Think Pawsitive

Your Dog Is Not As Social As You Think (Sorry this may be long and nerdy!) Most of us when first getting a dog probably had romantic ideas of our dogs playing... with others in the park, romping with friends and having a ball meeting furry mates. I certainly did! I was single when I adopted Trevor my Stafford and I had this 101 Dalmatians notion of Trevors lead tangling with the lead of another dog with a handsome man at the other end. In reality he did tangle his lead with a dog and had an almighty scrap which was less than ideal! Adult dogs are simply not the social beings we are sold the idea of in popular culture. There are some hyper social dogs who love all but the vast majority of adult dogs enjoy the company of their humans and some of their doggy friends and that’s what makes them happy. Have a read of this excerpt from a study (linked below). Observations of 1870 interacting dogs were made in public places where owners frequently walked their dogs...... Puppies played together more than twice as often as adults (P < 0.001) and eleven times as often as seniors (P < 0.001). The occurrence of play was seen more often between dogs of opposite genders than between males (P < 0.01). Small, medium and large dogs played with dogs of the same size more often than with dogs of different sizes. Threat appeared twice as often between dogs on a leash as between dogs off a leash (P < 0.001). Dogs of the same genders showed a threat nearly three times more often than dogs of opposite genders (P < 0.01). Males (P < 0.05) and females (P < 0.01) bit dogs of the same gender more than five times more often than dogs of the opposite gender.’ The reality of it is that dogs are not puppies. They are not consistently sociable creatures in the romantic way we often believe. More to the point, your dog does not need to play with strange dogs in order to be happy. In fact dog parks and interactions with strange dogs has been studied and the below found; ‘In Study 1, salivary cortisol increased significantly from baseline levels following 20 min in the dog park (P = 0.013), but not in the same dogs following a 20 min on-leash walk.’ Another study of two dogs that didn’t know each other let off lead in the same environment states the following; ‘We found that the dogs, on average, spent only 17% of the time (less than 1 min) in proximity.’ We can extrapolate from these studies that adult dogs play half as much as puppies, senior dogs even less, that positive dog interactions are more likely when of opposite gender, that 20 minutes of interaction with strange dogs leads to significantly more cortisol (the stress hormone) in the dogs body and that when thrown together with random dogs, they spend only 17% of their time directly interacting. That means 83% of their time they preferred to be doing their own thing. Put more simply, adult and senior dogs find interactions with strange dogs quite stressful, and most dogs prefer to do their own thing rather than play or interact. So what do we do about this? Quite simply we need to drop the human ideology that dogs play in parks happily. It simply isn’t where the vast majority of dogs want to be. For my own dogs, they aren’t reactive, they have groups of friends (dog and human) and in a park or woodland may offer a cursory sniff to a dog and move on. Reality check time. If you continually put your adult dog with other dogs that aren’t part of their ‘friend group’ in the hope of social behaviour or reducing aggression, it simply will not work. Train your dog. Teach them to pass other dogs. Build confidence and resiliency above all else. Resolve the reactivity. On occasion, they may make a friend and play and that’s wonderful for us and them if done conscientiously, but chances are, every time you take your dog to the park or throw them in with unknown dogs, you’re contributing to a buildup of cortisol, and therefore increased anxiety, aggression and even a shortened lifespan. Stop peddling the ideology that ‘all dogs are friendly and need to interact to be happy’ and throwing dogs together to resolve their issues or influence positive social behaviour. The data proves that’s simply NOT true. Signed, A foxhound who knows this is her field and everyone should sod off and let her sniff in peace https://www.sciencedirect.com//a/abs/pii/S0168159111002668 https://www.sciencedirect.com//a/abs/pii/S0168159113000981 https://akjournals.com/view/journals//70/2/article-p156.xml And an additional thank you to Paw by Paw Training & Behaviour for the help researching this post

Whatever your views on animal testing, please take a moment to remember the lives lost; billions of animals per year. The majority of which are rodents, particu...larly mice and rats. Animals can’t consent to this, their lives are given for a cause they can’t comprehend. The LEAST we can do is remember them, be thankful and acknowledge them for any breakthroughs in medical sciences they have helped towards, but continue to protest all unjust harm to them. The more we push for better welfare standards, higher prioritisation of animal life and further questioning the scientific validity of animal experiments, the more we can make a difference. Animal testing for cosmetics will never have a place, will never be necessary nor valid, and should always be condemned. Here is a recent list of cruelty free brands list: https://ethicalelephant.com/cruelty-free-brand-list/ We remember you, we are sorry for what you went through. Please consider supporting this movement for animal free research to be our future: www.animalfreeresearchuk.org Animal Free Research UK

