Deference, Appeasement & Calming Signals in Training

We studied this with Kenya, to see if DH could use these to put her at ease.  Honestly, it didn't really work, really wish it would help though!  He watched the Turid Rugas video a few times and got suggestions from our trainer.  He would do stuff like yawn, look away, paw at the ground when she came near, and obviously not lean over, no direct eye contact, no straight on approaches, but she just looked at him like he was even more nuts.  However she has some pretty deep rooted issues and neurotic behaviors, once she starts up these behaviors it's like she's lost control of herself.  We have had almost zero luck with any sort of desensitization or increasing the threshold of her what triggers her, it has all been about management for us.

I observe my dogs giving each other calming signals all the time.  I'm not totally sold that it works for humans to use them.  I think dogs know the difference between species.  I think they are more valuable for understanding how dogs communicate with each other and what signals they might be giving off to us, but in my experience it didn't really work the other way around.

With both my shepherds, I've had much better luck calming the dog using T-touch or just certain ways of touching and massage.  When we do classes at the all-breed club, our trainer always has us start down on the floor with the dog, massaging and touching until the dog is voluntarily rolling onto his side and then gives a sigh and you can hear the breathing change and feel the dog relax.  Kenya likes her ears massage or her chest stroked; Nikon loves to be stroked hard down the length of his back or have you gently hold your hand over his muzzle (I've also seen Kenya do this to him with her mouth when he is being out of control in the house).

I think you're spot on about dogs realizing that we are not dogs, and that it is often useless for us to try to communicate that way.  I'm sure that many dogs don't respond at all to our clumsy attempts.  But, I've had other dogs recognize the use of signals, too, and the most frequent has been in that "come when called" context.  I guess I would liken it to going to a foreign country and trying to speak their language.  You might get lucky and be understood by the native speakers.  On the other hand, "I'd like a sandwich" might be interpreted as "I'd like a van twitch." 

I love massage and TTouch for dogs - and tonight is puppy massage at class.    

Liesje

He would do stuff like yawn, look away, paw at the ground when she came near, and obviously not lean over, no direct eye contact, no straight on approaches,

Haha, I was once trying to find the nest of a teensy little bird who would not go to her nest while I was on her territory. I tried the above, but instead of pawing at the ground I was pawing at vegetation, making like a wallaby pulling branches over and I even pretended to munch them. Then I'd roll over and kind of lie down and make a load of rustling noises like I was completely disinterested in concealing my presence. It worked! The little bird came over to watch me for a while, then went off to her nest.

I've got to do lots of the side on and no direct eye contact stuff with Kit, and I imagine I do it a bit with the dogs without consciously realising it. I tend to encourage them to come alongside me rather than front on, at least to begin with. I think if I am deliberately trying to communicate calm it doesn't work as well as if I actually am calm. I have found that to be the case with wild animals. I really have to be rather than act.

With abbie, if I stand in front of her, look at her and tell her to down, she will look away and flick her tongue. I don't think she is not trying to calm me. I think that my asking her to down when I am close to her just stresses her out. If I lay off the pressure by stepping back a step then she relaxes and will do the down.

Anyway, I guess I agree and disagree if that makes sense. Its all just a matter of saying "potato" and potah-to if you know what I mean ;p

 My Ena is the most expressively submissive, sweet dog I know. She is a body curving, eye squinting, woowooing, play bowing, gaze averting fool. She does it all, and she does it like she's on stage, where EVERYONE can see. Her standard greeting for a new dog is to streeeettttch her body, then approach with her spine in almost a circle, face turned away, flicking her tongue. Every dog she meets likes her, without exception. It's amazing.

For her, I do have to look away, sometimes, to help her come. Giving a big yawn will help her settle, if she's worked up on something. She knows I'm not a dog, like I know that a certain client is not a native speaker of English, but we have an understanding

I think there's also a difference in how you reinforce the body language or command.  For example, in SchH we sometimes really belt out a command, not because we intend it to be harsh, or want the dog to assume he will be punished for not executing correctly, but because we are working with very powerful dogs in a hightened state of drive on a field the size of a football field.  It's important they hear and understand every command, crystal clear.  So I will not give verbal commands to Nikon out on a large training field the same way I will give vocal commands to Kenya in the rally ring.  So when Nikon was a wee pup, I started introducing him to this way of hearing commands, but of course with all the treats, praise, and fun games I think are necessary for good training.  Now I can scream "PLATZ!!" at him in a no-nonsence tone of voice, but that is all he has ever known, and originally that command was trained using all the yummy goodies, and he knows that when he does the platz as asked, he will still be released and rewarded appropriately.  Same with training his formal recall.  I started holding a handfull of good food to my belly, so he was basically nibbling constantly as I stepped backward and he continued eating and driving into my belly as I said "HIER!!"  I can give the command with such force that a dog not conditioned to hearing it that way might tuck his tail and pee, and yet my dog has only known the command in that tone of voice and comes driving into my belly with enough force to knock me over (which he has done).

