What works for my dogs...

...will work for your dogs.

Ok, that's a bit of an overstatement, but the idea I'm trying to get across is that I really dislike the saying "well, whatever works for the individual dog is what's needed." Basically what people are communicating when they say this is that owners have the right to treat their dogs however they want to achieve the behavior they are looking for, as long as it doesn't cross the line into "abuse." I could write a whole blog post on the many things that are widely used as instruments in dog training that are considered abusive to experts in the field of behavior, but I will save that for another time. This blog post is to discuss force free training and why it works for every dog and why it's better for every dog.

When people say "Whatever works..." what I believe they are really discussing is how it's easiest for them to get the behavior they want out of their dogs. Sadly, for most people this includes a series of don'ts. I don't want my dog to jump, I don't want my dog to growl, I don't want my dog to react to other dogs on leash, etc. This is a very unfortunate way to look at the behavior of our dogs, and I say this with full understanding because I was once that owner. It got really frustrating for me and I'm sure it got frustrating for my dogs. Why would they walk next to me if I wasn't treating them nicely? Did it matter that they got some cookies for sitting and doing other tricks? Maybe it helped, but it certainly wasn't enough.

Lucky for me and my dogs, I changed. I had my eyes opened to the world of force free dog training. It's been a long, difficult process because it's not easy.  This is where I think the breakdown occurs for a lot of people: when they think "no corrections" they think "positive reinforcement." So what do you do when the dog is doing something you don't like? How do you use clicking and treating to fix that!? For this reason I prefer the term force free training. There are three primary elements to force free training:

1) Positive reinforcement--rewarding what you like
2) Negative punishment--not rewarding what you don't like
3) Management--setting the dog up to succeed

I think management is really the most difficult and this is what changes from dog to dog and situation to situation. So yes, it's an overstatement to say "what works for my dogs will work for you dogs," but it is the management that changes, not the method. Management can be really tough. It takes a lot of energy and thoughtfulness to always be 10 steps ahead of your dog. It can be tough to maintain vigilance to foresee situations that your dog might fail in and avoid them. Believe me, mistakes get made even by the best most highly credentialed trainers, but as you keep working at it you get much better and it becomes a part of your routine. The management element of force free training is why communicating over phone, e-mail, or even in person with someone will never be the same as having an in-home professional, force free trainer. For recommendations visit Truly Dog Friendly.

With sound management, force free training will make your life happy with any dog. Will it make your dog-aggressive-dog dog social? No, but it will teach you how to build a relationship with your dog such that when he sees another dog he no longer has an aggressive response, but rather maintains engagement with you. This is accomplished without ever causing fear, anxiety, or pain, and in fact building that relationships REQUIRES never causing those negative responses. As an added bonus, you learn about your dog on a level you never believed possible. You learn all of their nuances and it makes everything in your life so much easier in the long run, but it is a huge hurdle to get over that learning curve.

"Traditional" trainers--trainers that use positive punishment and negative reinforcement--haven't done the research on learning theory published in the last 50 years that demonstrates how dogs (and all animals) learn best. We do not learn best by positive punishment, ever, and such punishment has consequences. A lot of those consequences are that your dog doesn't like you as much, that your dog fears you, that your dog listens to you because he's intimidated. Some of those consequences can be more severe, like the development of fear aggression, being bit, taking his suppressed anxiety or fear out on another animal in the home. Did you know 15% of dogs have an aggressive response to being yelled "NO!" at and 20% of dogs have an aggressive response to being sprayed with a water pistol (Herron, et al. 2009)? Those are scary numbers to me considering how many "trainers" (quotations indicate they likely have no credentials) and people helping other dog owners, give that kind of advice. Are these dogs innately aggressive? Maybe. Sometimes aggression is genetic, but 20% of them? That seems unlikely. What seems more likely is that these animals are fearful of their owners and thus respond aggressively. They are scared. Their owners have scared them. Is that what you would ever want to do to your dogs? I regret every single day that I used fear in an attempt to manage my dogs. I only wish I could take that back.

It pains me to see and hear people giving advice that works because of inducing fear, whether it's a loud noise, water, a choke chain, or a verbal correction. Does it work? Sure, it can, in 80% of cases, according to Herron, et al, but it costs a piece of your relationship with your dog. If you use these techniques you probably don't even realize that piece is missing, you don't know any deeper kind of bond exists, I certainly didn't and I have and always will love my dogs deeply. It causes me so much pain when I hear "whatever works for each individual dog," unless of course they are referencing the particular reinforcer that dog responds to or a particular management technique. There are changes necessary to account for unique circumstances and the specific personality of the dog, but under no circumstances does it have to include pain or fear. To quote Ian Dunbar in his 2007 TED talk: Punishment "does not have to be nasty, scary, or painful...if it doesn't have to be, then it shouldn't be."

