Weekly Tidbits - June 16, 2021

On my mind this week and random things from around the web on dogs, behaviour and training.

Dogs on their own

My wife and I have often talked about the problem of “Pandemic Puppies.” Lockdowns and working from home have given many people the opportunity to get a new puppy and actually spend time doing the early basic training and house-training with their new dogs. But now that things are looking up and the world is beginning to return to more normal life patterns, what happens to these young dogs who have never been apart from their humans for more than an hour or so?

I have already heard from trainer friends that their calls for help with “separation anxiety” have gone way up. The reality is that most of these dogs don’t have true “separation anxiety.” Clinical Separation Anxiety is characterized by a panic so profound that the dog will injure itself, breaking teeth or ripping out nails, in an effort to find their human. Most of the people calling trainers for help are dealing with prolonged barking, whining, or howling. Maybe some chewing or scratching. That’s a different thing but still important to deal with.

If there is one thing I’ve learned over the past 30+ years of living with dogs it is that dogs are creatures of habit. They prefer things to be predictable and understandable. Our dogs spend most of their time observing us and making a mental catalog of what their “normal” days look like. Major deviations from their expectations will trigger natural behaviours and emotions to deal with unexpected and potentially dangerous situations. That’s why our dogs bark when they see a deer out in our driveway, for example.

So now we have a whole crop of “Pandemic Puppies” who have learned to understand that “normal” life means having their humans around them most of the time. Unless their human caregivers have taken the time to teach these dogs how to cope with being left on their own, it makes sense that these dogs would find being left alone for more than a short time very distressing. They need to find an outlet for their emotional upset and so we get barking, whining, and howling.

The problem starts with cuteness. Our dogs are adorable and we love spending time with them. Puppies are especially cute and insecure and will spend a lot of energy to solicit our attention. It can be hard to ignore an adorable bundle of fluff who is pawing at your leg or whining softly from the other room. In pandemic times, it’s easy enough to just bring the puppy with you wherever you go. And you have set your puppy’s expectations of what “normal” looks like. But it would be better to leave that adorable creature alone for short periods so they learn that being on their own is normal too and nothing to worry about.

The time to teach your dog to cope with being left alone is right away. But like anything else we teach our dogs, it has to be done in small, incremental steps so that the dog can be successful. You can’t expect to leave a 9 week old puppy alone for 8 hours on the first day! There are lots of great books on raising a new puppy like “Puppy Start Right” by Ken and Debbie Martin that talk about setting up useful routines and teaching your dog to be alone.

Canadian trainer Jennifer Berg has a great ebook "Teach Your Dog How to Be Alone" written specifically to deal with helping dogs cope with time on their own. It’s a skill that we work on with our dogs throughout their first year in a variety of environments. You can contact Jennifer directly here to get a copy of her book. Books like these provide a great roadmap to creating a happy, confident dog. If you can use them along with the help of a good trainer, so much the better!

Criteria and “Good enough”

Watching some people work with their dogs reminds me of the Paul Simon song “Slip Slidin Away.” They have an idea of what they are trying to teach their dog but I’ll be darned if I can see exactly what doing it “right” would mean. They could be teaching their dog to sit and they reward them for staying in a sitting position. But then sometimes the dog gets up and they reward them for the sit-then-get-up behaviour. Still other times they say “sit” and the dog looks off in the distance and they say “sit. Sit. SIT!” The dog sits after that fourth cue and they reward the dog.

So which of these responses is the one being trained? The real answer is “all of them” but I’m sure that is not the intention. Why is it that the goal behaviour we are looking for can prove to be harder to teach than we expect? We’re back to Paul Simon and “slip slidin" in our training.

All operant behaviour (i.e., behaviours the dog does intentionally to get something in return) is based on setting criteria. A good working definition of “criteria” would be “the conditions by which you are deciding if something is correct or not.” From our human perspective, that can be tricky. We have a picture in our heads of what we want our dog to do. But the less specific we are about our criteria in any training situation, the greater the chances of “slip slidin away” with what we accept as correct.

