Houston Dog Training Archives | Page 9 of 16 | Michael's Dogs Behavior Group

The Hurricane Dog Training Challenge

Michael Baugh CDBC CPDT-KSA

Hurricane season ends November 30th, and not a moment too soon. This season was particularly brutal, with three major hurricanes hitting U.S. shores in less than a month. The most impactful for us in Houston, of course, was Hurricane Harvey.

The storms this year, and Harvey in particular, got me thinking long term about what we all need to teach our dogs so that we are well prepared for next year’s hurricane season and the ones to follow. These aren’t quick fix tips. This is a training challenge for all of us for the next six-months ahead. What can we do now so that our dogs are best prepared if the worst happens – again?

The Hurricane Dog Training Challenge.

Potty Training. During the many long nights and days of Harvey’s deluge, I got more texts and emails about dogs not wanting to go outside to potty in the rain than any other subject. There were few easy answers at hand. We were in the middle of a crisis, all of us including my dogs and I.

One former client posted this great photo of sod she’d purchased and put under her carport. It’s a great solution if you’d thought of it ahead of time.

I leveraged a cue I’ve taught my dogs: “go outside go potty” to get them revved up and out the door. This rather dark video is an example from Sunday Night in the storm.

The Training Challenge: Retrain Potty training with a cue for going going out. Here’s a link to my potty training handout for your review. And here’s a link to my potty training video. Be sure to add the cue, as I did.

Crate Training. Thousands of dogs (yes thousands) ended up at the George R. Brown Convention Center shelter during and immediately after Hurricane Harvey. They, along with the other dogs at shelters around the area, were required to be under control and safely confined. Many other dogs were crated as they were rescued from flooded homes and remained in crates for long periods of time.

A disaster should not be the first time our dog has to spend time in a crate. It would be so much better if all our dogs were familiar with their crates as a safe comfortable place for transport – or to just relax (as much as is possible in a hurricane).

The Training Challenge: Teach or Review Crate Training. I used Susan Garrett’s Crate Games to teach my dogs to love their crate. Here’s my short video intro to some Crate Games concepts. And here’s the link to Susan’s excellent DVD.

Leash Walking. I’m the kind of guy who scanned the TV coverage during Hurricane Harvey looking for the dogs. Some didn’t have leashes but most did. Dogs being carried through the flood water dangling a leash. Dogs on leash swimming through the flood water. Dogs leashed up on boats floating through their neighborhood. Dogs in the baskets of helicopters with their humans – leash on collar – the other end wrapped around a tightly clenched fist.

Our dog’s leash should be a comfort line, the symbol of the safe emotional connection between the dog and human. When or if a crisis occurs, the leash is a life line as well – an essential training tool – but also a reminder of the dog’s routine of calm self-control outside the home.

The Training Challenge: Teach our dogs to comfortably wear a harness and walk calmly and confidently on leash. This is my favorite YouTube video for leash walking. It’s by my friend and colleague Kelly Duggan.

Building Trust. I couldn’t imagine getting in a basket dangling from a helicopter. It would be a first-time-ever thing and I doubt any of us have prepared for it. I can’t imagine (as many of you have experienced first hand) coming downstairs from the second floor to get in a canoe and paddle out my front door. What is the training for that? I’ve stayed at hotels with my dogs, but never in a shelter with 10,000 other people. There are no practice sessions for this either. The idea is surreal for most of us – but each of these situations was all-too-real for a lot of folks and their dogs during Hurricane Harvey.

I’ve listed three specific things above that we can work on to prepare for next hurricane season: potty training, crate training, and leash walking. Think of these Training Challenges as a framework for the much more important overriding project of building trust between us and our dog.

Teach these core values to your dog as a way to build trust and keep communication open on a daily basis.

You (dog) are safe with me. Let’s create situations in which our dog can learn to look to us for direction and support in novel situations (we traditionally call this “training.”) We’ll use nonthreatening and nonviolent methods to achieve this. We’ll also be careful not to lead our dogs intentionally into danger or into situations they perceive as dangerous. We’ll comfort our dogs to help them through situations that are overwhelming, scary, or painful without concern that we are “reinforcing fear.” We aren’t.
Humans are reliable and consistent. We are not, but we can learn to be with our dogs. We don’t threaten and harm them in the name of training one minute and then treat and pet them the next. We reliably and regularly use reinforcement based nonviolent training techniques that encourage our dogs to think and, when in doubt, to look confidently to us for instructions. We don’t stray from this path.
You (dog) can relax with me. Every day, often many times a day, I sit on the floor and do nothing with my dogs. There are no cues (commands) and no expectations. We just hang out. If one of the dogs initiates play, we play. If they want to lie down, we chill. If they approach for some cuddles, I lean in and touch them.

