Archives : 2009 : November

One common problem people run into when trying to stop dog barking is fear.  It is very common for your dog to bark at things that he’s not used to seeing.  In my Hands Off Dog training course I showed you how I addressed this issue with my Golden Retriever Bauer.

When I brought my dog home he was 8 weeks old, and we had just moved into a new neighborhood where there was LOTS of construction going on.

While this could have been annoying to some dog owners, I treated it as a fantastic opportunity for learning.

My dog had never heard air compressors, or see men walking on top of roofs or using staple guns before.

It was all very scary to him… so I taught him the “go touch it” trick.

To teach the “go touch it” trick I first trained my dog to touch something on cue, this is called targeting.

I would practice telling my dog to touch all sorts of objects, in exchange for a treat.

While most of us really cold care less if our dog touches objects or not, it is a phenomenol tool to use when you notice your dog becoming afraid of something.

I found this helpful video on youtube that shows the process with a live dog.

Enjoy!

If you’ve got a dog who just won’t shut up when the doorbell rings I wanted to point you in the direction of a short but good article from a trainer who trained her Border Collie how to stop barking at the door.

You can see her article here: Solutions for Doorbell Barking

The thing I like about this short article is that it addresses the dog’s emotional state, and the hi adrenalin rush that some dogs get from hearing the doorbell ring, and offers you a simple replacement behavior for how to reduce a dog’s adrenalin rush when he hears the doorbell ring.

However, I do think it’s important to note that the reason this stratagy was effective, was because the trainer new the exact cause of the behavior she was trying to cure.

The Border Collie in this article did NOT have an aggression or territorial issue.  She had an adrenalin rush issue, which is why the the technique was effective at finally being able to stop the barking.

If the Border Collie was barking out of territorial aggression, then this training example would not have been effective, and she would have had to take a different approach that addressed her dog aggression issues instead of her ability to stay calm.

Have you ever heard of the famous Marshmallow test done by Stanford university that suggests that self-control is the number one determining factor to whether our children grow up to be above or below average?

If you’ve never read up on that study, it’s fascinating and can teach you a LOT about what it takes to teach puppies to stop nipping and control their emotional urges.

In their study, Stanford university took children into a room and asked a child to sit in a chair with a Marshmallow in front of them.  The instructor then told the children that if they waited for him to run an errand, they could have two Marshamallows when he came back.

But if they ate the one in front of them they would NOT get the second Marshmallow.

Whether or not the children were able to resist the inner urge to just gobble up the Marshmallow or not, was an incedible predictor of how successful those children’s lives would be, how much money they would earn, and how happy their marriage would be.

The reason this experiment was such a big predictor of these childrens’ future success, is because there is one trait that all successful people have in common… the ability to delay immediate gratification because they realize it earns them long term gains.

Well guess what, this applies to dog’s as well!

The better your dog is at remembering to keep his emotions in check, and realizing that waiting can get him BIGGER rewards, the happier and easier your life with him will be.

Luckily for us, we can build delayed gratification, or what i call, “Urge Control” into our daily training excercises.

Build Urge Control Into every Day
Activities With Your Dog

When we weave the concept of Urge Control into all of our puppies training drills, the result is a dog who remains much more calm and emotionally stable in situations like:

• Staying calm when the doorbell rings
• Not rushing to gobble up food dropped on the floor
• Staying off counter tops
• Not nipping during a game of tug a war
• Being less aggressive on a leash towards other dogs
• Remaining indifferent when children accidentally irritate them
• and a host of other situations

One of the simplest ways I recomend people teach their dog’s Urge Control is when they first get their puppy and are working on how to stop his nipping.

Understanding Why Your Puppy is Nipping

The thing you need to determine when teaching a puppy how to stop nipping, is the main driving factor for why the puppy is nipping in the first place.

In most cases a puppy is nipping for one of two reasons.

