Last night, a lovely friend sent me a video of a dog she is thinking of taking on. The dog was staring at the light and shadow patterns on the floor in the home and trying to catch them. This behaviour, often known as light or shadow chasing, is part of a suite of other behaviours that I realised I’ve never written about. These behaviours, depending on a number of factors, might be known as stereotypies or compulsive behaviours. Sometimes you may hear these behaviours referred to as ‘Canine Compulsive Disorder’.

These behaviours might include:

• circling: pacing or running in circles
• tail chasing: attempting to chase and bite their own tail
• mutilation: repeatedly biting and damaging body parts including limbs, feet, flanks and tails
• licking and nibbling (also causing acral lick dermatitis and granuloma) : repeatedly licking or nibbling body parts including limbs, feet, flanks and tails
• fly snapping: trying to bite invisible flies
• light or shadow chasing: trying to catch moving light reflections
• trancing: walking slowly backwards and forwards under plants or soft furnishings
• licking non-nutritional surfaces like walls, beds

In reality, stereotypies can include a much wider list than these behaviours, but most of these would be considered normal under usual circumstances, so I don’t want to get alarmist and send hundreds of people to the vet in search of a behaviour consultant, medication or a veterinary behaviourist. However, behaviours such as masturbation and humping can also take on elements of stereotypy.

How would you know if your dog has a stereotypy?

The first thing is that the behaviour is usually seen as a movement that is repeated over and over again in largely the same manner.

Is Lidy’s circling before we go out for a walk a stereotypy? I’d say not. It is repeated and it is practically an identical circle each time, but it’s the last 30 seconds before we go out for a walk.

Is Heston’s fly snapping a stereotypy? No, because there are actual flies.

They can occupy a large part of the animal’s wake time. This was why the first thing I asked my friend was how long the dog spent trying to chase shadows every day. If a dog is suddenly excited by the reflection of their collar tags on a sunny day, that’s a lot different from a dog who spends hours every day performing the same ritualised behaviour. Stereotypies can often be difficult, if not impossible to interrupt.

Sometimes they might not be evident to us. How do we know whether licking is a stereotypy if the animal never damages themselves or we don’t see it?

Stereotypies are not only repetitive and largely unvarying, they are also unproductive. What I mean by that is that they don’t seem to have a purpose or a function. This is one reason a medical rule-out is necessary. Another friend’s dog has just had surgery on his foot and it reminded me of a dog we took into the shelter a few years ago who’d licked most of the fur off his hind leg. A quick x-ray showed that he had an infection in the bone and some necrosis. Removing the metatarsal and a heavy dose of antibiotics and the ‘stereotypy’ stopped. In other words, his licking and nibbling had a function. It was a site of pain and just like scratching an itch, it was perhaps comforting, perhaps an attempt to remove the pain, perhaps both.

Even things like fly snapping can have underlying medical causes. For dogs who have a lot of ‘floaters’ – you know those moving pieces you sometimes seem to get on the surface of your eye – you can see how that could be interpreted as a fly you can never catch.

Ruling out medical causes is vital. Even things like licking walls and beds can be underpinned by health issues. Licking non-nutritional surfaces is a symptom sometimes seen in dogs who have gastrointestinal problems such as irritable bowel syndrome and chronic pancreatitis (Bécuwe Bonnet et al. 2012). When Amigo used to occasionally lick the plastic of his dog bed, a quick chat with the vet and some stomach pills sorted him right out. Even things like compacted anal glands can lead to behaviours that seem stereotypical in nature. Tilly’s ‘froggie tongue’ or repetitive air licking was always a signal that she had an upset stomach as well.

It can really help the vet to know if the behaviour is directed at a specific body part, which can indicate something going on beneath the surface. If you’re going to the vet because you have a problem behaviour, make sure you explain how frequently you see the behaviour and when you see it. Vets aren’t good at guessing what’s wrong if you don’t tell them this is happening for three hours in a row.

It’s not unusual for the vet to clear the dog and say there’s nothing wrong with their eyes, their stomach, their anal glands or their bones. Usually, stereotypies are seen in captive animals who don’t have opportunities to forage or behave naturally, so your vet might have a point. You’re no doubt aware that seeing stereotypies is one of the most alarming signs of poor welfare in zoos, for instance, but it can also happen in farm animals too, as well as animals in lab. Keeling and Jensen (2002) say that stereotypies often occur when animals are prevented from performing ‘normal and strongly motivated behaviour patterns’, for example behaviours related to foraging or exploration. For this reason, working with a behaviour consultant who has a strong understanding of species-specific behaviours can really help.

Keeling and Jensen also point out that prey species who spend a lot of time foraging tend to develop oral behaviours, and predatory species like dogs tend to develop motor patterns like circling and pacing. That said, we’ve tinkered so much with dogs in making breeds that we also need to talk about genetic factors. I will talk about solutions later, but poor welfare and lack of opportunity to do ‘dog stuff’ isn’t the only other thing to rule out besides current medical health.

For instance, if I tell you that one of the behaviours is most often seen with shepherds, in particular the German shepherd, you’ll begin to see what I mean. In kennels, German shepherds, and sometimes Malinois or Dutch shepherds, can start tail chasing. If someone tells me their dog is chasing his or her tail, I’d put money on a shepherd or a terrier. Not something we often see in the shelter, but if someone tells me they have a dog chasing lights and shadows, it’s often a setter or a spaniel. Funnily enough, when I said this to my friend who’d sent me the video, she told me of a friend of hers who’d had an Irish setter who’d done the same. Setters, springers, sprockers, cockers, Brittany spaniels and all their cousins do seem to have a thing about repetitive behaviours.

