“ALL SHE WANTS IS THE TREAT”

     …..addressing complexities of training with food

Someone out there has put a spell on us. It was, no doubt, the many years of using more traditional style training where the use of food may have been considered ‘bribery’.  When I began training in the late ’80’s, I would not have considered it, though there was a man on the horizon, Dr. Ian Dunbar, who would turn us on our compassionate ear, and begin to lead us into a way to communicate with our dogs effectively using positive reinforcement.

Since then much behavioral research has been introduced, showing the expeditious manner in which dogs learn when food is presented as reinforcement for desirable behavior, and also how it is faded when the behavior is habituated. 

I will state the obvious here, because we often bring dogs into our lives with such completeness that we expect them to act like, and learn like, humans.  Given they aren’t, and English is not their first language, it is unfair to expect they know it all when they arrive; however if they do, then we have been gifted an exceptional dog at reading the signals that are required to coexist.  What can happen in this process, and a reason why I get called in for assistance, is that anxiety has been created, in large part, due to dogs not having enough information to feel confident they can navigate this human environment.

So, now back to the treat part….There is a huge part of her dog brain that is engaged and fascinated with how to get one of those goodies, yes.  But please don’t get confused, she is also LEARNING.  

With this style of teaching,

ü Learning is fun, 

ü It’s interactive, 

ü It’s time spent with you, 

ü It’s lower stress method of introducing new and higher level learning in lower stress way

So yes, she’s probably having a lot of FUN. 

Using food, we’re accessing parts of her brain that receives information, and helps her remember faster and with more hormone and neuron activity to assist us in the training process. The corner we have to take with the thinking of using food, is that it is not bribery, rather they are learning what you are reinforcing in the process.  Keep in mind when your pup looks to you for that yummy goodie, there is also an imprinting process that is happening in her brain, to help her remember just what she was doing to earn it.

When we are able to provide information that is going to make all our lives easier, and she is enthused about it, then it shouldn’t matter what we are using to accomplish the process. It does matter however, the awareness of methods and timing we are using toward training, and not bribing.  Complexities that can be involved with this, such as;

·     When do I provide the food reward? 

·     How do I provide the food reward?

·     When do I fade, or stretch, times of giving food reinforcement for the amount of times she is responding to my commands?

·     What types of food rewards do I use?

·     Where do I keep my food rewards while I’m training?

   

These are all perfect reasons to find a reputable trainer to help you identify when and how to apply the process.  Below I provide a snippet of information, to help understand the process better, and help your comfort level of working with food.

Another misconception of training using food is that we are using bribery to get results, and that we will forever need to have food at the ready for our dogs to comply. That is not the case I’m happy to say!  

Let’s use the recall as our example with puppy, Molly.  As we are teaching her recall, 

§ You call her to you (Molly, come!), 

§ Molly comes running, and you give her food reward when she gets to you,

§ Next time you call her, she comes running and you don’t have anything!, 

§ Next 2 times you call her you have something,

§ Next time you have nothing.  

§ Since she has not yet learned what the word represents, which is to drop what she’s doing and come to you, then she’s learning an environmental reinforcer, which may be to look to see if you have something so she can determine whether its worth it to her to come.  Therefore it is critical to her learning the command, that every time she comes to you while she is learning this word, you give her a goodie to teach her and begin building neuropathway that ‘come’ means ‘coming to you’.  Then, over time, you provide what is called ‘stretching’ whereby you expect more times of her coming to you between food rewards (while still verbally excited to see her of course)

            So, in future it would look like this:

§ You call her to you (Molly, come!)

§ Molly comes running, and you give her food reward for getting to you

Don’t expect anything of her when she gets there, by the way! You are building a positive association with the word right now, no other agenda. 

§ Every time you call her = food reward when she gets to you. 

§ When she is coming to you consistently, comprehension is high, and she appears to have a positive association with the word, begin fading the level of reinforcement, or stretching.