1. He is teething and finds relief from nipping and chewing on items.  In this case, I recommend using a technique that I call, Cataloging Chewables which is all about how to stop destructive puppy chewing.
2. He still thinks nipping is a fun way to play with you just like he did with his litter mates.

With puppies that are nipping because they think it’s a fun way to interact with you, we need to set up an environment where we take what the puppy wants (interaction with us) and hold it hostage against them.

This means that we set up a new rule for our puppy that he can fully understand.

The New Rule = “Playtime STOPS when you nip”

This means that you can play with your puppy all you want, but the second he nips you, or mouths you harder then you are comfortable with, simply stand up, and ignore your puppy.

It is not necessary to yell, swat or say no.  The fact that you’ve given him the cold shoulder is sending him the strongest signal possible.  Nothing else could be communicating your new “rules of engagement” better then by taking the thing he wants more then anything else in the world, (YOU) away from him when he nips.

Now Here’s What I
Want You To Do Next

Because this Urge Control drill is so effective, I want you to go practice it on your puppy right now.

Most clients of mine see a dramatic change in their dogs behavior within a matter of minutes.

After a handful of times of getting up and abruptly ending playtime with your puppy when he nips, you’ll see the little wheels start turning in his head as he realizes that you only stop playing with him when he nips.

Try to ignore your puppy for about 15-20 seconds after he nips before you resume playing with him.

If you’ll go spend some time today practicing this drill you should see nearly instant results.

But Your Work is NOT Done!

Urge Control is something that needs to be built into all aspects of your dogs life.  Urge Control needs to be a rule your dog lives by, not just something to stop only nipping.

Sure it can be used for just that, but it can be something so much more when applied to all areas of your dog’s life.

So after you go try out this Urge Control technique on your dog, and see for yourself how effective it is, I want you to come back and sign up to receive a copy of my Hands Off Dog Training program that can show you how to finish up the other areas of your puppies training that need work.

You can pick up a copy of my Hands Off Dog Training program here.

One of my favorite techniques for training dogs not to bite is based on what I call the Pursuit of Pain Principle.

The Pursuit of Pain principle states that under certain conditions you can actually condition any living, breathing creature to actually feel the desire to Pursue pain.

You’ve seen this principle at work lots of different times, but were probably never aware of it.

One of the most common examples of this principle is in football.

The next time you watch a good football game, pay attention to what the announcers say.

They’ll often use words like, “This guy just LOVES to hit people”… or “he loves to lower the boom on linebackers”.

Now I don’t know if you’ve ever strapped on a pair of football pads and played the game at a competitive level or not, but I can assure you that when two football players colide it is a painful experience.

It does not “physically” feel good to ram your body full speed into another human being.

So why do you hear announcers say that some football players LOVE to hit people?

Because it even though it doesn’t feel good physically, it DOES feel good EMOTIONALLY!

The emotional satisfaction of physically manhandling their opponent is a higher emotional reward, then the physical pain they have to endure to achieve that result.

In a way, football players have been trained to LOVE pain.

They’ve been conditioned to love it starting at a young age.  When young people start out playing football the pain isn’t very intense, because the other players are not as strong as adults. But with every passing year players get bigger and stronger, and the amount of pain tolerance it takes to play the game increases….

Yet the players don’t seem to be bothered by that…. hmmmmm?

The Pursuit Of Pain Principle
Is All Around Us

Think about how certain women will continually go back to a man that beats her.  Even though the physical pain of being beaten by her spouse or boyfriend is painful, the EMOTIONAL pain of being alone is for many, worse.

The fact is we all know people who continually ask for and even pursue physical pain, because it brings MUCH more EMOTIONAL relief or EMOTIONAL pleasure.

And surprise, surprise, this is true with animals as well

Animals Can be Trained To Pursue Pain Too

In some very interesting studies, scientists have discovered that they could train rats to Pursue the Pain of electric shock.

To do this the scientists had to take an Emotionally valuable item, typically food, and first train the rat to pull a chain to receive the food.

