Dog Behavior Blog

Tricks of the Dog Training Trade

Most dog trainers pride themselves on having a dog who serves as a resume, and that’s why so many trainers’ dogs know so much. Sure, we teach our dogs sit, lie down, stand come, heel, leave it, wait at the door, to greet properly by not jumping up, not to jump on the furniture or take food from children and a host of other behaviors that make life pleasant. But those cues are really about teaching our dogs to be polite members of society.

The real fun for many trainers is teaching our dogs tricks, and the more creative, the better. Sure, a well-trained dog is likely to know how to crawl, beg, and roll over, but tricks can be a lot more elaborate and showy than that. Tricks tend to come and go in popularity, and a lot of great tricks are “in” right now.

Having your dog retrieve a tissue when you sneeze is always a crowd pleaser. Dogs who are naturally good retrievers learn this trick easily, and those who love the spotlight enjoy the merriment that human observers show when they perform it. It’s better not to teach this to dogs who eat tissues.

A great trick for playing practical jokes is teaching a dog to lift his leg as though he is marking, but not to actually urinate. People get very alarmed when a dog does this in the house, which can be fun for some people.

A great demonstration of fire safety is to ask a dog who is walking or running to do this series of behaviors in sequence in response to a single cue: lie down, rollover, crawl. That way, the dog is showing what to do if caught on fire—stop, drop, roll, and crawl to safety.

One of my favorite demos to do at school programs or career days is to tell a dog, “What happens when you smoke?” to which the correct response is to play dead. The actual cue I used to teach my dog is just the word “smoke” but I always used the whole sentence after he learned the trick.

And a perennial favorite is to teach a dog to put all the toys back into the toy box to one of two cues: “This place is a mess!” or “Tidy up!” It’s as practical as it is charming.

--Karen London

Toys That Dogs Like

My Standard Poodle Raja loves to play "ball." In his case, "ball" is anything that he can chase, catch, and bring back to the person throwing the "ball." Although he will do this with round balls that he can fit into his mouth, he really prefers plush toys that look like chipmunks or rabbits, that are small enough for him to fit into his mouth, and that squeak when he chews on them.

The downside of his playing "ball" is that he needs to convince some willing person to play this game with him.

What about dogs who don't have a person around? What sort of toys do they like to play with?

When I tried to find some scientific articles that have looked at this, I found that few had studied this problem.

However, a recent article in the scientific literature investigated what sorts of toys dogs in kennels like to play with (Pullen, A J et al. 2010. Preferences for toy types and presentations in kennel housed dogs. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 125: 151-156).

The experimenters studied the kinds of toys that dogs liked to play with in two different types of kennels:

· Re-homing kennels (the equivalent of Humane shelters), where dogs are brought in off the street for adoption.

· Long-term kennels where dogs spend most of their lives in a kennel.

The circumstances of kennel life were very different between the two types of kennels. In the re-homing kennels, the environment was very new to most dogs and the dogs showed signs of stress at being in unfamiliar surroundings. In the long-term kennels, the dogs were used to being in the kennels and received a lot of enrichment in the form of off-leash walks and interactions with people in an enclosed environment.

The experimenters gave both groups of dogs two types of toys to play with, and recorded the amount of play on video:

· One type was robust toys, which were difficult for the dog to destroy. These included a large indestructible ball, a rope tug knotted at both ends, a nylon and rubber flexible tug toy, and a rubber frame toy.

· The other type was less robust and easier for the dogs to damage. These included a vinyl bone with a squeaker, a soft fabric toy with two squeakers, a plush toy with a squeaker, and a tennis ball.

The robust toys were presented to the dogs as either hanging toys, suspended by a metal chain into the middle of the kennel, or as floor toys, placed onto the floor of the kennel.

The less-robust toys were only placed on the kennel floor.

Although there were some differences between the responses of the dogs in the re-homing kennels and the dogs in the long-term kennels, there was a common thread:

· The dogs generally did not like to play with toys that were hanging.

· The dogs preferred the soft squeaky toys to the hard indestructible ones.

While the indestructible toys are more attractive to people because dogs can't shred them, the indestructible toys are less attractive to dogs.

However, dogs can destroy the soft squeaky toys and possibly swallow pieces of the toy or the squeaker.

That means that if you give soft squeaky toys to your dogs, you have to watch them to make sure that they don't swallow anything.

I'm sure that Raja would agree with the results of this experiment. The only thing that they left out, in his opinion I am sure, are the people who can throw the soft squeaky toys for him to retrieve.

--Con Slobodchikoff

 

Fatal Dog Attacks On People

The other day I received an email containing a graphic on fatal dog bite attacks in the United States from 2005 to 2009.  You can see the graphic at the bottom  of this post.

The graphic does a terrific job of summarizing information about breed-specific fatal attacks on people. It shows that out of 149 fatal attacks, 55 percent (83 attacks) were by Pit Bulls,  14 percent (21 attacks) were by Rottweilers, and various other breeds were responsible for the remaining attacks. The graphic also points out that some 4.7 million dog bites occur every year (see my blog post of March 18, 2009 on dog bite statistics).

This is valuable information. Dog bites are a serious problem, and nothing can lessen the tragedy of a person killed by dogs, or even being bitten by a dog.

However, before we decide that dogs are just plain dangerous to have around, let us keep these numbers in perspective.

The 149 fatal attacks are over a 4 year period. That averages to about 37 fatal attacks by dogs each year.

Compare that with these numbers from various sources on the internet:

Each year in the United States,

• About 50-100 people die from bee stings (Yahoo Answers).
• About 36,000 people die from the flu (CDC).
• About 40,000 people die in car accidents (NHTSA).

Let's see how the numbers stack up in terms of the chance of a fatal dog attack or the chance of getting bitten .

The 2010 population of the United States is estimated to be about 310 Million people, and there are estimated to be 110 Million households.  The US Humane Society estimates that 39 percent of households own at least one dog, and that there are about 78 Million dogs living in households.

The chance of any given person suffering a fatal dog attack is very small. Dividing 37 (the average number of fatal attacks per year) by 310,000,000 (the estimated population in the US), gives us about a one in 10 Million chance of a person being fatally attacked by a dog. This is comparable to one person suffering a fatal dog attack in the entire Los Angeles County (population 10.3 Million) which includes 88 cities.

In terms of dog bites, the chances of a person being bitten are larger. Dividing 4.7 Million by 310 Million gives us about 1.5 chances out of a hundred that a person will be bitten by a dog. This means that about 1.5 percent of the population of the United States can expect to be bitten by a dog annually.

How does this compare to the number of dog bites vs. the number of dogs? If we divide 4.7 Million (the number of dog bites) by 78 Million (the number of dogs), we get 0.06. This means that on average 6 percent of the total dogs in the United States have bitten someone annually.

So your chance of being fatally attacked by a dog is very small, but your chance of getting bitten by a dog is significantly larger.

As far as dog bites go, I think we should keep in mind two points:

One is that any dog can bite given the wrong circumstances.

The other is that dogs who are well-socialized and who are treated with kindness, respect, and gentle leadership are less likely to bite than dogs who are abused and treated with violence.

--Con Slobodchikoff

 

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Visit Oklahoma-Law.com for more information on Oklahoma dog bite laws.