Tag: dog behavior

What I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Studying Animal Body Language

Posted on by Allie Bender

Last week I wrote a post about the “freeze” option our pets have while over threshold and mentioned that it often gets written off as “fine”. You can read that article here if you haven’t yet. This week, I want to focus on a reaction that I often see when people first learn about this: the prelearning dip. 

Waaay at the beginning of the Pet Harmony blog, I talked about “prelearning dips.” You can read the full article here, but the Cliffs Notes version is that a “prelearning dip” happens when we receive new information that competes with information we previously had, so we reject the new stuff. It’s one of the reasons why providing facts, stats, and scientific studies in an internet argument doesn’t usually work in persuading the other person. We all go through these dips and sometimes we hang out in that dip for a while instead of reconciling the new information and updating our knowledge base. I know that I have!

Often, when I talk about the “freeze” option to clients I see them having a bit of a prelearning dip as this new information – that their pet is uncomfortable, stressed, and/or anxious – is incompatible with what they thought was happening– their pet being “fine.” That’s a really difficult piece of new information to reconcile. In a session, I’ll let my client work through that and ask me as many questions as they need to to reconcile instead of pushing them, but I wanted to take the time to talk to y’all about this particular situation more in-depth. And, more importantly, let you know that this is a normal part of the learning process. 

Prelearning Dips & Learning Body Language

I regularly give presentations about animal body language. After every presentation, there is at least one person – without fail – who is concerned about their pet displaying many of the stress signals that we discussed in the seminar. This happened so frequently that I included an entire slide in my updated presentation saying that, “not all stress is bad stress” to allay some of those fears and questions I was routinely getting. 

Good stress vs. bad stress is a topic for another day; the point of this anecdote is that there are a whole lot of feelings that come up when people first start studying animal body language. Guilt, anxiety, confusion, wonder, excitement: I’ve seen it all! And a very common occurrence is that of the prelearning dip. This happens because, for some people, I’ve inadvertently shattered their beliefs about their pet. They might think that their pet loves belly rubs but I challenged that by describing a “tap out” (pictured below).

This dog’s ears are held low and back against the head, mouth is tight, and body looks stiff. All signs that this is a tap out instead of a belly rub invitation!

They might think that their dog loves getting kissed on the top of the head, but I challenged that by putting all of the signals they see from their dog in that situation into the “distance-increasing” category. 

Dog kiss
This dog’s ears are super far back and low against the head, body stiff, mouth closed tightly, head turned away, and it looks like the tail might be tucked as well.

They might think that “freeze” is a sign of “fine”, but I challenged that by stepping on a mini soap box about how not-okay it is for animals to be shut down. 

Scared puppy
This dog’s ears are low and back against the head, tail down, body stiff, and slightly crouched. The weight distribution on the hind legs (leaning back) may be for balance instead of a stress signal.

The list goes on. 

The biggest thing that I want to tell folks who I see struggling to reconcile this new information with the information they previously had is: it’s okay. It’s okay to go through a pre-learning dip! We’ve all been there before and will be there again. It’s okay to take some time to sift through new information and noodle it over. It’s okay to reframe how we think about our pets based on this new information; they’re still the same individual they were before and we won’t love them any less. It’s okay. 

If you’re one of the majority of people who has or is struggling with a prelearning dip as you learn more about your pet’s body language, know that you’re not alone. It’s okay to learn new things and even learn that you were wrong about a certain aspect of your pet. We all do the best that we can with the information that we have in the moment; and when we learn better, we do better. The most important thing is to keep learning.

Now What?

  • Have you started studying your pet’s body language? If not, get on it! If everyone knew how their animal communicated we would live in a very different [and I think better] world. Here are some resources to help you (these are Amazon affiliate links. We receive a small commission for purchases made through these links at no extra cost to you. This helps us continue to put out free content to help you and your pets live more harmoniously!)
  • Think through your learning journey in regards to animal body language. What’s something that you’ve learned from multiple reputable sources that you’re still hung up on? Why do you think you’re having a prelearning dip about that particular thing? What ideas do you currently have that have to change in order to reconcile the new information?
  • Talk to an expert about your prelearning dip. Tell them about the hangup you’re having and why you think you’re having it. Many times hangups happen because there are kernels of truth in mostly untrue ideas or statements; it’s hard to piece together what is and is not factual in those situations. An expert can help you do that more proficiently! 
  • If your prelearning dip is happening as a way to keep guilt at bay, you’re not alone. All of us at some point have been told to do something or train in a way that wasn’t LIMA-friendly towards our animals. And oftentimes, prelearning dips are a way for us to not have to deal with the emotions that come along with that. Remember, we all do the best that we can with the information that we have at hand. Let yourself feel those difficult things and then move on, knowing that you’re on the path to knowing better and doing better. 

Happy training!

Allie

When Should We Be Concerned About “Fine”?

Posted on by Allie Bender

I’ll admit, I’ve had an issue with the word “fine” for longer than I’ve been involved in animal behavior. The reason for that is fairly perfectly summed up in this meme:

But I digress. Onto how this relates to animal behavior!

Something I hear frequently is:

“I don’t get it. He tries to bite people normally but is totally fine when they take him in the back at the vet clinic!”

When I hear this, I ask my client more questions about that scenario: what sort of body language do you see at the vet? Does your pet seem fearful or is he totally happy and excited to be there? It’s almost always the former. In that case, I have to break some bad news to my clients: their pet is not actually fine. 

A bit about thresholds

We’ve talked about thresholds before in our “Does Your Pet Have Mountain Lion Brain?” post. Essentially, it’s that line in the sand where under threshold your pet is okay and above threshold they’re in fight-or-flight mode (this is an overly simplified version; I recommend Eileen Anderson’s blog post to learn the nuances). However, our pets have more options than just fight or flight when they’re over threshold. Freeze is a third option. 

What does “Freeze” look like?

A quick note before we continue: there’s also a body language signal that we refer to as “freeze”. That type can be a bit different than the “freeze” option over threshold that we’re currently talking about. 