§ Pair food reward with verbal praise, as when you fade the food, eventually, the verbal will remain

                        

Many say, ‘my dog is not food motivated’.  What this translates for a trainer is that the reinforcement value of the food is not sufficient to get her attention in that environment.  I often make a recommendation in beginning training protocol, to lift the bowl during feeding times instead of feeding her all of those training opportunitiesJ  This doesn’t mean she is going hungry, it means you may wish to begin by doing the following

·     Measure out the amount of food you feed each meal

·     Use this food in your daily training regimen, both for active and passive training…and reinforce heavily.  Examples:

o  Active = taking 5 minutes to work on a command

o  Passive = reinforcing when she sits down when greets you coming home, rather than jumping 

·     Spike her food with some cooked liver or chicken gizzard, meatballs, or some other such goodie (when thawing a frozen goodie, it helps all the kibble in the bowl taste yummier. This is your friend when you are expanding your dogs training bubble. The higher the value, the higher the relevance in that environment!

·     Purchase ‘treats’ from the pet store, or make them yourself, to provide variety

·     Reward with small bite morsels.  It is distracting and takes time for your dog to be chewing large biscuits during training.

·     If you’re concerned about weight gain during training time, increase her exercise quotient, or feed from what you would have during mealtime.

·     Keep treats in various places around the house to reinforce behavior as it occurs. I call this passive training….you have not asked for it, but she may be drawing from former reinforcement experience that this is what you want) 

o  Examples of this is lying on her bed when you sit down to eat your meal, sits instead of jumping on you, running to the window and not barking at the passerby, and so on.  

I hope from this, you imagine your future of handing her a food reward as a learning experience rather than bribery!  When it occurs to you that ‘she’s only doing it for the treat’, remind yourself that THIS IS the learning process. The vehicle to introduce her to this foreign language of ours just happens to taste really good. 

Now, what in the world do you want your dog to learn, and I’ll show you a yummy way to accomplish it!!!

Patti Howard BS, CCS, ACCN is specialist in dog behavior, training and nutrition in the greater Olympia area.

DOG FOOD AND ATTITUDE; what our dogs eat and how it may be affecting ability to change behavior

DOG FOOD AND ATTITUDE

What our dogs eat and how it may be affecting ability to change behavior

I was excited to have an appointment with Craig and his dog Jake last week. Craig’s original complaints for me to address were counter surfing, excessive whining, barking at what appeared to be ‘nothing’ and leash pulling.  It quickly came to my attention how dull his coat looked and felt as I reached out to pet his German Shepherd frame. When I probed what Craig had been feeding, he responded, ‘I’m spending a lot of money on premium kibble! How would a change in his food affect his coat and behavior?’

So begins our discussion.

Jake is on a 95% kibble diet, and has been for 3.5 years. (treats making up the other 5%).  The kibble company spends a tremendous amount of money overriding our common sense approach that anyone eating the same anything for 3.5 years are at risk for experiencing potential problems.  Add to this that kibble is a highly processed, nutritionally devoid, carbohydrate-ridden food.

Craig has been feeling as though he was upgrading when he began feeding Jake ‘grain free’ and while this has been a positive direction for kibble companies to travel with their formula, there is still a HUGE carbohydrate load to these foods.

Awareness of human and canine nutrition and its affect on body/mind chemistry is a tap on my shoulder when I hear people tell stories of dog dilemmas.  For Jakes situation:

1. Can we blame a dog that is not getting his nutritional needs met when they forage on a counter?

2. Is it fair to punish the counter surfing behavior, and not a potentially strong physiological need behind it? 

3. Is it realistic to ask whether highly processed food could be manipulating his blood sugar, contributing to anxious displays (whining) of behavior?  If we were to consider the effects of nutrition on our human bodies, there has been much research to determine that what we eat can (and does) affect our behavior, so is not a huge leap to consider any other living form is affected as well.  

Consider these facts and participate with me in a little exercise:

·      Begin with a piece of paper with 100% written at the top. 

·      Subtract the % of protein, % fat, and % moisture listed on the back of the kibble bag you feed,

·      The remainder you see is carbohydrate composition of the food!

·      Most will be surprised to witness this amount in excess of 40% (in other words, you are picking it up in the yard after your dog has spent time and energy processing it)

o   Now consider that your dog operates optimally at between 11 and 18% carbohydrate intake for his system to function optimally.