Other breeds seem to go more for specific body parts. I’ve had three German short-haired pointers who had repetitive behaviours related to their feet and pads. It’s well-documented about flank sucking in the doberman. Collies are another breed who tend to fall into light and shadow chasing. Trancing seems to be an English bull terrier or greyhound thing.

That said, for every breed, there are outliers and anomalies. I’ve seen cockers trancing and flank sucking in many other dogs beyond the doberman.

My personal opinion is not that dogs have a genetic predisposition to develop stereotypies as such. Any dog can develop compulsive behaviours. That said, fearful natures can be inherited and there can be comorbidities with fearfulness in my experience. Also, geneticist Elaine Ostlander and her team have done a lot of work on the genetic factors behind canine compulsions. I do think, however, that when particular breeds are distressed for a number of reasons that I’ll explore shortly, or they’re not getting their needs met, or they’re in ill health, then these underlying issues tend to appear in oddly predictable ways.

Often, stereotypies appear early in life (Tiira et al. 2012) and can be present from 3-6 months, so it’s important to make sure you pay attention to your dog’s wellbeing during this time. There’s a little evidence in that same study that stereotypies can be more prevalent in dogs removed too early from their mother, suggesting developmental causes alongside genetics and nurturing.

Of course, being in a shelter, you can see many of these behaviours. Stressful experiences and change can often trigger these repetitive behaviours. For some dogs, they seem to be a way of coping. Lidy self-regulates by circling and pacing, as many of her Malinois brethren do. Thus, stress – whether acute or chronic – can worsen stereotypies. Stress doesn’t necessarily need to be some kind of traumatic experience: anticipation, frustration and excitement can also contribute to stereotypies. We’ve had a number of dogs who’ve damaged their tails (all malinois or shepherd crosses) either by chasing them or biting them who’ve had to have amputations, all of whom presented with some pretty sad and disturbing behaviour in the shelter, often despite being medicated, who went on to show those behaviours very rarely in the home. I’m also going to mention coprophagia here as well, as we see this as a sterotypy in the shelter too.

So what do we do when we recognise our animal might have a sterotypy or compulsive behaviour?

The first thing to do is accept that it’s usually multi-factorial. There are usually a number of contributing factors to the development of stereotypies including genes, personality, underlying medical factors, environmental triggers and behavioural consequences. No one thing will usually resolve your dog’s behaviour in entirety. There are no quick fixes and there may need to be many things to trial.

The second thing is create a journal. This doesn’t have to be very long, because these behaviours often cause welfare issues. However, a journal of two or three days is a good starting point.

Note how long the dog performed the behaviour. Note if you or any other individual (including your animals) tried to intervene, and how the dog responded. Note any variations. Then take the dog to the vet. A journal also helps you look back and see accurately and without bias whether there has been progress or not. There can be set-backs when dealing with stereotypies or compulsions, and it can be hard to see that in fact, it’s not actually as bad as it used to be. Also, we tend not to see that 20 minutes has now turned into 2 hours as we get used to the deterioration.

The vet may rule out underlying medical conditions or they may not. You may find that even if they give you treatment for a very clear medical condition, the dog continues to perform the behaviour – just less than they did. This may not be a sign that the cause hasn’t been treated, just that repetitive behaviours become habitual and it ends up being just what the animal does. Even if you get treatment or surgery, you will probably need to work with a behaviour consultant to make some changes to the dog’s life that minimise the chance of the dog reverting to that behaviour under stress.

One thing I often find is that if the dog has had a behaviour where they have been nibbling, licking or biting themselves, even if they haven’t damaged their skin, regrowth can cause a tingling sensation that can cause the stereotypy to recur, so it’s worth discussing a trial of anti-inflammatories or mild sedatives with your vet.

Know as well that behaviours can recur under stress in the future, even if the dog has had a long period of behavioural remission. Be mindful that sudden and stressful events can cause the behaviour to return.

Once you have sorted out appropriate treatment or ruled out medical causes, it’s time then to have a really good look at the animal’s life. A dog who is anxious or fearful a lot of the time may benefit from a consultation for behavioural medication. Clomipramine or Clomicalm has had a number of trials with dogs who have stereotypies such as tail chasing (Moon-Fanelli and Dodman 1998)

There may be a benefit to checking out your dog’s diet anyway, as some small studies have found that vitamin supplements have decreased performance of compulsive behaviour. We’re learning so much about the gut microbiota and behaviour but the fact that a number of these behaviours correlate with poor intestinal health is one sign that diet is worth investigating. As always, diet is never going to cause an instant change in your health and behaviour, so effects may be gradual. Ok, those Haribo sours make me high as a kite, but the spinach I eat to improve my iron levels isn’t going to turn me into a well-adjusted person any time soon. Some foods may have an instant effect where others may take their time. Still, Tiira et al. (2012) did find that some compulsive behaviours decreased when the dog was given supplements.

We tend to think that such behaviours are medical or genetic, rooted in welfare and coping skills, and that can lead us to overlook the consequences of the behaviour for the dog, making it very difficult to extinguish the behaviour completely.

It’s very important when you’re doing the journal to make sure you take a video of the dog when you are not present. It sounds odd, but some dogs increase their behaviour as it gets attention. Even if you are telling the dog off or you are just looking at the dog, this can reinforce behaviour and you will need to be aware of that. If the dog does less of the behaviour when you’re not present, then that tells you something important: you are a factor. Sometimes, it can be that we inadvertently contribute to the stress of others around us. Other times, it’s purely that we’ve laughed at the terrier chasing their tail or we’ve not realised that we pay attention to the dog every time they do the behaviour. One thing I saw with the video my friend sent me was that every time the person holding the camera spoke, the dog moved position. Professor Susan Friedman gave the example of a flank-sucking doberman in her Living and Learning with Animals course… a behaviour often seen as ‘purely’ genetic. What video showed was that the dog sucked their flank more when the guardians were present than when they were absent. This is vital information. Our relationships are a factor we need to consider. One tail chasing dog in our shelter only span when people passed his kennel. At other times, he was relatively calm. It may be a coping mechanism but we still need to rule out our own involvement in the situation. This can be tough, so a behaviour consultant will be better placed to help you decide, and to understand just how your behaviour is influencing the situation.