This list is not exhaustive. I’m sure you can think of many ways you build trust between you and your dog. I really like Susan Friedman’s video about how teaching and learning can help us build trust with animals. Take a look at it and let me know if you like it too.

Muzzle training. Just a brief note about this. Many of our dogs have a history of biting. Dogs under unique and extreme stress (think Hurricane) are more likely to bite. Let’s continue to build and maintain muzzle training – or start teaching it if we haven’t already. Here’s my favorite muzzle training video by Chirag Patel.

Take The Hurricane Prep Dog Training Challenge. In Houston we’ve had three 500-year floods in the past three years. I don’t think we can say whew I hope that never happens again anymore. It probably will. I hope not, of course. But, the odds don’t seem to be in our favor.

So over the next six months, from now until the beginning of next hurricane season in June, will you join me as we get our dogs ready? Start now. Let me know how you’re coming along. Post your progress on social media with the hashtag #michaelsdogs so I can see it. You can also email me. I love getting video and photos.

I’ll do the same. I’m teaching my dogs all these skills as well and will post regularly to Facebook www.facebook.com/michaelsdogs and Instagram. I’ll try to get more active on Twitter too. Follow along online and look for the #michaelsdogs hashtag.

Let’s do this together. Even if the worst doesn’t happen again (fingers crossed) – we still get a stronger more enjoyable relationship with out dogs out of the deal. And really, how cool is that?

Meditation and Dog Training

Michael Baugh CDBC CPDT-KSA

When I was a child I imagined I could communicate telepathically with my dog, Casper. I wanted to know what he was thinking and what he was trying to say to me, so I imagined it. I spent hours with him and told myself stories about what it all meant. There’s a lot of nostalgia there – a boy and his dog. And, if you’re waiting for a “but,” there isn’t one.

This is what we humans do. We tell stories, all 7.4 billion of us. There isn’t a human being on the planet who doesn’t speak and think in at least one language. We think in words and words are what fill our brains every waking hour and some of our sleeping hours as well. They are powerful things, these wordy thoughts. Powerful good. Powerful bad sometimes, too.

Even now as adults I know we all still create stories about what our dogs are thinking and what they’re trying to say to us. We’re only human, after all. I wrote a blog a few years ago called Positive Thinking – Positive Training about how our thoughts and stories about our dogs can get in the way of good training. We keep tripping over our brains, crowded with words. My dog is jealous of me – My dog thinks he’s alpha – He’s stubborn or defiant. Then we slip and fall into even worse thinking. I need to show him who’s boss – this is hopeless – I can’t anymore.

It’s a curse of being human. We can’t always think our way out of problems, but we can almost always think our way into them. In our worst moments our thoughts spiral and loop back on themselves. We become anxious or depressed. We make bad decisions or become too paralyzed to act. Things get worse.

How can we tame our minds and slow down these damaging thoughts? I mentioned Aaron Beck in my Positive Thinking blog post. He’s credited with pioneering Cognitive Behavior Therapy, a great tool for helping us humans to think better about the stories we tell ourselves. I also recommend the writing of Steven Hayes who developed Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT), which helps us notice thoughts without struggling against them. The book The Happiness Trap is a great introduction to ACT.

And, none of this is new. Buddhist teachers have been helping folks tame their minds for millennia. Mindfulness is something of a catchword these days but it has a deep history. When we are aware and present (mindful) we can see our brain chatter from a different perspective – almost like we’re an observer. Hmm, I’m having some thoughts. Author and Buddhist nun, Pema Chödrön writes about not getting hooked by those thoughts. We notice them, but we don’t engage them – we don’t get sucked into the spiral or the word loop in our heads. How? Meditation.