Philadelphians for Force Free Dog Training

Not all dogs need anti-anxiety meds!

I've gotten some great feedback from my last post. While it was helpful for some people, it also made me think about anxiety in most dogs versus the anxiety Eli has that requires medical intervention. Most dogs have triggers for their anxiety and it's important for us to recognize what they are and try to support them as much as possible when they become anxious and try to avoid those triggers whenever possible. I find a lot of people "deal" with their dog's anxiety. I hear a lot of comments from people I know about how their dog flips out during thunderstorms or seeing other dogs on walks makes their dog anxious and they just try to get through the situation as quickly as possible. Management is incredibly important, but working on these issues to make our dog's lives better is possible and in turn, our lives become better as well.

So how do we address anxiety in our dogs when they probably don't need medical intervention?

Number one: EXERCISE! Dogs get the same "high" from exercise as people. It makes them happy and physical exhaustion reduces their ability to freak out. Getting our dogs adequate exercise can be really really hard and time consuming. No matter how long of a walk we might take, it does not make up for dogs getting to run full speed off leash. If you have a yard, great! But yard time by themselves does not count as exercise. For your yard to "count" you should be out there playing with them: playing fetch, playing tag (with your dog as "it"--they should ALWAYS chase you), chasing sticks, whatever it is that your dog likes to do with you. The amount of exercise needed depends on the dog. A lot of pit bulls and pit mixes are very high energy, like Eli, which predisposes them to anxiety if they are not getting adequate exercise. Bee has a moderate level of energy so he is easier to exhaust.

Number two: mental exercise. Eli's anxiety is much reduced after a evening in Tricks class. He is very smart, and many dogs with anxiety are. Without mental exercise, they have more energy for anxiety. Classes are great for anxious dogs, for reasons other than mental exercise as well. If you don't have time for classes, we use Kyra Sundance's 101 Dog Tricks to come up with new tricks to teach Eli. Right now Eli is learning to nod his head "yes" in response to certain questions and shake his head "no" in response to other questions. While adorable, these are just silly tricks to us, but to Eli they are a way to stay sane. They keep his brain working on things other than freaking out about Bee, our cats, and every startling noise or sudden movement.

Number three: actually addressing the issue. For some triggers this is easier than others, and for some dogs it is easier than others too. It's important for owners to know when to call in the big guns, like a certified professional trainer. If you have a dog who is engaged with you and very food motivated, you can re-wire their brain to have positive associations with practically anything. Using highly palatable food triggers their reward pathway, just like it does for us. Some highly palatable foods I have used include easy cheese, hot dogs, squeezable cake icing, squeezable peanut butter or jelly, a spoon with cream cheese on it. It's all about finding what your dog really loves and will ignore the anxiety-inducing stimulus for. Bee has leash reactivity because he gets frustrated not being able to meet the other dog. Luckily he is incredibly food motivated so if I have something as low-quality as milkbones on me he will ignore the other dog and pay attention to me. Our walks go so much smoother and are much more enjoyable when I keep treats on me. For Bee and I, every walk is a training walk. A book that helped us a lot is Control Unleashed by Leslie McDevitt. We also took the class with Bee...twice. It's designed for reactive dogs, and it doesn't really matter why the dog is reactive. Bee is overly-friendly reactive and he gets so over-excited he forgets himself. This is called being "over threshold." He stops thinking and he can't learn in that mind frame. Control Unleashed taught me how to keep him engaged with me and keep him "under threshold" so he would show an appropriate level of interest when seeing another dog on the street or in classes.

Fixing issues with anxious dogs, or dogs with Bee's kind of excitable reactivity, doesn't happen over night. However, it's important to remember that our dog's lives can be better and less stressful if we are willing to dedicate the time and energy to them. It also creates an incredible bond with our dogs. Our dogs help us through so much and teach us so much. I am grateful I can say that Jonathan and I have helped our dogs too and that their lives are enriched because of us.

Thanks for reading!

Eli is an Anxious Dog

I'm not a veterinary behaviorist or a professional dog trainer, I am just an owner with an anxious dog who has utilized both veterinary behaviorists and professional dog trainers to help me and my boyfriend understand our anxious dog and make his and our lives better. 


What are some of the signs that your dog is anxious? 


We've all seen our dogs be anxious--during a thunderstorm, when they have a bad interaction with another dog, when they're upset that we left them alone, or maybe when we get upset with them! Some signs that a dog is anxious that most experienced dog owners know include tucking their tail between their legs or hunkering down their body posture. However, some signs are less obvious, like licking their lips, yawning, shaking their skin like they would after going swimming but when they're not wet, and some signs might be clear, but we don't always understand what they mean, like pacing and being unable to settle down even though you are settled down. Dogs that are easily startled may also have a high baseline of anxiety. Sometimes dogs will constantly lick their paws or if they have a minor scratch, they'll lick it incessantly because of anxiety. Prior to medication and behavioral intervention, Eli exhibited each and every one of these signs of anxiety. 


