Vicious Bitch

From the very excellent webcomic PartiallyClips  (click here to embiggen)

H/T to Natureblog for the link to this wonderful little time sink

Watching Paint Dry

Or… Why I’ll never be a teevee star.

If you believe what you see on television, dog training is a thrilling profession where remarkably photogenic people with exotic accents spend their days hugging puppies and going mano-a-mano with potentially lethal red-zone killers. The action is like something out of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom where, as kids, we watched breathlessly as Jim Fowler wrestled deadly cobras, grizzly bears and piranhas while Marlin Perkins stood safely in the background and provided golf tournament style commentary, “We’ll wait here while Jim wrestles the angry pit viper rat terrier with his bare hands.”

Unfortunately I’ve moved around the country enough that I have a television newscaster’s generic accent and I’m only slightly more photogenic than Steve Buscemi.  Most importantly, when it comes to working with dogs I’m more Marlin Perkins than Jim Fowler.

Being a dog trainer is more like defusing bombs than wrestling alligators. Working calmly and carefully, I want to avoid explosions, not create them.  As a spectator sport, it’s about as exciting watching paint dry.

My foster dog Charlie is a volatile little fellow so it’s important to defuse him.  Practice really does make perfect. The more times a dog is allowed to practice the wrong kinds of reactions to stressful situations,  the better he gets at it.  This is why when I’m working with a reactive dog (one that is extremely excitable, fearful and /or aggressive) I work very hard to prevent the dog from having bad reactions in the first month or two of his training and rehabilitation.

While I’m keeping the dog away from triggers to the extent I can, I also work on building his self control.  With young Charlie this means we practice “sit to get”; long sit-stays; sits at a distance; “leave-it” with food and his favorite toys; “wait” at all doors; polite walking on the leash and to accept being in a crate.

In this program I am attacking Charlie’s reactivity in two ways:

First - I’m doing all I can to keep him from practicing bad reactions.  This means that Charlie gets a whole lot less freedom, attention, exercise and time with my family than a less reactive dog would get. Limiting these things now will help him earn a lifetime of privileges, so I don’t feel the teensiest bit bad about it. He’ll enjoy privileges more after he’s earned them.

Second - I’m teaching Charlie how to exercise his own self-control in situations that are carefully calibrated for success. I started with simple things like having him sit very briefly before I threw his toy and making him move back away from the kennel door (instead of leaping up on it) before I’d open it.  In a little over a week, we’ve progressed to one minute sit-stays (on leash), a stop and sit at 15 feet, a sit-stay while I pretend to throw the frisbee, sit before I open the kennel door, down for treats, and “leave-it” exercises with food in my open hand or on the floor.

As Charlie learned how to exercise self-control in moderately stimulating situations I introduced him to new dogs and new people.  I did this with him on a leash and each situation was carefully structured to help him maintain his composure.  So far there’s been no snarkiness and no drama*.  This is exactly what I want.  As Charlie’s skills improve, I’ll introduce him to increasingly challenging situations and if I go too far and he reacts aggressively, I’ll smack myself upside the head with a rolled up newspaper (bad trainer!) and move a couple of steps back in the program.

* SMACK – Ok, since I started this post we did have a bit of drama.  Since Charlie cheerfully lets me touch any part of his body and because he’s started to shed profusely I decided to brush him.  Touching him with any thing but my hand or the leash is apparently a Big Deal to Charlie. Stay tuned for updates on how we handle this.

I Did a Terrible Thing

I did an unspeakably terrible thing today [hangs head in abject shame].

I wore a hat.

A tan baseball cap with a dog embroidered on it to be exact. It was a cool morning (52F) and along with the warmth the cap provided, I needed something to cover my unwashed hair. I put it on without a thought and I went out to the kennel where Charlie is staying.

Charlie likes me. In fact, he seems to like me a lot. But when I walked into the room wearing that baseball cap he saw me as some kind of ungodly, depraved beast. And he reacted accordingly.

Because he’s small and in a sturdy kennel and I’ve been around a rather large number of staring, snarling, slavering beasts I reacted to his castigation by calling his name out sweetly.  He paused briefly, obviously recognizing my voice – then continued his tirade. ‘Cause, you know – I had done this terrible thing.

I took the hat off and calmly, quietly walked to the kennel door. I didn’t affect a passive or assertive posture. I was as completely neutral as I could be. When I got to the door I turned sideways and crouched down. I spoke softly to Charlie and let him decide when he was ready to approach and sniff me. In seconds he was the soft, happy, wagging teenager I know once again.