Now lets look at the first six ingredients in Jakes food:

Herring meal

Potatoes

Sweet potato

Canola oil

Pea protein

Rice

That is the bulk of the food right there, and the remainders of ingredients aren’t any more flattering.  How can a company have good conscience marketing this to us, who wish to do right by our dog. This particular formula rendered 52% carbs for Jake to digest, and there is no real substantive nutritional value in this at all. Dogs are carnivores, and the meat is missing!

When our dogs consume more carbs than their body can use, a list of problems can arise including (but certainly not limited to); blood sugar instability, digestive issues, obesity, imbalance with intestinal bacteria, allergies, arthritis, seizures, cancer, anxiety, and the list is growing with research.  Carbs can bind vitamins and minerals in the intestines, whisking them out of their bodies with no chance of absorption.  Now consider that one of the many duties of B vitamins, for instance, is as a calming influence, as well as capacity to improve brain function.  Behavior problems that are rooted in anxiety, which is of course the opposite of calm, may be affected by not getting enough B vitamins. 

Speaking to a dogs’ species appropriate diet and prior to when kibble came to be, Jake (this time of year for example) would be feeding on bunnies. He would be eating the innards of the bunny first to assist in digestion of the protein, bone, organs and fur they were about to consume. So this would consist of vegetation the bunny had eaten, packed with B vitamins, digestive enzymes, and probiotics that all help the body absorb food optimally. The enzymatic value of fresh food has been found to also help naturally remove plaque from teeth, and keep it off.  Kibble cannot replicate this process.  Maybe the ingredients that went into it at one time were nutritionally viable, but that was a very long time before your purchase. 

Kibble companies would also have you believe that there is ‘better kibble’ than another. This may be the case for the integrity of the ingredients they applied to the recipe; however,  beyond that, each and every kibble goes through the same nutrition degradation process in the highly processing procedure.

Below are some ideas for canine species appropriate (fresh, real food) commercial and convenient options to a highly processed kibble that are available:

·        Commercially prepared raw diets:

o   Darwin’s, is delivered to your door on auto ship basis

o   Northwest Naturals

o   Stella and Chewys

o   K9 Naturals

o   Tuckers

o   Answers

·       Commercially prepared dehydrated diets:

o   Stella and Chewys

o   K9 Naturals

o   Northwest Naturals

o   Addiction

And ideas for Movie Night!  Suggestions to bring ideas for further discussion:

·      ‘Pet Fooled’ Video:               http://www.truthaboutpetfood.com/petfooled

·      ‘Supersize Me’ Video:          http://documentary-movie.com/super-size-me/

Please note, I am NOT suggesting replacing nutrition advice for behavior advice! Although I have witnessed what I consider miracles with a shift in nutrition, I am addressing it here more from the perspective that unless you have as much information about your dog as possible, then a behavior modification plan may be compromised. If a behavior is not responding to protocol that has been revised appropriately, it makes sense to investigate our dog’s physiology – and how they are FEELING!

In terms of Jake’s behaviors, I’m thrilled to say Craig’s now looking to his food bowl as potentially part of the solution.  We are working diligently on Jake’s issues, as he has been reinforced in many ways, but we will save that for another chapter.  Furthermore, Jakes coat is shining, and he loves mealtime!

There is still much to learn in the area of dog nutrition, many scientific case studies to be performed; however, we can take the gift that research has given us to move in the right direction.  With all the good intentions of feeding what the kibble companies would have us believe is the highest quality food, we are picking up much of our money with a pooper-scooper. 

For references of dietary suggestions, to learn how to begin feeding a more natural diet, or to unlock the mystery of the ingredient list on your bag of kibble, please contact Patti Howard for a copy of nutritional recommendations, free, via www.yourcanineresource.com   Patti is Certified Specialist in Canine Training/Behavior, and holds Advanced Canine Nutritional Certification. Patti is convinced with 25 years experience in these areas that Your Dog Can’t Do Anything Wrong, as will be interpreted by her book of the same name, available this fall/winter.

YOUR DOG CAN'T DO ANYTHING WRONG; as in the title of Patti's book!