What does meditation have to do with dog training? Everything. It’s where we practice patiently and gently settling our own minds. Chödrön and others frequently refer to our “monkey brain” – fast moving thoughts coming at us nonstop. The 8th Century Monk, Shantideva, refers to it as the “elephant mind;” the thoughts are sometimes strong and pressing. When we meditate, we are learning to tame our thinking – the fast moving monkey and the pressing elephant. We acknowledge thoughts but then release them. Thinking. There is it. Off it goes. Breathe. We don’t judge. We simply notice and let them go. We then return our focus to our breathing. You’ve heard about breathing in meditation. It keeps us in the present moment. It’s where we put our attention when we feel like we’re getting hooked by a thought or two – or fifty. I highly recommend Chödrön’s book, How to Meditate, for more information.

Here’s how it relates to our work with our dogs. Meditation sessions are brain training. We learn how to see thoughts, many of them potentially damaging, and then set them aside. We don’t get hooked. We don’t act on them. We return to the breathing and relax into the right-now. Later, though, in our daily lives we can use these same skills. In a teaching session with our dog we might have a thought like, oh he’s never going to be able to do this. But, we don’t have to believe it. We don’t have to become paralyzed by it. We’re not hooked. We can notice the thought and then let it go – returning to the present moment with our dog. Yes, we’ll observe our dog’s behavior. And, yes we’ll adjust the learning session to help him succeed with the task at hand (that’s all thinking of a sort). But with our new clearer minds we won’t be stymied by useless or destructive thoughts.

So often in dog training we talk about starting with our own behavior. Our actions affect the choices our dog’s make. Now we’re taking one extra step back to look not just at our actions but our thoughts. Is our wordy brain chatter leading us to poor choices with our dogs? Or, is our clear thinking helping us both? Let’s see our thoughts for what they are. Let’s tame them. Let’s set the ones aside that we don’t need and come back to the ones we do. Let’s think and act better. And breathe. And simply be. Be human with a delightful brain full of stories. But be present and mindful, too. And most certainly, be right here right now in this moment with your dog.

Michael Baugh teaches dog training in Houston TX. He helps families whose dogs behave aggressively and fearfully.

How We Feed Our Dogs Can Make Them Smarter

Michael Baugh KPA-CTP CDBC CPDT-KSA

Feeding our dogs from enrichment toys, toys that dispense food, can actually make them smarter. It definitely seems to make them happy. Puzzling out the food inspires activity and thought. A lot of trainers liken it to the skills a scavenging dog or a hunting dog would need in order to eat the food they’d found or killed. Other trainers, me included, have noticed that it helps our dogs focus, activating their brains in a way boring bowl feeding simply doesn’t.

It turns out we’re probably right. Animals (and human animals) who successfully learn challenging skills are more likely to be successful at subsequent challenging skills. In other words, succeeding at hard stuff makes us better at doing more hard stuff.

The research actually dates back to the late 1970s. I came across it in Angela Duckworth’s great book, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. She cites the research of Dr. Robert Eisenberger from the University of Houston. He showed that rats that mastered a complicated task to earn food pellets, pressing a lever multiple times, we able to master subsequent complicated tasks (like running a maze) more easily. In fact they learned new tasks with more vigor and endurance. He ran related studies with children and college students in the 1980s with similar results. Eisenberger called the process Learned Industriousness.

Are our dogs learning to be more industrious because we feed them from food-dispensing toys? I think so. The task-based eating process is similar to what Eisenberger used, teaching the animal to work for the food. It also aligns with what many clicker trainers have observed. Dogs who learn tasks seem to learn how to learn. As they come to understand the process, the learning seems to come faster.

Almost all of my clients report that Mat Work, teaching their dog to lie on a mat, helps the dog become more focused. Mat Work is fairly complicated because it challenges the dog to figure out what do do with the mat (lie down on it) on his own. We don’t provide instructions, only feedback via clicks and treats. It’s a puzzle for the dog to solve. When we set it up properly and provide honest and clear reinforcement the dog figures it out, usually pretty quickly. It’s a hard skill that sets our dog up for more learning – for mastering other hard skills. In the clear light of Eisenberger’s research, all this seems to make more sense now. For a great primer on how Mat Work works, read Fired Up Frantic and Freaked Out by Laura Van Arendonk Baugh (no relation).

How do we teach our dogs learned industriousness? Let’s start with the toys. There are lots of great food-dispensing toys on the market. For beginners I recommend the Bob-A-Lot (pictured above). It’s perfect for feeding dry food. I’m also a big fan of the KONG Classic, which truly is a classic. Both are available online and at local retailers.

Michael Baugh KPA-CTP CDBC CPDT-KSA teaches dog training in Houston, TX. He specializes in helping dogs with aggression and fearful behavior