How Dogs Learn Archives | Michael's Dogs Behavior Group

Teach Your Dog to Relax on Cue

Michael Baugh CDBC CPDT-KSA

Anything our dogs can physically do, we can put on cue. Our dogs can run towards us, walk beside us, lie down, stand still, and do a ton of other things. We can train all of those, put them on cue, turn them into polite behavior or tricks.

Think about that for a minute. What are the things your dog does, or could do, that you really like? We focus on the bad stuff, the misbehavior, things we want our dog to stop doing. Think for a minute about the good stuff you’ve observed. Most of my clients tell me their dogs are good ninety percent of the time. What does good look like?

Here’s a fun fact: it turns out dogs spend about a third of their waking hours just chilling and casually watching the world go by. That’s good. Some researchers call this behavior “loafing.” I prefer what certified dog behavior consultant Sarah Fraser calls it: “relaxed observation.” Street dogs do it. Our pet dogs do it. It’s natural. And guess what? We can put it on cue.

Trainers learned long ago that the best way to stop misbehavior (think: biting, for example) is to replace that behavior with something different. When we ask folks what they’d like their dogs to do, the question stumps them. They just want their dog to stop (insert unwanted behavior). When pressed, some simply say they want their dog to do nothing at all. That frustrated trainers until we realized that doing nothing is actually doing something. Lying down and observing are both behaviors and we could teach dogs to do them in a slow and relaxed manner. We can teach relaxed observation.

It gets even better. When we train a dog to relax the body, the mind follows. There’s research behind this. It’s like when we humans do our breathing exercises. It’s a simple behavior that calms our bodies and our minds. Lots of behaviors affect our feelings. The simple act of intentionally smiling can put us in a good mood. Try it. It’s fun.

Like humans, our dogs do best learning to relax in a calm and nondistracting setting. Always set your dog up to succeed. I teach Dr. Lore Haug’s conditioning relaxation protocol. We begin by teaching down in a relaxed posture – the dog lounging on their hips rather that lying tense facing forward. We add the visual cue of a mat to direct where they lie down and how deeply they relax.

We don’t put the behavior under any social pressure until it’s well engrained. When we take our time and train it right, though, this simple exercise is very versatile and durable. Training your dog to do nothing is really something!

I teach relaxed observation to almost all of my clients’ dogs. Many clients tell me it calms their dog, not just in training, but in everyday life. It’s as if they’ve adjusted their dog’s baseline for relaxation and they are just calmer over all.

I’ve seen that with my dog, Charlie. Relaxed observation is his default behavior at outdoor restaurants, coffee shops, at the airport and even the vet clinic. This is natural behavior, and it’s learned behavior.

Charlie’s not special. Any dog can learn to relax on cue. We can too, of course. In fact, we can model calm behavior for our dogs and see them reflect it back. How cool is that? We can hang out and chill out together. Just doing nothing with our dog has never been so much fun.

Inspired by Sarah Fraser’s post The Non-Activity we Should All do More Often with Our Dogs

Michael Baugh teaches dog training in Houston Texas. He specializes in aggressive dog training.

Five Things to Know about Dog Resource Guarding

Michael Baugh CDBC CPDT-KSA

Many dogs hide, cower, freeze, stare, snarl, growl, snap or bite when they are guarding something. For the purposes of this blog post we will call that resource guarding, dogs who claim possession and guard a prized object, place, food related item, or food itself.

Resource guarding is normal dog behavior. This fact surprises a lot of people. We have a romanticized view of dogs including the idea that some are good and some are evil. Ascribing this kind of moral code is a disservice to them and to ourselves. They are animals, as are we. Animals protect valuable resources, as do we. Wanting to keep our stuff is hardwired into us. Yes, we can share. But, you might also have a few things to say to a random dude at a restaurant who pops one of your french fries in his mouth and walks off.

Normal does not mean acceptable. Some dogs do take it too far. I agree. Who among us really wants our dog’s scrap of stinky frayed fabric that used to be a stuffed toy? It doesn’t make sense that he bit Aunt Sally when she reached to pet him while he rested his head on that disgusting thing. Some dogs (and humans) can get weird about their prized places and things. It seems a bit out-of-context, a bit too much.

It can be dangerous. Dogs who guard a lot of things, including random stuff they find, can be hard to predict. Is he guarding that leaf, that remote control, his poop? It can get especially dangerous if the dog bites to protect his vast and changing collection of valued things. One mistake can turn bloody.

Dominance and conflict-based training can make it worse. From the dog’s point of view resource guarding is about a perceived conflict. He’s already gearing up for a fight. Training methods focused on dominance are conflict-based. This outdated training approach frames every interaction with our dog as a competition with a winner and a loser. We end up proving to our dog that his already-inflated sense of danger is in fact justified. That sock is very valuable. This is a challenge. Violence is possible if not inevitable. Every time we approach resource guarding from this skewed perspective we risk the dog escalating his response. We actually make the resource guarding and the intensity of our dog’s behavior worse.