I stood up and gauged his reaction to my change in posture. Soft and welcoming. So I opened the door, went in, petted and leashed him and walked him out. When we were out of the kennel I made of show of picking up the Hat From Hell and presented it to Charlie. He stood quietly - but suspiciously – at my side and I calmly held it out to him.  He slowly stretched his nose forward, feet still locked in place, and tentatively sniffed the rim of the hat. I remained motionless and said nothing. He sniffed The Evil Thing again, then sniffed my hand.

I saw wheels inside his pretty little head click into place as Charlie realized that the hat smelled like me.  His posture softened and he grinned up at me with a look that said ”Okay, I get it”.  So I put the hat, which was now just an ordinary hat, back on my head and took Charlie for a walk.

Parsing a Sneeze

In The Feeling of What Happens Antonio Damasio writes, “We are about as effective at stopping an emotion as we are at preventing a sneeze.”  Like sneezes, emotional states are induced through classical conditioning processes where an innate, involuntary behavior (like an emotion or a reflex) becomes associated with a specific event or context. Their basis in these involuntary processes helps explain why emotional reactions are unpredictable and difficult to control.

In his book, Damasio introduces us to a man with extensive damage to his temporal lobes, hippocampus and amygdula.  “David” suffers from some of the most severe learning and memory deficits ever recorded - he is unable to learn anynew fact. Despite this and in spite of the fact that he’s surrounded by people he is completely unable to recognize, David displays consistent preferences and avoidances in his day-to-day interactions with staff and patients.  Intrigued by David’s behavior, Damasio designed a good guy/bad guy experiment to examine how David might develop these preferences under controlled circumstances:

Over a period of a week, we were able to engage David, under entirely controlled circumstances, in three distinct types of human interaction. One type of interaction was with someone who was extremely pleasant and welcoming and who always rewarded David whether he requested something or not (this was the good guy). Another interaction involved somebody who was emotionally neutral and who engaged David in activities that were neither pleasant nor unpleasant (this was the neutral guy). A third type of interaction involved an individual whose manner was brusque, who would say no to any request, and who engaged David in a very tedious psychological task designed to bring boredom to a saint (this was the bad guy).

After the week of controlled conditioning David was not able to recognize any of the ‘guys’ from photographs or in person.  Yet, when he was presented with photographs of them and asked questions regarding hypothetical situations such as “Which one of these people would you ask for help?”  or “Who is your friend,” David chose the ‘good guy’ over 80% of the time. While David’s conscious mind may no longer be equipped to give him an overt reason to recognize, much less choose, one person over another, he is still able to learn to correctly choose the person most likely to react positively with him with an accuracy far exceeding that of pure chance.

So it appears that we can develop preferences and aversions in a completely unconscious manner.  This is fascinating and it may help explain why two- and four-legged creatures so often react in apparently inexplicable ways. While we are aware of the emotions we feel, we sometimes have no idea why we feel them. And this can make emotional reactions incredibly difficult to control – even for us allegedly big-brained humans. Because our emotions can be rooted in factors as diverse as previous experiences, health and our base line emotional state – and because many of these factors lie outside our conscious control – our emotions don’t always make sense to us.  Or to those around us.

Dogs with emotion-based problems like fear of thunderstorms, fear-based aggression and separation anxiety are notoriously difficult to rehabilitate. The dog has no idea why it’s behaving the way it does. He’s much like David, classically conditioned to react to a situation – and utterly unaware of why he behaves the way he does.

This is why the popular idea of ’psychoanalyzing dogs’ - collecting obsessively detailed case histories in an effort to discover exactly what events in the dog’s past led to the development of it’s emotion-based problems – drives me crazy.  Because these kinds of problems arise from classical conditioning processes – there is likely no single event or simple chain of events that led to the dog’s problem. And, like David, the dog likely has absolutely no idea why he feels the way he does.

Trying to analyze the basis of an emotionally-based behavior problem in a non-verbal species like a dog makes no sense.  It’s like parsing a sneeze.

Sea Kittens and Getting Bitten

Via AtomicNerds, a bit of entertaining and insightful commentary on the latest bit of pointless ranting PR from the morons our friends at PETA courtesy of BluntObject (go – read it now):

The clever folks at PETA decided that the best way to convince people to stop eating fish was to RENAME THEM AFTER A CARNIVORE.  (Not only that, but a carnivore famous in popular culture for eating fish.  Gosh, that was clever.)