Other times, dogs have performed more stereotypies in the absence of company. This usually has two mechanisms. The first is that our presence has stopped the dog doing the behaviour as much. We’re a punisher. I don’t mean to say we’re smacking the dog or reprimanding them, just that our presence might reduce behaviours and the dog then is more able to do what they feel the need to do when nobody is present.

Our presence can also be comforting to the dog and relieve some of the stress. Many people who call me when their dog has what appears to be a compulsive behaviour, we do need to rule out separation-related behaviours if the dog is doing more of it when the guardian is absent. However, as I said in the last paragraph and here, our presence can either simply inhibit the dog or can even comfort the dog. It might be nothing at all to do with their inability or ability to cope without us.

Besides our presence inadvertently reinforcing the behaviour, punishing the behaviour or removing the need to perform the behaviour, dogs can also be performing the stereotypy for their own internal reinforcement. Injuries and locomotion cause the body to release opioids and endorphins. I can attest to this having done a marathon with shin splints and a dodgy Achilles. Locomotion can be stimulating in itself. Many of us have little repetitive behaviours that we don’t even notice, from hair flicking and touching to finger tapping to tapping our feet. I’m a compulsive shredder. Some days, I find little piles of the tag from my tea bags in a little pile next to my laptop and I have no idea how they even got there, shredded into tiny, tiny pieces. This might explain, though, why dogs removed too early from their mothers can be at risk of developing stereotypies. What we know from rats is that maternal licking builds more robust offspring. Perhaps if dogs are removed too early from the home or they have mothers who do not care for them in the way they should, they may be less able to cope with life’s little stresses. Who knows? It’s not beyond doubt, however.

Knowing the causes is essential. Only when you know the causes can you effectively and efficiently reduce compulsive behaviours. Otherwise, it’s a bit like throwing spaghetti at a wall and hoping something will stick. If your dog needs medication, a change in diet or dietary supplements, if they have underlying anxieties or maladaptive responses to stress where behavioural medication may help, if you try and deal with your dog’s behaviours without these, you are likely to be much less effective than you could be. Since stereotypies are a welfare issue, it’s vital we deal with these quickly and effectively otherwise we are prolonging our dog’s suffering. Just because the dog doesn’t seem to be in pain or suffering from spending 4 hours a day chasing shadows in the kitchen doesn’t mean that it’s a harmless activity.

Likewise, if your dog’s behaviour is caused by them seeking sensory stimulation, if it is related to coping with stress or if it is related to your presence, if you don’t understand an aspect of this, you’re less likely to find that one piece of spaghetti that really will stick to the wall. If you want a resolution, you absolutely have to have an understanding of the many factors currently contributing to your dog’s behaviour.

Once you understand the problem, you can work with your vet and a behaviour consultant to manage the behaviour, to modify it and to medicate if necessary.

Management may involve preventing the dog from accessing places where they perform the behaviour, or using things like Elizabethan collars to stop them chewing their tail or flank sucking. It might involve shutting the curtains on sunny days, removing collar tags or jewellery that’s causing light to dance, even preventing your dog from accessing the yard on brightly lit days, or only accessing parts of the garden where there are no shadows moving. Management doesn’t prevent the need to perform the behaviour, however, so muzzling, restricting the dog, removing lights and shadows won’t stop your dog. We had to unfortunately amputate the tail of a dog who was damaging their tail in the shelter. The vet said at the time that removing the dog’s tail wouldn’t change much and the dog might then refocus on other body parts. Behavioural medication and anti-inflammatories played a large role in management and treatment too.

Management can also involve providing environmental enrichment for the dog. For me, this is one of the key ways to treat stereotypies and compulsions. The right level of physical activity, the right level of mental stimulation, plenty of opportunities to be more dog, and you’ve got a dog who’ll cope better. That might involve social relationships and friendships. I suspect my friend’s home with her two dogs will reduce the light chasing of the dog in the video she sent me. Plus, my friend has dogs who are dogs. They go on long walks, they smell, they do dog things. It’s very hard with busy, working dogs to offer them the level of support that will meet their needs, and I think there’s a clear correlation between dogs bred for work and the performance of some of these behaviours. French Brittany spaniels and setters are ‘busy’ dogs, like collies can be… a sedentary, sedate life is one that some find it hard to cope with. Overdoing the physical exertion can make things much worse, so offering lots of dog-specific enrichment is an absolute essential. My little cocker Tilly did not have stereotypies when she arrived, but she was a nervous, aggressive, piddling ball of anxieties… Being more dog and having a good bond with me turned her into an almost well-adjusted dog. Even so, for a lazy little spaniel, she still had more stamina for enrichment activities than any other dog I’ve ever had (including three malinois!) and therefore a book like Allie Bender & Emily Strong’s Canine Enrichment for the Real World is an absolute boon. Think of your dog’s social relationships, their ability to play interactively, their bonds, their mental enrichment, being more dog… Play can often meet our dog’s needs, and I find that many dogs with stereotypies have developed them in lieu of other dogs or people who’ll interact with them. I find that really sad. Play is a very underestimated cure for many ailments, but it has to be interactive. Dogs are social species, and a lot of their malaise can come from a lack of appropriate social contact. This doesn’t mean solely play with other dogs. Play with humans can be just as fulfilling. I’ll never, ever forget Lidy’s first morning at home. Despite having been three years in the shelter with all kinds of dogs, she had never played with them. I’d never even seen her try to play with another dog, though she’d played often with me. The first thing she did with Heston that first morning was try to play with him. She plays like someone who has brought knives and throwing stars to the playground, but even so, the fact that she tried to engage in a bit of conspecific play for the first time in three years showed me that she finally felt safe. Dogs, like humans, aren’t designed to be starved of relationships.