Over threshold, “freeze” looks like when a rabbit spots you crossing their path. They get very still, as if they’re saying, “If I don’t move then you can’t see me and won’t eat me!” This is true for our pets, too. Freeze looks like a stiff stillness. One of my favorite resources to help my clients understand this important distinction between “fine” and “freeze” is this video from Eileen Anderson (note: while shut down and freeze are technically different, the concepts are similar enough for our purposes at the pet parent level):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CyH0RHWYsU&t
Thank you Eileen for letting me link to your video here!

As you can see, there are very subtle differences between “fine” and “freeze”. It’s easy to see why many people don’t spot what’s happening! 

Why is “Freeze” Not Fine?

At this point when I’m talking to my clients, they often ask me if this is really a big deal. Their pet is not actively aggressing, nor running away, and the clinic staff is able to do what they need to do for the health of their pet. Why is that not okay? The answer is dependent on who you ask. 

From the human point of view, everything is okay. We’re able to perform the tasks we needed to to keep the pet physically healthy and we were able to do so safely. It’s a win-win for the humans! From the pet point of view, however, it’s definitely not a win-win. They’re still scared and over threshold, which can feed into other aspects of life. For instance, a client recently told me that her dog had major regressions in all of her anxiety-related behaviors, including light/shadow chasing, reactivity, and aggression, after she came back from a tooth extraction, even though there were no negative reports from the clinic. Behavior doesn’t happen in a vacuum; many seemingly unrelated things do impact one another. 

Experiencing these traumatic (again, from the point of view of the pet and not the human) and unavoidable events can lead to learned helplessness. This is a state where an individual has learned that nothing they do affects their outcome so they choose not to do anything when put into stressful situations. I mentioned the vet clinic, but I also see this happening at groomers and even at dog parks and doggy daycares. 

There’s a whole host of negative mental and physical side effects from learned helplessness, from disrupted sleeping patterns to increased anxiety-related behaviors. We talk a ton about this in our book in the Agency chapter if you’re interested in this topic. In short, “freeze” is definitely not okay from the point of view of the pet’s mental and behavioral health. 

What can I do?

The good news is that your pet will tell you when they’re uncomfortable and, in most situations, we can advocate for them! The above video excellently showcases different dogs in this shut down state but it’s up to us to learn our own pet’s body language to know what it looks like for them. 

When you see your pet entering that zone, take a moment to assess the environment and situation. What is your pet responding to? I’ve been using a vet visit as an example but this can happen in other situations, too. For instance, when I first adopted Oso he would choose “freeze” during thunderstorms. How can you manage the environment in that moment to alleviate your pet’s stress? 

And, of course this wouldn’t be a training and behavior blog without recommending training! When you know what is making your pet uncomfortable you can work on helping your pet feel more comfortable in those situations. Above I stated that when I first adopted Oso he would freeze during thunderstorms; that’s because we worked through that fear using counterconditioning and he is no longer as frightened of them. There’s no reason for him to freeze because it’s not that scary. That is the true win-win. 

Now what?

  • Continue learning your dog’s body language and stress signals. Here are a couple books to help you with that (these are Amazon affiliate links. We receive a small commission for purchases made through these links at no extra cost to you. This helps us continue to put out free content to help you and your pets live more harmoniously!)
  • When you see your pet choosing “freeze”, assess the environment and situation to determine what the triggers are. Make a note of those. 
  • Work with your behavior consultant to determine the best course of action for working through your pet’s fears. While it’s possible to do this on your own, your behavior consultant should help you do this in a way that is effective, ethical, efficient, and empowering so that you don’t have unintended consequences down the road. 
  • Work through your pet’s behavior modification plan and see those true win-wins roll in!

Happy training!

Allie

Conversations with My Dog

Posted on by Allie Bender

A lot of people talk to their pets. I’m one of them. I ask Oso questions he’ll never be able to answer, I sing him songs that he doesn’t understand, and I occasionally throw in something that he does know like, “Do you want to go outside?” Humans are talkative beings. Sorry, Oso. But what if I told you that Oso can hold his own in some of our conversations? I sound crazy, right? Let me explain. 

This may just look like a super cute picture of Oso, but it’s actually the beginning of a conversation. Here’s what he’s saying:

Oso: *puts head on couch* I’d like to come up on the couch. 

Me: Okay, come up then.

At this point, one of two scenarios play out:

Scenario 1: 

Oso: *comes up on couch and snuggles* Hooray snuggle time!

Intense snuggling: the result of missing yesterday’s snuggles.

Scenario 2: 

Oso: *looks at me without moving his head* There’s stuff in my way.

Me: Is something in your way? You’re ridiculous. *Continues chattering while clearing space for him on the couch* Come up then. 

Oso: *looks at me without moving his head* There’s still not enough room.

The subtle eye movement here is impressive.

Me: *Sigh* You’re the worst. *Moves my legs to give him even more space*

Oso: *comes up on couch, sprawls out, and falls asleep*

Now, I’ve clearly anthropomorphized some of this. I don’t *really* know his side of the story. But, what I do know is that we very consistently have this interaction. We have both learned this way of communication from one another. His head-on-couch behavior prompts me to create space for him and he comes up after I do so. He continues to put his head on the couch because he gets the space he’s looking for and I get snuggles so I continue giving him space. It may look unconventional but it definitely qualifies as a conversation. Communication is so much more than talking.

Expanding the picture

Oso learned how to use a “head down” behavior as a conversation starter not through this couch behavior, but during our training sessions. We often start our training sessions with his nail file board. However, after he scratched for a varied length of time, he consistently would become disinterested in continuing. In the beginning I took that to mean that he wasn’t interested in continuing our training session in general and would move on to my own thing. He would continue putzing around the room, though, as if to say that he wasn’t done with the interaction. Maybe I had gotten it wrong?

Around this same time, I was teaching him a “head down” behavior as a new trick. While I don’t remember the actual interaction, my assumption is that during a training session he decided to do a “head down” behavior instead of continuing to use his nail file board and I started reinforcing him for that. We continued the session but switched to a new activity. It only took a few of these interactions for us to finally be on the same wavelength (humans are slow, aren’t we?): he wanted to continue training but didn’t want to do his nail file board anymore. 

