Safety Tips for Dogs at Halloween  October, 2012 – DueNorth Kennels Boarding and Training knows that Halloween, with candy, costumes and kids, can be a scary and even dangerous time for dogs across the country. By following a few simple guidelines, dog owners can enjoy the festivities, knowing that their dog is safe and comfortable. “Halloween can be extremely stressful for dogs. “Every November first, hundreds of dog owners have heartbreaking stories to share about their dogs – stories that could be prevented with a little planning and awareness.”  : Top Three Obedience Commands 1.            Practice your “stay” command with your dog in the days and weeks leading up to Halloween. With ghouls and goblins coming to the door, this is a great opportunity to strengthen your obedience training. Remember to use a leash or a baby gate while practicing your “stay” command if your dog has not had enough practice. 2.            Teach your dog how to relax on command, with a word like “easy,” “calm” or “chill.” Use it to keep excitement levels down when trick-or-treaters come knocking. 3.            Make sure your dog has a solid “Leave It” command in place for the days that follow Halloween, when the ground is covered in candy, wrappers, and other goodies. Seven Safety Strategies 4.            Expose your dog to costumes, masks, and people doing funny or lurching walks before Halloween. Watch your dog’s reaction carefully to decide if he is ready to face Halloween revelers. 5.            Learn the signs and signals of stress in a dog, by remembering LAYS: o        LICKING lips or LIFTING one paw o        looking or trying to move AWAY o        excessive or exaggerated YAWNING o        sudden vigorous SCRATCHING, or becoming very STILL. All of these signs are your dog’s way of saying “I’m not comfortable with this situation.” By learning to read these signals, you can interrupt or change the environment, and prevent your dog from escalating to a growl or a bite. 6.            If your dog is frightened or distressed, do not force her to continue putting up with Halloween activities. Provide her with a safe, comfortable place that will help her feel more secure amid the scary sights and sounds. 7.            Consider giving your dog a highly valued chew toy at least 30 minutes before trick-or-treating begins, which may help to keep her mind off the disturbance. 8.            Keep your dog inside, and attach a “house leash” to your dog, to act as an extra long handle, should your dog try to escape or run away. Make sure your dog is wearing proper identification in case she gets out the door. 9.            If your dog is frightened, do not comfort or “baby” your dog if he is afraid. Dogs take their cue of how to behave from their owners; if you are acting “strange” by offering soothing words and gestures, your dog may interpret it as praise for being frightened, or a confirmation that the costumes are truly scary. Instead, act as normal and as “matter of fact” as possible, to help your dog understand that there is nothing to worry about. 10.        Make sure your family knows that chocolate is toxic for dogs. Dark chocolate is the most dangerous, but all chocolate has the potential to cause nerve damage or even death. “Halloween is a tremendous opportunity to help your dog learn how to be calm and obedient with high levels of distraction,” said Robertson. “With a little preparation to keep dogs safe, and an understanding of how to help pets through their fears, dog owners can have a safe – not scary – Halloween celebration.”

Do you have a dog that growls at you if you happen to get to close to her food? If you do….you have a ‘resource guarder’. This behaviour often starts in young pups and can get worse as the dog gets older. It will not go away without some training. Dogs that resource guard can be especially dangerous to children.

Dogs by nature are scavengers that hunt for food or find food sources. They tend to think that if they have it, then it is theirs and they will protect it.

Obedience can play a big role in solving this issue.

Start today to get your dog to sit on command. Then start to ask the dog to sit before you put down an empty bowl. Have a leash on the dog for greater control.  Then place a very small amount of food into the bowl. When the dog is finished, use the leash to call the puppy away from the bowl. Tell the pup to sit again and add some more food. Make the dog sit until you tell her it is OK and let her go to eat again. If the dog shows any sign of aggression at all, make her sit again and take the food away.

Once she seems to be getting better with her food, hold onto the food bowl while she is eating and occasionally add something a bit more tasty so the dog learns that you are not a threat to her food.

If this aggression is also occurring with toys, remove all the toys but one. When the dog has a toy, offer her a trade for her toy. The trade has to be a trade up for the dog. In other words, if the dog has a high value toy like a stuffed animal then you have to offer a very tasty but small piece of meat. You can start using a word for this, like trade or give and then you should be able to use that word to get your dog to give you whatever it has. Don’t nag the dog with this though or it may revert back to guarding things.

Dogs with a tendency to resource guarding should be on some sort of a leadership program. That means that they get nothing…not even petting without having to do something for the reward. So if your dog butts your hand asking for a pet, say sit first and wait till the dog sits before petting.

Your dog should not be allowed on furniture (some dogs will guard their place on the furniture) and should sit at the door before being allowed outside. If this problem persists after the age of 5 months, you need to get professional help.

Positive Only Training – you be the judge.

I have written before in this column about positive only training and other types of training, using a leash and collar and also using an e-collar. I am not a huge fan of using positive only training.

