TAGteach - A New Approach to Changing Behavior

Since the early 80’s my work has involved working with people – teaching them, tutoring them, training them. Most of that work has been with children with a large chunk in the middle involving adults in the business environment. A theme that ran through nearly all my work was changing behavior – helping children with special needs fit into a classroom environment, working with people new to English acquire another language and engage with a different culture, assisting employees of a large retail organization to improve their performance, helping a large corporate organization get back on track with failing projects…the list goes on.

After 30 years of working with humans I made the switch to working with dogs. My primary reason for doing this was the new addition to our family – a traumatized miniature poodle named Blue. It was during my study with the Karen Pryor Academy last year that I first learned about TAGteach and since that first introduction I have been curious as to just how well it would work with humans in all the circumstances in which I have worked.

In May of this year, I certified as a Primary Level TAGteacher after completing online the comprehensive TAGteach IntroductoryCourse and keeping a journal throughout of my progress – both with the course itself and with TAGteaching. At the time I only had a few students and it seemed the right time to immerse myself in this new philosophy of learning and to really come to terms with all of its uses.

In any sort of training environment there are always doubters – whether it be the teachers of the students I tutored or their parents, a disgruntled manager considering that the training was a waste of time, or the students themselves believing that they’ve never been able to do this before so what makes this approach any different. In the past I have been used to dealing with this sort of response but it was not until I came in contact with dog trainers and owners that I experienced for myself how easily it is to question what you know to be true and revert to the “way everyone else does it”.

I found my students were so conditioned at focusing on what their dog did wrong and trying to correct that, that it was difficult to convince them that their dog’s behavior would change if they just focused on what it was they wanted the dog to do. I needed a new set of tools to deal with these situations so that I could demonstrate what I meant through the way I responded to my student. My normal approach of positive praise was not powerful enough – it lacked timing, accuracy and specificity – what exactly was it that they had done well? I found it increasingly difficult to answer this question when I came to write up my session notes. It occurred to me that I needed to change my approach and TAGteach seemed the most obvious choice to do that.

The TAG of TAGteach stands for Teaching with Acoustical Guidance and this approach is all about enhancing performance on any level in any situation by identifying what it is you want the subject to do, specifying it articulately and tagging (with an audible marker) every occurrence while ignoring everything else. It is clicker training for humans… and it works!

I tag everything now – my dogs, my husband, my clients and myself. I’m even starting to think in tag points and that has probably been the most beneficial aspect of this learning for me. What is it I want to achieve? Ah, yes…and the tag point is…

TAGteach has reaffirmed for me that there is always a way to get the behavior you want, you just need to be creative in your approach and engage the participants as much as possible. This is not just conditioning or behavior modification, though those are very much behind the science of this technique, rather it is more about clearly defining what it is that you are after in a behavior and expressing why.

The course required the completion of exercises at every stage and many of them required me to take a look at myself – at home, at work and at play. I was asked to look at things I wanted to change and to see them from a different perspective – how I want them to be. I learned to shift my focus from what was bugging me, to the much more positive – what would I like to see?

TAGteach in Action

Martin - my TAG partner

One of the many success stories I’ve had since completing the course was in the enhancing of domestic bliss. One of the issues I have in my home is that my kitchen is not large enough to accommodate me and my mode of cooking let alone play host to all the empties we seem to accumulate during the week. Ever since we’ve lived here I’ve nagged my husband to “Please put the empties in the recycle”, every morning there they are, neatly stacked on the corner of the bench and it is left to a rather disgruntled me to move them into the recycle box in the hallway.

One of the TAGteach mottos is “tag, don’t nag” and it is so true. Rather than continue to nag Martin about the bottle dump, I decided instead to engage him in the process. I explained my situation and my understanding of his. He told me that there was no malicious intent in his forgetting to recycle; he’d simply got into the habit of leaving the bottles there, a behavior that was hard to change when he was tired and focused on other things.

What an eye-opener that was to me. And since then I am seeing more and more how much of the behavior with which we are dissatisfied stems from patterns of repetition that are hard to break simply through being told. I invited him to engage in an experiment with me.

I’d learned all about the focus funnel in my course and while I could see how it would work in a teaching or coaching environment, I was curious as to how it would work in changing patterns of behavior between mutually agreeable participants.  The focus funnel literally draws together all the bits of information you want to get across and pulls them into a tightly constructed TAG point. I wanted to try this with our situation and Martin, the champ that he is, was willing to go along with it.

