Dog Behavior Blog

Dog Love

While scientists are still debating whether dogs and other animals have any emotions beyond anger and fear, I want to offer a personal anecdote.

A few years ago, I was walking with my two Standard Poodles, Zephyr and Raja, along a dirt road in the desert.  Because I am always concerned about the dogs finding rattlesnakes and being too inquisitive, I had them both on 25 foot expandable leashes.

Raja always plays the role of leader dog, the one who always has to be out in front when we walk. Curiously enough, this does not translate into the traditional dominance idea, because in everything else he always defers to Zephyr, who as an older, larger dog has never shown any aggression toward  Raja.

In fact, Zephyr is a very sweet dog who wouldn’t hurt a fly. He is my zoologist dog, interested in any animal that moves or flies.  Raja is not interested in animals or plants on walks. The only thing that he is interested in is being out in front of everyone.

The dirt road that we were walking along had a lot of curves and dips so that it was hard to see more than 100 feet ahead or behind us. I was in a semi-meditative state, enjoying the warmth of the day, the blue sky, and the wind on my face.

Suddenly from behind us came a Rottweiler mix, running as fast as he could. Without any barking or growling, he lunged at Zephyr and tried to bite him on the back of the neck. Zephyr, who had never been in an aggressive situation, stopped, looking stunned.

I yelled. Raja, who was out in front about 25 feet from Zephyr, turned and looked at us. Instantly, without any hesitation, he ran full-tilt at the 120 pound Rottweiler mix and slammed into him with his 40 pound body.  This knocked the Rottweiler back, giving me time to get between the dogs and the attacker. I had my hiking stick, which I poked at the attacker’s face.

Around that time a pickup truck came driving up, with a man inside calling for his dog. The dog broke off the attack and came up to the truck. It seems that the man was using the lazy way to walk his dog, letting the dog run ahead while he drove behind.

I yelled at the man to control his dog.  In addition, I had some choice words to say about people who let aggressive dogs run free, but I won’t repeat those words here.

As in my experience often happens in such situations, the man was telling me that his dog has never done this before, and he can’t understand why his dog would do that.

After making sure that the dog was safely locked up in the cab of the pickup, checking Zephyr (fortunately, he only had a scratch, thanks to Raja’s quick action), and taking the man’s name and phone number in case there was a problem with Zephyr,  I tried to explain to the man that there could have been serious consequences.  For one thing, in the desert of the Wild West, many people have guns, and someone could have shot his dog.

The man was unimpressed and left.

So why did Raja respond by attacking a dog who was much larger and much fiercer than he?  If I toe the scientific line, I could go into a huge explanation about stimulus and response, and that perhaps Raja was conditioned at some point in his life to respond to certain cues with aggression.  With this explanation, Raja mindlessly responded to the motion and size of the other dog.

However, I prefer another explanation. I think that Raja realized that his companion was in danger, and selflessly threw himself into the fray to help out a friend who he loved. Just like you and I might do in similar circumstances.

--Con Slobodchikoff

People Can Signal Playfulness to Dogs

A study by Rooney, Bradshaw and Robinson (2001. Do dogs respond to play signals given by humans? Animal Behaviour, 61:715-722.) investigated dogs’ responses to human play signals. These researchers found that humans do communicate a playful intent to their dogs and that their various behaviors when doing so can be considered interspecific play signals.

Additionally, they found that the success of human signals at instigating play was unrelated to the frequency of use. For example, patting the floor as well as whispering were both often used by people attempting to initiate play with their dogs, but dogs showed a low rate of playful responses to these signals.

In contrast, running towards or away from the dog as well as tapping their own chest were two human signals that were highly effective at initiating play with dogs but neither was used frequently by participants in the study.

The least effective human behaviors in their study for eliciting play in dogs were kissing the dog, picking up the dog, and barking at the dog, none of which ever resulted in play. Stamping their feet and pulling the dog’s tail had very low rates of playful responses by the dogs.

The human signals that most frequently elicited play were the forward lunge (the person makes a sudden quick movement toward the dog), the vertical bow (the person bends at the waist until the torso is horizontal), chasing the dog or running away from the dog, the play bow, and grabbing the dog’s paws.

