The Natural Dog Training Difference

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

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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 [note: this video has been deleted] 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. Millan interprets this as 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 Pushing Exercise

This is a corollary to my previous blog post, "An Open Letter to New York Dog Trainers."

How to Do the Pushing Exercise

Some dogs play tug naturally, others have to be taught how. 
That's where "The Pushing Exercise" comes in handy!  

In Natural Dog Training one of the most important and pivotal exercises we do is called “the pushing exercise,” where we hand feed a dog outdoors, encouraging the pooch to push against us while he or she eats. Kevin Behan — the originator of NDT, and the nation's premiere expert on the rehabilitation of problem dogs, particularly those with severe aggression problems — created this exercise, as an outgrowth of the work he did for many years training police dogs, border patrol dogs, and detection dogs. In order to build a dog's drive to the levels needed in such work a trainer will often play tug-of-war and then push against the dog as he's tugging on the toy. This builds the dog's drive and makes him more reliable in a crunch situation.

One of the things the pushing exercise does is it creates a better emotional bond between you and your dog. But it's also amazingly effective at solving all kinds of behavioral problems, particularly those that are fear-based.

Why?

All behavior is an expression of energy, but energy always has to flow toward something. And sometimes a dog's emotional energy gets blocked by past experiences, fears, lack of confidence, etc. The pushing exercise can help a dog learn how to push past her internal resistance, her emotional barriers, and whatever other kinds of energy blocks she might be experiencing. Once she does, she'll be happier, more confident, plus a lot more obedient.

All dogs are good dogs, some just need a little push!

NOTE: This version of the exercise is designed to be used by the average dog owner, one whose dog has mild to moderate behavioral problems. Do not try this with a dog who's aggressive toward humans over food. You have to either do some preliminary work with such dogs before moving on to the pushing exercise, or leave it in the hands of an experienced professional.

The Pushing Exercise (Please download and print this as a pdf file!)

At meal time, take the dog outdoors, on-lead, to a quiet spot with few distractions. Have her morning or evening meal in a bait bag (or you can use a leather nail bag from the hardware store). It’s a good idea to feed the dog only half her usual fare at her previous meal so that she’ll come into this exercise with more desire to eat than usual.

When you find a good spot, stop walking, calmly stroke her and praise her. Scruff her under the chin or scratch under her ears. Set up a warm, convivial feeling.

Take an open, loose, non-threatening stance, not directly head-on, but at a kind of 3/4 degree angle, with your legs apart so when she comes to take the food from your hand she’ll be coming at a more direct angle. You don’t want her coming in from either your right or left side—she should come straight between your legs.

With some dogs I do the exercise while seated, but keep the same loose body language.

Bend your knees slightly, but lean back from the hips in what I call the “Kramer.” But keep your shoulders rounded, not stiff. This stance will automatically encourage your dog to want to come toward you. (She might not at first, but she’ll at least have some desire to do so, much more so than if you stand close and loom over her).

Grab a handful of food from the bag. I like to use my non-dominant (left) hand for the food (I’m right handed). Also, if the dog eats kibble I usually marinate it in hot water for 20 mins. or so, until it’s nice and mushy; I also like to add some juicy chicken or bits of steak, or some tasty canned food as well. Sometimes a dog I’m working with will be eating a raw food diet. That’s fine too. I always wear a latex glove on my food hand.

Show the dog that you have a nice handful of yummy food. Praise her for showing interest in it. Then close your fingers gently across your palm (covering the food), and say, in a warm, gentle tone of voice, “Wait…” And as you can see the dog holding her energy back for a second or so, say, “Good… Ready!” in a happy tone, then open your hand and let her eat.

As she eats, put your other hand lightly against her chest, with your palm up, cupping her breast bone. Don’t push against her with this hand. Just let it sit there. If she shows nervousness about having that other hand against her chest while she’s eating, you have to take it a little slower; use that hand to scratch under her ears again, etc. You want her to feel comfortable. Let her eat while you pet her and scratch her with that hand.

Once she’s finished eating that handful of food, withdraw your other hand from her chest, dip into the bag for another handful, and start again, repeating the same sequence of words: “Wait…” She waits. “Ready? Okay!”