It became clear as we discussed options that there were several behaviors in need of modification: glass bottles, jars, and cans needed to be rinsed, plastic bottles needed to be crushed and recapped, and all needed to be put into the recycle.

TAGteach is all about focusing on one behavior at a time and as the ultimate behavior was to have a clear benchtop, I decided to back-chain the behaviors. Get the items into the recycle bin first, then work on the rinsing and the crushing at a later date. We came up with three tag points, one for each behavior.

Using the protocol for forming a tag point, we articulated them thus:

• The tag point is… empties in recycle.
• The tag point is… rinse non-plastics.
• The tag point is… crush’n’cap plastics.

My job was now simple, all I needed to do was state (or create a sign) that articulated the tag point for that day, tag whenever I was present and leave it to Martin to do the rest.

Promoting behavior change is all about reward and reinforcement, whether it be intrinsic – the satisfaction of achievement, or extrinsic – getting paid for a job well done.  TAGteach International know this well and have devised an ingenious means of tracking tags received and trading them in for something more tangible – the tagulator. I have dozens of them that I made for my clients (they earn them with tags) and I gave several of these to Martin.

Simply put, the role of a tagulator is to record a tag whenever it occurs – Martin’s hang in the hallway, opposite the recycle bin and a tagger (clicker) on the shelf. Bottle goes in bin “tag”, slide a bead on tagulator.  The process has been going since our meeting on June 2^nd, and in that time Martin has accumulated 67 tags. The top tagulator records every tag, and the second tracks the number of times he fills up the first tagulator – when the bottom tagulator is full, it’ll be time to cash in on any one of a number of “treats”.

Besides reflecting on the number of empties we go through in a month, it’s a very visual way of recognizing the effort that has gone into changing the behavior. I haven’t been involved much in the process since we set it up, other than to notice in passing the number of tags being accumulated. When I asked Martin why he still continues to do it he said, "it’s about presence of mind, committing to the whole process breaks the habitual behavior”. When pressed further he put it this way: “even though I’m the only one recognizing it, it gives me a nice feeling that I am being recognized for doing it.”

Is he convinced that TAGteach works? Absolutely, to the degree that we are now devising ways for Martin to incorporate TAGteach at his work.  

Am I pleased with the result? Totally - the evidence accumulates daily on the tagulator, but more importantly, I have a clear bench and there is no more nagging – now that’s a definition for domestic bliss. TAG!

“Be a Tree” – there’s more to it than preventing dog attacks

This week (20-26 May) is International Dog Bite Prevention Week. 

For most of this month I’ve been out and about trying to educate kids and their parents as to the best ways to keep themselves safe around dogs.

For all their laws and regulations regarding the correct care and training of dogs, the Swiss are more interested in banning dog breeds than educating humans about safety around dogs. I was amazed to learn recently that the canton of Geneva has banned 15 dog breeds and keeps dog owners and their canine pals on a tight leash while doing nothing to educate the greater public how to behave around dogs. In all respects they hold the dog owner responsible, without considering that dog bites are usually a last resort for the dog and the unwitting actions of humans (dog trainers included) can provoke an attack when we disregard the warning signals a dog tries to communicate to us.

One in two children will experience a dog bite at some time in their childhood, and while most of these, more than 80%, will require no medical attention, many could have been prevented as most bites are by a family dog or a dog that is known to the child.  The best way to keep a child safe is to be vigilant as parents and teach the child how to act around dogs.

All dogs bite – it is a key behavioral characteristic of the species – but most do so only if they consider they have no other choice.  A dog bite is nearly always the result of some form of provocation and occurs only after the dog has sent out a plethora of warning signs of which we humans are either unaware, or chose to ignore. 

In the late 80’s, as a young parent, I got to experience firsthand what can happen when our ignorance gets in the way of common sense. My son, Simon, then aged 4 years and our 3 month old Siberian husky, Zak, were playing together in the kitchen while I prepared the dog’s dinner.  I placed the bowl on the floor next to the puppy and turned back to tidy things away. With my attention elsewhere my son decided to try taking the dog’s bowl away, an action he had seen me do as part of the dog’s training (an action I now know is unnecessary and provocative). Zak growled defensively, enough to cause me to turn to see what was going on. I still have in my head the image of Simon’s hand holding the bowl, and the puppy, body tense, ears flat back, eyes wide, tossing warning signs out like sparks from a fire. Before I could react Zak struck with an open mouthed punch to Simon’s face. A razor sharp puppy tooth from his upper jaw punctured the skin just above Simon’s right eye and the lower jaw teeth penetrated to the left of Simon’s mouth.  It was a level 3 bite on Ian Dunbar’s Dog Bite Scale, but one that could have been much worse had the puppy held on or closed his mouth. 

