The Girl Who Talks To Dogs

If you were immersed in a culture where you didn’t understand the language, you’d rely heavily on body language, too. This does not mean that you are incapable of learning language.

No treats, so no joy? Well, if you’re asking your dog to do things they don’t like, then yes, no joy. But if you can put aside your desire for compliant and unquestioning obedience, then you can start to work on things your dog and you both enjoy without the need to control them with external rewards. Oxytocin is a much better reinforcer than food. ;)

I think one of the troubles with R+ and loose leash walking is that R+ dogs need near constant positive feedback to keep on track, which is contrary to the llw experience. This is because you’re constantly applying conditional approval with R+, but a llw is supposed to be casual.

The way I teach this is also force-free, but different. The goal is to make the dog think that you always approve unless you say something. Ideally, you’d start by sharing a bite of something tasty. Then you’d ask “[dog’s name], will you walk easy?” When they look like they’re onboard (calm, not hyper), then go.

When the dog gets close to the end of the leash, then remind them they are doing good by saying “good easy”. Say ‘easy’ like you’re saying ‘easy’ to a horse, with the gentle and drawn out intonation. That calm is literally contagious. When they do get to the end of the leash, use the Premack Principle. Have them walk all the way back before you will walk again. Remember that we don’t reward resets unless we want to incentivize the cue for a reset, so don’t even praise. The functional reward is that you ask them if they will walk easy and start walking again when they seem onboard. Don’t worry about the timing. Dogs have excellent memories. Timing only matters when you’re conditioning because you’re targeting a very primal part of the brain.

When I ask my dog to come back, I give the illusion of choice by asking kindly, waiting 10-15 seconds, asking again, waiting 10-15 seconds. The sense of choice helps to build their understanding of why you’re asking. Sometimes I will say “I am waiting on you because you pulled me.” The first time I said it in this situation, my dog’s face lit up with the joy of finally understanding me and he pranced back to me.

Using this system sets boundaries and expectations for your dog. This incentivizes the right mindset, but there is no guarantee your dog can get to the right mindset on their own. I also teach a settle through coregulation that helps hyper and nervous dogs slow their roll if they are having trouble with the boundaries. I also play engagement games like snuffling at the edge of excitement and anxiety to desensitize dogs to whatever is causing them to forget their manners. If you’re up for it, feel free to take food sharing breaks whenever during the walks, even when your dog is doing poorly. You do not want them to feel your approval is conditional, as that would undermine the sense of choice that ultimately builds the desired loose leash walking behavior.

RANT ALERT:

Please don’t think I’m unkind, but I don’t understand why anyone would defend grain-free or BEG diets today. To me, these people sound like anti-vaxxers. This FDA warning is all one big conspiracy to help Big Pharma ...err, I mean the big four kibble manufacturers. 😊 I know I should give others a few days to process the news, but it just doesn’t make sense to me.

It’s right that the mechanism linking grain-free foods with DCM is not yet known, but nutrition scandals like this can be predicted by Research and Development practices. Grain-free and BEG formulations are not tested in any sort of trustworthy and formal manner.

Keep in mind that DCM doesn’t crop up immediately after a grain-free diet is implemented. If a health issue is nutrient related and non-immediate, then it is often the product of longterm malnutrition or slow poisoning. Since we don’t think this is poisoning, then this is likely malnutrition.

I get that the role of both genetic and environmental factors are difficult to parse. As an example, I get heart palpitations sometimes. (Don’t worry it’s mostly just weird, not very dangerous.) Turns out that this is a side effect of longterm vitamin B deficiency. I won’t experience this problem if Vitamin B is in excess in my diet and I mostly remember to take my vitamins. If I accidentally go vegan for a bit and then also forget my vitamins, THEN the heart palpitations show up. At that point, I’m so far in the hole that my heart will tell me if I took my vitamins that day or not. 😂

See, I’m a longtime vegetarian. Maybe there’s some genetic issue where I have trouble absorbing vitamin B, but most people with a similar difficulty don’t know as they are omnivores who get an excess of B vitamins in their diet. 🤷‍♀️

In a similar way, these grain-free formulations are causing some sort of longterm malnutrition that some dogs are more prone to than others, but more than when dogs are fed a grain-inclusive diet. If these kibbles had been tested using scientifically valid feeding trials before they came to market, the chances of a malnutrition scandal would have gone down significantly, but these formulations weren’t rigorously tested. ...which is more important when you’re introducing a new style of formulation such as excluding grains.

