If you live long enough in the dog world, you eventually realize that the training method you were taught is now not just out of fashion, but downright vilified. Every decade or so, like a messiah fresh off the morning train from Mount Sinai, a new dog training guru proclaiming the good news of an infallible method, rises to be anointed by the public as the Chosen One, and to smite all the unbelievers.
Confucius says: He who learns but does not think is lost.
The reason why one particular training method comes to be accepted as gospel for a time is not always obvious. But in a world where Gwyneth Paltrow’s weird fixation on kale ice cream and steaming her vagina has made her millions, we shouldn’t perhaps find it too astonishing that some people will love the sage who tells them it’s best to medicate their dog for behavioural problems. After all, that’s a lot easier than trying to figure out why the dog is misbehaving and what else could be done about it.
As the new prophetic vision takes hold, soon anyone who uses any tool, any command, any reward, any correction, any punishment not sanctioned by the guru du jour is castigated as cruel (if they use compulsive training) or wimpy (if they use positive only training) or just too ignorant to even acknowledge (anyone who doesn’t wholly adopt our preferred method of training).
Treats every time the dog does something right? Folly! Stone the apostate!! A prong choke collar? Blasphemy! Call the SPCA!!
When I got my beloved Toby, Barbara Woodhouse (“No Bad Dogs the Woodhouse Way” – the “Walkies!” lady) was still the bomb. She was about the last prominent adherent of the traditional compulsive training method, although Cesar Milan’s “Dominance” philosophy has elements of this in its DNA.
We used choke collars and the jerk-and-release as correction to teach our dogs to heel. We learned to give commands in stern, authoritative voices. We did alpha dominance rolls and stare downs. Although positive reinforcement was given by way of lavish praise when the dog did what we wanted, treats were for very occasional use.
It was a moral failing to have to bribe your dog to obey a command. What? were you too big a wimp to command your dog’s respect?
A few years later, I started seeing dogs wearing head restraints, like Haltis and Promise collars. A few years after that, and harnesses became a common sight.
The changes in collars and restraining devices was the outward sign that the positive only school of dog training had snuck up and knocked the traditional compulsive trainers from their position as High Priest of dog training. That form of training had been “debunked’, as one writer put it.
Positive only dog trainers were like Martin Luther nailing the 95 Articles to the Cathedral door. Theirs was the only true religion now.
Now when badly behaved dogs came into the kennel, we were advised by their owners that we must never tell the dog “no”. We had to somehow make the dog want to do what we wanted her to do. We were handed big sacks of treats and told to administer them liberally in order to get the desired behaviour.
When we told these owners that we walked our dogs on slip collars because there was less chance of a dog escaping from them, they expressed horror at this ‘cruelty’.
When I was trying to housetrain Toby, I followed someone’s advice to give him treats each time he peed in the correct place. Being a dog of no little intelligence, within a day, he started cutting off his production after three drops of urine and then looking at me for a treat. He would then produce another three drops and wait for the next treat.
In 2010, I read an article advising me urgently that dog training “was in dire need of reinvention”. This author castigated both traditional training and positive training equally. He was selling seminars on a new method called “Science Based Dog Training”.
This attempt to supplant positive only training doesn’t seem to have attracted fanatical adherence, at least as yet. This may be because no one seems to understand what the hell
Science Based dog training is.
To the extent anyone does understand the principles involved, no one seems to have had much success in adapting them for everyday use.
One enthusiast wrote, “…science based training is forever changing. As new studies are undertaken, new evidence comes to light and old theories are thrown out and new ones brought in, causing old methods to be thrown out and new ones adopted…..before trying to change a behaviour, everything surrounding and leading up to it is first studied and understood.”
Yowzer. I didn’t know Dr. Freud treated dogs.
This sounds great in theory. But if you are a person dealing with a puppy who resists housetraining, being told to put him on the couch and psychoanalyse him isn’t exactly helpful. While you’re trying to figure out what puppyhood toilet training incident has scarred him for life, your carpets aren’t exactly smelling any fresher.
And what are we supposed to do in light of the information that the method I am being told will work for me today, based on the latest scientific study of course, is going to be thrown out tomorrow when the next scientific study comes out?
Here’s are some propositions I think are a crucial underpinning to dog training.
1. Training is crucial. It can make a positive difference in every aspect of your dog’s life and your relationship with your dog.
(a) Living with a boisterous untrained dog can make life miserable for everyone in the household. Most dogs who end up in shelters, are there because of unaddressed behavioural problems. Relationships have broken up over badly behaved dogs.
(b) Training helps to keep your dog safe, as well as the people she interacts with. Commands like ‘Stand’ and ‘Stay’ are useful when clipping nails, or meeting strangers or opening the car door to let the dog out on a busy street out. But it’s not just because you’re tired of being dragged off your feet when you walk her. It’s about her safety and yours too. All kinds of accidents occur involving untrained dogs. Not only can your dog get injured, you might end up paying damages for any injury she causes.
(c) Training will result in a happier dog. Not only does it mean your dog gets to spend time with you, being intellectually and physically stimulated. Once you have managed to teach him how to be a good canine companion, he will be less stressed and anxious because he knows what is expected of him and where the boundaries are.
It’s exactly like teaching a child.
The General has long espoused the theory that no one should be allowed to have child until they have successfully trained a dog to be a polite, well-mannered companion.
2. Accept the reality that training a dog can be a long, frustrating process, involving a big commitment of time and money. While some dogs, like my Mac, will need hardly any training, in most cases, there will be days when you feel like you’re taking two steps forward and one back. It can be frustrating and aggravating. It is drudgery at times.