Watching dogs with stereotypies can be hard. It can also be something we laugh at and don’t understand because we fail to see what it is. Understanding these maladaptive behaviours for what they are is the first step in addressing them. Stereotypies are often multifactorial. It’s not just a case of throwing the dog a stuffed Kong from time to time. It’s so much more than that. It’s not something that you can often deal with in isolation, though I’ve known dogs with stereotypies in the shelter stop them completely when moving to a home. If you’ve got a dog who is exhibiting any of these behaviours, you might need to work with a team of people including your vet and a behaviour consultant, but prognosis is often very good when you do.

My book Client-Centred Dog Training: 30 Lessons for Dog Trainers to get Maximum Engagement from Your Clients is out now

References:

Bécuwe-Bonnet, V., Bélanger, M., Frank, D. et al. (2012) Gastrointestinal disorders in dogs with excessive licking of surfaces. Journal of Veterinary Behaviour 7:4 pp.194-204

Keeling, L. and Jensen, P. (2002) Behavioural disturbances, stress and welfare in Jensen, P. (ed) The Ethology of Domestic Animals. Wallingford: CABI

Moon-Fanelli, A. A., and Dodman, N. H. (1998) Description and development of compulsive tail chasing in terriers and response to clomipramine treatment. Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association 212:8 pp.1252-1257

Tiira, K., Hakasalo, O., Kareinen, L et al. (2012) Environmental effects on compulsive tail chasing in dogs. Plos One. 7:7

I doubt that there is a single person in the world who thinks that they are either the direct cause or the indirect cause of their dog’s behaviour, but the reality is that there are numerous ways we can worsen our dog’s problem behaviours or even cause them. I want to take all the blame out of every single one of these because I’m absolutely sure that not a single one of us would like to think we’re worsening our dog’s problems and that we wouldn’t do better if we knew how.

So what type of behaviour am I talking about?

You name it… digging, escaping, barking, barking at the neighbours, trying to catch invisible flies, shadow chasing, self-mutilation, over-arousal, over-excitement, chasing animals on the TV, puppy and adolescent biting, separation related behaviour, fearfulness, reactivity and even aggression.

None of this is to say that it’s our fault. None of this is to say it’s actually things we could do anything about. This post isn’t about apportioning blame… it’s just an explanation of how we can sometimes contribute to our dog’s problems.

#1 Accidental cues

Cues are just signs for dogs. They tell dogs that stuff is about to happen and allow them to predict the things that come next. For instance, when I switch the lights out, my dogs head for the bedroom. They know what happens next. When I put my earphones in to start an online class, that’s a cue that I won’t be playing tug with them anymore. Cues show dogs that stuff will happen and that it won’t.

Generally speaking, this is not problematic for our dogs. We do hundreds of predictable things that help them work out what will happen.

Where it becomes a problem is where that cue releases an emotional cascade that only stops when another predictable thing happens. For instance, every morning when we get up, the first thing I do is take the dogs out. Thus, everything I do from waking up to brushing my teeth to putting my boots on (and especially putting my boots on!) adds to my dogs’ excitement because each thing I do is a cue that predicts a walk. The only thing that brings the excitement down is… going for the walk.

Likewise when I pick up my car keys. This is the cue that says the next predictable thing that will happen will be going on a car journey, which my dogs love. Thus, the longer between picking the keys up and getting out of the house, the more excitement, anticipation and frustration that causes, only stopping when we’re in the car and on our way.

It’s not all about good emotions, either. If I go out of the front door and shut it behind me, Lidy panics. She’ll then spend the intervening time trying to find ways to cope with her panic which is only brought to an end when I return.

Worse, for some of my clients and even for some of the dogs who’ve lived with me, that panic may be anxiety that isn’t based on the occurrence of a particular behaviour or event. For instance, lightning made Flika panic and generally her panic didn’t subside until well after any thunderstorms had stopped.

Dogs can be very good at backchaining too, where they pick up the previous cue in the chain. For example, it used to be just my boots that triggered excitement. Then it was putting my socks on before my boots. My dogs can’t be the only ones in the land who are delirious with joy when I go for a pee, I’m sure.

That’s the other thing… Dogs are very contextual learners, so they know the difference between that first toilet trip and the rest during the day. It’s not always true: I can’t even move my car keys without unleashing mayhem.

Our accidental cues can become triggers for behaviour that the dog cannot control. The more predictable they are, the harder it can be to reduce the behaviour. These accidental cues are often the problem behind separation-related behaviour but also behind excitement-related behaviour.

In trainer speak: is Pavlov causing your client problems?

#2 Accidental reinforcement

If dogs do stuff, I hate to say this out, but it’s probably because it’s reinforcing to them. It means that for one reason or another, that dogs do stuff that nets them specific things.

Not all of these specific things are good: it might help them escape or avoid stuff too.

Not all of these things are visible, either. Sometimes dogs do stuff because it helps calm themselves, it helps them manage their frustration or it helps them soothe themselves.

Dogs behave because that behaviour leads them to get stuff they want or need… when Lidy claws me with her great big paws, it’s because sometimes, it nets her affection and petting. When Heston comes and stares at me around 3:50, he knows more often than not, it nets him his dinner. Or, at least he thinks it does. Animals can have superstitious behaviours too.