So a trustworthy test? I trust AAFCO feeding trials, which monitor the health of a dog who is fed exclusively the kibble formulation for an extended period of time. While many brands claim feeding trials, it’s important to note that AAFCO feeding trial minimums have been optimized to the bare bones requirements to establish scientific validity. If a brand claims feeding trials and they do not have the AAFCO feeding trial certification on the bag, then they cut corners somewhere. A company can do better than the minimum and still get the certification, but they cannot get the certification if they do less than the bare minimum requirements.

There’s people who criticize the feeding trial bare minimums. I don’t understand it. Right, six is the bare minimum number of data sets needed to determine if a difference of averages is statistically significant. Of course it would be ideal if a feeding trial had more dogs. I don’t understand how this is a valid reason to accept less than the bare minimums in an AAFCO feeding trial. These grain-free people are supposedly very committed to the welfare of their dogs, but then they make these strange arguments. This is doublespeak.

All of this probably riles me up so much because I’ve been an opponent of BEG diets for a long time, which is not a welcome opinion in the pet care world. I’ve been screaming internally for a while as the status quo doesn’t leave room for my perspective. As tragic as it is that dogs have gotten sick and died, I am relieved that it is no longer easy to look down on me for my preference for kibbles formulated using WSAVA guidelines and certified with AAFCO tests. Yes, I will feed Iams before Blue, Acana, Kirkland or American Journey because I don’t trust boutique kibble, grain-free, nor unknown manufacturers.

I’ve had many times where I revealed that I don’t feed boutique kibble or take Dog Food Advisor ratings seriously and then, all of a sudden, I am a negligent dog caretaker who doesn’t know how to make a good decision. Not at all. I had also been confused by the marketing around dog food, but I was still in grad school when I got my first dog as an adult. This means I institutional access to a network of full-text journal articles, which I consultedto make my decision. Guess what they say? Yet, *I’m* the one who doesn’t care about my dogs?

Hello fellow force-free trainers!

I wanted to introduce myself. I am CJ from Gymnasio Argos which is a company I founded in February of this year. I am a force-free trainer who is on break from my PhD in Chemistry.

If you want the details:

I have completed my coursework and my Qualifying Exam, which was a defense of a research proposal entirely of my own design. My defense included a closed-door session with a committee of experts in Chemistry who had full latitude to ask me any chemistry questions they would like (it was a grueling hour-long session), which was preceded by a public presentation and Q&A session that was widely announced, as is legally required. I have not yet completed my research requirements in order to receive my PhD (which isn’t to say I didn’t do research). I don’t know if I will yet or not. There’s a lot going on behind the scenes.

Moving on:

Like many of us, I have always had a gift with connecting to dogs. However, I am relatively new to the dog training scene. I have only been into dog training earnestly for about the past four years. I won’t bore you with the details, but I’ve gone through many modality phases. I’ve been LIMA, Milan-esque, “balanced”, R+ force-free, and now I have my own spin on Bond-Based Choice Teaching*, which is also a force-free approach to dog training (or “dog education”, as I’d prefer to call it if I didn’t have to worry about SEO).

I don’t want to step on toes, but Bond-Based Choice Teaching was such a departure from everything I felt I knew about dog training that I feel incredibly lucky that I’m new to dog training. It took so much un-learning and revisioning that I couldn’t imagine trying to do it after a lifetime of understanding dog behavior through the lens of the Behaviorism most common among dog training.

I also feel very lucky for the training I received during my incomplete PhD. While Chemistry is an unrelated field, preparing for my Qualifying Exam taught me how to parse journal jargon and how to rank the epistemological** value of information. When I happened upon Jennifer Arnold’s Love Is All You Need, which is where I learned Bond-Based Choice Teaching (BBCT), I had the skill set to convert my incredulous reaction to fact-checking. Again, I don’t want to step on any toes, but I have yet to run into a dog trainer who is as up-to-date on research, empirical, and adaptable as Jennifer Arnold of Canine Assistants.

Regardless, I know that my approach as The Girl Who Talks To Dogs is unique and considering it is unsettling for all. It’s fine. It was for me, too. I won’t demand you consider it, but please know that Canine Assistants places 75-100 working dogs each year with a 95% success rate. It works.

However, if I could ask one thing of my fellow force-free trainers, it would be to note your own feelings about such a radically different approach. Does it seem uncomfortable and non-intuitive to you? (Yes.) Do you trust that it will work? (No.) Are you tempted to try to explain any success I’ve had with my approach within the framework of your own methodology? (Yes.) I’m familiar with the feeling as I’ve crossed over training philosophies several times.

I’m not pointing this out to sell you on anything. I do want to make a point about reaching out to punishment-inclusive trainers. They feel the same way about force-free as you do about The Girl Who Talks To Dogs. To punishment-inclusive trainers, force-free doesn’t seem like it will work. Many punishment-inclusive trainers believe force-free trainers have a “backroom” where we harshly punish our dogs. ...because they don’t believe force-free works. If you don’t believe an approach works, then it naturally follows that someone who claims success with it is obscuring information.

