Lee Charles Kelley

Don't Say "No!"

2011-11-28T19:31:00.001-08:00

I recently got a question from a student of mine asking me how I feel about using the word “No!” to correct dogs. So I dug into the archives (yes, I have archives, tons of them), and found these two stories that, I think, explain my position on “No!” pretty well. Just to be clear, though, I sometimes refer to “No!” as the “N word” of dog training.

So don't use it! Below, you’ll find two of my reasons why...


Ahhh, that's more like it...

“DoYou Know How Much EnergyThat Would Take?”

Mack,a Jack Russell terrier, used to go nuts whenever the phone rang, barking andrunning around, basically driving his owner crazy.

Mack’s owner — who was going through a difficult divorce — thought the best way to solve the problem was to correct the dog, shouting, “No, Mack! Quiet!” over and over until he finally stopped. Stopped, that is, until the next timethe phone rang. (Mack was no dummy; he’d picked up on what was going on his owner’s life and knew that when the phone rang it usually meant that she was about to go into a deep funk, and would be talking on the phone for hours, either with her attorney, her friends, or her soon-to-be ex-husband.)

Sometrainers might have suggested putting Mack in an extended down/stay. Othersmight have told her to keep his leash on and make a good hard leash correctionwhenever the phone rang, or to use a shake can to scare him; all designed to correct the behavior through fear and dominance. Positive trainers would probably have recommended giving Mack a “time out," or using a “replacement behavior” like hand targeting. With some dogs these methods may have been temporarilyeffective, just as yelling at him had been (sort of). But their only lastingeffects would have been putting the owner in conflict with her dog. And, over time, guess who usually wins those conflicts?

Tome, the fact that Mack showed so much energy when the phone rang was a goodthing. My goal was to use that energy to create an almost Pavlovian response: the ringingphone would be a signal for Mack to find a toy, take it to his crate, and chewon it happily while his owner took her call. (She’d already taught Mack that when he wants to chewsomething he has to do it inside his crate.)

So Itold the owner that every time the phone rang, instead of correcting him byyelling “No!” or “Quiet!” she should jump up off the couch and praise him veryenthusiastically, then grab one of his toys, tease him with it, and run away,encouraging him to chase her.

Oncehis energy was fully focused on the toy, and not the phone, she could give himthe toy, tell him to take it to his crate. Then she could finally sit down and take hercall.

Ofcourse she thought I was nuts. “Doyou know how much energy that would take?”

Ireminded her that she’d been expending a lot more energy saying “No!”without getting the results she wanted, and promised her that if she followedmy instructions to the letter, Mack would stop barking at the phone in a matterof two weeks.

“ButI shouldn’t praise him for barking, should I? I mean, isn’t that only going to reinforce the badbehavior?”

“Inthis case we’re using praise to make Mack feel emotionally connected to you.That way you’ll be able to change his emotional state from resistance into awillingness to obey. You can’t very well create that kind of emotional state byyelling at him.”

You see, everytime Mack's owner corrected him she put herself in conflict with his feelings, forcinghim to either keep barking at her until she was in tune with what he wasalready feeling or to give up. And JackRussells are not bred to give up. By praising him she would be able to remove the conflict and openthe flow. Then and only then couldMack feel that they shared a common purpose and begin to look to her for a signalas to what to do next.

Shereluctantly did as I suggested, thinking I was completely insane the wholetime, and guess what? She didn’teven need to do the exercise for two weeks. With just three days of acting like a complete idiot, shewas able to create such a dramatic change in Mack’s behavior that she was ableto stop doing the exercise completely. Whenever the phone rang Mack would bark briefly, but as soon as his owner told him to find a toy, and he’d do so, take it into his crate, and chewaway on it, thinking the whole thing was his idea all along.

It’s Simple, But ThatDoesn’t Mean It’s Easy

Ayear or so later I got a phone call from a recently-divorced young cinematographerwhose three year-old cocker spaniel, Roxie, was biting him. He told me that the dog had been abiter as puppy, but that she’d been severely punished for it and that the bitinghad since been kept under control. Now that the couple had split up and the wife was moving out, the dog’saggressive behavior had re-surfaced, with a vengeance.

Heexplained that if he or anyone else went anywhere near Roxy’s crate ordinner bowl she would become violently aggressive. And the more he tried tocorrect her—as he’d done so successfully in the past — the worse her behaviorgot.

Finally, he called me andasked if I could help him. Icame over to his apartment to see what I could do.

Roxy, a buffcocker, seemed fairly calm and friendly when I first came in, perhaps even alittle shy. She wagged her tail but kept her head and shoulders tilted downslightly. When I reached down topet her, she started to roll over on her back.

Wewent into the living room and sat on the couch, with the dog lying betweenus.

“When Roxy was a puppy, would you say your wife spoiled her?”

Hesaid she’d done just that; giving her too much attention, letting her have herown way because she was so cute.

“Andyou were the disciplinarian?”

Henodded and said that was also true.

“Spankingher, saying no, that sort of thing?”

Henodded. “You have to show the dogwho’s boss.”

Iexplained to him the new trends in thinking — that there really is no such thingas an alpha dog or pack leader. Ialso explained that when a puppy is spoiled — made to feel that she’salways the center of attention — it can make a lasting impression on herbehavior. This is particularly harmful if another member of the household actstough with the dog. Later, when her puppy antics have become bad habits (andparticularly if she was also scolded and punished for those antics instead of beingtaught how to behave properly), she’ll be stressed out. Her behavior will seemto be under control for months, even years. But any sudden change in the householdwill throw her into a panic and the old behavior will not only re-surface, butget worse.

“Idon’t know,” he seemed unconvinced. “Another trainer told us it was because she was trying to be alpha.”

Roxy was lying on her back, asking for atummy rub. “Look at her,” I said. “This is not a dominant dog. In my experience, most dogs who bite their owners have what we — in theold way of thinking — would have called a submissive, not dominant type oftemperament.”

Then Iasked if Roxy had any favorite toys or games.

Hesaid she loved to play fetch with a tennis ball.

“Perfect,”I said. “Is she possessive aboutthe ball?”

Hesaid she wasn’t. She like to chase it and bring it back.

“Good girl,”I said. “Okay, then let’s get started.”

Iasked him to do whatever it took to get Roxy to exhibit the aggressivebehavior. He said all he had to do was touch her crate, but he was extremelyreluctant to do it. “Once she getsinto this mood it may be hours before she finally gets out of it.”

Itold him not to worry and he went to the kitchen and touched the crate. Roxy instantly leapt off the couch and charged into the kitchen; snarlingand growling. She was Cujo!

Itold Roxy’s owner to walk slowly back to the living room and he did.

Then Iwent into the kitchen, holding a tennis ball in my hand.

Ididn’t say “No!” or try to intimidate or dominate Roxy. I simply bounced the tennis ball on thefloor. She stopped growling for amoment and looked at me, puzzled. Then I laughed in a giddy, absurdly happy fashion. “Whee-hee!” I cried then bounced thetennis ball again, praised her loudly, and ran away, inviting her to chase meand the ball.

Twoseconds later I was sitting on the couch with a totally different dog next tome. She was happily chewing on her tennis ball while I rubbed her tummy. Wewere the best of friends.

Herowner was amazed. “Explain whatjust happened!”

“Well,”I said, “instead of reacting to Roxy with fear or aggression I didsomething which I knew from past experience would create a different emotionalshift in her. Once I got her toswitch gears emotionally, her behavior changed as well.

“It’sthat simple?”

“Well,yes and no. It’s simple, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Why don’t you give ita shot and see what happens?”

“Idon’t know,” he said. “When she gets like that I have trouble not losing mytemper.”

“You can’t let her drag you into her movie. What you need to do is staypositive or neutral. She’s acting like it’s life and death, like she’s battling The Terminator, and we need her to feel like she’s in a buddy movie.

Iconvinced him to try the game.

Hedid and got the same results I had. Roxy was a completely different dog almost immediately, just from bouncing the tennis ball, laughing loudly, acting silly and running away.

“This is amazing,” he said. “Who knew it could be this easy?”

“No, it’s simple. It’s not easy. There’s a difference. Plus itwon’t fix things immediately.”

I went on to explain. “She’s had three years of certainpatterns and expectations so it will probably take at least three months forher to let go of them. Just realize that guarding her crate like that is a very unpleasantfeeling. Saying no actually reinforces that feeling and makes it stronger.Praising her and getting her to chase you and sink her teeth into the ballcreates a positive, group mood, and releases all that negative energy. The more you canhelp her to switch gears like this, from a survival mood to a group play mood,the more likely it is that she’ll choose not to guard her crate.”

Herewe have two situations where the problem was solved not by saying “No” or using behavioral science techniques like de-sensitization, etc., but bystimulating the dog’s need to chase things and bite them as part of a group dynamic.

Understanding the dog's underlying emotional state — along with replacing the "N" word with a happy, playful voice and attitude — was the key to resolving both situations.

However ... I need to make the following disclaimer very clear. These situations were solved fairly easily because a) I was there, controlling the emotional tone for the owners and the dogs, and b) both dogs were raised from puppies, by their owners.

DISCLAIMER: I would be very reluctant to use these techniques with some shelter dogs, particularly those who have spent time living on the streets and who, therefore, may not have the same social impulses or ability to detect playfulness that is second nature to most pet dogs. I do not recommend activating the prey drive in such dogs, except under the direct supervision of a seasoned professional.

LCK

Lexi and Melissa in Frank Sinatra Park: Understanding Attraction & Resistance

2011-04-15T20:00:00.000-07:00

This post is an extension of my latest for PsychologyToday.com.

Lexi & Melissa in Hoboken

In Unified Dog Theory XIV: The Importance of Understanding Attraction and Resistance, which was posted earlier today at PsychologyToday.com, I discuss the properties of attraction and resistance, and their importance in understanding how and why dogs do the things they do. If you've read that article, feel free to skip the paragraphs in blue. If you haven't, you'll need to read them now to be up to speed on what happened with Lexi and Melissa in Frank Sinatra Park.

For those who haven't read some of my previous articles in this series, I've defined the 4 Quadrants of Drive Training as Attraction & Resistance, and Tension & Release. I've already discussed the last two in some detail. Here I'll be discussing attraction and resistance.

First of all, everything in the universe is geared toward seeking out connections with some other facet of existence. From sub-atomic particles on up to the need some of us feel to log on to Facebook each morning, the entire universe is about making connections. The underlying theme of how these connections get made - whether it's the way sodium and chlorine atoms hook up to produce salt, how a bloodhound sniffs a criminal's trail, or how two people find each other across a crowded room - it's about physical, chemical, magnetic, or emotional attraction.

Things can't form connections without experiencing some form of attraction.

In canine behavior, it's pretty easy to see a dog's feeling of attraction manifest itself when he pulls on the leash to get to another dog, or when he chases a squirrel, or jumps up on a person he likes.

The flip side of attraction - which could be either magnetic repulsion or emotional resistance - isn't as clear cut, but can be seen vividly in the difference between the way a dog pulls toward an object of attraction along a straight line as opposed to taking a more circular approach. In my view, the curvature indicates that the dog's feeling of attraction has met some form of resistance, either internal or external. In fact if the resistance is strong enough, the dog won't dog even look at it or acknowledge the so-called object of attraction.

Biologists talk about approach and avoidance, which are behaviors. Attraction and resistance are emotional states. A dog can sometimes be seen approaching someone while having very strong feelings of resistance toward that person, i.e., approaching very slowly, with the head and tail hung low. A dog can also have a strong attraction for something and hold perfectly still, not approaching it at all (this is usually called stalking).

One of the rules I follow in training is that when using games like fetch or tug to elicit an obedience behavior, you should always quit before the dog starts to get tired or bored. This is very important because what starts out as a pleasurable learning experience can quickly become the opposite, which will result in slower response time, and may even devolve into a general lack of interest in listening or obeying at all.

How can you tell when the dog is starting to get tired or bored?

I recommend studying Turid Rugaas's "calming signals" - a dog's behavioral postures and micro-expressions - which I've discussed previously, and which Rugaas sees as being produced with the conscious intent to communicate to another dog or person.

Since dogs produce these behaviors when people and other dogs can't see them, I tend to think of them as "tells," the kind of postures and micro-expressions poker players read when in their oppononents when trying to determine whether they're bluffing. In my experience, canine tells can be successfully used to determine whether a dog is feeling more resistance than attraction in any given situation.

So one way to determine when a dog is getting tired or bored with a game goes back to the difference between a straight line and a curve. If Fido chases the ball ten times, and brings it directly back each time, in a straight line, it means he's still emotionally invested. If, on the eleventh throw, he begins to come back in a more curved fashion - no matter how subtle the difference - his interest has started to wane, his heart is no longer in the game, and it's time to take a break.

Of course, we could interpret this behavior in any number of ways. The dog is simply tired. The dog's sense of smell is starting to override his joy in playing, etc. But I think it's extremely helpful to be able to interpret canine behavior through the lens of attraction and resistance.

I was working with a student of mine named Melissa last week. She’s learning how to produce a good, rock-solid stay with various dogs. We were in Frank Sinatra park in Hoboken, NJ, with a dog named Lexi (shiba inu mix, about 35 lbs.), and I immediately saw a problem: when Melissa began doing the first stay exercise (the "step-away" stay), Lexi held his position very well, but couldn't look at her. This is one of Lexi’s tells. He was physically obeying the command, but at the same time, his heart wasn’t in it. He was feeling resistance.

So I suggested we stop working on the stay, and instead we did an exercise designed to build Lexi’s feelings of attraction toward Melissa. In briefest terms, I held Lexi’s leash and had Melissa walk away, about fifty feet or so, and hide behind a tree.

Lexi was now very interested in Melissa. After a while, he became riveted on her, and started whining, and pulling on his leash. When these feelings were at their peak, I released him, Melissa called him, using a high, happy voice, and ran away, encouraging Lexi to chase her.

He raced toward her with all his might, in a straight line. But then, for some reason, the old resistance showed up again, and his path curved toward a tree, which he immediately peed on. Interestingly, Lexi’s biggest behavioral problem is urinating inside the house, which he only does when he’s left alone. When I saw him do that I realized why he'd been peeing on the carpet when left home alone. All the love he felt for his owners, all the feelings that had been trapped inside him, had to flow out, and the only he felt he was connecting to them when they were gone, was to pee on the carpet.

Melissa re-interpreted it this way (which I think is pretty brilliant):

"Lexi feels an immense void inside. And in order to connect this energy, he pees. And he pees in the part of the house that has an emotional charge to it, the living room where the family hangs out, where the family plays and laughs. It's also possible he likes the carpet, how it makes him feel, because he likes to rub his body on it. But I think it also has his owner's scent and their vibration, a family vibration."

Another way of putting it is, when Lexi's owners leave him alone, he feels their absence deeply. This produces high levels of anxiety, perhaps even panic, which carries with it a physical feeling of pressure, and perhaps even trembling. He has learned that the way to get rid of these uncomfortable physical feelings is to release the tension they produce through his bladder. (Some dogs with separation anxiety release tension through their throats, by barking, others release it by chewing on the carpet or furniture, and still others may find release by digging at the carpet, or scratching frantically at the front door.)

At any rate, once I’d seen that Lexi had trouble relating to Melissa with total abandon (no resistance), even in mid-chase, I suggested we bring him back to where we’d started, come down to Lexi’s level and just lie on the grass, and start doing some very gentle teasing and pushing games, the kind puppies do to initiate play with a littermate. We even nuzzled his body with our faces

We did this for a while, and then Melissa, sensing Lexi's desire to play, asked if she should take Lexi's favorite toy, Mr. Foxy, out of her bag, to see if he'd play tug outdoors, which he'd never done.

I said sure, then took the toy and teased Lexi with it, dancing it around his face, then pulling it away to pique his interest, i.e., build up his attraction for it. And after about 30 seconds of this – for the first time ever – Lexi began to play tug outdoors, first with me, then with Melissa.

Will learning to play tug-of-war outdoors with his owners, cure Lexi’s separation anxiety? It couldn't hurt. There's a lot of stuff that Lexi feels, under the surface. So it's going to take some time to make him feel safe enough to let go of those feelings. But playing tug with Mr. Foxy in Frank Sinatra park that chilly Sunday was a pretty good start.

LCK

Natural Dog Training in New York City

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PS: I saw Lexi again last Sunday. I was sitting on a bench at the entrance to the park. As soon as he saw me he got very happy. Melissa released his leash, knowing he would come directly toward me. He did, but halfway to me he started feeling the old resistance.

So I got "small," hunched my shoulders together, ducked my head, made myself as small as possible, considering how big I must seem to the little guy. Then I spoke to him in a high, silly voice, and his trajectory toward me returned to its previous happy straight line.

I'm telling you, understanding how dogs feel and express attraction and resistance is very important. In fact it may be one of the most important aspects of dog training.

It Was Just Like Love

2011-02-11T10:49:00.000-08:00

Another tune from the pen of LCK.

So I'm putting together a 4-song submission for ASCAP’s Songwriter's Workshop. And I'd like to know what you think of this recording.

The main body of the tune was recorded live at Birdland in New York City, on someone’s iPod, during a singing workshop with Tierney Sutton. The audio quality is low, but the musicians — The Christian Jacob Trio (also known as The Tierney Sutton Band) — were phenomenal. I also stumbled a little with the lyric.

I can probably clean up the sound using Garage Band, and maybe splice the first bridge into the 2nd section of the song. The question is, is the sound quality too low to bother?

“It Was Just Like Love”

It was just like love without the aggravation—

a rich blend of warm friends, cool conversation,

plus the thought that rain or shine you’ve always got
great company.

Hey, that sounds a lot like love to me.

It was just like you to keep my engine purring

while guys you knew were the same bad dream, recurring.

I still don’t know what made you feel you had to go
through all that fuss
when it was so much like love with us.

I guess I should have understood
the rules of the game—

used those good old tools of the game
that make hearts dance.

Yet sad to say I’m like those wayward
fools of the game

who’d rather wait for one true love
than waste time on romance.

It was just like me to fix what isn’t broken.

Too late I see some things should have stayed unspoken.
Yet in a blaze of reckless honesty our days
of fun were done.
I spoke one phrase and watched you run.

(musical interlude, repeat bridge)

It was just like bliss that couldn’t clear the runway.