With apologies to BluntObject I’m going to argue that PETA’s idea was clever.  Our culture has, to a frightening extent, succeeded in romantically recasting cats and dogs as harmless, helpless, Disneyesque caricatures instead of the living, breathing, complex (and sometimes flawed) animals they really are.  Like Rousseau’s noble savage they’re increasingly seen as more innocent, more noble – and to some – more worthy – than we humans are.

And when they inevitably ‘betray’ our romantic image by, well, simply behaving as animals instead of noble savages, we tend to react in fear and avoidance just like we did when presented with that other famous character from romantic fiction - Frankenstein’s creature.  And when, like Frankenstein’s creature - who started out as an innocent, loving being; then turned into a monster from torture and neglect - our pets behave aggressively… we demonize them.

An interesting example of this kind of cognitive dissonance was reported in last week’s news when Barney the Whitehouse dog “attacked” Reuters reporter Jon Decker.  Check out the video clip below and carefully watch Barney’s posture and demeanor in the beginning of this little misadventure:

In the seconds before he bit Decker Barney laid his ears back, tucked his tail, lowered the front part of his body, partly averted his gaze, held his mouth closed — and probably threw other fearful and distance-increasing gestures easy to miss when viewing a black dog in poor quality video.  In other words, he did everything in his power to tell the reporter “I’m stressed out, stay away from me!”  Decker, obviously clueless when it came to recognizing and reading those important signals, moved into the danger zone anyway because “he just wanted to pet Barney.”  And, very predictably – the dog bit him. 

More interesting information can be seen in the still shot below, captured from the video immediately before the dog bit:

 

Note the dog’s expression.  His eyes are wide open with the sclera (white) showing, the corners of mouth pushed forward, upper lips pursed, and ears still pinned back. These are classic signs of the fear-biter.

And all of this because a clueless reporter “just wanted to pet the dog.”

All too often today people see a dog as a sort of adorable, animated stuffed animal that can be approached and handled at will.  And where did that come from?  I mean – do the same people who treat dogs like this go out and grab strange children so they can fondle them?  I think not (and if they do, they usually get ‘removed’ from society).  So why then do they assume that they are entitled to behave this way with dogs?

We have somehow created a cultural ideal where we believe that ‘good’ dogs are incapable of violence.  Because we can’t imagine that they’ll hurt us, we don’t take take precautions to prevent bites. And when – inevitably – they do bite, we are utterly unprepared for it.  We blame them for our ignorance and mistakes instead of taking responsibility for our own actions.

Dogs are wonderful, social creatures. They make excellent companions – and I believe that the social lives of both of our species are more complete when we spend them together. But a vital part of that shared life needs to be an awareness and respect for what they really are - animals.  And as the nut-jobs at PETA have so annoyingly (but accurately) pointed out – in our Rousseauesque desire for purity or Disneyesque search for innocence - this is something that we have managed to lose track of.

To gain an important – and somewhat sobering - bit of perspective it might be wise to consider the words of ethologist Konrad Lorenz:

“One day, during a hard winter, a deer crossed our snowed-up garden fence and was torn to pieces by my three dogs. As I stood horror-stricken by the mutilated corpse I became conscious of the unconditional faith which I placed in the social inhibition of these blood-thirsty beasts, for my children were at that time smaller and more defenceless than the deer whose gory remains lay before me in the snow. I was myself astonished at the absolute fearlessness with which I daily entrusted the fragile limbs of my children to the wolf-like jaws.”

Konrad Lorenz – Man and Dog          

And, oh yeah – “sea kittens” don’t just eat fish, they kill them too.  Even in the wonderful world of Disney.

Telling Tails of Aggression

This week’s Misguided Science Award goes to researchers at the University of Victoria who used a robotic dog to study how long versus short or docked tails affect canine behavior. 

The study concluded that dogs approach a dog with a docked tail more cautiously than they do a dog with a ‘complete’ tail.  According to one researcher, this could make a dog with a docked tail more aggressive. 

Their findings were based on a series of observations regarding how dogs at a dog park approached the robotic dog when it was fitted with a long or short tail.  The robotic tail wagged on some trials and stood up stiff in others. 

First, I am absolutely flabbergasted that anyone would consider that dogs’ reactions to an obviously fake, robotic dog represent valid data on dog-dog behavior.  I am certain that even the most sheltered, apartment-dwelling city dogs innately understand the difference between real and robotic dogs.  And in most cases they’re not going to react the same way to a robotic dog that they will to a real one. 

Second, it does not appear that the group conducted an initial study of how dogs with long and short tails (remember, not all short tails are artificially docked) wag them in different situations.