The dog just wanted to be left alone to eat his dinner in peace, and he did what any puppy would do to a litter mate who got in the way. After consultations with the vet and the doctor, it was Simon who decided he wanted to keep his puppy and so began my education in appropriate training for puppies. But really the dog was doing what came naturally to him, it was we humans who needed the training.

As a result of this, and other incidents I have experienced with dogs over the years, I now take every opportunity I can to educate anyone who will listen on how to be doggone safe.

Doggonesafe is a non-profit organisation that is dedicated to dog bite prevention through education. They have a brilliant program called “Be a Tree” that goes well beyond dog bite prevention into interpreting dog body language and the appropriate ways to respond to what the dog is saying. The program begins by informing children that they have all the tools they need to keep themselves safe right inside their head, and goes on to illustrate how they can use those tools to read the signals a dog might be sending and to respond appropriately. Large poster sized photos of each tool and a number of dogs in various attitudes show the children the signs to look for. Ears, eyes, muzzle, body, tail – soon become a mantra reminding children that these are the parts of a dog they need to read to find out how a dog is feeling.

Be a Tree pose - how to respond to an unknown dog on the loose.

Learning how to behave around dogs is really about following a few simple guidelines:

• Always “Be a Tree” if an unfamiliar dog approaches you or a dog you are playing with becomes over excited
• If you are on the ground, or a dog knocks you down, roll up like a hedgehog, be a rock!
• Always stay calm and quiet when a dog comes near you – if you squeal he may think you’re his prey
• Always watch for signs of how a dog is feeling : ears, eyes, muzzle, body, tail
• Always ask your parent or caregiver first, before approaching a dog showing friendly body language
• Always ask the dog’s owner if you can pet the dog
• Always let a safe dog check you out first, let him sniff your fist
• Always walk away from a dog you think might be unsafe
• Always leave dogs alone who are sleeping, eating or who have puppies
• Always tell an adult if you see a dog behaving strangely
• Always remember, you might like hugs and kisses, but dogs don’t. They do like it though if you gently stroke their neck or chest.

The other day I met up with one of the first children I taught to “Be a Tree”, and I was delighted at the calm way in which he stood – tree-like – as I passed by with both dogs. My poodle knows this boy well and went up to greet him. Instead of crouching down and giving Blue a hug like he might have done some months ago, this 6-year-old quietly stroked Blue along the side of his neck and Blue nuzzled in for more.

Beau, who is still learning how to behave around children, sat quietly a short distance away and watched. The boy’s quiet calm even extended to him, as normally the exuberance of children with their flailing arms and high pitched squeals, as they go about playing their games, sets him on full alert - hunting mode, but not this time. This time I am sure he saw the child for what he was, a small human offering up affection dog-style.

For every child who learns how to behave appropriately around a dog, and practices reading  the signals that dogs are continually exhibiting for us, the closer we move towards keeping all children safe and I am sure the dogs will appreciate this as much as we will.

Going on Vacation? ...and can't take your dogs?

What to look for in a Boarding Kennel

Whenever possible our dogs come with us on vacation. In Europe it is easy to do because dogs are readily accepted in hotels and holiday accommodation, particularly in France. Every couple of years though, we head home to New Zealand for a month to catch up with family and to enjoy all the wonderful things about the country we love.

Blue on Day 3 of his holiday

In the past this has not been a problem for the early years of our time in Switzerland we were dog free. This year however, we have a new family and the dilemma before us was one many dog owners face – what to do with our dogs while we were away.

Our home leave is a well-orchestrated affair – it has to be. When you are travelling nearly 20,000 km to the other side of the world you really want everything to go as smoothly as possible or else where is the R & R element to the adventure? So I start planning our trip three or four months out and this year I had the added task of looking for appropriate accommodation for our two rascals.

