Untitled

When I found our dog, Eloise, she was a stray wandering through an Arkansas RV park.

She’s now 110lbs, but even back then, malnourished and abandoned, she was still a big dog. At her first vet appointment, she weighted in at 76lbs.

What I liked about her was how much she liked people. Our previous dog liked us, but didn’t like visitors to our house, and so he made socializing more work than we wanted. Eloise was the opposite, and that’s exactly what we were looking for.

In Eloise’s journey from camp to camp at the RV park, she insisted on saying hello to every single person. She didn’t seem to want food, just attention.

The way she asked for attention was with her paw. At first people would think she had the world’s best shake command.

But she’d keep pawing at you and pawing until you’d given her all the attention she needed. One guy in that RV park came away with a deep, bloody gouge down his forearm. She’s a big dog with big paws and even bigger claws.

Eloise was a dangerously friendly dog and that’s the habit I wanted to train her out of. It’s classic habit breaking and really isn’t all that different than from when you and I want to break one of our own bad habits.

Habit-breaking has two big challenges.

One is that even though we call them bad habits, they almost always serve a need. In this case, Eloise pawed at people because it brought her human attention, which she wanted.

Two is that the neurological pathways in our brain are reinforced by usage, but there isn’t an equivalent way to destroy those pathways. They basically sit there ready for use long after you’ve decided you don’t want to use them anymore.

So, that’s how replacement habits have become a core strategy for breaking bad habits. It reframes the problem into habit building, which is still hard, but generally much easier.

With a replacement habit you don’t have to break the underlying need. You just serve that need with a new behavior. And then you need to build up that new behavior to be the stronger of the two habits.

What I did with Eloise wasn’t particularly hard, I just really like the result.

I encouraged her to use a different behavior to ask for attention. So instead of pawing at you, I wanted her to lean her head on you.

She’s got a giant head that’s so soft. Amazing ears too. Very huggable.

That’s the replacement habit. If she leans her head on you, you can’t help but give her attention. It serves the same need as pawing at you, and it’s much less dangerous.

Everyone’s always curious about how the actual training sessions go. But it’s hard to give universal advice because every dog’s motivation and learning curve is a little different.

But the basics is that dog training works through reinforcement and shaping. Eloise doesn’t like treats but she does like attention. And so training her was simply about giving her attention for reinforcement and withdrawing that attention for things we didn’t want to reinforce.

Then to shape the head lean, we divided her behaviors in half. In one half, she was pawing at us and so we’d turn our body away. That’s the withdrawal of attention. And in the other half she wasn’t pawing at us, and that’s when she got a lot of attention.

Over time, we took that midpoint and move it closer and closer to the head lean. That head lean was a behavior that she’d occasionally do spontaneously and the more we reinforced it the more she’d do it. That’s what shaping is.

It’s not the most difficult dog training I’ve ever done. But it has my favorite result, which is now we have a giant dog that goes around leaning her head up against people.

I’ve had the pleasure of working with many animal trainers over the years, including one of the best animal behaviorists in Texas, Michael Baugh. Dog training myths, for some reason, run rampant.

And they drive me f’ing nuts.

Here’s the thing: Just because you read something on the internet (ha, ha) doesn’t make it true. Please feel free to fact-check this piece when you’re finished reading. Let me know if you think I got something wrong. Click here

Some dog training myths are merely annoying, but others can cause serious behavioral issues among our canine companions. And that needs to stop.

How Do Dog Training Myths Get Out of Control?

When you’re chatting with a friend over the phone and the subject of your dogs arises, your friend might say something like, “Oh, I heard that prong collars are the best way to stop pulling.”

A subtle jab at your pooch, who always seems to storm ahead like a locomotive.

You accept her advice as gospel because, well, she’s your friend. Then you tell other people who struggle with maintaining their dogs on walks.

Dog myths also get out of control when a so-called expert produces a YouTube video, writes an article, gives a speech, or otherwise spreads harmful messages.

That’s why you have to get in front of the rumors.

You can debunk dog training myths on your own by digging into the research. Start with scientific evidence. There’s plenty of literature out there about positive, modern, pain-free dog training methods.

What’s the Best Puppy or Dog Training Method?

