Cesar Millan: Pack Leader or Predator?

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My Dog Hates the Rain and Snow

I have a client/blog fan whose dog, a Jack Russell terrier, is showing signs of what might be called weather aversion. He’s refusing to walk when the streets are cold and covered with snow and ice. This article is for him, but it’s also useful for anyone whose dog hates inclement weather of any kind.

My Dog Hates the Rain and Snow!

It’s been a pretty harsh winter in New York. And we’ve had it easy compared to the Midwest! A common complaint I hear from dog owners this time of year is that their dogs refuse to walk in the rain or snow. Some dogs can be perfectly well-behaved and well-trained, but any inclement weather changes things dramatically. A lot of people just accept this as part of their dog’s “personality,” figuring there’s nothing they can do about it.

Is that true?

I don’t think so. Do wolves refuse to go hunting when the weather’s bad? Do all dogs naturally hate the cold and snow and sleet and rain?

I got an e-mail the other day from a woman in Saskatchewan. Now there’s a cold weather spot! She told me that she and her husband found a shivering dog roaming around their neighborhood. They made a shelter for the doggie, who was initially very wary of them. They then spent several days offering her food until she finally took some from them. Then they put some more food inside the shelter so that she would go in there and finally come in out of the harsh prairie wind.

This took several long days.

So here we have the flip side of the belief that “it’s natural for dogs to hate the snow.” This dog was so wary of strangers she would’ve preferred to stay outside in the wind and snow rather than even be fed, at least in the beginning. Following some advice her new owners found on this blog, they not only fed this poor doggie but were able to teach her to play.

Here’s part of the last e-mail they sent me:

“Lee - thank you again for responding to my email. We will continue to take it slowly. Friday we are getting a larger pen, and that will allow her more room to run when we play with her. I read several of your online articles, and the more I read, the more it made sense. We've been using the 'tug-of-war' game to help build her confidence; she is getting happier and more willing to engage in play.”

Of course, I would like to see them be able to get this doggie to come inside the house at some point, but they’re now working slowly to simply get her to accept any human contact. They won’t even be able to take her to the vet until they can gain a lot more trust, get her used to having a leash and collar on, etc. However, in terms of the subject of this article, the point is that disliking the rain and snow is not natural for dogs. It’s purely a matter of context.

So what do you do if your dog hates the rain and snow?

Simple. Change the context!

One of the primary rules of dog training is that you can’t just train a dog in one environment with one particular set of circumstances and except to obey under any and all conditions. It’s true that initially you want to do your training where there are as few distractions as possible. But once a behavior is learned, you have to begin to slowly add distractions so that the dog can begin to cross-contextualize his lessons.

(This isn’t the same thing as “generalizing, by the way, which requires intellect. Dogs think viscerally and emotionally, not through intellectual abilities like abstract thought, which is one of the prerequisites to having the ability to generalize things. Personally, I think cross-contextualization is probably an evolutionary, cognitive pre-cursor to that higher level ability.)

Adding distractions doesn’t just mean that the dog sits, no matter what. It also means that you want the dog to be able to “weather” all kinds of stimuli. And the best, most positive way to do that is to make play a fundamental part of the training process. This is what my e-mail pals in Saskatchewan are learning. Their dog is becoming more and more comfortable with them because they’ve been getting down on the dog’s level and encouraging her to play. Food has been a great help, but it can only go so far. I think play is the real clincher.

Freddie Tackles a Green Bay Packer

When Freddie was a pup, and we went out for a walk in his first snowstorm, he hated it! And New York is an urban setting so there was also a lot of salt and other snow-melting chemicals on the sidewalks. He not only refused to walk because he was cold and wet, he actually cried about it, partly because of the salt, but also because he just didn’t like being out in the cold.

So what did I do?