At last, we kiss, though not quite in the fun way.

It’s all gone bust. Yet as we kiss goodbye I trust
you’ll share this toast:

Wasn’t it just like love, almost?

’Cause it hurts just like love almost…

Words and Music © 2006 by Lee Charles Kelley

West Sixty Ninth Street Music (ASCAP)

Reply to Patricia McConnell

2011-01-24T11:01:00.000-08:00

This is a reply to Patricia McConnell's critique of one of my PsychologyToday.com articles.

Patricia McConnell with One of Her Border Collies

Thank you, Dr. McConnell, for mentioning my PsychologyToday.com blog article here. Oscar Wilde said that the only thing worse than people talking about you, is people not talking about you. Still, I stand by what I wrote. And I’d have to say that some of the people commenting here have actually proved my point for me.

It might help to know that the rationale behind my “Unified Dog Theory” series at PsychologyToday.com is a, perhaps vain, attempt to help end the divisiveness in the training world, but also based on a very real need to help educate dog owners and trainers that there aren’t just two philosophical or methodological choices — dominance and positive reinforcement — there’s a third form of dog training, one that’s used to train working dogs: police dogs, herding dogs, search-and-rescue dogs, etc. It’s been modified for use with pet dogs by former police dog trainer, Kevin Behan, who learned his trade from his father, Jack Behan, a famous figure of the 1950s and 60s (and probably the first famous dog trainer in America). As Kevin grew as a trainer he disagreed with his father’s reliance on dominance, and set out on his own to find a training method for police work that wasn’t abusive, and formulated a training program in his 1st book, Natural Dog Training.

So there are really 3 common forms of dog training: dominance, +R, and the natural method.

One of your readers mentioned Sigmund Freud, and seemed to be scratching her head over why his name comes up in my articles. There’s actually a sound, scientific reason for it. That’s because the basic principles of drive training are more consonant with Freud’s pleasure principle than with Skinner’s clinical outgrowth, positive reinforcement. One of the ways Freud defined pleasure was as the release of internal tension. This is a measurable, physiological phenomenon. On the other hand, positive reinforcement (as defined by behavioral scientists, if not by most dog trainers) isn’t.

As you well know, a positive reinforcement isn’t an actual object, marker or event; it’s a function of statistics. (Plus, most behavioral scientists will tell you that there’s no real way to determine if a behavior was learned through positive or negative reinforcement.)

Personally, I’ll go with actual physiological realities (Freud) over statistical probabilities (Skinner) any day.

Another reason for writing my “Unified Dog Theory” series, is to bring back the wolf model — the real one, not the one that’s been proven invalid by modern wolf research — back into play.

Formal obedience training got its start (by Max von Stephanitz in the early 1900s) as a way of imitating the predatory motor patterns of wild wolves. This bit of history is missing from both the dominance and the +R views of training. And it’s very important, in terms of this current discussion, because juvenile wolves don’t begin hunting until they’re well into adolescence. That’s why I wrote in my article:

This is the model that has been set in place by Nature, and has worked for millions of years. Why change it now? Why force puppies to pay attention and ‘learn,’ when Nature is telling them to jump around, bite, play, get distracted, and amuse the heck out of their owners?

The other problem is that it’s long been believed that a dog (or puppy) has to be calm in order to learn; dogs can’t learn when they’re highly stimulated. I’ve found that the exact opposite is true. I think it’s best to teach obedience skills as part of an active, high-energy game, where you stimulate the dog’s urge to bite, focus it on a toy, and teach him that he gets to win the toy by obeying your commands.

The more actively the dog’s whole organism is involved — his emotions, his kinetic energy, his instincts, and his brain — the better and faster he’ll learn. This is something, that frankly, you can’t do with young puppies because they only have 3 play settings: Off, Play Hard, and Play Way Too Hard.

It’s time we re-think the whole idea of puppy obedience classes, and perhaps set them up more as owner orientation classes, where the owners can watch their puppies play while the instructor explains a few simple training techniques for teaching their pup’s basic manners, but does so through the spoken and written word, without using the pup to demonstrate the process. That way the owners can learn two important things: how to teach their pup manners, at home, on their own time, and how much fun it is to watch puppies play together.

With all that said, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with using food or positive reinforcement in training pet dogs. Behan himself writes about the value of these things in his 1st book, something which caused a little conflict with some of the K-9 trainers he worked with over the years. But I also think it’s important to take a look at what Ian Dunbar has been writing about on his blog recently.

“Laboratory study has revealed a variety of reinforcement schedules. Puppy training has revealed that most of these are notorious[ly] ineffective, or impossible to administer … Wake up! Puppy training has taught us that most of this stuff doesn’t work too well.”

Dunbar also says that one of the worst things you can do is reward a dog every time he obeys. Yet Bob Bailey, perhaps the most knowledgeable animal trainer on earth, at least when it comes to operant conditioning, says that a dog should be rewarded every single time he obeys.

Like me, Bailey has also been somewhat critical of the +R movement, particularly the tendency some within it have to isolate themselves from the dog training community at large. Last year, after someone gave him a link to one of my blog articles, Bailey sent out a newsletter in response. In it he wrote, “The‘clicker training community’ has insulated itself from much of the public and from trainers not embracing the ‘purist’ methods … How many have heard me say, ‘Beware of he or she who claims [to have] The Truth?’”

Some people have closed their minds, but believe it or not, Cesar Millan sometimes gets things right, and some well-known figures in the +R world sometimes get things wrong. The truth is, dog training is as much of an art as it is a science. In fact, it may be more of an art than a science. We all gravitate towards what feels right to us.

My “Unified Dog Theory” is an attempt to give people who are unaware of the scientific principles behind drive training, or don’t know how to utilize it with their dogs, some simple tools to start them on their way.

Hopefully, it will start the ball rolling toward bringing all dog trainers together rather than setting up opposing camps and sniping at one another. (And I’ve been as guilty of that in the past as anyone.)

Thanks again for mentioning my article.

Lee Charles Kelley

"Changing the World, One Dog at a Time"

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"Last Train to Mercerville"

2011-01-13T12:44:00.000-08:00

My two favorite songwriters of the golden age are Johnny Mercer and Hoagy Carmichael. Here's a song I wrote about Mercer. The trick to it is that in nearly every line, starting after the opening (or what they call "the verse") there's at least one Johnny Mercer song title. In other words, the entire lyric is made up of Mercer song titles..

(click on the image below to buy this book)

(click here to listen to a recording)

"The Last Train to Mercerville"

Sometimes in quiet contemplation

when all the world seems tired dull and stale,

bored to tears with my computer’s cursor,

I yearn for an amusifying verser

whose clever lyrics always cure my alienation.

So, if you share my fond preoccupation

with good old tunes that tend to tell a tale,

with words just terse enough, not any terser,

as written by a certain Johnny Mercer,

perhaps you’d care to meet me at the railroad station…

     where Mister Bob White is Trav'lin’ Light
     and dustin’ his shoes to The Blues in the Night.
     Down on Skylark Lane, past Early Autumn Hill,
     he’s boardin’ the last train to Mercerville

     where Laura rides too, on that train passin’ through.
     On each train I caught, John, I Thought About You.
     You were just Too Marvelous for Words, at least until
     your words charmed all the birds in Mercerville.

On the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe,

they know Something’s Gotta Give.

But the Mercer Line runs great and tonight I’ve got a date

to Accentuate the Positive.

And isn’t it fine, Come Rain or Come Shine,
to ride that old friend to the end of the line.
Ah, The Summer Wind, The Autumn Leaves that spill
across the track that takes you back to Mercerville.

(musical interlude)

     Watch her glide alongside the Moon River,
     and Dream when you’re feelin’ blue,
     where Fools Rush In, lovin’ the spin that they’re in
     and the Angels Sing a Tin-Pan Alley hymn for you.

Well, that’s how it goes, and, John, these phrases I chose
fit Hoagy and Henry and Harold and those
of the Old Music Masters who gave us a thrill
with plaintive strains aboard those trains to Mercerville.

I was born old fashioned, I’m Old Fashioned
I love the moonlight, still.
I’m just insane about that train
(a-hoo-wee-de-hoo-wee) to Mercerville.

Hop on board. Take a trip on a train, hop on board.

Day In, Day Out, That Old Black Magic has me in its spell

and Anyplace I Hang My Hat Is Home, Goody-Goody.

The Days of Wine and Roses, Tangerine.

Jeepers Creepers,Time to Hit the Road to Dreamland,

and In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening, I Remember You...

West Sixty Ninth Street Music (ASCAP)

Extra verses:

     Life’s a Beautiful Ball and, John, your words tell it all.
     Like that flat in Manhattan and my Satin Doll.
     But when miss Tangerine handed me her bill
     I Casey Jonesed my Lazybones to Mercerville.

(musical interlude)

     And may I say Hooray for Hollywood
     and the picture shows they showed?
     And sad although it may be, I’ll have One for My Baby
     and one more for the road.

Unified Dog Theory IX: Language, Representational Thinking, and Object Relations in Dogs

2011-01-12T13:50:00.000-08:00

Chaser

There are three interesting studies in the news right now.

The first is about Chaser, a border collie who's been rigorously trained to remember the names of all 1022 of her toys, and can differentiate between the verbs "to nose," "to paw," and "to take." She learned to do this in a series of 4-hour sessions, taking place over a period of three years, using a ball as a reward for making a successful match between a word and a toy, or a word and an action.

Some in the media, and even in the scientific community, have touted Chaser's abilities as evidence that she has a rudimentary capacity to understand human language, and that her linguistic abilities are on a par with those of a 3-year old child.

Most animals -- dogs and humans included -- process salient features of their environments by making internal representations of them. This is pretty simple stuff. We look at an object but our eyes don't really see it, they just provide raw sensory data, which is translated by the visual circuitry in our brains into a representation, or mental image, of that object. Dogs are clearly able to do this, otherwise they wouldn't be able to dream or catch Frisbees (or, perhaps, dream of catching Frisbees).

However, when get into the realm of what words "mean," we're entering the territory of representations of representations. This means that for Chaser's abilities to rise to the level of a 3-year old child's linguistic skills, she would have to be able to understand words in a more abstract fashion, not just as verbal cues. (She would also have to be able to use words herself, do so in novel and inventive ways, and differentiate between nouns, adjectives, pronouns, verbs, etc., and use them with a fair amount of grammatical precision.)

Chaser's basic ability to respond to verbal cues, relative to her prey drive (toys are prey objects, after all), isn't unusual. Dogs, like wolves, are social predators, so they're constantly reading us for social cues. They do this so casually and so often that many times we're unaware of what's going on. So, to me, what's most interesting about Chaser isn't that she can respond to auditory cues, but the staggering number of them she apparently has stored in her memory banks. (Tellingly, her owners can't remember the names of all her toys; they have to rely on a written list!)

Meanwhile, another study, this one from UCSD, suggests that babies differentiate between words that relate to pictures of objects and those that don't in much the same way that adults do.

The researchers used MEG (which measures magnetic fields in the brain) and fMRI to estimate brain activity in 12 to 18-month old infants when they were shown pictures of familiar objects then heard words that were either a match or a mismatch to the name of the object. (Interestingly one of the tests involved showing the infants a picture of a ball followed by the word ball, versus a picture of a ball followed by the word dog.)

The brains of the infants lit up in certain areas when the word matched the picture. And the same parts of the brain lit up when human adults were given the same tests. Plus, these parts of the brain weren't those normally associated with language, such as the Broca's and Wernicke's areas. In fact, a much older part of the brain -- the cerebellum, which controls attention, and motor skills -- also lit up.

The third study may seem totally unrelated, but I think it can tell us something about how Chaser learned the names of so many toys, and also why matching words to objects seems to involve the cerebellum in human infants and adults.

Researchers at Princeton tested two groups of students for their ability to retain printed information based on how difficult the font (or typeface) was to read. One group was given a homework assignment printed with either a Comic Sans or Bodoni/Italic font, printed at 60% grayscale, while a second group was given the same assignment printed with the easy-to-read Arial font, printed in pure black.

The first group did substantially better on retention.

The researchers write, "It is not the difficulty, per se, that leads to [learning] improvements but rather the fact that the intervention engages processes that support learning."

What might those processes be?

The researchers say that "pinning down the precise mechanism [is] quite challenging." But in a recent blog article here, I wrote about dopamine circuits in the brain, and how they're not really "reward circuits," as they're often referred to, but attentional pathways. And that what they seem to reward is paying attention to changing patterns in the environment.

From that article: We're now discovering that the real purpose of dopamine is to help motivate us to gather new information about the outside world quickly and efficiently. In fact dopamine is released during negative experiences as well as positive ones. (The puppy who gets his nose scratched by the cat doesn't need further lessons to reinforce the "no-chasing-the-cat" rule; he learns that instantaneously, with a single swipe of the cat's paw.) This adds further importance to the idea that learning is not as much about pairing behaviors with their consequences as it is about paying close attention to salient changes in our environment: the bigger the changes, the more dopamine is released.

Could pattern recognition explain Chaser's amazing abilities?

I think so. Chaser is a border collie. (So was Ricoh, who knew the names of over 200 objects.) And border collies aren't bred for their linguistic abilities but for their herding skills. In other words, language is not a prerequisite for herding sheep but pattern recognition (which is an evolutionary pre-cursor to logic and language) is.

I said earlier that in the study done on how infants discriminate between word/object pairs that match and those that don't, one of the areas in the brain that lit up was the cerebellum, which is operational during motor control as well as during attentional tasks. And if dopamine is designed to make us pay attention to changing patterns in our environment, then it makes sense that the cerebellum -- which controls attention -- might also be involved in the cognitive process of finding words and objects that match up, and ignoring those that don't. This would also explain why the college students who had to expend more energy recognizing the patterns in their homework printouts retained the information better than those whose homework was easier to read.

I also said that dog owners are often unaware of how easily and how often dogs read our social cues (i.e., pick up on our patterns).

Years ago, when my dog Freddie and I would go on long walks in Central Park during off-leash hours, and he would do his business (#2), if I got distracted I would sometimes be unable to find where he'd left his "present," which would leave me perplexed and frustrated.

Fred, meanwhile, would usually be off sniffing around, or looking for other dogs to meet or squirrels to stalk. Sometimes, as I stopped and looked around, baggie in hand, I would say, "Freddie, where did you do your business?" And for some reason, one I can't exactly figure out, he would almost invariably stop what he was doing, come back over to the spot, and sniff his own poop, something he never did on his own.

I didn't train Fred to do this. He learned it on his own. There were no external rewards (though I did thank him). And perhaps more importantly, he didn't look at me or reference me; he never gave any outward signal that he "understood" my words. In fact, if anything it seemed to me that this was all his "idea," not mine. And yet he almost always went back to his spot and sniffed it.

So, is Fred's behavior an example of a capacity to understand human language, a facility for pattern recognition, or something else entirely?

I'll let you decide.

LCK
"Changing the World, One Dog at a Time"
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"New York in the Rain"

2010-12-02T10:50:00.000-08:00

I got the idea for this song a few months ago, while riding in a cab on a rainy fall afternoon. As I looked out at the city, I thought to myself, "I love New York in the rain..." then thought, "Hey, that might make a good song title." Later, I got an image of two people huddled under an awning during a summer storm, then took it from there.

"New York in the Rain"
(click on title above to hear a demo)

Some folks fear the weatherman.

They don't like to get wet.

I once feared the weatherman

until the day we met...

...under an awning

in the warm summer rain.

I'd just missed my bus, you just

got off the train.

And we talked and laughed till skies grew clear above.

In a week or two we two were deep in love.

And although we parted

while the springtime was new,

when I hear raindrops fall I

still think of you.

And I wear a secret smile I can't explain

except to say that I love New York in the rain.

Words & Music © 2010 by Lee Charles Kelley
West Sixty Ninth Street Music (ASCAP)

Curing Thunder Phobia

2010-11-17T10:15:00.000-08:00

Those of us who are familiar with the Natural Dog Training philosophy are so used to being ahead of the curve on some training issues it can sometimes come as a shock to us when we find out how many of the techniques we've been using for years are met not only with skepticism but hostility by others in the field.

Barking at the Storm: Curing Thunder Phobia in Dogs

Years ago -- back when my dog Freddie was having almost daily panic attacks over any little sidewalk noise here in New York City -- I ran into a dog owner I knew who had a Sheltie named Duncan.

I told him about Freddie's panic attacks and he said that Duncan had once had a similar problem. He was afraid of thunderstorms.

"How did you help him get over it?"

"I didn't. He got over it on his own."

"Okay, but how?"

"I don't know. One day he was scared out of his wits. Then out of nowhere, he barked at the thunder, and that was the last time he was ever afraid."

This made sense, because Kevin Behan had once said to me that "aggression cures fear." So, I reasoned, if a dog can bark while he's frightened, even if there's nothing to bark at, the fear may go away -- as it did with Duncan -- just because of the barking, and nothing else.

As a result, whenever Freddie had a panic attack after that, I gave him the "Speak!" command. He didn't always respond right away; it's hard to listen to commands when your brain is full of fear and static. But once he did bark, his tail, ears, and shoulders immediately came back up, and he gave me a look, as if to say, "What are you looking at? Are we going for a walk or are you just gonna stand there?"

Over time, his panic attacks grew less and less serious, I think partly because of what I learned from Duncan the Sheltie. (I eventually resolved the issue altogether using a technique from Kevin Behan's book, Natural Dog Training.)

I'd like to know if anyone else has a story like this! It doesn't even have to be about fear-related issues, though would be great too.

Over the years a lot of readers have given me great stories about how Natural Dog Training techniques have helped their dogs get over fear, aggression, and other behavioral and emotional issues. I'd like to stockpile as many of these stories as I can for a possible future book on solving behavior problems the natural way!

Thanks! I look forward to your stories!

LCK

"Changing the World, One Dog at a Time"

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Part of Me

2010-11-04T10:45:00.000-07:00

I wrote this song on a piano backstage at a theater on 42nd Street in the summer of 1984, where I was working as the house manager for a production of an Alan Aykbourn farce.

As some of you know, I'm working on a CD of "Sinatra Songs," ballads and blues from the golden age of American songwriting, the only difference being that instead of singing actual songs from that period, I'm writing songs that I hope will sound as if they could have been written back then.I recently dusted this one off, brought it to my partner, Janice Friedman, and she liked it a lot. I simplified the lyric even more, and that's the form you have here.