Your Dog Can't Do Anything Wrong (just consider it a training opportunity)

What kind of feelings come up when you hear that your dog cannot do anything wrong? Does your primate kick in and defend its position in your relationship? If our dogs aren’t listening it must be because THEY are wrong! Right?

From my years in responding to requests for behavior modification, most people misunderstand (and therefore label) a lack of compliance from their dog as being ‘stubborn’ or ‘willful’.  We are assuming in that statement that the dogs brain is sophisticated to the degree that those labels are fair.  For the sake of conversation here, I have seen dogs hesitate complying with a command, (which may be more common in certain breeds, you know who you are) though by and large many more times they are simply not understanding what we are attempting to communicate.

What is apparent to me as a teacher is that in order to recognize a training opportunity, it will be helpful to recognize when you are feeling they are being stubborn or willful.  Let that be your information, not your frustration!  Take a step back to ask if you have trained them to the level you are asking.  Taking responsibility, as their humans, to help them learn what you are communicating IS the training opportunity.

In the simplest of terms, if our dogs don’t know what it is we are communicating, it falls on us.

Let’s look at the human experience of communication, for example. The way we communicate is if we do not get a response, or the one we’re expecting, we tend to repeat the same thing over and over, possibly louder and louder.  Whether we know they are hearing us or not, it’s apparent they aren’t listening.  Therefore, this is the way we tend to communicate with our dogs, and it is as ineffective, if not more so.  They can hear a potato chip drop in the next room, significant to ‘hearing’ not being the problem.  Since English is not their first language, I suggest slowing down a bit, training them to hear our first request, and not repeating as though we were in a burning building.  Sit, SIT, SIT, SIT, SIT!  This is a most INeffective way of communicating with a species that is adept at reading energy.

Here’s a training opportunity story:

Your dog, Pearl, slides out the front door and is on an all out, ears-flapping-in-the-wind run for a passer-by and their dog. You call out to her to come back, then again louder, all the while chasing after her full speed, in panic.  Game-On!  So, aside from feeling embarrassed, angry or frustrated, how are you going to react in this scenario?

According to Pearl, she’s not being stubborn to not come to you.  Rather she is in an exciting, low threshold environment for her.  So where is the training opportunity in this, and how is it she isn’t doing anything wrong? Simply put, you may have worked with Pearl’s recall in your home, or in the fenced yard, but have not taught her to come to you in a highly distractive environment.  She has likely not generalized that coming to you in the house is the same as when she is excitedly running after something. The training opportunity is training her when she’s running away from you, and this requires hours of practice with her on long line running after things, and coming back to you when called.  It requires that it works for her to whip around and run to you when called, and practicing the recall when she’s running toward different yummy things will accomplish this for you.

I will add that no amount of frustration or anger for not coming will teach your dog a thing, except possibly that if it wasn’t fun to come when called before, it certainly isn’t now.

Consider the association she has with how it feels to come to you. Have the times she has come to you ever been aversive? Have you called her out of the back yard (where she was having a blast) and then locked her in the house for 8 hours while you rushed off to work?  Have you called her numerous times (missing the training opportunity) and so frustrated when she finally got to you that you exhibited anger? That would explain the next time you call her to you and she hesitates, or that she possibly does NOT come at all.  Instead, in this scenario, make a game of running into the house with you, or having her wait while you leash her up and she walks nicely into the house with you. This will help you achieve your goal, with no breakdown to the recall command.

THESE are ideas of how you design the recall to ‘work for her’.

In order to fully train your dog to your communication, it is important for you to generalize the communication with her. There are ways to incrementally introduce levels of training to your dog that will help build confidence and levels of compliance, showing that taking advantage of a training opportunity is rich in rewards for you both.  In this series, we will explore many more training opportunities and how to recognize when they’re presenting themselves.

In conclusion, if your dog ‘blows off’ a command, pack your frustration and anger away, and look for your training opportunity, because they aren’t doing it wrong, they just don’t yet know how to do it RIGHT! 

  

Patti Howard BS, CCS is certified in Canine Behavior and Nutrition, and owner of Your Canine Resource in Olympia WA  www.yourcanineresource.com