I have to tell you a secret. I train my own dogs for different kinds of competition. I compete very successfully in competitive obedience. One of my personal dogs became the first dog in our club to become an obedience champion in over 25 years. I also compete in Rally Obedience and to some degree in field training.

So I can hear what you are thinking as you read this. It goes something like this “I don’t compete with my dog….my dog is just a pet. So I don’t need all that really great obedience”. Well the truth of the matter is, there are no kids in the competition ring that are walking around with cookies or toddlers to knock over. Folks, competition obedience is a lot easier than pet dog obedience. Competition obedience has no squirrels running by or deer grazing off in the field. There is only you, your dog, the judge and a very sterile environment.

Go to an obedience trial and ask those people how they train their dogs. Go to a field event and ask them how they train their dogs. Most of those people will tell you that while they do use a lot of positive in their training, they do use correction based training as well. These events unlike events like agility and flyball require a very obedient dog. You require an obedient dog. Don’t accept anything less.

You as a dog owner need to know what kind of dog training you want for your family pet. Unless you are going to be competing with your dog in a sport like agility or flyball, you should be expecting the obedience course that you are attending to provide you with an obedient dog at the end.

Beware of classes that say Beginner level one, Beginner level two, Novice level one, Novice level two. These are classes designed to keep you and your money coming back in a never ending scenario while you live with a partially trained dog.

If you enjoy taking classes and you want to eventually do what I do and compete with your dog…then you have to take classes over and over but your beginner level class should provide you with all the skills that you require to train your dog to a basic level of obedience in one set of lessons. Your dog should be able to perform basic level obedience by the age of one year. Please don’t accept less!

One of the most common things that I hear in class is “I have to go to work in the morning and I can never get my dog to come back into the house when I say ‘come.’”. Dogs that start this have learned a few things about ‘come’.  First of all the dog has learned that when he hears the word come something that he does not want to do is going to happen to him. So when you call ‘come’ in the morning, his fun ends and he gets left in the house all day. He has also learned that when you say ‘come’ you can’t really make him come so the word has become meaningless to your dog.

My suggestion is that you let your dog out in the morning and let him drag a long line about 15 to 25 feet long. Make sure that the dog is only wearing a flat collar that he can’t back out of and keep an eye on him while he is out there doing his business. Allow yourself a few extra minutes and when you call him use a different word such as ‘here’. Pick up the long line and call his name and say ‘here’ and then turn and walk back a few steps carefully so you don’t trip. When he gets to you turn around so that he is now in front of you and give him a little treat. It should be a really wonderful treat such as a bit of meat or wiener. Then take him off for a little walk. Even a five minute walk will make the act of coming to you seem like a more worthwhile effort to the dog. When you do end up leaving for work, leave the dogs a stuffed Kong to keep it busy while you leave.

Training a dog can be a lifelong endeavor depending on what you want your dog to do. A dog under the age of two should not be left outside without a line. That way you can enforce what you really want your dog to do.

If you call your dog to come, make sure that there is something in it for the dog. Don’t call the dog to come when you want to clip the dog’s nails or give it a bath or lock it in a crate. Doing so is just encouraging the dog not to come when called.

A recent discussion on a dog training email list got me to thinking about some issues that are currently tearing the dog training world apart.

The comment from the email list was from an obedience judge with over 30 years of judging experience. She was commenting on the general lack of obedience that is currently being seen in competition level dogs and wondered if this was due to the changes in training methodology over the past 15 to 20 years.

She felt that even the highest examples of dogs…those trained to compete in the highly disciplined sport of competitive obedience were no longer able to perform reliably because of a lack of consequences.

I have to agree with her on this one. However a lot of people went on to say that dogs should not be trained with consequences…. they should only be rewarded for good behaviour and all bad behaviour should be ignored. Saying no to your dog is not acceptable. One responder even went so far as to suggest that we employ standards from the Children’s Aid and make it illegal to even walk a dog with the leash pulled tight.

Perhaps this might work if you are single, don’t work, don’t have anything else do and there are no children in the house and you devote your entire day to training the dog.

Somehow I just can’t imagine this working for a working mom with 3 kids. Having a dog around that is constantly knocking over a two year is going to be a big problem if all mom can do is reward it for being good.

These trainers make claims that training dogs with consequences are going to cause aggression in dogs. Balderdash! The opposite is the case. In a lifetime of training dogs and using consequences that has never been the case here.

It is also true everywhere in Nature. Consequences for making bad choices are part of everyday life, no matter if you are a bad driver or a deer crossing a busy highway. Even among barn yard animals there exists a hierarchy and a consequence will occur if a certain horse ventures too close to the best hay or grain.

A mother with 3 little kids and a dog can afford the time to ignore bad behaviour waiting for good behaviour to occur. She needs the behaviour to stop in a timely manner. If we as dog trainers fail to provide her with a solution we are failing both her and the dog. We will leave her with no other choice but to re-home the dog or surrender it to the shelter.

Insisting on good behaviour from your dog will not cause aggression in your dog. Saying no to your dog will not cause aggression or destroy its self confidence.