Personally I think the biggest mistake people make with recalls is that they end the fun.  They try to recall the dog b/c it's time to go or whatever.  Why would the dog want to obey a command that always means the fun is over?  Regardless of my body language and tone of voice, when Nikon was little I did tons of impromptu recalls and immediately sent him back off to play. 

spiritdogs

Dogs do a lot of appeasement gestures and signals that say "I'm not a threat.".  Everything from tongue flicks to curving the body to play bows to averting the gaze.   If most dogs were not generally deferential, there would be a lot more dog fights.  Is it possible that we should be using more of those signals in our communication with dogs when we are asking them to accept things that are scary?  If we curve our bodies, or avert our gazes when we put a collar on a pup, would it make a difference?  I think it would.  So often, I see owners calling their dogs with a frontal posture, leaning over and making direct eye contact with the dog, almost demanding that he come.

I almost want to say "welcome to my training world!". I have to be so particular with my much smaller dogs.

What i do notice is that a lot of obvious feedback from dogs is missed in training. If you look out for it, you can change what you are doing or find a point that your dog may be finding difficult.

What i have noticed of late is that there are claims that free shaping with the clicker is supposed to be stressful to the dog. Now if you are painting by numbers and not watching your dog then i guess that it can be. I don't use a lot fo free shaping with my older dog, i tend to micro step excercises, and use her huge latent learning.

My younger dog is a free shaping dog. He is good at it, and seems to like it and definitely not he stressed by it. He is also very quick to learn by this method. I am not a total purist, but i like the behaviours i get with it. They certainly seem to rev up with a bit of drive applied.

Why is the stress and clicker thing most often rolled out by trainers of  a  nature more inclined ot use corrections? Any ideas?

poodleOwned

What i have noticed of late is that there are claims that free shaping with the clicker is supposed to be stressful to the dog. Now if you are painting by numbers and not watching your dog then i guess that it can be. I don't use a lot fo free shaping with my older dog, i tend to micro step excercises, and use her huge latent learning.

My younger dog is a free shaping dog. He is good at it, and seems to like it and definitely not he stressed by it. He is also very quick to learn by this method. I am not a total purist, but i like the behaviours i get with it. They certainly seem to rev up with a bit of drive applied.

Why is the stress and clicker thing most often rolled out by trainers of  a  nature more inclined ot use corrections? Any ideas?

Every trainer I know that uses corrections also uses a clicker.  Actually I think every trainer and person like myself who trains their own dogs (not necessarily a professional trainer) uses a clicker....

I actually agree that freeshaping is "stressful", but I don't think stressful in a negative way.  Stress = not being in equilibrium.  So when freeshaping there is something you want the dog to do and something that the dog wants to earn and he has to work through that "stress" to appease you and earn the reward, thus returning to his "equilibrium".  How much stress/conflict you present depends on what you are trying to teach and how much your dog can handle.  In SchH we use this type of training all the time, because we want a "proactive" dog, a dog that will freeshape and act on his own to work through "stress" and conflict presented in training, not a dog that shuts down or just sits there with his tongue lolling waiting for every command or needing to be lured constantly. 

For a really sensitive dog that was not taught this way during the foundation period, I think freeshaping can become stressful in the more negative sense of the term.  My older female is this way.  She was trained with all positive methods, but a lot of luring, not much freeshaping or developing her into a proactive dog.  So, if I am waiting for her to offer behaviors, I can tell she starts to get stressed.  To tie it back into this thread, she will start giving off calming signals rather than throwing behaviors.  Freeshaping does not work well with her, sadly.  She is so sensitive and is so focused on earning approval that she is much happier simply being told what to do (and being lured initially, if it's a new behavior).  She does not have enough drive for the reward for her to work through the stress/conflict in a way that's beneficial to her training.  This is why with my puppy I encouraged him from day one to freeshape and be proactive.  Now he is a far more confident dog, a "thinking" dog.  Part of it is his temperament, he is more confident and not sensitive so he is more likely to work positively though higher levels of stress and conflict.  But part of it is also the foundation work that started at 7 weeks of age.

I think it's very valuable that we have an in depth understanding of things like deference signs, appeasement gestures, and calming signals, because it can go miles to knowing how your dog is feeling at any given moment, as well as other dogs. Knowing about such subtle body language communicators also gives you a good idea of which types of gestures a particular dog might use in certain situations, as well as how "dog-savvy" a particular dog might be.

In terms of how people use them though, I do have to err with the thought that just like dogs know that we can't alpha roll, scruff shake, or bite at them as another dog would, licking our lips, yawning, or making an actual playbow would not necessarily have the same message either. I think there are some fundamental things that dogs do respond to though: eye contact (or lack of), overall body posture (how tense, direct or side-on, bent or straight, leaning forward or back, etc), hand movements, tone of voice, breathing patterns,  and then those individual things that every dog/human pair will learn from each other (maybe a certain muscle twitch, or a certain breath intake at certain times, etc).

I don't use much in the way of calming signals with my own dogs, as per Turid Rugaas. I have played around with them, but they don't yield any sort of consistent result that I have been able to see. But I do pay attention to my general body posture, tension, eye contact, and breathing, as I do find dogs respond to those things with humans.