Because I work a lot with dogs in kennel situations I had a very good idea of what I did not want for our two. My first task then was to define as clearly as possible what it was that I did want. This is an excellent training exercise for a clicker trainer – shifting the focus from what you don’t want, to what you do. Here is what I came up with:

From: I don’t want my dogs…		To: I want my dogs…
	…to be separated.		…to stay together.
	… to be caged or put behind bars.		…to be in a safe and secure indoor environment.
	…left on their own.		…to be in the company of humans.
	…exercised with dogs they don’t know.		…to be exercised with other dogs that play well.
	…to be isolated in any way.		…to always be in a social environment (unless they are sleeping).
	…left to their own devices.		…to be stimulated and challenged.
	…to be fed unknown food.		…to continue their raw food diet.
	…to develop bad habits.		…to continue to be reinforced for behaving well.
	…to be exposed to incessant barking.		…to be in a place that encourages quiet times.
	…punished for things they do wrong.		…to be rewarded for what they do right.

Okay, even I had to admit that my list was just a little fanciful but the truth was that these really were the things I wanted the boarding kennel to provide for my dogs. And so the search began.  I started with Switzerland, it seemed logical, that’s where we live. I followed up a score of different kennels, and I could find none that satisfied half of my criteria.

The first thing that struck me was how large many of these kennels were and how many dogs were housed there. I felt compelled to add more to my list.

I don’t want my dogs…		I want my dogs…
	…to be lost in the crowd.		…to get the same sort of attention they get at home.
	…to be fed with strange dogs present.		…to be fed on their own as they are at home.

The more I looked the more concerned I became. Statements like: “First shock upon arrival: the barking welcome! Your friend may be a little upset by such noisy activity! Don’t take too much notice. Soon he will be part of the fun and follow his pals!” Oh dear, here was a place that thought it was all right for dogs to be constantly barking!

And then there was this one: “Why may your dog lose weight while staying with us? above all for two reasons. First every change of environment is stressful; second when in kennels no dog will leave all the “works” to the others! As soon as one dog barks, all of them listen, get up and… join the fun!”

With new friends on Day 12 

Another suggested that we leave the dogs at the gate and not enter the compound (is it just me or does that sound like a prison sentence?), others insisted that we bring nothing the dog could associate with home (excuse me?) I felt more and more disheartened. All I could think of was my little poodle reverting back to his reserved former self and all the good work over the last year or so becoming completely undone.

I widened my search to include France. The more I looked, the more despair I felt – was there nothing out there? It was my husband that came to the rescue. I had sent him a link to the dog::links website to pass onto a friend who was looking to adopt a dog. He sent me back a link to a place in France that had been advertised on the site – why had I not seen it? Who knows, but I was so glad that he had.

Saint Pardoux Pension Pour Chiens was the perfect place for what I was after. First of all it was a small concern situated in a tranquil rural community in the Deux Sevres region. I had no idea where that was, but I didn’t care. That word “tranquil” had captured my attention and I wanted to read more.

The site offered “a 4-star holiday experience in a warm and friendly environment”. I was more intrigued, this sounded so like the perfect place for my dogs. What really impressed me was that there were only 3 “kennels” but they were more like little apartments, with tiled floors and real doors. Ambient music was played in each room and dogs could have heating or television if required – these were the comforts of home my dogs were used to. It sounded idyllic, the sort of place I’d love to be if I were a dog. 

As I read the customer comments I got more excited and wasted no time in sending off an email to make enquiries.  Here was a place that seemed to tick all the boxes on my list – was it too good to be true?

Day 17 - Beau finds a quiet spot under the desk in the office

That was in February. We went on home leave in April and picked up our dogs two weeks ago. They couldn’t have been in better condition. It was obvious from the looks on their faces that they had had a ball of a time – and Blue, my supposedly anorexic poodle, had put on weight!

Saint Pardoux Pension Pour Chiens is an 8 hour drive from where we live in Switzerland, a fact that had little influence at all on our decision. The quality of care our dogs received was well worth the effort, one we would gladly do over again. Not only did Suzette Jeapes, the proprietor, keep us informed with weekly updates on how our boys were doing and the friendships they had formed with the other dogs in residence, she also took photos and video of them throughout their stay. Now we have this wonderful record of their holiday so we too can share in their experience.

Had I not come up with my list of criteria, and been determined to seek out the ideal place for my dogs to stay, I might never have found Saint Pardoux Pension Pour Chiens and our holiday experience would have been all the less as a result. Focusing on what it is you do want – in all things – really is worth the effort and can be the difference between accepting the mediocre and going for gold every time!