I’ve spent a lot of time watching dogs interact with each other.  In my experience, short-tailed dogs don’t just wag their stubby little tails when they’re happy and excited.  They typically wiggle the whole rear half of their bodies. 

Tail-wagging doesn’t always indicate happiness or friendliness.  Generally speaking, it indicates arousal.  The soft, slow wag of a lowered tail can indicate calm interest.  The rapid, loose wagging of a tail held at mid level (combined with a butt wiggle in a short-tailed dog) may indicate excited, friendly anticipation.  Rapid, stiff, wagging of an erect tail generally indicates intent arousal – and may precede an aggressive response. 

So, when robo-dog wagged what was very likely a short, stiff, erect, electronic tail he may have been communicating a weird, artificial kind of aggressive intent.  I don’t find it the least bit strange that dogs avoided robo-dog or behaved in an antisocial manner toward him if that was the situation. 

When robo-dog wagged a long tail at mid-height (especially if that long tail was constructed in a way that allowed it to flex as it wagged) he communicated an odd but friendly demeanor.  I would expect confident, social dogs to approach a ‘thing’ that behaved that way to investigate it.

In neither case do I believe that the dogs studied mistook robo-dog for a real dog.

As you can probably guess based on what I’ve written here, I don’t for a minute believe that having a short or docked tail predisposes a dog toward behaving aggressively toward other dogs. 

I have a different theory.  Check out the video below for frightening footage of a short-tailed dog demonstrating some extremely aggressive behavior:

Did docking his tail make this Airedale wire-haired fox terrier violently aggressive – or was it an owner who forced the poor beast to listen to death metal music that sent him over the edge?

Studies have indicated that listening to classical music, panpipes and whale songs may have a calming effect on dogs.  Is it then a stretch to suggest that exposure to gangsta rap, death metal and the music of Richard Wagner could turn them to violence?

Are the vicious pibbles and rockwilders we hear so much about in the media innately hostile beasts – or have they been ruined because their owners exposed them to too much teevee violence and musical mayhem?

It’s food for thought…. 

The Most Dangerous Dogs

Despite the media’s current obsession with stories about packs of aggressive dogs running loose and attacking strangers – the vast majority of dogs who bite belong to the victim’s family or friends. Yes, believe it or not, contrary to what you’ve read in the news, most dog bites come where and when we least expect them.  From good dogs. In our own homes.

People who report dog bites often say that the bite was ‘completely unexpected’. When they describe the dog that bit them (or their child or their friend) the first thing they’ll do is tell you what a great dog he is.

And most of the time their description of that good dog includes a long list of aggravations that good dog has endured. 

“The kids chased him around all the time and it never bothered him before.” 
“He never used to care when we grabbed him.”
“We always encouraged him to bark at the door, we never imagined he’d actually bite someone.”
“But we didn’t know he was injured and it hurt when we touched him there.”

We live in a culture that endows dogs with human virtues and denyies them our vices, and that twisted ideal leaves us with good dogs that unexpectedly do bad things.  People love their dogs for the good things they do and excuse them for the not-so-good. This gives them a false sense of security and leads to a lack of supervision and training. 

After all, a good dog doesn’t need to be trained or supervised, does he?

What our society seems to have forgotten is that the goodness of a dog won’t stop him from biting. Responsibility on the part of the people who own and interact with him does.

How to keep a good dog from going bad:

Supervise ALL interactions between preschool children and dogs.

Teach children to respect dogs. Set aside a ‘time out’ location (like a crate or laundry room) that the dog can go to when it doesn’t want to be with the kids. Enforce a ‘leave the dog alone’ rule when the dog is there. Don’t allow children to tease or harass the dog and discourage rough play.

Obey leash laws.  Keep your dog safely in your home, on your property or under your supervision at all times.

Pay attention to your dog’s health.  If he seems crabby or lethargic, take him in for a checkup even if nothing obvious is wrong with him.

Don’t force your dog to accept the attention of strangers (including the four-legged ones). Not all dogs are social butterflies. You don’t let every person you meet hug you or paw at you – why should your dog?

Train your dog. Training creates a common language and strengthens the bond between you and your dog. It does NOT turn a dog into a mindless robot. Rules and boundaries create predictability in a dog’s world. Predictability reduces anxiety, and reducing anxiety decreases aggression.

Don’t let your dog fence fight.  Don’t let him lunge and bark at people or dogs when you go for a walk.  Don’t let him charge the door, windows or gate when visitors approach. When your dog does these things he’s not protecting you, he’s expressing his own insecurity.

Don’t let your good dog go bad.