Once again, though, I do think it an invaluable thing to understand when it comes to reading your own dog and what it may be telling you, and you can then read those signs and respond in human-specific ways.

Liesje and I have quite similar circumstances, I think. I have two dogs who are vast opposites of each other when it comes to how they respond to stress in training. In terms of freeshaping, Gaci loves it - she thrives on it, learns things faster than I can practically teach them. I have taught so many things with her with free shaping that I will use that as a first choice where suitable so that she gets to use her brain and think openly.

Shimmer, on the other hand, finds free shaping very frustrating and stressful. Even when I use microshaping, if I don't keep rate of reinforcement uber-high, and training sessions uber-short, she will start showing signs of stress - ears back, looking away, sitting down and looking at me, or laying down in general. She much prefers to be told what to do, unfortunately, than to do a lot of creative thinking. Or, it's not so much that she doesn't want to be creative, but for whatever reason she is so intrapersonal and takes lack of reward very seriously, almost as a punisher. So we don't do a lot of freeshaping, or at least not much that requires a lot of  fine tuning. Or with her, I'll often start something off with a lure and then quickly fade it and shape the final steps.

I teach them a lot of the same behaviours - shutting cupboard doors, they are learning a combined leap frog game trick - both with a clicker, with the same end behaviours, but how I actually have to work each to get there is quite different. To an unknowing observer, the methods might look similar, but to somebody experienced in operant conditioning the differences are actually vast. It really is a know thy dog sort of thing.

Then you get a boy like my Zipper, who doesn't find shaping stressful, he just doesn't care. He's a simple boy when it comes to learning tricks, and would rather just chill out and practice zen than try any silly human games!

 Kivi is like Shimmer. I introduced him to free-shaping very early on. I think my reward rate was nowhere near high enough at the time. He soldiered on anyway, but over time he grew to find it more and more stressful. It's almost like I'm the one that shuts down on him when I stop giving him direction and try to encourage him to do something new. Lately he has become very intolerant of it, and he wants to follow cues. I've been luring him mostly by shifting my body weight and only bringing a hand (with no food in it) into it if he needs it. When I get around to it, I will take him back to 101 games with a box and reward much higher with the hopes that he'll get over the current "I need someone to tell me" hangup.

I was talking to an academic this week who was selling a potential PhD project to me based on measuring optimism in dogs, and he was saying things like free-shaping best suit dogs that are persistent and optimistic. It may be that some dogs are inherently well suited to it whereas others aren't. I think that if I ever get around to doing some free-shaping with Erik, he will be awesome at it, but while I think I can teach Kivi to like it again, I'm not confident that he will ever cope as well with the associated stress as other dogs might.

Kivi is also a big one for appeasement gestures and I've seen very tense and worried dogs slowly relax while he's crouching in front of them licking their muzzles. I keep saying I should hire him out to help rehab dogs that have been attacked. They don't quite seem to know what to do when they have this big dog kissing their face, but they relax in spite of themselves. Sometimes he comes on a little strong when other dogs are trying to play ball, though. A BC at the dog park with a ball in between its paws does NOT want a hairy teddy bear licking their face at that moment. I enjoy watching Kivi honing his appeasement skills. He is learning when it's better to not lick so much, but just nose the ear instead, and when it's best to stay low and curve his body and not lick or nuzzle at all. I don't yet trust him to choose the right thing, but he's still a bit of a kid and I am hopeful that he will figure it all out for himself.

I agree that a lot of appeasement gestures are missed. I think that personally, I'm more likely to miss it if I'm very focused on my results. I realise looking back now that when I was using corrections with Penny she was screaming appeasement at me whenever we trained. She was still doing it 11 years later when I'd really reigned in my corrections many years ago. It broke my heart. 

 I don't use a clicker, these days. I used it to teach Emma's retrieve, but never successfully for much else. It's hard enough for me to walk, and not step on my dog. Also, Bean is scared of the clicker, and I never pushed it, with her.

That is all

Every trainer I know that uses corrections also uses a clicker.

You're lucky.  Around here, we still have correction trainers who don't use food, and have no idea how to use a clicker.  There are some who would argue that if you use a clicker you are just a trainer who uses a clicker, but you are not a "clicker trainer."  So, when I post about clicker trainers, I am referring to the latter, not the former, although I think that the more people who recognize its benefits, the better off the dogs will be.  I just don't see the clicker working as well with correction training as it works with dogs who are trained exclusively with it from puppy hood.  Corrections still tend to make dogs wary of offering novel behavior, so it would seem counterproductive to use both in early and intermediate stages of training.  If you were going to correct a dog it should be long after you install the appropriate behaviors, and proof them thoroughly.  IME the dog that has been proofed correctly is far less likely to err than you would imagine.  If you also install a NRM for the dog to recognize "oops" behavior, you (I mean the colloquial "you", not you personally) might use correction even less.

spiritdogs

Every trainer I know that uses corrections also uses a clicker.

If you were going to correct a dog it should be long after you install the appropriate behaviors, and proof them thoroughly. 

This is how it is done.  I don't know anyone who would use a clicker and corrections in the same training session.  Seems a little bass-ackward.