Why Dogs Pull on the Leash

Liesje

I don't seek to squash his excitement or prey drive

Me niether, i just contol it. His prey drive and excitement are where they need to be and are promoted on the situations where they need to be promoted.

Is interesting to see your choice of words to try to make your point valid, choices like "squash" (when nobody here does that), "months of proofing" (where spiritdogs or Kim probably can have it done in days), "not waste a lot of time", "lack of a bond", etc. etc. I think all the people here has chosen the method they did because it works the best for them and the skills they have, that does not mean they are not better than yours or that yours is does not give results either. I could name so many points why i think your method is not that great and we could discuss why my method it's actually faster but it's not fun because i rather to focus on exercise and relaxation. Yeah, i dont like to turn around and get away from "x" either but if some people here have the patience of do it because they are not as good at leash redirections like me then is a method that works for their specific situation.

My dog gives a rat's butt if i dress like a clown and make myself "fun" for him because once he sees a rabbit nothing else exists in this world but him and the rabbit. I would consider my method better because i dont have to be carrying anything to distract him (food or toys) because i hate to be carrying something while we walk.

Yesterday there was a guy walking a mutt at the other side of the street, every time the dog wanted to sniff something or started pulling the guy corrected him with a choke collar, the poor doggie after each correction was lowering the ears, the head, was turning around to see him and putting the tail between the legs, the guy was correcting him literally every 10 seconds and scaring him every time. That method was not working for that dog. Certainly i would not apply the same technique i use with Chuck with that dog

Your method does not work for my dog and would it be very impractical for me and Chuck. My method would not work for Kim because she is way more skilled on a different method. I dont have the patience to do your or Kim's method and other posters dont have the skills to do mine.

So as you can see it depends on the handler and depends on the dog

espencer, you're missing the part of my post where I'm talking about the people I see in my training classes.  I think most people on this forum and everyone in this thread knows training and knows their dogs well enough to use the appropriate method and we all have a great many tools i our toolbox, but "in real life" there are too many pet owners that don't have a clue and often use the totally wrong method or tool on their dog, trying to force behaviors without spending any time bonding with their dog and learning what actually motivates the dog.  They make something that should be fun and exciting into a chore.  If you do not have a positive working relationship with the dog you will not get results regardless of what method you choose.

This is on my mind at the moment because someone I know who has a wonderful dog with a wonderful temperament asked me to work with her because she feels that her dog is too pushy, disobedient, and doesn't listen to her.  Based on how she describes the dog, you'd think he was a stubborn monster, but I know this dog very well and know BOTH of his parents and how they work and train and know this is a wonderfully tempered dog, very clear in the head, very biddable and social dog.  But there is a huge disconnect between the owner and dog, no communication going back and forth.  Her problem is not that her dog mouths her or pulls on the leash and doesn't pay attention, her problem is that she has no way to communicate with the dog, period.  I'm quite sure she could put a Gentle Leader on the dog and all of her "problems" would be solved but then the next time she tries to train a new behavior or move forward with Rally she's going to run into the same roadblock - the dog doesn't understand what she wants and has no reason to work with her because she confuses him and doesn't give him the right feedback (positive OR negative).  I have avoided them because I don't know how to say nicely that there is absolutely *nothing* wrong with her dog and she's very lucky to have such a genuinely kind dog.

Yesterday there was a guy walking a mutt at the other side of the street, every time the dog wanted to sniff something or started pulling the guy corrected him with a choke collar, the poor doggie after each correction was lowering the ears, the head, was turning around to see him and putting the tail between the legs, the guy was correcting him literally every 10 seconds and scaring him every time. That method was not working for that dog.

That's exactly what I'm talking about.

LCK: The dog would have to have a sense of self and other (in order to see himself and the environment as two separate things), and have a linear, "if/then" thought process (if I do X then I'll get Y), which is the simplest form of logic

CORVUS: Why does a dog need to have a sense of self and other to seek information?

First of all, thanks for your response. Secondly, I think we’re pretty much on the same page about this, but that we seem to be explaining things from, perhaps, slightly different angles.

From my perspective, all living things, from single-celled organisms to human beings, are constantly experiencing a rhythmic cycle of tension and release. And that any subsequent behavior is, one some level, the result of a need to reduce that internal tension and, thus, experience release. (One could argue that, on the most elemental level, the same holds true for non-living things such as rivers, oceans, volcanoes, tectonic plates, atoms and even celestial bodies.)

At any rate, when we say that a certain behavior happens because a dog is seeking to glean information from the environment, we’re automatically seeing the dog and the environment as two separate things, while a dog doesn’t have the mental apparatus for doing that. We also come up against the problem that information isn’t a tangible thing, meaning that we’re explaining the dog's behavior as if she has an ability to form abstract thoughts and concepts.

