Who is Teaching Your Dog?
Article written by CollieMan.
No matter which breed of dog you own, it will love to learn new things. How and why dogs learn is already discussed in the Level One classroom lessons and, if you haven’t already, you could learn much from reading through them.
The important question, for me at least, is what is your dog learning and from who or what is it learning from?
Random Encounters
Your dog is learning each and every waking minute, and maybe even when it sleeps. It may well learn which is a good spot to sleep on without getting disturbed. Either way, your dog will waste no opportunity in learning something; it knows no other way.
This leads to an important question — who and what do you allow to teach your dog? Each day, I see dog owners allowing their dogs to run around in the local park, with little or no knowledge of the past history, social skills, or even the names of the other dogs. Even if these same dog owners don’t allow such reckless play, they will often stop when meeting up with another dog on a leash, and allow the dogs to mix, again with little or no knowledge of the other dog. I believe both of these acts can be counter-productive and negatively affect the relationship between the dog and the owner.
The Physical Dangers
One risk of such unchecked encounters is physical injuries that may arise from a dog fight. Dog fights can flare up in seconds and result in physical damage which, aside from being very painful to your dog, can cost thousands of pounds to correct, and open up a whole world of potential legal implications.
There is also the risk of long-term, if not permanant, behavioural changes to your dog or the other dog. Again, it takes seconds, and it can ruin a dog for life. Your dog may, from that day forth, show signs of aggression towards all other dogs, or it may nervously shiver all the time. Dogs can be affected in so many ways.
The Relationship Dangers
A trainer friend of mine once told me, “Give me fifteen minutes and a pound of liver, and I’ll make your dog forget you ever existed.” We like to think that our dogs will naturally gravitate towards us, but it’s not the case. There are, quite literally, millions of things that your dog would rather do than be with you, unless you are prepared to put a lot of ground work in to the relationship. Don’t believe me? Open your front door and see what the dog does. Chances are that your dog will dash out quicker than you can say sit.
When you allow your dog to play with other dogs, you open the door to a whole new world, but a world where you don’t play a significant part, and that’s the real danger. You will rarely be able to compete with other dogs in the ‘how much fun am I’ stakes. Why make it harder for yourself by allowing unchecked play with other dogs.
Where’s the Off Switch?
As smart as dogs are, they don’t really get the concept of “sometimes”. It’s almost like they work in binary - it’s either on or it’s off. There’s no “sometimes it’s on and sometimes it’s off”.
I would say that if you don’t want your dog to pull on the leash towards other dogs, or run after dogs, ignoring your recall command in the process, then don’t switch that behaviour on in the first place. Just don’t let it learn how much fun other dogs can be.
Far better is for you to spend time with your dog. Be selfish about it. Don’t worry about looking or sounding silly to others in the park. What is important is what your dog thinks, and it will love it. Vary the games you play, take rewards with you in your pockets, so that you can reward your dog for returning to you or catching up with you when you run around. Wave your arms about, take an old towel for your dog to chase as you let it flap in the breeze from your belt. Do anything that you like and that gets your dog’s attention!
I would discourage ‘fetch’ type games at the start, in favour of interactive games, where you are working more closely with the dog. Tugging games are ideal for this.
If you don’t fancy tugging games, why not practise some of the lessons shown in the Dog Tricks Academy Classroom?
Why discourage fetch type games? When playing ‘fetch’, the only time you are really interacting with the dog is when you hold the ball. Then you throw it and the fun begins for the dog — when it is running away from you; the exact opposite of what you want to accomplish. Better to keep the fetch type games for special occasions. You could still have your dog sit in front of you and have it catch the ball in its mouth. That way it has to look up and focus on you.
Worth Working For
I won’t pretend it’s easy. It isn’t. Dogs bore easily, and so you have to keep things varied. Try changing the route you take on the walks, cross the road at random points, and stop at random times. If you encounter another dog walking towards you, just keep on walking as though it doesn’t even exist, make a sound to get your dog’s attention as you pass.
If another dog approaches you in the park, move away, ask the owner to remove it, just ignore it, or if needs be, make a noise to discourage its approach. Again, be selfish!
Don’t make the mistake of believing that your dog HAS to play with other dogs to really have fun. It doesn’t. It might not be easy to keep your dog’s attention, but the rewards, I promise you, are well worth working for. Before you know it, you will have a dog that is not in the least bit interested in other dogs and has eyes only for you.
Socialising must be Controlled.
