About twenty years ago, I was part of a team who worked on internet safety for our 13-year-olds in school. We pushed several messages about bias and motivation, but we had no idea at the time that the internet, thanks to social media and Google rankings, would become a massive popularity contest.

Let me clarify my position. I’ve got two businesses. Both of them do really well on social media and on Google rankings (thank you!) and I’m regularly on the first page of Google rankings despite not paying for posts. I spend a good part of my week working out how to maximise my content, about keywords, about SEO and about how to manage a social media presence. I’ve had posts shared over 200,000 times and posts seen over 8 million times. That’s pretty tremendous for someone who has never paid for content.

I sincerely believe that you can rank highly with superior content. But I also know that you can manipulate rankings either through money or through the methods known as ‘clickbait’. Politicians, opinions and popularity rise and fall on the tides of such methods.

Sadly, clickbait is a rising trend as dog trainers fight for clients, and, more worryingly, their messages are potentially damaging for many of our dogs. But it’s not just people using unethical marketing to attract business. It’s also noisy, opinionated people who believe blindly in a food regime, in a health regime, in a supplement, in a training method.

I’m aware that puts me on the Donald Trump side of ‘Fake News!’, decrying everything I don’t believe in as phony, sham or manipulative.

It’s not just about calling people out though, especially if their views don’t support your own. It’s not just dismissing people who don’t think what you do. It’s about remembering their biases, their credentials and their purpose for posting before making a decision about the validity of what they are saying.

Time we step back.

Back to those twenty-year-old questions:

• What do we know about the person who posted this?
• What’s their bias?
• What’s their purpose in posting?

I try to bring this to everything I read. It’s fine to read things that are biased as long as you recognise that bias. It’s fine to read things on the internet as long as you know a little about the person posting and their credentials. It’s fine to take on their messages when you’ve considered why they are posting. I seek out alternative views and try to keep an open mind – all time aware that challenging your beliefs can actually make your views more stubborn and persistent rather than open to fresh data.

Back to the most fundamental of those questions: what is their purpose for posting?

For some people their only purpose for posting is marketing. They’re fishing for sales. They share, not because they want ‘the truth’ out there, but because they want posts that drive traffic to their websites that drive traffic to their phone that drives traffic to their door that puts money in their bank account.

There are two ways you can do that: honestly, with authenticity, or dishonestly.

Authentic people are honest about their standpoint, their views and their purpose. Dishonest people aren’t. It’s fairly cut and dry.

I would much rather ten authentic people whose views completely contradict my own. I would rather the honesty of alternatives. It’s the deceit in marketing that I can’t stand.

That’s especially important where other living beings are concerned.

What concerns me the most are people who don’t put themselves up to scrutiny, who disguise their beliefs and values in order to get business by any means necessary, and who then deliberately write blog posts that are designed to get people sharing.

One of those dangerous trends comes from ‘pet health sites’ who aren’t clear that a) they aren’t always certified vets even if they have a title to their name b) they make up their ‘statistics’ and lie or c) they have a vested business interest in what they’re promoting, usually financial.

Not only that, for every fake story they put out, every article that isn’t rooted in reality, it damages the whole field of holistic and alternative medicine. If alternative medicine wants to shake off its snake oil and woo-woo reputation, several of those big ‘pet health’ sites need to take a good look at themselves. Anyone who would willingly damage their own field makes me question their motivation. If you would willingly spread misinformation that could seriously damage the health of a pet and also the field in which you practise, I’m sorry but you don’t deserve to have any credibility at all.

Any online vet, for instance, that exclusively promotes one diet or another when it wouldn’t be appropriate for the pet, is not a vet that I can have faith in. If that site is populated by ‘cute’ stories of dogs playing with birds or video compilations alongside scaremongering, I can’t get away from the fact that some high-ranking sites have an agenda that should impact how I read their (FAKE!) news.

We always need a healthy degree of skepticism where things are promoted or discouraged that take one side or another where medicine is concerned. I trust my vets implicitly but I’m not afraid to ask questions and they know me well enough to know they can give me an answer. But when you go to vet conferences, as I have been privileged to do from time to time, there are things that most vets do, things that all vets do, and things that divide the room. Mention precocious sterilisation, for instance, and you’ll divide the room. Mention methods of anaethesia or post-surgical care, and you’ll divide the room. Those are three simple everyday topics where the arguments can last long, long into the night or where many vets keep their opinions to themselves because they know they’ll be forever damned by their peers for revealing their standpoint. And, as most vets will agree, whether you fall into one camp or another is not an ‘always’ kind of thing.

As always, ‘it depends’.

They make their decisions on a case-by-case basis, not on a one-size-fits-all.

But just because they prefer one thing over another doesn’t mean they are wrong.

But it does make me worry when popular pet health sites promote one thing to the exclusivity of others. Not least because they don’t know our pet.

We should trust OUR vets enough to have a conversation. Not online vets who have never met our animal. If you don’t trust your vet, shop around. If the only vet you find you can trust is one online that you’ve never met, then it’s time to ask some questions about why that it is. Believe me, the answer is not because all your local vets are inept and the online ones are the only ones to tell the truth, I promise you.

It’s a good idea to go into conversations asking for all the pros, all the cons and then make your mind up based on who you trust and knowing them instinctively. I know which of the vets I regularly see are worrywarts, who are the best surgeons, who are great technicians, who are solid on dentistry or osteopathy, who can be dismissive and who are overly cautious. We need to trust our vets and get to know them. It’s a reciprocal relationship. They need to know which of us are worrywarts, which of us hand our dogs sneaky sugary treats, which of us have problems exercising our animals, which of us follow advice, who needs an explanation and who doesn’t.

I particularly love my vet surgery because when I go in with my particularly catastrophic “it’s liver failure/cancer/peritonitis/tick fever”, I never leave without feeling completely sure that it isn’t.

If you don’t trust your vet to ask “Are you absolutely sure it’s not osteosarcoma as I googled these symptoms, even though I know that is dumb, and that’s what it said”, then you need to find a different vet.

By all means get a second opinion, but don’t fall into the conspiracy trap of thinking that an online expert is right and the rest of the medical world are wrong.

Let’s talk one of those things regularly posted on ‘woo woo’ sites: vaccinations.

Someone posted an article from a ‘holistic’ vet site about the dangers of vaccinations and even the pointlessness of titre testing. Basically, it was advocating doing nothing.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a dog die of parvovirus. I have. In fact, it’s more regular than you’d realise in a world where there are puppy shows, kennels and pounds. Distemper, not so much, not where I live. I’ve never seen rabies. But parvovirus, yes. Our main problem at the pound and shelter where I am a trustee is unvaccinated dogs. So much so that we vaccinate on the first day of arrival and keep dogs isolated as long as possible to minimise risks. It’s a small number of newly arrived dogs who contract parvovirus – around 1% – and a smaller number still who die from it – but it’s a number nonetheless. We have not had a dog die of parvovirus who has had the second vaccination. Those are our statistics.

So it makes me skeptical when unqualified and uneducated people discuss the efficacy of the vaccine on Facebook, and also when they discuss not vaccinating at all, guided by advice from a vet who is a) not aware of local vectors b) not a vet for your pet c) has never met your pet d) has a very good income from the adverts and products on their website.

When it comes to vaccinations, I absolutely trust my vet.

I remember the names of every single one of those dogs who have died of parvovirus.

I remember who spent 11 days on a drip.

I remember who nearly died.

But the general public, who don’t get the health and sanitation figures for animals in their region, don’t see those names, don’t see those numbers and don’t realise why it’s so infuriating to see clickbait shared time and time again that is just plain wrong. Nobody shares clickbait that says how efficient the vaccines are, and how vaccinating against disease has all but eradicated it in some parts of the world.

Now we can wring our hands after the dog has died, wailing and beating our chests about viruses and diseases that can take our dogs away, or we can have an informed discussion with our vet. We need to stop thinking that they’re all out to become millionaires on the back of our gross stupidity or that they are too ignorant to become as informed as we are – or at least we think we are, having read biased and inflammatory articles on dodgy sites that support our nagging hesitations. When I took Amigo last year to the vet for his jabs, she advised against his yearly vaccinations and he just had the (perennially controversial) leptospirosis vaccination. Having had a stroke, I wondered if she thought it would interfere with his health or if she was just telling me politely not to waste money on a dog who probably wouldn’t live out the year… so I asked her. She explained why and I agreed, so that was that.

For my dog Heston, he’s still a young guy. He comes with me often to the shelter. He has his yearly vaccinations and he always will until he’s an old dude – because I put him at high-risk with what I do.

That’s what makes me angry – people say ‘my dogs don’t go to kennels, I don’t travel, I don’t take them to dog shows, I don’t walk them with other dogs…’

Sadly, you don’t live in as safe a world as you think you do, where disease is concerned.

I sure as hell hope that nobody ever leaves their gate open or that their dog never, ever escapes and ends up in the pound, or never comes in contact with parvo or distemper when they do need to take their dog to the vet… because they’re precisely the kind of dog who will contract the disease.

But if you have a really low-risk lifestyle and a low-risk dog, I can see why you might want to have a conversation with your vet. I’m not going to tell you whether you should or shouldn’t vaccinate. That’s a conversation to have with your vet.

In fact, there are hundreds and hundreds of things I like to ask my vet. My poor vet. Which chews are okay and which cause slab fractures? Have you ever seen a dog with a tongue stuck in a chew toy? Do dogs really die from eating chocolate? Is agility okay for my shepherd? What about frisbee? What exercise can I do with my dog who had a vestibular event? Can I give melatonin and valerian to my dog who has dementia? Is this food causing colitis?

I want my dogs to live long, healthy lives, and following every fad shared in kooky websites may cause more problems than they solve.

That is especially true as certain popular pet health sites are happy to run with Daily Mail style headlines about “this food is KILLING our pets”, “this pet health bombshell that everyone is ignoring that is KILLING our pets”, “This bad habit is KILLING our pets”. But because the good (eg don’t smoke around your dog – passive smoking is not good for your pets) is mixed up with the sensational (feeding X, Y or Z is killing our dogs) you end up either ignoring the good stuff because you are suspicious of everything on the site, or believing the sensational.

But pet health marketers unfortunately take advantage of our feelings, which is why we need an added layer of skepticism.

At the same time, I’m conscious that there are more things in heaven and earth than science has got round to testing yet. And I’m also conscious that we don’t know everything. If it won’t hurt and it might help, then it’s worth a look. I’m a fan of Rescue Remedy sometimes. No idea why it works – it just seems to with some dogs. Melatonin worked with Amigo, and so did valerian.