How do you help an anxious dog?


We ended up at a veterinary behaviorist because our dogs got in a fight. This was a culmination of a deterioration in their interactions together. We weren't there for Eli's anxiety, but perhaps not shockingly in retrospect, our dog's fight was largely a result of Eli's anxiety. Eli has generalized anxiety for real, and given his background of being rescued as a cruelty case and now understanding his intelligence and sensitivity--DUH! The behaviorist put Eli on anti-anxiety medication and helped us identify good puzzle toys for him. That helped immensely for a long time. Then we got comfortable and decided to see if we could take him off the meds since the dogs were doing well together. Basically, we were stupid. He became increasingly fear aggressive to Bee and incredibly possessive of us. Even after putting him back on the meds, a lot of damage was done between their relationship and we had no idea how to handle it.


In an attempt to help him and us, we started Eli in classes at Y2K9s Dog Sports Club. We had taken both the dogs separately through Basic and Advanced Canine Manners there when we first got them, but stopped after that, like many busy owners do. Eli was a superstar in classes. Everyone loved him and he was amazing with the other dogs. For awhile his behavior in the home improved a lot as well, probably as a result of more regular mental exercise. But then he declined again. We're not sure why. It was winter and perhaps he wasn't getting as much physical exercise, perhaps we weren't working on his training as often. We went through a terrible period when we seriously considered re-homing him. Our stress levels were incredibly high. We obviously wanted re-homing him to be a last resort, so we hired one of the instructors at Y2K9s to do some in-home training with us. We had handled Eli's issues outside the home, but now we needed serious help in the home. 


The trainer we hired, Marisa Scully, has her own private dog training business, Philly Dog Training, that mostly deals with behavioral issues. She also has 3 rescued pit bulls of her own. She helped us really truly understand Eli and what his needs were particularly inside our home. Some pit bulls, i.e. Eli, are the most sensitive dogs you can find. Something bad happens to them once, and they are fearful of it forever. To work with these dogs and use their sensitivity for good, you have to be incredibly cognizant of your tone of voice, your body language, and to always use positive reinforcement. We had Marisa visit 3 times over 3 months, and with lots of hard work during that time and after with just us, we re-conditioned Eli to have a positive association with Bee. 


Are things perfect? No. We use a lot of management, but the dogs cooperate incredibly well together now. One of the beautiful things we learned about positive reinforcement is that you can actually change the dog's emotional response to the stimulus that used to make them so anxious. The fact that Eli and Bee are still living together with us is a great testament to this.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to post any questions! 

How Bee and Eli Began Their Adventures

Welcome! This is a new blog created to chronicle our adventures in working with and training our two dogs! 


Beeblebrox is a 5 1/2 year old Newfoundland (?)/retriever mix! Apparently he also has some border collie in him. He's a loveable, goofy, silly boy named after Zaphod Beeblebrox in Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He's super friendly, to the point of being rude to other dogs at times because he's so desperate to meet them. I'm one of those owners who used to say "He just wants to say hi!" Now I might still say that, but first I make sure he's in control and the other dog actually wants him to say hi! He's not an easy dog despite his friendliness. Overly-friendly dogs represent their own set of challenges as an owner, especially living in the city with lots of other dogs around, and when they weigh 75 lbs! Beeblebrox is my boyfriend's "soul dog." We love him to bits!


Eli is a 5 year old pit bull rescued from the PSPCA 4 years ago. Eli was confiscated from his previous owner for cruelty and at one year old he weighed 28 lbs, was mangey, was loaded with intestinal parasites, and had exposed bone on his tail. Eli was surrendered with another dog and the officers were told by the "owner" that he didn't feed them because they fought when he fed them. What we didn't know then is that Eli is an incredibly sensitive, intelligent dog with a naturally high level of anxiety. Living with an overly-friendly dog did not help this! We have worked through a lengthy and difficult integration with our boys and we are so thankful to everyone who has helped us achieve a level of success we often did not think was possible! Eli is my "soul dog" and we couldn't live without him!


I'm Abby, a VMD-PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania. When we first adopted each of our dogs separately, I adopted Bee, my boyfriend, Jonathan, adopted Eli, we had basically no knowledge of dog training, dog behavior, or anything related. We have learned so much with our puppies and we are so excited to share our continued progress with you! Jonathan is a graduate student at Thomas Jefferson University, assistant teaches Beginner Tricks at Y2K9s Dog Sports Club, and walks dogs for Walkies. 

Thanks for reading!