Is it bad behavior or is it fear?

Is it bad behaviour or is it fear? pg. 231

Since most people equate bad behaviour with defiance, stubbornness, or lack of intelligence, it is no wonder that so many owners, dog walkers, doggie daycare workers, and other pet care workers are under the mistaken assumption that dogs behaving badly do it intentionally. In fact, dogs act and react typically out of only two basic emotions: fear or dominance. Dogs do not have an agenda or convoluted plans to ruin your day or get in trouble in order to get a reaction from you. They are not children and certainly not teenagers who seem to enjoy getting their parents upset. Dogs are pure and honest. They are raw. True, there are certain dogs and breeds of dogs who tend to be more or less intelligent and certainly more or less reactive to outside stimuli. My work with feral dogs in the Caribbean and all around the world has given me a unique perspective of animal behaviour and just how much misinformation is out there. For example, as Dr. Grandin reminds us, many, many trainers and owners do not understand the basics of animal behaviour and this is responsible for the eventual euthanasia or “rehoming” of “bad dogs”. Hubris is a dangerous thing. Think of what constitutes a “good trainer” or “good behaviourist”. Many have unfortunately no credentials or training or even common sense. If a dog is barking, and we yell, what does that dog think? No, the dog does not think that we are yelling at him to stop barking but rather the dog sees that we are unstable and out of control ourselves and have now become the barking dog’s backup singers. We are doo wopping our way into reinforcing bad behaviours. When a dog is barking out of fear, yelling and screaming is simply intensifying the dog’s fear as it believes now that there is definitely something to be afraid of and chase away. Try this simple, “dog logical” technique from UK(9professionals. Instead of yelling at your dog to shut up or “Leave it” or “knock it off”, walk up to the area where your dog is barking. Get in front of your dog and look out the window or door or wherever the animal is barking. Look out in that direction and see if you do see something that looks dangerous. Either way, whether there is something or not, you have checked it out. Once you have looked at the potential danger and now turn and walk away from it, your dog will see you as his protector and the one who will keep him safe. This is just one way that you can instill confidence in your dog. Think of him as a doorbell alerting you that someone is at your door. By youre going up to check out the potential danger and blocking your dog from being there, you are showing him in a very visual and physical way that you are in fact keeping him safe. Thus you become his parent instead of his child. Changing the relationship from your being the child needing protection to your being the parent who is giving protection, will begin to teach your fearful dog that he is safe and in time he will become much less reactive. Obviously, there are many other behaviours habits you will need to change in order to truly teach your dog to become less reactive, but giving a cookie when an animal is in fight or flight mode is never a good idea. You are actually rewarding the fearful or active state of mind and not as you think, what you perceive to be a change in behaviour because of a simple change in his body position.

Refer to “There is Hope” for a full list of rules and behavioural modifications to help you with your metamorphosis from protected to protector. It’s very simple because animals think in black and white. They do not postulate and hypothesis. They act and react out of fear or dominance. Dogs can be motivated out of both fear and dominance and it is never a good idea to be an arrogant human in those situations. If a dog trusts you to provide for it and to protect it, it will begin to lose its fear or dominance and instead begin to become a very solid companion. When a dog is unsure of his job description and duties is what frequently begins and exacerbates behavioural issues. When a dog barks and you simply yell louder than your dog, you are teaching him that barking louder and joining in his tirade is a viable option. Would anyone follow a screaming crazy person yelling at people on the Titanic to go up for safety? Remember, the Titanic was upside down so running up was actually running to one’s death. We do not typically have confidence in people who are yelling and screaming, so why would your dog have confidence in you when you are seemingly out of control? The answer is, you dog sees you as weak in that moment and may intensify his behaviour in order to protect his screaming baby.

Back to fear. What causes a dog to be fearful and what is the difference between fear and uncertainty? In my opinion, fear is more of a genetic or predisposal to novel or frightening stimuli. A dog who is fearful is much like the climate compared to weather. Uncertainty, however is a dog’s lack of clarity or exposure to a stimulus that it is uncertain how to react in that moment. Some dogs, due to poor breeding or upbringing, can be genetically fearful dogs. Many of the designer mixed breed dogs have genetic predispositions to certain behaviours and physical issues. They are more like altering climate. They can be helped but it takes a very experienced and knowledgeable behaviourist to intervene. On the other hand, dogs who react from uncertainty can be helped relatively easily by giving them the clarity they are looking for and so desperately need.