"Part of Me"

(click on the title, above, to hear a recording )

The time it seems so short
since we were groomed and brided.
Now the fam'ly court
says we're to be divided.
And as the dust all clears
I try to take defeat
right on the chin.
I’m not in tears,
but oh I’m incomplete, for…

     part of me will always love you.
     Part of me will always care.
     And when he becomes a memory
     reach out to me, I'll be right there.

     Near or far, it doesn’t matter
     no matter where you are
     that’s where my heart shall be.
     For there’s a part of you,
     deep in the heart of you,
     that keeps shining through
     the heart of me.

     You will always be a part of me.

Words and Music © 1984 by LEE CHARLES KELLEY
West Sixty Ninth Street Music (ASCAP)

Endless Tune

2010-09-20T15:15:00.000-07:00

I'm submitting 4 songs for the ASCAP Songwriter's Showcase. They're looking for "cabaret" songs, but I don't write cabaret, per se. I write Sinatra songs, or in this case, it's more of a Fred Astaire song (though I don't sing like either one of them). Anyway, if you're interested, click on the title below the picture, give a listen, and let me know what you think.

"Endless Tune"
(click on the title, above, to hear a recording)

The song begins to play. Your thoughts are miles away.

Then all at once the beat becomes entrancing.
You throw your arms ’round mine. A thrill runs up my spine,
though I know you’ll only hold me while we’re dancing.

The motion of your hips, the tender way your lips
brush up against my cheek so softly glancing,
they leave me dazed and hot, and yet I know I’m not
the only man with whom you spend time dancing.

     I don’t exactly lack the knack for conversation,
     But subtract this syncopation and I can hardly speak.
     ’Cause the groove is like a tonic:
     when we move I’m supersonic;
     when we stop my knees, ironically, get weak.

But we spin and twirl so well, caught up in an ancient spell,
that together we personify romancing.
This love is strong. It’s mine to give. And yet as long as I shall live
I know you’ll only hold me while we’re dancing.

(musical interlude – repeat bridge & 3rd verse, go to coda)

Coda
So alone tonight I’ll ask the moon to help me write an endless tune
that will keep you in my arms forever dancing.

Spoken: “Thursday? Hmm, Thursday . . . Yeah, I can do Thursday. Same time? Okay, see ya then…”

Words and Music © 2008 by LEE CHARLES KELLEY
West Sixty Ninth Street Music (ASCAP)

Why Do Some Dogs Act "Sneaky?"

2010-08-10T13:01:00.000-07:00

This article is linked to a recent blog article I wrote for PsychologyToday.com. If you've clicked on the link in that article, please scroll down to the red sentence below to avoid having to re-read the material from that article.

Why Do Some Dogs Act "Sneaky?"

"Uh-oh, I think someone's coming!"

In a recent blog article Marc Bekoff has said that dogs -- these amazing animals we all love so much -- have what’s called a Theory of Mind, a theoretical construct used by cognitive researchers to determine where a particular species’ forms of cognition lie on the evolutionary and psychological scale. In the study Dr. Bekoff cited, what’s ostensibly been proven is that dogs have the first of three levels of a ToM, the conscious awareness of the perceptual states of other beings (also called “mind reading” by cognitive scientists).

Bekoff says, “We”ve learned that dogs know what others can and cannot hear,” and provides a link to a new study “proving” this idea.

I’ve read the paper, and I don’t think it comes anywhere near to proving that “dogs know what we can and cannot hear.” The researchers have clearly assumed that this is so, but I don’t think that, within the confines of their study, they’ve showed any such thing.

Here’s how the study was done.

20 dogs were collected to see if they changed their behaviors in relation to whether a human being could or could not hear what they were doing.

1) “Dogs were allowed to familiarize themselves with their surroundings by exploring the area (10 – 15 min.).” I don’t think this enough time to get a true baseline on how anxious the dogs might or might not have been before the trial started. It would have been better to let the dogs explore the space for at least an hour a day, each day, for two weeks.

2) “Following acclimation, dogs first completed a short inhibition task to mark the human as ‘gatekeeper’ for treats.” I agree this is probably an important step to set up the dynamic of being given access to treats only when a human allows the dogs to do so.

However, as above, I think it would have been better if the dogs had all been acclimated to the researchers, i.e., fed by hand, once a day, every day, for two weeks. This would have greatly reduced whatever baseline anxiety they might have had about those persons.

It’s also not clear how many dogs passed or failed this first test, or how they failed, exactly. “Dogs were allowed a maximum of 5 min to take the treat. If the dog had not taken the treat in 5 min, the dog was given the treat.” What happened to the dogs who didn’t wait? We’re not told.

3) After the inhibition test, the dogs were shown two translucent containers. Each had three strings of small brass bells, hung across the openings. On one container, the “ringers” had been removed. The other bells rang normally. When the researcher put treats in the containers, she made sure to demonstrate the noisiness, or lack thereof, for each container. (Without seeing the video, I’m not sure what impression, if any, this made on the dogs at the time this demonstration was performed.)

4) Each dog was only given one trial, which makes perfect sense. Subsequent responses are more likely to be the result of learning rather than of some innate cognitive faculty.

Once the “sound properties” of each container had been demonstrated, “the experimenter sat between two containers,” and either looked straight ahead (Looking Position) or “pulled her knees to her chest and placed her head between her knees, facing the ground.” (Not Looking.)

Then the dogs were given permission by their owner or another researcher to go get a treat.

5) When the experimenter was in the Not Looking position (knees pulled to her chest, hiding her face), the dogs always chose the silent container. When the experimenter was in the Looking position, each dog’s choice of container seemed entirely random.

“This suggests,” the researchers conclude, “that [the] dogs’ pattern of approach in the Not Looking condition was not due to either a general preference for the silent container or an aversion to the noisy container. Instead, dogs appeared to prefer the silent container only when the experimenter was not looking and therefore did not have knowledge of their approach. This suggests dogs took into account the noise caused by their approach only when that noise could change what the experimenter knew about their actions.”

As an attorney in one of my novels might say, “Objection. Based on facts not in evidence!”

There is no clear evidence that the dogs were showing an awareness of the humans’ knowledge states. I would suggest that without giving the dogs enough time to acclimate themselves, both to the space and to the strange “gatekeeper,” it’s entirely possible that, to paraphrase the study, the “dogs significantly preferred the silent container only when a strange person sat in front of them in a strange position, with her eyes hidden from view.” And I would paraphrase the conclusions drawn as follows: “Dogs appeared to prefer the silent container only when the experimenter was acting in a strange manner, with her eyes hidden, which from the dog’s point of view, created feelings of uncertainty. This suggests dogs took into account the noise caused by their approach only when that noise would further impact their feelings of insecurity.”

The researchers don’t give us any insight into why they think the dogs felt that they had to be quiet. Since the dogs were being “allowed” to get a treat, there’s no logical reason for them to be “sneaky” about it. So what was their motive in “making less noise?”

Instead of setting up an artificial study, in an artificial environment, as was done here, let’s look carefully at one way that dogs do seem to be acting sneaky when in their home environment: the dog who sneaks up on the bed only when his owners aren’t home or are fast asleep.

This would seem to be based on the dog’s knowledge of its owner’s perceptual state, correct?

So, absent a ToM, how does that happen?

First of all, there would be no need for a dog to act sneaky unless he’s engaging in a behavior that will “get him in trouble.” Very young puppies never act sneaky. Everything is jake, as far as they’re concerned. It’s only when their owners start scolding them, or pulling them away from things that interest them (like mommy’s dress shoes, or the television cords), or lunge at them when they try to make inside the house, do they start to “act sneaky.” So sneaky behavior is based on past experience, not necessarily on an innate understanding concerning whether we can see or hear what they’re doing.

Secondly, a dog’s social instincts give them very sensitive “antennae” for reading our emotional energy and our attentional states. They learn to detect even the slightest difference between an owner who’s wide awake (active, or +, levels of energy) and one who’s fast asleep (absent, or -, levels). They also have a capacity for reading our levels of intensity. The more intense the energy coming from the owner, the more the dog will be motivated to act in certain ways to either avoid the owner, acclimate themselves to the energy’s intensity, or to find a way to offset or offload it.

So being able to read the owner’s energy and attentional states is step one.

Step two is that, over time, and with experience, the dog learns that whenever he tries to get up on the bed when the owner is lying in bed but is still in an active (+) state, the owner pushes him off. But when the owner is in a passive (-) state, she doesn’t.

The dog also learns that certain ways of approaching the bed (based on a simple ability to register how the dog’s own energy does or doesn’t cause a perturbation in his owner’s energy and/or attentional states) can sometimes change the owner from a passive (-) to an active (+) state, which results in the owner pushing the dog off the bed. The more intense the owner’s reaction to the dog’s behavior, the sneakier the dog will be.

In this model, the dog’s “sneaky” behavior is based solely on a) the ability to read the owner’s energy states and b) past conditioning. That’s it.

Some may think I’m splitting hairs. But hopefully this analysis will give the careful reader a slightly different way of interpreting their dog’s behavior, one that doesn’t imply that dogs are doing the things they do because they’re capable of knowing right from wrong, that they understand when they “did something wrong,” or that they do things with deliberate intent.

The more we understand how dogs really think, they better our relationships with them will be.

LCK

"Changing the World, One Dog at a Time"

My Psychology Today Blog

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7 Games Associated With the Predatory Sequence

2010-06-26T10:30:00.000-07:00

I've written a lot about the predatory sequence in several other posts. Here's a more complete examination of this phenomenon, showing how and why playing seven specific games that stimulate and satisfy your dog's prey drive will have a very strong tendency to create calm, obedient behavior by reducing your dog's internal tension and stress.

7 Games That Stimulate & Satisfy Your Dog’s Prey Drive

In mammalian predators (which includes dogs), there are 5 basic steps in what’s called the predatory sequence. Each of the steps involves a fixed-action pattern, or hard-wired instinctive behavior, that leads to the 5th and final step.

These steps are as follows:

The Search

The Eye-Stalk

The Chase

The Grab Bite

The Kill Bite

It’s important to understand that for a predator, the act of leaving one’s den or home turf to find and kill prey animals of any size is a dangerous business. In many cases the predator, particularly a wolf, has to venture deep into foreign territory, with unknown changes in terrain that will have to be factored in to its approach to hunting. A predator could easily injure itself by twisting a leg in a rabbit hole, for example, or injure a paw by landing hard on a sharp rock, or rip a hole in its abdomen by running too close to a sharp tree branch.

In order to motivate predators to do their job, Mother Nature has a compelling tool at her disposal: the release of endorphins, one of the body’s own form of opiates. Nature does this at each of the 5 successive stages because the closer a predator gets to its prey, the more dangerous the enterprise becomes.

So in some ways, while we tend to think of predators as the dangerous ones, hunting is almost as dangerous for the hunter as it is for the hunted. Hunting is also more dangerous for wolves than it is for other predators, such as the big cats. That’s because the default setting on the wolf’s prey drive is to go after large mammals with horns and hooves. It’s true that a wolf will also hunt small prey, especially when large, dangerous prey are unavailable. But the wolf's prey of choice is usually over ten times bigger than the average wolf. Elk weigh around 800 lbs., moose around 1000, while the average wolf only weighs around 80 lbs. Also, a wolf doesn’t have powerful claws, as the big cats do. Nor does he have the tooth size or the kind of pressure in his bite that a cougar or cheetah does. So the odds are stacked against him.

However, he has two things working in his favor. One is that he doesn’t hunt by himself, so the feeling of danger inherent to preying on moose and elk is diffused, spread out across the entire pack; no one wolf feels the entire charge. And, since the wolf isn’t going solo, he’s also able to work in-synch with his pack mates: this means he can slack off, take a breather, if a change in terrain favors another wolf’s physical skills, or fall back if he sees an easier, more circular approach to the prey, etc.

The second element in the wolf’s favor is his relentless drive to connect to the prey animals, and his ability to outwit and outlast them. Big cats operate primarily on the element of surprise. So a cheetah or cougar always has to act quickly or lose the window of opportunity. Wolves, on the other hand, usually win by wearing down their prey.

It’s also important to note that wolves who settle near garbage dumps don’t form packs. Coyotes, on the other hand, sometimes do, but only when they need to hunt large prey. So pack formation is actually an ancillary function of the canine hunting instincts.

Finally, it’s important to know that captive wolves exhibit stress-related dominant and submissive behaviors, but that these behaviors are rarely found in wild wolves. The reason for this is that captive wolves aren’t able to relieve their internal stress by going out as a group and hunting large prey, so they engage in internecine squabbles instead. Dominant and submissive behaviors are rare in wild wolves because hunting and killing large prey is the ultimate stress-reducer.

Is this really relevant to dog training?

Of course. Since hunting is dangerous, especially for wolves, and since predators are motivated by an internal, psycho-chemical process to go through all 5 steps of the sequence, and since dogs share a long evolutionary history with wolves, we can learn something about what motivates dogs to learn new behaviors or unlearn old ones by looking at what motivates their wild brothers to hunt large prey.

Plus, all the basic obedience behaviors we normally teach dogs (except the sit) are analogues of the predatory motor patterns found in wild wolves. And since the wolf’s need to hunt large prey is the genesis of all canine social instincts (hunting as part of a group requires intense social cohesion and cooperation), knowing as much as we can about the way wolves hunt may be the most relevant thing we can do to learn about how to best motivate dogs to obey, and how to make a maximum use of their instinctive energy and emotions.

And finally, since all misbehaviors seen in dogs are the result of an inability for the dog to relieve internal stress naturally, and since the prey drive has stress-relief built into it (thanks to endorphins, etc.), it's far more effective to use up your dog's energy by playing hunting games than it by taking him on long walks, or even going jogging together.

With that in mind, there are seven games designed to use up your dog’s energy, naturally, by stimulating and satisfying his hunting instincts:

The Predatory Sequence & 7 Games Associated With It

The Search – “Find” - hide a toy or treat then tell the dog, "Find!" (also called “Hide-and-Seek.” by some trainers, but that's actually a very different game where you hide when your dog isn't looking, and wait for him or her to look around to see where you are, then you suddenly reappear, act excited, and run away.)

The Eye-Stalk – “The Eyes Exercise” (the foundation for the stay)

The Chase – Fetch and “Chase Me” (get your dog to chase you), and “Hide-and-Seek.”

The Grab Bite – Fetch, and Tug-of-War

The Kill Bite – Tug and “Push-of-War” (push while playing tug)

“The Pushing Exercise” is also helpful, not just for using up a dog’s energy, but for removing any emotional blocks that prevent him from relieving his stress naturally through play.

LCK

“Changing the World, One Dog at a Time”

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The Canine Mind Doth Make Fools of Us All

2010-05-07T10:28:00.000-07:00

Here's another article from my PsychologyToday.com blog. This one was supposed to have already been available through the menus on the right, but for some reason, the link failed, so I'm re-posting it now.

How Dogs Can Fool Even Our Smartest Scientists

In an earlier post -- "From Pavlov to Pauli..." -- I wrote that, scientifically speaking, all canine behavior can and should be explained from an emotional/energetic point of view rather than a mental framework. I even kind of bragged, perhaps foolishly, that I could do just that.

In my most recent article -- "Smart Pooches or Dumb Science?" -- I critiqued a recent spate of online articles and TV news blurbs in which psychologist Stanley Coren quite wrongly states that dogs are better at math than 2-year-olds. Here's CNN's version of one "study" supposedly proving that dogs can count and perhaps even do arithmetic:

"Counting ability is tested in drills such as one in which treats are dropped, one at a time, behind a screen. When the researcher either sneaks away one of the treats or stealthily adds an extra before raising the screen, the dog will wait longer -- appearing to puzzle over the bad math -- before eating the treats."

In rebuttal I gave some of the scientific evidence for the idea that all animals, not just dogs, have an innate number sense, which enables them to know when the general amount of salient things in their environment has changed: robins and their eggs, for example, or dogs and their treats or toys. (This "number sense "can also be found in 4-and-a-half-month-old babies, by the way.)

However, I think the concept of animals or even babies having a "number sense" is inaccurate because understanding numbers -- 1, 2, 3, 10, 3/5ths, pi -- is language dependent. Without the use of words, animals and babies can't put names to abstract numeric concepts, or even to concrete objects like a robin's eggs or a dog's chew toys. It seems to me that the thing they're actually aware of is the changes that take place in their environment: the absence or presence of things that were or weren't there before. And it would make more sense that they would be able to calibrate these changes viscerally (via the changes in own their internal energy states) rather than figuring it all out mathematically.

Since in my "Pavlov to Pauli" article I proposed the idea that I could explain any and all behavioral phenomenon in dogs from just such an energetic standpoint, I'll attempt to do so here.

Imagine you're at a party. Your mind is full of thoughts: "God, those cheese thingies were good, I wonder if they have any more," or, "Hey, Shelia looks good in that," or, "I hope the kids aren't terrorizing the babysitter," and possibly, "Uh-oh, there's that awful bore, what's-his-name? I hope he doesn't try to harangue me again with his theories about how dogs have better math skills than toddlers."

These are all thoughts. But beneath these thoughts your body is busy accommodating its inner "radar" to the underlying press of stimuli around you: the buzz of conversation, the brief bursts of laughter, the tempo and level of the music, the clinking of ice in glasses, and the almost constant sense of kinetic energy, people shifting between groups of 2 or 3, etc. You're not thinking much if anything about all this, but your body's internal radar is. It's constantly calibrating and recalibrating itself to accommodate these fluctuations in energy. (Since a stimulus is, by definition, anything that increases the energy in an organism, that's exactly what your body is responding to: fluctuations in energy.)

At some point you ask the hostess if you can use her bathroom. She nods, points the way, you go down the hall, make a left, go inside the bathroom, start the water running in the sink, etc. And, while you're thus engaged, a large chunk of people decide to go to another venue: perhaps out back to see the pool, perhaps they have theater tickets. It doesn't matter. Approximately half the people, let's say, are suddenly gone, disappeared.