There is hope. We humans have already won the evolutionary race. We have nothing to prove to our dogs other than this: I can help you. This is good news for dogs and for humans. We now have smart, simple, and effective aggressive dog training techniques for quelling resource guarding in dogs. These reinforcement-based methods work and (I promise) do not jeopardize our position as the dominant species on the planet. You can reach out to me or a similarly credentialed dog behavior consultant for help. Or, contact a veterinary behaviorist.

Bottom line: Resource guarding is normal but it is not okay. There is hope. You can have a long and enjoyable relationship with your dog.

Michael Baugh specializes in aggressive dog training in Houston TX.

Can You Teach a Dog to be Afraid?

Michael Baugh CDBC CPDT-KSA

It turns out people rarely ask. Instead, they just assume that if we comfort a fearful dog that we must be reinforcing fear. They grow even more concerned if we use food. The answer to the unasked question is layered and a bit technical. I usually don’t go into detail. I just reassure my fearful client that we are not, in fact, reinforcing or rewarding their dog’s fear.

The truth is we can teach fear, but not in the way most people are worried about. The process is called associative learning, sometimes called classical conditioning or (more commonly) Pavlovian conditioning. Don’t go to sleep. It’s pretty interesting stuff. When I was much younger I taught my dog to stay out of the basement. When she was a puppy, the first time she peered down the basement steps I dropped a book and it made a loud bang on the hardwood floor. She startled and ran away from the door, never to return again. Ever. Seriously, she never went into the basement. I associated the open basement door with a loud and startling noise. The open door was forever frightening enough that she never approached it again. I taught her to be afraid of it.

Some trainers teach dogs to fear the beep on a shock collar. The dog only has to get shocked once after the beep for it to work. It’s a learned fear. Even a minor car crash can teach dogs to be afraid of the car forever. Car sickness can do that too. I once worked with a dog who was terrified of the garbage truck. At first she learned to fear the sound of the truck in the distance. Before too long she had learned to fear Wednesday mornings (garbage day). Benign things, a beep, a car ride, or a day of the week, become frightening because of the terror they once predicted predict.

John Watson became both renown and notorious when, building on Pavlov’s findings, he conducted the infamous Little Albert experiment. He taught a 9-month old baby to fear soft furry animals by associating them with a loud startling noise. The child ended up having a phobia of rats, bunnies, even dogs. Ethical restrictions would prohibit this type of research today. Still, governments used this part of behavior science to elicit extreme fear responses associated with otherwise unremarkable words, gestures, or environmental triggers. They did this by associating those things with torture including beatings, shock, sleep deprivation, drugs, and hypnosis. It’s a dark and not-so-distant part of our history and an interesting revelation of how emotions work.

Yes, fear can be learned. Lot’s of dogs have learned to be afraid of people, places, and situations. But, using food never taught a dog to be afraid. The function of fearful behavior is to escape something scary. It’s not to earn a bit of cheese. Maybe this example will help.

What if I gave my dog some cheese for looking at a man she was afraid of. This guy is cool; he’s just sitting there. But, what if my hypothetical dog has had a hard time with men in the past? What if now they are all pretty much suspect? So, she looks at this guy with her ears back and tail tucked (obviously afraid). Is offering the cheese going to make her more fearful of men in the future (because that is the definition of reinforcement). The short answer is no. Let’s break this down.

My dog refuses the food. This is a typical behavior when dogs are very afraid of something. The food does not register. In this case the food has no impact on future behavior or emotions. My dog remains roughly as afraid of the man as she was before.
My dog doesn’t get a chance to take food because the man gets up, talks to her, and reaches to pet her. In this case, her possible curiosity is met with the exact thing she feared the most. Her fear would be maintained or made worse.
My dog takes the food. Better yet, I present a conditioned marker (like a click or the word “yes”) when she looks. She then looks back at me and takes the food. I’ve just reinforced looking at the man and then looking away. I’ve also associated the sight of a man with food (not a startling or painful outcome). I now have the beginning of a new behavior pattern: See man; Look at him; Then look to me. I also have the beginning of some new associative learning (Seeing a man predicts food from me). In this case fear is actually reduced.

Plot twist. We need to get the order of events correct. If we present the food first and bribe the dog to approach the man, the dog may play along. She may even take the food. But if she gets too close and the man scares her our whole plan falls apart. Food + man + startle = Fear. Before long our dog will grow suspect of the food itself, and rightly so. Food in that context will elicit a fear response (likely retreat and avoidance). Dog guardians often mistake this as the dog not being interested in food or simply being stubborn. Not so. We accidentally taught her that food in this case is not a predictor of good things to come. It’s a trick.

Bottom line: Fear can be learned. In fact we remember fearful events for a very long time. Seemingly harmless triggers can get hooked into fear. Only unpleasant outcomes (think scary or painful) reinforce fear. Food can become one of those harmless triggers that get hooked into fear if we use it incorrectly (as a bribe or a lure). Food, though does not reinforce fear. It reinforces behavior. When used well food can help quell fear. So too can a kind voice, a gentle touch, a little space, and some time.

Michael Baugh is a dog behavior expert in Houston, TX. He specializes in fearful and aggressive dog training.