The Gift of Autonomy

Many of you may already be familiar with the work of Patricia McConnell,  who's an applied animal behaviorist and a wise, generous resource for  humans and dogs alike. Her books range from the highly practical  (including a series of short works addressing common behavioral  challenges, from leash reactivity to separation anxiety) to the  provocatively theoretical.

My favorite of McConnell's books is The Other End of the Leash,   which summarizes the research she and others have done into the ways  that human and canid styles of communication differ and sometimes create   confusion. (The short version of one common misunderstanding: primates   establish authority by getting loud, canids by getting quiet. Thus  yelling at a barking pup often backfires not only because he's likely to   suppose that there really is something to bark about if we're barking too, but also because our vocal eruptions connote immaturity to a canine mind. Oops!)

"The Other End of the Leash" is also the title of McConnell's wonderful blog. She posts regularly there about her life with her own menagerie and her   thoughts about the not-so-minor miracle of interspecies relationships,   especially those between Homo sapiens and Canis familiaris. Despite her  great depth of experience and expertise, "Trisha" remains charmingly  humble in the face of everything there remains to learn, and thanks to  her example, the adhoc community that gathers in her blog's comment  section is unusually smart and gracious.

I've written elsewhere about the importance of autonomy to a fearful dog:   few things give us a greater sense of safety when we're anxious than  control over our bodies and our space. The ability to advance or retreat   at will is especially precious. (This helps explain why many dogs are only reactive when on leash.) But Trisha reminded me in a pair of recent  posts (here and here)   that anxious dogs (and humans) are not the only ones who savor the  freedom to choose. She and her readers have a host of great suggestions for how to "loosen the leash," how to give our dogs safe opportunities to express their preferences: to walk or to sniff? to tug or to chase? to cuddle or to curl up alone?

It's tempting sometimes when we're  training to equate "well-mannered" with "perfectly obedient," to suppose that a "good" dog is one whose agenda always matches ours.  But many of us love our dogs in great part because they've got minds and  desires of their own. We love them for their mischievousness, humor,  and imagination; we love them for the stubborn mysteries they introduce into our lives. ("How can that possibly smell good to you?") And it can be a great relief to everyone when we humans give up our "responsibility" to be forever in control.

So   if you're stumped about what to give your dog for Christmas, put some choice under the tree - preferably wrapped in bright paper and topped  with a chewy rope bow!

Silence Is Not Always Golden

In the right dose, frustration can be a powerful motivator. (Too much frustration, of course, can kill motivation. As many a playwright knows, the most reliable recipe for compelling drama has three ingredients: high stakes, high obstacles, and high hopes. The challenges that lie between a character and whatever she's intently pursuing need to be mighty but not insuperable, or helplessness descends and the story deflates.) One of the strongest motivations powering this blog is my frustration with some of the core tenets of "positive" training and my corresponding desire to bust them open and look at their innards.

"Reward what you like and ignore what you don't" is terrific training advice, especially as a corrective to correction-based methods. Most or all of us are natural-born critics, with a strong tendency to focus on whatever is threatening or unpleasant. (The evolutionary advantages of this tendency may also explain the disproportionate and unpredictable power of punishment to alter our perceptions and behavior: some lessons we're lucky to learn even once.) Few of us have much intuitive sense for the way that truly unproductive behaviors - actions that have no payoff - will extinguish on their own. So the reminder to "focus on the positive" does us intellectual good, just as the shift from grudging resentment to grateful appreciation does us spiritual good.

Let's not forget, however, that ignoring behavior works (when it does work) as a form of negative punishment. Behaviors that are responsive to the "ignore it" approach are behaviors that have previously been reinforced by attention; if attention hasn't built up the behavior, the absence of attention won't extinguish it. Furthermore, a dog who is highly sensitized (either in general or in a specific set of circumstances) to the relative availability of his owner's attention may have a more difficult time than an emotionally resilient dog weathering its deliberate withdrawal. Thus the question of whether "just ignore it" is in every circumstance the most compassionate and productive response to behavior we don't like remains open even in the context of training a non-verbal animal.

"Ignore what you don't like" can be truly crap advice when we're talking about how to conduct ourselves in dialogue with our highly verbal human peers. As a species, we are at least as dependent as dogs on social support, and our high degree of enculturation makes us much more sensitive to the symbolic elaborations of acceptance and rejection. Dogs read body language; they don't read theater reviews (or blog comments). Dogs don't talk behind your back, and they don't damn with faint praise. They'll never tell you that they found your inept frisbee toss "really interesting!"

With a bit of mutual trust, humans can negotiate conflicts as straightforwardly and good-naturedly as dogs most often do. But (unlike dogs) humans can also play psychological Twister and pretend there's no conflict at all. The universe would be perfectly harmonious, some people don't quite tell you, if you would just shut your trap and stay in your designated corner.

Semi-hypothetical situation number one: I'm watching Sunday afternoon action at Jimmy's Sports Bar, sharing a table with an assortment of other more or less rabid football fans. Philip Rivers, quarterback for my beloved (and sadly benighted) San Diego Chargers, completes a gorgeous long pass to Malcom Floyd. "Yes! You go, Philip!" I crow.

A man in a Bears jersey shakes his head. "Rivers? I can't stand that guy. Never stops with the mouth. Just shut up and throw, dude!"

