In Praise of Aggression

I have great news. I just started writing a blog for Psychology Today online. It's going to be a different kind of blog: a bit more technical and more focused on dog psychology than training ideas, so I'll keep writing my training tips and explanations of the Natural Dog Training approach here as well.

Why You Should Always Praise an Aggressive Dog

Praise is one of the most important training tools we have. Dogs love feeling connected. Most of them even like the feeling of connection they get with practically anyone they meet. The reason praise works as a training tool is because it satisfies that deep social need in dogs.

Since underneath it all, every dog wants to be friends with everyone she meets, aggression is not a normal behavior. It’s a sometimes neurotic, sometimes borderline state that feels totally unnatural unless they feel they’re in danger. Praise can often remove that feeling of danger, which is why your first approach when working with an aggressive dog should always be to lavish her with praise.

You have to remember, though, that praise isn’t being used here to reward the aggression. That’s a key element. Praise works as a positive reinforcer for some behaviors because it makes a dog feel good, makes her feel connected. You also have to remember my little mantra:

All Behavior Comes From Emotion

So When You Change a Dog’s Emotional State
You Automatically Change Her Behavior

Praise is one tool to change a dog’s emotional state, even if you’re praising a bad or unwanted behavior.

I lived for a while in Marble Hill, the northernmost neighborhood in Manhattan. Many of the houses are on hillsides with garages below the house, like in San Francisco. Years ago it was an Irish neighborhood, but now there’s a mix of third or fourth generation Irish households—mostly old ladies—and first and second generation Hispanic families.

Though it wasn’t on my usual route to the subway station, I used to sometimes pass by a certain house, where there was a Doberman pinscher kept behind a chain link fence, with signs saying "Cuidado—Pero Malo".

The first time I walked by, the pero malo charged the fence and scared the bejebus out of me. I caught my breath then said, "Good girl!" She continued to snarl and snap. I praised her some more and sort of she quieted down a little. Then I put my hand up the fence to let her sniff it. I was glad the chain link was there! I would've lost a finger!

Over a period of several months every time I passed by—which might have been once a week or once every three weeks—I praised the dog (whose name, I eventually discovered, was Willow), and she barked and snarled and snapped, yet I continued to praise her. Occasionally I’d put my hand up to the fence to see if she'd try to bite it; she usually did.

Over time, though, her aggression began to diminish in small, almost imperceptible increments. And I began to get the impression that she was always curled up at the top of the steps, waiting for me to come by. Then, when I came around the corner and she heard my keys jingling (I wore them hooked to a belt loop), she would race toward the fence and give a few peremptory barks and growls, but she’d also wag her tail. I continued to praise her and let her sniff my hand, still keeping it safely on the other side of the chain link.

Then one day, when I put my hand up to the fence, she licked my fingers! Ah-hah! A breakthrough! So I carefully pushed a few fingers through the chain link, and she nibbled on them happily, the way puppies do when they use your hands as a pacifier.

It turned out that Willow wasn't a pero malo at all. She was a cupcake. From then on, every time I passed by she ran down the steps and wagged her tail happily, hoping—or so I imagined—that I'd poke my fingers through the fence so she could nibble on them and be my friend.

The next story starts with a phone call I got from some potential clients with a female Rottweiler who’d been exhibiting severe aggression toward the skateboards, roller bladders, joggers, and cyclists in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg. From what I was told she seemed to view these people as prey animals, in desperate need of killing.

I was a bit distracted when I arrived for my first visit at their 1850s era, but recently remodeled two-story house. Normally if I’m dealing with an aggressive dog I’m very careful about how the first meeting takes place, particularly in terms of my entrance through the door to the dog’s “den.” I like to meet such dogs out on the street. But since Twyla’s aggression was supposedly only directed at joggers, skateboarders and the like I mistakenly thought my entrance into Twyla’s den wouldn’t be a problem.

At first it wasn’t.

The husband opened the door. Twyla was sitting obediently by his wife at the back of the entry, next to a set of stairs leading up to the second floor. Her leash was on and she was “happily” wagging her tail.

“Hi, Twyla,” I said, in my friendliest voice.

She pulled the leash out of the wife’s hand, ran to me and jumped up, with her front paws resting on my shoulders. She was a big girl. That 100 lbs. didn’t contain any fat at all. She was long and lean and lanky. And huge!