Virtually all of my clients who have dogs with aggression issues have dogs who’ve found that aggression is very, very effective at making stuff NOT happen. Growling makes hands back off. Barking at the neighbours makes them spring back from the fence. Biting the vet is a quick way to stop them manipulating them. Nipping the groomer is a quick way to stop them grooming you.

If it worked, dogs are likely to do it again.

There can be very weird and wonderful behaviours that are reinforced by things we do. You perhaps wouldn’t think that a dog who barks at a window is actually doing it to get your attention.

Quick test: video your dog when you’re out and tell me if they react as frequently or as dramatically when you’re not there.

I know so many dogs whose alert and alarm barking at noises outside is very much connected to what the family do after the dog barks. It’s one reason I suspect that my alert and alarm barking protocol in the link above is very effective. The dog isn’t barking for food. They’re barking a) to make stuff stop in a superstitious fashion and b) they’re barking because they want us to notice the scary stuff.

Of course, it may not simply be our behaviour when dogs bark that gets our attention that’s causing the problem if your dogs bark less when you’re out. Remember that if you engage at all with the dog – if you physically interrupt them by moving them away, if you tell them off, if you pull them away, if you tell them how ace they are, if you look at them even – that’s all attention that can be altering what your dog does. Being told off is just attention to the dog. The other problem can be, though, that our presence is a confidence boost to an anxious or fearful dog. Our presence motivates the dog to bark when they wouldn’t if we weren’t there.

Even if you don’t reinforce the dog every single time, it can be really challenging to eradicate this behaviour, and the sporadic reinforcement actually makes it harder to kill the behaviour. One experiment in the 1970s with a chimpanzee had 1 reinforcer for 57000 behaviours. No, that’s not an error. That’s like you hitting the coffee machine button 57000 times to make a coffee come out.

Humans are so often involved in building behaviours, including if we’ve laughed at a dog for humping, if we’ve encouraged them, if we interact with them at all. I do know dogs who chase TV shapes or only bark at animal noises on TV when their guardian is there…. we simply have no comprehension of just how much our behaviour affects our dogs.

The quickest way to find out is to video your dogs when you’re not there but the triggers that cause the behaviour are there. In other words, what happens when the schoolkids next door go past the house when you’re not in. Does your dog still go nuts? What happens when people pass your car and you’re not in it. Does your dog still bark?

The saddest thing is that this can often happen with dogs who engage in stereotypical, compulsive or even self-mutilating behaviour. Sometimes, dogs can cause a lot of damage to themselves that is sometimes worsened by what we do when the dog is doing it. For one dog, every time he’d start snapping at invisible flies, the guardian would intervene. Video showed that the dog did it much less when the guardian wasn’t there. What that tells us is that what the guardian did was in some way reinforcing for the dog. For that specific guardian, they were interrupting the dog and inadvertently giving the dog a way to get their attention.

Alternatively, we can also be an accidental punisher. For instance, my boy Heston, since he started on phenobarbital two years ago, has become a stomach on legs. When I go out, he nips into the kitchen to help himself. Now I have never punished him for countersurfing or impromptu foraging, but the clear evidence is that, whether I like it or not, my presense inhibits his kitchen foraging.

In trainer speak: have you ruled out all reinforcement including human interaction, and have you ruled out human presence as an establishing event? Have you also ruled out if the human is acting as a purposeful or accidental punisher if the behaviour only happens in their absence?

#3 Accidental vacuums in guidance and training

Not vacuum cleaners. That would be weird.

Here, I’m talking about the fact that our dogs sometimes do stuff in lieu of guidance from us. In other words, they go Full Dog because we’ve not taught them how to not be Full Dog or because we’ve not given them other things to do.

You remember my tale about the mental spaniels who chased my car down the hill? That’s an accidental vacuum in both guidance and in training. Perhaps the dogs have never been taught what to do when something happens (and bless my little Lidy yesterday morning who is in the process of learning to stand between my legs when she sees a cat, who, as I was bent over trying to poop scoop holding a torch in my mouth – do NOT ask! – saw a cat and did that very thing, smashing the torch into my nose and causing me to drop both the poop and the poop bag and then the torch in the poop… and then expected a sausage for the privilege of ALL THE POOP ON EVERYTHING) or the dogs haven’t had guidance that said, ‘oh, you mean NOW as well??! Ok!’

Flika, for instance, would go nuts at any passing car that had the audacity to slow down in front of our house. If I didn’t call her away (with the purposeful reinforcer of biscuits, natch) she would happily run up and down along the gate barking.

In trainer speak: have you got competing schedules of reinforcement or has the behaviour not been proofed in a variety of contexts?

#4 Accidental lack of management

I’m guilty of this. In the car, we have two lengths of harness attachment for Lidy. One is short for sitting-up kind of journeys. It’s not long enough to let her lie down or move, but it’d stop her slamming around if I crashed. It keeps her on a literal short lead. Then there is a longer attachment for longer journeys so that she can lie down. That one, however, gives her more space to get into trouble should anyone stick a hand through Heston’s slightly open window. In other words, I don’t want her on a long attachment in the car should people get too close to the car. Yet sometimes I forget to switch from the long to the short if I pull up for petrol or for a snack break.

It’s human nature to give our dogs more freedom than we probably should. We let them off lead, we take them to the vet without a muzzle, we don’t have some kind of secure gate if the front door is open that stops our dogs dashing out into the garden. We get lucky more than we should, and we take our foot off the pedal. It can feel like we don’t trust our dog or that we’re not giving them adequate freedoms.

I always say they’re dogs. The only thing I trust is a very, very long training history. They’re going to be dogs, and we’re just lucky if nobody gets harmed as a result. Dogs gonna Dog. It’s up to us to manage it.