If she really gets into eating this way, or is almost there, but not quite, I’ll encourage her while she’s eating. “Oh, you want it! Come on! Come on and eat it! Push me! Push!” You have to make sure this doesn’t throw her off-balance emotionally though. It should make her want to push into harder. If her interest lags instead, ease off a little on the vocal encouragement. Another variation, once the dog is really into the game, is to move away from her as you push. This not only increases her interest in the game it has the added benefit of making her more interested in coming when called.

With some dogs it may take several days or more to get them comfortable with this. Take it very slowly. Sometimes it's beneficial with such dogs to simply not "push" it at one meal and "skip" to the next. It won't hurt a dog to fast for a meal or two. In fact holistic vets recommend that you fast your dog once a week. It's actually good for a dog's digestive system. Doing this will also reduce a dog's nervousness about eating from your hand. 

Don't go overboard, of course. And if you're working with a rescue dog who's severely underweight, let her get closer to her ideal weight before doing any fasting. Kevin Behan recommends that for some dogs you have to keep them at about 85% of their ideal body weight until their behavioral problems are resolved. (There is sound reasoning behind this idea: hunger is nature's way of curing fear.)

Over the course of a few days, as you sense your dog's increased openness to pushing, start pulling your food hand away bit by bit, while keeping the other hand in position, nice and steady against her chest. If she’s interested enough in the food, this will automatically cause her to push into you to keep eating. As she gets used to the feeling of pressure, and seems to start to like it, you can slowly build the amount of pressure she’s able to tolerate against her chest. The harder the dog pushes the more of her fear and confidence issues she’ll be getting rid of (because she's pushing past her emotional barriers).

The ultimate goal is that eventually, over the course of a week or two (maybe more, depending on the dog), you’ll have her pushing so hard that she’s up on her back legs, nearly knocking you over. But never let her feel pressure against her chest unless she’s also eating at the same time. As she begins to push harder and harder at each meal, you’ll see some incredible changes in her behavior. She’ll be calmer, more obedient, less pushy (I know!), and more centered and balanced.

That’s what always happens. You just have to see it to believe it…

Click here for a downloadable pdf file so you can have a hard copy to work from.

Click here to purchase Neil Sattin’s DVDs, the 1st volume is almost exclusively about pushing.

What Kinds of Behavioral Problems is the Pushing Exercise Good For?

Why it works.

LCK

"Changing the World, One Dog at a Time"

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How to Manage Your Dog's Energy

Those of you who’ve listened to Kevin Behan’s radio interview heard him talk about the two types of energies operative in canine behavior: electricity and magnetism. Some of you may have also read the comments section of my last post, where I gave a response to Summer’s mommy about a problem she’s been having in getting her dog to do any off-lead heel without vocalizing. This post begins with part of that exchange:

How To Manage Your Dog’s Energy

Summer's Mommy: One question, sometimes she gets so riled up with the exercise that she wants to bite my left arm. I think it’s somewhat cute, but in competition that would lose me some points. Also she can get quite vocal (growling, short staccato barks) when she's in drive in the heel. Again, more areas where I can lose points. Do you have any suggestions on how to convert that drive that's being manifested into the biting/barking/growling and channel into just the act of heeling itself? I don't want to punish her or say no, but even as I praise her when she does it, she doesn't stop the behavior even with praise.

Here's my reply:

The biting is a result of a strong attraction (magnetism) while the vocalizing is an expression of nervous tension (electrical energy). She's also trying to "tell" you something. (What that is, I don't know.)

Remember, when she stayed with me I got to see her behavioral idiosyncrasies up close, and I said I thought that even though she's a bit tightly wound, she's also a very sensitive doggie. So it might also help to do more "chase me," "hup!" and "dance with me," and less hidden pops.

In other words, more magnetism, less electricity.

LCK

PS: Now that I think about it, the "chase me" will probably create more of a likelihood that she'll grip your arm while heeling, so while I might still do that, I would also probably give her some leash corrections whenever her teeth stray onto your arm. You have to be very fluid about it, and you can't pop her too hard; it should be just enough to damper the energy a little, but not hard enough to make her lose interest in chasing you.