Having a clear training plan is a great first step to keeping my training on track but life is complicated and I’m not perfect, variations are going to creep in. There are any number of reasons why I might reward something slightly different from my training criteria. The first and most obvious reason is that I’m intentionally modifying what I’m are looking for because my dog is learning and progressing toward that intended goal behaviour. That’s good and mindful training.

It’s the other stuff that’ll get me into trouble. Life is busy and rushing to get to something else can cause me to accept something that’s “close enough” to what I want from my dog and reward them. As a one off, that’s no big deal. But if it becomes a pattern, I could find that the perfect Sit we worked so hard on is getting sloppy. That’s not my dog’s fault, it’s MINE! I rewarded it, I told them it was acceptable.

Then there’s the problem of “good enough.” Sometimes I struggle with teaching a new behaviour or my dog struggles doing a known behaviour in a new environment. It’s easy to randomly relax my criteria and decide that a version of the behaviour is “good enough.” Maybe it’s been a long session or my dog has been really trying. But I choose to reward my dog because I think they deserve it rather than because they are meeting my behaviour criteria. Sometimes it’s because I just want to see something that looks like success. Again, do that too often and I’m going to find that the behaviour has changed into something I didn’t intend.

And then there’s the repetition. Doing something over and over can be pretty mindless. Whether I’m doing a bunch of behaviours in a row or make a habit of working behaviours every day, repeating the process can let me fall into a bit of mindlessness. I’m not paying strict attention to either my criteria or my dog’s performance and I’m just rewarding something that looks like what I’m asking for. I’m not attending to the details. That’s fine for behaviours I don’t need to be precise but if I’m training for competition in Obedience or Agility, it could cost me a qualifying score.

There is something I try to say to myself when I start any training session with my dogs. “What are my criteria for this session?” That simple reminder helps me set expectations for both me and my dog as we start working together. Those “good enough” moments are going to happen for one reason or another. But I like to believe in the 80% rule - get it right 80% of the time and the other 20% will fall away.

Don’t rush. Don’t get impatient for success. Don’t repeat for the sake of repeating. Do be a mindful trainer!

That whole “Integrity” thing

I’ve been writing and sharing my thoughts on dogs, behaviour, and training for more than 10 years at this point. That’s more than half a million words shared on various platforms. I’ve recorded and published 150 podcasts. And I’ve never put any of that content behind a pay-wall. It has always been and always will be free to anyone who wants to take the time to read or listen.

I’m a dog lover that got motivated to learn a lot about the biology, ethology, and behaviour of dogs. My adventures got me into Applied Behaviour Analysis, Learning Theory, Behavioural Science, and other topics that related to doing the best job with my dogs. I learned enough to get certified as a professional dog trainer but I’ve concentrated on sharing what I know through my writing. And you all have access to it free.

You see, it’s an integrity thing. If you’ve read more than a couple of my essays, you can see a pattern. I’m standing on the shoulders of giants. I write about things that were researched, explored, and articulated by people who are incredibly accomplished in their respective fields. In short, I don’t have all the answers, they have the answers and I’m just telling you about finding what these great people have to say.

I’ve taken what I’ve learned and applied it to my own dogs. A lot of my writing is about telling you how things have worked for me and why I think these things are important. My hope is that you can have an experience similar to mine and check these ideas out for yourself. I’m confident that they can bring you the same joy we have found with our dogs. Somehow, it just didn’t seem right to claim that these answers to your dog training problems are something I invented. Who am I to charge people money for information they can get from numerous sources?

I’ve had conversations with other trainers who shake their heads and wonder why I don’t make more of an effort to make money for my efforts. That’s a complicated question. The simple answer is that my life is so much better with my dogs and I would like everyone to experience the same ease and joy of a great relationship with their dogs. I don’t think of myself as an “expert” in dog stuff but I know what I know. And I’m happy to share that with you for free.

Maybe someday I’ll want to do something that takes a little more financial investment to make happen. That might mean I have to charge for that kind of service. But, for now at least, sharing what I’ve learned is the best thing I can do to make the world a better place for dogs.

No charge. You’re welcome.

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Have a great week and have fun with your dogs!