If your dog jumps on you 100 times, you have to be prepared to correct him 101 times. You have to be the adult in the relationship. Eternal vigilance, at least in the beginning, is the price of a well trained dog. So many people think it is cute that their puppy mouths them, or chews their slippers or barks constantly or – my least favourite thing – jumps up on their owner and everyone else.
When that puppy becomes a 60 pound Huskie jumping on you and raking you with his claws, then to the Shelter they go. “Oh, he’s too rough; we thought he’d grow out of it”.
They don’t grow out of bad habits, they grow into them. You have to teach him what he needs to do. Right from the beginning.
3. Decide what your training goals are. Do you want and expect your dog to watch you 24/7 for cues as to what you expect him to do? When you go for a walk, do you want him within one centimetre of the proper ‘Heel’ position at all times? This is what Donald McCaig calls “useless, mechanical perfection”.
McCaig recounts watching a man renowned as “a noted dog trainer, in a nation of superb dog men”. (It’s McCaig, so that would be a man training a herding dog in Scotland.) He tells us that
“…nothing I see him do, day in and day out, remotely resembles what Americans call ‘dog training’. Training is where you get the dog to do what you want him to, right? When he does wrong you scold him, when he does right you give him a pat or a treat, right? A well-trained dog obeys every command despite his own inclinations, otherwise what’s the point?… The presumption of this training is that dogs are willful and stupid, and no doubt, some are.”
But then, his dogs were working dogs who needed to think and act on their own.
Do you not care that he would never win an obedience competition, but just want him to walk without pulling your arm out of the socket? Begging at the table is okay, sleeping on the furniture is okay, barking at the mailman is okay?
You think it’s a success if he does sit, even if you have to tell him three times. If he gets up and walks away a few minutes after you told him to ‘Stay’, you’re good with that, because at least he wasn’t in your way when you carried the groceries in, which was the reason for the command. The fact that he didn’t wait to be released is no a problem for you.
For my part, I wanted my dogs to be polite and well mannered, but when I didn’t need to exert close control over them, I also wanted them to just be dogs. They were allowed on the furniture, but not to sleep with us ( it was too disruptive to my already disruptive sleep patterns). Walks were as much for their benefit as mine so why would I want them to spend the entire walk anxiously looking at me and not enjoying their surroundings? I did however, insist that they walk calmly, on a loose leash. That way I could enjoy the walk as well.
I also made sure that they understood when I meant business and they needed to obey me.
I believe that dogs understand context.
Toby knew that if I was leaning towards him, smiling, using a playful tone of voice and slapping my knees, the command to “come” might actually be an invitation to a game. If he backed up, play bowed and woofed, he was confident he wasn’t going to receive a sudden correction. If we were in a field and I stood stiff and straight and called him to come in a deep authoritative voice, coupled with a ‘come’ gesture and a neutral or even stern expression, he knew he must come right away, regardless of the distractions competing for his attention.
4. Dogs don’t all learn the same way. Any individual dog doesn’t learn the same way on the different days, or in different circumstances. Slavish adherence to any particular method of dog training will sooner or later let you down.
Einstein said that “The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.” Challenge your assumptions and prejudices. Remember Confucius. Learning a method is great. But it’s still up to you to think about how it is working for your dog. If something is off, you need to be flexible enough to consider another way. Understand your dog’s limits, and work to expand to those limits.
One trainer said, of a seemingly intractable dog, “…I had to stop trying to be like, think like, and act like all the trainers I had sought so hard to emulate. I would have to have total confidence that this dog wanted to communicate with me, and I had to have confidence in my ability to hear him.”
5. You have to train yourself before and as you train your dog. You must learn the method you choose and how to carry it out in practice.
You must train yourself to be observant even when not engaged in actual training.
“Training” is really a misnomer anyway, in that it implies a discrete activity that takes place at a certain time and place. In reality, your dog is always picking up cues from your body and your voice. You need to be mindful of the messages being sent to your dog through the energy of your body and your tone of voice. Dogs respond as much or more to those things they do to the command words you use.
Yacking away endlessly does nothing but confuse them. Giving what is supposed to be an order in a tentative, unsure voice sends mixed signals. The dog is confused, or believes he needn’t do what you say.
6. The one thing that is absolutely essential, no matter which techniques you decide will be appropriate for your training, is to get your dog’s attention. Until you can accomplish this consistently and reliably, you won’t be able to teach your dog a single thing.
Your instinct will be to pull back at him when he pulls, and natter at him and repeat commands. That won’t get his attention. This is only reacting to what he is doing, not making him want to pay attention to what you’re doing.
When your dog runs away, your instinct will be to run after him. It takes an effort of will to run in the other direction, shouting and laughing like an idiot so he will turn around and run after to you to find what that’s about.
How you get that attention will depend on your dog and your decisions about training methods. With Mac, I didn’t need to do a thing; he was always watching me. Shoe responded to his name as if it was a command. Nothing I tried short of the prong collar worked with Toby. Some people use treats. Some use clickers, some use physical coercion like the alpha roll or dominant stare.
I repeat – the technique you use to get your dog to focus on you, is up to you. Just think it through; don’t unthinkingly persevere with a method that isn’t getting results.
Essentially all training boils down to praising and rewarding desirable behaviours and discouraging unwanted behaviours. Inform yourself, take responsibility, listen to your dog, make sure your dog listens to you.
But whatever you do, however you do it – train your dog.