Manners vs. Obedience

MANNERS VS OBEDIENCE

Most training can be broken down into Manners versus Obedience. Obedience is when you ask your dog to do something, and she does it. Sit, Down, Here, Stay, Drop It, Spin, Beg... these are all examples of Obedience.

Manners are all the things you want your dog to do without you having to ask for it. Mostly, this is a list of "Don'ts": Don't chew on the furniture. Don't jump on guests. Don't pee in the house. Don't bark to get your way.

The irony is that while most owners think they want their dog to be obedient (and most trainers offer “Obedience Classes”), what they really want is for their dog to have good manners. Give 99% of people a dog that never chews on furniture or shoes, is calms when guests come over, is housebroken, and is never pushy or barky to get its way, and they'll be thrilled – even if it never learns a decent Down or Stay.

Teaching Obedience is relatively simple. A few minutes of good reward-based training a few times a day will train a dog to understand a command. Of course, you then need to “proof” the command for increasing levels of distraction, but ultimately, that's still a fairly straightforward task. My Day Training option – where I train a client's dog for them directly, and then “transfer” the behavior over to the client – is best suited to Obedience: I teach the dog to do X when someone gives the command.

Manners, on the other hand, is a very different approach. With Obedience, you're just focusing on the training a little bit at a time a few times a day, and in between you're not worrying about it. Manners, though, requires A) always being there to interrupt bad behavior when it happens and redirect to a better option, and B) managing your dog's environment so that it can't practice the bad behavior during those times when you can't be on top of it. 

"We had to destroy your wine-in-a-box.  It was gauche."

Manners, in other words, is a full time job compared to Obedience's part time work. But don't worry. Manners might be full time, but it's also just a temp gig. Most dogs can pick up good manners in just a few weeks of consistent behavior from their owners.

(Obedience, on the other hand, should really be a permanent part-time gig – never stop training your dog, and you'll have a happy dog forever.)

Positive Isn't Permissive

Positive Reinforcement training emphasizes rewarding good behavior over punishing bad behavior. This is good. This is wise. This gets the best results. But it is still inevitable that your dog will do bad behaviors. What are you supposed to do then? Just ignore it and hope it goes away? Well, no, of course not.

Except that, yeah, sometimes you should! If your dog is engaging in bad behavior that you can safely ignore, then that's often the best way to handle it. If your dog is barking at you to get your attention or to demand food or a toy or to be let out of a crate, then your best strategy is to just completely ignore your dog until they've been quiet for a while. No eye contact, no talking to them. Act as if they didn't exist. Once they've figured out the bad behavior isn't getting them anything, they'll eventually stop wasting their energy.

Dogs themselves can be masters of this.  Here is a video of my boxer Krypto when he was a wee puppy, trying to see if being a barky little pest will get him the bone that my older girl Derby was chewing on.  Other than a slight snark from her when he actually tried to get in and take the bone, all she did was quietly but utterly ignore his obnoxious behavior.  It took him almost four minutes to get the message, but eventually he figured out it wasn't going to work and he calmed down.  After that, he almost never barked at Derby for anything again.

 

WHEN IGNORING DOESN'T WORK

A lot of times, just ignoring a behavior isn't an option. If your dog has jumped up on a piece of furniture that you don't allow them on, then ignoring it is the same as giving them permission to misbehave. What to do then?

Well, the first thing to do is “management” - setting your home and lifestyle up so that your dog has a little opportunity to misbehave as possible. Your dog can't jump on your bed if he can't get into your bedroom. He can't jump on guests if he's kept behind a baby gate when they come over. While this might seem like “cheating”, it actually serves a very real training purpose – it keeps your dog from practicing bad behavior and building bad habits. It's not usually enough to fix a problem on its own, but it is an absolutely necessary part of training. Set things up so that your dog only has the opportunity to misbehave when you can be there and are able to do something about it. The rest of the time, set them up so they have no chance to misbehave.

If your dog does misbehave, usually just being more stubborn than your dog is enough to fix the problem in a short period of time. If your dog jumps on the couch and won't respond to you saying “Off”, just calmly (not angrily!) pull him off the couch. If he jumps up again, repeat. Repeat as many times as it takes him to understand that you are more stubborn than he is!

(My mentor, Janine Pierce, likes to say that the best dog trainers are women, because they're naturally bossy. My retort is that men make awesome trainers, because we're stubborn!)

But a very, very important flipside to handling your dog's misbehaviors is that you must be aware and reward your dog when he doesn't misbehave. Did your dog jump on the couch five times and you had to pull him off each time? On the sixth time, did he look like he was thinking about it, but then turned away? Praise the heck out of that little guy! The next day, did he come up to the couch but then just lie down on the floor next to it? That deserves a belly rub!