Meanwhile, if we say the dog’s aim is only to relieve a feeling of internal tension by releasing the somewhat unpleasant build-up of internal energy, and that she does so through her behavior (while admitting the fact that, when viewed from outside the dog’s experience, such a behavior appears to be one of seeking information), then we’re probably closer to the truth. At least we’ve removed the mental thought process from our explanation.

CORVUS: He doesn't need to know he's seeking information. He just needs to satisfy a deep-seated urge -

Right. And I’m saying that the deep-seated urge you're saying needs to be satisfied is less complicated; it’s a function of having a desire to release internal tension by foffloading it onto things that attract him in some way. Does doing this provide information? Yes, but I don’t think it can rightly be said that the dog’s aim is to seek information. That's all.

CORVUS: Incidentally, there was a paper I came across that I think you should read, but I can't remember what it was called or where I saw it. I will try to find it. It's to do with the surprising ability of some animals to develop a linear sense of events in time, I think. I will say that quite to my shock and surprise, Erik when he was a pup started to get enormously excited when my partner called up to tell me he was on his way home. Erik's excitement would gradually increase until it peaked when my partner walked in the door 40 minutes later. WTF?

From what I’ve studied, dogs have a very clear sense of cyclical time, but no sense at all of chronological or linear time. So I’d be interested in seeing that study.

I wrote an article about this (among other things), titled “From Pavlov to Pauli: What Can Dogs Tell Us About the Nature of Time, Consciousness, and Modern Science?” And in a subsequent article, “How Dogs Think: the Debate Between Emotion and Logic,”  I wrote about how my dog Freddie used to always wake me up at the exact time I needed to get out of bed in the morning, with no training or prompts of any kind from me. Also, biologist Rupert Sheldrake, in forming the framework for his book, Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home, set up a number of carefully controlled experiments showing that the dogs in question weren’t reacting to any cues of any kind: auditory, olfactory, etc.

CORVUS: Dogs naturally seek information about their environment the same way they naturally chase and bite things, and they find it inherently rewarding in of itself because they are programmed to. The same way many of us find doing internet searches on things inherently rewarding.

Again, it seems to me that you’re mixing up the mental (a google search) with the instinctive/emotional (sniffing a fire hydrant). Plus by saying that a behavior is inherently rewarding because it’s hard-wired doesn’t tell us anything about the exact mechanism causing it. Why is it inherently rewarding? What drives a dog to “naturally seek information?"

Yet the google search and the hydrant-sniffing behavior can both be described in terms of having a drive to connect in order to relieve internal tension. The first way of releasing tension – the google search – comes in the form of relaxing one’s mental curiosity. While the other – the hydrant-sniffing behavior – comes in the form of inhaling a scent that either relaxes the physical body, or provokes the dog to release tension by urinating on top of it. Meanwhile, the drive to seek information doesn’t explain Erik’s behavior (or Freddie’s, or the dogs in Sheldrake’s book), but the drive to connect does.

Suppose there really is an emotional field or, as Sheldrake calls it, a morphic field (which, by the way, would contain a lot of information). And suppose that shifts in this field can have an affect on a dog’s behavior in much the same way that the shifts in a body of water have an effect on the objects floating or swimming in it. Now suppose that when your partner was thinking of coming home, those thoughts (which may have included a desire to see the puppy) created a shift in Erik’s emotional state just as if your partner had tossed a pebble into one side of an emotional lake.

This also explains why dogs chase moving objects. It’s also connected to how lost dogs are able to find their way home, via an internal emotional GPS system. It also explains why several years ago an unknown pack of wolves appeared in Yellowstone National Park, and staged a siege outside the den of another pack , one whose energy had gotten out of control (thereby causing a major disturbance in the emotional field), and did nothing but wait until the out-of-control pack’s newest litter of pups all died of starvation. Then, as mysteriously as they first appeared, they "packed up" and left.

Corvus: I'm not a huge fan of Behaviorism, but the thing is, I'm only interested in building on it to make it more useful, not throwing it out.

LCK: Well, I think, at some point, behavioral science has to be thrown out. The more you build on a shaky foundation, the worse off you are.

CORVUS: We'll have to agree to disagree, then. It may be flawed, but it's the best thing we've got for now IMO. The laws of energy don't explain animal behaviour to me any better than an understanding of evolution and learning theory does.

Then you probably haven’t really been trying to see things from the energetic perspective, which is fine. It’s not easy to do. However, there are dozens of examples of behaviors that can’t be explained any other way. Like Erik’s behavior, and Freddie's. Like how you can extinguish certain behaviors in dogs (barking at noises, scavenging), by praising a dog for doing them. Or like the dog who’s tied up to a tie line in the yard, and every time a squirrel comes by, he goes racing after it, which over time, creates a trench in the ground beneath the tie line. And this despite the fact that time after time (after time), he always comes to end of the tie-line, gets flipped off his feet, is sent flying into the air, and lands hard enough to knock the wind out of him. Yet this type of dog still gets back up, shakes himself off, seems to have a satisfied look on his face, and the next time a squirrel comes by, he does it all over again.