Actually, what helped more with his night-time wanderings was me taking them.

His wandering wasn’t upsetting anyone except me.

I give my dogs glucosamine and chondroitin supplements even though I know that glucosamine only had success in lab tests but not outside the lab in real life and chondrotin is practically pointless from an academic point of view. I use MSM and GLM supplements for arthritis as they seemed to give Tobby more mobility than when he didn’t have them, or when he was on anti-inflammatories alone. GLM has done well in some small tests and so has MSM.

I’m really pleased to have found a vet who is happy to discuss these things and also to recommend them if she thinks they might work.

I’m glad that when Ralf got in a fight with a badger, I walked out with arnica for his bruises, some anti-inflammatories for his fat lip and cauliflower ear, and some antibiotics against the yucky stuff a badger might have transmitted through a bloody open-wound contact fight. I wish I could have done the same for the badger. But that combination of proven medicine and great natural remedies is what I like. For me, that is truly ‘holistic’ medicine.

So it’s not to say I need everything to be governed by what I’ve seen, like the efficacy of particular vaccines. But neither do I jump on all trends. Given the recommendations on Facebook I got for my new foster who has a range of ailments, she’d be rattling with woo-woo medicines. I’ve got to sift and appraise from my friends’ experiences, but Facebook doesn’t have the knowledge that my vet does. When I read about a medicine or a treatment, I try to focus on who wrote it, their bias and their purpose. Once I’ve taken off my own blinkers, I can do better for my dogs.

After all, all of these things we do, it’s because we love our dogs and we want them to live as long as possible.

That said, we shouldn’t ever let our heart rule our heads when it comes to diet or medicine. If I see ‘products’ and ‘shop’ on an article that’s supposedly about canine health, I’ll take everything with a large pinch of very unhealthy salt. I want sponsors to be clear that they are sponsors, and if I suspect a whiff of dishonesty from ‘natural’ sites, I’m off to look for more reliable stuff. If an ‘information’ site asks me to subscribe, I’m out of there. Why on earth would they want me to subscribe unless to sell me something? I don’t want to see ‘web entrepreneur’ alongside a biography of a ‘health practitioner’ and I’m fond of visiting sites such as Skeptvet to check out the other side of the argument. And I’m aware too that it is their job to be skeptical about stuff. That is their bias.

If in doubt, look at the front page of the site.

Does it state in the headline what it’s about, or is it just ‘This THING will KILL your pet’ and you have to click to find out what?

Does it have a ‘shop’ button? This for me is the big giveaway.

Does it have a load of sponsors down the side?

Does it ask you to sign up now?

Does it have pop-up boxes to get you to subscribe?

ALL good signs that the person producing the website is making a bit of a living (or a very good living) from marketing.

Sadly, because they do not know our pets, because they do not have a whole history, because they do not know us, any online vet or health site that gives advice should be read with a healthy amount of skepticism. Any zealot who doesn’t mitigate their own advice with ‘go and see your own vet’ is lucky not to face lawsuits more frequently. And it goes without saying that if the advice is on a forum or Facebook, take it with a huge pinch of salt. Do your research if it sounds interesting. I’m in a few great groups for canine dementia, for vestibular disease and for degenerative myelopathy, and they give me ideas of things to discuss with my vet, but they certainly don’t replace my vet and they never will. Even if they were Mr Super Vet himself on Facebook giving me advice about vet care, I’d wonder why he was so happy to dole out free advice – other than the stuff that is generally accepted, like looking after your dog’s teeth, keeping their ears clean or the problems short-nosed dog breeds can face. If I follow vets on Facebook, I’m looking for photos of their pets, photos of their clients’ pets, even photos of operations, some good advice for all dogs and some posts about interesting animal facts. I’m not looking for a zealot and I’m not looking for them to diagnose and treat my pet online.

But medicine is not the only place where controversial sites publish clickbait. Sadly, this is infecting behavioural advice for dogs too. Next week, I’ll look at some of the FAKE NEWS! from the behaviour world that is potentially very damaging for our dogs.

After aggression issues, the most usual thing I get calls about is…. teenagers!

In fact, the two things often go hand in hand. But teenagers can pose problems in all sorts of ways, many of which owners feel unable to deal with. In many ways, that combination of puppyish play behaviours in a big dog body as your dog works its way through the full repertoire of canine behaviours can be a very testing time indeed.

It’s not a surprise so many teenagers end up in the shelter.

Would it be a surprise if I said to you that 80% of the dogs in our shelter are under three years of age?

Of those, 95% of our longer-stay dogs are male.

Of those, 95% are big.

That’s the sad reality.

If you are a big, young male, you are far more likely to find yourself staying for more than a couple of weeks, should you arrive in a shelter. You won’t behave any differently than a smaller dog, but it’s easier to accept some behaviours in smaller dogs.

And if you add lack of appropriate socialisation with humans, cats and other dogs to that equation, along with a lack of obedience training, you have yourself the profile of our young dogs. If you look a bit ordinary, a bit average, expect to find yourself lost in the system for a while.

You’d have thought they were from the same litter, wouldn’t you?

But our big, young guys are not just the stuff of shelters… I remember the days when my own dog Heston was a teenager. I remember the escapes, the chewing, the barking, the over-enthusiasm. I remember my frantic tears and the desperate attempts to just live with him. Everything he is now at five was born from my attempts to calm him, to occupy him and to actually manage him. He is a dab hand at freestyle heelwork, obedience and also at gundog stuff – but there were days when I’d spend hours working with him, wondering if it’d not be better for him to be rehomed.

That’s why I have a lot of sympathy for my clients who have dogs who are not exactly a teenage dream.

One of my clients phoned me, absolutely convinced that there was something dreadfully wrong with her flat-coated retriever, Murgatroyd. He’s a pedigree from great lines and many of his relatives work. What she was looking for really was a vet referral.

“He just bites out of the blue,” the conversation started.

Funnily, I’d had a conversation earlier that day with the owner of a Bernese Mountain Dog, Bernie.

“He just launches himself at my husband and grabs his leg! There’s something seriously wrong with him!”

I think there are many of us who think there is something wrong with our dogs when they are teenagers. It’s not unusual to have conversations about ADHD, about whether dogs have undiagnosed brain tumours, about rage… conversations with owners whose dogs have already seen the vet and ruled out any major health issues that may cause this.

In fact, when I mention over-arousal or over-excitement, often the owners are dismissive.

“No, he’s not like this all the time!”

But over-arousal isn’t an ‘all the time’ thing. Neither is over-excitement. Because the dogs have the semblance of some manners, the owners think that the dogs must be wired wrong. Often, it takes a full examination by a vet and some pretty heavy insistence from both of us to convince owners that their dog isn’t suffering from some kind of undiagnosed rage syndrome.

It’s only then, when we discuss common symptoms of over-arousal that owners often realise that yes, their dog is doing a lot of the other things too.

And then the penny starts to drop.

For Murgatroyd, he was a humper, a very friendly humper, but a humper nonetheless. And a digger. The lawn was filled with huge tank traps. He was also a barker. Barking, humping, digging and mouthing… bug-eyed lack of focus and panting all added up. On the diagram above, he was doing 8 of those 10 things.

For Bernie, he was jumping up all the time, circling and nipping when excited. He was regularly doing 5 of those 10 things.

Both boys pulled like a demon as well, despite choke chains (which were probably contributing to their arousal on walks, which I’ll explain later).

Once you start to see that the biting is part of a puzzle, and that the picture that the pieces make up is just an over-aroused dog, then it makes it a lot easier to devise a strategy to help your dog get through its teen years without ending up in a shelter or being put to sleep because that mouthing gets more and more insistent.

That is not to say that you shouldn’t rule out every single possible biological or physiological cause with your vet. You absolutely should. It’s always the place to start when you have any behavioural abnormality. Even something simple like impacted anal glands can mean your dog is reluctant to sit down or is more restless than usual. But some disorders can become evident as dogs mature, such as problems with the thyroid or neurological issues such as focal epilepsy or intracranial pressure. There are many reasons to visit a vet, and teenage behavioural problems such as over-arousal and aggression are always good reasons.

So why might your teenage dog turn into a furry nightmare on legs?

Some of those medical issues above may well be behind it.

But there can also be other physiological reasons.

You’d think there may be “boy” issues, but every single dog I work with has been castrated prior to working with me and it hasn’t made a difference. Castration removes a lot of a dog’s ability to create testosterone, and whilst it may work on some problems such as roaming, it may not work on others, especially if that behaviour is driven by other hormones, chemicals or neurotransmitters. That’s like wondering why your fridge is still working when you’ve taken the fuse for the cooker out. If it’s not related to testosterone, castration won’t make a difference.

There is often a different cocktail of chemicals at work. Adrenaline is a big part of that. So is dopamine. Dopamine does lots of things, but it is heavily implicated in reward behaviours, learning and addictions, as well as in other pleasurable behaviours. It also has a central role in impulse control. Adrenaline is crucially implicated in arousal. Whilst we get bursts of adrenaline when we are under threat or stress, we also get adrenaline surges in response to excitement.

Just because it can be physiological doesn’t mean you can’t change it through behaviour modification. It’s something that doesn’t necessarily require a prescription to sort out.

And over-arousal may not be just the body at work.

There are, as I have mentioned, age-related issues. It’s unusual for an older dog who has previously been calm all their life to become massively over-aroused unless their life changes a lot. Usually, medical changes would be predictable there. We all know that puppies are balls of energy, but young dogs also need a lot of sleep. They also need to learn impulse control and they need to learn the rules of being an adult aren’t the same as being a puppy. For larger breeds, we all know it’s vital not to exercise them too much, with the risk of growth problems, but what do you do if you have a large breed who is over-aroused?

Again, lots of the strategies I’ll explore later will help with that.

Food can be an issue, just as it is in humans. Dogs don’t process sugar as we do, but if I say to you that my boss used to give me some full-sugar Coca-Cola and a bag of Haribo Sours before a meeting just to see me go, you’ll know why he found it so amusing. If you run marathons or do triathlons, you’ll know all about the importance of carb-loading for energy. Additives, sugars and unnecessary ingredients can all have a negative effect on canine behaviour, just as they do on human behaviours. As a rule, if you’re buying food from the supermarket, you may find that it isn’t an optimal diet for your teenage dog. Discuss this with a canine nutritionist or your vet, but know that there are very good diets out there, be they raw, cooked, home-made, dry or wet food, and it needn’t be inconvenient. It’s important you get the best food for your dog. Some will no doubt suggest low protein diets or serotonin-enhancing diets, but the very best thing to do if you think diet is the major contributing factor in your dog’s behaviour is to seek out a professional. It’s not something to tinker with yourself if you think that food is the primary cause behind your dog’s excited behaviour.