Another way to work on this would be to do very short "chase me" sessions using a ball or tug toy as the focal point, and quickly end each go-through with a game of tug. Then gradually increase the length of the game, but then turn it into a "game" of off-lead "Heel!" And follow that with a ball throw or a game of tug, whichever she prefers. If she's still too bitey during the off-lead heel, go back to doing it on lead with the leash corrections to inhibit her from biting during the heel. The idea is to let her know that she can't bite while heeling, but that she'll get a big old payoff once she's finished.

I hope that helps!

Okay, so what do I mean exactly when I say more magnetism and less electricity? I’m essentially describing the difference between drive energy (i.e., desire/connectedness) and an overload of nervous tension (i.e., neediness/feeling disconnected).

The body of any animal has two basic energy systems. The nervous system (which includes the brain, the spinal cord, and all the neurons, axons, and dendrites), and the emotional system (limbic system, endocrine glands, sexual and sensory organs). Both types of energy are necessary. For instance, you can obtain a great deal of knowledge about a person’s internal organs through an MRI machine: a magnetic resonance imaging. But it doesn’t work unless you plug it into the wall first.

As I’ve been thinking over Jacinta’s and Sang’s problems with their dogs, Summer and Roxy (Sang complains that Roxy gets overstimulated, which basically means she’s got too much electrical energy running through her system), and it seems to me that there are four basic ways to use, manage, control, and modulate your dog’s natural energy.

First let’s talk about the differences between electrical (neediness) and magnetic (desire) energies.

We all have survival needs, and the survival instinct exists to ensure that we act to protect ourselves from danger, drink when we’re thirsty, eat when we’re hungry, etc., etc. Sometimes, however, we attach survival feelings to something unrelated to our actual survival needs. How many times do we tell ourselves that we “need” to get to work on time, or that we “need” a raise or a new car. Another example is the kid, like Ralphie in The Christmas Story, who thinks he’ll die if he doesn’t get the air rifle he wants for Christmas. When we attach neediness—survival energy—to non-essential things it screws us up, it puts stress on our bodies and actually makes us less efficient at getting what we really need. It also makes us feel unconnected from our co-workers, who—come on—aren’t going to kill us if we’re late to work, or our bosses, who are also not going to kill us. And it makes us feel like our parents “don’t understand” us when they say it won’t kill us if we don’t get what we want for Christmas.

But what do we say? “You don’t understand! If I don’t get it I’ll die!”

Yet, here we are. We’re all still alive.

On the other hand, when you have a strong desire for something—and I mean pure desire, without any neediness attached—you often feel a sense of steadiness and calm as if your desire has created a direct link to whatever it is you want so badly. You are connected.

Desire is governed by the sex instinct; never mind the actual, specific act of mating, the sex instinct governs the creative aspects of life, in all its forms. When you’re in a state of pure desire you almost know you’ll get what you want eventually. You have new, unexpectedly creative ideas on how to do things. And if you hold on to that feeling of desire—that fire in the belly—and if it’s strong enough, it will almost always bring some kind of positive results. It sets things in motion. This is what I mean when I say that desire has a kind of magnetic energy.

So electric energy runs your survival needs; it has a choppy feel, it makes you feel alone, disconnected, it’s chronological, meaning it makes you feel the pressure of time, and it also causes the bad kind of stress on the body. Magnetic energy is desire; it has a smooth rhythm to it, it makes you feel connected, it’s timeless, and creates mostly the good kind of stress.

I think this is a helpful model in learning how to manage your dog’s energy. And as I see it, there are four basic ways to do that.

The Four Ways to Handle Your Dog’s Energy

One: Give your dog a satisfying “ground wire” to offload excess energy.

Ground wires include tug-of-war, fetch, play sessions with other dogs, the “eyes” exercise, and even taking your dog on long walks in nature. (Believe it or not, trees and grass are natural ground wires for a dog’s energy.)

I’m trying to codify everything here, but a lot of what I “know” about this stuff is intuitive or comes from my subconscious mind. I’ll give you an example: The other night I had a session with a new client. They’ve got a pit bull named Latte who was found on the street, emaciated, over a year ago. She’s reportedly been a lovely girl since then, very affectionate indoors, very obedient and willing to learn, but she’s started exhibiting occasional leash aggression recently.