An example of this is a dog who is generally fine with people but who will bark when a person, known or novel walks into the home through a dark hallway. The dog is not afraid genetically of people or of the home, but since the hallway may be dimly lit and the person may be wearing a hoodie, in that instance, the dog might backup or even growl or bark. Human reaction to that is to say, “it’s ok. It’s only Michael. You now Michael!”. Instead of telling the dog it is okay to be afraid in the moment, try putting a light in that hallway so that the dog can see that it is a human coming in and not Freddie Kruger. Once the dog can see the person, he then can understand that it is nothing to worry about or to fear. My goal is not to make robots but rather to create independent thinkers who can then be calm and confident in any situation. This is how I train service dogs.

So why do we feel the need to toss cookies like a human Pez dispense to dogs with behavioural issues? And for God’s sake, why do we use shock collars and prong collars so freely, and so irresponsibly. Okay, haters, bring it on! Think of what a pronged collar represents. In theory it is a brilliant idea. The prongs of a collar represent the teeth of the “pack leader” while the leader is correcting one of his pack members. Absolutely brilliant idea, but now let’s go back to energy. Think of the two handed yank that must be implemented for many dogs to feel the prongs around their throat. If the pronged collar were on your toddler or grandparent could you use the same energy for correction. Hopefully not. So where does that put prong collars in our list of viable options? There are certainly people who enjoy great success in walking a dog with a prong collar and who do not feel the urge or need to use brute force in correction, but for the average dog owner, feeling fear or panic at an oncoming bicycle, child, stroller or other novel or moving stimulus, the chance for overcorrection is nearly inevitable. My rule is that if you would not use this on your child, you should not use this on your dog.

Shock collars or the cotton candy version known as “E-collars” or “training collars”. Another brilliant concept gone horribly awry in many cases. What does the shock represent? It represents the teeth of the “pack leader” biting the dog in the neck or throat. Again, wonderful concept but horribly flawed. While my good friend, Temple, and I were driving home from her induction into the National Women’s Hall of Fame, we had six hours to discuss this very concept. In order for a correction to be understood by and incorporated into the dog for future use, the dog must see the direct relationship and correlation between the perceived “bad behaviour” and the punishment. The issue here is how can a dog understand that his owner is making this correction when the owner is five, ten, twenty or even fifty feet away and not near the dog. This can easily make a fearful or uncertain dog lash out in panic mode. The animal must understand two things: which behaviour was undesired and that the person correcting the behaviour was the owner or trainer. When a dog lacks that sense of clarity, he may become phobic, fearful, and more unpredictable.

An example of this is a beautiful, large dog in Connecticut, named “Dan”. When I first met Dan, he was people aggressive, child aggressive, toy aggressive, dog aggressive, car aggressive, chipmunk aggressive, everything you could imagine aggressive. For many hours I worked with his family and Dan began to change. Dan slowly became less reactive and much more able to tolerate stimuli around him. In fact, he was a new dog. So what went wrong? Dan was a very uncertain dog, although an inexperienced or novice trainer might think he was a dominant dog. This is where the big boys need to play games and the children need to step back and watch and learn. Dan was not in fact a dominant dog but rather an extremely uncertain dog with basic underlying fear issues. I asked the family one important favor that they never do if they wanted this dog to be the best dog in the world. Dan became Model Citizen.

Many years later I received a phone call from this family that Dan had bitten the next door neighbor, an elderly woman who gardened and had a beautiful calm, sweet personality. So what went wrong? They did the one thing I asked them never to do. They used a shock collar. It was not one that they should have ever used but each time the dog approached the property line where the neighbor was gardening, they would give a tiny zap to the dog. This was not on a high setting but every time Dan saw the neighbor he received a shock. Dogs typically believe whatever they are looking at is the cause of their pain. Thus Dan assumed that the neighbor was responsible for shocking him. One day, the battery did not work and Dan severely bit the neighbor as payback for what he perceived she was doing for years. Dogs are not stupid. The same cannot always be said for humans.