What could possibly be positively reinforcing that behavior when logic tells us that the end result is always the exact opposite of a positive reinforcement? The only way to explain it is to say that the dog feels a satisfying release of pent-up emotions whenever he comes to the end of the tie line and is flipped up in the air.

How can you extinguish an undesirable behavior like scavenging by “rewarding” a dog for doing it? The only explanation is that the feeling of being praised creates a stronger feeling of connection than what the dog is seeking through scavenging.

How do dogs wake up from a nap - and perhaps even go to the door or window, and wait - at the exact moment that their owners decide to come home? The only explanation is that the dog and owner both have a drive to connect, which is transmitted via changes taking place in their shared emotional field.

None of these things can be explained by learning theory. They can only be explained via the drive to connect, and how that drive is designed to create a reduction in the dog’s internal tension or stress.

Anyway, that’s how I see it,

LCK

Lee Charles Kelley

LCK: The dog would have to have a sense of self and other (in order to see himself and the environment as two separate things), and have a linear, "if/then" thought process (if I do X then I'll get Y), which is the simplest form of logic

CORVUS: Why does a dog need to have a sense of self and other to seek information?

First of all, thanks for your response. Secondly, I think we’re pretty much on the same page about this, but that we seem to be explaining things from, perhaps, slightly different angles.

Yeah, I think we are.

From my perspective, all living things, from single-celled organisms to human beings, are constantly experiencing a rhythmic cycle of tension and release. And that any subsequent behavior is, one some level, the result of a need to reduce that internal tension and, thus, experience release. (One could argue that, on the most elemental level, the same holds true for non-living things such as rivers, oceans, volcanoes, tectonic plates, atoms and even celestial bodies.)

I don't disagree with this. To me it's analogous with a homeostasis explanation. 

At any rate, when we say that a certain behavior happens because a dog is seeking to glean information from the environment, we’re automatically seeing the dog and the environment as two separate things, while a dog doesn’t have the mental apparatus for doing that. We also come up against the problem that information isn’t a tangible thing, meaning that we’re explaining the dog's behavior as if she has an ability to form abstract thoughts and concepts.

Okay, this is where I get stuck. The dog and the environment are two separate things and I think they interact in that way. Take for example Erik's propensity to poke things with his nose, presumably to see what happens. He'll walk around the house and poke things, usually jump backwards because often enough he pokes something too hard and it falls down on him. The way I see it, he's filling a void. He is a busy dog and he needs a lot of "connecting" if you like. But I think for him it goes further than just connecting. Like the prediction-control expectancies, he is seeking the "zing" of that moment when he does something and something happens as a result. I think this is why he keeps doing it even though he obviously doesn't enjoy it when he pokes too hard and something falls on him. If he does something (just connect) and nothing happens, he doesn't get his "zing" and he has to act again. The fascinating thing is that he does much the same with vocalising sometimes as well. He'll bark at me and the only way I can possibly make this barking unrewarding is if I do absolutely nothing. If I look at him, I can see it in his face. He just got a "zing". He did something and something happened as a result. It reminds me of that strange compelling need people have to feed wild animals. I think they just can't help that urge to affect something that normally they can't affect.

Meanwhile, if we say the dog’s aim is only to relieve a feeling of internal tension by releasing the somewhat unpleasant build-up of internal energy, and that she does so through her behavior (while admitting the fact that, when viewed from outside the dog’s experience, such a behavior appears to be one of seeking information), then we’re probably closer to the truth. At least we’ve removed the mental thought process from our explanation.

Okay, fair enough, but all those caveats seem a bit overly detailed to me.

CORVUS: Dogs naturally seek information about their environment the same way they naturally chase and bite things, and they find it inherently rewarding in of itself because they are programmed to. The same way many of us find doing internet searches on things inherently rewarding.

Again, it seems to me that you’re mixing up the mental (a google search) with the instinctive/emotional (sniffing a fire hydrant). Plus by saying that a behavior is inherently rewarding because it’s hard-wired doesn’t tell us anything about the exact mechanism causing it. Why is it inherently rewarding? What drives a dog to “naturally seek information?"

Well, now we're talking about neuroscience IMO. And neuroscience is still struggling with these things. But it would seem that some things are inherently rewarding because the parts of the brain that are involved in them have links to the bits that tell the dog that something feels good. At least, if my very novice neuroscience is remotely correct.