The “head down” behavior took off after we learned how to communicate together in this way. He started doing it during training sessions any time that he wanted to switch to a new activity. I learned that he likes switching up what we’re working on far more than I was doing previously. He started doing it whenever he got frustrated because I wasn’t clear in what I wanted. He started doing it to ask to get up on the bed or when he wanted me to create space for him on the couch. He started doing it to ask for most things that he wanted (the only different one is when he wants to go outside). He learned that that behavior works for getting him things he wants.

The Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) term for this type of behavior is called, “manding”. Essentially, it means requesting something that you want. Oso learned “head down” as a manding behavior because I treated the behavior as a form of communication instead of a random or coincidental occurrence. Not only is his “head down” behavior cute and unobtrusive, it is so much less annoying than many of the behaviors he could have chosen: barking, pawing, nudging my hand. 

Here’s my challenge for you: start treating your pet’s behavior as a form of communication instead of a random occurrence. Look around and assess the situation. What could they potentially be saying to you? What has your pet “gotten” for doing this behavior in the past (attention, petting, treats, play time starts, etc.)? 

What conversations will you have with your pet?

Now what?

  • Observe your pet’s behavior free from judgment. Take away the morals– good behavior and bad behavior– and simply watch. Is there something that they do fairly regularly? 
  • After observing their behavior, start noticing the situation around that behavior. What happened before? What happens after? Again, this step should be free from judgment. 
  • Are there conversations that you and your pet already have? Your observations may uncover some form of communication that you weren’t cognizant of!
  • Is there a way that you’d like your pet to communicate with you? One of the easiest ways is to choose a behavior that your pet is already performing and reinforcing it. You can also choose to teach a new behavior and use that instead! 
  • Start training! I chose to reinforce Oso’s manding behavior not with food, but with “real life” reinforcers like access to furniture and fun training exercises. 
  • Post pics and videos of the conversations you have with your pet on our Facebook page! We’d love to see them. 

Happy training!

Allie

Does Your Pet Have Mountain Lion Brain?

Posted on by Allie Bender

Have you ever said something like:

  • Treats won’t work if he’s barking.
  • Nothing works when he sees another dog!
  • She won’t pay attention to me when she’s like that. 
  • If you have, then this post is for you!

A Little Bit of Body Language

Before we get started and I explain what the heck “mountain lion brain” means, we first need to define one term: threshold. Threshold refers to that line in the sand where underneath the line your animal is “okay” and over the line they go into fight-or-flight mode. This is an overly simplistic view (for a more in-depth discussion as to types of thresholds check out this article) and there are more options over threshold than just fight or flight, but for our purposes in this post this definition will suffice. Essentially, under threshold can look like this:

Close up of copper colored spaniel with floppy ears and pink panting tongue with blurred background of vegetation
Photo by Jamie Street

While over threshold can look like this:

A black dog with pointed ears, slightly turned to the sides, round eyes, tense facial features, open mouth with lips pulled back to show teeth. Dog is wearing a red collar and is in front of a fall woodland background.
Photo by Nick Bolton

Or this:

A brown puppy chases a ball, running through the grass. Their hair is blown back as they run. Mouth is open, ears are back.

Or even this! (I mentioned there are more options than fight or flight; freeze is another option.) 

(Photo by Mia Anderson) A small, soaking wet yellowish dog with a somewhat curly coat with large floppy ears standing on top of a small surf board on water. The dog's weight is shifted back and spine is slightly arched and body appears stiff.
Photo by Mia Anderson

Understanding thresholds and what your particular animal’s body language looks like below and above threshold is imperative to successfully working with them, especially for those working on fear, anxiety, reactivity, and aggression. One of the reasons for this is that learning– or at least the type of learning that we typically think of with training– does not happen over threshold. This is another overly simplistic and inaccurate statement for the true science pros in the audience, but it’s true from the eyes of the average pet owner. This is why your dog won’t take treats or sit when he’s reactive. It’s why nothing works at that moment. 

I call this over-threshold state, “Mountain Lion Brain”. You have willingly come to this webpage and are hopefully comfortable and able to absorb the material. However, if you were being chased by a mountain lion and I ran up alongside you and asked if you’d like to learn about your pet’s behavior, the answer is no! You couldn’t possibly learn while you’re being chased by a mountain lion. You have “Mountain Lion Brain”.

That over-threshold state is not conducive to learning for you or your pet. Your pet is not stubborn, or stupid, or has selective hearing when they’re over threshold. When they’re experiencing “Mountain Lion Brain”, the fear/strong emotions center of their brain takes over and essentially shuts down the learning and reasoning parts of their brain (overly simplistic but you get the picture). They’re not learning because they can’t. 

Sometimes when I explain this, a client will ask me, “But he’s not actually in danger. Why does he still have “Mountain Lion Brain”?” A good question! Threats are not always physical and they’re not always “real” from an outsider’s perspective. For example, public speaking is one of the top fears of people across the world. There is no actual, physical threat in public speaking (unless maybe you’re a prominent and controversial figure). The threat is not “real” from an outsider’s perspective, however, can feel very real to the person who fears public speaking. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if someone else perceives the threat as “real” or valid; it only matters if the individual experiencing it perceives it as such. Fear doesn’t always make sense. 

 

What Should I do if my Pet is Experiencing “Mountain Lion Brain”?

The best answer is to remove the threat and/or your pet from that situation. A note: many pets will “redirect” their frustration or fear onto the closest being when they have “Mountain Lion Brain”. This is why many dogs bite their owners for grabbing their collars when they’re reactive. It’s safer to remove the threat instead of your pet. If that’s not possible, please do so with caution and by physically handling them the least amount possible. 

There’s no sense in trying to train if your pet is not going to be able to learn. Make a mental note of your pet’s body language leading up to threshold, what the involved triggers were, and anything else of consequence so that you can avoid those situations in the future. Your behavior consultant will be able to help you make a plan to work on behavior concerns under threshold, where both you and your pet will be safer and more successful. 

Now What?