Once this behavior had been trained, they then ran a small electrical current through the chain that would mildly shock the rat as he pulled it.  The shock was initially not painful enough to warrant going without food.

But the scientists discovered that if they increased the level of shock the rat received slowly enough… over time they could condition rats to go back and pull the chain to get food while putting up with extreme levels of shock that would knock them backwards.

Just like the young football player who has been conditioned his whole life to willingly tolerate more and more pain to receive an emotional reward, rats can be trained the same way.

Why You Should Inflict Pain On Your Dog!

The reason I’m bringing all of this up, is because the infliction of pain is one of the two largest contributers to dog bite attacks in the world; the other is fear.

Typically the pain I’m talking about is caused accidentally, like when a toddler jumps off a couch and lands on your dog; or bites his tail, or accidently falls off his bike and runs into your dog.

In these instances, your dog can be suddenly put into a lot of pain, and out of instinct, bite to protect itself.

This is why I believe that you have a moral obligation to use the Pursuit Of Pain principle on your dog to increase his pain tolerance to the point where he can simply shrug off hi levels of pain.

In order to help prevent dog aggression towards children, I teach a concept called Toddler Proofing.

Toddler proofing is a training process that gradually sets up situations where your dog is exposed to very low levels of pain, like a slight tail tug, while receive VERY hi value treats at the same time.

Most of our clients find that with practice, they can get their dogs to actually become excited about receiving low levels of pain.

This is obviously a topic that requires a LOT of precision and must be understood fully before implementing, so I’m not going to cover it in complete detail in this blog post.

But if you’re intersted in learning how you can use Toddler Proofing to increase your dog’s pain tolerance threshold to reduce the risk of accidental dog bites, then you should invest in my Hands Off Dog Training course.

>>> Aggression Question from a Reader:

Chet,

I’m having a problem walking our 11 lb. terrier/chihuahua mix. I’ve just begun to do your exercises involving the clicker and treats. When we take her out, she’s fine and does not pull much, but when there is another dog around she goes bonkers. She will growl and pull very hard on the leash. This may be fear agression because she really likes some dogs and loves people. How do we handle this behavior? Please give us some tips.

Thanks,
Jo

>>> My Comments:

Jo, I’m glad to see that you’re already actively training your dog with the clicker training techniques we teach in our course for how to get your dog to stop aggressive pulling on his leash.

However, I don’t think your dog has a Leash Pulling problem…

I think your dog has something my old College baseball coach had, “Little Man Syndrome”!

Little man syndrome is typical of smaller males who feel that the only way to get others to notice and respect them, is by being scrappy, hard nosed, and aggressive.

They treat of everyone in their environment as a threat, and while they often get what they want, they tend to have a lot of people hate them.

We’ve all known people like this, and when we’re around them, we spend the entire time wishing they’d just stop trying to tell us how important they are.  Don’t they realize if they’d stop boasting people would treat them nicer?

Sadly, they have no idea that being nicer to people is an option!

They have so little confidence in themselves and in their ability to get along with others, that they construct social defense mechanisms to make sure nobody can get close enough to hurt them.

And I think this is what’s going on in your chihuahua, Jo.

Your dog does not have confidence in his own social skills, and is easily feeling overwhelmed.

He’s responding to your Leash Training commands beautifully because he doesn’t feel threatened when others aren’t around.  But when you try to take him into situations that make him uncomfortable he doesn’t have the confidence needed to continue obeying you.

So here are 5 tactics that can help your dog overcome his “Little Man Syndrome” and develop more confidence in his social skills and less aggression towards other dogs.

5 Tactics To Cure Your Dog’s
“Little Man On A Leash” Syndrome

Tactic #1: Applying the “Rough House” theory

The Rough House theory helps explain why dogs who are raised from a puppy around LOTS of other dogs, almost always have social skills.

