Flashback Friday: My First Dog Business

This week’s blog is not really going to be about training. And after a long streak of serious blog posts, it’s time to liven things up. Today's is a bit silly.

At about 11 pm the other night my phone went off and it was my mom. Here is what she sent me?

Aren't I adorable?

The picture is a little blurry but the business card says “Good Dog Dog Walking: Fun

Enjoyable Dog Exercise for your Furry Friend.” I was in 6th grade at the time I think. I totally forgot until this jogged my memory.

One of the neighbor ladies helped me do this. Her dog’s name was Crash and I got the job when I started playing with her dog in the grassy field that the picture was taken.

Not only was this my first dog related business, it was also the first and only time I’ve been fired from a job.

Another woman in the apartment complex needed her poodle walked at night while she was away. For three weeks I walked her poodle three times a week, until one day she left a note on her door addressed to me. It said something along the lines of “I am not longer in need of your services.” The note was most likely less cold than I remember, but it was tragic for me nonetheless. I stopped the business at that point.

I guess this means that my dog training experience goes further back than 11 years. Though it doesn’t count for much.

It looks like I was destined to dog training, regardless of what else I tried to be. It’s funny how these things tend to just work themselves out.

Time Under Pressure: Can Dog Training Become the Next Modernist Movement?

During one of my appointments I was talking to my client about timing how long her dog was pulling on the leash. We would then compare the amount of time the dog was pulling to the amount of time our appointment took.

To teach loose leash properly, I think you need to treat when the dog makes the choice to make the leash loose i.e. stepping into a non-tense position. The dog should also be treated for not pulling i.e. every time the leash is loose. There is a fine distinction between the two and it revolves mostly around how much credit you give your dog to solve problems.

Taking the idea of timing how long her dog had a tight leash, we can see what percentage of the time her dog was unsuccessful. Ideally, in the perfect world, that percent error would be 0%. I haven’t tried that technique yet, but I imagine we’d end up with about 25% of our time the dog would not be performing successfully.

The percent error is something I’m going to refer to as “Time Under Pressure”(TUP). The most basic definition I can come up with is that it is the time under which the dog is not successfully performing and the handler is not causing successful performance. Let’s expand this definition a little bit.

On the human side I’ve said “the handler is not causing successful performance.” On the most basic level, this means that the handler is failing to train the dog how it the handler wants to train it. This doesn’t apply strictly to loose leash because not every dog needs to be leash trained or leash trained the same way. Think sled dogs or scent dogs, their leash work is way different than a house pet or a guide dog.

For the human to eliminate the human side of time under pressure, the handler (human) needs to be educated on what techniques they want to use and how to use them. When TUP is caused by a human error, it almost counts as doubly unproductive because the human is not performing successfully and that will  absolutely cause the dog not to perform as well.

From there, emotions begin to run high and patience runs thin and nothing gets done. I’m going to begin to compile statistics during my training sessions, but I feel as though for human TUP, it most likely won’t be able to exceed 15% for brand new handlers and 5% for experienced handlers. I think those percentages would be the threshold under which a successful human experience would happen.

A dog’s perspective on TUP would be that of confusion and frustration. “What is being asked of me?” is probably what they would ask. If a dog is not being directed properly, then very little learning could possibly occur. We know this already from the previous explanation of human TUP. This begs the question, what happens if the dog is not learning and the human is instructing as effectively as possible?

The percent TUP for a dog will be much greater than it will for the human. It will be greater because the dog has much more to learn and much more to adapt to than the human does. Makes greater than one leap in logic to reach a conclusion is not really possible to teach in a dog. What we have to do is teach the pieces of a behavior before combining them. We can teach human’s this way, but it is also possible for humans to understand conceptual and abstract ideas to learn. We cannot put this style of learning on our dogs.

For TUP to count for a dog, the dog must be unsuccessful in training. This idea of unsuccessful is much more strict in the mind of a person than the mind of a dog. How many of you, when you tell your dog to sit, your dog will sit not at your side, but will sit facing you? You’ve asked your dog to sit and he has sat. That is successful. We cannot count that as TUP. Now imagine if we’re trying to teach your dog to sit by your side. Then every time your dog sides facing you, that would count as TUP.

Notice again, we are making fine distinctions between two ideas. Specificity is what makes the dog successful and able to learn. In order for the dog to know what to do, you have to know exactly what you’re asking the dog to do.