Rehabilitating a Food Thief: Part 3 – Cueing a new Behavior

Our subject for this series is Poppy, a 2 year old Pointer cross foundling who recently gave birth to a litter of eight wee pups. Poppy has a propensity to steal food and will in fact steal anything that remotely looks or smells particularly interesting.

Her latest antics involve getting onto the work surfaces in the kitchen where she helps herself to bottles of cleaner or air freshener or whatever is in reach.  On one occasion Poppy stole a bottle of Airwick air freshener from the counter – the old sort with a wick you pull up – and took it down into a dog bed made up with a candlewick bedspread and a blanket – you can imagine the result… Poppy was found with an empty bottle and a well scented bed.

Poppy (photo: dog::links)  

Dogs like Poppy who have never had any clear guidance as to what is or is not appropriate behavior need to be taught self-control. The more traditional approach of scolding the dog, or punishing her in some way, does nothing to teach the dog how to behave appropriately, it just makes the dog fearful and more likely to perform the heinous act when no one is around to stop her.

A much better approach is to put the behaviors on cue. In this case the preferred behavior “leave it” and the current behavior “take it”. Teaching a dog opposite cues in pairs is an excellent way to control a specific behavior.  This pair will teach Poppy self-control in the presence of anything tempting with the added benefit that rather than help herself to things lying around, she will await the cue to take it.

Don’t believe it? Neither did I when I first learned of this technique during my training, but since then I have proved time and time again that teaching pairs of cues works brilliantly and seems to be more reinforcing for the dog than teaching a single cue on its own.

I first attempted this exercise with our Beauceron cross when he was about five months old. Beau was a food hog and ate everything in sight. I couldn’t put my lunch plate on the coffee table without him vacuuming up its contents, and if I left the dining table for a moment, he’d be paws up and at whatever it was I was enjoying at the time. It wasn’t really a problem at this stage, he was a puppy after all and it was his curiosity that got the better of him. Had I managed things better there would have been no temptation in his way. However rather than fix this as a problem later in the dog’s life – as we are doing with Poppy – I thought it prudent to preempt the problem and teach Beau some all-purpose self-control that would hold him in great stead for any situation in the future.

Like Poppy, Beau has a great love for bottles of anything – if I didn’t puppy-proof my soft-drink cupboard, he’d flog a bottle of tonic and proceed to mouth and roll it around the room until he managed to pierce the plastic. No prizes for guessing what would happen then. Better to keep the full ones under lock and key – the empties though are fair game, a great motivator for my emptying the recycle bin on a regular basis.

My shaping plan for Beau therefore needed to be comprehensive enough to incorporate all aspects of his fascination with human foods and their derivatives as well as those other items that were of great temptation to him as well – basically anything human related that was left in easy reach. I needed to teach him that the best way to get something was to leave it alone.

It’s a simple enough philosophy and one that applies to any number of circumstances: dog wants to go sniff bush – dog pulls on leash – trainer stops dead – dog slackens leash, looks at trainer – trainer clicks, runs towards bush, “go sniff”. The way to get what you want is not to even try.

Shaping “leave it” with Beau

The secret with any shaping exercise is to plan well, keep the increments small and the rewards high. My shaping staircase for Beau was huge. I literally broke the behavior I wanted down into the minutest detail. I needed this to work and was not prepared to leave any of it to chance. The first part of that shaping staircase was included in my last blog. The last part is too large to print here, but has to do with putting the behavior on cue and gradually increasing the criteria until I could leave a plate of food on my coffee table and not have him go anywhere near it.

 The first step then was to get the eye contact with duration. Once that was happening reliably I needed to construct a wide range of situations in which to reinforce Beau for leaving the food, while associating the act with the cue “leave it”. To do this I went back to the very basic step of holding a piece of low value food in my outstretched hand. When Beau looked at me – as he had been trained to do –I cued “leave it” and waited, counting 1-banana, 2-banana, 3-banana – “click”, then I offered him a new cue “take it” and handed him the item of food.

I then started to change the position of the food – first it was in my open hand, then placed on my knee while I was sitting, then on my foot. It was still a low value food item and it was still in close proximity to my body – I wanted to be sure there would be no reinforcement for a “snatch and run”. It didn’t take Beau long to realize that all he had to do to earn this treat was to look away from the food placed before him and to look at me for direction. If I cued “leave it” he would wait patiently, if I cued “take it” he would take it from my hand.