However, there are dozens of examples of behaviors that can’t be explained any other way. Like Erik’s behavior, and Freddie's. Like how you can extinguish certain behaviors in dogs (barking at noises, scavenging), by praising a dog for doing them. Or like the dog who’s tied up to a tie line in the yard, and every time a squirrel comes by, he goes racing after it, which over time, creates a trench in the ground beneath the tie line. And this despite the fact that time after time (after time), he always comes to end of the tie-line, gets flipped off his feet, is sent flying into the air, and lands hard enough to knock the wind out of him. Yet this type of dog still gets back up, shakes himself off, seems to have a satisfied look on his face, and the next time a squirrel comes by, he does it all over again.

I could try! We use a clicker or marker word on walks to get both our dogs under control when they see something they badly want to go to. Steven Lindsay says it can work to jolt a dog off one track and onto another. For example, say Kivi sees another dog and badly wants to go and greet it, but he's on leash and he can't, so he starts getting frustrated. I use his marker word "ping" and he goes into training mode right then and there. Forgets about the dog and comes and sits in front of me and I give him a treat. By Lindsay's reasoning, I didn't actually reward him for trying to get at the dog by using a bridge, because the only thing that could have rewarded him at that time would have been getting to the dog. Instead, I created a choice junction where he got distracted for a moment from the dog and I had my chance to ask something else of him. Because he's been conditioned with his marker word, it kind of did the whole lot for me. Jumped him off his "get to other dog" track and onto his "let's train" track and then I rewarded him with the training reward, which is the right reward for the track he's now on.

The dog would have to have a sense of self and other (in order to see himself and the environment as two separate things), and have a linear, "if/then" thought process (if I do X then I'll get Y), which is the simplest form of logic

There are behaviorists who posit that dogs do have a sense of self and other, even if it does not rival our own, and even if it isn't quite the same as ours.  If they have no sense of themselves or others, why would my Aussie frantically try to wake her dead house mate up, and run surreptitiously back and forth to me, popping off my waist to "tell" me that she couldn't wake Fergie up?  That morning, when she found her old friend dead (she lived to be 20 and died in her sleep), was the first time in her life she had ever exhibited such frantic behavior.  She poked the body so hard it rose off the bed!  She had never seen death before, but certainly realized that something was very wrong with her friend.  The next several days she seemed to mourn the loss, and would search the house to try to find her.

At a play group a few years ago, I watched one dog "bait" another with a toy, shoving it toward him, so that the other dog would try to get it, and that gave the first dog the opportunity to pounce on him, which he did - in a very nasty way.  Regardless of motive, that certainly suggests that some dogs do think at least a little in to the future, and are capable of deception, or at least of being a bully, on a limited basis.  If you have no sense of other, what's the point in bullying someone to accept a resource that you already possessed, then getting on them for taking it? 

Granted, these instances and others are anecdotal, and perhaps not applicable to that many dogs, but there is much we still do not know about the level of cognition that is taking place in them and various other species.  Once we thought they didn't have language - we now know that is completely false.  Their vocalizations mean something, and we can now often identify what it is, if somewhat crudely.  So, I am not willing to accept a blanket statement about this until we have more evidence one way or the other about what processes are really there.  We are an arrogant species, after all, so our assumptions about others could be wrong.  We need to continue to investigate.

corvus

say Kivi sees another dog and badly wants to go and greet it, but he's on leash and he can't, so he starts getting frustrated. I use his marker word "ping" and he goes into training mode right then and there. Forgets about the dog and comes and sits in front of me and I give him a treat. By Lindsay's reasoning, I didn't actually reward him for trying to get at the dog by using a bridge, because the only thing that could have rewarded him at that time would have been getting to the dog. Instead, I created a choice junction where he got distracted for a moment from the dog and I had my chance to ask something else of him. Because he's been conditioned with his marker word, it kind of did the whole lot for me. Jumped him off his "get to other dog" track and onto his "let's train" track and then I rewarded him with the training reward, which is the right reward for the track he's now on.

Right, and what I would see when viewing these behaviors is that a) Kivi wants to connect his energy to the other dog in some way, and b) the word "ping" stimulates physical/emotional memories of connecting to you on an even deeper level. Another way to look at it would be to suggest that the new dog is a much smaller "magnet" for his emotions than you are at that moment.

So I would agree that Lindsay (as you've described his reasoning) is partially correct. Where we differ is in the idea that it's not that getting to the other dog was the only thing that would have rewarded Kivi at that moment; the only thing that would have rewarded him was the feeling of connecting he might get from interacting with the other dog: i.e., downloading some of his pent-up emotional energy by sniffing, circling, and perhaps playing. I would also suggest that the "ping" didn't provide a choice junction as much as it created a circuit junction, it put Kivi back into the same emotional state he's in when he's connecting to you through all the obedience games you're played with him over time. Since, from what I can tell, you're a smart trainer, and make such games very satisfying, the other dog lost its force of attraction because you'd built up a stronger level of that force, and the "ping" redirected him to that more satisfying feeling state.

