Be Your Dog's Best Friend
Module 4- Section 5
Module 4- Section 5
PREVENTING BEHAVIOUR PROBLEMS IN PUPS
- Preventing Begging
- Preventing Reactive Behaviour When Pup is Hugged
- Preventing Resource Guarding
- Preventing Excessive Licking
- Preventing Getting Bitten When Grabbing Your Pup’s Collar
Although a pup would go up to its mother in the wild to ask for food which she may be carrying in her mouth, it is not natural for a dog to mooch from the pack leader, or, any other members of the pack.
In our family dogs, begging is simply a learned behaviour – whether we like it or not, somebody visiting or in our family has offered the dog food either from their plate or slipped the dog something they themselves did not want to eat, normally under the table as in the picture insert. As we all know, dogs are quick studies as to which behaviour gets the desired results, and begging can quickly become an annoying behaviour.
The way in which to prevent is to never allow it to happen. If the behaviour has already started, ignoring the behaviour will not always work, as the pup may not be getting fed, but it will be hanging around the table area, looking at you beseechingly, or the mouth may be watering in anticipation.
Changing/Preventing the Begging Behaviour
As you have now learnt, negative punishment by way of the pup being removed from what it works is a wonderful training tool. There are several ways this can be achieved: -
You may think about ‘punishing’ the people who are giving the pup the food as well, instead of the pup!
- Preventing Begging
Although a pup would go up to its mother in the wild to ask for food which she may be carrying in her mouth, it is not natural for a dog to mooch from the pack leader, or, any other members of the pack.
In our family dogs, begging is simply a learned behaviour – whether we like it or not, somebody visiting or in our family has offered the dog food either from their plate or slipped the dog something they themselves did not want to eat, normally under the table as in the picture insert. As we all know, dogs are quick studies as to which behaviour gets the desired results, and begging can quickly become an annoying behaviour.
The way in which to prevent is to never allow it to happen. If the behaviour has already started, ignoring the behaviour will not always work, as the pup may not be getting fed, but it will be hanging around the table area, looking at you beseechingly, or the mouth may be watering in anticipation.
Changing/Preventing the Begging Behaviour
As you have now learnt, negative punishment by way of the pup being removed from what it works is a wonderful training tool. There are several ways this can be achieved: -
- Remove the pup completely from the area initially. You can either supply a chew toy for the pup to get stuck into, preferably on its bed, or just leave the pup in another area of the home. If the pup barks, howls etc just ignore the behaviour. Here you have to be a little careful – you do not want the pup to start the begging, knowing that if it keeps it up a chew toy will be forthcoming – rather set it up that the pup is given the chew toy, before it comes to the table. What normally happens here, is that when the pup realizes no food will be forth coming, it will give up and go back to chewing the chew toy.
- Feed the pup in another area at the same time the family is eating.
You may think about ‘punishing’ the people who are giving the pup the food as well, instead of the pup!
Figure 1at a glance all here looks ok, but see the dogs head pulled upwards, the ears are back, and there is a bit of lip licking
2.Preventing reactive behaviour when pup hugged
We don’t believe that strange dogs should ever be hugged. Bear in mind what you have learnt about a dog’s natural behaviour and you will remember that one dog placing itself over the other dogs neck or shoulders is actually a sign of reactive behaviour. The only exception to this is when you see pups play fighting and often what will occur is both pups will be standing on hind legs and front legs can appear to ‘hug’ the other puppy – this is simply ‘rehearsal’ behaviour.
Why then, are people surprised when a child gets bitten because it gave a dog a hug? Believe you me, this does happen, and the majority of pictures we have viewed on dog bites to children, they occur around the face area. Scotty tells the story that when Brady, her Border collie, was much younger, she had taken him to an outside flea market and suddenly a lovely little toddler pulled away from her parents, rushed up to Brady, threw her arms around his neck and said ‘doggy, doggy’. Now luckily Brady has been habituated to being hugged by children, but this came totally out of the blue and not from one of the children he knows. Scotty said it was so unexpected that she could not even get in front of him to prevent this behaviour - she said that Brady looked up at her, eyes frantic, head turned as far away from the child as he could, his neck seemed to have elongated in trying to get away, and to her thinking, his whole body said ‘help, get this off me!’. She told him to ‘calm’ and wait, then gently disengaged the child from around his neck and then spent some time teaching the parents how to get a child to approach a dog! This little girl was lucky, a situation such as this could have had serious consequences.
