Bradshaw's K9 Blog

Don't Fool Yourself

2009-07-11T00:00:00-04:00

I have recently had the experience of interacting on one level or another with people who have a desire to be dog trainers, professionally. It never ceases to amaze me how they seek out instruction, and with no backgound to speak of, have already formulated strongly held opinions about training methods. They have never had to meet a payroll or so much as pay a single bill as a business person in the dog business, and they have a visceral, emotional reaction to somethig like a pinch collar or e-collar, as a tool for training. It's like taking a car to a mechanic because you have no skill in that area, and then proceeding to tell them which tools they are allowed to use!

The FACT is, that pinch collars are safer than chokes or nylon chokes, or head halters. Here are the results from the study done in Germany comparing choke collars and Prong Collars. Reference: http://cobankopegi.com/prong.html

100 dogs were in the study. 50 used choke and 50 used prong.

The dogs were studied for their entire lives. As dogs died, autopsies were performed.
Of the 50 which had chokes, 48 had injuries to the neck, trachea, or back. 2 of those were determined to be genetic. The other 46 were caused by trauma.
Of the 50 which had prongs, 2 had injuries in the neck area, 1 was determined to be genetic. 1 was caused by trauma.

There are 2 other famous articles by acclaimed trainer Suzanne Clothier, debunking the myths that prong collars are dangerous, and as well that the ever popular head halters for dogs are "gentle" training tools (they do nothing for training and are not gentle). She explaines the differences in head and neck structure between dogs and horses, to explsin why in the case of a horse it is a safe tool, but in the case of dogs they are generally the WORST tool to use, and the most dangerous! But people will believe what they think and not what they know. Ms. Clothier's articles can be accessed with a free registration at: http://flyingdogpress.com/content/view/18/94/

Registration is quick and free, and she has a lot of good, thoughtful resources on there in addition to the ones I mentioned.

I suppose the bottom line is that people believe bullshit because they are so scared of reality, it is an easy way to hide from it. We have been training both police dogs and pet dogs using prong collars, literally thousands of dogs since Tarheel Canine opened in October of 1994, and not one, I repeat not one traumatic injury was caused by a prong collar being used. However, we have had countless dogs come to the facility, choking and weasing because their tracheas are literally collapsed or partically collapsed because of the trauma inflicted by choke chains, and yet because of the way a prong collar looks, we that use these devices are the ones on the defensive.

In Part 2 of this rant you will see my response to an interview questions from the Signature K9 Blog www.signatureK-9.com our preferred equipment manufacturer. This is reprinted with forgiveness begged, not permission....

Police Dogs & Your Kids

2009-06-30T00:00:00-04:00

In the old days, police dogs were kenneled in a central location and rarely were taken home by K9 officers. That has changed to the point where it is unusual to find a K9 that does not come home with his handler every day.

This means that the dog is going to interact with the family. Often times when I get asked to provide a dog for a department, they want a dog that is perfectly safe with kids and with the wife. There is no such thing as perfectly safe no matter how great the dog appears to be socialized. Never forget he has a mouth full of teeth. Here are some ways to help ensure a good outcome with a new police dog in the home.

(1) The dog shold not live loose in the house. Period. You cannot supervise him adequately if he is running loose in the house. He can get himself into trouble. The police K9 should have an outdoor kennel with a good igloo dog house, and a roof over the kennel to both prevent the weather from getting to him as well as to prevent him from getting out by bailing over the fence. In the house, the dog should have a vari-kennel for times when he needs to have some quiet time. The dog needs alone time, just like you do.

(2) Kids need to be educated. It is not the dog's responsibility to know how to deal with your children, no matter how many Lassie episodes you have watched. Dogs view kids as co-equals and sometimes subordinates. Even when the dog is well socialized into the family, disagreements among equals are solved with growling and snapping and sometimes inhibited biting (mouth on skin but not with a lot of pressure). Unfortunately, children's skin is not as tough as a dogs furry coat, and what is not intended to do damage actually does. Kids need to learn to leave the dog alone when eating, sleeping, and to give him a break from being annoyed. If you ever find these words coming out of your mouth, you are asking for trouble: "The dog SHOULD be great with kids." There are no SHOULDS in dog training. You must anticipate what will go wrong and set up to avoid what can go wrong,. That is the essence of being a dog handler and trainer. Don;t put the burden on your dog, he has the intelligence of a 3 year old.