In trainer speak: is the dog living in a secure environment where there are two lines of protection?

#5 Accidental failure to acknowledge we’ve got a dog

This sounds terrible, doesn’t it? How do we forget we’ve got a dog?

Yet people do it all the time.

They also forget that they’ve got a specific breed or a specific type of dog, and that specific breed comes with specific behaviours that are more of a tendency than they’d want.

We forget to put in enough enrichment into our dogs’ daily lives. We forget that enrichment involves social needs and interactive play needs. Or we forget that our dogs have mental needs as well as physical needs.

We forget that our previous puppies were arseholes through their teen years. We forget how hard puppy training is.

Worse still, no matter how informed we think we are when we get our first dog as adults, we are never informed enough. We don’t know enough about canine body language, about canine needs, even about how to be around dogs. I have to say that I’ve benefited hugely from a more ‘Rural French’ approach to dog approaches. That’s to say, ‘you’ve got a dog, good for you… I’ll keep my hands to myself and stop staring at your dog’ instead of ‘How cute! You’ve got an enormous grumpy-looking German Shepherd. Can I pet him?

We are all learning.

In trainer speak: is your client skilled up enough about the dog they have and the lifestyle that would suit their dog?

#6 Accidentally putting our dog in past their coping level

I think this is one we’re all guilty of. We thought their training was better than it was. We thought their recall was more reliable. We thought they would cope with sitting at a café. We thought they would enjoy going for a walk with all our friends.

Whether we’re asking too much of our dogs’ current level of training, or whether we’re immersing the dog in situations they’re not yet ready for, this can be another way that we expect too much of our dogs and end up contributing to their behaviour.

I can’t tell you how many reactive dogs I’ve worked with, or dogs who are fearful in public, whose guardians haven’t quite got their head around the fact that the lead is the thing causing the problem because it interferes with the dog’s abilty to make good choices. This is not to say we should take the lead off. This is to say that we absolutely need to make safer choices for our dogs. Why would our dog feel the need to sort things out for themselves and navigate complex situations? Largely because we keep attaching a lead to them or trapping them within four walls and then exposing the dog to things they’re not yet ready for, but they can’t escape from.

In trainer speak: has your client accidentally been flooding the dog or working too quickly through stimulus gradients?

Conclusion

The point of this post is not to apportion blame. We feel guilty enough, I know. Accepting that our behaviour and our habits, our interactions with our dogs, our lack of training or guidance, our lack of management or our lack of awareness of our dog’s needs may be part of the dog’s problem can be a big enough ego burst. We think we’re doing such a great job and it’s pretty ugly when we look at what’s going on and realise we’re responsible for some of it.

I like to remind myself that much of this is just human nature to forget. Our lives with dogs are different and we’re all involved in the pursuit of knowledge that helps us help them lead more successful and enjoyable lives. Not a single one of us would like to admit that we are quite likely for our dog’s problem behaviour. Nobody’s sitting there wondering if they hadn’t laughed so much that first time their dog humped Uncle Eric, that Uncle Eric might not have been the first in a long line of humpees. Nobody is glad that they’ve turned their dog into a barking machine.

We’re not doing it on purpose.

But that’s not to say we don’t have to Adult the F*ck Up and accept our role in things. We’re grown ups. We can do this without crying in the corner for weeks. We don’t have to get out the hair shirts, the bells and the ashes. We can accept it and decide to do better in future. We’ve not got such fragile egos that we can’t cope in the slightest that *shock, horror* we may be in some way responsible for what our dogs do.

As Maya Angelou said, ‘When we know better, we do better’.

Now we know better, let’s do better.

If you’re a trainer and you hate having these kind of conversations with your clients, why not check out my book? It’s ace. I would say that, wouldn’t I? It’d make a good Christmas present for your dog trainer friends, too.

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As the guardian of two dogs who always relinquish anything I ask them to, I feel pretty blessed. Lidy was so destructive in the shelter that she chewed her wooden kennel and also couldn’t be left with any bedding at all. She did have three or four good toys which she often carried about, but sheets and towels, dog beds and cushions were all things that she’d likely tear to pieces given half the chance.

Yet here, with her collection of stuffed animals, she might give them a good shake from time to time, but she never pulls them to pieces.

If you have a destructive dog, it can be a nightmare. If they’re tearing things to shreds, you can end up having to clear up a real mess. If they’re tearing things to pieces and consuming them, you may end up with a rush to the emergency vet, an x-ray and a day of starvation if not a surgical procedure to open them up and remove whatever it is they’ve ingested.

Destruction can be pretty natural behaviour. You may even be adding it to your dog’s day as a form of enrichment if they really enjoy doing it and it’s not dangerous. Most of us would be pretty happy if we had ‘controlled’ destruction: that our dogs understood what they were free to destroy and they stopped when we asked.

If you’re the guardian of a dog with powerful jaws and a tendency to tear things to pieces, a dog whose destruction is uncontrolled, then it may be driving you to distraction. How do we move a dog whose destruction is uncontrolled to a dog who knows what they can chew and what they can’t, what they’re supposed to do with things and when they need to stop?

The first is to understand that destruction is a perfectly natural part of the dog’s behavioural repertoire. Whether they are eating things or they are playing, chewing things and pulling things apart can feel pretty good to the dog. They may be chewing and destroying things that resemble food items that wolves or other canids would catch in the wild: it’s not a great leap of manufacturing to go from a buffalo to a shoe, after all. Many things that dogs like to destroy can be things that they resemble prey species – or, at least, part of them. I can’t tell you how many spaniels and golden retrievers I’ve known who had a thing for tissues. My nana’s American cocker spaniel would have happily pulled every single tissue out of the box and left them strewn around the bedroom. I’ve worked with a few English cocker spaniels who had a real problem with tissues and would growl or bite their guardians if they tried to remove them. Having never pulled feathers from a bird myself, I can’t really say that it feels the same at a neurological level as killing pheasant and wood pigeons, but I imagine it might, just a little bit.