Conceptually, I don’t think this idea does much more than put words to what dog trainers already know. What I’m most interested in with TUP is discovering a more exact relationship between how our failures relate to our dog’s failures. Now this might sound like an overwhelming negative concept, but it only sounds negative if we consider our failures and shortcomings a bad thing.

In my previous blog about Willy the Pit Mix, I received a lot of feedback regarding breaking down dog training into percentages. A 1 second increase in a 4 second stay is a 25% increase in success. My clients who are just getting their first dogs or aren’t super comfortable around dogs really enjoyed that we could call a seemingly small improvement a huge success.

So that is the point of TUP. I am trying to figure out more ways to quantify how well a dog’s training is going. In modern dog training we try framing everything as positive and only put the dog in situations in which he will be successful. It only makes sense to further modernize dog training and use statistics, instead of just relying on intuition and feel.

To take a step back from dog training for a moment, it seems as though, since about 2010ish, there have been modernist movements in even more fields that used to be stuck in classical and archaic ways and techniques. Cooking for example, has seen chefs pushing a person’s relationship to their food. Writing has also seen changes in the way the human experience is described.

The question I’m forced to ask myself now is, how can dog training reflect on what it means to be a person? We seem to be on our way with everyone trying many different things, but what seems to be missing is reflection and introspection on how the dogs affect our humanity.

Feel free to leave me a comment here, on my Facebook, or shoot me an email at Michael@concentricdog.com. I’d love to know what you all think.

Client Spotlight: Willy the Pit Mix

Today I want to start an on-going series (again) high lighting some of the successful (and sometimes not-so-successful) techniques we’ve been using lately with clients. This is my chance to speak about individual learning styles of each dog I work with.

This week’s dog is Willy the pit mix. You can tell by his ears that he has some sort of terrier in him.

Here is Willy, right before I got him too excited and he jumped at me. You can see him contemplating.

Willy’s mom came to me with the goal of “having him listen to me.” A respectable goal considering that I too wouldn’t want anything living in my house that didn’t play by my rules. During the rest of our consultation I saw he likes to pull on leash, eat things off the ground, and mouths when playing or being handled. All of which sounds worse than it is. I only saw behaviors that have a million different ways to teach. But when you’ve been living with a dog who doesn’t listen, I can imagine feeling a bit more stressed than I was.

The first thing we discussed training was loose leash. We talked about how this would meet her goal of teaching Willy to listen. Then we talked about the goal I wanted to set for him. For Willy, I saw our “graduation” as walking a lap through a store, loose leash the whole way. In order to do this, he would have to listen, as his mom wants, but he also has to perform many different obedience commands and show a certain amount of desensitization to distractions. The goal, when we get to that point, will demonstrate that obedience training is crucial to solving most behavioral problems.

The problem I run into in the first two or so sessions with a new client is that they will feel discouraged with their dog’s performance. In a culture of immediate satisfaction, not receiving that when working with a pet makes my job a bit harder. While we worked on loose leash in our first session, every time Willy would sit, the sit would last for a few seconds before his mom had to hand place him back at her left side. The issue is that Willy is about 50 pounds of muscle and his mom is not tall enough to get the best leverage against the leash. I could see and feel the frustration. It seemed like he wasn’t learning and in those moments, it’s crucial to maintain positivity.

It’s hard convincing a client that a lot of progress has been made. For Shimmer, a dog I’ve been training for three years, progress looks a lot different than for Willy, who has not been living with his mom all of his life and has been training for less time than that. For Willy, progress is sitting for 5 seconds instead of 4 seconds. To me, that’s a 25% improvement! But 1 second is never as satisfying as it should be. This is what we worked on for almost the whole session. We hardly walked at all because he wasn’t there yet.

On 9/4/14, our third and most recent session, we had a breakthrough. Not only did we learn that a clicker works better than a mark word, we were able to turn that revelation into walking loose leash for over 50 feet! Granted, there were a lot of stop and goes, but that’s fine. Willy was able to walk 50 feet loose leash. As opposed to three weeks ago when we were just working on positioning him at his mom’s side.

To get him from the first week to the third week we had to change a lot of how we approach working with Willy. The first thing we tried to do is change our positivity towards him. After a while of frustration, this was, and still is not, easy to manage. I tell my client to use her “12-year-old voice. I know you know how to use it.” Tone of voice became important towards managing Willy’s willingness to work with us.

We also learned that Willy does not work the best with us in the first and last 20 minutes of the session. To compensate for that, we do the easy stuff first. We work on Willy just sitting in a “heel” type position. This requires very little problem solving skills from him and he still gets tons of treats. Then in our middle 20 minutes, we work on the hard stuff, which is actually moving while loose leash.