In his book on child psychology, Raising An Emotionally Intelligent Child, John Gottman shared the results of study that seems to show evidence of several parenting factors that determine the liklihood that a child will make friendships easily and often, or whether they’ll be more of a loaner in school.

Gottman did this by studying a group of children and as they grew up, and making observations of how their parents interacted with their children.  He then took this data to try and construct an optimal way to raise a child.

And Gottman discovered something fascinating in his research.

He discovered one thing a parent does to their child that increases the likelihood that they’ll be social.

Guess what it was?

The children who’s father’s “Roughhoused” with them regularly were the most likely to grow up with excellent social skills and the ability to make friends!

Why Does Roughhousing Increase Social Skills?

The reason Roughhousing increases social skills is because it allows a child to experience a wider range of emotions, and facial cues, and to learn what they mean by receiving lots of instant feedback.

Children learn to read when they’ve hit their parent where they shouldn’t, what types of facial cues mean the other is having fun, and when it’s time to calm down.

And children who don’t get this type of Roughhousing play with their parents don’t develop the same ability to read the facial cues of their peers.  This “Lack of Knowing” what others are thinking causes them to be slower socially, leaves them feeling awkward in social situations and results in them making less friends.

And it’s my belief that this is why it is so much smarter to buy a  puppy from a breeder who allows the mother dog to raise a puppy herself, along with its litter mates.

If you’ve ever seen a litter of puppies playing together you know their’s one thing they do more then anything else, Roughhouse!

This Roughhousing is not just play, it is vital social skill developement that helps make sure your puppy will grow up with confidence in his social skills.  So he’ll have the ability to look at another dog and KNOW the intentions of that other dog.

My own dog, Bauer has this ability.

He can spot a dog with bad intentions LONG before I know the dog has bad intentions… and simply stay away from that dog.

And he can also tell a dog who has GOOD intentions.

I believe that it is this ability, the ability to read subtle facial and body cues of other dogs that gives my dog the confidence to enter into social situations and not feel like he has to be on guard.

So if you’re reading this to prevent leash aggression in dogs, I recommend only buying puppies who are raised by their mother and litter mates.

Tactic #2: Only Allow Play with Well Socialized Dogs

This tactic might sound super simple, but don’t let your dog hang out with, or be around dogs who don’t have good dog to dog social etiquite.

You wouldn’t knowingly let your child hang out with thugs and drug dealers would you?  They’re a bad influence right?  And you know that letting children hang out with peopel of bad influence increases the liklihood that their bad behavior will rub off on your child… so good parents do their best to make sure their children associate with other good kids.

Well dogs are the same way!

If you want your dog to learn the social rules for how other dogs want to be treated, your dog has to learn that from other well socialized dogs.

This means you need to be ANAL about refusing to let your dog play with other bad dogs, and find a group of pre screened social dogs that your dog CAN hang out with and learn from.

I call this, increasing your dog’s social IQ, and have written about it in the past so I won’t go into it here.  But the key to advancing your dog’s social skills is to get him around a LOT of other good dogs…. because it’s a skill YOU can’t teach him on your own.

You’ll need the help of a few fury, butt sniffing friends

And don’t think just one other dog is enough.  I exposed my dog to several hundred other dogs, both bigger and smaller as I was teaching him to interact with others.  The more the merrier principle is definitely at play here.

Tactic #3: Don’t Let Your Dog Be Protective

Another common mistake I see people make with their dog’s who have dog to dog aggression issues is that they don’t realize the dozens and dozens of ways a human can accidentally communicate to their dogs that they are NOT in control of the situation.

Our dogs look to us to lead the way throughout their daily interactions, and they do so in ways we don’t realize as humans.

Things like where we allow our dogs to sleep, how we feed them, and how we look at them all determine what our dogs are thinking of us.

A great book to read up on that talks about these issue is The Culture Clash, by Jean Donaldson.