I practiced this for days, in different situations, inside and out. Gradually, I increased the value of the food, but I still kept it small in size and in close proximity to me. Beau continued to impress by reliably looking at me and on the cue “leave it” waiting politely until I cued him to take it, or clicked and treated him for leaving it alone.

The real test though was what would happen if I put the food on the floor. In the dog world anything left lying on the ground is fair game. How was I going to transition to that? Several ideas sprang to mind. I’d been using plastic ice-cream container lids for targeting with my other dog and I decided these made ideal “plates”. I also decided to utilize feeding times as a further reinforcer of the process.

Beau learning to "leave it"

For the first of these sessions I went back to low value treats and placed just one on the lid on the floor. When Beau went to give it a sniff, I quickly cued “leave it”, he raised his eyes questioningly to me, I clicked, and picked up the treat, cued “take it” and gave it to him. It took longer than I thought for him to make this transition, but eventually he started to show the same blasé to the food on the lid as he had to the food in my hand. 

For meal times I adapted it a little. Previously we had cued him to sit, while we placed the food down then I’d give him the release, “OK” to tuck in. Now I wanted to use that to help reinforce “leave it” even further. We would start the same, with the sit, I’d then place his food before him, and wait for him to look at me. I then cued “leave it” moved away and waited. Sure enough he had that questioning look but kept his eyes on me. “OK” the release, “take it” and he was free to have his dinner.

From the plastic lid to a sheet of paper, to the bare floor, from one piece of low value food to a small mountain of high-value treats, from my standing right beside the pile to my being on the other side of the room. We worked our way up little by little. If I said we didn’t have mishaps, I’d be lying. But nearly all of them were my fault and involved raising the criteria too quickly – too many of a particularly tasty treat in the pile at one time, a pup that was too hungry to be bothered with waiting, my not varying the duration flexibly enough and making him wait longer than he was able to, having the other dog too near forcing Beau to snatch his treats in case the interloper got them.

By all accounts Beau was a fast learner. He was young and eager and very forgiving of my mistakes. I took it into the kitchen – casually dropping a lump of cheese on the floor, or some other item that escaped my messy culinary skills – cue “leave it” and sure enough Beau would plonk himself into a down-stay and wait patiently for me to either pick up the item I had dropped (which earned him a click and treat) or to cue “take it” after which he would cautiously approach the tempting morsel.

I took the cue into the streets on our walks. There is always something lying around on the ground and I put my powers of observation to work seeking them out before Beau saw them. As we approached I’d cue “leave it”, his gaze would shoot up to me, I’d click and treat and we’d walk on by. Sometimes I wasn’t as quick off the mark as I hoped and he already had the item in his mouth before I’d opened mine. A third cue “off” or “drop” came in useful there, but that is another story.

Each new situation presented an opportunity to further reinforce the cue until we are now at the stage where I can leave my lunch on the coffee table when I leave the room for something and neither of my dogs will go near it. Ideally I should be able to leave a plate of food on the floor with the same result, that's what I'm aiming for - we've done it with cheese!

There have been other benefits as well. Beau is no longer a food hog. As much as he loves his food, he now takes to it with more control, savoring it rather than taking the vacuum cleaner approach – and this has surely helped his digestion, which in turn makes for a happier dog all round. Where once he would jump at the “take it” cue, he now gives me a look that seems to say “I’ll take it when I’m good and ready thank you.” I no longer use the cues as a pair, though that was how they were taught. I’ve paired “take it” up with “off” for our games of tug, and I’ve got plans for “leave it” in a whole new situation: Beau has a penchant for cats, he gets highly aroused whenever one crosses his path and his fight/flight mechanism kicks in rendering all previous self-control strategies useless. If I can harness the power of the “leave it” cue to work in this situation, then we really will be making progress.

It has taken many hours of setting up situations and reinforcing the behavior to get Beau to where he is now; in Poppy’s case it will invariably take longer. Her behavior is more engrained and quite likely has a psychological element to it as well. This just means that the planning has to be more carefully thought out and the criteria kept small and achievable so that Poppy gets lots and lots of success during each training session. A clear advantage for Poppy with this type of training is the huge amount of positive personal attention she would be getting for doing the right things and that is much more reinforcing for a traumatized dog than any punishment or scolding.