Other dogs I’ve worked with have had a real thing for fabric, especially floaty fabrics. It’s not uncommon for dogs to really like the rip of fabric. Having never shredded fascia, ligaments, skin or muscle, I can’t tell you if it feels the same to pull a towel apart, but I imagine it might well.

The first thing you need to do is rule out any age-related causes like still being a puppy or a teenager. That’s not to say that it’s inevitable or unpreventable just because the dog is young, but that you’re going to need some more management as their brain isn’t working at full capacity to inhibit impulses yet.

You also need to rule out developmental issues, health issues and self-soothing. Heston hadn’t chewed anything for years, and now he likes to suck holes in soft fabrics. He only does it before he sleeps or if he is coping with being alone. It’s very much his way of comforting himself. Destruction and chewing can be clues as to illnesses and imbalances, particularly anxiety. Lidy destroyed things in the shelter because she couldn’t cope. The only time she destroyed anything here (she ripped some of my clothes that were in a washing basket) was when there was a storm and I was teaching in the next room. She couldn’t get to me because she was behind a baby gate and I couldn’t hear what she was doing because I had headphones in. Destruction can be a sign of psychological distress as much as any other behaviour.

Also, rule out lack of supervision. Is the dog only destroying things when you’re not there? If so, the first thing you’ll need is video so that you can work with a professional to rule out separation-related issues, to rule out boredom, to rule out whether a punishment schedule is in play when the guardian is present and to work out the function of the behaviour. Why don’t Heston and Lidy destroy things when I’m there? Well, I hate to say it and I’ve never actively punished them – or even inadvertently punished them – but my presence inhibits their behaviour. Even if we interrupt or remove a toy, if they’d naturally tear it to pieces in our absence, then our absence means there’s no external pressure to comply. You don’t need to have even yelled at your dog – but if you intervene in any way, you’re an external force rather than the dog really knowing not to chew. I’m fine with that, by the way. I don’t expect my dogs to have the willpower not to destroy things in my absence. They’re dogs, not people. I used to teach classes of 16-year-olds who’d hide classwork if I was absent and they had a supply teacher. That other beings will behave differently in my absence is just a fact of life. It doesn’t mean I’m an ogre. It just means that my interventions to support them in the choices they make are scaffolds, not straitjackets, but scaffolds they need, nevertheless.

So, with those brief provisos in mind, and with this more detailed exploration of why dogs chew and destroy things also considered, I’m going to take the example of a dog who is destroying toys and chews in the presence of their guardians.

What do they need to know?

#1 How to cope with frustration

If you’re going to remove things from a dog, the dog first needs to know how to cope when you do. If they can’t, you’re potentially going to end up with worse behaviours.

They need to know how to cope when they don’t get what they want or they can’t have what they want. Given that frustration can very easily tip over into aggression, you need a dog who can cope with that. Coping with frustration is also about learning to manage your own emotions and self-regulate better.

If you’re looking for ideas about where to start, this post should help.

#2 How to have control over impulses

If your dog can’t control their own behaviour and they can’t stop what they start, if they can’t self interrupt, you’re going to end up having to wrestle toys or chews from the dog, or try and distract them so you can steal their stuff. Unsurprisingly, dogs are wary of us doing this after the first time we do it, so it’s fine for a one-off emergency, but heaven help you if you need to do it again.

Dogs need to be able to self-interrupt as well as knowing how to stop when asked. Dogs who have no idea how to press their own off buttons are a liability. One of the drivers behind destruction, alongside frustration, is the inability to self-regulate. When Lidy holds her toys ever so gently or she stops pulling the ear off her elephant when I ask (like my mother, she’s a sod for being unable to leave a thread hanging) those skills are impulse control skills. I confess to having a very icky habit around scabs and peeling skin – other people’s scabs and peeling skin – I almost can’t stop myself from wanting to pull them off. I know, it’s disgusting. Even so, if I feel itchy about not being able to pull at some random stranger’s flappy scab or peeling skin, I shouldn’t expect my dog to cope any better than I do. The only thing that stops me is a very long history of rules about socially acceptable behaviour. In other words, I stop myself.

If we want dogs to stop themselves, then we need to teach them how.

#3 Teach them to relinquish items when you ask

Teach them how to drop. Your dog needs to learn to relinquish things. To be fair, most of the dogs I’ve known other than my toy-guardy dogs Tilly, Tobby and Amigo, have all been happy relinquishers of their stuff. If your dog has any kind of history of running off with stuff or reluctance about forced removal, you need Chirag Patel’s Drop. To the letter, no skimping.

Until you’ve mastered this (6-12 weeks of daily practice, I’d say), I’d manage the chewables very carefully. This technique is so good that Lidy spat out a found pigeon wing the other day. She didn’t want to eat it, so there’s that, but it can be such an instinctive reaction that the dog has relinquished before they’ve had time to think that they didn’t want to.

Don’t bother with trading if your dog is destructive. You’re never going to be trading. You’re not giving them something else to destroy. You need a safe way to get them to drop and leave items that also brings them back to you. Chirag isn’t teaching relinquishment, really. He’s teaching the dog that when you say a word, then it’ll be advantageous to come back to you from wherever they are and have an empty mouth, kind of like when my mum said, ‘Tea’s ready!’

Play stopped because tea was valuable and also because of ingrained habit. This method of drop is exactly the same.