(3) Police dogs are posessive and relatively more dominant than the average dog, Unlike a normal fido, these dogs are selected to have a high degree of posessiveness. This can sometimes bleed over to posessiveness of food, toys, and resting places. Allowing others in the household to try to take away these things can often lead to aggression. Most of the cases where a family member gets bit by a police dog occur over a posessiveness issue which could have been prevented with some foresight. No sleeping in the bed for god sakes! No taking toys away from him. If you do not train him, you don't get to discipline him - that includes your wife and kids.

(4) Police dogs are usually very territorial. In the car or in the outside kennel, or even in the fenced yard, barrier aggression and territoriality of the property is a real issue. Handlers must not delegate feeding the police dog to kids who have to reach into kennels, or enter kennels. Allowing people to approach kennels and then let the dog out to meet people can lead to disaster. Letting people come into an area in which the dog is running loose (like a yard) can lead to the dog seeing that as a violation of territory (especially if his pack is inside the fence).

We tell our K9 officers that your dog is a piece of law enforcement equipment. You wouldn't be cavalier with how you allow your gun, pepper spray or taser to be handled by kids and family members, so the same should be true of your K9. Dont treat him like a pet. Once the dog learns that he can get his way by aggressively dealing with family members, it will continue. As the K9 vendor, these dogs are usually sent back because their temperament is "faulty," when in fact the officer/handler is faulty in their expectations and how they allow the dog to interact with the family.

Each of these things I have mentioned have been situations we have had to deal with, most of the time taking the dogs back because the dog is blamed for the aggression.

K9 Alert problem

2009-06-19T00:00:00-04:00

Question: "I am having a little problem with my mal. We have been really focusing on his alert to start the action and that has been going fine (this is something we've focused on from the start), but as soon as I alert him he pulls very hard into the leash, gets low the ground and snarls/barks aggressively (classical aggression). The intensity is awesome, but he is pulling so hard he can't hardly breathe. He is just inches of the ground pulling forward. I have him on a harness (because he can't breath to bark on the collar), but this seems to cause an issue for him as well. He is so focused on pulling that he can't seem to bark much."

There are a couple things you can try with the dog. The forst thing to realize is that the dog is clearly getting into the right mood (aggressive) with the alert, however, he is not expressing it as you would prefer. All his energy is being thrown into the pulling forward behavior, and not enough into the barking behavior. The key is to set up the alert, and only reward the behavior you want (barking) successively approximating to the end result (a whole string of barks proior to the grip).

It is my assumption, that you probably have rewarded him by allowing the bite in the past without holding him to the standard of barking you really want, and so the dog thinks the route to the grip is through pulling rather than vocalizing. This has to change - only bite after some barking. Both you and the helper must be on the same page here to not allow a reward for pulling.

Here are some tips:

1. Try to work on slick floors for a while to establish the idea that barking brings the grip.

2. Use an XL Pinch collar, double hooked to both the inside and outside rings, to restrain the dog in the alert. You can use two lines, one for the alert and another on the harness for making tension during the grip work after the grip is obtained. You have to be careful not to depress the barking because of the discomfort of the prong collar, which is why we use an XL. But if you need more diffusion of the collar, place the pinch over a bandana to further cushion the effect. This approach will self-limit the pulling (becomes uncomfortable) and allow the dog to channel his energy into vocalizing. Be sure to reward this behavior as soon as it occurs. If you do this right, you can manage both lines so that the dog upon alerting pulls but not enough to depress his vocalizing,

3. Use a barrier to limit the dog's pulling (fence gate, car door like in the PSA carjacking) and focus on vocalizing.

My best results have come from using methods 1 and 2. be sure to reward the vocalizing, and if the dog refuses to bark, he goes back in the car, with no grip, and bring him out many times (withold the reward) to try again, so the dog can have the opportunity to figure out the change in regime - barking only after the alert gets a grip, and pulling gets nothing.

Conditioned Responses

2009-06-19T00:00:00-04:00

Here is a question I received via email from a reader of this blog:

When a dog turns in a near perfect performance in one of the dog sports (KNPV, Belgian Ring, PSA, etc.) and the handler is unable to provide a correction in the ring/stadium or whatever, what can that near perfection be attributed to, since the dog is not wearing an e-collar, prong, etc.?

