Weekly Tidbits - July 21, 2021
On my mind this week and random things from around the web on dogs, behaviour and training. Principles, puppies, and podcasts!
Swimming outside the mainstream
Have a look at the courses offered by the most popular dog training websites. You are likely to find things like “Get a rock-solid Stay!”, “Teach your dog to fetch!”, “Building focus in your puppy!”, or “Getting the perfect recall!” I’m sure that all of these sound interesting but they are not typical topics here at Canine Nation. These are useful skills and any dog would benefit from learning these kinds of things. But I think there is another, more important layer to be considered in living and working with our dogs.
The mainstream of dog training seems to be focused on “how-to” information designed to help dog owners get their dogs to do the things they want to see and to help the dog behave in ways that the owner prefers. But there is a layer of science that runs under all of these tricks and techniques to help you get the dog you want to see. And that is what I find most interesting. Not the “how” of getting behaviour but the “why” getting my dog to cooperate and learn happens.
Let me give you an example. I’ve watched hundreds of people run in the sport of agility with their dogs. Some of these handlers struggle to keep their dog’s attention while trying to complete the course. In talking with these handlers, they have told me about the training drills they found in popular dog magazines, classes they take with local instructors, and workshops in the latest agility handling techniques. And still they struggle to keep their dog engaged for the 60 seconds or so it should take to complete an agility course. What’s the problem? What’s going on here? In many cases it’s simple - a very low rate of rewards for the dog.
We expect our dogs to remember what we teach them whether it is “sit” or “stay” or something else. It shouldn’t be a surprise that our dogs also learn things like how stingy we can be with rewards in certain situations or for certain behaviours. But learning about how generous or dependable we are relates to everything we ask our dogs to do for us. If we don’t work on these more fundamental issues with our dogs, everything eventually becomes more than a little unpredictable.
Topics like “Rate of Reinforcement”, “Reinforcement History”, “Conditioned Reinforcement”, or “Creating A Training Plan” are rarely seen in the courses advertised to dog owners. They are not an easy sell. People want their dog to come when called and don’t really want to hear about the importance of making the dog successful so they can be rewarded 70% or more of the time. But that success rate is precisely what is going to make their recall training successful. Not just their recall training, but ALL of their training!
I’m sure that the best instructors out there include bits of these important behaviour principles in their course materials. Kind of like that “bit of medicine” in the spoon full of sugar that promises to teach the perfect recall. But I think it deserves more attention than that. It was learning and practicing these higher-order principles that vastly improved my own training with my dogs, not a series of clever techniques and exercises I did with them.
That’s why Canine Nation exists off the beaten path, just outside the mainstream of most dog training discussions. Results can be important when working with our dogs but I think that how we get to those results is even more important. If I’m doing a good job of getting the message in my writing across, it should help trainers be smarter and more effective at what they do. Even using techniques learned from books, videos, or classes. Knowing WHY something works will help you do a better job and make adjustments in your training to suit your dog.
Swimming outside the mainstream may feel awkward at first. But creating a more effective and satisfying relationship with my dogs has helped me appreciate that there is more to dog training than the latest techniques, drills, or classes.
Puppyville
Suddenly there are puppies everywhere in my circle of dog friends. It seems like there has been a perfect storm that has brought many new additions to the homes of old friends. So we’ve been talking with folks a lot about how we raised Six (who came to us in 2018) and Ashe (who arrived in Sept. 2020). We have two over-arching principles when we raise all of our puppies - Have a Routine and Pay Attention!
Have a Routine -
Our puppies usually come to us at 8 weeks of age. At that point they are just entering what is called the “Critical” or “Imprint” period of their development. The time between about 7 weeks and 12 weeks is an important stage in a dog’s life because many of the most impactful lessons they learn during this period will imprint on the dog for life. Learning that we are there to provide them food and safety is important. But it’s also important that the learn a host of other things in a comfortable environment. We create a routine for our puppies to make sure that we stick to our “script” for getting these lessons across.