Part of their study involved looking at the effects of vocalizations on play solicitation by humans of dogs. They used two composite play signals and asked whether they were more effective at soliciting play with or without vocalizations. The two composite signals were a play bow combined with patting the floor with their hands and foot shuffling combined with a forward lunge in the vertical bow position. The vocalization was saying “come on” in a whisper followed by “come on little dog” in a high-pitched voice.

The two composite signals used to initiate play with their dogs were more successful at eliciting play when accompanied by play vocalizations.  It could be that the more components a play signal has, the more effective the signal is.

Interestingly, their data suggest that different play signals may invite different kinds of play. The composite bow signal with or without vocalization increased physical contact between the person and the dog and resulted in more licks of the person by the dog, but the composite lunge signal did not, either with or without vocalizations. Perhaps the bow acts as an invitation to approach and make contact, but the composite lunge signal does not. Perhaps one signal acts to solicit close contact play but the other instigates chase games.

Their study, though it was published eight years ago and is widely known in academic circles, does not yet seem to have reached wide audiences in the dog world. This is a shame because people and dogs could benefit from its findings. This study indicates that we should pay attention to whether or not the way we try to entice our dogs to play is effective, what the effects are in terms of the type of play our dogs’ do, and that we should consider adding vocalizations to our visual play signals.

--Karen London

A New Edition of “Canine Behavior: A Photo Illustrated Handbook.”

        In a previous post (September 7, 2008) I reviewed Barbara Handelman’s “Canine Behavior: A Photo Illustrated Handbook” (WoofandWord Press, 2008).  At the time, I reported that it is a very useful book, showing dogs in a variety of action photos doing many different behaviors. My only criticism was that many of the photos were very pale, lacking in crispness and definition.

        Barbara Handelman recently sent me a second edition of the book, in which the photos have been reprinted. In this edition, the photos have really good contrast, are crisp, and it is very easy to see the behaviors that the photos are illustrating.

        At the time of my original post, I thought that this was a terrific book for anyone who wanted to get a visual impression of dog behavior. I still think so.

As best I can tell, the only thing that has changed between the first and second editions is the way the photos have been printed. The book now is available through Dogwise, www.dogwise.com.

Here is what I said about the first edition:

The book, “Canine Behavior: A Photo Illustrated Handbook” by Barbara Handelman (copyright 2008, 347 pages, Woof and Word Press, Norwich VT, ISBN 978-0-9765118-2-3) is quite an impressive tome. The book cover says that the book has 1000 pictures, and although I did not count, I can well believe it. Each page has at least several black-and-white photos of dogs behaving.  Measuring 8.5x11 inches (21.5x28 cm), the book is large, with an attractive color cover of dogs performing a variety of behaviors.

The book is organized alphabetically, starting with “acquired bite inhibition” on page 1 and ending with “zoomorphism” on page 280.  Each entry provides a brief definition or description of a particular behavior. In places where the definition is not always easy to understand (such as learning), the book usually also has an example that is much more concrete and more comprehensible than the official definition. For example, “Counter Conditioning” (p 140) has a definition that is standard to the psychological literature, and an example that can be understood by those who get lost in the psychological jargon.

Pages 283 to 294 have 24 photos of dogs either interacting or showing different facial expressions, and the reader is asked to identify as many behaviors as possible in each photo. Pages 295 to 312 have detailed answers to the behaviors in each of the previous photos, and the reader can easily flip back to the alphabetically-organized subjects to get a more detailed look at each behavior.

At the very back of the book is an extensive section of references, titled “Works Cited,” and a topical bibliography, again alphabetized, that lists the more important books and other resources, starting with “Aggression” and ending with “Websites.”

The photographs in the book are provided by 9 different photographers, including Barbara Handelman. Most photos are action shots, with the dogs caught in the middle of some behavior that is featured in the text. A number of photos are of wolves, but many different dog breeds are represented as well.

Clearly, everything in the book has been well-thought-out and well-presented. The book is useful to everyone who is interested in dog behavior, both the seasoned professionals with lots of experience and the novices just starting out.

--Con Slobodchikoff

 

What Dog Sports Do For Dogs

Note from Con Slobodchikoff: This is a post by guest author Nancy Frensley, CPDT, CAP2, who is Manager of Behavior and Training at the Berkeley-East Bay Humane Society in Berkeley, California. She will write periodic posts about the behavioral challenges and joys of shelter dogs.