So, while we have ideas and deep sentiments about canine welfare, those aren’t particularly useful things to share. Punishment-inclusive trainers are torn by the cognitive dissonance of “wouldn’t that be nice” and “but this what I know; it is what I have to do”. This dichotomy is a perfect recipe for pushback. As an example, it is hypothesized that a similar element of dissonance is why vegans are regarded so poorly. Do you like to taunt vegans about bacon and meat? Do you feel a little attacked when someone declines a food you would eat with “no thank you, I’m vegan”?

If there’s anything I could change about force-free activism, it is the realization that no amount of science or moral appeals are going to “set them straight”. That sort of thing worked for us, but we were already inclined to consider force-free approaches. A recent study on owners of reactive dogs found that dog owners felt incompetent applying force-free techniques, that they didn’t trust force-free techniques would work, and that they were often incredibly desperate. There’s not a place for “this is abusive” in that perspective. Instead, I feel the burden is on us to make force-free widely accessible and enviable.

While I also struggle to restrain myself sometimes, I believe antagonism towards punishment-inclusive trainers only deepens their commitment to it. Who wants to hear that some stranger thinks they are abusive? It’s not healthy to worry so much about the opinions of hostile strangers. When I fail to restrain myself with punishment-inclusive trainers, I do my best to focus on what is effective and how I’ve personally addressed their challenges in a force-free manner. Does it mean I do some free work sometimes? Yep. If the goal is to reduce the overall utilization of punishment in training, then force-free needs to become accessible.

Which is a decent prompt for the niches I think BBCT fills.

1. First and foremost, all reinforcement training requires good timing. Research indicates that the response time to sustain a previously conditioned behavior is less than half a second. I was not able to find a study on the reaction speed a dog owner is capable of, but I was able to break down the neurological requirements to find an equivalent response time test. The Driver’s Break Reaction Time Test adequately measures the average person’s ability to recognize something unexpected during a task they do all the time, switch mental gears to respond, figure out an appropriate response, and then the speed of that response. The average response time was 0.9 seconds, with a quarter of people taking a full 1.2 seconds. Which was a really technical way of saying that I don’t think everyone is cutout to maintain a dog trained through reinforcement. I see BBCT as less technically demanding, which I believe gives it an advantage with dog owners who will struggle with reinforcement due to neurological limitations.

2. While many dog trainers find BBCT incredibly non-intuitive, those who are unfamiliar with formal dog training find it incredibly intuitive because it does not treat canine cognition as a black box. While they might be prone to naive anthropomorphization, we are learning more and more that informed anthropmorphism is highly appropriate. It is simply much easier to reach people when they get to be mostly right.

3. BBCT allows handlers to build the sort of relationship with dogs that we all dreamed of as kids. As far as building envy to encourage force-free handling, I can’t imagine a better motivation.

So, I guess, hello. My name is CJ. I have an unhealthy amount of formal education I don’t use and I have a lot of ideas. I hope I don’t offend you, but I do hope I’ve made you think. Let’s stop calling punishment-inclusive trainers abusive.

Please know that I am happy to engage in discussions so long as conversation remains levelheaded and that I am very excited at the prospect that you will chat with me. :)

*While Arnold’s approach also eschews obedience training and incorporates sentences with several parts of speech, cooperation over compliance, and yes/no questions, I am the only person I know who uses head gestures for real-time conversations with dogs using yes/no indications. I also really dislike “sit” and refuse to teach it, though Arnold teaches it to her dogs using a technique similar to Do As I Do called Like Me.

It’s time to make good on my blog name. If I’m being entirely honest, I feel very anxious about being “The Girl Who Talks To Dogs”. To people who already do it, I know I seem egotistical. To people who don’t believe it would work, I know I seem delusional.

Regardless, this is a walk with my dog, Shadow. He is 75% my weight and has no obedience training whatsoever. We are able to do a loose leash potty walk anyway through communication, cooperation, and compassion.

You’ll notice I have poor timing as I sometimes say “good easy” when Shadow is at the end of the leash. Poor timing is an all-the-time thing for me, so training through conditioning (even free shaping) is not a viable dog training route for me.

I do not get upset with my dogs when they express that they are uncomfortable because I am looking for cooperation, which is not one-sided. I consider it my job to make sure they are comfortable with what’s happening. As a result, you’ll see that Shadow listened without aversives, treats, or praise when I asked him to wait for the street, when I said that we needed to leave a spot he couldn’t loose-leash walk in, when I told him things were “ick” or gross, when I said we needed to get out of someone’s way, and when I said it was time to go home.