"He loves the game!" I protest. "He's a total kid out there, and he trash talks like one. You know his worst swear word is 'golly'?"

"Whatever, the guy's a punk."

"You've got Cutler for QB and you're telling me Rivers is a punk?"

"Yeah, yeah. Point taken."

Now, if this hypothetical Bears fan had the presumption to think it was his job to train me to stop saying nice things about Philip Rivers, or to stop saying anything at all, he'd be making a hash of it. For me and him and most of the people who gather at Jimmy's, this kind of superficially contentious exchange is good fun and strong reinforcement. We're there because we're all still kids at some level, still deeply invested in "meaningless" games, and we'll keep going back as long we find our right to our ridiculous passions respected.

Semi-hypothetical situation number two: during lunch at a conference of "positive" trainers, I wonder aloud whether the use of physical pressure is uniformly aversive. "It seems crazy to me not to use the leash as a tool for communication, not to teach a dog that it could be rewarding to move in the direction of gentle pressure when so many of them are 'self-applying' huge amounts of pressure whenever they see a squirrel or cat or another dog. What do you all think?"

Silence descends. Someone leaps to a new topic. Someone else emails me a few days later to thank me for raising questions that she's also wrestled with but felt uncomfortable airing.

Everyone at this hypothetical table (save the gal who never stops with the mouth, yours truly) has been effectively trained by the "positive" technique of "ignore what you don't like." They've been punished by silence into silence.

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

We all need to decide for ourselves when, how, and with whom to air our disagreements. We need to respect the decisions that others make about whether a difficult discussion will be worth their time and worth the risks that all conflict entails. But I'm revolted by the idea that we should treat exchanges with people whose views don't mesh perfectly with our own (i.e., everyone) primarily as training opportunities; I emphatically reject the notion that we should work to suppress the expression of their unwelcome thoughts through the deliberate withdrawal of our attention and engagement.

This version of "positive" seems positively poisonous to me, and I think it's both symptom and source of a lot of unacknowledged fear in communities that are meant to be supportive. A fear of conflict drives its unhealthy suppression and generates more fear: I could be shunned if I mention the elephant in the room. Or even the mouse.

We seem as a culture to be abandoning the practice and art of civil but rigorous dialogue. When we retreat to our (shrinking) camps, we may preserve a fragile peace for ourselves, but others suffer for our silence, sometimes literally.

That's what I think, anyway. What about you?

Forza!
Gretchen

Is it okay if our dog gets on the couch?

​Well, why on earth not?

I'll occasionally cross-post here and at the Bridgetown Dog Training blog, where my focus tends to be more practical and my language somewhat less scatological...

This is one common version of a question I hear all the time: "Is it okay if... my dog walks on my right side instead of my left... sleeps in our bed... goes through doors in front of me... gives us kisses?" And while I know it can be annoying to answer questions with questions, my reply is almost always the same: "Is it okay with you?"

If I see behavior that looks potentially dangerous, I'll speak up. These are the only urgently not okay situations I encounter, and they jump immediately to the top of my management and training priorities. In just about every other case, however, it seems obvious that the people who decide what good behavior is should be the people who live with it on a daily basis.

Of course, this does create a bit of extra work for everyone. I think one reason that many trainers hold on to the dominance myth (the idea that dogs are perpetually scheming to take over our homes and the world) is that it supplies conveniently cut-and-dried answers to questions that are, in reality, wide open. The words "always" and "never" give us a false sense of strength and certainty. "You should always walk in front of your dog, you should never play tug…”

Science has exploded many of these myths, giving us the freedom to create highly personal visions of good behavior and the responsibility to see them through. Here are a few general tips to guide you in the process:

1. Be specific. The more detailed your vision of what “good” looks like, the more easily you’ll get there. I’m currently working with a couple who do like sharing their couch with their pug but don’t like having her climb to the top of the cushions to demand their attention. Identifying that distinction enables them to communicate their desires clearly to their dog (by pointedly ignoring her when she’s perched on the back of the couch and lavishing her with rubs and praise when she moves down to the couch seat). It also lets them stop feeling guilty about letting her do what they like her to do. There are fewer “slippery slopes” when we train with clear expectations.
   
   
2. Plan for the long term. Life is full of surprises, but the better we can anticipate what behaviors might become problematic, the better we can avoid trouble down the road. Well-established habits can be difficult to undo, and you’ll find it much easier to loosen the boundaries you’ve set than to tighten them later on. This foresight is especially important if you have a highly driven or large breed puppy - ask yourself whether the adorable thing she’s doing at ten weeks will still be adorable when she’s full grown.
   
   
3. Be consistent. Once you decide on a boundary, hold to it. When you see those big pleading eyes (or hear that irritating bark) and you’re tempted to break your own rule, remember that your inner strength is a gift to your pup. You can’t ask him to show more self-discipline than you do.

Dogs will accept even the most arbitrary rules as long as you establish them as the “facts” of their world. Barley is the only one of our three dogs allowed to sit on the couch with us. That’s the way it has always been and always will be. (But you needn’t take pity on Kili, who lounges on her divan, or Pazzo, who favors the antique French chair passed down to us by my mother-in-law!)

Forza!​
Gretchen

Here's one version of "good" that may or may not overlap with your own:​