Lack of sufficient rest and sleep can be a problem and can also create young dogs who are permanently wired. Like you, your dog needs a low-noise, unstimulating environment in which to sleep. They also need a lot more sleep than you’d think. It should be comfortable and at the right temperature. Expecting your dog to cope with household arousal when they are surrounded 14 hours a day by family members and excitement is a recipe for a dog who’s living on the edge of its nerves. 8 hours of sleep may be enough for us, but it is not enough for our dogs.

Many are going to say that teenage behaviour is ‘dominance’ or a change in the rank of a family pack. So is your dog trying to dominate you if they’re showing any of the behaviours above? Whilst some dogs on occasion may be – perhaps – influenced by position in the canine group and their relationship with another dog in the family (and there are no good studies to support this for pet dogs), there is zero evidence that dogs consider us as part of their pack and are trying to dominate us. I’ve taken to replacing ‘dominant’ with ‘arsehole’ when people describe their dominant dog. I think it’s become a shorthand way to say the dog is unruly and doesn’t heed the owner as much as the owner requires without accepting responsibility for not having taught household manners. It blames some aspect of a canine ‘personality’ (and dominant behaviour definitely isn’t a personality trait!) rather than saying “hey, I’ve not taught my dog how to behave properly”. Somehow, if we say they are dominant, it sounds more scientific. Nobody wants to call their dog an unruly arsehole. Some cats behave like mannerless arseholes all the time but nobody describes them as trying to dominate their human. Dominance has become the great excuse for unruly behaviour, blaming the dog not the lack of family rules.

This is no place for a lecture on the whys and wherefores of dominant behaviour in dogs. That said, I think some of the better aspects of ‘treating’ so-called dominance may also be of help. Those are going to include clear boundaries in the home, regular and consistent handling from all the family members and clear rules. You don’t need to be a Sergeant Major to deal with unruly behaviour, but firmness and consistency in household rules and manners is vital.

Don’t forget: manners are taught, not caught. Your dog is not bound by the same social and cultural conventions as a human involving theft of food, for instance. A dog who takes food when he is hungry is excelling at being a dog. Even human beings have to be taught social conventions such as not raiding strangers’ cupboards if they are hungry. If you want your dog to do something, remember it needs to be taught.

Some people are also going to say your dog is challenging you. I don’t believe, however, that dogs push boundaries in the same way teenagers might do. I know how it is to face the challenges of teenagers who don’t understand the reasons behind social or cultural rules – believe me, when you’ve worked in schools as long as I have, you see a lot of that. I’ve certainly met teenagers who enjoyed getting a rise out of particular adults. But we do a lot of quashing teenagers’ “rebellion” with ‘Because I said so’, which doesn’t always wash. ‘Challenge’, even with human beings, is not always about pushing boundaries or rebelling against authority. I didn’t dye my hair to be rebellious but because I was finding out who I was and what I enjoyed. I liked noisy, dirty, loud music and I liked the way Lita Ford looked… It felt good to listen to Motley Crue, I got a lot of reinforcement from my friends, and I got a lot of peer reinforcement in ways that dogs just don’t. When we talk of challenge or rebellion, we need to keep those words for describing ourselves as humans, not our domesticated pets. He’s not going through a phase where he’s deliberately pressing your buttons.

Heston wasn’t showing off for his friends or rebelling against my rules.

But he was learning what felt good, what was rewarding and what wasn’t.

And sometimes that means getting attention in ways that your dog has realised is very effective, like barking at you or humping you, biting you and mouthing you.

They’re learning how to work the environment around them, finding out their preferences.

I liked, as a thirteen-year-old, to go off on the train to Manchester and explore. I liked long-haired boys and Hanoi Rocks, tight jeans and cider. I liked black eyeliner and red clothes. I very much defined my own taste and I picked and chose what worked for me. It wasn’t consciously about defiance or rule-breaking, but about finding myself. I still like to bugger off on my own and explore. I can pass happy hours wandering around cities and forests by myself. I still like noisy music, and my tastes are as broad and eclectic as they were when I was thirteen. I still have a thing about men with long hair, although I’m not a fan of the hipster man bun thing. And I still like cider, black eyeliner and red clothes. I wasn’t doing those things to be controversial or to be deliberately defiant, but because they appealed to something in me.

Dogs are the same.

Not that they like noisy rock metal or eyeliner.

But as they mature, they are developing preferences for things they enjoy, things that reward them. It’s not about defiance or dominance, but about preference. Dogs, actually, are a lot better at accepting ‘because I said so’ than teenagers. I thought, tonight, that Heston has never counter-surfed. He has never begged. He has never stolen food. He has never run off with my shoes. He has never made his own fun out of stealing things. We nipped his fun little off-site wanderings in the bud with some chicken wire fencing patches and what emerged out of the other side is a biddable, calmer dog. Sure, he has some bad habits. He loves a bark and a forage, he likes to explore, he’s a bit of a Tarzan with new friends and he is as noisy as I am. But those teen years are about trying out the full canine repertoire of dog behaviours and working out if it’s fun or not. Digging, barking, peeing on things, humping, counter surfing, stealing, chewing, biting, destroying stuff, dissecting toys, wandering, chasing things… all in the canine repertoire and all possible to be things teenage dogs will trial.

This is why, though, habits picked up in the teen years tend to be things dogs grow into rather than grow out of.

Tried it. Liked it. Worked for me. Will do it again.

This is especially true of behaviours that involve feel-good buzzes from adrenaline and dopamine.

If your dog has a particular bad habit though, and it is deeply ingrained, best to get some specific help for that problem. The longer they’ve been doing it, the harder it can be to stop.

So how do you deal with your furry teenager?

If you just have a common-or-garden over-aroused teenage dog, there are three things you really, really need to do to make a difference. That involves the right balance of mental and physical stimulation, teach focus and impulse control to help your dog manage their emotions and introduce a basic calming protocol to lower arousal.

The first is to bring over-arousal levels down through a balance of mental and physical stimulation. That means lots and lots of enrichment activities. It means making your dog’s brain work. This needn’t be time-consuming for you, but I promise you the best ones are the ones you do in partnership with your dog. They will take a bit of a time commitment, but the trade is that they’ll improve your relationship no end.

Some mental activities don’t take any time commitment from you at all. It’s fine to scatter food from time to time, to dig out your Kongs, to buy a load of lick mats and snuffle mats, to get out bones and chews, tendons and pieces of hide, but make sure you’ve got something you can actually enjoy with your teenager too.

I did heelwork to music first. Heston knows about 100 hand and voice commands and has a good routine to ‘Stand and Deliver’ and ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, but it wasn’t his thing. It really was going through the motions for him. Scentwork fared better, but it was only when I began to do traditional gundog activities like blind retrieves, casting and quartering that he really came into his own. Know your dog, know what they like and do something every day in partnership with them. It can be really hard to stop yourself tearing your hair out with a teenage dog, having an activity that reminds you of just how great they are can stop you coming to resent them. Plus it builds on the owner-dog bond, which is always a good thing. Fifteen minutes a day can make a real difference. Plenty of programmes do this, from Absolute Dogs to Susan Garrett’s Recallers’ Programme

You can also check out this fabulous Canine Enrichment group on Facebook. Be warned: there are people with a lot of kit and it can sometimes seem like it’s all about the food. It isn’t, and you don’t need all the cash in the world to keep your dog busy. But if you search for scent work or non-food, you’ll find at least a handful of ideas you won’t have tried yet and there’s plenty of stuff if you’re on a budget. Some of the ideas have become absolute go-to staples for me, like snuffle mats, scatter feeding and stuffed chews. But it should never be all about the food, nor all about things for your dog to do on their own.

The fact of the matter is that the more things your dog finds rewarding, the more you can use them. That includes handling, specific touches, massage, scent work, using smell, including food and edibles, and plenty of appropriate exercise from swimming to low-impact agility as well as toys and food. Bear in mind that your teenager may also be still growing so keep an eye on the physical exertion, and this is also a time when favoured objects can become accidental obsessions. Use the teenage years to build up a massive, huge bank of things your dog finds wonderful. You want that bank of things that your dog finds fun to be absolutely flipping massive. Twenty toys your dog loves, twenty scents (including the icky ones), twenty touches, twenty activities, twenty different taught words for praise and twenty food items – you’ve got over a hundred amazing ways to reinforce your dog’s behaviour.

At the same time you are building up preferences, activities and mental stimulation you also need to watch the physical exertion. Adrenaline is addictive. I speak as an ex-runner who used to clock up 100km every week. There is a reason I am an ex-runner. Exertion is costly, physically. We all like to recall the 70-year-old doing the marathon, but in reality, addiction to adrenaline is no fun and it takes its toll physically. When it’s 2am, you can’t sleep and you’re itching for your trainers despite plantar fasciitis, it is a real moment or realisation, let me tell you. That’s as true for our dogs as it is for us. When Heston pulled a muscle earlier this year, the vet was convinced it was hip dysplasia. It wasn’t, but it cost me some sleepless nights wondering if I had caused this. Adrenaline begets adrenaline, and it can be hard to break that cycle with a dog who is almost bug-eyed with a crazy, amphetamine-like high. Now is not the time to take your dogs on 10-mile hikes or take up canicross or joring just to tire them out. To be honest, now, I’d avoid amping dogs up in their teenage years. Calmness is your friend. I made that mistake with Heston and it took me years to put right.

You may find other ways as well to find some calm for your dog. Gentle massage, Ttouch, music, even long, gentle grooming sessions can be just as calming for a dog as they are for you. If your dog is aroused by these, go slower and for shorter periods of time. Both Murgatroyd and Bernie had (male) owners who rough-housed with them. This has to stop I’m afraid. Whilst rough-housing might be fine with an adult dog who has good impulse control, it is massively over-arousing and I work with a couple of dogs whose mouthing is a direct response to rough play. I wrestle with Heston now from time to time, but he is six. I didn’t do it when he was 18 months and I’m glad for that. Dogs do play like-for-like with us if we play back – they play bow to us, they hip-check us and body slam us. It doesn’t take much for this to pass over into mouthing if you have a boisterous breed.

