Stuff a Kong, Squirrel Dude, Twist-n-Treat, or other food puzzle with wet dog food. Freeze it (have several so there’s always a frozen food puzzle for your puppy or dog).

Make sure your puppy understands the good-puzzle concept by having your dog work through a few inside the house (different days).

In a fenced-in yard or supervised on a leash, give your puppy the Kong to enjoy. It will last a lot longer, frozen. your puppy will passively hear the noises of the world, but not react to them. Do this a bunch!

Give a food puzzle and relax in different locations, too:
– Dog training class
– Bus stop
– Front yard
– Back yard
– Coffee shop
– On a bus (older puppy)
– At a busy park, like Green Lake (off the path)
– Near a playground

Repeat, repeat, repeat! Bring your own entertainment, like a book to read (Ahimsa training manual, maybe?).

Just make sure no other dogs try to steal your puppy’s great toy. You should also rehearse trading the food puzzle for a treat (then giving the toy back, usually), so you don’t end up with resource guarding.

For our students: also look at the training manual for the Relaxation Protocol, which is great to practice in all of the settings above.

Watch for body language while he’s being petted, like glancing away, turning his head, sniffing the ground, walking away, shaking off, or quickly licking his lips. If you see any of those, just happily say, “let’s go!” and walk a few steps away with the puppy. You can even hand out a treat at that point (for putting up with the stranger and for coming with you), and then possibly see if he wants to go back for more.

Do this with everything: other dogs, strangers, kids, garbage cans, etc. Let him check out scary stuff from what he thinks is a safe distance. The more he can trust you on the leash, the more brave he will be. And since most aggression is really just fear, now is your chance to do some aggression prevention.

If your dog may bite someone and you’re not sure what training to do, learn more about BAT. Behavior Adjustment Training can make your muzzle obsolete.

Definitely follow his sage advice to put the muzzle on at times that are pleasant to the dog, or you will end up undoing all of your work to get the dog to like the muzzle. Dogs are great at making assocations.

“My golden-doodle is incredibly sweet and wouldn’t hurt a fly but when she sees someone outside, whether she knows them or not, she barks like she wants to rip their head off. If she could speak english, what would she be saying?”

My answer:

Thank Dog they don’t speak English. I think dogs would just tell us how silly and boring we are. But it would help keep humans from making dumb mistakes, like patting dogs on the top of the head, as if they liked it. I would LOVE to be able to explain a few things to my dogs, though!

Your dog is probably simultaneously shouting “Intruder!” to the folks in the house and “Go Away!” to the people approaching. You’ll probably hear a change in pitch once she recognizes the people, getting higher when she realizes it’s a friend, not a foe, out the window.

The bigger question is, why are you training your dog to bark like that? Ditch the perch – close blinds (Roman shades that open from the bottom are great), move the furniture, whatever it takes to keep her from feeling like she has to guard the house all day. She’ll relax more and probably live longer. Stress kills.

If she’s still young, under 2 or 3, be careful. This can be the start of a bigger problem, like biting people at the door. You might think about getting a trainer or behaviorist in to help – not one that will use pain or intimidation to correct the barking, but one who teaches her what *to* do, using reinforcement.

It could also be just what it already is, annoying. Many, many dogs bark at things they see outside. But it’s definitely fixable!

Related Link: Private dog training in Seattle

Learn more about how to teach your dog to stay in one of our classes. If you aren’t in the Seattle area, look up a dog-friendly dog trainer on the APDT website.

Notice that while I trained my dog to heel and walk on a loose leash using treats and toys, we don’t need them any more. Walking on a loose leash is his default behavior when on leash. Continuing to walk forward is the treat for loose leash walking and permission to do loose leash walking again is the treat for heel.

Learn more about how to teach your dog to walk nicely in one of our classes or specifically in the Leash Walking workshop (next one is May 9th, but we schedule them about once a month). If you aren’t in the Seattle area, look up a dog-friendly dog trainer on the APDT website or check out our blog post on Leash Walking.

I just heard back from a trainer who started BAT with a really over-the-top freaked out foster dog on April 11th. The dog is so much better and just went home with her new family!! and I think there may be footage to use in my seminar.

And my dog, Sagan, played with a client dog. Yes, played! Both were doing BAT at the session. Play started about half an hour in. This was Sagan’s 11th BAT set-up. We left Sagan’s muzzle on, just in case. We’ll be doing another session next weekend.

That one was filmed and will definitely be in my upcoming seminars.

Any Seattle folks have a dog or child that could help me socialize Sagan and Peanut? (dogs for S, kids for P). The trade-off is that you would learn how to do BAT. I’m also fine buying a meal for families who will eat outside a restaurant so Peanut can join you!