  • Learn your pet’s body language approaching threshold. This step is so important that we give it to almost every client as one of their first homework tasks. This helps to make your pet’s behavior more predictable to you. 
  • Identify triggers based on your pet’s body language. Additionally, identify if your pet is able to learn, respond to you, and eat when you see certain signals. That lets you know how close they are to “Mountain Lion Brain” and gives you information as to whether this is a training moment or a management moment. 
  • Find management solutions to keep your pet under threshold. Get creative!
  • Work with a behavior consultant to help you with any of the above and to come up with a solution to working on your pet’s behavior concerns under threshold. Contact us at info@petharmonytraining.com to work with someone from our team!

Happy training!

Allie

5 Reasons Why Your Dog Isn’t Listening to You

Posted on by Allie Bender

A common group of grievances I hear from pet parents is:

“My dog doesn’t listen to me.”

“I want my dog to listen better.”

“My dog is stubborn.”

“He doesn’t do something unless he wants to.”

Let’s explore why that might be! Below is a list of 5 common reasons why your dog isn’t listening to you. 

  1. You haven’t trained the behavior well enough. The learning process is more involved than many of us know; check out our blog post on “Why You Should Care about the Stages of Learning” for more info. Oftentimes the dog doesn’t actually know the behavior in question in that particular situation and simply needs more repetition or breaking the training down into smaller pieces to be more successful. 
  2. Your dog doesn’t know what you’re asking for. There’s a lot of overlap between this one and the one above. I’ve seen many people lament that their dog isn’t coming when called anymore but it turns out that they aren’t using the cue they taught! Dogs don’t understand synonyms like we do. If you taught “come” but are now saying “c’mere” or “c’mon” your dog won’t know what you’re asking for. Additionally, if you reinforce multiple behaviors for the same cue, you’ll keep getting multiple behaviors (i.e.: saying “sit”, dog lies down, giving them the treat anyway). This is why some dogs consistently lie down when asked to sit! You get what you reinforce. To combat this make sure that you’re being consistent with both your cue and what you’re reinforcing. 
  3. There isn’t a strong enough reinforcement history. There is absolute truth in the last statement in the above list: “He doesn’t do something unless he wants to.” Yep– that’s true for all of us! Behavior serves a function to the individual performing it. If it doesn’t serve a function then we stop doing it. For instance, if your boss stopped paying you you would stop going to work. If a light bulb burnt out you would either replace it or eventually stop flipping that switch. Building strong, solid behaviors should rely on strong, solid reinforcement histories (e.g.: how much you’ve been reinforced for that behavior in the past [there’s a bit more to it than that but that’s beyond the scope of this post]). This means that we need to practice, practice, practice, and reinforce, reinforce, reinforce. 
  4. There are competing reinforcers. The environment provides a lot of reinforcers for our dogs that compete with whatever we want to offer them: chasing squirrels, sniffing the grass, protecting oneself from harm, etc. If we’re offering them the equivalent of $5 and chasing squirrels is worth $100 then we’re going to lose out to the squirrel. This is why you’ll often hear trainers talking about “high-value treats” and “being more exciting than the environment”. It’s not enough to have a reinforcement history of shelling out $5; we need a reinforcement history of paying $100. 
  5. The dog is experiencing fear or anxiety at that moment. When any individual is in fight-or-flight mode their brain cannot respond to other stimuli around them. They’re essentially in their own world. The best thing to do in this situation is to remove the trigger (preferable) or remove the dog (careful! This can be dangerous.)

Now what?

  • The next time your dog doesn’t respond to you, pause and assess the situation. Ask yourself:
    • What does my dog’s body language say? Are they comfortable or stressed?
    • Am I asking for something that I have taught?
    • Has my dog been successful with this behavior in this situation before?
    • Have I recently practiced this behavior in a variety of situations? How did my dog do?
    • What’s my reinforcement history like for this behavior in this situation?
    • Are they doing something else that they like better? 
  • Use the above questions to figure out where your dog’s lapse in training is. Once you know then you can work on it!
  • If you’re experiencing number 5– the dog is experiencing fear or anxiety at that moment– email us at info@petharmonytraining.com to set up a consultation so we can help you work on it. Working with fear/anxiety is very different than working on basic manners. 

Happy training!

Allie

Your Pet is Not Like Your Car

Posted on by Allie Bender

A few months ago my car was intermittently making a strange noise. I had to take it in for an oil change anyway so I set up an appointment for a couple weeks from then. The morning of the appointment my husband reminded me to tell them about the noise (which I hadn’t heard since I scheduled with the mechanic). I responded, “With my luck, it won’t make any noise and they won’t be able to figure out what’s wrong with it.” I then told him a story about a similar incident where I intermittently smelled something akin to burning rubber when I drove but when I took it in, the mechanic couldn’t smell it and wasn’t able to diagnose the issue. 

And then it hit me. This is why people want to show me their dog’s undesirable behavior. I hear on an almost daily basis statements like:

I want you to come to my house to see the behavior. 

I hope we see dogs on our walk so you can see what he does. 

I’m worried she’s going to act perfectly when you’re here. 

Let me show you what he does.

All of these boil down to the desire that people have for me to see their pet doing the behavior that they want to change. And, on an almost daily basis, I respond with:

I don’t need to see your pet’s behavior in order for us to work on it. Actually, we’re going to manage the situation so that we hopefully don’t see it! 

That statement is usually met with skepticism and a look that says, “What do you mean you don’t want to see the behavior?” And while I’ve always understood that it’s a foreign concept for most in our society to address behavior issues before they happen instead of relying on consequences, I didn’t understand why it was truly so difficult to overcome the desire for me to see the behavior. That is, I didn’t understand until I said the exact same thing about my car. 

It dawned on me at that moment that there are issues that truly can’t be diagnosed without the problem happening in front of the expert. An optometrist needs to administer a vision test. The IT person asks to remote into the computer to poke around. The mechanic says that they can’t diagnose an intermittent smell because everything else looks okay. Most of us have a long learning history that reinforces this thought process that the expert needs to see the problem in order to develop the solution. We also have a learning history that says that when an expert doesn’t see the problem, we’re stuck with it. 