One of the most important elements of our routine is to teach our puppies to be on their own. We use crates and ex-pens for management but also to teach our dogs that it is safe to have some down-time away from their humans. But time in crates and pens has to start fairly short and work up to longer periods over time. To do that, we set up a schedule. From the time we get up, there are periods of social time with us (including training and play) and time in the crate or ex-pen. Like children, young dogs need lots of rest (even if they don’t agree sometimes!) so crate/pen time happens 4-5 times a day to start with; a couple hours to rest, eat, or chew on toys. Time outside of their crate/pen leads us to important principle #2.
Pay Attention!
It’s a rule in our house that if the puppy is out of their crate/pen, someone must have their eyes on them at all times. This is important for several reasons, not least of which is that toilet training is among the first things we are working on. The most important step in toilet training is to LEARN TO SEE THE SIGNS that the puppy needs out. To be sure, there will be mistakes along the way but if we’re paying attention, we can bring the time it takes to toilet train a puppy down to a matter of a week or two rather than months.
Puppies tend to be notorious for causing chaos and getting into trouble. It’s been our experience that these episodes happen we are paying the least attention to them. It is far easier to solve a problem by making sure it never happens in the first place. Letting a puppy choose what to get into and play with can be a bad idea especially if you value your shoes, furniture, or other valuables. We keep our eyes on our new puppy to make sure we can trade him a fun toy for anything inappropriate he may be investigating. We try to make sure that our puppies never practice any behaviour that we don’t want them to do as they grow up.
Of course, life happens and it can sometimes be difficult to keep an eye on our puppy while we tend to other important things in our lives. That’s where crate and ex-pen training from principle #1 comes back into play. If we have done our work making our puppy comfortable in his crate or ex-pen, then we can put them away while we attend to the things life throws at us.
Critically Content
It’s all part of providing a predictable, safe, and comfortable environment for our puppy to get them through that critical period of development from 8 to 12 weeks. We try to work in short outings to new places, meeting new people and dogs, and trying new things into our usual routine. Always with regularly scheduled crate/pen down time to let our puppy recharge.
Just a note, it’s not always easy to convince a puppy that it’s time for a rest! Especially when they are young, they are eager to keep going sometimes and, like an over-tired toddler, they can have little tantrums too with the typical barking and whining after being put in their crate or pen. It can be hard, but if we know that they have been fed, had their toilet time, and don’t need anything else, we just ignore the noise until they settle for a short rest.
There are lots of different approaches to starting out with a new puppy but this is an approach that has worked for us for the past 20 years. I wish all of our friends with new puppies a successful and fun start to many happy years together!
To podcast or not to podcast
I have been dithering about whether or not to start recording Canine Nation podcasts again. Unlike many podcasts out there, my podcasts don’t involve guests or conversations. They are mostly “audio-book” versions of the essays I write here on Canine Nation.
The trouble is, they take time. I spend a few hours writing for Canine Nation each week and re-starting the podcast would mean an additional 2-5 hours of recording and production work to get an episode out each week. Considering that I’m not getting paid for this at the moment, it has been difficult to come to a decision.
I know that people enjoy the audio versions of my essays in the podcast. It still gets a lot of downloads each month even though I haven’t produced a new episode in 2 years or more. So I’m currently looking at creating a paid subscription model - something like $1 per episode - to cover the additional expense of producing and maintaining the episodes (web hosting and storage costs more than $150/year, for example).
I’m interested in your thoughts. Would you be willing to “buy me a coffee” per episode by paying a small subscription price? Do you even listen to podcasts? If you have any suggestions on how I can format the podcasts to be more useful or informative just let me know. I look forward to hearing from you on this!
Have a great week and have fun with your dogs!
I enjoy reading the articles I get emailed from CNC thru substack. Although I’d gladly buy you a cup of coffee in person I do not think I’d pay for the audio version.
Hi Eric, an interesting and thought provoking article as usual. I wish more new puppies were given the opportunity to learn to be happy in an ex pen. That simple skill saves so many problems later on.
Regards the podcasts- I really enjoyed listening to them, and that’s how I got to know you.
Personally, however I prefer the written articles, as I find I can absorb the info better in the written form. Possibly this is simply a visual vs audio learning preference.
I also go back and re-read parts of the article, which I did not do with the podcasts. That’s just my 2 cents though, and I am sure loads of people would be willing to pay a subscription for your words of wisdom.