For centuries the dog has been considered to be mankind’s working partner. From ranchers whose shepherd dogs beat them to the pickup truck to work the livestock every morning; to the soldiers who depend upon military working dogs to help detect dangerous explosives – people still work in partnerships with canines. But today, in many countries dogs are more likely to be family members than working partners.

 

Through centuries of selective breeding for work, dogs are still equipped to be

working partners. They can always do some things better than us humans. They take up where we leave off in speed, movement, scent detection and the ability to cover distances. Moreover, within just about all of them lies some instinctive urge to do the work for which they were bred. Even Poodles, with their dressy haircuts and smart looks, were originally developed to hunt birds in water. Recognition of the canine’s inherent need to work has given rise to dog sports as a solution. As a result, many pet parents have discovered the sheer joy of having a working partnership with their dog by participating in dog sports. 

 

As a dog behavior consultant at the Berkeley-East Bay Humane Society and an avid dog agility competitor with my own dogs, I am in an ideal position to advise people who are adopting a dog about the value of getting their dog into a sport.   

 

Sports for dogs include much more than agility and obedience competitions (though these are the most common and plentiful). Most of the sports offer both competitive and non-competitive venues. Tracking and other forms of nose-work challenge a hound’s scenting ability while giving the human partner a hike. Field trials and Dock Diving channel a dog’s drive for hunting and water work. Lure coursing and Earth Dog contests give sight hounds and terriers a way to work off their mutual need to chase (and all a handler needs is a chair and umbrella!). Dogs bred to pull can enjoy sledding and its relatives, ski-joring and bike-joring. Bully breed types are awesome at weight pulling (the most famous of these appears in Jack London’s, White Fang.) Stock dog types can engage in competitive herding if their human partners are willing. Any and all of these are great fun to try whether a dog is a mixed breed or purebred. And, on a personal note, if you haven’t been knocked down by a small herd of sheep your dog just drove up, you haven’t lived!

 

Besides being exhilarating to try, dog sports do a lot for dogs and their people. 

Participation builds a solid and trusting relationship, enhances communication and builds courtesy, understanding and common goals among the dog-lovers’ community. They develop the dog’s intelligence and problem solving abilities while channeling natural instincts into structured activities. Both dogs and people stay fit and out of trouble when active in dog sports. Whole families that compete seem to have special bonds around the sports. Channeling instincts into a sport helps to prevent aggression and builds confidence in shy dogs. And lastly, people increase their skills at training and handling their dogs.

 

To find a sport that suits a dog it takes no more effort than internet searches for the various dog sports mentioned above. Dog sport enthusiasts have clubs, classes and lessons available that allow anyone interested to try that particular sport.        

      

 

Puppy Mouthing and How To Stop It

When puppies are still with their littermates, they use each other’s bodies as toys. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that they use their mouths on us—most frequently on our arms, hands, and clothes. Though this is natural dog behavior, dogs must learn to interact in ways that are appropriate in the human world. Since mouthing people is not acceptable, what can be done to stop this behavior and teach our dogs that this is unacceptable behavior?

One useful method is to startle and then redirect the puppy, which is an ethologically useful technique, because it is based on puppies’ natural behavior when interacting with littermates. When littermates play together, they use their mouths to tug or gnaw on ears, tails, paws, and loose skin anywhere. If one puppy mouths too hard, the puppy that got hurt will yelp and move away from the puppy who was too rough. The puppy who was too rough has to go find someone else to play with, but has started to learn that mouthing too hard results in playtime being interrupted.

To simulate this behavior with a puppy, if a puppy mouths too hard, simply yelp with a puppy-like sound (Aaarp! is the closest description of this sound that can be spelled), and then, when the puppy releases its mouth from the person, immediately put something that the puppy can chew into its mouth. Possible objects for redirection include bones, rawhides, Kongs®, Goodie Balls®, squeakie toys, and stuffed animals.

A common mistake when using this method is making the yelping Aaarp! sound and then failing to redirect the puppy’s mouth to something appropriate. In most cases, the sound will startle the puppy, who will stop mouthing the person, but then will go right back to the inappropriate behavior unless given another, more appropriate object to chew on.

Over 90 percent of puppies respond to this method to stop puppy mouthing if it is used consistently over several weeks, but the remaining few dogs seem to get worse in response to those high-pitched yelps and are not responsive to attempts to redirect them. If after three or so attempts with this method, it becomes apparent that the dog is responding to the yelps by getting even mouthier and more revved up, don’t keep trying it. If it doesn’t work right away, it is not going to work at a later point, and it’s time to try something else.