If we only get 20 real minutes of loose leash training, and we’ve only worked three times, that means we’ve got Willy to a very basic loose leash walk in 60 minutes. That’s 1 hour, out of the total 168 hours in a week, dedicated to making Willy easier to live with. A very minimal time commitment.

The big progress is what seemed to make everybody the happiest, but it’s also important to recognize the little victories when they happen. I’m sure Willy’s mom can attest to me making a big deal out of what seems to be nothing. But any victory, regardless of size, is a victory in my book.

I’ll leave with this final note. I heard it when I was 14, just starting dog training, from a woman who seemingly didn’t like me at the time. She said “in order to be a good dog trainer, you have to be willing to make an ass of yourself.” Not just Willy’s mom, but all of my clients, can speak to how silly I can get. This is the attitude I try to impart on everyone I work with and when they finally feel comfortable to look and feel foolish, their dog will grow, just like Willy.

If you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them below, on my Facebook, or email me at Michael@concentricdog.com

I wrote this blog with Willy’s mom’s consent. The last thing I would want to do is invade someone’s privacy or misrepresent them in some way.

Pulling Is An Instinctual Behavior and A New Collar Won't Help

Martingales, choke chains, harnesses, and head collars. These are just some of the tools that I’ve seen people use to get their dogs to walk loose leash. I even read on a dog training forum yesterday that someone likes to wrap the leash around their dog. (Note: when I read these things, I won’t be posting the link to where I read. I don’t want to start a witch hunt for the person.) While some of these tools are arguably more inhumane than others (when used incorrectly!) they all have the same thing in common: they don’t teach a dog to walk loose leash.

What they do is put a bandage on a stab wound. Sure you can’t see the problem anymore, but you haven’t actually done anything to fix the problem. The problem will still be there because it’s not a problem to the dog. Pulling on leash is instinctual and letting it happen is a reward.

Try this experiment. When your dog is standing next you to, with one finger, push into your dog’s ribs. Your dog will push back against you with some amount of force. Puppies will do this before they’ve even had a leash and collar attached to them. Because this is an instinctual behavior, every time the dog performs it, it is rewarded and will then continue to do it even more than before.

The special equipment and wraps and anything else will not unteach an instinctual behavior. Proper training and reward is what will replace (NOT get rid of) an instinctual behavior. This is the same reason why it is impossible to say if even the kindest dog won’t bite. You cannot remove instinct from a dog. You can only make other behaviors more desirable to perform.

Using a special collar also does not teach anything if you keep walking forward. The reward for pulling is forward progress. That’s why dogs will choke themselves out on these (most of the time. some of them of course have their place.) useless special training collars. Even though they are choking themselves, it’s more rewarding to move forward than it is punishing to get choked.

It’s a gross misunderstanding of how any animal, including people, learns to put a choke chain or martingale on a dog and expect it to walk loose leash. Not only that, but it always seems to be that the dog’s handler feels a sense of retribution from choking their dog for doing a behavior that the handler doesn’t like. Even though the handler never taught the dog the right thing to do in the first place.

To summarize, special training collars do not replace actual training because they do not teach or unteach anything. And often times indicate, to me at least, laziness in training and frustration in the handler.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave one here, on my Facebook, or shoot me an email at Michael@concentricdog.com

Human Projection of Morals onto Dogs Revisited

I’ve touched upon the idea of dogs doing good and bad before. In that post I was more focused on how people project their own moral system onto their dogs. In this post, I want to focus more on the personification of animals in the media. Most notably, two big examples lately, the bear that pulls a crow out of water and a dog splashing water on a fish.

Here is the first video I want to cover, the one of the bear pulling the crow from the water

Only the first 2 minutes of this video are relevant. The first thing I noticed was in the description of the video. The person who posted it says, “even animals can break away from instincts.” I think this expresses the general sentiment most people have while watching this. They get warm fuzzies from watching wild animals befriend each other. While I’m no expert in bear behavior, and nor am I going to pretend to be, there are certain things we can take from this video that applies to most animals.

The most important thing I noticed was that the bear was eating before the “rescue efforts” started. And the entire habitat the bear was in also had food coating the ground. To me, this indicates the beginning of meal time. With the abundance of food and the eating before and after the rescue, the bear seems hungry and hasn’t finished its meal yet. So far the bear hasn’t strayed away from instinct. If hungry, then eat. It’s a fairly simple recipe.