To me, what you've described goes back directly to the idea that dogs will stop pulling on the leash once the owner becomes a more satisfying release point for the dog's pent-up instinctive and emotional energies than the squirrels, other dogs, interesting smells, etc.

I'm glad you mentioned the thing with Erik, and he how pokes things with his nose. My feeling is that he's doing it because a) just before he starts out on one of his poking "binges," he probably feels like his instincts and emotions are "stuck," that they aren't moving the way he'd like them to (meaning he isn't finding a satisfying outlet for them at that moment). And b) poking things sometimes makes them move. (This may also relate to how he got his littermates to play with him when he was very young.)

As for the reason my caveats about imputing thought onto the "drive to seek information" might seem overdetailed to you, I would suggest that it's at least partially because the human mind is designed to personify or anthropomorphize the behaviors of all kinds of natural phenomena, living or inanimate. Marc Bekoff wrote about this topic last year, in an article for PsychologyToday.com.

Bekoff: Evidence is surfacing that anthropomorphism may be a hard-wired mode for conceptualizing the world in general, not just other animals. Recent research by Andrea Heberlein and Ralph Adolphs shows that a part of the brain called the amygdala is used when we impart intention and emotions to inanimate objects or events, such as when we talk about "angry" weather patterns or "battling" waves. Heberlein and Adolph studied a patient called SM with damage to the amygdala and discovered that SM described a film of animated shapes in entirely asocial and geometric terms though S.M. had normal visual perception. Their research suggests that the "human capacity for anthropomorphizing draws on some of the same neural systems as do basic emotional responses." My reading of this research and my own experience with a wide variety of animals is that "We feel, therefore we anthropomorphize." And we’re programmed to see humanlike mentality in events where it cannot possibly be involved.

So I would say that it's not that my caveats are overdetailed so much as it's that the science on animal cognition is naturally anthropomorphic, and as a result I probably have more sensitized "feelers" for it than most people.

As for neuroscience holding answers to what's inherently motivating, I'm no expert, but I see neuroscience as both an answer but also a bit of a problem because a) many scientists refer to the dopamine pathways as "reward-circuits," which has a built-in confirmation bias (which has been contested by some who think they should be called "anticipation" circuits. And b) one of the current trends in neuroscience (as seen on the recent series of interviews on the Charlie Rose show) is toward Antonio D'Amasio's idea of the "feeling brain." It's true that some neuroscientists seem to have revived the James-Lange theory, or portions of it, which postulates that we first feel things in our bodies, then we become aware of what we're feeling, and that mental awareness of what we're feeling is what we call "emotion."

I would argue that while that may be true for human beings, most animals (except dolphins) don't have the capacity to "think" about their feelings. For this reason I divide emotions into simple (felt in the body) and complex (a simple emotion with some sort of mental thought process added). For example, while most animals (like Spirit Dogs' dog, and the supposedly "grieving" chimps observed in Scotland a few months ago) can feel the shock and loss at finding the body of a close companion, whose life energy is no longer radiating outwards toward them, they can't experience true grief, which I think requires a whole series of thought processes, including the awareness of one's own mortality, mental time travel to past happiness with the deceased, or to the future, the knowledge that you'll never see that being again, etc. (See, "Misrepresenting Their Cognitive Abilities Hurts Animals," by LCK.)

However, Candace Pert, who discovered the existence of opiate receptors and endorphins (both of which were predicted by Freud, by the way), says that since every cell in the body has these receptors (plus receptors for all other neurochemicals), it's more logical to presume that emotions happen in every molecule of the body, not in the brain. (This is my clumsy precis of an entire book, by the way.) Randy Gallistel has also written an interesting book suggesting that neurons don't have enough "space" for storing memories (and there's a strong correlation between emotion and memory), but that molecules do.

However, back to the mechanism that makes something inherently rewarding: one effect of dopamine, oxytocin, vasopressin, GABA, endorphins, etc. is that they relax the subject, or the reduce his or her internal tension or stress. In fact vasopressin (which in males, acts a lot like oxytocin), has an inverse relationship with the stress hormone cortisol. When vasopressin levels go up, cortisol goes down.

So it seems to me that we're back to Freud's idea: "We have no hesitation in assuming the course taken by mental events is automatically regulated by the pleasure principle." (There's the idea that behaviors are inherently, or automatically regulated, by internal changes in a dog's body and/or brain that create pleasurable feelings.) "We believe, that is to say, that the course of events is invariably set in motion by an unpleasurable tension, and that it takes a direction such that its final outcome coincides with a lowering of that tension--that is, with the avoidance of unpleasure or a production of pleasure." ("Beyond the Pleasure Principle," The Freud Reader, 594, 595; italics mine.)