This is a complex topic, that can’t be done justice in a little bullet point on a blog post, so go get the book and become an expert and NOT violating the miscomunication that happens all the time between you and your dog that you never even realized was going on.

Many of my clients have followed this books advice and seen dramatic differences in their dogs.

Tactic #4: Re-Program Emotional Reactions

The 4th tactic for curing “Little Man on a Leash” syndrome is for dog owners who realize that their dog has missed out on the previous tactics, especially tactic #1 and tactic #2, and are wondering if those social skills can be relearned by older dogs.

Luckily they can!

But the only way to help your dog become less aggressive towards other dogs when he’s on his leash, is to first help him be less emotional at the mere sight of other dogs.

If your dog is extremely nervous, scared or territorial at the site of other dogs while on his leash, then his mind will be in survival mode, and NOT learning mode.

So I like to teach my clients a series of mind reprogramming techniques that you can use to change the emotional reaction your dog has to anything!

To help teach you these mental reprogramming techniques, I’ve written a free report on this topic that I’d recommend you read, called, Reprogramming the K9 Mind.

In this report you’ll discover how a dog’s mind works, and how simple it can be to reprogram negative emotions like growling at other dogs to emotions of excitement.

The report walks you through a series of exercises that allow you to practice changing emotions in a controlled setting with your dog in less then 15 minutes per day.

If you’re serious about fixing your dog’s aggression while on his leash, it’s a definite must read report, and costs nothing to download

Would you like to be able to TRUST that your dog won’t piss all over your house?

Have you tried scolding him, or rubbing your dog’s nose in his own pee when you catch him… and it just doesn’t seem to be working?

If that sounds like you, then you’re going to LOVE these 3 FREE potty training tips that you can use to fix your dog’s potty training problems once and for all.

Each of these tips are crucial to follow if you ever want your dog to be TRULY potty trained.

Make Your Dog EARN Room Rights

Dogs have a natural instinct and desire to NOT piss on themselves or their territory.  This is why you see so many dog trainers talk about why you should crate train your dog.

I call this desire to not eliminate on themselves or their territory, the “Rental Car” mindset.  The “Rental Car Mindset states that we always treat things we consider to be our own, better then we treat things that we are merely renting, or don’t consider to be our own.

This certainly is a simple way to think about whether your dog is potty trained, or is NOT potty trained.  If he’s potty trained, then you’ve effectively shown him that your home is his territory and, if you haven’t potty trained your dog, you’ll want to follow the exercises below to help teach him to respect his territory.

A very simple example of the Rental Car Mindset at work is when you see dog trainers talk about crate training.

Crate training a dog forces the dog to live in a space for a long period of time without peeing in it, because dogs don’t like peeing on themselves.  And when a dog lives in a space long enough without peeing in it, and is also shown WHERE to pee once he leaves “his” space, you end up with a dog who understands where he can and can NOT pee.

But most experts who teach you this technique are leaving out a big part of the story.

What Do You Do After
Your Dog Is Crate Trained?

Simply crate training your dog is NOT enough to effectively potty train your dog.

In order to effectively potty train your dog you need to take the same concept that crate training uses to teach the dog that a crate is his OWN space, and apply it to larger rooms of your house.

This is where the concept of Earning Room Rights comes into play.

When I say Earning Room Rights, I’m talking about a process of confining an un-potty trained dog to one small room, and helping him understand that that particular room is not to be eliminated in until he fully grasps that concept.

Once the dog has fully mastered the art of holding his bladder in this first room that room is now Pee Proof, then and only then do we slowly give the dog the opportunities to earn the rights to additional rooms.

Thus the name, Earning Room Rights

3 Tips To Pee Proofing A Room

Most of my clients who struggle potty training their dogs are making one of these 3 Pee Proofing mistakes.

Mistake #1: Focusing on more then one room, or one space at a time

Never forget that potty training dogs is done one room at a time.