This raises the question of why the bear is bothering with the crow. Following the same train of thought as the previous paragraph, I think the bear is just hungry. A skim of information about bears online finds many sources agree that bears are not active predators (when they do find food from meat). Seeing a crow flopping around, defenseless, the bear probably sees this as an opportunity to eat something different than what the keepers provide, which is most likely boring to the bear. It’s simply a matter of opportunity.

In the same vein as boredom, another possible explanation is that the bear was playing with the crow. Zoos often run into the problem of entertaining their wildlife. As soon as the bear pulls the crow out, it stops moving and play has ended. It’s no longer rewarding (read: fun) for the bear to keep messing with the crow. That’s why so many species of animals have a ‘play dead’ behavior.

The next video is one in which a dog is splashing water on a fish. With all of the fish around, it seems as though the setting is at a fish market or a dock.

Here is the video:

]

The comments are all related to how much people like dogs more than humans, or how this animal has a heart of gold. But in reality, this dog’s heart is as full as its stomach. The dog could not possibly know that fish die when taken out of water. That’s orders of logic beyond what I dog can do. And if the dog did know that fish die out of water, why would the dog care about it? What reward would the dog get for “saving” the fish, as opposed to eating it? In this instance of an animal “saving” another, just like with the bear, the dog is simply trying to secure food.

(NOTE: There is evidence suggesting that animals can be altruistic. The evolution of altruism is a fascinating subject, but I won’t be discussing it in my blog because I do not feel it has much to offer in explaining dog behavior.)

What we see the dog doing is attempting to bury the fish to eat later. He’s either full at that moment, or understands the scarcity of resources in his current environment. Once again, the animal in question is not going outside of instinctual behaviors. The dog is totally within the confines of the “if hungry, then eat” explanation of behavior.

I realize some of this can be a buzzkill. It’s nice to believe our dogs are capable of showing a human level of compassion, but without a bigger brain, the ability to have complex emotions is not something a dog has (though who knows what future research will show).

It may seem unfortunate that almost every single behavior our dogs do is for food, but when we try to speak their language, instead of getting them to speak ours, it actually encourages a stronger relationship with your dog. Everything I just explained is essentially the premise behind positive reinforcement training. And every time I talk about positive reinforcement training, I always explain that it helps create a bond with your dog. That understanding is how you form a family with your dog involved.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them here, on my Facebook, or email me at Michael@concentricdog.com

Mistakes Your Dog Trainer Makes Part 1: Bear the Foster Dog

This is the first part in a many part series in which I’m going to discuss the mistakes I’ve made, what caused them, and how to prevent them in the future. It’s a great way to document training because only documenting my success would be 1) Uninteresting and 2) I would never give myself or anyone else the opportunity to learn from them.

The mistake I made this week has to do with a dog who is not food motivated.

I recently brought a foster dog home from my local Humane Society. I’ve been wanting to do this for a while and finally did the paperwork and attended the volunteer orientation to do it. The dog’s name is Bear and he is a German shepherd/Akita mix. They say he is 4 to 5 years old, but who really knows with the strays. He had major surgery on his front right leg so he needs a home to recover in.

The routine in my house for animals requires only a small bit of training. I like all the dogs that come into the house to wait at the door, wait for their food, and stay out of the kitchen. And as we all know by now, I want to use food to teach these behaviors faster than just brute forcing repetition.

Since we’re out relieving every 3-4 hours and I’m in the kitchen a lot, there are a lot of chances to practice. When he would walk into the kitchen, I’d walk over to him and he’d walk backwards out. I marked and gave him a piece of what I use to train Shimmer. He took the food, but without much enthusiasm. This continued for three days with the door and the kitchen. He just didn’t seem to be learning what I was trying to teach.

What was I doing wrong? Why does Bear not work with me very well? I came up with two answers.

The first answer I came up with is that I brought a shelter dog into my house, with no background information on him, and IMMEDIATELY tried to begin a training protocol with him. I didn’t take enough time to learn his needs and how he works best. Unfortunately, because of his leg, I can’t use play as a motivator, but that is beside the point. I didn’t let him get acclimated and destress before trying to get him to perform.

The second mistake, and I think the most valuable one to learn from, is that I actually trained him not to be motivated by the food I was offering. Bear needs 5 pills twice a day. I’m really familiar with just pilling a dog, but I really didn’t want to do it 10 times a day for 7 days. And because I don’t know Bear that well, that just seems like 70 opportunities for him to bite me. I decided to put his pills in a small spoonful of peanut butter to keep my hands out of his mouth.