If you act like a dog and play like a dog, don’t be surprised if your dog plays back like a dog as well. I know dogs don’t see us as bald dogs on two legs, but if you play as dogs play, don’t be surprised if your dog doesn’t switch back to treating you like a human because they don’t know the rules have changed. How are they to know that a shoulder bump is par for the course but mouthing your limbs is not?

For dogs who do this as teens, there seem to be two agents: families who play physically with their dog, and dogs in single-dog homes who don’t get to play with other dogs, or those in homes with dogs who don’t play at all.

My sideline in foster caring for kittens involves a lot of work with small kittens on appropriate play. Having raised hundreds of non-clawy kittens, all that comes down to is appropriate play. My hands are never, ever honorary prey. We play with toys, but my kitts don’t ever chase my hands. The only thing my hands do is calm stroking and gentle grooming. People who play with their kittens using only their hands often end up with bitey, scratchy cats who don’t respect the ‘no-blood’ rule. Play finishes when this happens in my house and there’s no blood. We could all do with imagining dogs to be tigers with retractable claws and then we’d probably give off fewer mixed signals about play. This is especially true if your dog is going to grow up big.

It is really, really important as your dog leaves puppyhood around 12 – 20 weeks that you teach other things than jumping up or mouthing. Good manners are taught not caught, and there is no use crying over spilt milk when your ten-month old ridgeback or weimaraner is still nipping and playing far too hard. A puppy has no idea that the rules have changed unless you teach them.

Alongside teaching about these rules, it’s also important to teach focus and impulse control. These are things that you can be teaching your puppy from the moment you get them, because good impulse control in their teenage years will help them – and you – emerge unscathed. Dogs need to be taught that they don’t charge up to every single person or dog. They need to learn how to pass other dogs on lead without reacting or expecting to interact. They need to learn how to pass barking dogs and dogs behind fences, dogs in cars and dogs behind windows without feeling the need – or the right – to interact. This is as true for other dogs as it is for humans, cats, kids, cars, bikes and joggers. There are many great ways to teach impulse control, from Susan Garrett’s “It’s Yer Choice” to Absolute Dogs’ games, from flirt pole games to games with food or other toys. A dog that knows to look to the owner before making a decision and knows that they don’t have to interact with the whole world is a dog who will emerge as a wonder-dog from its teenage years. The most simple way to do this is through toys. Once you have taught your puppy to retrieve, it’s not hard to use this to teach them to only chase, fetch and retrieve when you give the okay.

I think this is one of the most fundamental things that overly-aroused dogs lack: the ability to look to the owner or handler before interacting. The lack of understanding that there are some things we just don’t need to interact with is a big part of the problem.

The final thing I ask owners of over-aroused dogs to do is to implement a relaxation protocol, such as the one devised by veterinary behaviourist Dr Karen Overall. For this, alongside the enrichment activities, you may find you’re ditching the bowl completely and using all of your dog’s calories for learning. The Relaxation Protocol at its simplest is a “sit/stay” programme with a variety of challenges and complexities. It can be practised in a variety of environments and can build up to non-engagement in a range of more challenging situations. It’s something I adapt with owners, because some dogs find it too difficult, and every dog is different. For some, it’s a “down/stay” rather than a sit.

Other aspects of a dog’s life that can promote relaxation include Ttouch or canine massage, certain oils or flower remedies, zoopharmacognosy, white noise and music. Thinking more holistically will certainly help.

A final word is about collars. Many teenage dogs pull. The stronger they are, the more they can pose a problem for you. Whilst I have no problem with leads and flat collars for dogs who don’t pull, a dog who is pulling is in need of a programme to help them walk nicely. I heard someone say this week that harnesses encourage pulling. Hmm, I thought. Not sure about the ‘education’ harnesses that plant a dog nose-first on the floor if they pull, or those that restrict movement. They definitely don’t encourage pulling. More likely that normal collars or chokes discourage pulling, and a well-fitting comfortable harness is more likely to show how your dog walks normally. That might be pretty bad indeed if your choke collar has been the only reason your dog walks to heel.

However, once a dog starts pulling on a choke, a martingale or a normal collar (never mind a prong!) things happen that will increase your dog’s arousal, not lower it. If your dog is pulling towards something, limiting blood supply and oxygen will only increase arousal.

Nobody, not anybody, will tell you that being short of breath is good for lowering arousal.

If you have a reactive dog, the unpleasant sensation can add to those feelings. Lead tension can be a powerful clue that something arousing will shortly appear in view. Aroused dogs, in my experience, will still pull – whether you are popping, yanking, tugging or jerking, or even if you have a constant pressure. I’ve seen aroused teenagers being ‘popped’ every two or three paces by their owner. We use slip leads at the shelter at the beginning because dogs need to get used to a harness, and there are few harnesses easy to fit to a bouncing scaredy setter who has spent 23 hours confined and surrounded by 200 other dogs. But do you think those slips discourage pulling? For our pullers, we switch as soon as we can to a harness. They still don’t walk on a loose lead unless we do a programme with them, but at least they aren’t hurting themselves.

Switching to a harness at least means that YOU aren’t contributing to their arousal by interrupting their blood and oxygen supply to the thinking bits of the brain. Sure, you may then realise you need a loose-lead programme as well but this is not because harnesses encourage pulling, more that collars are unpleasant and they discourage pulling. The end-result is the same, but it’s not because harnesses make dogs pull more.

If you have a short-nosed dog, a dog with a predisposition to thyroid problems, a predisposition to eye problems, heart problems, collapsing tracheas, paralysed larynxes, heritable disc or spinal issues, syncope, retinal problems or glaucoma, the very last thing you want to do is allow them to pull even slightly against a flat collar, choke, slip-lead or half-choke. If you have a dog who has ANY congenital or heritable likelihood for anything to do with thyroids, breathing, heart problems, spinal problems, eye problems or inner ear problems, a harness may not discourage pulling in the same way, but it will certainly reduce the likelihood that you’ll accidentally spark some congenital disorder. From ataxia, bloat, cardiomyopathy and cervical disc disease right through to ventricular tachycardia and vasculitis, if your dog pulls and you want to avoid stressing your dog’s blood circulation or breathing, then a good harness and a loose-lead programme is a must.

So there you have it.

Alongside a wide variety of mental enrichment activities and a reduction in adrenaline-boosting physical activities, teaching impulse control games and using a relaxation protocol, you should see an over-all reduction in arousal and over-excitement. This programme should be specifically tailored to your dog’s own preferences and tendencies but it does no harm at all to build up other skills that are lacking. Whilst Heston, for instance, was a very independent teenager, if I only did independent activities with him, I’d end up making him even more ‘unbalanced’. By building on his tracking skills, his heelwork skills and finally his gundog skills, I was able to move him from independent to inter-dependent at the same time as building on his natural talents.

Every dog is different. For Murgatroyd, a harness, an hour or so of specific mental enrichment activities, a calming protocol and some impulse control games helped him get past his bitey stage. And for Bernie, a regular rule-structure, some scent-work, reduced physical rough-housing and a relaxation protocol helped him learn how to play with his owners without grabbing.

Please get in touch with a force-free dog trainer or behaviourist if you are having problems and you want a way forward.

I don’t think there’s anything more worrying than a dog who is an escape artist or a dog with poor recall. When our dogs are out and about, our modern world turns into a nightmare – one filled with any number of ways our dogs could get into trouble, become an anti-social menace, get into an accident or even end up dead. I’ve written about digging and escaping before, but today I wanted to take a closer look at the reasons why dogs escape, including four more serious reasons.

I really hadn’t thought about escape problems until I started getting the figures through for our local pound. When you see as many animals as we do at the pound coming through, you come to see the many number of reasons dogs have to escape, and the problems it causes – mainly for the dogs, for the community, for other animals, for those who are charged with capturing them and for motorists. Even for those who wander without causing harm or getting harmed themselves, it can also cause a problem if your animal is in need of daily medication.

But it’s not just about those who arrive at the pound – it’s about those who don’t, whose owners spend years looking for a fearful dog who was never captured, or owners who receive the most terrible news of all.

It was only a couple of weeks ago that the corpse of a husky was found by the road near our shelter, having been hit by a car. There are several dogs who meet such a fate every single month. Barely a month goes by at the pound without an animal coming in seriously injured from a run-in with a car, a van or a lorry.

And vehicles are not the only hazards.

A hungry animal is more likely to accidentally poison themselves.

A loose dog is more likely to come up against other animals, be they wild or domesticated. You might not think a dog in a horse field is a problem until you’ve been asked to identify the corpse of the dog the next morning.

Some fearful dogs become impossible to catch, and it is only through our luck or near starvation that they find themselves trapped, as others are never caught.

If you’re reading this, you don’t need me to tell you about the terrors that await a loose animal, even one that is road-savvy. You’re reading it because you already know the possible fate of dogs who escape.

And you don’t need me to tell you the feeling you have of sick dread and anxiety that you have when your dog has absconded.

You do want to know why your dogs escape and how to best deal with it.

So why do dogs escape?

There are lots of Fs involved here: fighting, fleeing, fornicating (I’m being polite because I know how uncouth I am at heart), food, friends, fun and following something.. That’s not any order of rank or merit. I would hazard a guess that fun & friends, fleeing, unexpected freedom, following something and fornication are the top reasons, but there are few statistics available based on why dogs escape – I can only go off the dogs we get through the pound and those who are returned to the shelter.

Those five reasons are behind why dogs escape – many of them emotional or instinctive. This is going to affect the choices you make on how to prevent their escape, so knowing the emotions or instincts behind the behaviour to solving the problem completely. This is about the one behavioural problem that doesn’t come with an absolute need to get a vet check – although some of the solutions may call for a vet.

The biggest risk factors of severe accident or death statistically for our area are for elderly dogs and for those who abscond together. I don’t know why that is for dogs who go off as a pair, but the risks for a pair of dogs who go are much, much higher than for dogs who go alone. The risks are also much higher for elderly dogs, although the reasons behind that make more sense. Poor eyesight and hearing, dementia and poor response times are all health factors that negatively impact your dog’s chance of survival.

I’ll explore some of the five reasons in more detail. Some I have already explored in my previous post on the topic.

One of the very first things to consider is if your dog is escaping TO do something or escaping FROM something. Many dogs are attracted by something over the boundary fence, but some of the saddest cases I know are the dogs who are escaping from a perceived threat in the place where they are supposed to feel safest.

Let’s start with the easier stuff…. escaping to do something on the other side.