So why doesn’t your behavior professional need to see the behavior in order to modify it? Here are 5 reasons for us at Pet Harmony:

  1. We’ve seen it before, and we believe you. Because we have spent years studying the behavior sciences and their practical application, we understand the underlying causes of various behavior issues without needing to see them happening. We’ve worked with thousands of animals with maladaptive behavior over many years and assign our consultants based on what they’ve experienced and worked with. We know what questions to ask in order to develop a behavior modification plan for individual pets and can “see” the behavior in our heads. Only once in a blue moon do we get asked about something that none of us have seen before. In those cases we’ll often ask our clients to video the behavior, if it’s safe to do so, and/or refer them to a Veterinary Behaviorist. 
  2. Safety. We work primarily with aggression, reactivity, anxiety, and fear. In order to keep you, your pet, the public, and ourselves safe, we need to manage the environment so the animal can’t perform unsafe behaviors. If the pet’s problem is biting people then we definitely don’t want to see that!
  3. Mitigating stress levels. Once your pet passes a certain point, their brain is not receptive to learning. This is why people tell us that nothing works when their dog is reacting or they’ve tried using food in training and it didn’t work. If we want to start teaching the animal different exercises in our session then we need to keep them calm enough that they will be capable of learning. 
  4. Practice makes perfect. The more an animal (ourselves included) practices a behavior, the better they get at performing it. If our goal is to decrease the unwanted behavior, we don’t want them to continue practicing and perfecting it. This is why management (arranging the environment so the animal doesn’t perform the unwanted behavior) is so critical to behavior modification. 
  5. We can change unwanted behavior before it happens. There are several options to changing behavior and many of them can be implemented before the animal does the undesirable action! For example: if you don’t want your dog jumping on you, you don’t have to wait for him to jump on you to start training; you can train before he jumps and save yourself the frustration. 

Now what?

  • Take a few minutes to let this concept soak in: we don’t need to see your pet behaving badly to change their behavior. How do you feel about that? Relief? Skepticism? Email us at info@petharmonytraining.com if you’re still unsure! 
  • Consider the plethora of service options that open up knowing that we can help without being there in person. Is there actually a service that makes more sense for you than in-home sessions?
  • Are you struggling with other dog behavior problems? Learn about behavior modification and how you can get relief here.

Happy training!

Allie

January 2020 Training Challenge: Draft and Enrichment Plan for Your Pet – Part 2

Posted on by Allie Bender

Last week we started in our our first training challenge of 2020: Draft an enrichment plan for your pet. We had just finished filling out the first two columns for Winter Oso and were about to start in on the “Priority” and “Plan of Action” columns. Let’s pick up where we left off!

Here’s where we left off:

Aspect of Enrichment Is this need being met? Agency? Priority Plan of Action
Health/Veterinary   Likely  IP: cooperative care & happy vet visits    
Hygiene   IP: working on back nails   Appropriate    
Diet/Nutrition   Likely   Appropriate    
Physical Exercise Potential Room for Growth: winter behavior   Appropriate    
Sensory Stimulation   Likely   Appropriate    
Safety   Likely   Appropriate    
Security   IP: counterconditioning to fireplace   Appropriate    
Instinctual Behaviors  Potential Room for Growth: destuffing bed in winter   Inappropriate: destuffing bed    
Foraging   Likely   Appropriate    
Social Interaction   IP: meeting more people   Appropriate    
Mental Exercise   Potential Room for Growth: winter behavior   Appropriate    
Independence   Likely   Appropriate    
Environment   Likely   Appropriate    
Calming   Likely   Appropriate    

Oftentimes when people fill out an enrichment chart for the first time they’re overwhelmed with how much there is to work on and even feel a little guilty. We all want to meet our pet’s needs as best as possible and many times seeing everything in one place lets us know that we have more work to do than we were expecting. That’s okay! Oso’s enrichment chart definitely did not look like this when I first started on his enrichment plan; you’re looking at something that’s a few years in the making. It’s okay if there’s a lot to work on! We all have to start somewhere.

To help with the overwhelm, we put the “Priority” column next. It’s unrealistic and usually unproductive to tackle everything all at once. Additionally, if you add a bunch of things at the same time you don’t necessarily which is helping to change your pet’s behavior. The systematic approach is better in the long run.

When looking at prioritizing Winter Oso’s plan, I specifically want to pay attention to the new winter behaviors that I put on his list earlier (from Part 1). The other things that we’re already working on are built into his schedule, for the most part, and are a part of our routine. I can stay at a maintenance level with those for now and mark them as lower priorities.

Aspect of Enrichment Is this need being met? Agency? Priority Plan of Action
Health/Veterinary   Likely  IP: cooperative care & happy vet visits   Low  
Hygiene   IP: working on back nails   Appropriate   Low  
Diet/Nutrition   Likely   Appropriate    
Physical Exercise Potential Room for Growth: winter behavior   Appropriate   High  
Sensory Stimulation   Likely   Appropriate    
Safety   Likely   Appropriate    
Security   IP: counterconditioning to fireplace   Appropriate   Med.  
Instinctual Behaviors  Potential Room for Growth: destuffing bed in winter   Inappropriate: destuffing bed   Med.  
Foraging   Likely   Appropriate    
Social Interaction   IP: meeting more people   Appropriate   Low  
Mental Exercise   Potential Room for Growth: winter behavior   Appropriate   High  
Independence   Likely   Appropriate    
Environment   Likely   Appropriate    
Calming   Likely   Appropriate    

You’ll see that while destuffing his bed was on our “Undesirable Behaviors” list earlier, I marked it as a lower priority here. That’s because I believed the behavior to be a result of a different category (either mental or physical activity) instead of this one. If addressing the high-level priorities didn’t change this behavior then I would address this category. [Note about prioritization: Emily and I are working on a specific Prioritization Protocol at the time of writing this but it’s not quite ready for release nor did it greatly impact this post’s content. Stay tuned!]