When you come out of the bathroom you go into a mild state of shock. Your first thought is, "Wow, where did everybody go?" though you don't really care where they went, you just want to know how they all disappeared so quickly. And the reason you're shocked is that your unconscious mind has to re-calibrate itself viscerally to this sudden change in the environment, this huge shift in energy. (This is not a mental process, by the way; the mind rarely concerns itself with fluctuations in energy, but the body is always doing so.)

Okay, now back to dogs.

Remember, the researchers showed the dogs in their study a certain number of treats then dropped the treats behind a screen, added or subtracted some, then revealed the new "amount" to the dogs.

Coren interprets all this as follows: "Now we're giving [the dog] the wrong equation which is 1+1 = 1, or 1+1 = 3. Sure enough, studies show the dogs get it. The dog acts surprised and stares at it for a longer period of time, just like a human kid would."

The dogs "get it?" Right. Except that from the dog's point of view this is more like three-card monte or a magic trick done by an annoying relative -- pulling a quarter from a kid's ear or doing the "where'd my thumb go?" trick -- than actual arithmetic.

Now put yourself in the dog's shoes. You're in place where there's food and people, sort of like a party. Humans are showing you some treats, so you pay attention. Those treats are magnetic to you. They're buzzing with all kinds of potential energy. As far as your body is concerned, they're the most salient feature of your environment. Then these humans do a magic trick where one of the treats is suddenly no longer there or another one is suddenly, inexplicably present. And like the partygoer coming out of the bathroom, you go into a mild state of shock: you have a look of "surprise" on your "face." But it's not because you've done any mental arithmetic. It's because your body's awareness of its surroundings is forced to make a sudden adjustment. In short, you've been fooled.

Stanley Coren has had a long and distinguished academic career. His research on sensory perception is top notch. His paper "Sensation and Perception" is required reading on the subject at university levels. He's a bestselling author, and has also written some very interesting articles on dogs here. So I have to wonder why he sometimes seems totally incapable of using any kind of real critical judgment when it comes to the subject of canine cognition. He can't really believe this stuff, can he? If he does, I guess it's true that when it comes to dogs, even the smartest people can be very easily fooled. I think that says less about Coren, though, than it does about what truly amazing animals dogs are.

They can fool even the best of us without even trying.

LCK
www.LeeCharlesKelley.com
"Changing the World, One Dog at a Time"
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4 Easy Ways to Establish a Deeper Connection with Your Dog, and Your True Self

2010-05-06T11:52:00.000-07:00

This article can also be found on my PsychologyToday.com blog...

4 Easy Ways to Establish a Deeper Connection

with Your Dog, and with Your True Self

One evening, many years ago I was at an asphalt basketball court on the East Side of Manhattan with two dogs: my Dalmatian Freddie and a client’s Jack Russell terrier named Mack. (Someone in the neighborhood was on the city council, owned a dog, and had pulled some strings to allow us to exercise our dogs there in the evenings.)

The dogs were playing nicely. Everyone was having fun. Then it started to rain lightly, and Mack, who hated the rain, decided to go home. So he wiggled through a small gap in the chain link fence out to 68th Street, and headed straight for Second Avenue.

I went into emergency mode and called Freddie. There was no time to hook up his leash, which was hanging around my neck (along with Mack’s). I just ran as fast as I could to the exit, which was closer to First Avenue than Second. Freddie ran in-synch next to me. We came out onto 68th Street, and I scanned the sidewalk, looking for Mack. He’d apparently crossed to the uptown side of the street. So I checked quickly for oncoming cars, then ran across the street, saying to Fred, “Let’s go!”

We got to the other side, and I looked up the street toward Second Avenue, my heart racing, my mind trying not to panic. I still couldn’t see the little figure of the missing Jack Russell, and hoped he hadn’t tried to cross Second. My goal was to run as fast as possible and find the little bastard. But as I ran I noticed something unexpected and wonderful. Freddie was running right next to me, in a perfect heel, his eyes locked onto mine. In fact, I realized that he’d been running next to me like that the whole time. He hadn’t taken his eyes off me for a second. It was an amazing feeling.

We got to Second Avenue, I asked some people if they’d seen Mack, and was directed to a video store. We got inside and found Mack casually strolling through the aisles, begging for treats.

Although I'd spent many long hours training Freddie in obedience, I didn’t realize until that night how bonded, or connected to me he was. And there was no specific behavioral precedent for what he did that night. It was based almost entirely on our emotional connection.

I also realize now I was a different person before I met Fred. For one thing, the person I am now would’ve never called Mack a “little bastard,” even in my own mind. Mind you, I have no illusions that I’m now a fully-realized human being with no faults or character flaws. But I’m much more centered and grounded than I was before that wonderful, yet difficult, dog taught me how to be human. (I learned later that his being "difficult" was actuallly the result of my resisting the emotional changes taking place inside me.)

People sometimes question how (or why I think) I know so much about how dogs do or don't think, what makes them tick. Part of it comes through countless hours of research, studying various disciplines, from physics, to neuroanatomy to cognitive science to philosophy of mind to evolutionary biology to emergence to systems dynamics, and more.

But most of my understanding comes from my daily interactions with dogs. Except when they’re asleep, dogs are constantly watching us, reading our behavior. I’ve found that if we do something similar, just do four simple things for a few minutes each day, it can help us connect more fully to our dogs’ feelings, and connect to our true selves.

Will it make your dog run next to you in a perfect heel through the streets of New York? Proably not. But as they say about chicken soup: "It couldn't hurt!" And what may be even more important, you might find that by doing these four things, your life will, over time, become easier, happier, and more full of joy.

So here are the 4 simple steps that can help make all that happen.

1) Observe - Whenever you take your dog for a walk, or when your dog is playing with other doggies, or even when your dog is sleeping, take a few moments to simply watch his behaviors. Don't make any judgments or assign any + or - values to what the dog is doing. (When we take a walk through a pine forest, we very rarely impose value judgments on the trees, rocks, ferns, and birds, do we?) Just observe the minutia of his everyday actions; keep things as simple as possible. Pay attention to how your dog approaches other dogs. Does he come straight toward them, or in more of an arc? What happens to his face when he smells something? What is his tail doing when he sees a squirrel, or when you call him for supper?

Don't think about what any of this means, just observe.

One value of this type of objective observation this is that our visual systems are directly-connected to the pleasure circuits in our brains. So the mere act of looking at something, anything, creates a feeling of calmness and well-being. So the more we're able to observe without judgmental thinking, the more relaxed and contented we become.

Another nice effect is that by observing your dog's behavior without judgment or expectation, you'll begin to see things from his perspective. Thinking usually means we project our beliefs and value systems onto our dogs' behavior, which prevents us from seeing them for who they really are. But seeing dogs as they are returns us to nature - to the pine forest, the desert, or the waterfall - if just for a small moment in time.

2) Wonder - Childhood is a time of wonder. When we were young we spent a great deal of time wondering about all kinds of things. Wonder is also a key element in science. Darwin wondered why the various types of finches on different islands in the Galapagos had beaks with different shapes, and his theory of evolution was born. Einstein sat on a moving train and wondered what it would be like to be on a train that could travel at light speed, and the theory of relativity was born.

But there's more to wondering than the if, or how, or why of things. Just being in a state of wonder has an amazing effect on the psyche. Like observation, wonder stimulates the brain. Plus it opens up an emotional connection between you and the thing you're wondering about, in this case, your dog. So try each day to view your dog with a childlike sense of wonder.

Wondering means you don't know anything, but that you're open to learning something new. If Einstein had thought about it, he would've known that no train could possibly travel at light speed, and that would've been the end of that. But by wondering, he saw something in his mind that no one else could see.

What will you see, that no one else can, when you take a few moments each day to look at your dog in wonder?

3) Feel - Dogs are feeling, emotional beings. So are we. But as kids, we were forced by the rules of society, peer pressure, by how our parents raised us, and by our own survival needs, to put a lid on our emotions. It's an amazing thing that just by tuning in to our dog's emotions now, as adults, we automatically tune in to the emotions we gave up long ago in order to placate our parents and teachers, or to fit in.

So spend a little time each day trying to tune in to what your dog is feeling. Don't think about it. Take a second or two to try and feel it; then let it go. A few moments later you may find that a childhood memory will drift to the surface, or the answer to a problem you've been having, perhaps related to work or family, will suddenly become clear.

A theatre professor of mine once said that whenever we see a great play or movie, or look at a work of art, it has the capacity to change us for the better. And even though a physician or a chemist or construction worker may not feel any affinity for Hamlet's woes, or relate to the life of a Pennsylvania deer hunter, or understand what a Mark Rothko painting "means," each will come away a better doctor, chemist, or builder. True, dogs may not be Shakespeare, but in their own way, they can do that for us too. That's because by allowing ourselves to feel what our dogs are feeling, we reawaken our ability to feel our own emotional connections, the ones we lost when we were pups.

4) Be - Some trainers say, "Be the pack leader! Be dominant!" Others say, "Be the pack parent!" or "Be positive!"

I say, "Never mind all that, just be!"

What does that mean?

All evidence on how wild canine packs really operate suggests that our old ideas about wolf packs having a leader (which originated with Konrad Lorenz, who later admitted that everything he ever said about dogs was wrong), aren't true.

However, in every animal group there is always one member who - to borrow from Willie Wonka - has the golden ticket. To me, the golden ticket represents an animal's natural charisma or animal magnetism. So others in the group follow him because of his natural gifts, not because he has to dominate them to make them "obey."

Think about your natural gifts. What are they? Whatever they are, they're yours and yours alone. You don't have to try to be something you're not.

But remember, there are two yous (at least), the authentic self, and the self that evolved as a means of fitting in, satisfying your parents' and teachers' wishes, etc. The authentic self is the one who's able to observe, wonder, tune in to your dog's (and your own) feelings, and is able to just be. The other self, frankly, thinks too much.

If you get angry or frustrated with your dog, that's okay. Just try to own those feelings, but try not to act on them. Remember, they're not real, they're just signposts. So instead of acting in anger or frustration, take five slow, deep breaths - breathe in slowly, breathe out slowly - and remember that you already have your unique golden ticket: your dog's love. Yes, the road may be rocky at times, but those rocks aren't insurmountable obstacles, they're just reflections of the fractured pieces of the authentic self you gave up as a child. Your dog doesn't misbehave in order to dominate you or create obstacles; he does it because he wants to help you reconnect to who you really are.

So those are the 4 easy steps: Observe, Wonder, Feel, and Be. Just spending a few minutes each day engaged in those simple activities can bring amazing results.

LCK
"Changing the World, One Dog at a Time"
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The Sub-Title of This Blog...

2010-04-21T14:37:00.000-07:00

...is, Dogs - Sinatra Songs - Life in New York. Starting today, there's a new folder, in the column on the right, dedicated to some songs I've written with Sinatra (or Tony Bennett, or Diana Krall, et al) in mind.

"Let's Kick it Today"
(click on the title, above, to listen)

Love is like that old brass ring,

and you’ve got to grab it.

Worry never solves a thing.

It’s time to kick that habit.

Hey, baby, let’s kick it today!

We’ll buy a railroad ticket today,

ride to the country where everything’s green.

We can relax, turn our backs

on the fax and the answering machine.

We won’t think about tomorrow,
that habit is so passé.

So my baby, let’s kick it today.

Old Man Trouble, he can’t find us

if we leave the daily grind behind us.

There may be some devil to pay,

but let’s siesta, down Mexico way.

South of the border, we’ll bake in the sun;

dance to a band in the sand

honey, and just as soon as we’re done,

we won’t think about mañana,
oh no, we’ll just shout, “Olé!”

Oh my baby, let’s kick it today.

Old Man Travel makes you weary, dearie,

so perhaps you’d care to hear my theory?

What say we just stay home and play?

Put on Dean Martin and roll in the hay?

I’ll map the landscape of wonderful you

while Dino croons some old tunes
and the moon’s just a ball in the blue.

Why fret for what ain’t happened yet?

Fear will only get in the way, if you let it.

So baby don’t sweat it. Try to forget it.

Let’s kick it today.

Music & Lyric © 1997 by Lee Charles Kelley
West Sixty Ninth Street Music (ASCAP)

Sigmund Freud and the Art of Dog Training, Part I

2010-04-07T15:34:00.000-07:00

Here's the first article in this series...

Sigmund Freud and the Art of Dog Training, I

I'm a Neo-Freudian dog trainer. It says so in my bio.

I first discovered this fact while working with a Rhodesian ridgeback who had fear issues; she was scared of the construction noises in her Manhattan neighborhood. After one of our sessions - where we were able to get her to have fun walking past the jackhammers by using a favorite toy to build her prey drive - her owner, a psychotherapist, asked me if I'd ever studied object relations theory.

"No," I said. "Why?"

"It seems to me that your ideas about dog training are based on it."

So I went to the library (this was pre-Google), and did some research. I found that the term "object relations" was first coined by Ronald Fairbairn (in 1952), but that Freud used the term as early as 1917 to identify the people in a person's sphere of influence as "objects" of drives or desires.

Huh. I did sometimes refer to toys as "prey objects" and treats as "food objects," though I didn't know why. I also work a lot with a dog's prey drive, for inducing obedience and for healing wounded emotions.

But still, isn't Freud passé? Sure, most of us still use Freudian terms. When people say that someone is narcissistic or anal-retentive, we know immediately what they mean. Yet - except in Woody Allen movies - Freud is now considered completely obsolete, or worse.

"Whenever someone mentions Freud," writes poet and novelist Siri Hustvedt, in her blog article Who's Afraid of Sigmund Freud?, "I see eyes roll and listen to the nasty remarks that follow. The received knowledge, even among some highly educated and informed people, is that Freud was wrong and can be relegated to history's garbage can. ... the general attitude is one of out-and-out hostility."

Hustvedt then points out that modern neuroscience is starting to validate some of Freud's "outmoded" ideas. "No neuroscientist today would say that the unconscious does not exist. No one working in the field would argue against primal emotional drives in human beings either. Freud is no longer dismissed as quickly as he once was."

This is a kind of poetic justice since Freud actually studied neuroanatomy at the University of Vienna under German physiologist Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke. It was Brücke, who first proposed the concept of "psychodynamics" in 1874, along with physicist Hermann von Helmholtz (one of the formulators of the first law of thermodynamics). Brücke and Helmholtz stated that since all living organisms are energy-systems, they must be governed by the laws of thermodynamics. This became the springboard for Freud's psychology.

Modern neuroscience really is validating Freud. A new paper by R.L. Carhart-Harris and K. J. Friston, published in the Oxford University neurlogical journal, The Brain, posits that Freud's view of how the Ego (the conscious mind) is designed to monitor and, if necessary, suppress impulses coming from the Id (that is the more archaic parts of the mind, or the "unconscious"), is, in fact, grounded in actual physical brain structures, as well as the types of brain waves that different parts of the brain, such as the limbic system (which controls emotion) and the pre-frontal cortex (the seat of executive function) use as part of their operating systems. They write, "Freudian concepts may have a real neurobiological substrates [that] could be usefully revisited in the context of modern neuroscience." They go on to say that new advances "allow us to recast Freudian ideas in a mechanistic and biologically informed fashion."

But still, a neo-Freudian dog trainer?

It's true that Freud was a dog lover. But seriously, when we think about canine behavior, Sigmund Freud is not the first name that comes to mind. (Does Pavlov ring a bell?) Most dog trainers trace their philosophy back to either Konrad Lorenz or B. F. Skinner. Very few would consider Freud a major influence.

All three were geniuses who made a major impact. However, even though Freud is now considered old-hat, every single one of Lorenz's views on canine behavior have been proven invalid¹. And while Skinner's ideas still hold sway in most animal training circles, holes and cracks in his philosophy began showing themselves from the outset².

So even though no one thinks of Freud's ideas as being relevant to dog training, to me they're much more helpful, and much more relevant, than the Lorenzian or Skinnerian models.

Next time: how understanding Freud can 1) be of immense benefit to dogs with PTSD and other disorders, 2) show us that by punishing a puppy for mouthing or soiling the house we create neurotic behaviors later on, and 3) help us learn that teaching puppies obedience skills before their brains are developed, can create social, emotional, and even neurological disorders.

LCK
"Changing the World, One Dog at a Time"
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Footnotes:

1) Raymond and Lorna Coppinger, in their book, Dogs: A Startling New Understanding... report that when they met Konrad Lorenz he told them right off the bat, that "everything I ever said about dogs was wrong."

2) See Chomsky, Dennett, and many others. Or read my "Of Mice and Mutts" articles: Why Behavioral Science Is Losing the Training Wars, Is Behavioral Science Failing Our Dogs?, The Negative Effects of Positive Reinforcement, All Dogs Are Good Dogs at Heart, and SeaWorld Is Giving Their Star Performers a Raw Deal.

Sigmund Freud and the Art of Dog Training, Part II

2010-04-07T14:58:00.000-07:00

Here's an early preview of my next PsychologyToday.com article...

Sigmund Freud & the Art of Dog Training, II

"Happiness is a warm puppy." - Charles Shultz

"What we call happiness comes from the satisfaction of needs
which have been dammed up to a high degree." - Sigmund Freud

In my last article at Psychology Today, I made the claim that understanding some of the basic principles of Freudian psychology can help us - dog owners and dog trainers alike - understand our dogs better, and that Freud's ideas may be more relevant to dog training than those of Konrad Lorenz, Ivan Pavlov or B. F. Skinner.

I also pointed to some of the latest research in neurobiology, which validates Freud's views that the psyche is divided into the Id and the Ego. In simplest terms, and neurologically speaking, these correlate with the limbic system (Id/unconscious urges and emotions) and the pre-frontal cortex (Ego /conscious thought/executive-function).

In other articles here I've presented the idea that a dog's behavior operates more along the lines of a natural energy system than it does either as part of a dominance hierarchy or solely as the result of reinforcement schedules. When we examine Freud's view that the Ego's primary role is to suppress most of the unbound energy contained within the Id, we can start to see that there's also a direct correlation between some of the basic precepts of Freudian psychology and with the idea that all canine behavior operates as part of an energy system.

I think that's fitting, because Freud likened the human mind to a horse (Id) and rider (Ego), but he could just as easily - and perhaps more aptly - have compared the mind to a puppy and its owner.

Why?