When I came in and sat on the sofa, Latte was unable to settle down. We tried giving her a bone or a ball, but nothing seemed to satisfy her, so while I was discussing options—describing the possible source of the dog’s behavioral problems, and she was still at it, trying to jump all over me—I put my fingers between her teeth, hoping to give her a chance to ground her energy by mouthing my hand. She pulled away, zipped around the room a little, then settled next to me on the couch again and kind of “sneaked” in close and started to nibble my fingers, hoping I wouldn’t notice. I let her do that. Five minutes later she was sound asleep.

I didn’t pay much attention to this; it happens a lot with the dogs I see. But in a subsequent conversation with her owner, she said she thought it was amazing that Latte had been so relaxed that she’d fallen asleep next to me on the couch. “She has never fallen asleep with someone new in the apartment. Ever!” That’s when I remembered what I had done with my fingers, and I realized that by doing that, I had, in essence, given the dog permission to use me as a ground wire, which enabled her to download some of her excess energy. And that’s why she fell asleep.

Two: Upgrade the dog’s “wiring/hardware.”

This will give your dog a better ability to handle his excess energy levels on his own. Instead of just plugging him into a ground wire (like a tug rag), this would be similar to replacing old corroded wiring with newer, stronger, thicker wires. It’s also analogous to removing emotional blocks. This is where the pushing exercise comes in handy. Also, certain training exercises where the dog has to change emotional gears quickly—things like the “off-lead heel” or the “down-while-running” and conflict training—would also fall into this category. They make the dog’s energy system more productive and less wasteful.

Finally, the fasting exercise, described in Kevin’s book, and what I call the Frankenstein exercise is also helpful at removing emotional blocks in the dog’s system and getting it to run smoother. Kevin has a couple of versions of the Frankenstein exercise, described on Neil Sattin's blog.

Three: Drain the battery/shut down the system.

This is where a crate comes in handy. Another thing that helps is not feeding into the dog’s nervousness. That’s part of what worked with Latte the other night. If I had reacted to her energy with any kind of “dominance” or fear, she would’ve had even more trouble settling down. If the dog has no excess energy from you to feed off she’ll be able to calm down much quicker.

Four: Provide a transformer.

This is where praising the dog to settle his nerves works wonders. When a dog has too much nervous energy and you praise him, this will often help him relax. I’ve described this in more detail (excruciating detail, some might argue) in my article on praise. But in terms of energy exchange it works like this: the dog is nervous (electric energy), praise makes him feel connected to you (magnetic energy)—you’ve transformed that excess buzzing of electrical energy—which eventually has to find a way to ground itself, come hell or high water—into smooth magnetism, which has more of a gentle, steady hum to it. Make sense?

Interrupting the flow of electricity by applying light shocks on the collar, a well-timed throw chain; all of these things have a tendency, when applied to an overly nervous dog to shift her focus from her choppy, disconnected, solo-mood-type behaviors to something more like a group-mood feeling. Again, you have to be very careful and not apply too much pressure or you’ll get the opposite result.

I’m still working out the various ways of describing this stuff. As I said, so much of what I do is so deeply ingrained into my subconscious mind that I rarely pay any attention to what I’m doing anymore. It happens naturally, like breathing. But I hope this helps you understand the basic premise of how Kevin’s model—of the dog as an energy system—works.

I look forward to hearing everyone’s feedback and ideas on this.

LCK

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Conflict Training, 101

I got a request this week for help from a woman with three dogs: a Rottweiler, a female Malinois, and a beagle. The behavioral problem was that the Malinois had developed a fixation with eating the Rotti’s feces. I asked a number of questions about the past history, the type of training, exercise levels, etc., and there didn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary that could be causing this behavior. My suspicion was (and is) that the dog’s prey drive wasn’t getting enough of a workout. The owner had done some drive training, but in my view, it wasn’t precise enough for this dog (or maybe for this breed). Also, part of my suspicion is that the dog was acting out to reflect something she felt was lacking in her relationship with the owner. The owner had also been given the suggestion of using an electronic collar, but was hesitant about it.