Finally, we can get to our plan of action. What are we going to do to address those high priority categories? Those of you who’ve recently read the Winter Oso blog post, you’ll remember that I first tried increasing how frequently we played “find it” to address mental exercise. Here’s what the chart looks like with that added in:

Aspect of Enrichment Is this need being met? Agency? Priority Plan of Action
Health/Veterinary   Likely  IP: cooperative care & happy vet visits   Low  
Hygiene   IP: working on back nails   Appropriate   Low  
Diet/Nutrition   Likely   Appropriate    
Physical Exercise Potential Room for Growth: winter behavior   Appropriate   High  
Sensory Stimulation   Likely   Appropriate    
Safety   Likely   Appropriate    
Security   IP: counterconditioning to fireplace   Appropriate   Med.  
Instinctual Behaviors  Potential Room for Growth: destuffing bed in winter   Inappropriate: destuffing bed   Med.  
Foraging   Likely   Appropriate    
Social Interaction   IP: meeting more people   Appropriate   Low  
Mental Exercise   Potential Room for Growth: winter behavior   Appropriate   High   “Find it” with all dinners
Independence   Likely   Appropriate    
Environment   Likely   Appropriate    
Calming   Likely   Appropriate    

However, I didn’t see as much of a change in his behavior. Remember: activities must serve a function to be classified as enrichment! Even those “find it” and foraging are absolutely great exercises, do meet his needs in several categories, and theoretically could address the behaviors I didn’t actually see a significant decrease in his undesirable behaviors. That means that it’s not the activity he needs at the moment. With that in mind we increased his physical activity:

Aspect of Enrichment Is this need being met? Agency? Priority Plan of Action
Health/Veterinary   Likely  IP: cooperative care & happy vet visits   Low  
Hygiene   IP: working on back nails   Appropriate   Low  
Diet/Nutrition   Likely   Appropriate    
Physical Exercise Potential Room for Growth: winter behavior   Appropriate   High   Fetch outside daily, tug inside daily
Sensory Stimulation   Likely   Appropriate    
Safety   Likely   Appropriate    
Security   IP: counterconditioning to fireplace   Appropriate   Med.  
Instinctual Behaviors  Potential Room for Growth: destuffing bed in winter   Inappropriate: destuffing bed   Med.  
Foraging   Likely   Appropriate    
Social Interaction   IP: meeting more people   Appropriate   Low  
Mental Exercise Likely   Appropriate    
Independence   Likely   Appropriate    
Environment   Likely   Appropriate    
Calming   Likely   Appropriate    

Eureka! That worked! We started with a hybrid game outside (we’ve since taught him to play fetch) and tug inside each day and that has significantly decreased his undesirable behaviors and increased the desirable ones. It was physical exercise that he was lacking!

There you have it: a full example from start to finish of creating an enrichment plan. In our experience, it takes quite a bit of practice to look at behaviors in relation to their needs, so take it slow and go easy on yourself. And remember, we’re here to help!

Now what?

  • Time to finish up your enrichment plan for your pet!
  • An enrichment plan is fine and well, but the more important part is implementing it to see if your plan is beneficial. Have fun and experiment with some new activities! Check out our book if you need some ideas for the different categories.
  • Does this seem like a lot of work? Or overwhelming? Email Emily at emily@petharmonytraining.com for an enrichment consultation and let her create your plan for you!

January 2020 Training Challenge: Draft an Enrichment Plan for Your Pet – Part 1

Posted on by Allie Bender

Happy New Year everyone! I can’t believe we’re already into our 2nd year of training challenges. Thank you to everyone who has participated thus far and posted your progress on social media. I’m excited to get this year started! 

A little debrief about training challenges this year: they’re all enrichment-focused! Most of you know by now that our book, Canine Enrichment for the Real World, came out a few months ago (a huge thank you to everyone who’s purchased!) In honor of that, we decided to go through the book and set a training challenge based on the different categories of enrichment. So if you find yourself needing a little extra help in completing challenges in addition to the FB Live videos and these blog posts, there is plenty more info in the book. 

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the concept of enrichment, the simple definition is: meeting all of an animal’s needs. We can expand that to a full definition: enrichment means meeting all of an animal’s needs in order to empower them to perform species-typical behavior in healthy, safe, and appropriate ways. One of the challenging things about working on enrichment with our pets is that there are several species-typical behaviors that we don’t like: chewing, digging, barking, scratching, etc. But just because we don’t like a particular behavior doesn’t mean that we don’t have to meet that need. It means that we often need to think outside of the box on how we can meet our pet’s needs in a way that we also enjoy or at least don’t mind. 

Additionally, we need to actually see a change in our pet’s behavior to count that activity as enriching. If we provide our pets with activities or items that don’t elicit them performing species-typical behavior in healthy, safe, and appropriate ways then those activities or items are not enriching. If your dog is afraid of going on walks, then walks are not enriching. If your cat doesn’t use the scratching post, then the post is not enriching (without some training to teach her how!) We need to see the results to determine if what we’re doing is working. 

What I love about enrichment is that it helps improve behavior! There are many times where clients come to me for help with their pet’s behavior and it’s the simpler enrichment activities that give them the desired outcome instead of complicated training activities. When animals’ needs are being met they behave better. 

All of that leads us into our January 2020 challenge: 

Draft an enrichment plan for your pet 

Specifically, I want you to look at one or two undesirable behaviors that your pet does, consider what needs those behaviors are meeting (because all behavior serves a function to the individual performing it), and figure out how you can meet that need in a more desirable way. While the materials we’re providing are dog-centric, you can do this challenge with any species! I’m considering drafting an enrichment plan for my turtle, Zorro. 

I talked a bit about using enrichment to mediate frustrating behaviors in a fairly recent blog post about my nemesis: Winter Oso. Check out that post here if you haven’t read it already. “Winter Oso” is what we call our dog when it starts getting cold out and he starts getting squirrely. I knew that this behavior change was because I wasn’t meeting his needs well in the winter, but I wasn’t sure exactly which was deficient. Let’s go through creating an enrichment plan for Winter Oso. I’ll use our enrichment chart (pages 195-196 of the book) to make it easier to plan:

Aspect of Enrichment Is this need being met? Agency? Priority Plan of Action
Health/Veterinary        
Hygiene        
Diet/Nutrition        
Physical Exercise        
Sensory Stimulation        
Safety        
Security        
Instinctual Behaviors        
Foraging        
Social Interaction        
Mental Exercise        
Independence        
Environment        
Calming        

The first step is listing out the undesirable behaviors you’d like to see less of and the desirable behaviors you’d like to see more of. For Winter Oso, it looks like this:

Undesirable behaviors:

  • Increased activity at night
  • Destuffing his bed
  • Inappropriate investigation of household items within his reach

Desirable behaviors:

  • Sleeping in the evenings

After you have your desirable and undesirable behaviors, fill out the first column “Is This Need Being Met?” based on the behaviors you previously listed. What categories of needs do those undesirable behaviors likely fall in? What function do they serve? Here’s what that looks like for Winter Oso (I threw in other things we’re working on not listed above as well to give you a full picture):

Aspect of Enrichment Is this need being met? Agency? Priority Plan of Action
Health/Veterinary   Likely      
Hygiene   IP: working on back nails      
Diet/Nutrition   Likely      
Physical Exercise Potential Room for Growth: winter behavior      
Sensory Stimulation   Likely      
Safety   Likely      
Security   IP: counterconditioning to fireplace      
Instinctual Behaviors  Potential Room for Growth: destuffing bed in winter      
Foraging   Likely      
Social Interaction   IP: meeting more people      
Mental Exercise   Potential Room for Growth: winter behavior      
Independence   Likely      
Environment   Likely      
Calming   Likely      

The categories that his undesirable behaviors might be meeting include: Physical Exercise, Mental Exercise, and Instinctual Behaviors (specifically chewing/gutting). We now go to the next category: Agency. Agency can be defined as: the ability to have some level of control in our environment and be able to make choices that will result in a desirable outcome. If an animal doesn’t have agency within a category then that category doesn’t meet the definition of enrichment either.

Aspect of Enrichment Is this need being met? Agency? Priority Plan of Action
Health/Veterinary   Likely  IP: cooperative care & happy vet visits    
Hygiene   IP: working on back nails   Appropriate    
Diet/Nutrition   Likely   Appropriate    
Physical Exercise Potential Room for Growth: winter behavior   Appropriate    
Sensory Stimulation   Likely   Appropriate    
Safety   Likely   Appropriate    
Security   IP: counterconditioning to fireplace   Appropriate    
Instinctual Behaviors  Potential Room for Growth: destuffing bed in winter   Inappropriate: destuffing bed    
Foraging   Likely   Appropriate    
Social Interaction   IP: meeting more people   Appropriate    
Mental Exercise   Potential Room for Growth: winter behavior   Appropriate    
Independence   Likely   Appropriate    
Environment   Likely   Appropriate    
Calming   Likely   Appropriate    

Oso has a lot of agency in his daily life and we’ve spent a good deal of time teaching him that he has choices in difficult situations. We’re still working on medical handling but you can also see that one area that he has too much agency in is having access to his bed so as to destuff it. Last winter we put one of them away before he destroyed it completely. This year we’ve been working on teaching him more appropriate choices.

Phew! If you’re following along with your own enrichment plan these two columns alone probably took quite a while to complete. Let’s put a pin in this here and get into the second two columns next week.

Now what?

Happy training!

Allie

Let’s Get Rid of “Should”

Posted on by Allie Bender

I love when people are committed to doing right by their pets. Hearing how much people love for and strive for the best with their pets is one of the things that keeps me going as a consultant. Along with that commitment, though, I see a lot of doubt and worry creep in. Those are the times that I get questions like:

Is it okay that he sleeps in bed with me? 

Should I go first through the door?

Does it matter what side he walks on? 

Her reactivity on leash makes me not want to take her on walks anymore but I feel like I should…

What cues should I teach him?

All of these boil down to just one question:

What should I do with/for my pet? 

My answer, in a nutshell, is: whatever you’d like to.  Of course there’s a bit more to it than that. Really the answer is, “Whatever works for you, your family, your situation and keeps the animal and others happy, safe, and physically, mentally, and behaviorally healthy.” There’s quite a bit of stuff that we do as pet owners that doesn’t necessarily keep our pets mentally and behaviorally healthy but that’s a discussion for another time. 

In an effort to do the best for our pets we fall into this thinking that there’s one right and proper way to go about meeting this goal. Our society encourages this viewpoint that there’s one right way. The truth is that there are a lot of ways that we can keep our animals happy, safe, and physically, mentally, and behaviorally healthy and what works for one household doesn’t always work for another. 

Let’s take dogs jumping up on the furniture, for example. Many people sheepishly tell me that they let their dog onto the furniture, usually quickly followed by, “I know I probably shouldn’t let him.” To which I tell them that I don’t mind either way! The look of relief on their face always makes me smile. 

I then tell them that Oso has very specific furniture rules that work for our family. He’s always allowed on the couch at our house but never at my mom’s. He’s allowed on our bed any time during the day or if we invite him up at night but never when we go to sleep. He is then allowed to get on the bed in the morning regardless of whether we invite him or not. It’s what makes sense for us but those specific rules likely don’t make sense for everybody.

How could I not want him on the couch when he’s this cute?!

Another example is training basic cues. I often get people telling me (again, sheepishly) that they’ve never trained their previous dogs. They want to train their new dog and want to know what to work on. My question is always, “What do you want the dog to do?” That question usually elicits some blank looks because they knew that they *should* get their dog trained but didn’t really know what they wanted out of that. 

We then discuss that training helps teach animals how to live in our world (and is good for mental exercise) so there’s no set rule of what we teach. Again, it’s dependent on the animal and the household. If you don’t want to go into formal obedience or rally then there’s not really a point to devoting effort on teaching a proper “heel”. If the dog doesn’t grab items willy nilly then they might not need to learn “leave it”. All of those cues are helpful to getting a behavior that you want but aren’t imperative to living a healthy and happy life. 

My challenge to you is to get rid of “should”. Ignore what everyone (except your vet and behavior consultant) is saying you should do with your pet and look at what you and your pet actually need. Hate walking with your pet but both of you love playing fetch in the fenced-in yard? Go for it. Fetch is often better than walking for physical exercise. Love cuddling on the couch with your pet? Go for it. Unless your pet is guarding the couch from you then there’s no harm done. Figure out what makes you and your pet happy together and do that. 

Now what?