#4 Teach the Counting Game

This is another Chirag Patel classic. You may wonder at its use with chewing and destruction. It works perfectly in kind of similar lines to Drop…. ‘Hey! I’m doing something really fun here. Come see!’

You can move the dog away from items, slow them down (spread out your timing and slow down) and speed them up. I use it often when I have novice dogs who have no skills with drop. The Counting Game can be a really good way if I’m doing freework sessions or other stuff to get a dog to come nearer to me.

The added bonus is that the moment you start counting and you bend down in future sessions, the more likely it will be that dogs will stop what they’re doing and come to join you.

#5 Add a wider range of non-destructive enrichment

Like dogs who chase compulsively, destruction can be compulsive too. It scratches a biological itch that other things don’t. Destruction and chewing are part of the predatory motor sequence: the ways that predatory species seek and acquire food. Of course, your dog is not destroying things to consume them, usually. Even chewing of bones can offer very little nutritional value once the marrow has gone. Kill-bites, shaking, tearing things apart and even eating them are much, much later in the sequence. Just like you would with a dog who is compulsively chasing, your job is to do things earlier in the sequence. Scentwork can be really useful. Doing activities like mantrailing or scentwork can help build a behaviourally more balanced dog who doesn’t only have one way to get their kicks. I’m a huge fan of scatter feeding with dogs who destroy. I confess I prefer grass for this – it’s less problematic if they tear up some grass and you can scatter it further away. Snuffle mats are great, but I’ve seen dogs dismantle them in minutes. They just don’t afford you the ability to manage arousal in the same way. I have never, ever known dogs escalate from scatter feeding to vaccuuming the floor, by the way. If your dog does this, that’s something else entirely. Sometimes, it’s just a free buffet and what dog would turn that down? But dogs don’t graduate from scatter feeding to eating anything on the ground. Scatter feeding lasts much longer – I’ve never known a snuffle mat last more than 10 minutes with a single ration of food – and I’ve two enormous snuffle mats. I’ve had dogs still scouting for one single handful of chopped ham over 45 minutes later. Tilly once was out there for two hours still endlessly searching for the last bit of ham.

#6 Recognise destructive behaviour as part of adolescence and deal with it accordingly

Most destructive behaviours start young and fade, but some dogs get more excited by the destruction than others, particularly during their teenage years when it can provide an outlet.

Make sure you’re clear about the suite of behaviours that destruction might fit in to. If you recognise a number from this post, then you might want to think about ways you can channel your dog more appropriately through focus games, through the activities listed above and through careful management. Dogs who don’t learn what a thrill destruction can be from 8 weeks to 2 years of age are generally dogs who don’t destroy things the rest of their life either. For instance, rural France is not a toy-based dog culture as a whole and so a lot of our dogs have no idea what toys are. That doesn’t mean they’re not destructive: some are destructive despite the presence of toys. Many, though, if they are destructive do so because their behaviour early on wasn’t managed and their needs weren’t met. Meet a dog’s needs and you don’t tend to find them destroying the kitchen cabinets.

#7 Interact more with your dog

Destroying things is not just a predatory motor sequence thing, it’s also a form of entertainment and a way to engage with the environment. When we play more with our dogs and we interact with them, then we can meet their needs in other ways. To be honest, a dog who only enjoys life when they’re pulling the stuffing from cushions seems to be a pretty miserable dog if you ask me. Massage, petting sessions and training sessions can be ways of building up your own bond, as can interactive play.

Before everyone clutches their pearls, I’m not talking about turning your dog into a ball addict or doing irreparable damage to them physically and mentally. A balanced diet of a bit of tug, a bit of chasing, a bit of scentwork, a bit of massage, a bit of frisbee, even – dare I say it – physical play with your dog can be different ways for you to meet your dog’s needs to play. As one of our lovely DoGenius students wrote in their essay at the weekend, pseudopredation (so, finding, stalking, herding, pouncing, biting, shaking, grabbing, dissecting) could well be as much about play as it is about predation. Play more, and choose more interactive or social ways of doing so. A broad range of play skills is also a muscle you can build, just as you can build up scent work and so on. If dogs are making their own fun – essentially what destruction is – then get involved with them.

#8 Build bite inhibition

Some people seem to think that bite inhibition and bite strength are things dogs are born with. They’re not. They’re taught skills that they learn through life. Being born a dog teaches them to bite. Being socialised teaches them WHEN and HOW to bite. Destruction is sometimes about learning to hold back.

The mouth is bones and teeth secured by and operated by muscles. Bite inhibition is just choosing the right bite strength (or none at all) for the moment. Given that the mouth is controlled by muscles, it is an eminently trainable thing. It’s no different than our hands. Remember how you used to paint when you were four? Half the battle was holding the brush. We learn skills with our muscles that stop us over or under-reacting to the process we’re about to undertake. We don’t still paint and write like four-year-old children. Burly, muscley men can still learn to knit delicately if they try, just as dogs can learn to bite less hard.

How do I suggest you do this? Play! A great tug programme like Craig Ogilvie’s INTERACTIVE programme is ideal. Like any other muscular skill, it can be shaped over time. Of course, it’s easiest when you’re working with a fairly young dog, but it’s something all dogs can learn.

It’s not a question of finding more robust toys that can outlast your dog’s jaws. If your dog is that much of a chewer or a destroyer, the likelihood of hairline fractures and other dental damage is huge. Ideally, all dogs should be able to choose a grip that suits the thing they’re gripping. Many people are too afraid to intervene or don’t know how without causing frustration and potential aggression. It’s really important that we help our dogs get their needs met, but that their needs don’t end up bordering on a compulsion.

PS: I’ve got a book out, as if you didn’t already know! If you’ve read it already, please leave me some feedback! Pop over to Amazon now and wax lyrical.