One of the reasons a dog might escape is hormonal. It’s not the call of nature, it’s the call of hormones. It won’t surprise you that a lot of roaming is based on our number one biological urge: procreation. Whilst female dogs won’t be responsible for bringing all the boys to the yard when they’re on heat, if they are walked regularly or they are loose, the smell of their hormones in urine and in the air may be enough to sway the usual direction of a male dog. So it’s unlikely that your male dog will wander from the yard unless a female in season is in fairly close proximity, but if your male dog catches a scent, it may be enough to cause them to wander. In one village near me, when three local females would wander around when they were in season, the number of intact male strays suddenly increased massively. That’s not a shocker, is it?

Sterilisation may reduce wandering which is caused by hormonal drives, but it won’t reduce wandering that’s rooted in other behaviours. If your dog can get out, though, sterilisation will not just inhibit their likelihood to wander, but it will also stop them taking part in any unplanned matings. A question to raise with your vet, for sure.

But if you are hoping sterilisation will stop your dogs going for a wander, you may be in for a shock if it has little effect.

Escape can be related to genes and training as well. There is a reason why my neighbour’s hunt hounds are kept in a secure pen – biology is not something that is always easy to bring under control if you’re a dog who has been bred for independence and for ability to follow smells. If gallumphing through the undergrowth as part of a team is in your blood and you’ve been trained to do it, if you’ve got wildlife regularly roaming past your home, it’s not impossible to think that it may cause some animals to go off on their travels. After all, an ice cream van will get me out of the house when nothing else does.

Roaming cats or other wildlife can be a problem for the untrained dogs who become self-employed. Cats are often lucky that dogs are secure, as they aren’t always shy of coming into gardens where dogs live. You’d think with the number of dogs I have, it’d put cats off for good. Not so. Plenty of dogs are capable of chasing a cat or a squirrel over or under a fence that they’d never normally breach. And other dogs have a better genetic sense of ‘stay put’ like lifestock guarding breeds or those used for protection work. A dog that couldn’t be left independently to stick with a flock of sheep wouldn’t be good at its job. But that is not just a question of genes, but a question of training as well. Your Grand Pyrennees may well be a homebody, but unless they’ve been specifically trained to stay with the flock, they too may wander.

Genes and hormones are only part of the equation. Learning is the rest. I’ve had two shepherds that patrolled happily or never thought to abscond, and two who did one when opportunity presented itself. You may have the right ingredients to be a homebody, but it’s not a thing dogs just do by instinct.

Much of that is about the original incident in which escape happened.

I did it once. It was high amounts of great dog fun. I’ll do it again.

I had a few weeks about four years ago where my shepherd cross Heston was always buggering off through a hole. Since the behaviour increased, I can only assume that it was very rewarding out there, otherwise he’d not have done it again.

It’s now been a good three years since he went off for a wander, even though there are certainly holes he could get out of if he wanted. Very little actually changed other than I broke the habit. I’m always vigilant for the moment where he ‘remembers’ and that epic learning experience is remembered, but it’s not a surprise that he started doing it because he was young, he was unsupervised and he had means, motive and opportunity. The holes were there. There is still a lot of game that comes via my garden. He was unsupervised. A learning trifecta that led to some very enjoyable roamings indeed.

And because it was such epic dog fun, it was likely to be repeated.

Once a dog has sussed out how, they’re quick to repeat it.

Epic dog fun is one reason a dog might hup a fence and bugger off. One of our dogs was returned after an 18-month adoption for constantly getting over a 2m fence to play with the dog and the kids next door. Another dog was returned for a very similar thing. Dogs are social species. For those kept in isolation outside, don’t be surprised if the dog suddenly finds a burst of motivation to escape if there is something willing to play on the other. Of course, there are other emotions at work here. There is a reason those dogs are not secure in the house, often. Usually that is because they are destructive indoors. There can be different emotions behind that, but if one of them is boredom, don’t be surprised if a dog finds the outside way less boring because they can get out and make their own fun. Lack of supervision with a young, energetic, bored dog and you have a recipe for an escape artist. The desire to have fun and to play can be a very powerful motivator indeed for a social animal. If all that social fun is on the other side of the fence, then you have a situation where it is not unlikely a dog will decide to

What would pull Heston out of the garden again? Threat. If his barking and growling at the fence didn’t make the threat put some distance between them and the boundary, it’s not unreasonable to think that Heston might up his own level of threat.

If you watch anything like Ring, Mondioring, French Ring, IPO, Schutzhund with shepherds, you can see at the ‘Guard of Object’ trial how they take a dog who has been bred to stay put and use training to refine and hone those skills. Basically, the dog has to stay put on an object whilst an ‘attacker’ comes to retrieve it. Well-trained dogs will circle the object, staying right on top of it and only come off to attack when the threat becomes imminent. What makes them breach that invisible boundary? Threat. And then they return to base.

For some dogs, were a threat to come too close to the boundary, be it canine or human, then they would be more likely to go off territory to increase the distance between the threat and the territory. Mondioring and sports like this just capitalise on a fairly usual dog behaviour. It’s in the canine repertoire, and dog sports just capitalise on that, polishing and refining it.

Now, this is just a hypothetical situation. Heston is not that territorial that he’s ever likely to do that, but if there’s a bit of faulty wiring or a lot of stress, it’s not unreasonable to find dogs darting out of secure spaces to force a threat to make some distance, before they return once again to their territory. The aim of this behaviour is not to escape. It’s designed to protect a territory from threat. Territorial aggression and its relation to escape needs very careful management because the risks are very high. But how you address it may be very different than how you deal with a dog who is escaping to go and chase squirrels. One of those dogs is going to need a lot of motivation to stay put and one is going to need ways to minimise their sense of threat from the outside environment.

Aggression and predation, then, can be other factors that influence a dog’s behaviour around boundaries.

Most of these situations are ‘escape to’ situations, in which something over the fence is more attractive than staying put would be. Given the choice, it’s more appealing to get out. Fun, friends and fornication make up a lot of the reasons why a dog may escape.

But some of the harder cases to work with are cases where dogs are ‘escaping from’ something in the home. There are several conditions in which a dog may feel the need to escape from a situation, and many of these happen in great homes where the dogs should feel safe. Four of these behaviours present such a level of distress that they almost certainly will need some degree of professional support, be that from a vet or a behaviourist.

Containment phobia is one such phenomenon. This is the dog who hates to be confined to such an extent that it is a very real phobia or fear. This can be a biological instinct for self-preservation – feeling cornered often makes us fearful and anxious. We want to know where our escape routes are if we are under threat. If some kind human has gone to great lengths to make it impossible for us to escape if something startles us, that is going to add to our anxiety and our fear response. These are the dogs who may trash a crate or small room, but feel happier with an open house. I know there’s a view that crates create a sense of ‘den’ for dogs, but a locked crate is not a den that a dog can choose to get in or get out of… it is a prison. If you’re used to transporting dogs in transport crates, you’ll know the sound of a panicked dog who is frantically digging at the crate or biting it in hopes that something will give. It doesn’t happen often, but the frantic scrapes of a dog who will wear its claws to the quick to get out are not sounds you want to hear if you’re moving dogs about. Vet techs and vets will know these dogs too: the ones who panic in crates and on whom sedation rarely works. When we feel trapped, we’ll go to desperate measures to secure our safety, which is why a 5kg minpin trashed a crate that has safely housed a 45kg shepherd.

For some dogs, containment phobia isn’t just claustrophobia – an enclosed space doesn’t have to be small. These are the dogs who focus their destruction on doors and windows or on gates. It’s not just generalised distress, but a very focused, targeted destruction in panicked attempts to get out.

If you think you have a dog with containment phobia, you will see that whether someone is present or not. It may present as separation anxiety or isolation distress, but a dog who has a phobia of being confined will present that behaviour when they are in company or when you are home. Don’t get me wrong: this is not just a dog who doesn’t want to be in a crate or behind a door because they want to be near you. This is a dog who is panicking because they feel trapped. This is dogs who panic when they are confined or constrained, even on a lead sometimes. No one wants to see their dog upset and panicked. It is not a nice feeling at all. But this doesn’t mean you have to go through this alone. There are professionals out there who can help dogs (or any pet) who suffer from separation anxiety or stress. The sooner it is taken care of, the easier it should be for you and your pet.

It can be hard to work out the difference between containment phobia, desire to get IN to a room, desire to get OUT of a room, even to understand who is doing it if you live with a number of dogs. Video is your friend here, and the help of someone who can identify the probable motivation behind the behaviour.

As you can see from this image, there are lots of ways dogs can cause damage around doors. Want to tell me which one is caused by containment distress during a storm, which one was caused by a greedy dog getting into the place the food is kept and which one was caused by an over-excited dog who knew his owner was on the other side?

Just because your dog is causing damage near doors, gates or crates when unsupervised is nothing in itself. A good behaviourist is looking to understand the motivation behind the destruction and to understand exactly what is happening and when. They’re also looking for other behaviours that form a part of the habit. For instance, I’m working with a dog at the moment whose owner told me the dog suffered from separation anxiety. It had one symptom (escape was not part of it, nor destruction to doors) and when we videoed the dog, it turned out the dog was actually fine when alone. The behaviour was unrelated to anxiety from being left alone and was related more to lack of supervision at that time.

The moral is that you’ve really got to know what’s going on before you make a judgement.

Often, there’s evidence that containment phobia or distress at being confined is the result of a fearful dog having a one-off learning event in which they were confined. A very poor vet experience, poor crate training, being found roaming and trapped into a transport cage, being cornered, being moved about in a small crate or being kept in a small crate during trauma may cause this, but so can being confined during a storm or some other event that the dog considers to be traumatic. If the dog associates the fearful event outside the crate or space with the crate itself, then it may well panic if unable to escape.

The key thing here is that you will see this panic whenever the dog is contained or confined, or in a small space. Other than that, it may manifest similarly to separation anxiety or isolation distress. Attempts to escape are rooted in panic and a sense of relief from the choices the real world can have. If you’ve saved a streetie, you may find they panic in the home if they’ve only ever roamed. For dogs who have not been used to walls and doors, it can be very distressing to have an event occur that scares you and then not be able to get away, especially if your journey to your new home was also under stressful circumstances in a small transport crate. You can see how easily those things can be linked – the movement, darkness, other animals who are also afraid and the sense of confusion only happen when you are in the crate. It is rare, but increasingly more common because of the number of fearful free-ranging dogs being rehomed. How you deal with containment phobia or claustrophobia should only be worked on with a vet and a behaviourist if symptoms are extreme. For my dog Amigo, who hates storms and confinement, he copes with storms as long as he can find his own safe spot, but his symptoms are minor compared to some dogs I know.