Some dogs respond to being startled and redirected as long as the startling sound is not a high-pitched “Aaarp!” but rather a deep-voiced sound such as “Hey!” or “Stop!” Otherwise, the technique of interrupting the behavior and then redirecting the dog’s mouth to an appropriate object is the same. If the yelp does not work, this deeper-pitched startling vocalization followed by a redirection is the very next thing to try.

There are many suggestions for stopping puppy mouthing that I would never recommended either because they are inhumane, ineffective, or both. For example, do not hold the muzzle closed, yell at the dog, jam fingers into the inside of the dog’s mouth, or swat the dog. Basically, this comes down to one piece of general advice: Don’t do anything that involves any kind of physical punishment, pain or frightening the dog.

 --Karen B. London

Psychic Dog Saves People

This is the story of how my dog Nenkin saved my family.

A number of years ago, I was living in a house that had a small porch in front of the main door. The porch had a screen door that I usually kept locked. When someone came to the door, they would ring the doorbell and I would go out on the porch, greet them, and unlock the screen door to let them in. My smooth collie-mix Nenkin would usually accompany me out on the porch. She loved people and loved to say hello to anyone coming in.

One summer evening the doorbell rang and I went out on the porch. Standing in front of the screen door was a clean-cut man in his 30s. He explained that his car had broken down, and could he come inside to use our phone. This was prior to the general availability of cell phones, so his request sounded reasonable.

As I was about to unlock the screen door, Nenkin appeared at my side. She took one look at the man, and her hackles rose. She bared her teeth and started to bark furiously. I couldn’t believe that this was the same dog who lavished love on everyone coming into the house.

I grabbed her collar to keep her from lunging at the screen door, and regretfully explained to the man that I was sorry, but I couldn’t let him in because there was something wrong with my dog. He was clearly frightened by Nenkin’s barking and went away quickly.

The next day I read about this man in our local newspaper. It seems that he went a couple of blocks down the street, knocked on a door with the same story, and a kindly elderly couple let him into their house.  He overpowered them, tied them up into chairs, robbed the house and stole their car. He was stopped for speeding some 150 miles away, and because his name did not match the car’s registration, the police because suspicious and detained him. They called our local police department, asking an officer to check on the car’s registered owners. Because there was no response to a phone call, an officer went to the residence of the elderly couple, found them tied up and set them free. Without this chain of events, the couple could have died before anyone found them.

So my dog somehow sensed that this was not a good person, and saved us from possibly having the man rob us.

Was she psychic? Maybe.  Rupert Sheldrake, in his 1999 book, Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home, And Other Unexplained Powers Of Animals, documents a number of unexplained abilities that seem to suggest a psychic nature. One of his chapters deals with dogs and cats psychically picking up the intentions of the humans around them.

But there might be an alternative explanation. Recent research is showing that dogs are very attentive to human body language and very subtle cues that we humans don’t even notice. Perhaps there was something about the man’s posture that gave him away. Or perhaps Nenkin smelled a scent of fear from the man, or a scent of rage. I never saw her do this behavior again toward anyone else.

Whatever it was, I was very grateful to her.  Psychic or not, she saved the day.

--Con Slobodchikoff

A Troubleshooting Model for Your Rescued Dog

Note from Con Slobodchikoff: This is a post by guest author Nancy Frensley, CPDT, CAP2, who is Manager of Behavior and Training at the Berkeley-East Bay Humane Society in Berkeley, California. She will write periodic posts about the behavioral challenges and joys of shelter dogs.

Sometimes, adopters and clients at the Berkeley-East Bay Humane Society run into trouble with their dogs and do not know how to manage problem behaviors. Most of this “trouble” stems from normal dog behavior that has gone awry.

 

A vast majority of the questions from clients are about housetraining, chewing, escaping, dogs mugging guests, inappropriate barking, pulling on the leash, failure to obey, grabbing and stealing food or objects and jumping up on people. These are pretty much the top 10 behaviors people want the most want help with. If left alone, dogs will do all of these behaviors enthusiastically and, as a result, they become permanent habits. So how can a pet parent even know where to begin?