This is not an exchange or trade, it’s a repair. You can have them fix up to two (2) harness straps. Here’s the info:

Wiggles Wags & Whiskers
Attn: Harness Repair
1405-C Babbage Lane
Indian Trail, NC 28079

Please be sure to include the following information:
Name
Address
Phone Number
and a $5.00 Check to cover return shipping and handling.

Wiggles, Wags, & Whiskers is very proud to offer their chewed harness warranty as it brings lots of customer satisfaction. It only takes a few days to fix the chewed harness and it is promptly returned to the customer’s address.

Note: this does not apply to harnesses from any other brand, including the Easy Walk harness. In fact, I don’t know if anybody else has such a great warranty. If you have one of those that’s chewed, you can try having REI repair it, or buy a new harness, like the Freedom harness.

So I barreled over there in my car and slammed on the brakes beside her.  “Can you please stop hitting that puppy?” She looked up, slightly embarrassed, and tried to excuse the hitting, since the puppy had just jumped up and bitten her child.  I told her that there were lots of great ways to get the puppy to stop biting, and I’d love to show her.  But of course, it’s hard to be receptive when a perfect stranger comes and criticizes you from their car window, so she politely walked off. At least she didn’t yell at me.

Was my request enough? I didn’t have time to mention that her puppy is not a bad dog, that almost all puppies bite, and that if she keeps hitting her dog, her child will probably do the same, and she’d end up with a real bite instead of a puppy bite. 

I’m terrified for that puppy and the family, but I think she may have been one of our new students, so there’s hope. I recognized the Freedom harness that we sell at Ahimsa.  The puppy was young enough that she’d probably gone to only one class.  Maybe she hadn’t watched the videos that were emailed to her about biting. Maybe she just needs to be shown what to do. Our trainers will hopefully have a chance to convince her that there are better ways to keep dogs from biting kids. For starters, we teach bite inhibition, Leave It, Touch, tiring out the puppy with exercise, having kids play with dog by dragging toys on ropes so they’re further away, and teaching kids to Be a Tree (fold “branches” – arms – and turn away), among other tools.

Sigh.  I hope this puppy’s family comes around. I hope you don’t train using intimidation with hands, collars, or shock, and if you do, please stop hitting that puppy!

When: Saturday, February 20th, 2-4 p.m.

Who: Shy/fearful/standoffish puppies (15 spots) and regular puppies (5 spots). They can be shy around dogs, people, or both. Puppies must be current on vaccinations (not necessarily finished) & 2-5 months old. No professional dog trainers, please.

How much: Free if you bring a puppy, $15/person if you leave your puppy at home. All attendees must give permission to use footage of dogs.

Where: Seattlle, Magnuson Park Activities Center (the ‘Brig Building’), View Ridge Room

Click here to learn more or sign up!

Can you spread the word? Please Tweet or Facebook this, or if you’re going to visit a pet store, coffee shop, or dog park in Seattle in the next week, print this out and post it: Flier for Puppy video shoot. Thank you!

Tawzer Dog Videos filmed my 90-minute Behavior Adjustment Training seminar in Novato last month, and it’s now available for sale in our online store (click here). We ship orders out on Fridays only, so if you’re looking to get it as soon as possible, then get it from the Tawzer website, when it becomes available.

Here are some clips from the intro of that seminar:

(if that doesn’t work for you, you can view it on YouTube).

We should get copies on Thursday, February 11th, so orders placed this week will *probably* go out on Friday.

I could use a lot of volunteers in Seattle. Are you interested? Here’s what I need:

1. Dog-human teams that can be decoys in a set-up for BAT with a dog-aggressive dog. The goal is to have the student dog remain calm and happy around the decoy, so it shouldn’t be very stressful on your dog. Decoy dogs should not be aggressive or fearful, and should be over 2 years old. I can usually keep the sessions aggression-free, but there is a risk that your dog will be barked at. When we work up close, there is always a fence between the dogs or the dog is muzzled (when I’m feeling very confident), so there is no risk of a bite. We start very far away and move closer as time goes on. Volunteers can opt out at any time.

2. Child-adult teams that can be decoys in a set-up for a dog that is afraid of children. The dog barks but has no history of biting or snapping at any humans. Again, all attempts will be made to keep the session happy and bark-free and we will set up barriers so that there is no risk of a bite. Sessions can take place wherever you’d like. One good location is an outdoor cafe in Ravenna where you and your child just have lunch as we walk back and forth. I’ll treat you for the meal! (This is my dog, Peanut. He’s actually a therapy dog for an assisted living facility, but we haven’t done enough training with children.) Kids 0-13 would be best, since he’s fine with people over about 4’6″.

One benefit of doing this is that your child can learn more about dog safety.

