I get more calls about dog bites from Thanksgiving through New Year’s than at any other time of year. What is the matter, you might wonder? Don’t dogs have the appropriate Holiday Spirit? Are they irritated by the seasonal muzak? Why are they so prone to aggression at this time of the year?
There are several factors that combine to create this problem.
The weather gets cold and it gets dark early. People are busy with holiday parties, shopping and preparations for festivities. The result is dogs get walked less, exercised less, less attention in general.
More visitors – many households that have almost no visitors all year DO have visitors at the holidays. If the dog is unaccustomed to visitors this can be very stressful, and can lead to bad behavior that ranges from over-enthusiastic greeting to barking and even biting.
Separation Anxiety is a term used to describe the behavior of a dog who becomes extremely distressed when left alone. Dogs who suffer from this condition show their distress in a variety of ways – howling, whining, barking, drooling, panting, chewing objects, chewing or scatching at doors and windows, and urinating, defecating or vomiting. Some dogs show all of these behaviors when left alone, some only a couple. Some dogs show several of these behaviors when left alone, and yet do not suffer from separation anxiety – they just aren’t housetrained and enjoy chewing!
One of the most common problems faced by dog owners is being dragged down the street by an enthusiastic dog. This is not only unpleasant and potentially dangerous for the person, it is also unpleasant and potentially dangerous for the dog! Because many dogs decide that pulling makes you go faster in the direction they want, dogs will put up with a great deal of pain to try to accomplish this. Trachea and cervical injuries are common in dogs who pull hard.
Until a few years ago, most dog trainers believed that dogs lived in a rigid social structure, in which each animal was either dominant or subordinate to the other dogs – and to the humans – in the family. Many of the training methods used were based partly or entirely on this idea. This “dominance theory” evolved from some studies that had been done of wolves, who seemed to show just such a rigid social structure. Since dogs are wolf descendants, trainers thought it was logical to interperate all dog behavior along these “wolfy” lines, and to imitate the wolves’ behavior in our own interactions with pet dogs. This certainly seemed to make sense, especially since we also have extensive research showing the importance of dominance and submission in several other species of animals…including humans! Dog trainers taught that humans had to “be the boss”, the alpha, the pack leader, or else successful training could not occur, and peaceful dog-and-human family life would unravel into chaos and aggression.
At Alexandra Morgan’s Animal School, in Warren, RI, the staff not only train animals, they also help out with various aspects of rescue and rehoming for both dogs and cats. In late June, they took in 13 kittens who were shipped up to them from a very high-kill shelter in Georgia. The intention was to keep them for a week to ensure they were not coming down with any illness, and then find them all good homes locally. They had been told the kittens were all in good health, and had been checked by a vet and given first vaccines. The note that arrived with the kittens said only “Need to be wormed.” If that had been all they needed, all would have been well.
One often hears both dog owners and dog trainers using the terms “positive reinforcement” and “negative reinforcement” when talking about training dogs. These are terms that have been borrowed from human psychology and are frequently misused and misunderstood by both owners and trainers. Thus when dog trainers try to talk to each other about these concepts they often become hopelessly lost in a swamp of misunderstanding, all based on murky language. I hope this article will help to clear up the confusion…and in the process show why these terms are not good choices and we dog people need to come up with new ones!
The use of “Punishment” in dog training is an extremely controversial and misunderstood subject. In the past, punishment and praise were all that was used to train dogs. As a result, many dogs were labeled “untrainable” because they could not respond well to these force-based methods. Then, in the early 90s, came the revolution in dog training, and people moved towards better, reward based methods. However, for many trainers this meant eliminating ALL previous methods, the good and the bad alike. In reality, there is a place for the use of punishment in training, but it needs to be clearly understood and skillfully applied.