laid down and looked at me as if she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do.

Finally, I tried using the no reward marker more regularly. We continued shaping, but I tried to think in terms of right and wrong. I clicked when she got it right, and said “Nope!” when she got it wrong. This led to rapid-fire clicks and “nopes,” and after she got three “nopes” in the space of about ten seconds, Maisy again laid down with her chin on the floor. This time, though, I had to encourage her quite a bit to re-engage with the shaping game. But when she again got several more “nopes,” she laid down and refused to play any more.

I began to feel frustrated; this is not how it’s supposed to work! She’s supposed to want to play! My frustration came out in my voice, and I began to tell her to get up with an edgy tone. When she didn’t, my feelings of frustration gave way to anger. Since I didn’t want to take that out on her, I ended the session to evaluate what had just happened.

The first thing that I decided was that I was wrong: Maisy does not learn faster with a no reward marker. In fact, she gave up so quickly, and was so difficult to persuade to re-engage with the task, that I believe she found it punishing. True, she also gave up when the silence went on too long in the second scenario, but she worked approximately three times longer, and was much more willing to re-engage when I asked. As a result, I think she found the lack of any feedback confusing, but not aversive.

Still, I concluded that the complete lack of any kind of feedback was also not the best way to help Maisy learn. Instead, her learning is most efficient when she gets lots of reinforcement over a short period of time. This means my job is to break the shaping task at hand down into as many pieces as possible so it is easier for her to progress through each step of the task. However, sometimes it is difficult to figure out how to break a task down any further. As a result, if I cannot figure out how to make the task easier, and if it’s been fifteen to twenty seconds without a click, I need to give Maisy a “gimme” click- reverting to the previous level of criteria for a few moments before trying the higher criteria again.

I also suspect that my initial use of “nope!” wasn’t actually serving as a no reward marker. Given the way Maisy responded, I think it actually served the purpose of a keep going signal for her. This means that for tasks that haven’t had a sufficient amount of duration built in yet, she depends on verbal encouragement to know that she’s doing what I want. (Interestingly, though completely off topic, I haven’t been very good at building duration past 30 seconds or so, which was Maisy’s threshold for silence during these tests. It makes me wonder if my inability to build more duration in her behaviors is due to her threshold, or if she’s developed that threshold because I have neglected to put in the work necessary to build more duration. On second though, I’m pretty sure I know the answer to that.)

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I learned that I don’t like it when I have to tell Maisy she’s wrong. I became frustrated and then angry as she continued to fail, even though that “failure” was behaviorally no different than when we did silence only, or when I used the keep going signal. Maisy was going about the shaping task in the exact same way in each scenario. She wasn’t any more wrong when I told her she was than when I didn’t. In other words: focusing on the wrong behavior rather than the right one changed the way I viewed and felt about the training session, and it took all of the fun and joy out of playing the shaping game with Maisy.

In the end, doing this experiment not only taught me that my initial supposition was wrong, but it also reaffirmed my commitment to positive training. Focusing on what I want her to do helps Maisy learn faster, but it also makes us both feel better.

Emotional Exhaustion

I cried in the car on the way home from dog training class on Thursday.

It was the third week of level 3 obedience, and Maisy had been doing really well. The first week, I could tell that she was a bit uncertain, but she hung in there. She and I worked together, and though she had a few stressful moments, she managed to express that without going over-threshold. The second week was even better. Again, she had a few stressful moments, but was largely calm and relaxed- she was even able to watch dogs do restrained recalls!

Oh, but the third week.

When we got there, there were several things different. First, our regular instructor wasn't there. Second, the ring was set up slightly different (usually our instructor puts her dog in a crate behind a barrier; a slight difference, but we both noticed). Finally, a new dog was present, a large poodley-dog that I hadn't seen before.

Maisy doesn't like change. She was stressed from the beginning, so I did my best to keep her sub-threshold by playing Look At That, and rewarding calm behaviors heavily. She held in there okay, so I decided we could try the group heeling warm up.

It didn't go well. She pulled and lunged and barked and growled. I quickly realized that she needed a break, so I took her outside the ring to the other side of the opaque ring barriers. The first week, that was enough to help her remain calm, and while it helped on Thursday, it didn't help enough. She kept standing on her hind legs, trying to see over the barriers, and continued to bark and growl. I finally gave up on heeling entirely and just played Look At That ring barrier. In retrospect, I should have tried moving even further away.

We did eventually make it back in the ring, but it took almost half an hour for her to calm down enough to concentrate, and it was only once I made a box out of the ring barriers that she truly calmed down enough to work. She did wonderfully then, and after five or ten minutes of calm, contained behavior, I decided to leave class early so that we could end on a good note.

And then, I cried in the car.

I don't cry often with Maisy. She's a wonderful dog- reactive, yes, but she tries so hard for me, and she's made a lot of progress. But sometimes, I just find it so emotionally exhausting to work with her. Sometimes I wonder if I should just scrap my plans of doing obedience trials with her, and start fresh with a new dog.

But I don't want a new dog. I want Maisy.

Maisy is amazing. She's very cute. She's smart, but she's also very biddable. She wants please, or at least she wants to earn that piece of hot dog. She's enthusiastic and loves to train. She's playful and friendly and absolutely hilarious at times. She's also a cuddler, and I absolute adore the way she curls up next to me. She's up for anything, and she'll try anything for me. Simply put, I love her.

Even with reactivity, Maisy is a dog with a lot of potential. She already has titles, and she's never gone to a trial without placing in the ribbons at least once over the weekend. It will take longer than it might if she weren't reactive, but I know that she and I will go far together. Still, I mourn the potential she has that's been lost to her reactivity.

I mourn the normal dog that she'll never be. I want a dog that can go to class without freaking out. I want one that makes me look brilliant, not like the idiot who can't control her dog. More than that, though, I want Maisy to feel normal. It breaks my heart that she feels so stressed that she feels she needs to react like that in order to stay safe. And I hate that I put her in those situations to achieve goals that she doesn't care about. And I wonder if that's fair.

It's a heartbreaking thing, sometimes, to live with a reactive dog. Which is why I cried in the car last Thursday night.