Remember, good behavior, almost by definition, is easy to ignore. Don't. Notice when your dog is doing the right thing, and reward them for it, and both of your lives will be much easier.

Get It, Then Name It

Imagine you're in a foreign country. Your guide, who does not speak English, is trying to get you to do something. You're not sure what it is – a custom, perhaps? Maybe a gesture that means something in this country? You really have no idea, but your guide seems to think it's pretty important, and you want to fit in. He keeps moving your body and arms around, but you can never seem to quite get it right. Whatever it is.

But the worst part is that your guide keeps saying, “Griznaq!” at you. You have no idea what “Griznaq” means, but he keeps barking it at you, in progressively more agitated tones. “Griznaq! Griznaq! Griznaq!”

Pop quiz: Do you think that him saying “Griznaq!” over and over will it easier to learn what he wants you to do, or harder?

Harder, right? Well, guess what? This is a metaphor for dog training. Ha! Bet you didn't see that coming!

When you start teaching your dog a new behavior, you need to keep in mind that your dog doesn't know what you want her to do. This may seem obvious, but it's easy to forget in the moment. Watch someone teaching their dog to Sit for the first time. They'll say “Sit” before bringing the treat up to their dog's nose. Then “Sit” again as they try to lure the nose upwards so that the butt will drop down. And probably a couple more times before their dog finally sits.

What's worse, is if the dog doesn't follow the treat and sit pretty quickly, the owner will say, “Sit!” even more. “Sit. Sit. Sit! Sit! Sit!”

“Griznaq. Griznaq. Griznaq! Griznaq!”

The owner thinks they're helping the dog by telling it what to do. But their dog doesn't know what “Sit” means, yet! It's just nonsense to their dog. What's worse, rather than teaching the dog that “Sit” means put her butt on the ground, the owner is actually associating the word “Sit” with confusion and frustration for the dog!

So, here's your training pro tip: First, get your dog to do what you want it to do, easily. Follow a treat with her nose till she sits, quickly and easily each time you lure with the treat. Or follow your hand walking in a circle. Or picking up a ball and bringing it back to you. Any behavior you're training at all. Get your dog able to do it comfortably and quickly and easily, several times in a row.

And then tell your dog what that behavior is called.

Once your dog has mastered following the treat and sitting, you can then say, “Good job. By the way, we call that Sit!” And then each time, just prior to having your dog sit, you'll say, “Sit.”

Very important: You're still not telling your dog to sit. You're teaching them that the the behavior they're already doing (sitting) is called Sit. So, you're still not going to say it multiple times. Just once, before each sit. The average dog needs around 40 or more reps like this – spread over multiple sessions – before they really start to make the connection that “Sit means sit.”

After that, you can sometimes say the command more than once, if your dog gets a bit distracted and needs a reminder of what you said. But be sure to give her a good 10 seconds or so before saying it again. Sometimes – most times – a dog that doesn't respond right away is just trying to figure it out. She knows she learned it that command... but what did it mean, again? It's right on the tip of my nose... Oh, right, put my butt down! Yay!

If you fall back into saying the command over and over again, you're just back to yelling “Griznaq!” at your dog.

Now I need to go teach my dogs to do something when I say, “Griznaq.”

Metaphors Are Meta-Phantastic!

I've noticed that I'm a big fan of metaphors when I'm talking to my clients.  I really believe that almost everything our dogs do, or the ways we can deal with our dogs, has some real equivalent in the human world.

The best way to lock in our dogs' behaviors is to put them on a "variable reinforcement schedule" (or vR+ in science lingo) - make our rewards for their behavior come at random times and in random amounts.   

Metaphor: Vegas, baby!  Gambling is fun (and oftentimes even addictive) precisely because you might win at any time, and the amounts can be different each time.  And when you think about the behavior that is being locked in - "give us your money" - you can see just how powerfully vR+ works on us.  Getting your dog to Sit on command should be a cinch, comparatively.

Often, a good indicator if you're pushing your dog too hard, or if they're feeling stressed by a situation, is if they start nipping your fingers hard when they take food from you.

Metaphor: Horror movies.  Ever notice that when the protagonist is being chased by the killer and they're trying to get into their car or home, they always have trouble getting that key into the slot because their hands are shaking too much?  When we're stressed, we lose control over our fine motor functions. Dogs are the same way.  Normally, a dog has probably more control over its mouth and teeth than we have over our fingers, so if they're losing their normally gentle touch, they could probably use a break for a while.

It's a common issue for people who've recently rescued a new dog.  For the first few weeks, the dog is perfect - quiet, respectful, well behaved.  And then, after 2-4 weeks, it starts growling or nipping at people if they come near its toys, or it starts lunging at other dogs on walks, or starts chewing up the furniture.  But it was so good!  What happened?