This is a fairly complex quesiton, however, the simple answer is the dog's behavior has been well conditioned to replicate in all manner of contexts. The way that we get there is to set up a standard of performance, and no matter what, hold that dog to that standard of performance at all times. This is the critical piece of the puzzle. It is also why the vast majority of handlers do not achieve the near perfection you are alluding to, because they are inconsistent in their expectations, or vary their standard of performance to which they hold the dog from training session to training session.

A dog is a creature of habit, and if you vary the standard of performance, there is no chance to create a habit to which the dog will revert. Thus you get a wide variety of behaviors, and you hear a lot of this: "My dog never did that before!" The other variable is time. Many handlers do not allow enbough time in training to have a dog establish a completely conditioned response. In fact, many handlers, once they see a response to a command cue a few times will claim their dog has "learned" the behavior, when in fact the dog is only in the fluency phase of training and the dog needs a lot more conditioning to get through the generalization phase (phases of training are discussed in Controlled Aggression: acquisition, fluency and generalization). This can be why the dog fails on a new trial field or with a slight change in a scenario context - the behaviors have only just started to take root, and slight changes in the environment or the scenario throw the dog off track. The response is not generalized yet.

As to equipment, it doesn't matter if you use a leash and pinch collar, a choke collar or an e-collar, or completely motivational food reward if you can get the results you need to establish the conditioned response. (As long as the dog moves through the acquisition, fluency, and generalization phases completely). The training approach needed will be dictated by each individual dog's temperament. However most trainers take the religious approach rather than match method to the temperament. It is my opinion that purely motivational approaches or purely compulsive approaches are incomplete approaches and do not allow the trainer to completely condition the responses to their highest potential, and an eclectic approach that rewards the standard of behavior, and also corrects deviations from the standard of behavior, will achieve the best, and most enduring conditioned response in the majority of dogs, and especially with high drive working dogs.

However, I will say this, using an e-collar makes distance control easier, and it makes the timing of corrections during the training process much easier and more precise, and this is why you find most high level competitors using the e-collar. The collar is not a fix, it has to become a part of the dog's everyday life both in training and deployments in my opinion (this is why NTPDA www.tacticalcanine.com allows K9 teams to deploy in certification with the e-collar receiver on, though the judge holds the transmitter) and the handler must hold the dog to the same standard of performance day in and day out.

Conditioning takes a good plan, good implementation of the plan, and the right tools for the dog in question.

Do Dogs Expect Fair Play?

2009-06-13T00:00:00-04:00

From NatGeo News......

http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/player/news/latest-news/austria-dogs-apvin.html

Do Dogs Expect Fair Play?

2009-06-13T00:00:00-04:00

National Geographic Video........

http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/player/news/latest-news/austria-dogs-apvin.html

Another Article: Dominance Theory Questioned

2009-06-11T00:00:00-04:00

Read this link before reading on: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090521112711.htm

There are a few things I concluded from reading this article in Science Daily:

1. It excluded from the research sample, dogs that are more likely to be highly dominant, such as high level working dogs. While working dogs do end up in shelter environments, the vast majority do not.

2. If you conclude from reading this article that dominance - related aggression doesn't exist you will be doing a disservice. They are correct to point out that the blanket attribution of dominance, in Cesar Milan fashion, to all situations is in fact ridiculous, as most professional trainers and behaviorists have known for years since he showed up on the scene. However, there are situations where dogs attempt to manipulate control through showing aggression (because they learn it works) and the dog is in fact not scared or fearful. The researchers attribution of fear and anxiety in blanket fashion is just as ridiculous as Cezar Milan's all encompassing dominance. This is the same victimology that is attributed to everything canine to justify force-free training in all situations. If the dogs are simply trembling victims of abusive training methodologies, and if they are ALL just frightened and anxious, we cannot use anything but love and a clicker on these poor canine victims of society.....it is the same reason why we now have a society full of kids who no longer respect authority, because there are no consequences for anti-social behavior, for after all they are just victims of economic "abuse." That is another show.

3. The article does verify something I have been saying for years, that even if you have a dominant dog (call it what you like, but a master manipulator - they are after all predators - that uses aggression to satisfy his drives, hunger, or other innate needs) the Alpha-Omega model that uses physical dominance techniques like alpha rolling is a poor method to use because when people use it they are inconsistent and weak minded, unlike another dog would be using the alpha roll, and usually it does in fact lead to the owner or someone else getting bit.