Normally, I see jumping up as a sign of friendliness, a desire to make social contact. And that’s what Twyla seemed to have in mind too. That is, until I leaned my nose close to hers, expecting her to lick my nose.

Rookie mistake.

Her face turned into a horrible mask of terror and aggression. A low, throaty growl came through her lips, parted now into a vicious snarl of fury. Her teeth were less than two inches away from my nose. She was ready—given the slightest provocation—to rip my entire face off.

Did I mention her teeth were two inches from my nose?

My heart did a funny thing, though. It did nothing. It didn’t skip a beat. If anything it seemed to slow down. Sure, a part of my brain was wondering how much of my face Twyla would be able to tear off and eat before her owners could finally grab the leash and pull her off of me. But for some reason that didn’t faze me.

Instead, I did something I’d trained myself to do over the years. I broke eye contact and praised Twyla vocally in a soft, yet very warm and friendly voice. “Good girl… good girl…”

After a brief pause Twyla jumped down and started licking my hand.

Five minutes later we were all safely inside the house and the dog was lying next to me on the couch, flat on her back, with her legs in the air, using my hand as a pacifier. Just by praising her softly I had changed Twyla from a potential killer, ready for blood, to a complete pussycat.

I’d also saved my face from being severe damaged.

I’m not recommending that you walk up to any dog on the street and try this. In Willow’s case there was a chain link fence between us. In Twyla’s, I did a dumb thing by leaning my face toward hers, which dogs perceive as an act of aggression. Please don’t ever do that!

There’s another aspect to it too, though: sincerity. If you try this with your dog (because again, I do not recommend doing it with a strange dog), your praise has to be sincere, and you can’t have even a single trace of fear in your body. And remember: it might not seem to work initially, as happened with Willow. Then again, you might see results right away, as I was lucky to have done with Twyla. Just remember: 

No dog wants to be aggressive. 

It goes against their nature.

LCK

“Changing the World, One Dog at a Time”
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Using Praise as a Correction

In the interest of building an easily-referenced library of dog training tips, here is another article previously posted on the Amazon blog. By the way, in reviewing this before posting it, I realize it may be one of the most profound things I’ve ever written about dogs. Enjoy!

Using Praise to Correct Bad Behavior:
Freddie and the Chicken Breast

My Dalmatian Freddie and I were in Central Park one day when he was a little over a year old, and he found a discarded chicken breast near a park bench. What a treasure! As soon as he saw it, he ran over, took it in his mouth, then looked over at where I stood, about twenty yards away, and dug his paws in, getting ready to run off with it.

 

At the time I had developed the idea that everything the training books say is wrong, and I was experimenting with my hypothesis by randomly doing the exact opposite of what you’re supposed to do in any given training situation, just to see what would happen. As Fred got ready to run away with his prize I thought, “I should probably tell him no or correct him in some way. What would the totally opposite, wrong thing be?” 

The answer came back, praise him. So I said, “Good boy! What a good boy!” in an excited, highly emotionally charged voice.

Freddie, without knowing what he was doing or thinking about it, immediately dropped his treasure and came running back to me, wagging his tail, and smiling. (Dalmatians do smile.) 

I praised him even more, picked up a stick, teased him with it, then had him chase me to get it. We played a little tug-of-war, with Freddie on his back legs, and his front paws braced against my body. Then I used the stick to heel him past the chicken breast. I did it three or four times in a row. Then I had him sit right in front of it, took a few steps back, and said, “Freddie, come!” and he came to me and we ran off, playing. 

Accentuate the Positive

I thought this over, wondering why it had worked, and the only thing I could come up with was that I’d interrupted Freddie’s flow of feelings. He wanted to run off with his lovely, tasty chicken breast and make a meal of it. All my praise did, in this way of looking at things, was interrupt his behavior, his desired expectation, and his flow of feelings. 

As I thought it over even more I realized that whether you correct the dog or praise him, all you’re really doing is interrupting his behavior and/or his flow of feelings. Both methods stop the behavior as it’s happening, but corrections carry an unfavorable association towards whomever is doing the correcting. On the other hand praise carries only positive associations. So the question is, would you rather have your dog see you as a positive or negative?