Metaphor: Transfering to a new high school.  Ever moved and had to enter a new school when you were a kid?  At first, you don't know who's who or what the rules - explicit or unspoken - are.  So you keep your head down and try not to draw too much attention.  But after a bit, you start to figure out who the cool kids are, the different cliques, which teachers will let you slide and which are hard cases.  And then you can start to let your personality show; crack some jokes in class, show off at recess, start making friends.  Or,negatively, start picking on kids you see as easy marks or disrespecting the teachers.

The same goes for dogs.  Those first few weeks in your home, your new dog is unsure about how you will react.  Do you have rules you are stubborn and consistent about?  Do you care if the dog is being good or do you just ignore it?  And so, after a few weeks, your dog starts to feel more confident about its place in the home, and it's "true" personality will start to come out.  The good news is that you can use those first few weeks as a blessing and reinforce the heck out of all that good behavior, so that when your dog starts feeling free to behave as it likes, it will want to keep acting like a good dog.  Take that good behavior for granted at your peril!)

How is that dogs that start off so super-excited and manic about wanting to play with other dogs that they lunge and lunge against their leash can become extremely aggressive towards other dogs over time?  How did "I love other dogs SO MUCH!!!" turn into "I'll kill you!"?

Metaphor: Lakers Championships.  When the Lakers win a championship and the fans rush out of Staples Center here in L.A., they're all in an incredibly good mood.  They're cheering and yelling, they're high fiving and chest-bumping, "Wooo!  F#%& Yeah!"  And then what do they do?  They get into fist fights and set cars on fire.  Because too much adrenaline and uncontrolled energy has to go somewhere.  And whether it's people or dogs, getting too worked up without any self control is a recipe for violence.  When your dog lets itself get so manic about wanting to play with other dogs and then is continually brought up short by the leash, it gets frustrated.  And if it hasn't learned good impulse control to deal with that frustration, all that energy and frustration turns into negative emotions and aggression - just like a bunch of drunk Laker fans getting into fights with each other. (I stay off the streets after a championship lets out, if you can't tell).

What it all comes down to is that with just a little change in perspective, it's easy to see that humans and dogs are much more alike than we are different.  And more than just helping us to empathize with our dogs, knowing this helps us understand ourselves better, too.  So go chew on a bully stick and mull on that for a while.

"Corrections" aren't.

I've got a bone to pick with the word "correction."  I was listening to a trainer instruct someone on the proper use of a Gentle Leader head halter yesterday.  She told the owner that every time the owner subconsciously pulled tight on the leash, it was giving the dog a correction.  Now, in her mind and in common dog-trainer parlance, she was correct.  She meant that every time the owner pulled on the leash, she was giving the dog an adversive - that she was applying an unpleasant experience to the dog that would probably confuse the dog or make it dislike the halter.  Or perhaps she could have said that she was applying a punishment, which in behaviorism-lingo means a consequence that makes a behavior less likely to reoccur.

The problem is that the average owner isn't a trainer, and "correction" doesn't sound like a very negative term.  Which is the very reason the term came into use in the first place.  Back in the days of jerk-the-chain punishments when a dog did something wrong (days that are still with us), trainers knew that if they told their clients "jerk the leash to punish the dog for pulling" it would sound overly harsh to people who loved their dogs and just wanted them to walk nicely.  So they invented a euphemism, "correction".  "Give the dog a correction by jerking the leash when it pulls."

And it worked.  Most of us don't want to punish our dogs.  But "correction" is downright positive!  If you're kid spells a word wrong, and you give him a correction, i.e. show him how it is actually spelled, then you've helped him out!  And that's just what we want for our dogs, right?

Sure, except that, in dog training, a correction doesn't show the dog the right answer.  It just tells him what he did wrong.  Rather than telling your child the correct way to spell a word, it would be as if you just snapped, "Wrong!" each time they misspelled a word.  Which do you believe would be the more likely result, that your child became more motivated to improve their spelling, or that they would become sullen and not want to try anymore?  The second, certainly, because punishment dampens enthusiasm, and punishment without even pointing out the correct response doesn't just dampen enthusiasm, it kills it.

Keep that in mind in those times that you do use a punishment, however mild, with your dog.  All of us do at one time or another.  Sometimes it's even necessary, or even the best way to deal with a situation.  But any time you do, it is vitally necessary that you immediately show your dog what the correct answer is.  If your dog pulls and you end up jerking the leash out of frustration or old habit, at the very least lure or entice your dog into a proper position and then reward them for being there.  "That was wrong.  This is right." 

Let's build enthusiasm, not kill it.

Krypto Chronicles: Two Months!

Krypto just turned 16 weeks old, which means we've had him for two whole months!  Wow, time flies!

For a while there, I was a little worried that we hadn't gotten a proper Boxer.  Krypto was very easy going and mellow for the first month.  But now, trust me, he's all Boxer.  When he gets excited, gravity has a tenuous hold on him at best.  I can already see the "pogo-ing" in his future that is the hallmark of the happy Boxer.