Because, except when sleeping, puppies have almost boundless energy and curiosity. They're always sticking their noses, not to mention their teeth, into places they don't belong. The owner's goal is to prevent the little guy from doing too much damage to the owner's clothes, furniture, skin, or to the pup himself. This is often a matter of the owner's Ego (both small e and capital E) constantly repressing the puppy's desires. We worry what our friends or relatives will think of us when they come to visit. What if we take our pup to the bank and he does his business right there on the floor? Our self-image is often inextricably bound up in our pups' behaviors. (We also channel our inner parent when we interact with our puppies.) So we do everything we can to repress, and put a lid on - or as Freud puts it, "dam up" - the puppy's desires.

There's almost no way around this. In most cases we're just trying to keep the puppy from danger. And when we're not, we're unable to see the link between the childhood battles we may have fought with our parents and the battles we're now having with our pup. Those battles are locked deep within our unconscious minds; the puppy just does what all good dogs do, he fetches them for us, brings them to the surface for us to deal with.

Think of the words we commonly associate with training: leash, collar, harness, "No!" "Bad!" "Wait!" "Down!" "Stop!" "Stay!" etc. They're all designed to put a lid on a dog's energy.

Over time, the puppy learns to repress his instincts and impulses on his own. This is a matter both of conditioning and an outgrowth of the symbiotic relationship that develops between the pup's mind and that of his owners, a form of embodied, embedded cognition. The two begin to share a single mind, where the puppy is pure Id and the owner is the Id's control mechanism.

The thing is, though, that while puppies may have difficulty learning impulse control - at least initially -, as a species dogs are actually more capable of doing this than any other animal on earth, except humans and dolphins. In fact, impulse control may be an evolutionary artifact, a direct outgrowth of the dog's shared evolutionary history with the wolf.

A recent study on dogs, "Common Self-Control Processes in Humans and Dogs" shows that dogs exert impulse control in exactly the same manner as humans. And that in both cases, this ability to suppress one's own desires (alternately called "self-control," "delayed gratification," "volition," and other things), is measured through the depletion of blood glucose levels in the pre-frontal cortex, or "executive-function" portion of the brain. The more impulse control, the more blood glucose is depleted. As a result the less energy the dog or person has at their disposal for new cognitive tasks. However, once glucose levels are restored, the ability to learn new tasks, and to control one's impulses, is restored as well. (The dogs in this study were given commands that involved impulse control; they weren't put into positions where they had to do this on their own, which only reinforces the idea that this ability may involve a shared consciousness between dog and owner.)

The authors of this study say that it offers "the first evidence that exerting self-control depletes energy in nonhuman animals." (Holly C. Miller, Kristina F. Pattison, C. Nathan DeWall, Rebecca Rayburn-Reeves and Thomas R. Zentall, Psychological Science, March 2010, March 11, 2010.)

The idea originally comes from a 1998 study on humans ("Ego Depletion: Is the Active Self a Limited Resource?" by Roy E Baumeister, Ellen Bratslavsky, Mark Muraven, and Dianne M. Tice (1998), which was heavily influenced by Freud's psychology (which in turn was heavily influenced by the idea that the mind is an energy system, which obeys the laws of thermodynamics). In it the authors write that the "...theory that volition is one of the self's crucial functions can be traced back at least to Freud (1923/ 1961a, 1933/1961b), who described the ego as the part of the psyche that must deal with the reality of the external world by mediating between conflicting inner and outer pressures. ... Freud also seems to have believed that the ego needed to use some energy in making such a decision. ... [and] he recognized the conceptual value of postulating that the ego operated on an energy model."

If you go back through some of my articles, you'll see that when I talk about behavioral problems in dogs, I tend to describe them in terms of internal pressures - tension and stress - and that one of the best ways to solve such problems is by giving the dog an alternative outlet for that pressure, specifically through rough-and-tumble outdoor play, which increases the production of brain-derived growth factors.

You'll also find several articles where I talk about how when wolves evolved to form packs (for the purpose of hunting large prey), they learned to sublimate their urge to bite into more appropriate social behaviors. And that during the domestication process, dogs expanded on this ability to sublimate their urge to bite in order to secure their place within the human household.

I know that in the strictest sense of the word, sublimation refers to a means of redirecting the energy behind raw sexual urges into other, more acceptable social behaviors, such as art and culture. This was one of the primary focal points of Freud's psychoanalysis. However, Freud also made a distinction between Eros - the energy inherent to all natural drives and desires - and the libido - the reflection of that energy as it manifests in the form of personality. So while we may not think of a dog's urge to bite as having its origins in sexuality, it does. That's because there is - beneath the surface of both sexual and aggressive urges - an overpowering drive to connect with the object of one's desire. (Who has never heard the phrase - usually spoken to a baby or young puppy - "You're so cute I could just bite you?")

So how does this Freudian dynamic play out in terms of a puppy's development?

In his book, Before and After Getting Your Puppy, Dr. Ian Dunbar writes, "The more dogs bite as puppies, the softer and safer their jaws in adulthood." I agree, but would modify that as follows: "The more dogs are able to use their teeth to softly and gently mouth their owners, or to engage in rough-and-tumble play, the happier and better behaved they'll be as adult doggies."

This brings up a seminal event in the development of my ideas on dog training. Years ago, I got a call from a potential client whose dog had a very unusual problem. Emma was a small wheaten terrier who liked to lick doorknobs. In fact, she would obsessively lick the knob on the front door of her owners' apartment every time someone came in or went out, and she would continue licking for at least twenty minutes or so, no matter what they did to try to stop her.

I knew that licking was one way a dog has of sublimating the urge to bite. So my first question wasn't about how the behavior might've been reinforced, or whether someone had at some point opened the front door with bacon grease on their hands, and the dog had begun licking the doorknob as a result. Nor did I waste time supposing that Emma was licking the doorknob so as to dominate it or her owners. My first question was this:

"What was Emma like during her oral phase?"

"Oh, she was terrible. Always mouthing us and biting our clothes."

"And did you punish her for it?"

"Yes. We were told that whenever she mouthed or nipped, even in play, we should grab her by the snout, give her a smack under the chin, and say, ‘No! Bad dog!'"

"Well, that's why she can't stop licking doorknobs now."

The simple lesson is that when a puppy is going through an important developmental phase, and you "dam up" the energy behind those impulses, you're guaranteeing that the pup will develop some kind of behavioral problem later in life.

Freud writes: "The transference neuroses originate from the ego's refusing to accept a powerful instinctual impulse existing in its id, and denying it a motor discharge."

The powerful instinctual urge in this case was the puppy's drive to connect to her owners' hands, shoes, and pajama bottoms through her teeth, i.e., by mouthing and nipping in play, which are both harmless impulses, but that are, nevertheless, as Dr. Dunbar points out, important for proper social and emotional development in dogs.

The owner, in the role of the ego, denied that impulse its "motor discharge," and as a result the impulse was transferred to a similar motor discharge (licking) onto another object - the doorknob - which represented another form of connection to the owners, as it was the focal point for where the puppy saw her owners - the objects of her desires - leave her alone each day, making her feel disconnected, as well as where she saw them come back, re-establishing the feeling of connectedness that she yearned for.

In some cases, like with Emma, the through-line is fairly clear (though it would've been clearer if she'd become a biter rather than a licker). In others, like with my dog Freddie's panic attacks, the dog seems totally fine until an emotional stressor brings his repressed feelings to the surface. (People used to tell me how "calm" Freddie was; but then, when we moved to a new apartment, things changed, and shortly after that his panic attacks started.) In both cases, the course of action was to teach the dog to bite as hard as possible while playing tug or fetch with its owners outdoors.

Of course the repression of developmental urges isn't the only way dogs can develop behavioral problems. It can happen through trauma and through neglect. However, traumatic experiences always foster fear, which automatically represses a dog's drive. As for neglect, that's simply the flip-side of repression with the same general result; a lack of development in the dog's prey drive increases the amount of energy directed toward the dog's survival instincts, and, consequently, away from the sex and social instincts, both of which are related to the prey drive, and both of which are important to normal behavior in dogs.

I know that Freud has fallen out of favor in the last forty years or so. And, in some respects, there's probably a good reason for that (though Freud was the first to admit that his theories would be proven or disproven by future scientific inquiry). And I seriously doubt if you'll find many other dog trainers, if any, who base their work, even in the smallest way, on Freud's philosophy, as I do. It's also doubtful if my little polemic here will have enough weight to sway other trainers to my way of thinking. In my opinion, we all approach dog training more through the unconscious emotional connections we feel with our dogs than through our (only slightly more rational) "conscious minds."

But for both dog trainers and dog owners alike, there may come a time when neither positive reinforcement nor dominance is working with a certain dog. And if that happens, I hope some will remember what I've said here, and think to themselves:

"Maybe it's time to take another look at the man with the cigar."

LCK

"Changing the World, One Dog at a Time"

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So, I'm Finally Thinking About Getting a New Dog...

2010-03-19T15:21:00.000-07:00

Not this guy, necessarily. But I do love English setters...

Plus, it's been three years since Freddie died.

LCK

"Changing the World, One Dog at a Time"

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How Lost Dogs Find Their Way Home

2010-03-10T09:25:00.000-08:00

This article was originally posted on my blog at PsychologyToday.com.

Emotional GPS

I don't own a cell phone. I used to, but discovered that, for me at least, it was more of an inconvenience than anything else. Now that I'm no longer talking on my cell phone, I've noticed that whenever I pass by someone who is, I usually hear one of two things: "Where are you?" or "I'm [at such-and-such a location]." True, these conversations may go on to other topics, but that's how most of them start. That's one reason it becomes clearer each day that human beings have a deep biological need to feel connected to one another, almost to the point that on some level we feel actually, physically lost without such contacts.

I think dogs are the same way. They're not as neurotic about this deep need as some cell phone users seem to be, but they do have a strong biological need to feel connected to us.

Every so often you'll hear a story in the news about a dog who gets lost, and then then miraculously, against all odds, travels long distances to find his way home. Whether it's an Airedale named Max who got lost in Connecticut, 45-miles away from his home in Rhode Island, and was found hanging out in his own back yard three weeks later, or Jarvis, a Jack Russell terrier from Devon, England, who got lost on a family outing, and made his way home by hopping a ferry across the Plymouth Sound, it's hard to know how they got to where they were going. In rare cases dogs have even managed to do this while the family was in the process of moving; yet the dog still shows up at their new front door months later, tired and hungry, and wagging its tail.

How does this happen? What kind of GPS system do they use?

I was researching data on the mechanisms that homing pigeons and monarch butterflies use when finding their way home (or navigating), and discovered that, so far, science only has some educated guesses as to how those things happen. For pigeons one theory is that they operate by magnetoception, the ability to "tune-in" to changes in the earth's magnetic field. For monarch butterfiles, who travel every year from Canada and the northern United States to Mexico (and then back), their flight patterns are reportedly, "inherited." This makes sense because the individual butterflies that leave for Mexico are three generations removed from the ones that actually arrive. This means that those that eventually return north each year are at least six generations removed from the ones that started the journey. And since their flight patterns are very exact, those patterns would almost have to be encoded into each butterfly's DNA. But how do group memories get stored in an individual's DNA? Or do they?

As I thought about this, I realized that dogs might find their way home in similar fashion to some experiences I had when I was in college. I didn't get lost, but somehow, against all odds, I found my way from Point A to an unknown, yet very desirable Point B, with only my emotions to guide me.

The first time this happened, I was totally enamored with a girl named Pat Smith. We'd bumped into each other a few times on campus and I'd felt an instant attraction for her. (She reminded me of a young Ingrid Bergman.) I was too shy and love struck to be of any use to her or myself the first time we met. The second time, I was a bit more relaxed. After she laughed at a couple of my jokes, I got up the nerve to ask for her phone number, and she gave it to me.

Then I asked her where she lived, meaning on or off campus. She told me the name of the street she lived on, but couldn't remember the address; she was "bad with numbers."

I called her later that evening and found out she'd given me the wrong phone number. (She really was bad with numbers.)

I couldn't stop thinking about her, though. I had to see her again. But how? I could let the days drag by on their own, and hope that I might run into her again somewhere, somehow. But that seemed much too slippery and intangible, not to mention contingent on happenstance.

I told my roommate, Mark, about her, hoping he might have a solution, or maybe talk me down from the romantic ledge I was putting myself on. It didn't help.

Finally, one evening, I decided to take action. My car wasn't working, so when Mark picked me up after my shift at the local radio station, where I was a DJ, I asked if he'd mind driving me to this girl's house.

"You found out where she lives?"

"No, I just know it's a house on Seventh North."

"That's a big street with a lot of houses."

"I know. I just have this feeling that I'll know which one is hers."

Mark, who'd had his own share of romantic obsessions, said. "Okay, but keep it short. I want to get to the record store before it closes."

So we drove, Mark shaking his head, me staring intently at all the houses we passed by. After several blocks I said, "Pull over here."

He pulled over. I got out. He looked at his watch.

"I know," I said. "But this is her house. I can feel it."

He shook his head. "I'll keep the motor running."

I made my way up to the front door, feeling foolish and stupid and vulnerable, yet driven to find out if this was the house with the potentially wonderful girl living in it. I knocked.

A moment later the door opened. It was a college girl, but not the one I was hoping to see. Mark was right; this might take all night.

"Uh, hi. Sorry. I'm looking for Pat Smith? Does she live here?"

The girl gave me a funny look, then said, "Yes. But she's not home."

Wow. I'd nailed it.

After a brief conversation - in which Pat's roommate gave me the correct phone number (two of the digits had been reversed), and promised to tell her I'd dropped by - I went back out to the car and Mark and I went to the record store, shaking our heads in wonder.

Now, you might be thinking so what? What does that tell us about how dogs are able to find their way home when they get lost?

Well, first of all, that's not the only time I've done something like that. I once had a crush on another girl who told me that she'd be going to concert, that had been sold-out. I went to the venue anyway and stood at the entrance, hoping I'd bump into someone with an extra ticket. After a while the girl I liked and a group of her friends showed up. (This isn't the good part; I knew she'd probably be showing up there.) We chatted, I explained my ticketless state, and they said, "Oh, too bad..." and the like. But as we were talking another group of her friends came by, and one of them actually had an extra ticket.

So I was not only able to get into the concert, I was able to sit right next to the girl I liked.

Here's the reason I've shared these stories: they're not extraordinary. We all do things like this, or at least similar to this, every day. We become filled with a strong desire to connect to something - a potential mate, a job, a new place to live, a hard-to-find article of clothing, a concert ticket - and that desire creates a kind of "magical" connection between us and the thing we want.

However, I don't believe it's magical at all. I believe that in order for that connection to take place, there probably has to be some kind of natural energy field - call it emotional , bioenergetic, cardio-magnetic, or morphogenetic - that enables us (and dogs) to plug our internal GPS systems in and follow where it leads us. This may sound "new-agey," and perhaps it is. But the mere fact that this article started with an observation about cell phones kind of indicates that we're actually living in a new age, at least where science and technology are concerned.

So it seems to me that when a dog is lost and wants to find his way home, he's not remembering his route, or navigating by certain signposts, or thinking about what he's doing. If he did, he wouldn't get anywhere, just as I wasn't getting any closer to the girl I wanted to see by constantly thinking about her. No, a dog has to go by feeling his way. And if his drive to connect is strong enough, he'll get home simply by going where the bioenergetic (or emotional or magnetic or morphogenetic) field resonates most intensely with his desire.

A part of this process is perfectly illustrated in an Ikea commercial showing right now on TV. In it a married couple come home from vacation and fall, face first, onto their bed - first the wife, then the husband - and talk to it, telling it how much they missed it while they were away.

For most of us, home is a place of strong emotional resonance. If we were to chart our daily movements, home would be the center, with all other locations - work, the supermarket, the movies, a friend's house, the kids' schools - acting as satellites. It's as if "home" has its own emotional gravity, and so we find ourselves orbiting around and then being pulled back to it day in and day out. The more positive experiences we have with being there - comfort, rest, the satisfaction of eating and drinking, feelings of love and affection, feeling connected - the more those things would displace our own energy fields, creating a kind of emotional tide that constantly, yet subtly, pulls us homeward.

If home and family have any kind of emotional resonance for dogs - and I'm pretty sure they do - then it's those properties that displace the lost dog and pull him in one direction not another, just as I felt myself being pulled directly toward one house, and one house only, because that's where the person I most wanted to see and talk to lived. And if I was able to do it just because of a passing crush, imagine how much simpler it would be for a dog who's lost the people who mean the most to him. After all, there's a great deal of truth to the homily that "home is where the heart is," and of all God's creatures, dogs may be the ones with the most "heart."

So it's really no wonder that a lost dog would be able to find his way home. He's just doing what dogs do when hunting for a favorite toy. Only in this case the are stakes higher: he's trying to find a missing piece of his heart.

LCK

"Changing the World, One Dog at a Time"

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Siege at Druid Peak

2010-01-18T11:41:00.000-08:00

This article also appears at PsychologyToday.com.

Wolves, Social Networks, & Feedback Mechanisms

"Nothing in nature is random." - Spinoza

This is one of the strangest and most intriguing stories I've ever come across. It starts simply enough with a pack of gray wolves living happily in British Columbia. Then one day, in 1995, while they were out doing ordinary wolflike things, they were tranquilized by a group of biologists, fitted with radio collars, then transported to a new environment: the Lamar Valley in Yellowstone National Park. They were dubbed the Druid Peak pack, named after a central geographic feature of the valley. By 2002 -- after six or seven generations of new wolves came along -- the pack was getting a little too big to sustain itself. So a group split off, left the valley, and formed their own pack near Slough Creek, where, over the next several years, they grew to outnumber their old pack mates by almost three to one.

In 2005, when PBS began filming In the Valley of the Wolves, to document this phase of the wolves' transition to the park, the Druids had been ensconced in the Lamar Valley for over twelve years. They were reportedly now "at war" with the Slough Creek Pack, though the incursions from their rivals were few and far between. There was also a coyote husband and wife living in the valley, enjoying a semi-peaceful co-existence with the Druids. They would often approach the Druids' latest kill from a safe distance, and, in an almost pro forma way, one or more of the Druids would launch a mock attack.

Wolf: "Hey! You know the rules!"

Coyote: "Sorry, we were hungry. We'll come back later."

Wolf: "Okay. But there might not be much left..."