Well, first of all I did my best to keep the area between his pads free of any icy build up. Every time he lifted one of his paws up and limped along on the others I bent down and cleaned his “hurty paw” of all the excess snow and ice. But I also saw the snowstorm as an opportunity to change Freddie’s outlook on all inclement weather; I took him to the park and played with him in the snow. And I mean I really played with him, I didn’t just stand there and wait for other dogs to show up. I ran around myself, teasing him with a stick, and encouraging him to bite the stick and come after me with all his might to get it.

Once I could see that he was crazy to bite the stick, I ran away. Then I zig-zagged, stopped and started, changed directions, faked left and went right, faked right and went left, threw in a stutter step, etc. I even fell down in the snow and let him jump on top of me. Then I jumped up and ran off again. I was like a running back for the Green Bay Packers (except for the falling down part; that made me more like one of the Detroit Lions). I did this for about 20 secs. or so, until he was absolutely crazy to catch me and sink his teeth into that stick.

Then I encouraged him to jump up on me and we played tug-of-war, then I threw the stick. He chased it, killed it, then lay down in the snow and chewed it into sawdust. No resistance to the cold and snow at this point. He was covered in it. In fact, he was lying down on it, with the “evil” snow right up against him, chilling his belly. But he loved it. He was in his “zone,” his happy place.

The next time it snowed a funny thing happened. He not only didn’t mind the snow coming down on him and getting his coat wet, he was also less affected by the salt and ice on his paws.

So as I tell my clients, it’s important for you to always set the emotional tone for your dog. No more thinking: “It’s snowing? Ah, crap!” Instead, you have to think, “Yay! It’s snowing! Let’s go play!” You have to think like a happy little kid, not like a grumpy grown up. And the same thing holds true for the rain, which is usually a much less pleasant experience for adults than being out in the beauty and romance of the newly falling snow. So I think playing with your dog in the rain may be even more important than playing in the snow.

I’ll give you an example of a dog who hated the rain, and how rolling around with him in the mud not only got him past his disdain, it actually improved his ability to obey in any weather.

Acting Insane in the Rain

It was an October evening, an hour or so before sundown. I was out with Freddie and Mack, a Jack Russell terrier, on the Great Lawn in Central Park. Mack and I were playing fetch and Fred was sniffing around. The leaves had changed colors and the sky was turning dark and ominous. A light drizzle started to fall.

I knew Mack didn’t like the rain, but I didn’t realize how badly until I threw the ball and he just watched it roll off into the grass. I shrugged and went after it myself. But when I got to it and turned around, I saw that Mack was on his way home. He’d apparently decided that he didn’t want to play in the wet weather and had just started trotting back toward West 85th Street—which is where he lived—intending, I suppose, to somehow magically cross those four lanes of rush hour traffic on Central Park West without getting run over. Yikes!

I gave him his recall signal and he turned and came halfway back before remembering that I didn’t have any treats with me, just a tennis ball. He turned around again and started for home. 

I called him again, this time he didn’t even turn around; he just threw a look over his shoulder as if to say, “It’s too dark and damp; I’ll catch ya later,” and he continued to trot home.

I realized that I’d been a little lazy with Mack’s recall. In the beginning I’d always used a tennis ball or a stick as the focal point for motivating him to come to me as well as a reward for obeying. But out of laziness I’d switched to using food rewards and now—in a crunch situation—Mack knew I didn’t have any treats with me and so he wasn’t interested in obeying.

I quickly remembered that I had never used food for training his down-at-a-distance command. I had always drilled him on it with his bite reflex fully aroused and subsequently satisfied.

By now he was about fifty yards away, with his back to me, totally intent on getting out of the rain. I shouted out the down command: “Mack! Go down!” He instantly dropped into the down position. Then I told him to stay, walked over to where he lay in the grass waiting for me like a good boy, and hooked him up to his leash. Then I whistled Freddie over, and the two of us, the sensible ones, walked Mack safely home across those four lanes of rush hour traffic.