First, the bad news. Housetraining is still an ongoing project.  The truth is that Molly and I both get lazy and don't keep an eye on him as much as we should.  We have taught him to use the doggie door and he is fairly good about letting himself out, but we need to be better about making sure that he uses it!  As it is, we have an accident about every three days or so.  This is my promise to you, my vast uncountable legions of readers: I. Will. Do. Better. 

(A note on doggie doors.  There's a totally valid school of thought that says that if you train your dog to use a doggie door, you never really know if they're actually housetrained; i.e., if they don't have access to the doggie door, will they still know not to potty inside?  And while that is perfectly logical and maybe even true, I've realized that I've had three previous dogs that all were raised with access to the doggie door and all of them were absolutely reliably house trained.  So, I started training without letting Krypto use the doggie door, but now I've decided to go with personal experience and play the odds.  I'll let you know how it works out.)

The good news is everything else.  Krypto walks quite excellently on a leash.  His only difficult times are if we're walking him and Derby at the same time and Derby gets ahead, he'll often want to pull to get to her.  Which creates an interesting dynamic in that each time he pulls, I stop, so Derby gets farther ahead.  But it works out because eventually Derby gets so far ahead that he stops trying to pull - at which point I reward him by jogging quickly up to Derby.

He sits politely before meeting people and dogs.  (Well, sometimes I have to tell him a few times, but he catches on quickly.)  He rarely jumps on people (a big achievement for any Boxer owner).  He's got his basic obedience down nicely with Touch, Down and his Emergency Recall ("Crime!").  I've just now gotten around to teaching him Stay.  Check back in a week or two to see how he's coming along.  (Like I said in my previous blog post, I've been a little lax on the obedience training just because I know that I can start it at any point.)

After his great experience at the skate park, every time he sees a skateboard, he wants to jump on it, now.  So I went and bought him his own skateboard.  Getting him to push it along and jump on it is no problem.  Now I need to figure out how to get him to keep three paws on the board while pushing with the fourth paw.  Not quite sure how I'm going to approach that...

My friends at Hollywood Paws tell me that there's often studio work for a well trained white Boxer, so I've started teaching him to hit a mark on cue. He's ready for his close up, Mr. DeMille!

Three Kinds of Training

Raising Krypto (my now-four-months old Boxer) these last two months has made me start thinking that "training" comes in three general flavors in these early stages: Socialization, Manners and Obedience.

1.  Socialization
This is the most important - almost all important - if you have a very young puppy (less than 16 months old).  I firmly believe that nearly all the difference between an easy-to-own dog and a frustration-machine is created in the first 3-4 months of life and how much socialization the puppy is exposed to.  Puppies that get a chance to see the world, people and other dogs in all their infinite variations, always in a positive, non-forced way will grow up to be happy, confident dogs.   Dogs that are fearful, aggressive, cowering, anxious... these are nearly always dogs that missed out on proper socialization, and oftentimes the damage is so great that it cannot be erased, only minimized.

2.  Manners
This is the rest of creating an "easy" dog (the part that the "nearly all the difference" in the previous paragraph didn't cover).  Manners refers to what you teach your dog to do without being asked.  When your dog jumps on you and you instantly turn your back on him, so that he learns that jumping will not get him attention, that is Manners. When you notice your dog pick up a proper toy on his own and you get happy and play with him for a few seconds, so that he starts to gravitate towards toys and not your shoes, that is Manners.  In neither case did you need to tell your dog "Off" or "Get a toy"; you're teaching him to do these things automatically.

3.  Obedience
Obedience is having your dog do what you tell him to do.  The irony of Obedience is that is what most owners primarily focus on and ask for, but is actually the least important part of what they actually want!

Good socialization and good manners is really all that is needed to create a dog that most owners would love to have.  Imagine a dog that is happy to meet strangers and dogs, doesn't rush forward or leap up but rather is relaxed and gentle; that plays with its toys and never chews on clothing or the furniture; that is housetrained; that waits politely to be invited before jumping on the couch to snuggle; that walks calmly on the leash.  Sounds like heaven, right?  All of that is socialization and manners.  At no point did I talk about the dog knowing how to Sit, or Down, or do a Roll Over or Go to Sleep, or really doing anything at all because you asked it to.  The perfect dog for 99% of owners is just one that acts polite without being told.

Truth be told, I haven't actually put that much work in Krypto's obedience.  Partly because I've been a bit lazy/busy, but also because I know that I can do obedience anytime.  I can (and have) taken a 11 year old dog and teach it to Sit and Get Ready and Touch.  But good manners are harder to teach later on, and socialization can be much, much harder (or nearly impossible in some extreme cases).