This will affect some dogs more than others. Dogs that are fearful will not like this behaviour; dogs prone to reactive behaviour will definitely not like this behaviour! Like us humans some dogs like bodily contact and others will avoid it.
Teaching a pup to be hugged
However, in the event that a child ever does try to hug a dog, we believe that all pups should be taught to tolerate the embrace to prevent reactive behaviour happening.
The speed in which you practice this exercise will be determined by the pup’s reaction to the hug. If the pup is not happy with it, go slower and practice over and over.
We find it is easier to hug a pup initially when holding it. Bring the pup up to your chest and hug it for a split second – praise and offer a treat while hugging. Keep on doing this gradually building up the time period until you can hold the pup close for several seconds and rewarding each and every time.
When you have accomplished this, then start to do the same exercise with the pup standing on the floor and remember to praise and treat. Depending on the size of the pup, this may not always be easy, and you will have to get down to the pups level to achieve this. Keep on practicing until the pup can tolerate this with no problem. Even try slightly firmer hugs – imagine if you were a child, how hard you would hug.
When the pup is happy with above, then sit in front of it, and hug it around its neck, as a child would.
The next step here is to bring a child into the game, but make sure it is a child of about 10 -13 and start off with the hug with the child holding the pup. Reward each and every time, praising and treating, and ensure that every one of these interactions is supervised by an adult. You can then try this with a younger child, always supervised and watching the pup’s body language very carefully. Do not practice this game for long periods of time.
This should be practiced and reinforced throughout the dog’s life and careful attention should be paid to the pup's/dog’s body language to make sure the pup/dog is coping and stopped as soon as the first sign of displeasure is seen.
3. Preventing Resource Guarding
You have already been given the basic exercises to prevent this in your Puppy Notes for After a Pup Comes Home. A reminder is that to prevent resource guarding you would do the following with a few additions and remember the House Rules: -
1. Swap Exercise
2. Food Bowl Exercises
3. Couches / Bed etc - these all 'belong' to you and the family who on occasion help the pup to remember this. As the pup jumps up onto the chair for example, tell it 'off' and when it does get off leave it on the floor for a few minutes, then invite the pup back onto the chair/bed etc - this is now being done on your terms. Really does help to keep your status in the combined human/canine social structure balanced.
If the pup is not responding to the ‘off’ cue, go back a step, and put the pup back on the floor with no interaction. Only start to bring in the cue when the pup fully understand this action.
5. Shared Pup Duties - so that the pup does not become over dependent on any one person, as mentioned above, different family members can take the pup out for walks, whole family to be involved in feeding, playing and giving the pup love. At some stage over the first year of its life the pup will probably decide that one particular person is 'its' own person and prefer to spend more time with that person - just make sure the relationship is balanced by bringing in exercises such as above.
4.Preventing Excessive Licking
Unless we can really learn to ‘speak & understand dog’, we can only hypothesize why this occurs, based on a dog’s natural behaviour, and our own observations and understanding of the behaviour. The motivation (reason) for licking seems to change from dog to dog and occurs in different circumstances. You may notice that if your dog is stressed or worried it may lick you more, while other dogs only offer the occasional affectionate lick, and some give you the odd lick (or slobber!) when you arrive home. Many of the reason as to why these dogs engage in this behaviour are purely biological and part of a dog’s innate behaviour.
If the pup is a consummate licker and is driving you nuts with its constant licking, we have added in some modifications at the end to help you change the behaviour.
Why Dogs Lick
If your pup is a consummate 'licker', you may find that you have, inadvertently, reinforced the behaviour by paying more attention to the licking, by way of shouting, reprimanding the pup, etc. We think by now you are starting to get a really good idea of how often, we as the owners and/or handlers actually cause unacceptable behaviours to continue!
Stopping the dog licking you
To a dog, attention is attention, whether negative or positive, so shouting at the pup for engaging in this behaviour only serves to reinforce it, as we have said many times before!. If you are sitting petting your pup and it starts licking you, simply turn your body away and stop petting. The second the licking stops, you can resume petting the pup if you want too.