Interesting discussion.

LCK

Liesje

So I guess I disagree with most people in this thread in that I don't use the "tree" method, I don't turn around and move away from what excites the dog,

He has a high ball drive though right?  And if he were to spy a ball and start acting nutsy because he WANTED it, you wouldn't just remove the item, or remove him from that situation?  And if you DID.... would that affect his ball drive?  I suppose I am just not seeing how removing an item from a dog (or moving him away from it) squashes his drive....? 

Let's say my dog got all excited and wanted to go and say hi to some people across the street, and I turn around and move away while saying "hey, lets go".  Does that mean the dog isn't going to get JUST as excited next time she sees a new person?  To me the moving away is just communication, it's just, "nope, we are not doing that today".  After a time, all I need is "hey! lets go!" and the dog knows it means the same.  We aren't doing that today.  OK, it won't mean much to the dog if there is no bond there, if the dog has no reason to be interested in you and what you have to say, but surely that goes for any training method, whatever you use?

Also, if a dog wants something badly, but also controls themselves in the presence of that something, does that mean the dog's drive has been squashed?  Does impulse control always = squashed drive?

Sorry it's a tangent, just got me really interested in that line of thought

Chuffy

Does impulse control always = squashed drive?

I personally could never think that was so. When I look at the highest levels of competition in any sport, whether it be schutzhund, Rally-O, agility, herding, etc - where these are generally the dogs with intense drives and focus, it is all about the impulse control. The dog has to refrain from going to the distracting toy in a Rally exercise, the dog has to refrain from tugging the sleeve when asked, and to let go when asked, the dog has to follow a handler's directives in agility and ignore all the ring crew, the other obstacles that the dog may like better, the herding dog must refrain from many many things in order to properly herd sheep. All of these dogs would not get where they were without a high level of impulse control.

Chuffy

Let's say my dog got all excited and wanted to go and say hi to some people across the street, and I turn around and move away while saying "hey, lets go".  Does that mean the dog isn't going to get JUST as excited next time she sees a new person?  To me the moving away is just communication, it's just, "nope, we are not doing that today".  After a time, all I need is "hey! lets go!" and the dog knows it means the same.  We aren't doing that today. 

This describes life with Zipper. His "drive" is mostly in the form of social connectedness with others (kids and dogs being his favorite). He's pretty laid back and not much into sports or work, but he loves connecting with others. I use access to people as a reward, and he also knows that he is not allowed to just go and greet people just because he wants to. I may prevent him from visiting with a particular dog, but it doesn't squash any interest in wanting to connect the next time.

In fact, removing the dog from an interesting experience can really increase a dog's drive or focus. I have done this with Gaci in agility. In the beginning, when she was more easily distracted at a seminar (when you're there for 6 hours it's a long day for any type of learning for a dog), when she started wanting to do her own thing, or if she wandered off on a sequence when the prior reliability would indicate that she knows what she is doing, a quick "Oops" and swift removal from training, in which I work another dog for a short period of time, is enough to get her motor running again and it really increases her interest and focus with me.

espencer

Yeah, i dont like to turn around and get away from "x" either but if some people here have the patience of do it because they are not as good at leash redirections like me then is a method that works for their specific situation.

The only comment I can make on this post, is that I don't rely on the leash to perform a redirection away from a provoking stimulus. For me it's all about the relationship, and the leash is only a safety feature (and often a law-abiding feature in the city). If I can't redirect with my body or voice, then there is an underlying issue going on. Because if someday that leash breaks, or the collar breaks, or I trip and fall and am hurt, I want to be confident to know that it is me the dog is responding to, not a treat, or a leash redirection. I want to be confident that regardless of what is in that environment - that rabbit, or a person on a bike, or for Zipper a little toddler coming to say hi, or a flock of crows in the park - I don't want the leash to be my tool of communication.

It follows along with the reason I choose to use a head halter in rare situations with certain dogs (I have used one, I think twice in the last six months) is if I know I have to expose a dog to a situation in which I cannot control the environment and I know that the dog will have trouble coping, or I know I have not trained the dog to be in that situation, I choose safety because I know I may be setting the dog up for a stress in which it cannot handle well. It's not for training, it's total management and a safety precaution. Hopefully I don't actually have to use the halter, but it's there in case something breaks down.

Kim_MacMillan

I want to be confident to know that it is me the dog is responding to, not a treat, or a leash redirection.

I'm pretty sure my dog does not "break down" the process of the redirection and he is actually responding to me as well. The leash is an extension of my body and the way we communicate. Your logic process is like if i was saying that i want my dog to respond to me and not to my hand that i'm touching him with. And once again, once "x" is there then nothing else in the world exists around him and that includes my voice. My technique works for me and my dog.

