Dog Behavior Blog

Selecting Your Dog From a Shelter: A Life and Style decision

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.

What is it that makes us to want to get a dog?   Most people who get dogs when they are adults have had a beloved family dog as a child.  Friends or relatives with dogs might be an influence.  Perhaps the thought of a dog as a companion for hikes or as a running partner is appealing.  A visit to a dog show or shelter can spark the yearning for a canine friend.   For sure, volunteering or being a foster parent at a shelter such as ours, the Berkeley-East Bay Humane Society, will increase your desire to adopt a dog.  There is nothing like a dog to add joy and fun to your life. And searching for that special dog has its benefits, too. Getting to know dog enthusiasts is just one of them. They are a great community to join. 

 

When you set out to add a dog to your life for the first time, where do you begin?   One of the first things you need to do is create a couple of lists.  First, list the pros and cons of including a dog in your life then add a list of characteristics you think the dog should possess in order to be compatible with you. Try to create a vision of what your life with a dog will look like.

 

Your list of pros and cons might include activities you would like to add to your life as well as some you will have to give up. For instance, do you do well with a strict rule structure or do you like things to be loose and spontaneous?  Which of your habits and activities are you willing to change for the right dog?  How much room do you have in your house and life? Will your dog meet many people by going places with you or spend long hours alone with you? Factors such as these can not only affect your choice of a dog but are important since you can expect this relationship to last 10 years or more.

 

Whether you are meeting prospective dogs in shelters or through rescue organizations ask the adoption counselors what information they have collected about the dog.  They might not have a lot of history but should have done some level of health and behavior screening. Many shelters offer extensive adoption counseling and will want you and your family members to meet with the dog more than once.  

 

When you meet prospective dogs there are a few observable behaviors that are red flags. Among them are:

 

· The dog seems to be only tolerating you instead of liking you.

· The dog appears to freeze up when touched in some areas of his or her body. (The most common of these are the neck, shoulders, head and the flank area.)

· The dog shows stiffness in the body as though he or she is walking on tiptoe.

· The dog is openly afraid of or hostile to any member of your family.

 

Any of these behaviors can predict that the dog may have aggressive tendencies. A dog exhibiting any of those characteristics might be right for someone but will be a major project to take on with no guarantee of success.  A relaxed, friendly dog will have a loose, relaxed body most of the time and will usually have an open mouth with the tongue hanging loosely out the side when greeting you. The dog’s overall appearance will be soft, pliable and inviting.

 

Review the dog’s health records and ask questions. Some dogs need extensive and expensive health care. It is wonderful if you can take on one of these special needs dogs but you must be sure you have the resources to fulfill those needs. Both young and old dogs can be in good overall health which will show up in their shiny full coats, clear eyes, clean teeth and energy level. 

 

You probably will not be able to find a dog that meets every criterion on your lists. You might even choose one that differs significantly from your original vision. It is incredibly important to have defined what you want in a dog as well as being realistic about what you can handle. Nevertheless, the final choice is more often than not a result of that magical chemistry called love.  Having that “falling in love” feeling about a dog is the glue that will keep the dog in your home and give you the energy to work through any problems that come up.

 

There are millions of dogs seeking homes these days.  There is a right dog for everyone.  Dogs that have failed in one home can be outrageously successful in another. Making a choice can be challenging but well worth the effort.

 

 

Get Your Signals Straight In Obedience Training

When I work with training people and their dogs, I find that it is sometimes a challenge to get people to say just the command. If I ask people to tell their dog to "Sit," some people might say, "Please Sit," others might say the dog's name and the command, "Rover, Sit," and still others keep repeating the command like travelers in a foreign land dealing with people who don't speak their language.

While learning theory suggests that saying the command once and not saying anything else is the most effective way to train a dog, there has really been very little practical evidence to substantiate this.

A recent study provides a field and an experimental test of how well dogs respond to commands if their name or something else precedes the command (Braem and Mills. 2010. Factors affecting response of dogs to obedience instruction: A field and experimental study. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 125 (2010): 47-55).

In the field study, the authors videotaped 56 dog handlers giving their dog a "Sit" command.  There was a roughly equal mix of male and female dogs that were used, of a variety of breeds, and the handlers ranged in age from 10 to 60-plus.  The authors found that two factors influenced the dogs' performance in obeying the command: the attention that the dog gave to the handler while the handler was giving the command, and the amount of verbal information that the handler spoke before giving the command. Both of these factors decreased the performance of the "Sit" command.

In the experimental study, the authors used 12 dogs of various breeds, with only one handler who was always dressed the same and acted the same when giving the commands.  The handler taught to the dogs to respond reliably to a known command (e.g., "Down"), and to a novel command ("uff" to signal jumping up on a platform where there was a reward).

Then the authors did a series of experiments where each dog was given one of several combinations of commands:   the dog's name, followed by a one-second pause, then either the known command or the new command; and an unknown word (the German "Banane") preceding either the known or the new command.