Conflict Training, 101

The way I see it all canine behavior—whether learned or instinctive, normal or abnormal—is done in an attempt to reduce or release some kind of internal tension. When you think about it, even breathing is a matter of tension and release. When too much tension builds up inside a dog’s system, that’s when we tend to see abnormal behaviors.

The normal way for a dog to reduce tension is through some activity related to the prey drive. From the wolf model, we can see that wolves are an anomaly in the natural world. They’re one of only three types of mammals that routinely hunt animals that are larger and more dangerous than themselves: canines, homo sapiens & orcas All three originally hunted large prey by working cooperatively, though humans later developed weapons, so we no longer need to hunt in groups.

The bottom line is that a wolf’s social instincts are based on their need to hunt large prey. For instance, wolves who settle near a garbage dump don’t really form packs. They have looser social arrangements. It also turns out that coyotes—whom it was thought for years did not form packs—actually do, but only when they need to hunt large prey.

(I’m getting to the point, trust me.)

Bison, elk, moose, etc. have horns and hooves. It’s very dangerous for an individual wolf to hunt one of these large animals, so they also evolved strategies like scavenging, hunting small prey, and will even at times eat vegetation. The survival instinct sort of dictates that they not put themselves in harm’s way by hunting large prey unless they are absolutely driven to do it.

This is where Nature becomes a clever taskmaster. If she wants wolves to hunt large prey she has to design a strong enough motivation for them to leave the safety of the den and foray into the path of those hooves and horns. And the basic underlying mechanism for motivating wolves to hunt large prey is a build-up internal tension or stress. When the pack gets hungry enough, the prey drive starts to kick in. Once it’s strong enough to override the need for safety, the wolves are driven to hunt. That’s not entirely accurate, though, because it doesn’t reflect the wolf’s actual experience or point of view. What these animals are really driven to do is to simply get rid of their tension. Think of the way a male dog goes after a female in heat. If you look at it from this angle you can see that he’s not interested in mating per se, he’s really only interested in getting rid of the overwhelming levels of tension and stress he’s feeling. The higher the stress levels, the more driven he is to complete his “task.”

Another factor for wolves in particular (and dogs to a lesser extent) is that at every step in the predatory sequence—the search, the eye stalk, the chase, the grab bite and kill bite—a wolf's body produces endorphins, providing internal rewards for each behavior phase of the sequence.

So in nature (and no matter how domesticated they are, dogs are still a part of nature), the ultimate release of stress comes through acting on the prey drive with no (or very few) inhibitions. And the primary reason stress builds up in the first place is because the animals are inhibited about acting on the prey drive because doing so is dangerous.

So when I hear of a dog like your Malinois, whose behavior is outside the normal range (and coprophragia is normal in puppies, but not in a two-year old), I automatically see it as being related in some way to a blocked flow—an inhibition—of the dog’s prey drive.

So how do we fix it?

I don’t like to use punishment in cases like this, because in order for it to successfully override an instinctive, compulsive, or habitual behavior, it has to be so strong and so severe, that you run the risk of making the dog shut down in other ways. True, an electric shock can accomplish that goal, and may do so safely in some cases. But even if it were to work, there’s a downside to it, which is that the nervous system runs on electricity, and one of the last things you want to do is download more electric energy into a dog whose nervous system may already be overloaded.

In general terms what I might do in this type of situation is put the dog in conflict between something that she wants to do vs. obeying my command. In Natural Dog Training we call this “conflict training.” You don’t necessarily have to use the Rotti’s poop to do it, as long as it’s some activity that your Malinois has the same or a similar level of attraction to. Once she’s developed an ability or skill-set to give up one attachment in favor of obeying you, others will start to naturally fall into place.

Something similar that comes to mind, which illustrates this approach, is a compulsive behavior my own dog had years ago of digging in sand boxes. He particularly liked to “bury” his favorite toy—an empty soda or Poland Spring water bottle—in the sand. Conflict training is basically what I sued to cure him of his compulsive digging. (Now that I think about it, he used to love to eat wino shit in Central Park, too; but after I did the sandbox exercise with him, it was much easier to call him away from that unappetizing habit; and calling him away—followed by a game of chase—cured him of his coprophragia, so it might very well work for you!)

