Dogs CAN Learn That … and That, and That!
Do you know anyone who has more than one service dog because “one dog couldn’t be taught to do all the tasks” that person needs? Have you ever heard a dog owner (or worse, trainer) claim that dogs “can’t learn” to distinguish similar commands or tasks or learn multiple related tasks — for instance, detection of more than one type of drug or contraband or … the list of things that people claim dogs “can’t learn” is endless. And mostly wrong. “Our conservation detection dogs are agile, portable, and endlessly… Continued
The Power of Desensitization
Desensitization is a tool I use in my armory virtually every day – it’s ultra powerful, versatile and it works well, that is IF it’s applied correctly! Here I’m going to take a look at this ‘behaviour fixer’ in a bit more detail because if it’s worked with in the right way, you’re just not going to get the results you want and even worse, the dog may relapse. What’s Desensitization Anyway? I have a definition that I use for Desensitization or (to give it it’s full name) Systematic Desensitization.… Continued
Ringing the Bell to Go Out: Avoid These 4 Common Errors!
Zani learns to ring the bells This post is for the people who have tried–and failed–to teach their dogs to ring a bell to go outside. I suspect there are a lot of bell ringing failures out there. Not that it’s so hard to teach a dog to poke a bell with his nose or paw. But it can be tricky to teach him when to do it, to let him know that this is a way to communicate with you about a certain thing. I went through the top hits… Continued
Ideas for Touch Signs to Use
By Debbie Bauer You can give touch cues in many ways – you can use your hands, your feet, your body, your breath, the equipment you use with your dog, an extended touch stick, etc. Any way that you can make contact with your dog’s body to provide information can become a touch cue. The most common way I communicate with my blind/deaf dogs is with my hands. I do give certain cues with my feet because it is easier for me than bending or because it blends more perfectly… Continued
Clicking your Dog for Doing Nothing!
By Sue McCabe Recently, while out with my gang, two dogs rushed a fence, barking their hairy heads off as we passed. I clicked and rewarded my dogs even though they did nothing. Later on the walk, two horses passed us and my dogs looked at them. Again I clicked and rewarded them for doing nothing. Them as Jellybean stopped to sniff a couple of doggy friends, I clicked and rewarded him doing nothing. Did I truly click the dogs for nothing? Of course not. There is never an absence of behaviour.… Continued
Why Your Dog Doesn’t Know Sit
By Yvette Van Veen When I was a young girl, my grandmother would send gifts of books from Czechoslovakia. The books were filled with stunning moving pop-up illustrations. I learned a lot from those books. I learned how those illustrations popped up. I learned how one moving part operated another moving part. What I failed to learn was how to read Czech. My attention was so fixated on the illustrations that I memorized the words. I recited the story based on the illustration. I never focused on the letters. Illustrations… Continued
Reaching the Holy Grail of Training
By Yvette Van Veen Years ago, I taught our Kiki a formal recall using targeting. Systematically I proceeded to work through the exercise. Much to my delight, Kiki developed the most fantastic competition recall. People gasped at her speed and enthusiasm. Her formal recall never failed us over the years. You could say that it had behavioural momentum. Domjan, in The Principles of Learning and Behavior describes behavioural momentum as, “response persistence in extinction.” In non-technical language, behaviours with momentum are enthusiastic, despite distractions. They are highly resistant to extinction. … Continued
7 Ways to Get Behaviour
Guest Post by Karolina Westlund Ph.D There are two important questions to ask before teaching an animal a new skill. In another blog post, I discussed the first question, one that is extremely basic but often overlooked: “what is the cost/benefit of the behaviour”. Is it useful, useless, abuse or an ethical dilemma? Once a behaviour has been found to be useful, it’s time to consider how to best go about teaching it. The second question. Which is the best technique to teach the animal how to perform a new skill? You know the… Continued
How to Make Your Training Work!
All dogs can learn amazing things. Sometimes it’s us (maybe more than sometimes!) who don’t allow our dogs to fulfill their full potential, for whatever reason – time, other commitments, know-how etc. I want to look at a few things here that can help you make your training work better, just little things that will make that difference. Use Positive Power This one kind of goes without saying! If you’re battling with your dog, using punishment, chastising him and relying on aversives, then you’re only serving to cause fear and… Continued
Distinguishing Night from Day
By Debbie Bauer Some people living with blind/deaf dogs report that their dogs have trouble staying asleep all night. Often their dogs will wake them during the night and can’t seem to settle back down to sleep. If your blind/deaf dog is unable to distinguish between light and dark, it may be challenging to help her tell the difference between day and night. This can make it challenging for you to get enough sleep on a proper schedule. Keeping a bedtime routine can be helpful. Create as many clear cues… Continued
Reading List for Dog Owners
When I got my first dog in 1983 I knew nothing about living with dogs, so naturally I got a puppy. Needless to say I knew even less about raising a puppy. Samantha relied upon me to teach her, and I relied upon the only source available at the time: a book. If there were local dog trainers or puppy classes in particular I was unaware of them. There was no internet to search nor a Pet Professional Guild to inform me. I bought the best selling dog training book… Continued
Ask Your Dog Questions – Overshadowing 2
By Yvette Van Veen How to ask your dog questions…overshadowing part two. My last blog introduced the concept of overshadowing by offering a simple example to illustrate the point. For an explanation of the concept, you can read that blog here. But that basic understanding doesn’t go far enough in my opinion. Many unusual variations exist and can interfere with training. To recap, animals are more likely to attach meaning to information that is more important and noticeable – the more “salient.” Abstract variations can be hard to spot. It’s… Continued
Multinational Canine Behaviour Modification
Over the last two years or so, my behaviour practice has welcomed more and more dogs from overseas. Sometimes these are canines with profound behavioural difficulties. I have always assisted several imported dogs per year but there seems to have been an explosion of dogs from a variety of countries, thanks to the efforts of many local and larger International welfare charities rescuing such animals from dire conditions. So this year alone, I have assisted dogs from USA, Russia, various countries in Africa, India, Romania and many European countries. The… Continued
Does Ignoring an Unwanted Behavior Really Work?