The authors found that saying the unknown word before either the known or the new command significantly decreased the dogs' performance.  Saying the dog's name prior to the known command ("Down") had no effect on performance, but saying the dog's name prior to the new command ("uff") decreased the dogs' performance, just like saying the unknown word before a command.

So the results of this study substantiate the predictions of learning theory. Saying just the command is better than saying anything else along with it, although saying the dog's name does not seem to have any effect, as long as the dog is very familiar with the command.

 Saying "Rover, won't you be a good dog and sit down, pretty please?" just doesn't cut it in training dogs to respond to a command.

--Con Slobodchikoff

Dog Dominance Is A Very Complicated Issue

My Standard Poodle Raja likes to lead. When we come to a door, he likes to go in first. He also likes to jump in first into the car, and on walks he likes to be out in front, ahead of any of us. On walks, he would walk ahead of our other Standard Poodle, Zephyr.  By some interpretations, this would make him the dominant dog of the pack.

But things aren't that simple. Raja will also happily lie down at the drop of a hat and present his belly to be rubbed. He would also go up to Zephyr and lick Zephyr's muzzle while wagging his tail, which is kept down. Zephyr on the other hand would stand with his head and his tail up, accepting Raja's licking. This should mean that Raja is submissive to both us and to Zephyr.

So which is it? According to some interpretations, dominant dogs are the ones who want to go first, who have priority of access to everything, and who never show submissive behavior. For many years, a standard way of teaching dogs to not show dominance behavior was to make them wait at doorways until the people have gone through first, to make them wait at food bowls, and to make them wait at car doors so that their people would have priority of access. This was supposed to instill the idea that the people were more dominant than the dog.

Our ideas of dominance in dogs came initially from studies of captive wolf packs in zoo-like settings, where the wolves set up linear hierarchies with one or two dominant animals at the top and all of the rest of the wolves being progressively less and less dominant, depending on where they fit on that linear hierarchy.

Studies of wild wolves have failed to confirm that wolves have linear dominance hierarchies.  Wild wolf packs tend to be family groups, and the two parents tend to be dominant in much the same way that human parents tend to be dominant over their kids. They loosely set the rules, and the kids sort things out among themselves. (See a previous post on the Dog Behavior Blog by Dr. Suzanne Hetts, who discusses some of the myths of dominance and some of the work of Dr. L. David Mech with wild wolf pack behavior).

A recent study of free-ranging dogs in Italy addresses the leadership question in the light of dog dominance (Bonanni et al. 2010. Effect of affiliative and agonistic relationships on leadership behaviour in free-ranging dogs. Animal Behaviour 79: 981-991). The authors studied two packs of free-ranging dogs on a nature preserve in the suburbs of Rome. They found that one of the two packs, with 27 members, had very fluid leadership, with 6 dogs habitually leading the pack, but at least half of the adult dogs were  leaders some of the time. The habitual leaders tended to be the older, more experienced dogs, but not necessarily the most dominant.  

Leadership issues were even more complicated in the other pack, which was smaller with 9 dogs. This pack had one consistent leader for a month, a male who was previously a member of the larger pack but was not a habitual leader there. However, this male left the pack after one month, at which point a female became a habitual leader, although other dogs led as well. This female also came originally from the larger pack, where she was not a habitual leader.  A habitual leader of the larger pack joined this smaller pack part-way through the study, but did not become a habitual leader in his new pack.

As an aside, the authors define two types of dominance in dogs: formal dominance and agonistic dominance. Formal dominance is when a submissive dog comes up to a dominant one and licks the dominant's muzzle while keeping his tail low and wagging it. This is what Raja would do with Zephyr. Agonistic dominance is when a submissive dog would respond to a threat signal from a more dominant one by crouching down, pressing his tail down, or rolling over on his back. This is what Raja would do with us, although we never threatened him.

What the study of the free-ranging dogs shows is that dominance is a complicated issue in dogs, and cannot be reduced down to simplistic things like going through doors first or being out in front in a leadership role.

The other thing that this study shows is that dominance is not something that dogs are born with, but something that they might acquire depending on their situation.  Perhaps some dogs are genetically predisposed to be more dominant, but that does not mean that they will necessarily be dominant in any particular situation.  This is why some people prefer the term "status" to the term "dominance" when describing dominance interactions in dogs.

The third important point of this study is that dominance does not mean threats and aggression. The authors found that the dogs who used agonistic dominance, threat signals that elicited submissive behavior such as yelps or tails pressed low in other dogs, were seldom leaders.  Dogs who accepted signals of formal dominance, muzzle licking and wagging tails without any threats or aggression, were much more likely to be leaders.

As we study dogs in more natural settings, we are finding that dog behavior is much more complicated than we once assumed.

--Con Slobodchikoff