Separation anxiety can also cause a dog to want to escape from confinement. It is not the fact that they are contained that they are fearful of, but the fact that they are not with you. Again, escape is only one factor in this and you will no doubt find other symptoms. Video is the quickest way to clear up whether your dog has separation anxiety or not. If your dog suffers from separation anxiety, you may also wish to get expert help. It is not easy to deal with on your own, and a planned programme is more effective than hit-and-miss attempts to help your dog feel secure. How you treat separation anxiety is different than containment phobia. One relies on teaching your dog to feel okay on its own. The other relies on teaching your dog to feel okay in confined or closed spaces. And the two behavioural labels are not mutually exclusive: it’s not uncommon to find dogs who have developed a sense of containment phobia because they associate it with separation.

Isolation distress is another reason a dog may seek company and seek to escape from a situation where they are on their own. Dogs are social species. Whether they feel most comfortable with their owner or are happy as long as there’s a familiar creature around, separation anxiety is different from a dog who just feels anxious because they are alone. Malena diMartini-Price, who wrote the excellent Treating Separation Anxiety in Dogs says that, often, mild cases of separation anxiety do not involve hyper-attachment to the owner (ie your dog isn’t trying to escape to find you specifically) but for my old mali, he certainly had isolation distress (any old warm body would do for company) but he also had some hyperattachment/shadowing, and his distress was certainly not mild – it is not mild when a 14-year-old dog who is crippled with arthritis will move furniture, destroy window fittings and break gates to come and find you. On the whole, though, I do tend to agree. Isolation distress is an easy rule-out as well. Is their behaviour different when left with a friend than it is when they are left alone? Tilly howls constantly when left alone, but sleeps in company. Amigo paces when alone, and sleeps in company. Though they are relatively mild symptoms, they are both relieved completely by being left with other dogs.

In most cases, a gradual and carefully planned programme of desensitisation will help your dog habituate to isolation, separation, small spaces or confinement. However, it is what you are desensitising them to that will change. No point desensitising a dog to small spaces if they are not claustrophobic, or to isolation if they are not distressed when alone.

With programmes such as these, it can also be easy to inadvertently sensitise the dog more to the situation, making them worse not better. You need a ‘Goldilocks’ of a programme: not too challenging, not too easy. That in itself can be hard to do, which is why for these four types of behaviour, working with somebody else will really help. Accidentally making the dog worse is not something you want to happen!

Just a final note on how you secure your distressed dog… I’m becoming less and less of a fan of invisible electrified boundaries (or even visible ones). For a dog who hups a fence in search of fun, the motivation to cross the fence in search of it can be huge. Because you’re pairing a negative stimulus that is then followed by a positive one, the negative stimulus risks losing all its power, as it’s just a clue that fun will happen. For a dog who hups a fence to escape from something, the shock also precedes the sense of freedom, and will not prevent a distressed dog from seeking out the relief of space. Negative experiences followed by positive ones may only serve to take away the power of the punisher. That means you’ll need more and more power to that punisher. Are you prepared to keep turning the level up and up until you reach the maximum?

Funnily, I was just watching Mondioring trainer Michael Ellis (I wanted a photo of mondioring object-guarding) and he talks about shock collars in the world of mondio. Now I don’t share aversive stuff (which is why you don’t have a photos of a mali guarding a stop sign with this post) but I do listen to trainers talking about the use of bad stuff, as I hope they listen to us about the use of good stuff. He talks about when they use shock and when they don’t, but he also talks about the accidental factor of causing superstition when you use electricity. He says, and I totally agree, that using electricity is like no other sensation a dog has, and he talks too about how that can inadvertently cause a dog to generalise about the wrong stuff. Because it is such a novel punishment, it has to be used so, so carefully – more carefully than I think most people are capable of doing, or more carefully than most dogs are able to experience.

I think that what he said about superstition is SO true of invisible fencing. Mostly, when a dog will approach a boundary is when it wants something on the other side. Now that may not be such a horrible thing if the dog is seeking a squirrel or a snake compared to if a dog who hates dogs has seen another dog on the other side of the fence. I have much less of a problem with Lidy the Lou learning that if she tries to chase a cat over the fence, she will get a bad thing happening than I do with Heston learning that every time he approaches the fence to bark at the postman or a dog on the other side. I absolutely do not want, at all, my dog to feel WORSE about stuff he already feels bad about. Now I’m not about to use shock on Lidy to tame her predatory instincts, but it would be way, way worse if I tried to use shock with Heston. Do you think he will feel BETTER about the bad stuff outside if I add shock, or WORSE? Imagine if, for some easily understandable reason, he comes to associate the passing dog outside the fence with a punisher such as a shock? Horrific learning consequence right there.

Not only that, electric fences are completely incapable of determining whether your dog is coming or going. If a dog goes over, how do they get back when their motivation to be inside the boundary wasn’t so great to begin with? If I ran off because of a storm, and the pain wasn’t big enough to keep me in, do you think I’ll risk crossing back again once the storm has gone? If I escaped to have fun with my mates and risked a shock to do it, do you think I’ll hup back over it to get back into a place I didn’t want to be in in the first place? Were they one-way, that’d be different than indiscriminately shocking a dog whether it’s coming or going. For the time it teaches the dog to use an invisible electric fence properly, you can easily have taught other behaviours. Makers of invisible boundaries – or even visible ones – don’t tell you that, do they? Nor do they make clear the risks associated with the fact that their fences don’t distinguish between coming or going. Now you don’t want them to go, that’s for sure, but if they do, you definitely want them to be able to return.

If your dog is reactive, fearful or aggressive towards things outside the boundary, a shock collar or electrified fence is not the answer. If they are attracted to the world outside and the shock is just a precursor to fun, don’t be surprised that they don’t feel motivated to come back under their own steam and if that threat of shock is enough to keep them out when it wasn’t enough to keup them in.

In the last three posts, I’ve been looking at some trainer stuff about how animals learn, and trying hard not to be too ‘techie’ when explaining the fallout of punishments, why positive training isn’t the easy option and why your training method might not be working. Today, it’s about the fallacy of ‘balance’ and why it’s so important not to mix and match your carrots and your sticks when training your dog. Whether that’s clipping their nails, training a sit, getting them to be okay in the car or even training for the ring … what follows is perhaps THE most important stuff you need to understand about why mixing and matching is going to fail.

In fact, it’s what you need to understand about all your training methods, even if all you do is try to stop your dog getting on the couch.

Trainers talk lots about punishers and reinforcers. We’ve got a bazillion words that all mean slightly different things… it’s so ridiculously technical that it makes little sense to the average pet owner.

Reinforcers can be primary reinforcers, secondary reinforcers, conditioned reinforcers, unconditioned reinforcers… sometimes we call them ‘rewards’, but that’s not always right, and we hear ‘click and treat’ a lot of which is also not really accurate… none of this helped by the fact that the original words for these things are often in Russian and nobody knows quite how to translate them accurately into English. This is not helped by the fact that they are not all good, but they still make you increase a behaviour. For instance, stopping the kettle whistling is not necessarily a good thing, but it increases your behaviour in taking it off the stove. When you start talking negative and positive reinforcement, it’s no wonder people’s eyes glaze over. Add a bit of maths in there with your S-deltas and your US and your CS and what you have is a minefield of psychology that makes great sense when you understand it and really makes animal training much easier, but is just geek stuff to the average owner.

Punishers or aversives also have a gazillion names, and not helped by the fact that they’re not all bad.

It gets more complicated by the fact there are positive reinforcers and negative reinforcers and positive punishers and negative punishers, and some trainers don’t like the word ‘punisher’, but ‘force’ isn’t quite right, and ‘aversive’ isn’t always exact, or ‘coercive’ is also not kind of right. The technical side of animal training is where science and semantics meet and have hideous, hideous octopus-like babies.

So for the sake of this, I’m taking Maureen Backman’s great explanation about “good stuff” and “bad stuff” when we’re talking about dogs. Good stuff starts. Good stuff stops. Bad stuff starts. Bad stuff stops. It’s not brilliant, but it’s clear and it avoids confusing and inappropriate attempts to translate from Russian into an English so obtuse you need a dictionary to understand it.

Good stuff implies everything your dog wants. That might be stuff it doesn’t need to be taught to like, such as food, sex and sleep. Or it could be stuff you’ve had to teach your dog to like, but your dog really, really likes now, such as balls and squeakers and ropes and petting and praise. It could be sensory, like tastes, sounds or smells. It is highly individual to your dog. And this ‘good stuff’ is highly dependent on your dog’s needs at that moment in time. Like smelling lady wee is ‘good stuff’ where Heston is concerned, except for those times when he can see a hare in a field. Then the field could be drenched in doggie lady wee and it would no longer be ‘good stuff’.

Good stuff to a dog is often bad stuff to a human, or at the very least, icky stuff to a human. Biting can be just wonderful to a dog. Biting and shaking toys is GOOD STUFF to a lot of dogs. Dissecting toys, cushions and furniture is GOOD STUFF to a dog. Chasing squirrels is GOOD STUFF. Barking, digging, jumping, stealing stuff and running away… it’s all GOOD STUFF to dogs. You know how it goes.

But it’s situational and it’s hierarchical. Heston doesn’t want to play tug when he’s tired. He doesn’t want paté when he’s over-aroused. He doesn’t want to chase rabbits if he can chase a deer. Chocolate is ‘good stuff’ to me, until I have eaten a box of chocolates in one go and I feel sick. Someone could offer me a box of my favourites and I’d flinch. Good stuff is individual and situation-specific. It’s based on need and function. What do I need right now? What function does doing this serve?

Bad stuff is things they don’t want. It can be stuff they have never been taught, like the smell of overly-strong perfume, or physical, like a kick, being swatted with a fly swatter or a ‘bop’ on the nose. It can be taught, like a verbal reprimand. It can be environmental, like a snake bite. It can be stuff that is sensory, like someone touching a paw, or the smell of onions. Like the good stuff, it has scales, from mildly unpleasant to the ‘heavy artillery’ such as shocks, chokes and prong collars. It is also individualised and situation-specific.

Whilst many things may be the same for most dogs, you don’t get to choose for your dog what they find good or bad. That said, there are generalities that are often true. Dogs aren’t so individual that some only like rolling on squashed frog and some only like rolling in stale caviar. I walked 10 dogs last Tuesday and every single one of them stopped and sniff-excavated the exact same spot (suspect wild boar had been visiting) and five of them rolled on the exact same spot. You’d have thought I’d have learned to avoid it!