There are hundreds of ways to train dogs. Many of them are super effective.

Rob Peladeau, a successful dog trainer who has worked with service animals, law enforcement K9s, and aggressive dogs, gave a wonderful speech during a Google talk. He says that the only thing three dog trainers can agree on is that the other two are wrong.

Who would pick a fight with that sweet dog in the picture?

Years ago, when we first adopted Jewels, we noticed a few behavioral problems. When on a leash, she had a habit of barking at people and cars on the road. She loved other dogs and tried to lunge at them to play every chance she got. It took me months of training, but she finally figured it out. Click Here

There is a lovely house on a corner in our neighborhood opposite the creek that we walk by nearly every day. The couple that lives there owns a Labradoodle named Petey. Petey is a handsome boy, incredibly tall, with fluffy caramel and white fur. Petey loves people but hates other dogs.

When Jewels was in her training phase, we walked past the house that Petey lives in while Petey was outside with his owner. Jewels wanted to play and started tugging on the leash. She’s strong and I’m not that big, so although I could contain her, we struggled a bit.

Petey’s owner couldn’t help but tell me that I should probably get a shock collar for Jewels because it would solve all my problems. Case in point, he said, and pointed at Petey sitting perfectly still beside him.

Don’t you just love it when people think they can solve all your problems by giving you their oh-so-expert advice? I despise shock collars and would never use one of those torture devices on my dogs. I’d rather take a few months working with my babies until we understood each other.

I told him that I didn’t believe in shock collars as a training tool, and walked on.

Fast forward to this morning. We walk a little slower now since Jewels is a senior citizen. Petey must be seven or so but doesn’t show it. He still barks at other dogs but stays obediently by his owner’s side.

However, this morning, Petey was outside his house without his owner. I don’t know if he escaped his backyard, but I didn’t see him until I rounded the corner with Jewels, and by then, he was on top of us.

He went after Jewels, snarling with bared teeth, hair raised on the back of his neck, in full fight mode. Jewels, my lover who doesn’t know how to fight, responded by circling behind me with her tail buried between her legs.

Petey kept coming and Jewels kept circling until the leash was wrapped around my legs. Of course, I was shouting at Petey, making a scene, hoping that Petey’s owner would stop him.

At the moment that I fell to the grass, Petey startled and backed off. I saw his owner casually walking toward us, apologizing profusely and asking if I was OK. It turns out he’d been in his open garage with Petey, but didn’t bother to keep tabs on the dog.

As he helped me up and we looked Jewels over, it occurred to me that he simply shocked his dog into retreating. The dog’s behavior hadn’t changed. That collar controlled him.

After I made sure Jewels was OK, I lit into the guy. Shock collars don’t work to train dogs to behave well, they only control bad impulses. Owners have to work with their dogs for weeks or months to change a dog’s behavior. It takes patience and doesn’t happen overnight. Obviously, that stupid collar has done nothing for Petey. He still behaves the same way he did when we first met him years ago.

We will avoid walking past that house in the future. I can’t trust that we’ll get by it unscathed. It’s a shame, too, because it faces the creek in one of the most scenic areas of our neighborhood.

Hand signals are fun to teach and easy for most dogs to understand. All you need to get started with your dog are a few kibbles of food. There are several ways to teach your dog hand signals. Below, you will find one such method: Click Here

The first thing to do is to get your dog to associate a hand gesture with one of your command words; see below for tips on how you can link a specific motion to a specific command. From there, getting your dog to react to the hand signal alone is a matter of repetition. 

Let’s assume that your dog already knows the association between a verbal command (“sit”) and the action you want him to perform (sitting). The next thing for you to do is to create a new association between an unfamiliar hand signal and the verbal command and action that he already knows. To get started, pair the verbal command with a hand signal (see below for examples of common hand signals). When the dog performs the correct action, immediately reinforce this behavior with a kibble. You will have to repeat this many times to ensure your dog understands the association. 

While still using the food reward, gradually eliminate the verbal command. For a while, you might use the verbal command and hand gesture together half the time and the hand gesture alone half the time.

Once your dog reliably reacts to the silent hand gesture when you have the food, gradually remove the piece of food from the equation. Soon your dog will sit, lie down or come with just a motion of your hand.