Trainers beware of the all or nothing. There is usually some ideology lurking in the weeds.

The "Guilty" Dog Phenomenon.....

2009-06-11T00:00:00-04:00

You leave your dog alone for a little while, and you come home to discover something distroyed, or a steaming present waiting for you in the middle of the kitchen floor, and you shoot a glance at the dog......GUILTY! He has that look of defeat, because as a dog he just can't hide it, right? Wrong!

Alexandra Horowitz, an assistant professor at Barnard College in NY set up an experiment where she lied to pet owners about their dog doing something wrong. Here is what she did:

"During the study, owners were asked to leave the room after ordering their dogs not to eat a tasty treat. While the owner was away, Horowitz gave some of the dogs this forbidden treat before asking the owners back into the room. In some trials the owners were told that their dog had eaten the forbidden treat; in others, they were told their dog had behaved properly and left the treat alone. What the owners were told, however, often did not correlate with reality."

What the research uncovered was this: The dogs who appeared most "guilty" looking were the ones who were admonished by their owners for eating the treat. Interestingly, the ones who were described as most "guilty" looking were the dogs who were in fact obedient and did not eat the treat, but whose owners were misinformed by the researcher and told (falsely) that their dog ate the treat! The research concluded that the dog's guilty look is in fact a response to the owner's behavior (body language, facial expressions, verbal admonishments) and not necessarily related to any canine self-awareness of bad behavior.

Trainers are always careful to be aware of anthropomorphism, the tendency to attribute human attributes of reasoning or emotion to dogs. The dog owning population is full of people who make these attributions, and we as trainers should be clear to not accept them when they are brought up in conversation. Even K9 handlers, who handle highly trained dogs in very important situations will still throw out the occasional anthropomorphisms.

Hand this article to all your fellow K9 handlers, so they can understand and appreciate the effect of the handler's behavior and frame of mind on the dog's behavior. Ths relationship, commonly referred to as the handler's feelings "going down the leash" has a lot to do with the handler's expectations and assumptions. If the handler thinks the dog is screwing up, say the handler assumes there is a drug hide in an area that was set up as a blank area, all it may take to make the dog false respond (throw out a sit or scratch) is body language and facial expressions, and voice patterns that indicate the handler is upset with the dog's behavior. Even though in such a situation, the dog would be right and the handler wrong.

Here is the article reference: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090611065839.htm

Stress and Training......

2009-06-10T00:00:00-04:00

Have you noticed in your training, that when a dog is in a high state of stress, he doesn't process information clearly, like obedience commands that are well conditioned?

In the canine brain there are two key centers of activity that we must be concerned with; (1) The Limbic System and (2) The Cerebral Cortex. The Limbic System is concerned with emotion and the cerebral cortex with cognition, or thinking. Interestingly, activation of the limbic system inhibits activity in the cerebral cortex. Thus when the dog is in a high state of emotional aroural (i.e., stress), the thinking center will progressively shut down. He just phycically cannot think clearly.

This stress effect can come from outside the dog-trainer relationship, such as a threat trigger of the dog's defensive instincts, or from within the relationship, as the trainer puts pressure on the dog in obedience. In the latter manifestation, the dog resorts to emotional behavior (avoidance, safety-seeking) in response to the limbic system taking over. If the trainer doesn't recognize this, and presses the apparent "disobedience" with further pressure, it will create a vicious cycle, perhaps resulting in the dog resorting to aggression to halt the stress. The dog can no longer think and now simply reacts to reduce the stress.

An experienced trainer will recognize when stress is affecting the training session, and make an effort to change the training environment to remove the stress, and return the dog to a mood where he can think and process information.

One must be sure to slowly introduce stressors into the dog's training. This will teach the dog how to simultaneously cope with stress and learn at the same time. By taking this process slowly, you will be able to create a trained response that can be reproduced under all manner of stress.

References: http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/limbicsystem.html

http://www.ttlntl.co.uk/index.htm

K9 Body Language Quiz

2009-06-10T00:00:00-04:00

Try this basic Canine body language quiz.....see what your percentage is......

http://www.ttlntl.co.uk/3/bodylangquiz.htm