My leash is my tool of communication because is pretty simple for his brain to understand what i want from him. He does not even apply tension on the leash, he knows that if he is "attached" to me he will not go anywhere, he just looks at "x" and co exists with it. If a leash breaks, a collar breaks, etc. then is because you let the dog fixate way too long on "x". The leash redirection needs to happen even before the leash gets tense.

Dogs pull on the leash because the owner can not control excitement; the human just lets it increase way too high before doing something to try to lower it down.

espencer

And once again, once "x" is there then nothing else in the world exists around him and that includes my voice. My technique works for me and my dog.

I'm just playing devil's advocate here, but why is that? Have you tried to work on becoming relevant around "x" so that you don't need to use the leash for redirection? Have you thought about what you might be able to do to change the situation about it instead of falling back on "my dog doesn't realize I exist around "x""? Try to perhaps build focus on you, or do some desensitizing to "x", instead of leaning back on punishments?

What if you tripped and fell? Would you be confident that your dog would respond to you if you lost the leash?

I ask because I have terriers, and two of them with high prey drive (one with prey drive through the roof to be exact). One of those also once lived with quite serious dog aggression issues. However, I can still have great control in the presence of those distractions and don't have to rely on a leash (in actuality Gaci works offleash around dogs regularly and has not shown aggression to a dog whatsoever), and I am confident that I am relevant to my dogs in the face of those distractions. And it comes through training and training alone, a lot of those situations in which you mention you don't have the patience for. I am open to admitting that Gaci is only 85% reliable around some distractions when it comes to hunting, which is why I choose not to take the risk on the other 20% by keeping her safely on a long line. But at least I know I have that 85% to fall back on if the need arose.

Is it possible that you could actually gain relevance to your dog in distracting situations if you put in some extra training time?

Not arguing here, genuinely looking for information as to whether you have actually worked around "x" or just assume that you can never be relevant around "x".

Lee Charles Kelley

Right, and what I would see when viewing these behaviors is that a) Kivi wants to connect his energy to the other dog in some way, and b) the word "ping" stimulates physical/emotional memories of connecting to you on an even deeper level. Another way to look at it would be to suggest that the new dog is a much smaller "magnet" for his emotions than you are at that moment.

Okay, that's plausible to me. I think there are quite minor differences in our interpretations.

Lee Charles Kelley

I'm glad you mentioned the thing with Erik, and he how pokes things with his nose. My feeling is that he's doing it because a) just before he starts out on one of his poking "binges," he probably feels like his instincts and emotions are "stuck," that they aren't moving the way he'd like them to (meaning he isn't finding a satisfying outlet for them at that moment). And b) poking things sometimes makes them move. (This may also relate to how he got his littermates to play with him when he was very young.)

He definitely does it when he's at a bit of a loose end. It's a good indication that I'm not doing my job keeping him happy and content. I say he does it when he's bored, but I think that is not quite accurate. He has lots of things he could do and I can give him something to do on his own (like a Kong), but it will only satisfy him as long as there's food in it and then he's back to poking. I know deep down that the way to satisfy him is with some active social interaction. He wants to play or train.

Lee Charles Kelley

So I would say that it's not that my caveats are overdetailed so much as it's that the science on animal cognition is naturally anthropomorphic, and as a result I probably have more sensitized "feelers" for it than most people.

I was referring more to communication. I have a lot of theories about animal behaviour that have a similarly detailed and extensive list of caveats. I've learnt that to talk to other people about these things I've just got to swallow my urge to be as accurate as I can and use the words that makes sense to the people I'm talking to. I try to be adaptable, with limited success. 

Lee Charles Kelley

As for neuroscience holding answers to what's inherently motivating, I'm no expert, but I see neuroscience as both an answer but also a bit of a problem because a) many scientists refer to the dopamine pathways as "reward-circuits," which has a built-in confirmation bias (which has been contested by some who think they should be called "anticipation" circuits. And b) one of the current trends in neuroscience (as seen on the recent series of interviews on the Charlie Rose show) is toward Antonio D'Amasio's idea of the "feeling brain." It's true that some neuroscientists seem to have revived the James-Lange theory, or portions of it, which postulates that we first feel things in our bodies, then we become aware of what we're feeling, and that mental awareness of what we're feeling is what we call "emotion."

Haha, I rather think they should be called anticipation circuits, too. After all, they kick in for stressful situations as well. I kind of like the idea that emotions are perhaps a realisation of what is going on in the body. I'm not sure how applicable this is to animals, but I guess my thought is that emotion drives behaviour in animals, and so for behaviour to occur there would have to be some sort of salient "feeling" the animal is acting on. I'm doing my PhD on cognitive bias in dogs. Apparently you can test an animal's basic emotional state in a very coarse manner (positive or negative) by measuring to what extent they interpret an ambiguous signal as a positive or negative signal. Some researchers did this with starlings, and I thought it was so cool. If they moved starlings from an enriched cage to a standard cage, they had a negative bias for a few days, then it went back to normal, but if they moved them from a standard cage to an enriched cage, there was no difference. Anyway, that's drifting off topic a bit, I think.