Start teaching your dog how to be potty trained by picking one room of your home and confining your dog to that space with gates.  I personally like to pick a heavily trafficked room that has a door leading outside

To some dogs carpet is a bulls-eye just waiting to be shot at.  So to help make your potty training job easier, just avoid carpet altogether if you can.

Mistake #2: Failure to do Temptation Testing

If your dog seems to be holding his bladder in his one isolated room for hours at a time, even when you leave him unsupervised, don’t think your work is done.

As I mentioned before, many dogs have certain surfaces that they prefer to pee on, or certain objects like stuffed animals.

When I was potty training my Golden Retriever, Bauer, he would behave perfectly on linoleum, but had a hard time resisting the urge to go on the carpet.

So I felt that before Bauer had earned the right to have access to carpeted rooms, he needed to undergo some carpet Tempatation Testing.

Temptation Testing is simply taking the types of surfaces, or objects that your dog likes to pee on and puting them into the gated off room that you’ve been Pee Proofing.

In the case of my Golden Retriever, I noticed that if I left him unsupervised with a slab of carpet in his room, he would pee on it.

Knowing he couldn’t pass this Temptation Test saved me lots of messy clean ups, because if my dog couldn’t resist the urge to pee on one single slab of carpet in an entirely linoleum covered room, then he hadn’t Earned The Rights to carpeted rooms.

If your dog has the same kind of problem, this is the point where you want to train him that if he has to go, there is an EASIER and more rewarding way to go to the bathroom INSTEAD of peeing on the carpet.

This is the point that I like to teach people the “Jingle Bell” technique, which is a technique for teaching your dog to TELL you when he needs to go potty, and earning rewards for doing so.

If you’d like to learn more about the Jingle Bell technique, along with dozens of other potty training strategies, you can find them inside my “Hands Off” dog training course here:

Hands Off Dog Training Course

In short, just make sure your dog can pass the Tempations to pee on different objects before you expose him to a new room.

Mistake #3: Only give Partial access to new rooms

This technique is pretty straightforward, but ignored by many.

Too many people get their dog’s to stop pissing in one room, and then start thinking their dog is completely potty trained and ready for the whole house.

That ‘aint necissarily so

When you’ve successfully Pee Proofed the first room of your home, and your dog is passing his Temptation Tests don’t just give complete access to a 2nd room of your home.

This new room, hasn’t been lived in by your dog, and is not yet considered his.

In the case of my own dog, when he’d earn the right to gain access to a second room in our home, instead of opening up the entire room to him, I adjusted the baby gates that had previously locked him in our kitchen with , so that they allowed Bauer enough space to come lay down in the second room, but nothing more.

This meant I only allowed him to walk two or three additonal feet into this second room.

This process allows him to be further tempted by the carpeted surface I was letting him onto, as well as slowly spread his scent into that room and start to think of it as his own as well.

As I noticed him continuing to do well, I would slowly open up more and more of the room to him.  By the time he had access to the whole room, he’d already filled the room with his scent and taken ownership of it.

If you’ll follow this process, you’ll notice that each additional room your dog earns the right to live in becomes easier and easier to Pee Proof.  Just try to resist the urge to give your dog access to the whole house and you’ll find potty training a MUCH simpler process.

Additional Potty Training Tips & Recommended Reading:

If you would like to listen to learn additional tips for how to quickly potty train your dog, you should listen to the Potty Training Interview I did with expert dog trainer, Amanda Brothers.

You’ll receive a free copy of this interview when you order a copy of my Hands Off Dog Training course here:

Hands Off Dog Training Course

Here are the results of our Halloween dog costume contest. We know there was some trouble voting in the last couple days and we’re not entirely sure what happened but we’ll just call it a tie for first place and award both Maverick and Lucy the first place prize with 1986 votes. The runner up is Abbie the hunting dog with 847 votes.

Congrats to the winners and a big thanks to all who participated and voted! We’ll do this again next year so start thinking about your costume ideas!

My #1 Dog Training Tip

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