As I wrote about last week, there are basically only four combinations of conscious learning:

Good stuff starts

Good stuff stops

Bad stuff starts

Bad stuff stops

That’s what’s known as ‘learning by consequence’, or operant learning. Yes, it too has a lot of different names and associated terminology. This is a higher cognitive process in some cases. It is not emotional learning. It is ‘switched on’ learning where the dog has learned how to operate their environment. If I do this, then this happens.

But there is another kind of learning – learning by association – that I want to write about today. This is Pavlov. You know, that guy who made dogs salivate by ringing a bell?

It’s emotional, reflexive, physiological learning. I’ve stuck emotions in there because they are reflexive and physiological. Can you control your anger? Yes, absolutely you can, but for animals, this is definitely something happening at a much higher cognitive level and it can be much more difficult. Does it happen at a physiological level? Yes absolutely. There are biophysical changes taking place as your neurons fire up and release hormones and neurotransmitters such as dopamine, serotonin, cortisol and adrenaline that course through your body causing a cascading sequence of physical responses. Can you stop them? If you are very, very mindful and emotionally intelligent.

Your dog? Not so much.

Your cat? Good luck with that.

Go ask a cat to control its anger and come back to me and show me your scars if you don’t believe me.

“Now, now Tybalt, no need to get angry. I just want you to get in the travel crate so I can take you to the vet…”

Can a setter control its joie de vivre? Can a beagle contain its delight at rolling in the grass?

Emotions are not so easy for us as humans to control. If you don’t believe me, go ask a primary school teacher how hard it is to teach on a day when there is a) wind b) rain c) snow d) a dog in the playground e) a wasp in the room.

Emotions make learning more complicated. Gold stars stop mattering when there’s a flutter of snow or a joyful labrador bouncing across the football pitch. Emotions can make learning really, really secure (I’ll never forget the science lesson where my friend Anne made me be the tail of a sperm…) Emotions embed learning and that can work in your favour or to your disadvantage. But what you can’t do is take them out of learning. Even operant, conscious learning has emotional effects, from the pleasure of satiation or play to the anxiety and fear inspired by punishments.

Emotions make learning inevitable and unavoidable. They lay down the tracks for information storage and retrieval in ways we haven’t even begun to comprehend.

If you’re a dog… even if you’re a highly trained dog… emotions sometimes get the better of you.

Just ask this Bolivian police dog

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJOxw2Wqtk0

Emotional learning is MASSIVELY powerful and we underestimate it all the time with ourselves and with our dogs. I just had a sip of cider – haven’t had cider for years – but the smell of it made me smile for the 14-year-old me who loved a bottle of Merrydown Cider whilst hanging around on street corners like a hooligan. It reeked of pleasure. I could have stuck my face in it and rolled in it, it was that nice.

But… A whiff of Thunderbird is still enough to turn my stomach, however, 30 years after I had to clear up a friend’s vomit.

When we learn by association, most of it is learned (so it’s a consequence – waaaah! Gordian Knot of Knowledge!) Pavlov didn’t need to teach dogs to salivate to the smell of meat, but he did need to pair the bell with the meat. Finally, the bell ringing meant the dogs were salivating even before the meat.

The key to learning that bells mean meat is to always put the meat after the bell.

You can’t put the bell after the dog eats the meat. That doesn’t work. They don’t learn that the bell predicts the good stuff.

You can’t put the bell thirty minutes before the dog eats the meat. That doesn’t work either. It’s too big a gap between the bell and the good stuff for a dog to connect the two.

You can’t put the bell on a random repeat and expect a connection. You can’t just ring the bell at random and sometimes give meat and sometimes not. That doesn’t work to make the bell a strong predictor of the good stuff.

You always, always have to pair up the bell and the meat (either simultaneously or with the meat slightly after the bell) and you can’t unlink that link. If you start ringing the bell without it meaning meat, the bell becomes meaningless. It is no longer a strong indicator of meat. It’s amazing how quickly that links breaks.

What is important is the sequence by which we teach dogs that everything is either good or bad.

If I want my dog to learn that the word ‘yes!’ means meat is coming, I need to make sure the word is ALWAYS before the food, not too far before the food and that it always, always (or as near as dammit) means food will come. Eventually, I’ll phase out the food, but until that word ‘yes!’ makes my dog wag its tail, I’m going to keep using the food.

Dogs are great at this stuff. They are such great clue-readers. Much of their life is spent working out the connections in the human puzzles that surround them to make sense of our world. Leads are predictors of walks. Boots are predictors of walks. Keys are predictors of walks. For me all of the following are a predictor that a walk may come… going to the toilet, putting socks on, brushing my teeth, putting my hat on, putting my coat on, locking the door with the dogs outside…

Now my dogs weren’t born knowing that if I put my boots on, I’m taking them for a walk. It’s come through the sequential pairing of these things.

Boots >>>> walk.

I never do it in reverse.

It’s not

Walk >>> boots.

The putting on of boots wouldn’t be exciting because it comes after the good stuff.

And when I wanted Heston to stop excitement barking before a walk, I put my boots on hours before a walk. And I took them off. I put them on. I took them off. I used other shoes. It’s easy to break the connection, but my boots still make Heston have a little leap of joy.

And that’s just my boots.

How powerful is this stuff that your boots can make your dog joyful?!

Worth stopping and taking that in;

You have the power to make stuff like boots and keys exciting to your dog. That is just so powerful. You can turn metal bowls and cars, brushes, fridges, cupboards, leads and harnesses into predictors of VERY GOOD DOG STUFF.

It works to take the unpleasant out of something that your dog doesn’t like as well. Can a muzzle make a dog jump for joy? Hell yes. Can you take those icky nail-clipping sessions and get your dog so excited that they can’t wait to give you their paw? Sure you can.

And it works the other way. Can you make keys a predictor of something unpleasant, like your absence? Absolutely. Can picking up your coat make your dog shake with fear? Absolutely yes. Can a phrase like ‘Be a good boy!’ make your dog start to drool with anxiety? Of course.

We do this all the time – consciously and unconsciously – with our dogs.

And when you start using it to your advantage, it is perhaps the most powerful teaching tool you have in your box, where emotions are concerned.

For Heston, boots = walk was causing him to be so over-aroused that I couldn’t get a sit or a down. Using this ‘if… then’ model Pavlov so kindly gave us, I can uncouple the association between the two events.

Eventually, I decoupled that ‘Boots >>> Walk’ thing because it was driving me mad him whining in anticipation of the one great highlight of his day.

There is a lesson here.

Association works backwards. Good stuff is preceded by random stuff. Eventually the random stuff comes to predict good stuff. It doesn’t work forwards. Heston does not care two iotas what I do after our walk. Unless…. the walk predicts something else after. Sometimes that’s pleasurable. When we get back to the car, I quite often get a ball out, and that infects the last two or three minutes of our walk, where the association between finishing a walk/seeing the car means ‘time for football.’

Positive stuff works backwards to ‘infect’ the cue with the same emotion. If you don’t believe me, go and pick up your dog’s food bowl or their lead. Whatever announces that good stuff will start becomes a massive cue for joy.

Like this:

Dustpan and brush >>>>> play bow and tummy tickle.

How does that work?

Every single time I sweep up, Heston races over and the sight of me bent over triggers a play response. He playbows me, he rolls over and I tickle his tummy. That is how you make a dustpan the most exciting part of your cleaning routine for a dog. It is an absolute predictor of another (taught) pleasure, a bit of a tummy rub.

And that works backwards. The things that regularly precede the now joy-making dustpan become a predictor of the sequence.

Broom >>>>> dustpan >>>>> playbow and tummy tickle.

Now the broom is the cue that finishes with a playbow. Thankfully the rest of my cleaning routine is random enough that Heston isn’t following me around like ‘come on… do the thing…’

But this association is how we teach dogs that neutral or meaningless stuff is a predictor of Very Good Stuff.

And we use it all the time in training. I’m doing it right now with Massimo, the black dog in the photo, and a muzzle and harness. He had a fear-aggressive response in the vet’s for his routine jabs. Fear is one of the best teachers of all. One sight of that muzzle and the memory of its connection with a time of trauma and Massimo was backed up in his kennel. Now my training goes like this:

Muzzle >>>>>>>>>> very stinky amazing cheese.

I don’t mess with the second thing. It’s always very stinky cheese. It is never ham, never paté, never peanut butter. If I want the muzzle to mean something, it always has to mean Very Good Stuff. And overripe French cheese is a great way to get a dog’s head in a muzzle. It is VERY GOOD STUFF to Massimo.

But… and here’s the kicker. It’s not a bribe. It can’t be presented before the muzzle. That muzzle absolutely has to be first, otherwise it won’t work. Even if it’s a nanosecond before, the muzzle is first, the cheese is second.

How many times do you think it took before the presentation of the muzzle got a jump for joy?

Two. By the second time I presented the muzzle, a week later, he was WHOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Muzzle me up, baby!

See how you can take something horrible for a dog, something terribly aversive, the worst of the “bad stuff” and make it into a cue for something fabulous?

We do this ALL the time with neutral or meaningless stuff…

• fridge >>>> treat for dog
• bowl >>>>> food for dog
• lead >>>>>>>>> walk
• boots >>>>>>>>>> walk
• open door >>> garden >>>> play session

In these ways, we turn something meaningless into something pretty cool for a dog. Once a dog catches on, you can capitalise on ‘jackpot’ learning, wherein that meaningless cue becomes a thing of excitement even if the reward doesn’t always follow. I did this inadvertently with Tilly and my cat Fox. Tilly was ambivalent about cats. She’d never lived with them. Fox was in the habit of stopping out all night. When he came to the window in the morning, I’d let him in and feed him. Tilly got his leftovers.

So it went …

cat eats >>>>>>>>>>> get leftovers

Then it went …

cat arrives at window >>>>> cat eats >>>>>>> get leftovers

Pretty soon, the appearance of the cat meant Tilly’s little stumpy tail was on overdrive. Six years on and she is STILL happy to see cats even though she has had six years without a jackpot catfood leftover bowl.

Learning by association is so super powerful that it’s mindblowing.

This is how you change something a dog doesn’t like into something they love. If you use head halters, collars, leads, harnesses, muzzles, coats… they’re not necessarily ‘good stuff’ to a dog. But you can make them into something good if what follows is pleasurable enough.