Why is this a mistake? Let’s think of it like this. I offered him a ride in a Mercedes once a day, and then for the rest of the day he gets to ride in an old Ford with no a/c. One of them is extremely rewarding and is much more enjoyable than the Ford. The parallel here is that I know I’d rather just ride in the Mercedes once a day, and Bear would rather wait for the peanut butter.

How do I fix this? I narrowed it down to two options. The first option is that I can stop using peanut butter to pill Bear. I dislike this option, mostly because I’d rather use peanut butter for his and my sake (He loves it). My second, and prefered option, is that I use peanut butter, or something of similar value to train him. Every time I mark a behavior, I give him a lick or two of peanut butter from a spoon.

To generalize the lesson from this mistake, I did not properly assess what motivates Bear. Then I caught myself getting annoyed at myself that he wasn’t learning. Try to remember, 98% of the time, when your dog is not learning a behavior, there’s something wrong with the way you’re teaching it.

At the end of the week I’ll have an update with Bear’s progress.

Want to join the discussion? Leave me a comment, or shoot me a message on my Facebook or email me at Michael@concentricdog.com

Train Your Children to Train Dogs

One of the most fun things I’ve ever done, and unfortunately have had only a handful of opportunities to do, is work with children on training dogs. The children always love working with the dogs and the sense of confidence they get from having that sort of control over an animal is amazing to see. The children I’ve worked with definitely came out of their shells in just a few minutes to work with me and a dog for about an hour.

I think a part of the idea of family oriented training is having the children participate in the training as well. It is not just about molding your dog into a people person, it’s also about molding people into knowledgeable dog people. who are equipped with the knowledge to read a dog and know how to appropriately interact with and care for a dog.

We see on shelter dog evaluations is how dogs respond to young children. What this means is that there is special consideration taken with dogs around children. This is because children all bring different energy levels when meeting a dog and are often not aware enough of themselves or the dog to make good decisions.

Now, after finishing reading this article you decide to go through with training your children to train dogs, I still don’t feel like leaving young children and your dog unsupervised is a good idea. It’s up to your discretion and good judgment, but it just seem to me that it would cause more anguish than anything.

With all of that out of the way, let’s get into the mechanics of training children to train dogs. You’ll find that the most effective way to train dogs is often the most effective way to teach people (not just children). What you’ll do is keep everything positive and set up in a way that your child will be successful. Constantly berating the child for not getting right even after what you perceive to be “clear” instruction will only deter the child from ever trying again.

Does your dog know how to sit? Awesome, try having your child work the dog on commands he already knows. This way the dog gets treated easily, which will be nice for him, and your child will get a sense of accomplishment. Everyone is happy and that will make them want to continue to work.

After the initial stage of the dog and child getting comfortable with one another, it’s time to actually give your child a goal. A reasonable goal would be to get the dog to perform a slightly more elaborate version of a command he already knows. Have you taught your dog target training yet?(LINK). If your dog is small enough, have your child teach the dog to crawl between his legs. Or maybe even have your child teach the dog to sit in a chair. Any small thing that adds a bit of depth to an existing command/behavior.

While your child is working, it’s your chance to teach and analyze how he/she is doing. What’s great about teaching dog training, even if you don’t think of yourself as the best trainer, is that you learn how to be better by teaching.

What are you looking for? The two big things I watch for are 1) tone of voice and 2) body language. When giving anything instructions, even our friends and family, we tend to bark them rather like a drill sergeant. Not only will this meanness cause the dog to shut down, but I don’t see it as a good idea to instil that sort of behavior in a child.

Luckily, children’s voice are naturally higher than an adult’s, which normally means that dogs will respond with at least some attentiveness. Encourage your child to keep using that high pitched voice. Avoid sharp, laser like commands. Even though the pitch is high, it can still be smooth and relaxed, just like your child’s body language should be.

The first few things I learned when I got serious with my dog training skills were to relax my shoulders and relax my grip on the leash. Someone pointed out to me that my knuckles were turning white and this was due to my fear that my dog would run away. Then I was told my dog was pulling because I was nervous. I relaxed my body language, and while it didn’t solve the loose leash walking problem completely, it did remove one factor contributing to the pulling.

Now with that relaxed body language, your child could even hold the dog’s leash on walks. Freeing your hands up for other children or even your loved one. Everyone gets to enjoy each other’s company a bit more.

Family oriented training means everyone is involved and included. 

Do you have any strategies for working with your children and dogs together? Leave me a comment here, on my Facebook, or email me at Michael@concentricdog.com.