  • Think about one thing that you do in relation to your pet that you don’t particularly enjoy. Is it not letting them jump up to greet you when you come home? Is it taking your reactive dog for long walks? 
  • Consider if that activity is actually beneficial. If you’re not letting them jump up on you when you come home and they haven’t been jumping on guests then that might be beneficial. If you’ve been taking your reactive dog for long walks for months and their reactivity is still not better then it’s not likely beneficial. 
  • Figure out a more beneficial and attractive solution. For jumping, you could teach your dog to jump up on a cue. That way you get your coming home snuggles and your guests get a polite greeting. For reactivity, contact a behavior consultant to help with the issue and play in the yard or in the house for physical exercise in the meantime. 
  • Reevaluate after you’ve implemented your more attractive solution: is it beneficial? Are you and your pet happier and physically, mentally, and behaviorally healthier? If so, huzzah! Keep at it. If not, repeat the above steps. 

Happy Training & Happy Holidays!

Allie

A large brindle dog laying on top of a person.

Winter Oso

Posted on by Allie Bender (she/her)

Winter Oso

A large brindle dog laying on top of a person.

If you’ve followed Pet Harmony for probably any length of time you’ve heard me talk about the four-legged love of my life, Oso.

But let me introduce you to my four-legged nemesis: Winter Oso. 

I first met Winter Oso in the winter of 2018. I wish I could blame it on the polar vortex but he arrived prior to that. Winter Oso is squirrely. He cruises around in the evenings looking for mischief and driving us crazy. He destroys his bed. He decides to bark at the birds on the feeder for the first time ever. He gets into things he’s left alone for years. He’s such a nuisance that my husband and I actually, truly call him “Winter Oso” when he’s like that. And the worst part? Winter Oso is our fault.

Oso generally gets a lot of enrichment: playtime in the yard, training sessions, daily food puzzles, regular scent work, lots of toys, chews, and destructible items, and lots of snuggle time. He’s 7 years old and pretty happy to lounge on the couch with us in the evenings. This enrichment routine was enough to keep him calm and even keel for a year and a half after we adopted him.

A side view of a brindle dog calmly looking over the back of a couch (out a window)
Regular Oso
A brindle dog with an excited expression, eyes wide with his mouth open.
Winter Oso

It Was Enough...Until It Wasn't

When Winter Oso arrived, I went through the same thing that a lot of my clients go through: But I do so much for my pet. Are you saying that it’s not enough?

I was in denial that Winter Oso was a product of me not meeting his needs. “I do all this stuff for him! It should be enough!” While I thought that I was doing enough, Winter Oso was clearly telling me through his behavior that his needs weren’t being met. If I were meeting his needs better, he would be acting like his normal self instead of this new, squirrely beast.

It took a couple weeks of being annoyed and angry with him (hello, prelearning dip) for me to accept that I had to change course. If this were a client, I would tell them to increase or explore different options for mental and physical exercise. I was letting ideology—what it should be– get in the way of observation—what it actually is.

Solving Winter Oso

Increasing mental and physical exercise is just what we did. We played “find it” with every dinner spanning two floors of the house and getting in a lot of time up and down the stairs. It took 45 minutes. Every. Night. But it worked. Winter Oso was held at bay as long as we did this exercise.

We’ve now reached the one-year anniversary of meeting our four-legged nemesis. But this year, we were prepared. Winter Oso arrived during that cold spell we had in October: early but recognizable nonetheless. He started being more active in the evenings. He started destroying his bed: something we only saw during winter of last year.

We knew what to do, but… we moved into a new house this spring and no longer have the option of the exact same exercise that I was doing before (no stairs). That meant that I had to figure out exactly what was different about his enrichment schedule now vs. in warmer months and what the previous dinner exercise was actually doing to meet his needs.

We tried “find it” in the yard with his entire dinner a few days in a row. It took a little of the edge off but he was still squirrely. That meant it wasn’t a mental exercise problem. Aha! It was specifically going up and down the stairs during that dinner exercise that improved his behavior. He needed more physical exercise. But, why then, did we not need to worry about his physical exercise needs in the warmer months but did in the winter even if he spent the same amount of time in the yard on a warmer winter day?

It took me a few days to figure it out, but I realized two components that were different about his summer and winter yard times. 1) He’s more active in general when we’re outside too and we’re outside with him quite a bit when it’s warm out but not when it’s cold. 2) The reason we can get away with yard time as his primary form of physical exercise (besides age) is the wildlife.

Oso is a hunter and a threat to all things cute and fuzzy. He chases the squirrels, digs for voles, and gives birds a run for their money. We don’t mind it as long as he’s not incessantly barking; he’s a dog after all and it’s all normal dog behavior. In short, he gets a ton of exercise by just being a dog hunting for critters. In the winter, there are far fewer critters for him to antagonize and that means we need to step up our game and be the ones to provide him with his physical exercise needs.

We now play together in the yard almost every day for at least 5-10 minutes. We’ve invented a yard game that has him running for a large part of that time and that often does the trick. If he still needs more exercise a hardcore tug session with him and the husband will take care of the rest of his energy. The best part of this new routine is that its far more sustainable than our previous exercise. Winter Oso is no more and I have the four-legged love of my life back.

Here’s to harmony,

Allie

Now What?

Are there times where your pet is squirrely and you wished they’d just calm down? That is often a result of not meeting all their needs, like with Winter Oso. Take a step back and truly evaluate your pet’s behavior. Don’t let what you think it should be cloud your view of what it really is. For example:

    • If your pet is like Oso in that their behavior changes with the seasons, evaluate what is different. It might be something that’s not as easy to notice, like a change in critter density!
    • If your pet has undesirable behaviors regularly, evaluate what the function of their behavior is. What do they get out of doing it? What needs are the undesirable behaviors meeting?

Start experimenting with different activities and track the outcome. Here are some ideas:

  • Play with duration, time of day, and type of activity. It’s not necessarily about adding “more.” Often, it’s just about “different.” For example, instead of a 10-minute walk try a 10-minute flirt pole session if your pet needs more physical exercise. 
  • Keep track of what works and doesn’t work to address your pet’s behavior. That way the next time you see the change in behavior start you know exactly what to do and when!

Check out our book Canine Enrichment for the Real World for ideas and information on meeting your pet’s needs. Do you recognize that you have a Winter Oso on your hands but want professional help with addressing it? We got you.

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