That’s why you’ll hear, “but my dogs LOVE their prong collars! They’re so excited when I get them out!” or “My dog loves the choker! He wags like mad when I put it on him.”

Yes. Because the good stuff of a walk means the prong collar is no longer ‘bad stuff’.

Take a moment to take that in. It’s really important.

That thing you are using as an aversive, as a punisher… has stopped being an aversive or punisher. It is no longer aversive. You have conditioned it not to be aversive.

Now….

You’re using that thing because you want the dog to understand that if it stops pulling, it stops being painful or restrictive (or unpleasant, if you have issues with those words). But what you have done by pairing it with Very Good Stuff is turn it into something that isn’t bad at all. You want it to be aversive. But if you pair it with a pleasurable thing, it has lost its aversive magic.

That is the whole point of aversives. They’re meant to be aversive. They aren’t meant to ‘Spark Joy’.

You get the idea if I talk about canes. They are meant to be aversive. Imagine if you’d only met canes in the bedroom, with a saucy vixen dominatrix. How much of a threat or aversive is a cane now if you’re threatened with it as a punishment for shoplifting? No aversive at all. You’d be all ‘ooh, Matron!’

So if you want your aversives to be truly aversive, and to remain aversive (ie to keep working), you have to never, ever hook it up with something pleasurable.  Not ever. This is why things like chokes and prongs stop being effective. Kind of weird why we use them with a dog’s primary Number 1 pleasure time – the walk, I know.

Now when I tell you about a local trainer who is using a “yank and jerk” choke chain to stop dogs pulling on the lead, and then using food alongside this to ‘reward’ good walking to heel, you can see why it’s totally and utterly ineffective to use the choke.

Yank and jerk >>>>>>>> food reward & relief from tight choker >>>>>>>>>> continue on walk.

They’ve taught the dog that yanking and jerking is an absolute predictor of some great dog Good Stuff.

In other words, there’s no point in the yank and jerk. You’ve rendered it powerless. It is simply a cue that good stuff is coming. In fact, you’re infecting that yank and jerk with a sense of pleasure. That’s why punishers often stop working if they are followed by good stuff.

If you’ve turned your bad stuff into good stuff by linking them together, is there any point in using the bad stuff to change behaviour?

Wouldn’t it be more simple to go straight to the good stuff?

You’ve added an unnecessary complication to your training.

This is a really, really simple, powerful concept. If you’re going to yank and jerk, do not, under any circumstance, follow it up with the reward of a pleasurable functional behaviour (like continuing the walk) or  – worse – something lovely like food. All you are doing is making your aversive less powerful, which means you’ll have to increase the force with which you use it, or the frequency of its use.

You can see why you’d THINK this would be kind of effective. I mean, it is a bit with humans. Threat followed by nice stuff if you behave nicely. Except the threat becomes meaningless if it’s always paired with the good stuff after. It just becomes something you tolerate to get to the good stuff. Like cold changing rooms before going swimming. This is especially true of animals.

That’s why there’s no “push/pull” in animal learning, there’s no “aversive/reward” sense of ‘balanced’ training that works with dogs. Stick an aversive before something pleasurable, and the bad stuff will simply become a signal that good stuff is on its way. If the bad stuff is no longer bad stuff, might as well stick a clearer non-aversive signal in there and go straight to the positive reinforcement corner, because like it or not, that’s what you’re doing.

This works in the opposite way too. When good stuff is ALWAYS followed by bad stuff, it starts to infect the good stuff by working back.

Lazy Sunday afternoons >>>>>>>> crappy job on Monday.

Sooner or later, you’re going to start feeling less relaxed on those Sunday afternoons, as the association of them with your Monday morning will infect your pleasure time. This is often how school phobia presents itself, by the way. I’ve got a friend with Seasonal Affective Disorder who starts getting depressed on the 21st June! The antipation of misery infects the very lovely long days and hours of sunshine. We do it automatically too, ‘rewarding’ ourselves after unpleasant stuff. Retail therapy and Friday night drinking sessions anyone? We set up our lives to make the predictable  bad stuff less bad, but often that predictable bad stuff infects the good stuff that comes before it.

Now dogs may very well live in the present moment, be unable to think into the future very much. They don’t plot or collude, make plans for their retirement. But they are better than many at working out IF blah, THEN blah.

How many vet visits did it take Massimo to end up hating vets, the vet room, the people who were in there with him, the muzzle, the harness and the needle? One. One single, horrible visit.

How many times did it take me nicking Tilly to make her hate me clipping her nails? One.

How many times did it take Tilly having food taken from her by a child to make her fearful of children? One.

These are what we call One-Off Learning events. And they work best with fear, though it works wonderfully with jackpots of amazing dog “good stuff” bounty as well.

Sometimes they build up slowly. Like what happens if you always pair cheese with the bitter aftertaste of a pill? Your dog will soon realise that you offering cheese is a clue that there’s a nasty pill in there.

So let’s think about that, because it has implications for reactive dogs, and I’m convinced it’s behind a lot of on-leash aggression.

Dog appears >>> yank on the lead, yelled at by owner.

How many times do you think it takes your dog to associate the appearance of another dog (especially if they have negative feelings about unfamiliar dogs anyway) and being choked, jerked, yanked or even told “no!”

The dog’s appearance is the cue for bad stuff to happen. It’s like if you see the police sitting outside your home. You don’t think “Yay!” (unless you have previously associated the police with all things wonderful), you think “oh no!”

And I think this is how using aversives with dogs who are ambivalent at best around other animals can turn that negative-neutral experience into something absolutely horrible.

So if we’re going to use bad stuff with our dogs, we have to be absolutely sure that we don’t put good stuff before it, otherwise it’ll poison the good stuff.

Imagine this neutral thing for a newbie dog: a car ride.

It’s perhaps meaningless to a dog. Perhaps it’s fairly unpleasant. You’re in motion, you’re confined. You can’t escape. It doesn’t make sense to you. To a dog, it might well feel like how we’d imagine an alien abduction to feel.

What comes next is vital.

Car ride >>>>>>> walk, play, agility class, amazing fun stuff.

or:

Car ride >>>>>>>>>> vet, groomer, nail clipper, sickness/vomiting

Now you see? That first car ride is an absolute predictor of Dog GOLD Standard GOOD Stuff. Cars = the best thing ever because whatever comes next = the best thing ever.

That second pairing has the potential to turn into Dog BAD STUFF. If your dog doesn’t like the vet, that is. If your dog loves the vets, then it goes into the first line with the amazing fun stuff. That’s what I mean about it’s the dog who chooses. But a dog who only thinks of the car as the precursor to the Most Amazing Dog Stuff isn’t going to connect the car with the trip to something aversive.

This gets even more complicated if you put good stuff after the bad stuff again.

See dog >>>>>>>> owner yells and jerks collar >>>>>>> owner says ‘sorry baby!’ out of earshot of other dog’s owner, and pets them out of guilt for being angry

What happens then is that the yelling is still just a precursor of good stuff so all that telling your dog off isn’t going to do anything other than be a great big, fat signal that you are going to give them some good stuff.

You can see then why the following scenario means the dog is paying no attention at all to the owner.

See dog >>>>>> owner yells “no!” several times and pulls dog back >>>>>>> owner says “good boy!” once the other dog has gone out of sight and their own dog has calmed down.

The last thing that happens is the important one. If you’re going to use punishment, don’t ever follow it up with anything that you’ve taught your dog means good stuff. Seriously. I can’t count how many dogs are messed up through techniques such as these. Either miss out the yanking and the yelling, or miss out the good stuff. You don’t need both, and using both is making one or the other meaningless and taking that tool right out of your box. What good is a conditioned punisher such as “No!” if it’s got no power? No wonder people end up having to dig out the heavy artillery of punishers: they’ve taught their dogs that the light infantry is a predictor of good stuff!

However, if you only use the car to take your dog somewhere they don’t want to go…  you know your dog is going to be quick to catch on that cars are vehicles of the devil.

So, a simple message at the end of all of this:

• Don’t always put bad stuff before good stuff, unless you want the bad stuff to become good stuff.
• Don’t always put good stuff before bad stuff, or your bad stuff will end up poisoning your good stuff.

Either way, you render what comes first powerless as a reward or a punishment.

If you’re going to do either of the things above, don’t do them in the same time span. Make absolutely sure that you use the first thing out of pair with the second so that your dog doesn’t use one as an omen or portent of the next. For me, this means I get to keep a sharp “no!” as a very effective punisher, because I’ve not taken all the power out of it. Likewise, I can make ‘bad stuff’ like muzzles, nail clipping, vaccinations, pill-taking, ear cleaning and eye wiping into something quite delightful. You don’t need to see a video of Tilly skipping when I get the ear pads out, because ear pads ALWAYS mean paté, in order to see the logic in that.

Finally, though, you can see why I am skeptical of ‘balanced’ training methods. They are often confusing and make poor pairings unless they are used in a skilful way that doesn’t accidentally end up removing the power of an aversive or poisoning the food. Balance, especially in the same learning moment, flies in the face of how animals learn. If you are a trainer who uses aversives, be open about it and keep the cookies out of class. Be mindful though that dogs are very good at working out what’s present in the environment when they receive a punisher, and that can be working out that you are the common denominator.

Handler appears >>>>>>>>>>>> bad stuff happens

Owner gets home >>>>>>>>>> get shouted at

If you want a good relationship with your dog, using aversives can really poison your relationship as by pairing yourself by something unpleasant, you’ve ‘infected’ your dog with the fact that your appearance predicts bad stuff.

I don’t guess many of us want our appearance to mean our dog is filled with negative emotions?

And if you do, I guess what I am trying to say is that if you want your dog to fear you and to associate you with bad stuff, then make sure you keep the good stuff out of class. Your dog might turn around and bite you, but I guess you know that already. If you consistently arouse negative emotions in your dog, don’t be surprised if they then have nothing keeping their teeth in check.

But if you want a good relationship with your dog, don’t confuse your dog by removing the power of your bad stuff and poisoning your good stuff. Be clear, keep them distinct. Mixing and matching is perhaps the most damaging thing we can do to our training and the one thing we really, really haven’t got our head around.

Long, but a crucial and very misunderstood reason why punishers and reinforcers can sometimes become totally ineffective. If you ask me, it’s the most fundamental part of teaching your dog, and it is so powerful in a ‘holy crap’ kind of way that it is something you don’t want to get wrong.

Next time: some accidental poisonings and removing of Kryptonite that we do in our everyday lives through accidental pairing of stuff that we can un-do by breaking the association.