Here’s what I did:

I put him on a long leash, in a down stay near a sand box and put a soda bottle close to him, but off to the side a little, at an indirect angle to him. Then I walked away, backwards, facing him directly the whole time, holding the end of the leash. Then when I got to the end of the leash, I called him to me: “Okay, Freddie, come!” If he went for the bottle instead of running to me, I ran over and without saying anything used the leash to put him back into his original position, using short, fairly hard pops on the collar*, acting as if we were both in a dangerous situation the whole time. Then, once he and the bottle were back in the original position, I reminded him, “Stay!” and did it all again. *(You have to be careful that the pops don’t cause him to lose focus on you; they should actually motivate him to work harder with you.)

Once we got to the point that he ran straight back to me on command, instead of going for the bottle, I rewarded him with another bottle I had hidden in my training vest, though I didn’t just give it to him: I made him chase me around first for about 15 secs., then I threw it for him to chase on his own. (I had put a small amount of water inside so I could throw it farther than if it had been empty.) It also helped that his other favorite activity was de“cap”itating those bottles. So even though he had an impulse to take the bottle back to the sand box and bury it, all I had to do was say, “Take the cap off!” and he would settle down with the bottle and take the cap off with his teeth.

He was a Dalmatian, so it took a while before he “got” the “point” of the game. And I had to do it with him holding the stay at various places around and even inside the sandbox so he could cross-contextualize it. Once he got it, he actually “locked-in” to me. And I only had to re-acquaint him with the exercise once the next day after that first session. He never showed any interest in digging again. (And as I mentioned before, it was instrumental in stopping him from eating human feces in the park.)

Going back to what I said up top, my point is that digging is actually one way a dog has of sublimating his prey drive, meaning he’s expressing it in some way that doesn’t involve chasing and biting a prey object. Freddie had inhibitions about chasing and biting in play. Now your dog doesn’t seem to have the same inhibitions that Freddie did, but my suspicion is that she must have some issues, because scavenging and eating feces are also ways a dog has of circumventing and only partially satisfying their prey drive. In my scenario, once Freddie’s inhibitions were resolved he no longer had a need to dig in sandboxes or eat feces.

Another approach I’d take with your dog is I would hand feed her all her meals outdoors, using what’s called the “pushing exercise.” I’ve posted a link just below. One thing I didn’t describe in the sandbox exercise was the fact that I had taught Freddie to jump up on me on command, and that was part of the “chase me” game I played with him when he obeyed the recall. Jumping up basically causes a dog to plug a lot of her energy into you. It overcomes some of those natural inhibitions dogs have about seeing us as “prey” in the same way they see a Frisbee or another dog they like to play with as something to chase. The pushing exercise accomplishes the same goal as jumping up but without some of the drawbacks. So print out the article found in the link below and follow the instructions carefully. It will increase your dog’s levels of social attraction to you, which will increase the reliability of her recall, and might even reduce some of her need to eat feces in the first place.

“The Pushing Exercise” (pdf)

Doing the “eyes” exercise (below) may also help. You may have already taught it to her as “watch me,” but I think this version has a wrinkle or two that makes it stronger. Basically dogs alternately see us—or I should say they feel, us on a knee-jerk level—as either prey and predator. The more prey-like we become, the more interested in obeying us they are. However, to some extent, the more predator-like we are the more that increases their obedience skills too. The difference is that in the first case the dogs obey us willingly, because it makes them feel good, it makes them feel connected to us in the strongest way possible. But the more predator-like we are, the more their obedience is based on fear. (This is why dominance training works; it’s also why dominance trainers think dogs see them as the “pack leader,” when they actually sees the trainer the way a wolf sees a moose who suddenly turns and brandishes his antlers.)

“The Eyes Have It”

If I were you, I’d wait a few weeks of doing these two exercises before attempting the conflict training. Remember, I had already done the jumping up with Freddie.

One thing that will give you a clue as to how this is going to help is that after you do the pushing exercise, you may find that your doggie plays tug- of-war with a lot more energy and focus; she’ll probably bite and pull a lot harder than she did before. You can also integrate the pushing dynamic into your games of tug, which will up the ante considerably. And always remember, the key to reducing tension in the canine species comes primarily through chasing and biting.

Sorry for the lengthy reply. I hope this helps!

LCK

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