If, at this stage, your pup starts to paw you (or similar) for attention, ignore these demands as well. If this does not work, then stand up for about a minute and then sit down again - alternatively you can pop the pup onto the floor without speaking - message is that unless the behaviour is stopped the petting will not resume, (negative punishment). Your pup will quickly get to realize that licking takes away the thing it wants the most – your attention. Just remember that when the pup wants to jump up on the chair again, it is on your terms and by invitation!
5.Preventing Getting Bitten When You Grab the Collar
Another exercise that may seem a bit strange to teach! However if we realize that many bites occur when a person will grab a dog's collar when in a fight - or grabs the collar as the dog jumps excitedly out of the car or any time when the dog is over excited, we can see that it is a valuable exercise in prevention to bring in.
Start slowly and gently and just grab the pups collar when it is quiet and calm - the second you do so you immediately treat - the message is that when my collar gets grabbed a nice treat is forthcoming. Gradually make the grabbing harder and harder, more of a snatch.
When the pup is accepting the above then go back to the beginning again and when you grab now, start gently again and add in a small shout. The reason for the shout is that we often react instinctively and shout at our dogs to 'stop' while grabbing the collar at the same time. Gradually build up the intensity until you can grab and shout really loudly in all different situations and locations.
We don’t believe that strange dogs should ever be hugged. Bear in mind what you have learnt about a dog’s natural behaviour and you will remember that one dog placing itself over the other dogs neck or shoulders is actually a sign of reactive behaviour. The only exception to this is when you see pups play fighting and often what will occur is both pups will be standing on hind legs and front legs can appear to ‘hug’ the other puppy – this is simply ‘rehearsal’ behaviour.
Why then, are people surprised when a child gets bitten because it gave a dog a hug? Believe you me, this does happen, and the majority of pictures we have viewed on dog bites to children, they occur around the face area. Scotty tells the story that when Brady, her Border collie, was much younger, she had taken him to an outside flea market and suddenly a lovely little toddler pulled away from her parents, rushed up to Brady, threw her arms around his neck and said ‘doggy, doggy’. Now luckily Brady has been habituated to being hugged by children, but this came totally out of the blue and not from one of the children he knows. Scotty said it was so unexpected that she could not even get in front of him to prevent this behaviour - she said that Brady looked up at her, eyes frantic, head turned as far away from the child as he could, his neck seemed to have elongated in trying to get away, and to her thinking, his whole body said ‘help, get this off me!’. She told him to ‘calm’ and wait, then gently disengaged the child from around his neck and then spent some time teaching the parents how to get a child to approach a dog! This little girl was lucky, a situation such as this could have had serious consequences.
This will affect some dogs more than others. Dogs that are fearful will not like this behaviour; dogs prone to reactive behaviour will definitely not like this behaviour! Like us humans some dogs like bodily contact and others will avoid it.
Teaching a pup to be hugged
However, in the event that a child ever does try to hug a dog, we believe that all pups should be taught to tolerate the embrace to prevent reactive behaviour happening.
The speed in which you practice this exercise will be determined by the pup’s reaction to the hug. If the pup is not happy with it, go slower and practice over and over.
We find it is easier to hug a pup initially when holding it. Bring the pup up to your chest and hug it for a split second – praise and offer a treat while hugging. Keep on doing this gradually building up the time period until you can hold the pup close for several seconds and rewarding each and every time.
When you have accomplished this, then start to do the same exercise with the pup standing on the floor and remember to praise and treat. Depending on the size of the pup, this may not always be easy, and you will have to get down to the pups level to achieve this. Keep on practicing until the pup can tolerate this with no problem. Even try slightly firmer hugs – imagine if you were a child, how hard you would hug.
When the pup is happy with above, then sit in front of it, and hug it around its neck, as a child would.
The next step here is to bring a child into the game, but make sure it is a child of about 10 -13 and start off with the hug with the child holding the pup. Reward each and every time, praising and treating, and ensure that every one of these interactions is supervised by an adult. You can then try this with a younger child, always supervised and watching the pup’s body language very carefully. Do not practice this game for long periods of time.
This should be practiced and reinforced throughout the dog’s life and careful attention should be paid to the pup's/dog’s body language to make sure the pup/dog is coping and stopped as soon as the first sign of displeasure is seen.