“He Just Attacked Out of Nowhere!”

As a dog trainer I’m frequently called on to help people deal with aggressive dogs.  It is some of the most difficult, rewarding and sometimes heartbreaking, work I do.  Dogs evolved to be our companions in life – but they can also be very dangerous. 

If you have an aggressive dog in your home, do not try to fix the problem yourself.  Dogs can be very dangerous, even small dogs. Earlier this month a 6-month old child in Lexington, Kentucky was killed by a Jack Russell Terrier.

Don’t risk your life, or worse yet, a child’s life, by ignoring aggressive behavior or trying to trying to fix it on your own. And don’t make the dog someone else’s problem by dumping it with a rescue group without telling them the real reason you are getting rid of him.  To fix a problem like this you need to hire a dog trainer who has experience working with aggression.  We suggest you look for one who is a member of the International Association of Canine Professionals or the National Association of Dog Obedience Instructors.

Aggression is part of animal life and although there are many ways that animals express aggression, some features are common to most aggressive actions.  One of these is escalation.  Aggressive encounters usually start with a low risk, low intensity exchange of aggressive displays.  If these initial displays don’t end the encounter, increasingly intense – and progressively more dangerous – patterns of behavior follow.  If neither animal backs off, the encounter will eventually end with the most potentially damaging behaviors the animals are capable of.  This progressive increase in the intensity of aggressive behavior is called escalation.

Emotional aggression arises from impulsive actions and is therefore less affected by weighing risk against reward than resource-based aggression is.  Because of this, emotional aggression tends to escalate far more quickly.  A dog that is reacting out of fear, frustration or other emotional triggers will typically escalate more quickly than one who is calmly defending his territory. 

Dogs are masters at emitting and reading subtle contextual cues; most people are not.  The first signals a dog emits when he is aroused are usually very subtle and can therefore be missed by an inexperienced or inattentive person (or dog). When those initial, subtle signals are not acknowledged, the dog’s actions will escalate, especially if he is emotionally aroused.  I believe that this is why many people describe aggressive encounters with dogs as occurring without warning.  The warning was there, but it was so subtle that the person missed it. 

Escalation is a vital factor in canine aggression. The first step to curing problem aggression is being able to recognize key signals the dog exhibits early in the process. If we interrupt the dog at an early stage in arousal, it is usually easy to redirect him to more appropriate behavior. But if the dog has escalated to an overt threat stage by the time we try to intervene, we are far less likely to be successful – and far more likely to be bitten. 

Another key factor to keep in mind when you are faced with an aggressive dog is changes in rates of behavior.  When most people observe an aggressive dog, they look for specific reactions and postures (growling, bared teeth, stiff movement, etc.). These changes of the dog’s outward state are important, but we should also look for changes in rates of behaviors.  Escalation to the next level of aggression is often indicated by changes in rate of behaviors like pacing, panting, blinking, wagging, or other repetitive actions. For example, you may see a dog suddenly start to pace more quickly right before he moves into the next, more intense stage of aggression. 

When you observe a change in the rate of an action like pacing in an aroused dog, make a mental note of the postures, expressions and movements the dog displayed right before the change occurred. Some of these are likely subtle signals of aggression that you’ve missed in the past.  If the dog is still in an early stage in the process, it may be possible to divert his attention and redirect his behavior to another outlet.  If he is strongly aroused, there is more warning to avoid additional conflict or injury.

It is also important to realize that arousal happens quickly and calming down takes time.  Aggressive reactions are physiological, not just psychological, reactions.  Changes like increased respiration, heart rate, elevated adrenaline levels and other factors take more time to abate than they do to begin. To prevent an aroused dog from re-escalating, you should take him away from the source of his arousal and give him a chance to calm down. 

And remember – UNLESS YOU ARE AN EXPERIENCED, PROFESSIONAL DOG TRAINER – do NOT try to work with an aggressive dog yourself.  This article is purely informative.  It is not intended as a guide to working with aggressive dogs.

Links to three photos illustrating increasing levels of aggressive display.  In the first, Zorro is giving subtle signals (intent gaze, head positioned over Audie, tight lips) to young Audie to back off.  The second photo shows Zip intent on taking a toy from Audie.  The intense stare, prominent whites of her eyes, open mouth and ears aimed forward indicate she is in a higher state of arousal than Zorro was.  The third photo shows Aussie Roo (RIP) telling three much larger dogs to back off in no uncertain terms.  The completely bared teeth, tight forward-pressed lips, wide open (almost bulging) eyes and stiff forward posture are warning them that her next step will be to bite.