By Debbie Bauer I often hear the advice given to ignore the behavior we don’t like and it will go away. But is this really true? In my experience, and in the experience of many others, ignoring a behavior does not cause it to go away. In many instances, ignoring can even cause the behavior we are trying to get rid of to escalate. Ignoring a behavior can cause it to escalate. If we are trying to ignore a behavior and it escalates, we will often at some point give… Continued
Pet Guardians Need Help Finding Professionals
As a professional dog trainer taking behavioral cases I see how confusing it can be for pet owners to know what sort of help they need and where to find it. Lack of regulation and transparency in the industry can lead pet guardians into pitfalls. This happened to a client whose dog was fearful of other dogs during leash walks. He would bark and lunge, but then retreat. The owner sought help from a trainer who took her dog into his care for several days. The trainer called her a… Continued
Busy Toys Gone Bad
By Yvette Van Veen Toys…are neither good nor bad. Rather it’s how they are used. They can strengthen behaviour you like. If you’re not careful, they will strengthen behaviour you dislike. There are more toys out there than you can shake a stick at. You could say that busy toys are the new stick. Many people are convinced that if they just buy enough toys, the right toy, their dog will stop pestering them with jumping, nudging, barking, whining and more. They hope to buy calm. But could your busy… Continued
Learning a New Way to Communicate
By Debbie Bauer Sometimes we know in advance if our dog will lose sight and/or hearing. I have a senior dog now who is mostly deaf from age. So far his sight seems OK, but I know it too may begin to fade. There are some things we can do to help ease this transition for our dogs. One is to teach hand signals to our dogs for basic every day behaviors (sit, lie down, wait at the door, come) and for some of the fun tricks they know (fetch,… Continued
How Big Should a Cat’s Litter Box Be?
By Jennifer Mauger I was recently in a home where the resident cat was eliminating outside the litter box on a regular basis. He was a large Maine Coon mix weighing over 20 pounds. When I went to look at the litter boxes, they were well maintained, clean, and in quiet areas of the home. There were more than enough boxes for both of the cats too. The first thing I actually noticed was the size of the litter boxes. They were average size commercial litter boxes. When I asked… Continued
“Did You Know Your Dog Barks All Day?”
By Julie Naismith “Did you know that your dog barks all day?” my neighbour asked me one day. The simple answer was: no, I didn’t. It was this conversation that led me on the path to discovering my dog-ownership bombshell: that my dog Percy had separation anxiety. I can vividly recall how I felt that day my neighbour first said this to me. I had no idea Percy barked constantly when I was out. How could I have known? I’d had my other dog for a year with no complaints.… Continued
YOUR Dog, No Comparison
This is a subject I’ve always meant to write about and somehow it always slips my mind until the topic crops ups with another client of mine – that of comparisons. What I mean is those comparisons we make between our own dogs and other peoples’ and maybe our other dogs or previous dogs. It’s human nature of course and a lot of the time it cannot be helped, but to constantly compare, does us and our dogs a disservice. That one ‘great dog’ All dogs are great! Sometimes though there is… Continued
The Unintended Consequences of Shock
(Confidentiality Notice: Names in this blog have been changed to protect privacy, but the facts remain unchanged. Photographs have been used with written consent.) Betsy is a kind person who contacted a shelter in June of 2016 to help find a nice family dog to share her life with through adoption. She learned of Zelda, a female one year old mixed breed. Zelda’s online biography suggested she was “fine” with other dogs and was “friendly” with people, but jumped on them “to say hello.” Little was known about Zelda except… Continued
Scheduling Your Rewards
So…there we are teaching our dogs lots of new things and he’s responding beautifully – treat, treat, treat (yummy!) At what point though, do we stop dishing out all these lovely delicacies? This is a question I’m asked multiple times per week. It’s true that if we continued to treat our dogs at the same rate, at some point we’d end up with enormously fat canines – not great! So, we have to think about something called schedules of reinforcement Determining what scheduled to use When our dogs are learning… Continued
Clicker Training for Cats (6/6)
By Paula Garber and Francine Miller Inter-Cat Aggression Living with cats who do not get along is stressful for everyone. Sometimes the cats need to be completely separated and then formally re-introduced. In many cases, the best outcome we can hope for is for the cats to coexist peacefully to a point where they tolerate each other, even if they do not actively “like” each other. To facilitate peaceful coexistence, the environment must be arranged so that the cats can easily avoid each other and do not have to compete… Continued
You know you own a separation anxiety dog when…
By Julie Naismith Life with a separation anxiety dog differs from the ideal of dog ownership many of us have. “Lassie Come Home” it isn’t. Here are 5 ways this debilitating condition will affect your life as a dog owner, plus a few tips on how to handle the changes without losing your sanity. #1 You learn to plan way ahead for everything Once you’ve worked out your dog has separation anxiety and is in a panic whenever you go out, it gets tough to leave him. When you know the… Continued
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