3. A puppy that is afraid of people.

4. People to serve as decoys for the puppy. I’d love to have a vet’s office willing to help me with this, so if you work at a vet office and could do the set-up there, please let me know!

5. Someone interested in running the camera would also be great!

A description of the technique and some videos of what it looks like are on the Ahimsa website: http://doggiezen.com/blog/bat-posts

Benefits to participants: Information on how to use BAT plus a week of free drop-ins to our Dream Dog program. Info on the Dream Dog program is at http://ahimsadogtraining.com/dreamdog

Session times vary, but usually they are something like 15 minutes (if that’s all the child can do) to an hour.

Let me know if you’re interested in any of these volunteer spots. Thank you in advance!!!

At some point, I will be doing a research study on BAT, and I will ask for participants with human-aggressive dogs. That will probably be Fall, 2010.

I figured it would help to give students a chance to see progress, so I have created an overview sheet for set-ups. Clients will make progress if they do set-ups correctly and consistently.  It’s not enough just to do one set-up, for any method. With BAT, expect the sessions to decrease in length and increase in quality of interaction.  I did about 20 set-ups for Peanut with adults, and he went from not being touchable by strangers to enjoying working as a therapy dog in an assisted living facility.  The initial sessions were long and the sessions at the end were short, only a few minutes. 20 may seem like a lot of set-ups, but it only took a month of Saturdays.

Click here for the BAT session Overview sheet. There is a blank form and the second page is a filled-out sample. You might not use the same decoy 4 times, but it allows for that. I usually use decoys 2-3 times max, because the dog starts to remember them. Print a new sheet for each decoy. When you print out multiple copies, you’ll need to set your computer to just print page 1. Fill out whichever rows you think are most important, and do this for each session.

Dog trainers and behaviorists: you can print this out to use with your clients, but please leave the contact info on there. If you are posting it on a website, please use a link instead of putting the file on your domain.

Let me know if you use this, either by email or using the comments section below!

3 of the Ahimsa dog trainers went through the Karen Pryor academy, and one requirement was that we trained another species, besides for a dog. I trained an alpaca. Training a species that you’re not used to really forces you to look at the principles and the science behind clicker training. It works!

One thing that’s not clear from this video is that most cats don’t do marathon training sessions, like dogs do. Some cats I’ve worked with can only do 5-10 clicks worth, and they’re done. Some are also sound-sensitive, so you might start with a juice lid or a pen that clicks when you push the end of it.

We all hear negative news reports. It’s about time we focus on the positive! Ahimsa had a lot to celebrate in 2009. Here are 9 of the good things about 2009, for Ahimsa Dog Training and me, in no particular order:

• Ahimsa launched the Dream Dog program and (after some tweaking) people loved the flexibility.
• We continue to grow and improve. This year, Ahimsa taught more students than we’ve ever taught, in creative ways that we hadn’t used before. We got to make a difference in a lot of lives, both human and canine.
• In King 5′s Best of Washington contest, Ahimsa Dog Training was voted 3rd for the state, and the top dog trainer in Seattle.
• Ahimsa Dog Training ended the year with the same excellent staff that we started with!
• I went to an Association of Pet Dog Trainers conference and Behavior Adjustment Training, my system for working on aggression, fear, and other behavior problems, was a huge hit!
• I started grad school in Seattle for my second Master’s degree, which will be in animal behavior. That allows me the time to research BAT.
• The new Ahimsa Twitter account, @doggiezen, now has 1248 followers.
• My dog, Peanut, started visiting an assisted living facility as a therapy dog.  He’s come a long way from the dog who barked at everybody he saw from 150 feet away!
• I was interviewed on NPR in Seattle, which gave me a chance to think about the choices in my life, including becoming a dog trainer.

Please write your own list! Let’s overwhelm the world with good news.

(Or as Edie wrote, “Spill it! Why didn’t 2009 suck for you?”)

*****

Elliott Bay Animal Hospital is wishing you and your pets a safe and healthy New Year!

There is no greater gift you can give than to help other pet owners who are experiencing financial hardship pay for their beloved pets emergency medical care. This past year, due to your generosity, we were able to help 13 families with their pet’s medical care!
If you would like to make a donation, please make checks out to:
Elliott Bay Animal Hospital
And mail to:

Angel Fund
C/O Elliott Bay Animal Hospital
2042 15th Avenue West
Seattle, Washington 98119

We are also available to take donations over the phone. We gladly accept Visa, MasterCard and American Express.
Please note – Due to the modest size of our Angel Fund program it is not established as a tax exempt charitable organization.

Our Family… Caring for Yours!

Elliott Bay Animal Hospital
www.elliottbayah.com

****

Related Post: How to Find Low-Cost Vet Care

That got me to thinking…what a great puppy socialization tool! Too bad I didn’t have this game 7 years ago, when Peanut was a puppy.