The next week, during a Nor’easter, I took Mack out with a 50' longue line and a tennis ball and we played and rolled around madly in the pouring rain and mud and he chased the ball and re-taught him to come in the most insanely intense manner possible. Please understand that I actually got down on the ground and rolled around in the mud, in the pouring rain, encouraging Mack to jump on top of me. Why on earth would I put myself (and my wardrobe) through that? Because I knew that in order for this particular dog to come when called under all conditions I knew I had to teach him to not only tolerate the rain but actually love it, I had to use every technique in my bag of training tricks to make the experience as vivid and exciting for him as possible.

And it worked. After that insane day in the rain, Mack never showed the least resistance to his recall, in any kind of weather. In fact, a few weeks later we were on the Great Lawn again, and for the first time in his life Mack started chasing a squirrel. I had never seen him do this before so I just stood there, a bit befuddled. Finally, when the squirrel was about halfway to the nearest tree, which was a thirty yards or so away, I shouted his recall signal. He turned on a dime and ran back to me even harder and faster than when he’d been chasing the squirrel!

I had a pocket full of treats but wisely threw a tennis ball instead.

LCK

"Changing the World, One Dog at a Time"

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By the way, it helps if you know some of my other tricks for getting a dog to play when he doesn’t feel like it. Some of them can be found in Jump Starting the Prey Drive. But the main thing is that you have to kind of piss the dog off, make him want to bite you. Most dogs won’t bite you, of course; they’ll want to bite the tennis ball or stick instead. But you have to behave as if you’re another dog who’s trying to get a reluctant playmate to engage in a game of chase. This may include getting down on your hands and knees and doing a play bow, or whatever other crazy-ass thing you can think of. But as my friend Jason often says, “If nobody thinks you're crazy when you’re doing this stuff, you’re probably not doing it right...” Other people will think you’re crazy, but your dog won’t.

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

"Changing the World, One Dog at a Time"

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Chasing Squirrels

Here's another post from the Amazon.com vault. I promised a new client that I'd make this available again; her dog has an obsession with horses. It's much stronger than Freddie's fascination was with squirrels, but the principle still holds true: when you make yourself more relevant to your dog's prey drive, he'll be happy to give up whatever "prey" he's obsessed with, particularly if you let him finish the predatory sequence by biting a toy. It's really that simple (which doesn't mean it's easy).

Chasing Squirrels

I mentioned in a previous post the need to take charge of the dog’s emotional charge. You want to do this without attempting to become some mythical pack leader, of course (though Cesar Millan seems to be making a good living doing it). I’ve described this process in my work with Boomer, but another excellent example comes from my own dog, Fred, who used to love to chase squirrels in Central Park. At the time he was still having panic attacks on the streets, but was entirely calm in the park. In fact, I’d been trying to find a way to get him to play tug and fetch outdoors in order to cure those panic attacks, but his only way of expressing his prey drive was by stalking and chasing squirrels. Understand, I wasn’t as concerned with the fact that he was chasing squirrels; they were always too fast for him to actually catch. I was more concerned that he ignored me completely when he went into hunting mode. His attitude was, “I know you’re going the other direction. Don’t worry about me, I’ll catch up when I’m done here...”

So, one day I took some juicy pieces of chicken breast to the park. When Freddie spotted a squirrel and began stalking it—which he did by freezing, like a setter or pointer—I walked over and put the chicken in front of his nose to distract him; to try to get him to pay attention to me (or at least the chicken) and not the squirrel. He just ignored it. In fact, he kept moving his head around because my hand was blocking his line of sight. So I finally put it right into his mouth (which was open slightly). He let that juicy slice of chicken just sit right on top of his tongue for about half a second, then dropped it — ptaahh — onto the ground, keeping his eyes on the squirrel the whole time.

I was stumped. If I couldn’t distract him by putting a piece of chicken right into his mouth, how could I get his attention? Then it hit me: I would hunt squirrels with him. Maybe that would also solve my other problem; how to get Fred to share his prey drive with me. So, I put the chicken in my pocket, and later, while Freddie was sniffing around, I spotted another squirrel, one that he hadn’t seen yet himself.