Even when the Druids were hunting it was almost like a game to them. It was only when they got in close enough to be gored or maimed by their prey's horns and hooves that their teeth came out.

There was also a lone wolf who apparently wanted to leave the Slough Creek pack. He would occasionally come around, trotting behind the Druids at a safe distance, eyeing a particular young female. The father repeatedly chased him away, not in a mean fashion, just a kind of, "She's too young for you!" The female's attraction was stronger than her father's objections, though, so her suitor was eventually allowed to join the family.

And family is the key word. If you were to compare life in the Lamar Valley to a 1950s television show, it would've been more like "Leave it to Beaver" than "Wild Kingdom."

That all changed in the winter of 2006 when the Slough Creek pack came into the valley, launching an all-out attack on everyone in it. In a period of just a few days they had killed the mama and papa wolf, scattered the rest of the pack, slaughtered more elk than they could eat, and instead of just chasing the coyote couple away from their latest kill, they systematically chased down the husband and ripped him to shreds while his helpless, now-pregnant wife watched, terrified, from a distance. Then, their thirst for blood still not satisfied, they came after her too. Luckily, she was able to scramble safely away.

Then spring came slowly, as it does in the high country. Several of the Slough Creek females had given birth, and were raising their litters in a group of dens on the side of a hill sheltered from the lingering snow. The valley's victors, the Slough Creek males, had grown a bit lazy. They had let their guard down. So they weren't prepared when, one day, as they returned from a hunting expedition, they found a group of mysterious black wolves -- very different in color from the mostly grey and brown Druids and Slough Creekers -- who had come marching into the valley, taken strategic positions on the hill, and staged a siege outside the dens of the nursing females. These interlopers -- while fewer in number than the Slough Creek males -- easily fended off all attempted sorties. There was no way for those males to get food to their wives and pups.

The black wolves did nothing but wait patiently on the side of that snow-covered hill. The days turned into weeks, and one by one, every single Slough Creek pup in every litter died slowly of starvation. The helpless adults were bereft, agitated, in a state of terrible distress, so much so that by the time the black wolves finally left the valley, never to return, the Slough Creek pack scattered to the winds, their spirits broken.

It wasn't long before the Druids came out of hiding, joyously re-assembled, and re-took control of their beloved valley. For them, it must have been the best spring in years.

As mysterious as this event was, on a certain level we can sort of understand the behavior of the Slough Creek pack. They wanted the valley. They had superior numbers; they came in and they took it. Still, they didn't have to kill the coyote husband; he was no threat. In fact, by chasing him down and killing him, they used up more energy than it was worth. So did killing more elk than they needed. If one of the laws of nature is the conservation of energy, then these wolves weren't aware of it.

Even so, that's not what's really puzzling. What's really hard for us to wrap our minds around is the behavior of those mysterious black wolves. They weren't following the rules of nature either. Far from it! They weren't after the valley's resources. They didn't do much if any hunting there. They just waltzed in, surrounded the dens, waited for all the pups to die, and then left, as if that were their sole purpose, which makes no sense at all. Who were they? Where did they come from? Why did they do what they did?

Biologists and evolutionary scientists can't explain this. To them it's either an extended example of biological altruism (their behavior benefited the Druids), or just a random event that holds little or no meaning.

Yet we also have no explanation (other than, "Gee, aren't dogs wonderful?") for incidents like the one reported on NPR last week: A pointer named Effie, was out for a normal walk with her owner. But within a few minutes she started pulling to go in a different direction, than took off running to a nearby house where a 94-year-old man was lying unconscious, face down in his driveway. The dog started licking the stranger's face. Her owner called 911, then began doing CPR. Together, they saved the man's life.

Why do these things happen? How do we explain them?

The only answer I can think of is that that dogs and wolves may have their own form of Twitter and Facebook, their own social networks that help them tune into situations that require action when someone in the network is in danger, or perhaps even when the network-as-a-whole is out of whack. The difference is that we react to situations like the one going on right now in Haiti, or the Tsunami several years ago, both from a gut level, as animals do, and from a plane of conscious thought. "Oh, those poor people!" we think, and wonder how we can help. Then we start networking.

Dogs and wolves can't text each other; they don't have thumbs. But they can definitely feel what someone else is feeling, and they seem to do so as if it's actually happening to them. From my observations, canines also seem to have a gut reaction when something's not right in whatever social network, large or small, they're a part of. For Effie, that network may be her neighborhood. For those mysterious black wolves, it's a much larger network, one that includes the entire Yellowstone basin. In fact I would argue that it consists of all wolves and coyotes, along with the birds, the elk, the aspen trees, the rivers and streams, the weather systems, the sky above and the earth below, and even the PBS cameraman, drinking coffee from a Thermos, munching an energy bar, and making breath clouds behind his telephoto lens while waiting for the wolves to do something interesting.

Konrad Lorenz, who's responsible for most of the misinformation we now have about dogs and wolves, was still a brilliant scientist, capable of keen insights. One of his theories on ecology is the idea of feedback mechanisms. "In nature," he writes, "these mechanisms tend towards a 'stable state' among the living beings of an ecology: A closer examination shows that these beings... not only do not damage each other, but often constitute a community of interests. It is obvious that the predator is strongly interested in the survival of that species, animal or vegetable, which constitutes its prey. ... It is not uncommon that the prey species derives specific benefits from its interaction with the predator species." (Civilized Man's Eight Deadly Sins, 1974, p. 33). As if to prove this point, after the Canadian wolves were relocated to Yellowstone, a funny thing happened; the aspen trees, which had been dying out, made a comeback.

I don't think the black wolves came to Yellowstone to rescue the Druids from the evil Slough Creek pack. It's easy for us to see things in those terms, black and white, heroes and villains. But I think the black wolves came simply because they were part of a natural Lorenzian feedback mechanism. The Slough Creek pack had gotten too big and powerful for the network-as-a-whole. The black wolves felt a disturbance in that network, so they took action, not to punish or "unfriend" the Slough Creek wolves, and not to rescue the Druids either, but simply to restore the network to its optimal setting. (It's telling that they didn't kill any of the adult wolves; they simply got in the way of their ability to provide food to their young, which prevented a new generation from becoming part of a pack that had already grown too big.) To me this is the only explanation that makes any sense.

The key feature of wolf behavior is their ability to hunt together as a cohesive social unit. In order to do that, you have to have enormous social and emotional flexibility. You have to be able to read each other's social signals very quickly and extremely well, especially in a high-pressure situation. When dogs begans domesticating us, around 12,000 years ago, they expanded on the wolf's natural social networking skills, so that now they exhibit an extraordinary ability to read human social signals in a way that's far more developed than what we find even in our closest biological relative, the chimp. (In some ways dogs are far more social than even we are!) Their social intelligence is the primary reason dogs are the current "it" animal for cognitive research.

So the next time you take your dog for a walk, switch off your cell phone or Blackberry. And don't worry that you'll be out of touch; you'll still have a direct connection to one of the most wonderful and miraculous social networks ever created, right there at the end of the leash.

LCK
"Changing the World, One Dog at a Time"
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Why Do Dogs Mark Their Territory?

2010-01-11T12:37:00.000-08:00

...

Why Do Dogs Mark Their Territory?

The simplest answer is they don't.

In The Intelligence of Dogs, author Stanley Coren gives us the classical explanation of this myth: "All canids use urine ... to mark the limits of their territories. In males this marking behavior is usually accompanied by leg lifting to direct the urine against large objects (trees, rocks, bushes) to place the scent at nose height for other dogs and to allow the scent to radiate over a large area. Some African wild dogs ... scrabble as high up the trunk of a tree as possible before squirting their message."

First of all, dogs urinate far beyond the boundaries or limits of their so-called territory. Secondly, males aren't the only ones who lift their legs; some females (usually the anxious type) do this as well. Thirdly, dogs don't just urinate on large objects, but on vertical objects (trees, posts), unfamiliar or inorganic objects (tires, plastic bags, fire hydrants), and on anything carrying a scent that the dog wants to cover (such as another animal's urine or feces).

Coren is not responsible for the myth. His offhand re-telling of it, as if it were a scientific certainty, merely highlights a general tendency in science: in attempting to dissect how an animal's behavior might serve an adaptive purpose -- in this case marking would be a hypothetical means of limiting competition within a niche or habitat -- most scientists blur the line between what makes sense in terms of the grand arc of evolution, and what an individual animal is capable of in terms of its cognitive abilities.

Of course if a biologist who witnessed the African wild dogs madly scrabbling up the tree trunks did so with the belief that dogs urinate to send a message to other dogs, their behavior would, no doubt, confirm his hypothesis. But if we approach this behavior with a clearer mind we might ask, how could these dogs possibly know the "nose height" of another, purely hypothetical dog who might (or might not) come along at some undetermined point in the future?

In The Secret Life of Dogs, anthropologist Elizabeth Marshall Thomas compares a dog's urine marks to Hansel and Gretel's trail of pebbles and bread crumbs: a means of finding their way home. But that would mean the dog was planning for the potential (thus, hypothetical) possibility of getting lost. I've never seen any evidence for that kind of thinking in the dogs I've known. They live totally in the now moment.

Roger Caras, whose voice used to be heard each year at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show in New York, was fond of saying that when a dog sniffs a fire hydrant he's "reading his mail". This is highly anthropomorphic, yet it's hard to dispute that a dog does get information from the scent of other dogs this way. The only question is, did the dog who left the scent do so with the intention of "sending a message" to the one who comes along later?

It doesn't make sense that any dog would have the intelligence necessary to leave messages for other dogs in this manner because in order to do so he would have to be capable of propositional and/or hypothetical thinking, directed fantasy, mental time travel, not to mention a full-blown theory of mind. "If I mark this fence (propositional thinking), Spike will come along some time in the future (directed fantasy, hypothetical thinking, mental time travel), sniff it (more fantasy, more hypothetical thinking), and know he's in my territory (theory of mind, abstract and conceptual thinking) and start to feel nervous about being here (more theory of mind)." That's pretty complicated thinking for a dog.

Territory is defined by biologists as an area which an animal will defend against intruders of the same species. But how is such an area delineated in the animal's mind? Are its boundaries visible and concrete or imaginary and abstract? Is a dog capable of forming a mental image of where his territory begins and ends? And if animals have no sense of self and other, how could they think of a territory as "mine" or "belonging to me?"

Meanwhile, I got my first glimpse into a more reasonable explanation of why dogs mark -- one that has nothing to do with "territory" -- many years ago when I took my dog Freddie to a training session I had with a six-month Maltese male named Buckwheat who hadn't had much socialization with other dogs. Freddie's presence made Bucky a little nervous, but not to the point that he couldn't learn the games we were teaching him. However, at several key points during the lesson -- which was taking place in the dining room -- I put Freddie in a down /stay by a piano in the living room, to keep him out of the way. Later Bucky's owner told me that immediately after Fred and I left, Bucky had gone over to the piano and had urinated on the spot where Freddie was told to lie down.

Why did he do that? To mark the limits of his territory? He was already inside his territory; in fact, not even inside his territory but inside his "den." Did he do it to send a message to Freddie? The answer is simple: The rug held remnants of Freddie's scent. That made Bucky nervous so he put his own scent on top, to cover it up. Yes, in a sense, he marked the piano, but not to tell Freddie that it was his. If anything, he did it just to relieve his internal tension.

A few years later, while doing research for a subplot about kidney disease for my 4th novel, 'Twas the Bite Before Christmas, I learned that in mammals, the need to urinate is controlled, in large part, by the neuropeptide vasopressin. Higher levels of vasopressin increase water retention, reducing the need to urinate. Low levels are associated with excessive urination, bedwetting, etc. Vasopressin also has a converse relationship with the stress hormone, cortisol: when cortisol levels go up, vasopressin goes down, suggesting that there's a causal relation between stress and excessive urination.

So it seems far more likely that when one male detects the scent of another dog, (particularly an unknown male), it could cause a perhaps low-level stress reaction, which would then increase his need to urinate. As he does he would feel the pleasure of releasing some of the tension and pressure in his body. And thus, over time, his body would self-reinforce the behavior of peeing on top of another dog's scent. It would be a purely emotional and perhaps Pavlovian response, not based on intellect or other mental faculties.

Later, when this dog smells a urine mark he'd made earlier, he would probably re-experience, on some level, the original lessening of tension and the pleasure it produced. (Of the five senses the sense of smell is the one most likely to evoke memories.) He learns to mark in order to relieve emotional tension and to feel connected to his environment.

This explanation is simple, whole, and complete. It requires no complicated thinking on the dog's part. It obeys the rules of parsimony and logic. And it only requires that a dog have the ability to experience tension and pleasure, and to form simple physical and emotional associations.

LCK

"Changing the World, One Dog at a Time"

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The Natural Dog Training Difference

2010-01-03T10:34:00.000-08:00

Here's an in-depth look at how Natural Dog Training differs from the popular pack leader and positive reinforcement methods, including videos of all three methods in action.

The Natural Dog Training Difference

I read something interesting on Kevin Behans’s blog the other day, about how nearly everyone who takes their first ride on a camel or elephant experiences motion sickness, but this doesn’t happen when people ride a horse for the first time. Kevin’s reasoning is that horses naturally know how to adjust their movements to incorporate the rider’s center of gravity.

In thinking about that, I realized that what’s missing from both the dominance and +R approach to training, and what we do, is that dogs really do have a sort of emotional center of gravity as Kevin postulates. And when we teach them to do an exercise like the heel, for instance, using thought-centric models of learning, such as dominance and +R, the dogs have to figure out, on their own, how to match their forward momentum and energy with ours. But when we teach them using Natural Dog Training, no matter how bad we are at it initially, if our goal is to teach the dog to be in-synch with us physically and emotionally (instead of teaching them to respect our leadership, or by rewarding their external behaviors), at some point we’ll find that we’re actually creating a feeling in the dog of a shared center-of-gravity, just like with a horse and rider. In that respect, heeling not only feels natural to the dog. It feels really, really good.

To highlight these differences, here’s a video of Cesar Millan solving a fairly simple behavioral problem of a great Dane who gets too energized when she goes jogging with her owner. She expresses this excess energy (which is essentially a nervousness about how to keep her desire to run full-bore in check) as jumping up on the owner. Cesar interprets this as a problem of dominance, and teaches the dog to stay next to her owner by being “submissive.”

There’s so much wrong in Cesar’s explanation of the problem, not mention in how he solves it, yet it’s hard to dispute the visual “evidence” of the results.

So what, exactly, if anything, is wrong with Cesar’s approach?

Well for starters, even without knowing that dominance is not a real character trait or behavioral output in dogs, it’s quite easy to see that the Dane is simply expressing a strong social attraction — the desire to connect to her owner — in an inappropriate way. She’s also feeling nervous because she's unsure of how to align her energy with the owner while they're running: faster forward momentum = a challenge to the dog's ability to feel or stay connected, so she’s jumping up to ground some of that excess energy.

The thing is, you never want to punish or correct social attraction, no matter what form it takes. And you especially don’t want to do it by intimidating the dog, as Cesar does. If you watch his body language, and the body language of the dog very closely, you’ll see that Millan is actually acting very much like a predator in order to keep the dog in a “submissive” state. You can see this most clearly in the section where he first demonstrates the “touch” to the dog’s throat — which in the past he described as a “bite,” as in “If a dog can bite me, why I can't I bite him back?” — then moves into the dog’s space, making the dog even more nervous and unsure of herself.

In short, the problem is “solved” by repressing the dog’s energy instead of celebrating that energy and channeling it into a happy, joyous heel. (Personally, I probably wouldn’t take a great Dane jogging anyway; I don’t thinking jogging is a good idea with most dogs, particularly those with a big barrel chest and narrow waist.*)

But other than telling the owner to come up with an alternative exercise plan,** if we look at this as an energy problem, the way to solve it would be keep that level of energy active in the dog, but give it a different outlet without intimidating or repressing her drive to connect. In other words, keep the dog’s drive energy up but channel it into a heel. (After a while the Dane learns to do this on her own, but is still confused, unhappy, and not as energetic as before.)

Contrast the dominance approach with the traditional clicker-training and food-luring method, as shown by Nancy Cusick, a professional dog trainer from Texas who's been described (by herself and others) as The Awesomest Dog Trainer in Austin, which she may very well be. (I pulled this video at random from YouTube.)

I see several things lacking here. One is that the puppy is a bit too young for the exercise. She just wants to sniff and explore. Each time she does, Cusick redirects her with a kissing sound. That’s nice, and fine in theory, but by doing this Cusick slowly and inevitably becomes an obstacle to the puppy’s desires, desires that are being controlled more by the puppy’s developmental needs than by hunger.

Also, at one point when the pup sits while not in the heel position, the trainer moves her body next to the pup’s rather than using her own body language and energy to induce the puppy to move toward her and then sit. Then she clicks and rewards the dog for being in that position. This is based on the somewhat questionable idea that dogs learn through positive reinforcement: if the dog is reinforced while it’s in the proper position it will gradually learn to choose that position on its own. (Notice that despite the seeming validity of this idea, the more the trainer rewards the puppy for being in the heel position, the more the puppy actually wanders off to explore, and do other things on her own.)

Another problem is that when the trainer accidentally drops food on the ground, and the puppy goes after it, the trainer makes the kissing sound again to try to redirect the puppy’s attention back to her. Again, you can see clearly that the more the trainer does this, the less attention the puppy pays to the trainer. (At one point the trainer even jokes to the camera, “Attention doggie deficit…” and chuckles.)

There is nothing inherently wrong with using a kissing sound while teaching a dog to walk next to you. The problem here is with the timing. Instead of making the kissing sound as soon as the pup loses focus, the trainer does it after the puppy has already projected its energy onto something else. So the kissing sound ends up feeling like a punishment to the puppy.

Puppy loses focus ... finds something to focus on ... handler makes kissing sound.

Puppy feels, “Hey, I was having fun!”

Contrast that with making the kissing sound the instant the pup loses focus, before she finds something else to focus her energy on: “What can I find around here to focus on?”

Puppy loses focus ... trainer immediately makes kissing sound.

Here the puppy feels, “Oh, good! I can focus my energy on you! This feels great!”

See the difference?