Riding an Extinction Burst? Once a behavior has been learned to be a source of reinforcement and the reinforcement ends extinction will begin. So if a behavior ...was reinforced but now is not, the behavior will begin to fade. A behavior that is not maintained with reinforcement won’t maintain itself, it will begin to be less reliable, accurate, and consistent. The behavior won’t just fade away, it will actually burst like a bubble. Starting at the narrow point of the accurate, correct, and consistent display of the behavior. As the behavior goes un-backed up the learner will begin to vary the behavior (maybe I really need to do it a little different?) often making the behavior bigger and more dramatic to try to get the reinforcement response they were looking for (if you don’t want it like this, how about I do it twice as big?!) ... This phenomenon of behavior bursting before extinguishing happens with all species and carries with it the same feelings of frustration, confusion, anger, and desperation. So when we’re training our horses and reinforce a behavior we like, then decide later we no longer want that behavior, be aware of extinction bursts. Even if you didn’t originally intend to reinforce that specific behavior. For example, often when people start hand feeding their horses the horse learns to invade the human’s space and take treats out of the human’s pockets directly (why not it’s easier than waiting?) We decide we don’t like this new mugging behavior, and find it rather rude, so we stop hand-feeding, but the horse gets worse and worse, eventually even biting! Now we are resorting to punishment to defend ourselves, our horse is frustrated and we think hand feeding was such a terrible mistake! But what really happened was a misunderstood extinction burst. The lack of clear behavioral criteria with the food in the beginning, plus the sudden removal of reinforcement for a behavior that had previously worked is the combination that lead to the inappropriate expression. Just like the child at the store counter. Understanding this pattern can help us recognize it and avoid it. However there are some trainers who try to use this to their advantage in training, we call this riding the extinction burst. Where they train a behavior, reinforcing it lightly and unpredictably. This helps the horse understand what behavior is wanted, but then when it’s not reinforced they exaggerate and vary the behavior making it bigger and better. Then the behavior is reinforced again to stop it from growing beyond this exaggerated point. As the behavior settles back into it’s normal lower expression, reinforcement with be withheld again, causing it to begin bursting again. This is extremely upsetting, confusing, frustrating, and enraging for the learner. It becomes just like gambling, even addictive. It’s an inappropriate and dangerous approach to training. It can easily lead to an outburst of behavior that’s misplaced, it creates negative emotions that could easily be turned into aggressive behaviors. This is the most inappropriate use of R+ training I’ve seen out there. Extremely dangerous for human and extremely upsetting for the horse. So let’s make sure we work well to prevent this dangerous cycle. As we’ve seen removing the reinforcement isn’t the ideal option, avoiding the problem doesn’t solve the problem. So we need to use reinforcement appropriately: 1. Rate of reinforcement make sure your RoR is high enough to match the effort of the behavior, in early learning this will begin very rapid and can settle into a more relaxed rate as the horse becomes comfortable with which behavior earns which reinforcement. 2. Food value using a lower food value can help reduce the learner’s desperation for the reinforcement and reduce the amount of over the top effort they will put towards that behavior. So make sure to match the value of the food with the difficulty of the behavior (for your individual, a high spirited horse may need more satiating and low value food compared to a mild-mannered, quiet horse, who may need slightly higher value, more interesting food to be a strong motivator) 3. Food quantity using larger quantities of lower value food is more appropriate, like getting a bag of rice rather than a candy bar, it’s satiating and satisfying, but not exhilarating. 4. Alternate source making sure there are other options available to the learner, so their only source of reinforcement isn’t just through working with you. This will reduce their desperation and frustration levels. Using hay or a treat toy while you’re training can help this. 5. Focus on calm reinforce soft, mild expressions of behavior if the horse gets worked up while training 6. Dial it down provide a moment of satiation, using an easy behavior you can reinforce heavily and frequently, then break down the criteria of the behavior you’re having trouble with, into smaller and easier reinforceable steps. https://empoweredequines.com//01/06/riding-extinction-bur/

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