In a hushed, highly emotionally charged voice I whispered, “There he is!” and began stalking the squirrel myself.

Freddie eventually picked up on my mood, and when he did, he saw the squirrel too, and dropped into his stalking stance. We were now hunting together. Fred didn’t know it yet, but I was now in control of the game.

We did this for a few days, then I added a new twist. We’d stalk a squirrel together but at some point, I’d make a quick move toward the squirrel, motivating it to run up the nearest tree. This always set Freddie racing off after the the little critter. While he did that, I'd pick up a stick, hoot excitedly and run away, waving it for Freddie to see.

Freddie would then be forced to choose between chasing the squirrel, and then circling the tree to no avail, or chasing me and the stick. In the beginning he always went immediately for the squirrel. But the thing is, the squirrels always went up a tree, leaving Freddie with nothing to sink his teeth into. That’s the critical thing here.

Meanwhile, I was still enticing him with a stick. Once he started to come toward me, I’d shout, “Freddie, come!” (while he was already running toward me). Then, once he got to me, I’d invite him to jump up on me and play tug-of-war. I either let him win, or, if he lost his grip, I immediately threw the stick for him to chase, which he did with the same intensity, more or less, that he had for chasing the squirrel. Once the stick was in Freddie’s mouth and he was able to lie down in the grass and crunch down on it with his jaws and “kill” it, he was truly satisfied. He never got that satisfaction from chasing squirrels because he never got a chance to bite one. After just a few weeks of following these steps, whenever Freddie saw a squirrel, all I had to do was whistle, or say, “Freddie, come!” and he’d immediately turn and run back to me for a game of fetch.

Of course, from the traditional standpoint, everything I did to change Freddie’s behavior was wrong:

1.) I encouraged him to chase squirrels, which squirrel-lovers disapproved of (I told them it was just a squirrel aerobics class)

2.) I encouraged him to jump up on me, and

3.) I was not only playing tug-of-war with him, I was letting him win!

These were all huge no-nos in the dog training world at the time. But doing each of these things helped me take charge of Freddie’s emotional energy. That was the whole point.

Here’s how and why it worked: when Freddie saw a squirrel he became filled with an emotional charge. He was so charged up in fact that nothing could get his attention away from his intended prey, not even a juicy piece of chicken sitting on his tongue! By immersing (or pretending to immerse) myself in the same emotions that he was feeling, I created a dynamic, magnetic charge between us. Then, by getting him to jump up on me and play tug-of-war, I decreased his resistance to my position as a vertical being and gave him the satisfaction of crunching something with his teeth.

It also helped that Freddie’s m.o. in hunting squirrels was to stalk them; to try to sneak up as close as he could. Then, when they started to run towards the nearest tree, he’d give chase. If he’d been an instant chaser like some dogs, this wouldn’t have worked.

Now, I’m not recommending that you chase squirrels with your dog. It just happened to work with Freddie due to a number of contributing factors that I was aware of at the time, and that you might not be with your dog. What I am recommending is that you find a way to take charge of your dog’s emotional energy, not so that you can always be in control of everything the dog does, but so that the dog can be in control of his own behavior, and doesn’t need you to constantly be telling him what to do (which is something some people seem to enjoy).

Here’s the thing: if you don’t have “willing” squirrels as your guinea pigs when teaching your dog to re-direct her energy into something safe to bite, and especially if your dog is more apt to go after children or skateboarders or other dogs, you have got, got, got to be able to get her addicted to tug before you put her in a situation where she’s going to come up against her biggest bite-temptation. Squirrels are wily and can run up trees. They’re safe (more or less). Kids and skateboarders and other dogs don’t have as easy a time escaping those teeth. So work on the pushing exercise first, then work on redirecting your dog’s energy into a game of tug, or just on heeling, or jumping up on command. 

The more you do that, the less tempting these other things will be.

LCK

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