A few months earlier I'd been intrigued by a study done at Harvard, which showed that the human brain is designed to be unhappy, or at least not to be happy for very long. This has to do with how dopamine and serotonin levels always go down after they spike, and is similar to the effects of an addict's high, and how his substance of choice tends to lose its effectiveness the more it’s used. Another way of looking at it is the new toy at Christmas phenomenon. Man, on Christmas morning that new toy is the most wonderful thing in the world, but two weeks later it’s old hat. The Harvard researchers’ theory was that the brain is designed to not allow us to be happy for very long so we'll continue to do things, to achieve new levels of civilization, or to just get up in the morning.

I wondered if a dog’s brain worked the same way, and it occurred to me that whenever a dog (or wolf) leaves the den, his hunting instinct immediately kicks in. This means that there’s some level of dissatisfaction going on in the dog’s emotional system; some internal mechanism is telling him he’s not going feel better until he finds some way to use his prey drive, whether it’s meeting another dog to hook up with and play/hunt with, or to find a squirrel to chase, etc.

If this is true, then when Freddie found the chicken breast, he was thinking, “I’ve found it! This is what will fill that empty feeling inside!” He wasn't really hungry. He’d eaten a good breakfast. He was simply looking for some way to satisfy his hunting instincts. (By the way, if you think about it scavenging is a very economical way for a dog to hunt: you go directly from search to eat, with no need to stalk, chase, grab, and kill your prey. . .)

Then, when I praised Fred, flooding him with positive emotions, which came from a person who was the most important focal point of his life, it was even more emotionally fulfilling for him than finding the chicken breast had been.

Going back to the underlying mechanism, here’s how praise works: a dog sees a piece of food. He goes after it with the expectation of achieving satisfaction. If he’s interrupted, both his desire and his expectation of achieving satisfaction are thwarted. Since interrupting him by saying “No!” drags negative associations with whomever is saying it into the equation, the food object is rarely seen as the primary negative. Neither is the dog’s behavior. In the dog’s experience 

the handler is perceived as the primary negative

because the handler is an obstacle to the dog’s desire. 

Saying “No!” is an impure correction because the negative experience of being interrupted is directly attributable to the person saying “No!” not to the behavior itself.  On the other hand, when you use praise, the negative experience of being interrupted can’t be attributed to the handler, only the the thing the dog desires at that moment is perceived as negative. When you use praise as a correction 

the handler is perceived as the primary positive

because the handler is the solution to the dog’s desire. 

When Freddie found that chicken breast his social instincts became polarized toward resistance. The food was more important to him than his need to feel connected to me at that moment. But by praising him, I instantly reversed the polarity of his emotions from social resistance to social attraction. He lost his feelings of attraction to the food. Or rather, my praise changed his feelings of attraction for the food into feelings of attraction to me. In other words I changed his emotional state, and 

when you change a dog’s emotional state,

you automatically change his behavior. 

After the chicken breast incident I spent the next few days praising Fred—who’d previously been a bit of a problem scavenger—whenever he found something on the street. In three or four days his scavenging totally disappeared. All because I’d pigheadedly done the exact opposite of what the dog training books (and common sense) would say to do.

I began using a similar technique on other dogs with scavenging problems, and found that it always works to some degree, depending on how emotionally attached the dog is to its owner.

You have to remember that when a dog goes after something on the street it’s not necessarily because he’s hungry, but because he has an inner feeling of tension that needs to be resolved. (MRI research shows that even while the brain is in the conscious resting state known as “default mode,” there is always a certain amount of background tension present.) He may have no real desire to eat a pizza crust, just a general sense of dissatisfaction. (Remember, many dogs will often scavenge after eating a full meal, so they don’t do it out of hunger.) 

When you praise a dog, you give him a feeling of connectedness which overcomes his need for the food object. When you correct the dog, you may be successful at getting him to leave the object alone at that moment, but you do so by leaving him with an unfulfilled desire, a desire which has to then find its expression through another outlet. 

Ultimately it’s a matter of attraction and resistance. Praise makes a dog feel more attracted to you than he does to the food object. Scolding, even though it seems successful and seems to make sense, actually makes a dog feel more attracted to the food object!

However, this technique only works when the praise reverses the dog’s emotional polarity. When the dog is too wound up, it does no good to praise him. You have to use praise before things get ratcheted up.

So remember: this isn’t a cure-all; it’s just a helpful tool.  

LCK

"Changing the World, One Dog at a Time"

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(By the way, this article is part of a blog carnival, which will be available for viewing as of Monday, November 12, 2007.)