Balance - A harmonious or satisfying arrangement or proportion of parts or elements, as in a design.

We strive for balance in our lives. We balance our jobs with our recreation time. Excesses are often considered undesirable. We seek a balanced diet, a balanced exercise program. We often tolerate extremes for a period of time but eventually sanity prevails and we return to the middle of the road.

Should it not be so with dogs? I believe that it should be. It is my firm belief that dogs need to be trained in a balanced manner. This article will be about how I train my dogs and my clients dogs. I have had enormous success with using both food training and correction type training.

Each individual dog trainer is the product of their own experiences, resulting in a potpourri of methods, tools and theories. Some trainers will call themselves totally positive, some are pure positive and some are traditional. Some will call another trainer’s methods abusive while some will call the all reward method confusing for both dog and owner.

Often in these situations, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. So it is with dog training. The middle is balanced.  I personally think that there is something of value in all styles of training.

Many traditional dog trainers have come to see the value of better timing in their training and the addition of food in some situations. They have created  balance in their approach.

My belief is that a good quality obedience program opens the lines of communications both ways between canine and human. There has to be balance in the communication. The owner does have to make an effort to be clear to the dog about what is expected from the dog. The dog has to be prepared to pay attention to what the owner is trying to say.

For some dogs it is their lack of attention to the owner that creates most of the problems. You can never train any dog if you do not have attention from the dog.

Basic obedience training should create attention. With this attention the dog is primed for learning new things. For the dog this is the stage where it begins to learn the ‘rules’. It learns impulse control. It learns how to behave in a variety of situations with distractions. As it learns, it learns to pay more attention and it learns even more rules. Learning the rules gives the dog more self confidence and better behaviour. It also gives the dog more freedom. You would be more confident taking a dog that is well behaved with you on walks and on vacations. This gives the dog more and more freedom and results in a much more pleasant life for both you and your dog.

Recently there was a discussion on the CAPPDT email list about what constitutes a correction. I understand that many people are very opposed to a correction and feel that waiting until the dog “offers the right behaviour” is the way to go and perhaps in many situations this will work just fine. However time is a precious commodity in today’s world where moms and dads juggle full time jobs and kids with soccer, hockey and piano lessons. The dog is often very low on the totem pole. They need to have a full dialogue with their dog that includes all 4 quadrants of learning. Corrections should always be ‘just right’ and never cause fear. Sometimes the most subtle correction will work just fine and for some dog a firmer correction will be required. Rules and discipline must also be very fair and consistent.

I often use an analogy with my own clients. You and your dog need to play by the rule book…but it works best if the owner writes the rule book. If the rule book is the dog’s then you are both in trouble.

Those dog trainers who say that saying ‘no’ to your dog is going to ruin your dog and result in a fearful quivering mass are lying to you. In my life time I have trained hundreds of dogs as have other trainers I know. Not a single fearful dog has resulted. Because the training was fair!

 There is no balance in only saying ‘yes’ to your dog. It is a failure to communicate with your dog. Only saying yes gives your dog only half the information that it needs to survive in the world it lives in. You owe it to your dog to give it a balanced life and more self confidence….give him some clear rules applied with kindness, firmness and praise. Your dog will love you for it.

I started teaching 2 new obedience classes last week. All in all about 20 new students between the two classes. We have a good mixture of dogs in the class....everything from an English Mastiff and German Shepherds to papillions and little wire haired dachshunds. My emphasis will always be on fair and consistent training with dogs. If you show your dog repeatedly exactly what you expect until you are very sure that they know what to do, then it is fair to hold them to account for failing to be obedient. Corrections do not need to be violent or mean spirited but they do need to fair and consistent. Dogs learn very well from informative negative reinforcement...the key being informative. They need to understand the exercise well enough so that the correction when issued actually teaches the dog to improve it's attention and to avoid the correction in the future. A negatively reinforced behaviour stands up very well and needs few reminders later on.
I feel strongly that in group classes a greater number of students are actually better able to understand this concept than many other types of dog training.
I base my training methods on Koehler method but have tempered it to be more like the Monks of New Skete. Their books and DVDs are excellent resource guides for anyone interested in learning more about dog training and I am a huge fan of their methods. I find it to be fair and kind to the dogs and yet very no nonsense in the approach. It is also very simple and easy to understand.
There are also huge benefits to using food in dog training but I feel that it is better left to competition dogs and trainers that have more experience with it's use. The over use of food in training can produce it's own set of problems including dogs that practice resource guarding their owners. This is a pretty easy problem to develop in a dog and most people are ill prepared to deal with it or even recognise the problem. However if a clicker trainer program is phased in at the end of a correction based program, I believe that this is a very sturdy and solid experience for all competition dogs and pet dogs in particular.
Think of your relationship with your dogs as that of a benevolent boss. This is your favorite person to work with. You know that you have to do your job but your boss makes working with him/her so pleasant that you can never say no. These bosses are usually fair and consistent in nature.....and who would not want to work for them.