3. Preventing Resource Guarding
You have already been given the basic exercises to prevent this in your Puppy Notes for After a Pup Comes Home. A reminder is that to prevent resource guarding you would do the following with a few additions and remember the House Rules: -
1. Swap Exercise
2. Food Bowl Exercises
3. Couches / Bed etc - these all 'belong' to you and the family who on occasion help the pup to remember this. As the pup jumps up onto the chair for example, tell it 'off' and when it does get off leave it on the floor for a few minutes, then invite the pup back onto the chair/bed etc - this is now being done on your terms. Really does help to keep your status in the combined human/canine social structure balanced.
If the pup is not responding to the ‘off’ cue, go back a step, and put the pup back on the floor with no interaction. Only start to bring in the cue when the pup fully understand this action.
5. Shared Pup Duties - so that the pup does not become over dependent on any one person, as mentioned above, different family members can take the pup out for walks, whole family to be involved in feeding, playing and giving the pup love. At some stage over the first year of its life the pup will probably decide that one particular person is 'its' own person and prefer to spend more time with that person - just make sure the relationship is balanced by bringing in exercises such as above.
4.Preventing Excessive Licking
Unless we can really learn to ‘speak & understand dog’, we can only hypothesize why this occurs, based on a dog’s natural behaviour, and our own observations and understanding of the behaviour. The motivation (reason) for licking seems to change from dog to dog and occurs in different circumstances. You may notice that if your dog is stressed or worried it may lick you more, while other dogs only offer the occasional affectionate lick, and some give you the odd lick (or slobber!) when you arrive home. Many of the reason as to why these dogs engage in this behaviour are purely biological and part of a dog’s innate behaviour.
If the pup is a consummate licker and is driving you nuts with its constant licking, we have added in some modifications at the end to help you change the behaviour.
Why Dogs Lick
- When a puppy is born it is covered with a membrane which the mother will immediately start licking to stimulate the pup and start it moving and breathing.
- A pup is not able to eliminate spontaneously until approximately 3 weeks of age, so the mother will lick the puppy to stimulate the elimination process.
- At about 6 weeks of age, as their ancestors did, some pups will lick their mother’s lips to try to get her to regurgitate food for them, and many dogs still retain this instinct.
- Pups and dogs will lick themselves for hygienic reasons.
- We have found that dogs that are timid/fearful tend to lick their owners more, so this could be seen as a calming/appeasement/submissive/reassuring gesture. The more subordinate members of a pack will lick the more dominant members.
- Licking also releases pleasurable endorphin's which helps to reduce stress and helps to calm the dog – a bit like nail biting, knuckle cracking, or hair twirling in humans.
- Licking is also a form of affection and bonding.
- Dogs seem to enjoy the taste of our salty skin.
If your pup is a consummate 'licker', you may find that you have, inadvertently, reinforced the behaviour by paying more attention to the licking, by way of shouting, reprimanding the pup, etc. We think by now you are starting to get a really good idea of how often, we as the owners and/or handlers actually cause unacceptable behaviours to continue!
Stopping the dog licking you
To a dog, attention is attention, whether negative or positive, so shouting at the pup for engaging in this behaviour only serves to reinforce it, as we have said many times before!. If you are sitting petting your pup and it starts licking you, simply turn your body away and stop petting. The second the licking stops, you can resume petting the pup if you want too.
If, at this stage, your pup starts to paw you (or similar) for attention, ignore these demands as well. If this does not work, then stand up for about a minute and then sit down again - alternatively you can pop the pup onto the floor without speaking - message is that unless the behaviour is stopped the petting will not resume, (negative punishment). Your pup will quickly get to realize that licking takes away the thing it wants the most – your attention. Just remember that when the pup wants to jump up on the chair again, it is on your terms and by invitation!
5.Preventing Getting Bitten When You Grab the Collar
Another exercise that may seem a bit strange to teach! However if we realize that many bites occur when a person will grab a dog's collar when in a fight - or grabs the collar as the dog jumps excitedly out of the car or any time when the dog is over excited, we can see that it is a valuable exercise in prevention to bring in.
Start slowly and gently and just grab the pups collar when it is quiet and calm - the second you do so you immediately treat - the message is that when my collar gets grabbed a nice treat is forthcoming. Gradually make the grabbing harder and harder, more of a snatch.
When the pup is accepting the above then go back to the beginning again and when you grab now, start gently again and add in a small shout. The reason for the shout is that we often react instinctively and shout at our dogs to 'stop' while grabbing the collar at the same time. Gradually build up the intensity until you can grab and shout really loudly in all different situations and locations.