I’ll give Cusick the benefit of the doubt (as I said, she probably is the awesomest dog trainer in Austin, Texas), and suggest that part of the problem may be she’s not just focused on training the pup, she’s also talking to the camera as she works: not an easy thing to do.

However, in the end the puppy only has a “generalized” heel, whose focus is very easily broken except when doing the sit while in the heel position. The reason the puppy is focused then is because that’s the only time the puppy isn’t feeling a disconnect between its own body and the trainer’s. While they’re doing the heel the puppy is mildly interested in getting the treats, but can’t figure out how to match her body’s need for forward momentum with the movement of the trainer’s body and the food lure. And the trainer isn’t using the food to help the pup solve the problem, she’s only using it as a lure and a positive reinforcement.

To recap, in Cesar Millan’s mind the dog’s problem is “How can I be submissive to my pack leader?” which is based on a false premise. Meanwhile, the positive trainer sees the puppy’s problem as, “How can I get a reward? Maybe if I heel I’ll get a treat?” which is just as false. Both ideas require the dog to engage in a linear, rational, time-dependent thought process, and a) dogs aren't capable of rational or hypothetical thinking, and b) they live totally in the moment, without any awareness of linear, chronological time.

In each case the real problem for the doggie is, “How can I get my body to feel in-synch with my handler’s energy and momentum while we’re both moving together?”

Now contrast these two approaches with this video of Kevin Behan, working on the heel with a Doberman pinscher named Laszlo, using the natural approach.

First of all Laszlo is no ordinary dog. His owner brought him to Kevin because she was having a great deal of difficulty with his overabundant energy. As she wrote on her own blog, Laszlo was so wired that “he wouldn't lie down. I don't mean on command — I mean, he wouldn't lie down. Such was his anxiety and vigilance.”

Now, that’s a tense doggie!

The first thing Kevin does with Laszlo in this video is the pushing exercise, where he gets Laszlo to push for food. He does it, among other things, to stimulate Laszlo's social attraction to him. To the uninitiated viewer this may look just like “luring” the dog with treats the way Nancy Cusick does, but there’s a lot more to it than that.

How to Do the Pushing Exercise

How and Why It Works

After a bit of pushing, Kevin begins moving around, encouraging Laszlo to move with him. At one point Laszlo gets distracted by a puddle, but Kevin just keeps moving (no kissing sound), encouraging the dog to connect to him (and what’s in his bait bag). At other times Laszlo finds bits of food on the ground and Kevin waits a bit for him to finish eating them before he starts moving again.

Once he’s got Laszlo moving with him he begins to oscillate between acting like prey and predator, moves that again, to the uninitiated, might seem to have no purpose.

“He’s just throwing in some silly tai-chi moves to impress people.”

They may seem silly, but if you watch carefully, you’ll see that each shift in Kevin’s body language creates an immediate, in-the-moment shift in Laszlo's behavior, his approach to staying in-synch with Kevin’s movements. Those “silly” moves of Kevin’s have nothing to do with tai-chi, per se, though they do create shifts in Laszlo’s energy (which, for all I know, may actually be one of the goals of tai-chi).

At a certain point, Kevin even gets Laszlo to hold a down/stay without even giving the command. (Kevin exhibits some interesting “marching band” moves during this sequence as a means of both enticing Laszlo to break the stay, and to keep him in it at the same time.) And you’ll notice that Laszlo’s ears never go down or back except once or twice, for a fraction of a second, and each time they do, Kevin compensates with food or with his body language to bring the dog’s energy back into to a more relaxed and confident state.

There is no intimidation or dominance and submission in anything Kevin does. (Kevin does occasionally touch Laszlo’s neck with the back of his hand, which is done to help ground the dog's energy a little and to “steer” him a little, the way you’d do with a horse’s reins.)

You’ll also notice (I hope) the way Kevin does the about turns, which gently induce Laszlo to stay in "the pocket." To help with this, he uses food as a means of keeping the dog’s drive-to-connect up and active rather than as a reward for any one specific behavior. It’s more like a dance, one that leaves Laszlo entirely under Kevin’s command with no punishment or bad feelings taking place.

At the end, Laszlo is heeling off-lead, and his energy is totally plugged in to Kevin.

By the way, the movements that Kevin makes don’t need to be, and in my opinion, shouldn’t be, copied exactly by you or anyone else. Those particular “dance steps” are organic to Kevin’s emotional energy and personality. Think of Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, and Bob Fosse performing the exact same dance sequence for a movie. Even seen only in silhouette, so you couldn’t recognize their faces, there would be no question as to which man was dancing during each sequence. By the same token, everyone will do the heel exercise differently, depending on how they naturally express their own energy through their own physical and emotional centers-of-gravity.

LCK

"Changing the World, One Dog at a Time"

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Footnotes:

*Breeds like Danes, Dobermans, Dalmatians, viszlas, boxers, greyhounds, who all have a similar chest conformation, are designed to run hard and fast for brief spurts, not to jog slowly for long stretches.

**Working on the heel the way Kevin does will use up more of a dog's energy in 5 - 10 minutes than a 1/2 hour jog will. If you add playing tug, fetch, and push-of-war, the dog's energy needs will be completely satisfied.

The Meeting of the Dogs

2009-12-11T08:24:00.000-08:00

This poem is found in the front section of my novel, 'Twas the Bite Before Christmas.

The Meeting of the Dogs

The dogs they had a meeting.
They came from near and far.
Some of them came by Greyhound bus
While others came by car.

The purpose of their meeting?
To fill the world with glee
and put a brand new puppy
under ev'ry Christmas tree.

But a special hall was rented,
and the landlord did declare
he didn't want them running 'round
just pooping ev'rywhere.

So before inside that rented hall
the dogs could even look
they had to take their hineys off
and hang them on a hook.

Then once inside the meeting—
ev'ry mother, son and sire—
some cat, dressed in a dog suit,
began to holler, "Fire!"

They all rushed out, that pack of dogs.
They had no time to look,
to which type of hiney
they grabbed off its little hook.

They got their hineys all mixed up.
It really made 'em sore,
to have to wear a hiney
they'd never worn before.

Then, once the chaos ended,
so did the dogs' grand scheme,
and kids who'd dreamed of puppies
were left with just a dream.

It's also why you'll see a dog
give up a juicy bone,
to go and sniff and hiney,
to see if it's his own.

Merry Christmas to All, and to All a Good Bite!

LCK

The Negative Effects of Positive Reinforcement

2009-11-22T07:30:00.000-08:00

Here's another article originally posted at my PsychologyToday blog:

The Negative Effects of Positive Reinforcement

In the first article in this series, Why Behavioral Science Is Losing the Training Wars, I described two examples of learning in dogs that can't be explained through either the pack leader model of training or learning theory, and suggested that the reason the positive training movement hasn't dominated the current training landscape is that behavioral science isn't as scientific as positive (or +R) trainers claim.

In the second, Is Behavioral Science Failing Our Dogs, I described how my two examples can only be explained completely and satisfactorily through a simple energy theory which operates primarily on the principle that all behaviors, instinctive or learned, are designed to reduce a dog's internal tension or stress:

stimulus (energy-in) > increased tension > behavior (energy-out) > release

It's all pure energy.

This idea may seem strange at first, but after all, the universe started out as energy. It then differentiated into subatomic particles, then into atoms of hydrogen, then helium, and up the periodic table. At a certain point some atoms were joined, energetically, into various kinds of molecules. At a point beyond that some of these molecules developed into living organisms, which then evolved and developed into the rich complexity of nature we see all around us (and inside of us) today. From the Big Bang to the dog run, energy continues to manifest itself in everything your dog does, from the way the neurons fire inside his brain to the way his tail wags when you come home from work.

In presenting his energy theory, former police dog trainer and natural philosopher Kevin Behan, writes: "The irreducible essence of anything is always a function of energy. I'm proposing that the nature of dogs is also a function of an energetic makeup rather than a [mental or] psychological one." (Read more here.)

My good friend Alexandra Semyonova -- a highly-respected and well-known dog trainer in the Netherlands, who uses only positive reinforcement techniques -- wrote to me not long ago, saying, "Your energy theory¹ is not as far-fetched as people may think. It's just that you have to think interdisciplinarily to get it. You could say that an energy exchange with the environment doesn't only take place through food. As two dogs look at each other [or play together], the electrical patterns in their brains change. This can trigger changes in physical structure. And because those brains are a sort of solidified past, those dogs will be responsive to [the] kind of energy related to that past, and not to some other kind of energy that wasn't present or important at the time²."

To me, that's brilliant. And it's exactly how operant conditioning works (when it does work). The reinforcement for "good" behaviors isn't the result of an external object, event, or marker; it's due to the way a dog's emotional energy flows and finds a satisfying release. The more satisfying the release, the more deeply the behavior it's coupled with is learned³.

Mind you, when I talk about energy I'm not being vague and new-agey. I'm talking about nervous or emotional energy. Nervous energy is essentially electric: the movement of electrons through one neuron into the next. It's choppy; it has an unpleasant stop/start feel. Plus it's hard to control; it operates on its own, almost forcing an animal to obey its (the energy's) own needs. True, nervous energy is necessary for an animal's survival, but it has nothing to do with animal happiness. That's a problem, because both dominance training and operant conditioning rely primarily on survival feelings to get their effects: with a dominance-trained dog it's the need to avoid danger (i.e., a correction), with a positively-reinforced dog it's the need for food (remember, behavioral science got its start with Pavlov's dogs salivating at the sound of a bell, and continued with Skinner's rats pressing levers to obtain food pellets).

Emotional energy, though, is magnetic, flowing, and can be very pleasant. Yes, a dog may occasionally feel stressed if he has more emotional energy than his system can carry, especially if he has no way to resolve or release it. But at least he has more control over what he can do with it. And as long as he has that feeling, he's not distressed or thrown completely off-balance by the weight of excess emotion.

So it seems to me that despite Skinner's brilliance, instinctive biological needs actually interfere with an animal's capacity to learn, while positive emotions are the bedrock of learning. Behavior modification via survival needs is also almost wholly dependent on repetition and artificial reinforcement, not to mention the process of occasionally withholding rewards through a variable reinforcement ratio, which can be very stressful for a dog. Karen Pryor, one of the key figures of the positive training movement, writes in a 2006 article: "Reinforcement may go from predictable to a little unpredictable back to predictable, as you climb, step by step, toward your ultimate goal. Sometimes a novice animal may find this [variability] very disconcerting. If two or three expected reinforcers fail to materialize, the animal may simply give up and quit on you. You can see this clearly on the video of my fish learning to swim through a hoop. When three tries ‘didn't work' the fish not only quit trying, he had an emotional collapse, lying on the bottom of the tank in visible distress⁴."

Not only is this kind of training not positive, it actually proves that all behavior is learned, not through reinforcers, but through the reduction of internal tension or stress. The more stressed a dog is -- as with a variable ratio of reinforcement -- the deeper a behavior is learned when that stress is resolved. But learning through flow is anything but stressful. It also doesn't require reinforcements because it's an immensely pleasurable experience on its own. Plus it takes place instantly and automatically.

So no matter how well-conditioned our dogs become, no matter how much a part of their brain "salivates" at the sound of a clicker⁵, or works to gain a reward, on a certain level dogs are not very happy when they're subjected to learning through operant conditioning.

Not happy? Are you serious?

Deadly serious. I mean, think about it. Somewhere in the back of every dog trainer's mind is that image of Pavlov's dogs, salivating at the sound of a bell ringing. That's the apex of conditioning. Yet no one seems to consider how unhappy those dogs must have been. And let's not even get into the stress Skinner's lab rats and pigeons were feeling. So, yes, on a certain level, positive reinforcement is actually an unpleasant experience.

I know that may sound crazy, but the current trend in child-rearing and education tells us that positive reinforcement is undermining learning and happiness in our kids. In her Psychology Today blog, Creating in Flow, social psychologist Susan K. Perry quotes Teresa Amabile of Harvard. "If rewards become prominent in children's minds, they may overwhelm the intrinsic joy of doing something interesting and personally challenging." Kids who are given rewards for reading, for example, tend to choose shorter books in order to get more rewards, while children who are motivated by a love of learning will read anything that catches their fancy, just for the pure joy of it.

Every positive trainer reading this will assert that they see that kind of joy in their dog's eyes when their clients' dogs are learning through +R. I can only say that they must be seeing things differently than I do⁵. I would also argue that whatever happiness dogs do experience in a clicker class or by working for variable-ratio food rewards, it isn't because of the technique, it's probably because -- just like young children -- dogs are so hungry for learning and are designed to latch onto anything that gives them something to do with their energy -- especially in a social context -- that they're supplying their own emotional flow in order to help them move past the unpleasant aspects of conditioning techniques.

There's no doubt that there has to be a payoff for learning. That's the one simple truth of Skinner's theory. But if the payoff doesn't reduce internal tension, or spark feelings of pure joy, it will automatically create unhappiness and resistance in dogs just as it creates uncertainty and resentment in children.

The positive training movement defined itself from the outset as being a kinder and more scientific alternative to dominance training. And that's true. But dogs aren't lab rats. And there's a "new kid" in town, a method that's even kinder and may be more scientific.

If you've read my first article you'd know that my primary reason for discussing the holes I see in behavioral science is that dogs are trying to tell us something about the nature of consciousness. Lab rats and helper monkeys don't have the emotional capacity dogs do, so using survival feelings to condition them works fine most of the time. But dogs are different. Only canines, homo sapiens (and some cetaceans) have the ability to override instinct in favor of emotion. That's an amazing thing. And it's part of what makes dogs the current "it" species for cognitive scientists⁷.

We all love our dogs and we all want what's best for them. So I would challenge anyone reading this: if you believe operant conditioning is scientific, then be scientific and test Kevin Behan's energy theory for yourself. Next time I'll give you one simple exercise that will not only enable you to do that, it might just improve the lives of every dog you know.

LCK

Footnotes:

1) It's not my energy theory, though for some reason Semyonova likes to think it is. As this article states, it was developed by Kevin Behan. Oddly enough though, Semyonova and I are the first two people to describe canine social structure as part of a self-emergent system, long before we had a meeting of the minds online. Semyonova did it 2002 in her longitudinal study found at www.nonlineardogs.com, while I did it as a bit of passing dialogue in my first novel, A Nose for Murder, also published in 2002. Meanwhile, Kevin Behan described pack social structure -- particularly while hunting -- as a bottom-up, self-emergent system in his 1992 book, Natural Dog Training, even though he hadn't heard of emergence theory at the time: "Since each individual has different sensitivity to prey making, we observe the emergence of order -- the creation of a group and a pack -- out of what was chaos."

2) It's a physiological fact that certain sensory details associated with past emotional experiences can not only bring memories flooding back, they can often make you feel as if you're actually re-living that past event. One of the strongest of these mnemonic triggers comes through the sense of smell. For example, when your present-day nostrils inhale the same perfume worn by that wonderful girl you were in love with back in college, your olfactory nerves and the part of your hippocampus holding memories of her vibrate at the same frequency once again.

From Discover Magazine: "Quantum physics may explain the mysterious biological process of smell ... says biophysicist Luca Turin, who first published his controversial hypothesis in 1996 while teaching at University College London. Then, as now, the prevailing notion was that the sensation of different smells is triggered when molecules called odorants fit into receptors in our nostrils like three-dimensional puzzle pieces snapping into place. The glitch here, for Turin, was that molecules with similar shapes do not necessarily smell anything like one another. Pinanethiol [C10H18S] has a strong grapefruit odor, for instance, while its near-twin pinanol [C10H18O] smells of pine needles. Smell must be triggered, [Turin] concluded, by some criteria other than an odorant's shape alone.

"What is really happening, Turin posited, is that the approximately 350 types of human smell receptors perform an act of quantum tunneling when a new odorant enters the nostril and reaches the olfactory nerve. After the odorant attaches to one of the nerve's receptors, electrons from that receptor tunnel through the odorant, jiggling it back and forth. In this view, the odorant's unique pattern of vibration is what makes a rose smell rosy and a wet dog smell wet-doggy. It is the frequency of vibration, not the shape, that determines the scent of a molecule."

So Alexandra Semyonova's statement -- "dogs will be responsive to [the] kind of energy related to that past, and not to some other kind of energy that wasn't present or important at the time" -- is right on target.

3) While it's true that learning still takes place in relation to a dog's history (as behavioral scientists tell us), the key element isn't a conscious mental process such as thinking of past experiences and figuring out how to apply them to the present moment, or of learning through consequences or trial-and-error (which would all require that the dog be able to engage in mental time travel and/or propositional thinking). It's simply about the dog vibrating at the same frequency in the here-and-now moment as he did in the past: in other words, learning is a funciton of energy, not a mental thought process.

4) Pryor goes on to say, "Casinos, believe me, use the power of the variable ratio schedule to develop behaviors, such as playing slot machines, that are very resistant to extinction, despite highly variable and unpredictable reinforcement."

So are we training dogs or creating gambling addicts?

5) Clicker training was invented by Keller Breland -- a student and later a colleague of B.F. Skinner -- as a way of marking behaviors while working with hunting dogs at a distance. Breland later taught Karen Pryor how to use clicks and whistles to train dolphins. Here's how Pryor describes the process:

"The trainer clicks at the moment the behavior occurs: the horse raises its hoof, the trainer clicks simultaneously. The dog sits, the trainer clicks. Clicking is like taking a picture of the behavior the trainer wishes to reinforce. After ‘taking the picture,' the trainer gives the animal something it likes, usually a small piece of food. Very soon (sometimes within two or three clicks), an animal will associate the sound of the click with something it likes: the reward. Since it wishes to repeat that pleasurable experience, it will repeat the action it was doing when it heard the click."

So again we're using Pavlov's dogs as a template.

6) Another figurehead of the positive training movement, Jean Donaldson, clicker trained her dog to hump her leg on cue. (I know!) In my experience dogs only exhibit that behavior when they're in a state of frustration, not joy. Yet Donaldson insists that her dog "seems to have fun" doing it. Plus it makes her (Donaldson) laugh. (For the full article, click here.)

Finally (on this point), the fact that +R trainers see joy in the dogs they train doesn't mean much; after all, I'm sure Cesar Millan -- the nemesis of the positive training movement -- sees joy in the eyes of the dogs he works with too.