 

Start early and practice often is the best way to ensure that the dog’s behavior goes where you want and need it to go. Even if an adopter has had other dogs, by the time the dogs reach eight to 10 years old, most people have forgotten the work they initially put in. And, some have had those one-in-a-million easy dogs that need no effort at all. 

 

I found it was helpful to offer a formula by which pet parents can troubleshoot what is going wrong and get the dog’s behavior to go in the right direction. This model uses

positive reinforcement. In positive reinforcement training, we look at behavior as something to build rather than something to stop. We use a formula: Antecedent, Behavior and Consequences (ABC) to teach dogs specific activities. Here is an example: you call the dog (antecedent), the dog comes to you (behavior), and upon the dog’s arrival you throw a ball or give him a piece of food (consequence).     

 

Dogs learn through a process of habituation, successful repetition and consequences. So, if the dog is exhibiting inappropriate behavior or is giving an incorrect response, you have to look for the failure in these three areas. The formula I give my students is: Supervision-Repetition-Consequences.

 

Let’s look at the area of supervision. If the dog is not housetraining well, which includes both toilet and chewing habits, inadequate supervision is the culprit. Dogs must be patterned to eliminate in appropriate areas. If they manage to do it in the wrong areas, the solution is to be sure they only go in the right areas for a sufficient amount of time to make it a habit. Then they will have a desire to go in the correct area. The same goes for chewing on belongings that are not theirs. The pattern has to be in place and learning is quickest when no errors are made.  Supervision is the key to this.

 

In the area of repetition, the most common failure is teaching the dog to come reliably when called. There are very few cases in which inadequate repetition is not the cause.

Recall training takes many controlled repetitions before it becomes a conditioned behavior. And, as we discussed in the September 2 blog article, may never be accomplished in some circumstances that are overwhelming for the dog. The key is to get a dog to come every time with repetition, control and a generous reward at the end.

 

That brings us to consequences. It is only human nature to think that words are enough to let the dog know what we want. Dogs communicate through an elaborate system of physical expressions and do not process words in the same way humans do. What I usually hear when working with a client whose dog is jumping up on people is, “When he does that, I say ‘no’”. They are surprised when I ask them what they do after saying ‘no’. In this case, the dog should hear the word as he forms the intent to leap up on a person and then be quickly removed from the situation before jumping. That way, a positive consequence can be delivered for a correct behavior such as sitting. Or, in the same scenario, the dog can receive the positive consequence (he gets to greet the person for exhibiting the correct behavior). The correct behavior could either be sitting or standing still. 

 

Almost any failure can be grouped under one or more of those categories. So, when failures occur, think: Supervision, Repetition, and Consequences to find the answer.

           

 

 

Babies Can Tell The Difference Between Friendly Barks And Aggressive Ones

Parents, including me, tend to find their own babies’ accomplishments amazing, no matter how mundane the tales may seem to everybody else. Now, a new scientific study in the July 2009 issue of the journal Developmental Psychology confirms what parents often say: Babies can understand a lot more than we give them credit for.

According to this study, babies can tell the difference between friendly dog barks and threatening dog barks, and they can do this from as early as six months of age. The babies in the study were presented with two pictures of the same dog. In one picture the dog was in a friendly stance with a relaxed facial expression and in the other the dog was in an aggressive posture with a threatening facial expression. The researchers then played a two-second clip of a dog barking. If the bark was a friendly one, the babies directed their attention to the friendly photo but if it was the aggressive bark that they heard, they looked at the aggressive photo.

It’s not clear whether the babies are able to figure out which sorts of dogs—those exhibiting friendly signs or those sending off aggressive cues—would make the best possible playmates and which should be avoided. This study simply provides evidence that babies can make links between auditory cues from dogs and visual information from them and figure out which sounds go with which visual images.

The results suggest that babies can understand emotions before they can talk, and they can understand those emotions in another species, even if they have had little or no prior experience with dogs. For those of us who feel as though we have been able to understand dogs since before our earliest memories, there’s now scientific backup for those claims!

 --Karen B. London

Dogs Can Understand Photographs

Even though dogs have been around people for a long time, we still know surprisingly little about their abilities.

We have very little idea of what goes through a dog’s mind when we try to communicate with her. She might turn her head in an endearing fashion when we talk to her, but what does she really understand? Mostly, we have no clue.