I socialise my puppy each week at our training class. In that class, pups are not allowed to climb all over each other (effectively sharpening their future fighting and bullying skills in my opinion) and all contact is supervised by the fully qualified instructors. (Even when we go in each week, the entry is controlled and dogs are led in one at a time.)
Also, aggressive dogs have their own class and so we know there are not going to be dogs giving bad habits to all the other dogs in the class.
Socialising must be Safe
We attend monthly socialising walks, organised by our training class. The instructors take their 'safe' dogs as leaders and examples to the other dogs. Again, we have the instructors there to ensure that all dogs behave, and to give advice when things go wrong -- for example, we were advised and given extra help when it was identified that Ellie was a little overly anxious about other dogs. (She is now fine after extra help.) Again, aggressive dogs are not allowed on these walks.
We also take a weekly walk with the instructor and any one of her three dogs. This is to get our puppy used to different dogs, each with different personalities, and again, with a qualified person in case of mistakes being made by us or the dog.
Socialising must be Contextual
I strongly believe that socialising must be a part of something bigger. That means not socialising just for play. The latter, for me, leads to the biggest problems, as the other dog(s) becomes your dog's prime focus. However, when it is done as part of weekly training classes or walks, then the activity becomes the main focus, not the fact that there are other dogs there for it to mix with. In fact, I think it teaches the ideal response from the dog: "Okay there are other dogs here, but I'm too busy doing what I'm doing to bother with them."
So socialise as much as you feel is needed, but make sure it's safe, controlled, and contextual.
The first one is developing crucial communication skills necessary to interact with other dogs. Dogs have their own language, and the more they interact with other dogs then the easier it becomes for them to identify or generate those kinds of signals.
The second one is to increase his acceptance and tolerance of his environment. The more often a dog is exposed to a specific circumstance or situation, then the more relaxed and calmer he will become.
Example: Driving while your dog is in your car might make him nervous in the beginning, but they eventually learn to tolerate and accept it, they can even be conditioned to love it!
We have two Beagles - 5 months and 14 months. We take them to the park almost every morning and a large part of the walk is spent in a big, safe meadow in the center of the park. This is where all the dogs go to play off-lead. Our dogs thoroughly enjoy it and we've never had any trouble. They love to play chases and spend their time tearing around the field at break-neck speed. I've always told everyone that I think it's the best thing we've done for them as they are superbly socialized and get on great with all dogs and people. Here's there blog with lots of pictures of their romps and adventures:
fourleggedpal.com
You've got me thinking about this. But a couple of reasons why I'd be reluctant to stop these off-lead play sessions:
1. I don't know how we'd ever manage to get them the exercise they need if they weren't running and chasing with other dogs. They literally sprint for minutes at a time; rest for a moment then sprint again. (obviously not quite as much for the little one!) This can go on for an hour! They are in superb shape as a result. Beagles have been bred to run hard all day so they really need LOTS of exercise.
2. Our dogs have much better recall when they are playing with other dogs. They'll typically stop play if we call, and will quickly break away from the group and follow us if we move away. During play they'll return to us frequently as if to say "this is great fun mum!" - then off for another few sprint laps of the meadow. When we let them off-lead with no other dogs to keep their attention they tend to put their noses down and start sniffing. We then have BIG problems keeping their attention!
A typical walk for us will currently be :
- on-lead to the meadow.
- a good long romp in the meadow with their pals.
- as soon as the chasing stops we get moving again, perhaps walking around the meadow until more chase buddies appear.
- once they've burnt off lots of energy (and their thoughts start turning to sniffing) we get them back on extender leads and we go for a good long 'sniffy' walk around the park. We let them thoroughly satisfy their lust for sniffing, but make a point of recalling them frequently for treats (enforceable because we have the extension lead on). We stop for frequent training sessions.
Our control of our dogs when they are off-lead isn't as good as we'd like (because of their scenting instincts). The don't go far, and they tend only to run off for 60 seconds or so. But the oldest one has a habit of eating things she shouldn't. But my feeling is that play with other dogs makes them more controllable as it distracts them from sniffing.
We have recently started to play a lot more games and teach lots of tricks to try and make us more interesting than a nice rabbit trail! It's working.
We've recently started agility with the older one and the one-to-one interaction between the two of us is making her much more responsive and obedient. So I can appreciate what you are saying about the value of having your dog think you're the best thing since sliced bread. And she is absolutely fearless - I've always put this down to her off-lead experiences, but it could be genetic.
It's certainly something to think about though!!! Perhaps a bit more time spent having fun with us and a bit less with other dogs.