If dogs are raised in quiet homes without kids, they think it’s very odd when they meet them out and about, often leading to fear-based aggression.  Having a physically engaging video game like the Wii transforms quiet homes into a place where the adults occasionally jump up and down, punch the air, and giggle madly – basically, act like kids. Puppies raised in that environment will probably think that humans are crazy sometimes, and that’s ok!

To be on the safe side, it’s probably a good idea to give the puppy a chew toy, like a bully stick, once the video game begins, so that he’s got something fun to entertain him, too.  Otherwise, your puppy may end up turning the game into a chew-fest or decide that you really are scary, after all.

You could also do little short training sessions while you wait your turn. Then your puppy gets practice training in a chaotic environment. Excellent!

For older dogs getting used to the jumping about caused by the Wii (or other similar video games), you may want to give them something even tastier, like a stuffed Kong.

P.S. Don’t forget to put your remote away when you’re finished. It looks like an awfully good puppy chew toy.

The squeaker is free-floating, so even though Peanut is an excellent toy surgeon, the squeaker still works!!

We now have the lovely Pogo Plush squeaky toy in our store, or at least, we will have them very soon. Enough said. P.S. We can’t get them to you by Christmas, but your dog doesn’t know what the date is, anyway. It will make a lovely First Toy of the New Year.

I doubt the trainer specifically wanted to teach my dog to only work if food was present, but I was sabotaging my training, and we were on the fast track to teaching her to ignore me if I didn’t have a treat!

The reason I can say that with confidence is because I now know about two scientific concepts, blocking and overshadowing, that prevent animals (including humans) from learning a cue.

Overshadowing: if two cues are presented at the same time (like the word sit and the lifting treat), the more obvious one will be paired with the outcome and the other will be harder to learn (Pavlov, 1927). Which do you think is more obvious to a dog? The hand with food in it or the word?

Blocking: if two cues are presented at the same time (like the word sit and the lifting treat) and it is learned that one of them works by itself (the lifting treat), then it is significantly harder to learn the one presented only in tandem (Kamin, 1969). This is called learned inattention.

The cues I gave as examples are the lifting treat hand and the word sit, but the presence of the food is also a cue, as is your body language.

Furthermore, I was also supposed to say “Good sit!” which specifically paired he the word sit sometimes with NO CONSEQUENCE at all, making it doubly difficult for the dog to learn. Oh dear. (I wrote more on using the cue in your praise in another article).

So how do you avoid sabotaging your training?

• If you are using luring, teach the hand signal first, then transfer the cue to a verbal cue.  Do this by luring just a few times and treating when the dog is successful (to luring a sit,  put a treat to the dog’s nose, and moving it up so the rear goes down). Then quickly shift into using a pretend treat and luring with an empty hand. Click any attempts, and treat.  Gradually only click full sits.  Once the hand signal works to cue the dog to sit, then transfer the cue by putting two full seconds between the word sit and the hand signal. So it would be “Sit…….hand signal” or if the dog starts to sit without needing the signal, click and treat!
• Better yet, use shaping or capturing (click & treat when the dog sits on his own or when he starts to sit). Once the dog is offering a sit, begin to insert the cue before he does it, as if you are cueing the sit.  Then only pay for sits that you have asked for, or else the food becomes the more obvious cue and the word sit will be blocked.
• Clean up your body language so that only the word sit and the hand signal predict rewards when the dog sits.
• A natural consequence of using food or rewards in training is that the cue you want to teach the dog may be overshadowed by the presence of food.  One way to help overcome that is to simply teach multiple behaviors, like sit, down, and stand, so that the dog has to pay attention to your words.
• I also recommend using a counterexample to show that the cues are important on their own, even without food. Counterexamples have been proven to help teach previously overshadowed cues in humans (Heckler, Kaminsky, & Sloutsky, 2008).  Ask for sit, down, etc. when you have no treats on you. When your dog does them, say your marker word, like “Yes!” and run to the treat jar or refrigerator to get the dog a reward. Or use play: pull a hidden toy out of your pocket or instigate a game of chase-the-human.

Related blog post: To Treat or Not to Treat: Training Reliable Behaviors

Resources

Heckler, A. F., Kaminski, J. A., & Sloutsky, V. M. (2008). Learning associations that run counter to biases in learning: Overcoming overshadowing and learned inattention. In Proceedings of the XXX annual conference of the cognitive science society. (pp. 511-6). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society

Kamin L. J. (1969). Predictability, surprise, attention, and conditioning. In B.A Campbell & R. M. Church (Eds.), Punishment. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Pavlov, I. P. (1927). Conditioned Reflexes. London: Oxford Univ. Press.