Now some recent experiments are starting to untangle the abilities of dogs to form mental concepts when we try to communicate with them.

A recent article looked at whether dogs can understand iconic images (Kaminski, J., S. Templemann, J. Call and M. Tomasello. 2009. Domestic dogs comprehend human communication with iconic signs, Developmental Science 12: 831-837).

Iconic images are things like photographs or things that look like the real object. For example, a photograph of a hamburger is an iconic image of a real hamburger. Similarly, a rubber toy hamburger is also an iconic representation of a real hamburger.

In this article, the authors worked with 5 border collies.  Three of the collies knew the names of a variety of objects, and two of the collies had no experience with names. Each collie was presented with either a small rubber toy that looked identical to a larger one that was hidden in another room among a variety of other toys, or was shown a photograph of a toy.

After being shown either the small toy or a photograph, the dogs were asked to go and fetch the large toy.

All of the dogs did remarkably well at retrieving the larger toy when shown the small toy, even though there were other toys in the adjacent room. Also, at least some of the dogs could generalize from looking at a photograph of a toy and go into the next room and bring back the toy that was shown in the photograph.

While it is not particularly surprising that the dogs were able to look at a small toy and bring back an identical larger toy, it is surprising that the dogs could generalize from a two-dimensional photograph to a three-dimensional object.  This suggests that dogs can form mental concepts from the information that we give them.

Another study suggesting that dogs can form mental concepts was reported in 2007 in the journal Animal Cognition (Adachi, I. et al. 2007. Dogs recall their owner’s face from hearing their owner’s voice. Animal Cognition 10: 17-21).

In that study, the authors used a variety of different dogs to see if the dogs could form a mental concept of their owner from the sound of the owner’s voice.  They first played the sound of the owner’s voice to the dog, and then projected either the owner’s face or the face of a stranger on a nearby LCD screen.  Using video cameras, the authors measured the length of time that the dogs spent looking at the screen when they saw their owner vs. when they saw the face of a stranger.

The dogs spent less time looking at the face of their owner after hearing their owner’s voice.  When they saw the face of a stranger after hearing their owner’s voice, the dogs spent more time looking at the screen.

This suggests that upon hearing the voice of their owner, the dogs formed a mental concept of their owner and expected to see him or her, but were puzzled or confused when they saw the face of someone else. They spent more time looking to figure out why there was a mismatch between what they heard and what they saw.

So when your dog turns her head to the side when you are talking to her, perhaps she really is trying to understand what you are saying.

--Con Slobodchikoff

A Good “Stay” Means Ice Cream

When I lived in New England, I got a new dog and though he was over two years old, his training was so minimal that I was basically starting from scratch.  In other words, he knew how to sit on cue in some situations, some of the time. I began working with him on sit, down, wait, heel, come, and stay. The stay command soon became one of my top priorities, though my reason may seem self-serving.

I wanted to be able to cue him to stay so that I could go inside the local Ben & Jerry’s Scoop Shop. This goal involved a high level stay since he had to deal with distractions and with me being away from him, though still in sight through the store window. It took me a couple of months, but I got to the point where I could tell him to sit and to stay, then go inside, buy my ice cream and come back outside to a dog who was staying without stress just outside the door where he could see me.

This occurred in Hanover New Hampshire, which is a small and very friendly dog town. Most places I have lived, I would not leave my dog outside a store even in my sight because I would be worried that someone would either harass my dog or take him away. Hanover is ridiculously safe so that the risk of any harm coming to my dog was miniscule.

Just to give you some idea of how dog friendly a town Hanover is, here are two examples from Dartmouth College within the town. A big benefactor to the school bequeathed a fortune to the school with one major set of strings attached: Dogs must be allowed to roam free (off leash) throughout the campus. And roam they did—big packs of high energy, powerful dogs were regularly observed on campus and in the surrounding town. In the library at Dartmouth, instead of the usual sign on the door forbidding dogs from entering, there was a sign at the water fountain saying, “Please don’t allow dogs to drink from the water fountain.”

In such a town as this where dogs are allowed to be in so many places, a good stay is just part of what a dog needs to be able to do. They also need to walk politely either on or off leash and they need to come when they are called. These are the minimum core skills that dogs must be able to perform in order for them to be polite members of society. And in my case, my dog’s stay was the most important because I need my regular doses of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream in order for me to be a polite member of society.

 --Karen London