7) Virginia Morrell writes in Science Magazine: "Dogs are fast becoming the it animal for evolutionary cognition research. Our canine pals, researchers say, are excellent subjects for studying the building blocks underlying mental abilities, particularly those involving social cognition. Their special relationship with humans is also seen as worthy of study in its own right; some researchers see Canis familiaris as a case of convergent evolution with humans because we share some similar behavioral traits. ... Some researchers even think that dogs may teach us more about the evolution ... of our social mind than can our closest kin, the chimpanzee, because Fido is so adept at reading and responding to human communication cues."

Captive & Laboratory Learning vs. The Natural Way

2009-11-07T08:37:00.000-08:00

Here's a comment on my latest Psychology Today blog article, along with my reply. If you haven't already read the article you may still be able to follow most of the arguments put forth here.

Laboratory Learning vs. The Natural Way

Comment Submitted by Anonymous on November 6, 2009 - 7:16pm

I really don't feel there is a firm grasp of operant (behavioral) conditioning concepts in place here. Getting your dog to stop picking up trash off the ground by praising him is putting that behavior on stimulus control. This is widely used to eliminate unwanted behaviors-you don't ask for it, you don't get it. And I don't think you can call trying something with a few dogs a "theory." That is an insult to the scientific method, quite frankly.

I appreciate dog owners doing their best to be better owners to their dogs, operant conditioning is ALWAYS at play in every interaction you have with not only every dog, but every human you come into contact with. Behavior is constantly being reinforced or punished.

Operant conditioning is NOT simply positive reinforcement, and anyone who makes that claim (which I will admit has become fairly common) does not understand operant conditioning.

Read Skinner, read the Brelands, read Karen Pryor!!

Operant conditioning is postive and negative reinforcement (both which INCREASE behavior), and positive and negative punishment (designed to DECREASE behavior).

These methods are used to train animals of literally nearly every species in captivity from elephants to whales to sharks to turtles to fish to alligators to cats to rabbits to frogs to fish (zoos and aquariums aquire all KINDS of behavior with it), so please do not disregard something proven to be so universally successful as something that may not really work for dogs. I love dogs, but I am sorry to say they are not any more special or unique than any other animal. Don't "dogthropomorphize" behavior when it is simply behavior that is yes, specifc to dogs, but not so unique that the wheel must be reinvented to accomodate it.

Answer, submitted by Lee Charles Kelley on November 7, 2009 - 7:41am

Hi,

I don't think you have a firm grasp of what I've written.

1) How was the scavenging behavior put under stimulus control? The general principle for that technique is something I'm very familiar with. I use it all the time to teach dogs not to jump up or bark by first teaching them to jump up or bark on command, then teaching them what “Okay, off,” or "Quiet..." means.

Explain how that applies here.

2) I never said that the use of praise to stop a dog from scavenging was the basis of any theory. If you had read my articles more carefully you'd see that this behavioral shift was only presented as an example of learning that can't be explained through the alpha theory or learning theory.

3) The idea that operant conditioning is always at play in every interaction someone has with any animal or human is a myth. Not even a die-hard behaviorist would argue that. (They'd say you're ignoring instances where classical conditioning is at play.) Meanwhile, I would argue (and have) that neither form of conditioning can explain all types of behavior or learning in animals and humans. How does a child learn impulse control by pretending to be a factory guard? Is that operant conditioning? How does operant conditioning explain the scavenging example? Like everyone else, you've only attached a label to the phenomenon, you haven't explained it.

4) As for your reading list, I've read Skinner. Lots of Skinner. I've also read the Brelands. And sad to say, I went through my own Karen Pryor phase, where I thought operant conditioning was the "one true answer." But the more I applied oc principles to dogs the more I realized that the emperor has no clothes. Perhaps you should read Dennett and Chomsky and Pinsky and John Staddon and Gary Cziko.

5) I understand full well the difference between positive and negative reinforcement. I was explaining my approach to dog training yesterday in Riverside Park to a woman who's been training dogs for 6 years using clickers and positive reinforcement. We were discussing the praise issue mentioned here. She seemed to think that whether you're praising a dog or shouting at him you can still be reinforcing the behavior.

"Though shouting," she said, "would be negative, not positive, reinforcement."

"Actually," I said, "if shouting increased the behavior it would still be considered a positive reinforcement."

She didn't understand; she thought I was making it up.

6) The fact that these methods are used to train captive animals means very little. When we base our understanding of learning on the behaviors of animals in captivity we're only seeing a small, unnatural piece of the pie (which is, unfortunately how Skinner’s theory was first developed, in the lab, with animals kept captive in boxes, not walking around in real life). Captive wolves exhibit hierarchical behaviors, wild wolves don't. Why is that? When captive dolphins, who are designed by nature to swim hundreds of miles a day through open waters, are held prisoner in small (to them) tanks, why wouldn't they be willing to perform all sorts of acrobatics for food, or even for praise? What else are they supposed to do with their energy? Could they be trained to do all those things out in the open ocean? No, because in their natural environment they'd have another outlet for their energy.

7) Finally, you're completely misinterpreting my argument for dogthromorphism. I never said we should dogthropomorphize behaviors, but that instead of anthropomorphizing dogs, we should dogthropomorphize ourselves, meaning we should try to see their behavior from their own unique perspective. It may be true that all animals learn the same way, but that way isn't through operant conditioning; it's through the way emotional energy either flows or gets blocked. The satisfying release of emotion is what reinforces behavior and creates learning. Sometimes operant conditioning imitates that process, sometimes it doesn't. Dogs are the clearest window we have into this phenomenon.

LCK

"Changing the World, One Dog at a Time"

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How to Redirect Behavior Using Distractions

2009-10-18T10:24:00.001-07:00

Here's another puppy tip:

“Distract, Praise, Focus”

Before your puppy's behavior gets this much out of control, you might want to learn a cool trick that can him stop whatever he's doing instantly. Then, once he stops, you'll be to get to get him to immediately re-focus his energy on you, in the most positive way possible.

I call this exercise, "Distract, Praise, Focus." And here's how to do it.

When your puppy is about to chew something he shouldn’t, make a neutral sound distraction, like a whistle, clapping your hands, etc. Don’t do it too loudly, just loud enough to make the pup stop what he’s doing. Immediately praise the puppy vocally in a high silly voice. This should make the puppy drop what he was doing (or chewing on) and come racing toward you. Keep praising him. When he gets to you, tease him with a toy, then toss it a few feet for him to chase.

Here’s how this works. The puppy is emotionally attracted to an object, like your shoes or the remote. He’s plugged his energy into it, or is about to. Your sound distraction should be loud enough to make him unplug his energy from it on his own. (If it’s too loud it’ll scare him; if it’s not loud enough it won’t have any effect.) Once he’s unplugged his energy from your shoes, etc., you praise him, which will cause him to feel attracted to you. He’ll come running so that he can plug himself into your energy circuits. Then you tease him with the toy (getting him to focus his energy on it), until he’s crazy to bite the toy, then you throw it a few feet and he’ll plug his energy completely into the toy.

If you do this correctly 3 or 4 times, with a particular object, like a shoe, on the 4th or 5th time you do it the pup will go toward the shoe, then stop short, as if he’s been shocked. Then he’ll turn and come running to you. (Pretty cool, huh?)

If you try it and it’s not having the effect described, you may not be giving enough energy in your praise or in your distraction. It helps to use a different sound distraction each time you do it.

This exercise works very well for new puppies. But if you’ve been scolding your pup or taking things away from him, he’ll be more resistant to the exercise.

(For more info, read William Campbell's Behavior Problems in Dogs.)

LCK

"Changing the World, One Dog at a Time"

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Puppy Training, 8 - 12 wks.

2009-10-18T09:50:00.000-07:00

I'm adding a new folder, just for puppy stuff. Here's the first installment:

Training for Puppies, 8 to 12 Weeks

Photo from Decoverly Kennels,Fayetteville, PA

Puppies need to either be closely supervised¹ or confined behind a gate in kitchen, bathroom, or hallway, or in a puppy pen, with a water bowl, chew toys, a comfortable bed² inside an open crate,³ with wee-wee pads covering the floor.⁴Puppies take great delight in exploring everything in their path through their teeth and jaws⁵. They will stop to pee or poop whenever the urge strikes them⁶. They will bark and cry when left alone⁷. They will get tired very quickly, but quite often they won’t realize how tired they are.⁸

(Some puppies may be lethargic for the first few days. This is usually temporary and due to the shock of adjusting to a brand new environment, but you should consult with your vet to make sure there isn't an underlying medical problem.)

Puppies need to play more than they need structured learning. In fact, the more structured learning you impose on a puppy, the more you open the possibility of creating learning deficits, limit his social and emotional development, decrease impulse control, and guarantee that your pup will be unable to learn as many things as quickly compared to puppies who are given every possible opportunity to engage in unstructured play. The puppy's brain knows naturally what it needs in order to grow and develop. Most dog trainers are not as smart as Mother Nature in this regard, and there's not a dog trainer alive who has more experience than she does.

You’ll need to spend a lot of time down on the floor, playfully interacting with your pup, but the kind of games you play shouldn’t be forced on the puppy. Within reason, the puppy should choose which games and activities feel most important to him at any given moment, and you should follow the puppy’s lead. By the way, doing this will make the puppy feel more open to doing what you want him to do. It will not make him “dominant.”

Try as much as possible not to pick up the puppy, especially if you’re doing it to satisfy your urge to kiss the pup,⁹ or to stop the puppy from doing something he “shouldn’t” do or getting into something he “shouldn’t” get into by zooming toward him with your outstretched arms looming down at him, and then physically restraining him. And under no circumstances should you ever scold, reprimand, or correct a puppy for anything. You will pay for it dearly when he grows up. So always remember:

don’t correct — Re-Direct!

If you can’t watch the puppy closely, he should always be in his quiet area.

Cuddle time is important too, but don’t overdo it. There are two questions to ask yourself when it comes to cuddle time: “Am I doing this to satisfy my emotional needs?” and “Am I reinforcing too much neediness in my pup by cuddling when he ‘demands’ it?” You have to strike a careful balance. Puppies need affection and physical comfort, but don't give too much unless you want to spoil your pup.

Footnotes:

1) Notice the word, “closely.” This means you’re paying close attention to the pup at all times. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO MULTI-TASK! Your puppy’s health, safety, and proper emotional development come first (meaning no yelling at the pup because you weren’t paying attention and she got into something she shouldn’t have).

2) Use light blue towels. Light blue is a relaxing, calming color. And puppy beds are destined to be soiled, chewed, or ripped up. Towels are an inexpensive alternative.

3) Keep the crate door secure so it doesn’t bang shut or hit the wall, etc. For now, going inside the crate should be the pup’s choice, so make it as stress-free as possible. You should also consider putting her dinner bowl inside at breakfast and suppertime.

4) Put newspaper or wee-wee pads on the entire area except for the bed and water bowl. After a few days you’ll see that puppy generally chooses to go on one particular are. Over time you can slowly take up all the other wee-wee pads until only one is left.

5) To ensure proper emotional development, puppies should not only be allowed to do this, they should be encouraged to do it. They should especially be encouraged to mouth your hands, but only at times when they’re feeling relaxed and quiet. (See, “How to Stop Puppy Bites.”) However, there are some things they shouldn’t be chewing on, like electrical wires. The best solution is the puppy-proof your home. Bitter-Apple Spray (or other brands) can be applied to things your puppy shouldn’t chew on. Electrical wires should be placed out of reach, and if you have expensive rugs or carpets, take them up for now and put them in storage. They will get peed on, pooped on, and have their edges chewed when you’re not watching. (See footnote 4, and the “Distract, Praise, Focus,” formula for redirecting your puppy’s teeth away from danger.)

6) Do not ever stop your puppy from relieving herself by peeing or pooping on the wrong spot. Once she’s already in the act, you have to resist the urge to run over and grab her. Take a deep breath, count to ten, then quietly clean it up. Interrupting a puppy while she’s being controlled by a strong (and to her at this age, uncontrollable) urge, will do little to teach her how to go in the right spot, and will do a lot of damage to her ability to trust you.

7) As a general rule, when a new puppy comes into the home they’ll cry when you put them behind the gate, especially at night. You have to ignore the crying or you’ll reinforce it. It may take 45 minutes the first night, 30 minutes the second, and 20 the third night, but eventually the puppy will stop crying out of loneliness. If you give in and try to assuage her loneliness, you’ll only be guaranteeing that she’ll bark and bark and bark whenever she feels needy. You have to tough it out those first few nights.

In case you haven’t figured it out, this means you cannot and should not let a new puppy sleep in bed with you. Make sure you give her plenty of play time about an hour or so before bed, with a 20 minute cool-down period. If you want to cuddle with her on the floor, or hold her in your lap while she falls asleep, that’s fine. But once she’s making ZZZs, gently pick her up and put her behind her gate, turn out the light, and pray.

8) Overtired puppies are very similar to overtired kids. They just need an enforced nap.

9) On an unconscious, knee-jerk level, dogs react to a big head coming toward their head as a potential act of aggression. It’s okay to teach a puppy to give you kisses, but the pup should also come toward you to do that. It’s better not to move your head toward the pup. Few puppies are going to actually bite you over this, but it does create unconscious feelings of nervous tension toward you. So try to remember not to kiss your puppy; let your puppy kiss you (if she feels like it).

LCK

"Changing the World, One Dog at a Time"

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Why Do Dogs Like to "Kiss" Us?

2009-09-22T11:39:00.000-07:00

The following is taken from my column at PsychologyToday.com.

Why Do Dogs Like to "Kiss" Us?

They're sublimating their urge to bite.

In the Mike Nichols film, Wolf, Will Randall, a meek, downtrodden book editor (played by Jack Nicholson), is bitten by a wolf one winter night and finds himself becoming more and more in tune with his primal nature. He can smell things like tequila on a co-worker's breath from clear across the building. He can hear people talking from several floors away. He can read and edit whole manuscripts without his reading glasses.

Worried that the changes he's experiencing may have also caused a nocturnal blackout, Randall goes to see Dr. Alezais, an expert in animal lore. Toward the end of the interview the aging Dr. Alezais reveals that he's been told that he's dying. However, he thinks that if Will Randall were to bite him, he might become strong like the wolf and live forever.

"I can't ask you to transform me with your passions," Alezais says.

"I can only ask you to honor me with your bite."

My dog Freddie was punished for biting when he was a puppy. This created some behavioral problems later on (severe panic attacks) that took me a while to unravel. However, once I did, I observed a funny, and very sweet side-effect to the new emotional freedom he felt once his fears were gone. Before that, whenever we came home from our walks, he would wait at the top of the first landing, and as I came up and got close to him, he would lick my nose in a kind of ... what, a "submissive greeting?" Perhaps, though he really wasn't the submissive type.

But oddly enough, once I'd helped him resolve his fears, whenever we came home and I got near the top of the landing, instead of licking me he'd slowly incline his head toward mine and use his front teeth to lightly pinch the tip of my nose. The experience was thrilling; it often gave me goose bumps. He used his teeth so gently and so precisely, it felt to me as if he was re-establishing an emotional connection between us that had previously been lost.

Wolves make a living with their teeth. Predators aren't designed to be social animals because their urge to bite has to be kept under lock and key around other members of their group, otherwise there'd be bloodshed. And yet wolves are very social; they live together in almost complete harmony and are extremely cooperative when hunting. They even have the ability to share food, eating side-by-side, once their prey has been killed. This is pretty remarkable given the Darwinian view of nature as a cut-throat enterprise, even among members of the same animal group.

To me, all canine behavior is essentially a process of tension and release. When emotional energy builds up in a dog's system, it creates tension which then needs to find a release point through behavior. For wolves the most complete and most satisfying release of tension comes either through biting prey (during the hunt) or copulating (during mating season). In other words nearly everything a wolf does is a sublimation of his urge to bite (his prey drive), or his urge to mate (his sex drive).

One way of sublimating the urge to bite is "submissive" licking, commonly thought to be how a wolf appeases a more "dominant" pack member. But a) dominant and submissive behaviors are so rare in wild wolf packs as to be virtually non-existent, and b) if a wolf's emotional energy is geared to always be expressed primarily through biting, and c) if he also wants to maintain pack harmony at all costs, he may very well lick his pack mate's lips or chin, instead of biting them.

Submission? Probably not.

Sublimation? Probably so.

It's been suggested (I think by Desmond Morris) that when dogs kiss us (which is anthropomorphic, since a kiss involves puckering the lips, and a dog's lips don't pucker), they do so because that's how wolf pups get their parents to regurgitate a meal when they come back to the den.

This doesn't make sense to me. It's like taking a decal from one behavior and sticking it onto another. Dogs are very practical and context-oriented. It would be very unusual for a dog to take a behavior specifically related to her parents, and somehow apply it to human beings. For one thing dogs move through space on the horizontal axis. Humans are vertical. There's no way a dog could mistake a human being for another dog. Also, dogs don't just lick our lips, they lick our noses, our ears, our hands and feet. And the more stressed a dog is, the more he tends to lick. Plus dogs lick us a lot more when they're puppies than they do when they're adults. Why? Puppies feel a lot more oral tension than adult dogs do.

There's one more thing to consider. When humans smile it's considered a signal of good will. But to a chimpanzee a smile communicates fear. Similarly, when a puppy sees your big human head coming toward him, a part of him reacts with fear, and that part wants to bite you. But unlike wolves, dogs make their living with their hearts, not their teeth. They have strong feelings of love and affection for their owners. Plus, they retain the genetic knack of maintaining group harmony at all costs. So when your dog sees you come leaning in for a kiss, he sublimates his urge to bite, and licks you instead. Then, over time, as he accrues more and more feelings of trust on top of the love he already feels, he finds that licking you actually feels good, not just because it releases his nervous tension, but also because of how it makes you feel. (Our feelings are very important to our dogs; they're like the sails and rudders they use to navigate their way through their relationships with us.)

That's the simple, dog-centric genesis of why dogs lick us: it's a way of sublimating their urge to bite. That's why Freddie licked me when I reached the top of the stairs, back before his fears of being punished for biting went away. It's also why he replaced the less satisfying release he got from licking me, and started giving me those tender little love bites on the tip of my nose. He finally felt free enough to share a tiny bit of his deepest and most primal nature with me.

He honored me with his bite.

LCK

"Changing the World, One Dog at a Time"

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