Well, it's all very interesting. I shall ruminate on it.

Chuffy

Liesje

So I guess I disagree with most people in this thread in that I don't use the "tree" method, I don't turn around and move away from what excites the dog,

 

He has a high ball drive though right?  And if he were to spy a ball and start acting nutsy because he WANTED it, you wouldn't just remove the item, or remove him from that situation?  And if you DID.... would that affect his ball drive?  I suppose I am just not seeing how removing an item from a dog (or moving him away from it) squashes his drive....?

I'm not sure there's a word to describe the drive he has for HIS ball.  He's not obsessed with balls in general (he couldn't care less about tennis balls and 99% of the dog toy balls out there), just the specific type of ball we use for playing and training.  When he sees other dogs doing the same type of training with the same balls on the SchH field I allow him to fixate, even pat on his sides and say, "oooo wassat?  They go a ball!!!" and then I might break into heeling away from the other team working and then toss Nikon's ball.

What I see a lot is people will say that their dogs fixate on squirrels and this needs to be dealt with, but their method involves going out and seeking squirrels, allowing the dog to not only notice but fixate, and THEN try to redirect the dog's attention or just scold or physically correct the dog.  To me that is squashing the drive.  They are putting the dog in a situation where the dog is going to react and then physically correcting the dog for it.  Nikon has a very high prey drive, so if I notice we are approaching a squirrel or outdoor cat, I won't try to scare it away (or remove it) and I won't change direction, I just use an incompatible behavior like using that half block to practice a formal heel or eye contact.  Also, I always bring his ball along, in case there is every a situation where I need it as an "emergency" recall or focus.  Instead of punishing him for displaying his natural drives, I use it to my advantage by bringing along something that matches or exceeds his drive/desire for prey animals.  I don't always use it, but I could if I needed to and often when I haven't, we stop at a field and I give him a few tosses for fetch to let off steam.

Let's say my dog got all excited and wanted to go and say hi to some people across the street, and I turn around and move away while saying "hey, lets go".  Does that mean the dog isn't going to get JUST as excited next time she sees a new person?  To me the moving away is just communication, it's just, "nope, we are not doing that today".  After a time, all I need is "hey! lets go!" and the dog knows it means the same.  We aren't doing that today.  OK, it won't mean much to the dog if there is no bond there, if the dog has no reason to be interested in you and what you have to say, but surely that goes for any training method, whatever you use?

I think this is perfectly fine.  It depends on the goals for the dog.  I've seen SchH trials where there are birds and other wildlife scurrying out on the field, so for me I can't use the method of just turning around when we see a prey animal because the dog trains and performs off leash with these animals nearby and I need to know he is focused and under control.  Also we have to heel through a group and do "traffic" tests where the dog is expected to behave a certain way in very close proximity with other people.  I like the turning away method much more than physical corrections or forced desensitization but there comes a point where I need to be able to have the dog focused and under control with these distractions present.

Also, if a dog wants something badly, but also controls themselves in the presence of that something, does that mean the dog's drive has been squashed?  Does impulse control always = squashed drive?

Depends.  Ideally, no, because the dog has learned that self control means they WILL get what they want eventually, on the handler's terms.  For example if Nikon does a full BH routine, that is like 7 straight minutes of heeling work, but he knows he's getting a ball at the end.  In protection we often use "obedience bites" to train the heeling/control work that is necessary.  The dog heels off leash behind or alongside the helper and if he does it correctly, at the end he is released and gets a bite.  For your question, it would depend on whether the dog has been trained to control himself or if he is genuinely not interested. 

Chuffy

Let's say my dog got all excited and wanted to go and say hi to some people across the street, and I turn around and move away while saying "hey, lets go".  Does that mean the dog isn't going to get JUST as excited next time she sees a new person?

Maybe more so if frustration comes into play. Ever seen those dogs that are never allowed to meet another dog, just hustled away every time? Sooner or later they get so frustrated about never being able to meet and greet that they end up way over the top in arousal and are altogether likely to bite the strange dog if they ever do finally get a chance to get near them. I'm not saying it will always happen, but I think it's quite common when people make no effort to gain the attention of their dog or give them something else to do with their arousal. It's forever unresolved and just gets worse and worse.

espencer

The leash is an extension of my body and the way we communicate.

Do you always have your dog on leash? Because if you don't, it may well be an extension of your body, but only in contexts where you would normally have your dog on leash.