Category : Dog Aggression

Biting Off More Than You Can Chew…

I’ve heard of dogs that love ‘chasing‘ cars, but  ‘chewing‘ cars!  Check out the bumper on this police car.  Give the poor dog a good chew toy for goodness sake!

Talk About a Dog With a Chewing Problem…

by Maria Goodavage,dogblog.dogster.com

You think your dog’s chewing is destructive?

Don’t talk to Nancy Emerling, of Chattanooga, Tenn. Her bulldog made four cars — as in real-deal automobiles — into chew toys this weekend. And two of the cars happened to be police cars.

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Show me your teeth!

A face that only his owner could love!

Tunes for your Dog

They say “Music soothes the savage beast.”  Yes, I realize that is a misquote; it is actually “Music hath powers to soothe the savage breast.” However, I believe in this case, we’ll go with the first one.  Now, perhaps you don’t consider your sweet little pooch to be savage, but then again…

Dogster Exclusive Interview: Calming Dog Musician, Lisa Spector

by Maria Goodavage

Dogster’s for the love of the dog blog

We’ve got another terrific interview for you this week, with Lisa Spector, concert pianist and graduate of The Juilliard School.

“But this is DOGster, not MUSICster,” you might say. True. Fortunately for us, Lisa has a foot in both camps.

Lisa is co-founder of BioAcoustic Research & Development, where she presided over the groundbreaking music and canine research conducted with 150 dogs. She is the pianist on the Through a Dog’s Ear music series. If you have a dog who could use a little calming at home or in the car, these CDs are for you.

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Taking Your Dog on Field Trips

A lot of people are feeling the effects of “cabin fever” this winter with all of the snow we’ve had, so imagine how good it feels to finally get out and see new sites, other people, and generally just stimulate our minds with new adventures.  Well, your dog needs new adventures once in awhile, as well.  Read this article explaining why it is important to take your dog on field trips.

Field Trips: why it’s important to get your dog out of the house

by Rachael Pan, February 6, 2010

Examiner.com

Dogs are highly intelligent creatures and as such, can quickly and easily become bored. Stimulation—both physical and mental—is very important to the overall health and well-being of your dog. Taking your dog on a “Field Trip” is a great way to give him some extra stimulation.

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Outdoor Living and Your Dog

With Spring finally on the horizon, are you looking forward to getting outside and spending some time in your own back yard?  In thinking about creating the ideal setting for you and your family, have you also considered whether your yard is a place that both you and your pet can enjoy?

Petscaping for Dogs!

by Mary Haight
Dancing Dog Blog

Spring is almost here. No…really. (I know I’m repeating myself, but maybe if I keep saying it, it will stop feeling like I’m stuck in “Groundhog Day.”) With all the snow blanketing a large swath of the US, what better time to sit down and plan what’s going to make your yard the family’s favorite place this season? What kind of pet-scaping suits your dog and your family’s outdoor style?

Starting early can save money, giving you the time needed to plan a scheduled do-it-yourself assault on all the things you don’t like about your garden: The dog’s digging that makes your yard look like a manic woodchuck with memory loss kept digging up new back doors for his den; the flower beds you’ve been meaning to raise up and out of Monty’s parading area–how many times can delphinium be trodden on before they don’t spring back (it’s a trick question)? Maybe you could fence off an area where that digging behavior could be contained and indulged with gusto and no reprimands? Everybody’s happy! (See, this is fun:)

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Does Dog Dominance Really Exist?

Are dogs aggressive? Do they form hierarchies? Where do you fall into your roll of a dog’s hierarchy and are there ways to do a better job then you’re currently doing?

Aiden Bindoff post on dog aggression addresses some interesting issues worth considering.

Personally, I think one of the best thing you can do for helping set youself up as a better leader for your dog, is to set up LOTS of rules that your dog has to follow to get what he wants out of life.

Rules like:

• Hold down stays on bed while eating dinner, instead of begging at the table
• Sit down, or obey a command before you pet him, making him earn his pets
• Training him to stay away from the door when guests come over to avoid chaos, etc.

Do any of these things guarantee your dog will never have a dominance or dog aggression problem, no.

But I do think the more rules you set up, and the more structure you put into your dog’s life, decreases the likelihood of aggression problems ever occurring.

Proof Dominance Training Is Off Base?

For some reason the world seems to think that the only way to cure dog aggression issues is with dominance.

The people who defend this position like to argue that dogs are decsendants of wolves, and that the Alpha relationship in a pack of wolves, is why we should use domination to make our dog’s think of us as leaders too.

But the APDT has published on their website that they feel this approach is off base, and back it up with their own counter argument that you should go read if you’re the kind of person who’s been brainwashed into using dominance by some particularly popular TV show trainers.

Go read their statement here:

http://ahimsadogtraining.com/blog/2009/11/08/dominance-training-position-statement-by-apdt/

>>> My Thoughts:

The APDT says that you can not use the observation of wolf behavior to explain dog behavior, as you can observe chimpanzee behavior to explain human behavior.

But I’d like to caution people reading this statement and offer my thoughts.

I believe the APDT is using this argument to say you can’t explain ALL behavior, and not some behavior.  And I think they’re right about how Wolves do not determine who the alpha of the pack is by how dominant a dog or person is to them, and instead rely on social structure and support from one another.

But they do have a leader, and knowing how they determine who the leader of the pack is, I think is something worth studying and applying to your dog, especially since how they really do it is NOT with aggression.

To understand where we come from genetically, and what our DNA has been hard wired into us to do, is an important thing and not to be completely ignored.

Just my two cents.

What do you think?

3 Techniques To Calm Dog Aggression

I really love this collection of articles I found from ClickerSolutions recently, and thought I’d point you in the direction of one particularly good article on dog aggression.

You can read it here:
http://www.clickersolutions.com/articles/2002b/aggression.htm

It’s a guest article from Karenn Pryor on three techniques she’s used to help calm dog aggression while travelling around at all the seminars she holds, and teaching dog trainers.

In her events she, a hi percentage of her audience has dogs, so she’s always using her audiences dogs to help teach things.

Invarialby, this means she runs into dogs with issues, and has developed an interesting perspective on how to handle and address those issues on the fly.

It’s a great little article and worth a quick read.

As you read the article, pay attention to some of the things that she doesn’t go into great detail about, but are still crucial… for example, Replacement Behaviors are often a very good way to help overcome dog aggression issues.  And Karen makes lots of little comments that show how she’s always thinking of what the dog wants out of an interaction with something, and then creating a compromise that allows a dog to still fill the satisfaction of feeling something out, but in an acceptable behavior.

Interesting stuff!

How To Stop Puppy Nipping Using "Urge-Control"

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.

Using "Pain" for Training Dogs Not To Bite

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.