What Else Can Be Done to Help Poppy?

Teaching the behavior cues “leave it” and “take it” are just one approach to dealing with the Poppy’s situation, and even these can be handled in different ways. If I were working with Poppy I would build this type of training into Poppy’s routine so that she would come to expect “training” to happen thus increasing her anticipation for it. This would set the scene to teach her other things as well so that not all the training sessions dealt with this issue, though initially this might be the case. I would stringently ignore all her stealing, managing the situation to lessen any likelihood as much as possible, and focus instead on recognizing and rewarding all the moments of the day when she wasn’t stealing something (surely there were many more of them?). During the times she needed to be left alone, the times she is most likely to steal, I would leave her with a high value treat stuffed into a toy or a Kong stuffed with paté which had been frozen – these sorts of toys exercise her brain while keeping her focused on something other than stealing. I would pop out for a minute or two, and come back during the time that I knew she would still be occupied. I would “click” and reward her for being a good girl. Letting her know that the behavior she is engaged in is good behavior, and rewarding that, is much more powerful than giving her negative attention when she does something wrong.

The more I focused on what I wanted from Poppy, recognizing and rewarding any appropriate behavior at every opportunity, the greater the likelihood that Poppy would display more of this sort of behavior.  I would track my success in terms of time. How many clicks and treats can I give Poppy in a 30 second period for displaying appropriate behavior? I’d then set myself the task of recognizing her good behavior at least four times in a minute, then once a minute, I’d check in on her at five minute intervals and reward her for any positive behavior she was displaying. Rewards would vary too. I’d use food initially, but I’d also build in games and toys, or simply give her my attention. I’d then track how many hours in the day that Poppy was being good. I’d be sure to reward her for each of those hours.

Training of this type can be terribly time consuming and may be beyond the capacity of a refuge worker or a foster mum, but a new owner able to invest some time up front in Poppy’s rehabilitation, would certainly reap the benefits in the long term. Dogs like Poppy can become great family pets if they are just given the chance and a little investment of time and attention up front. If you think you might be able to offer a home to Poppy, one of her pups or any of the other dogs left in the refuges in France, get in contact with dog::links.

Rehabilitating a Food Thief: Part 2 - Changing the Behavior

Dogs steal for all sorts of reasons and our subject, Poppy, has probably the most understandable reason of them all for stealing food – fear of going hungry. 

Poppy (photo: dog::links)

In my last blog I made an attempt to analyse Poppy's situation so a strategy could be devised to deal with it. The trouble with any sort of stealing though – whether it be food or socks or your son’s new toy – is that the act itself often stimulates all sorts of reactions from the humans in the household and the whole situation turns into a self-reinforcing cycle. This in turn leads to the dog stealing just about anything it can in the hope of stimulating further reaction from her humans.

One way to help Poppy and other dogs like her to overcome this type of perpetual problem of stealing, is to shape a situation where the dog learns that better things come from leaving the food or item alone, than from taking it.

For this to work of course, it is most important that the dog is never punished or chastised for stealing, if this happens she will learn that she can’t trust her owners when food or that precious item is around and will therefore become more creative and cunning in her theft, only doing it when she is sure no one is looking. Dogs don’t understand the reasons why we go mad at them, they just know that their once happy human has all of a sudden become a grumpy, scary one and this causes further fear and confusion to our dogs.

If I want to show one of my dogs that I am not pleased with what he has done, I simply ignore him and his act. No fuss, no punishment, no shouting, no scolding, I just walk away and pay lots of positive attention the other dogs. This has a dual effect – it reinforces the dogs who are behaving appropriately and it shows the naughty dog that what he did awards him no reinforcement whatsoever. That is something for him to ponder.

The following is one approach to changing Poppy's behavior which can also be easily adapted to suit any number of situations. While the stages are worded in general terms, I have used Poppy’s situation to specify the examples.

Stage 1:  Be very clear about what behavior is wanted from the dog

What is it that we want Poppy to do? Depending on the way in which Poppy goes about her stealing – Does she counter surf to reach out-of-the-way items? Does she open the fridge to get at its contents (yes, I know dogs who do this)? Does she help herself off the table? Does she steal food out of the cats’ bowls or off other dogs? – there could be any number of possible options and each of these needs to be dealt with separately and specifically. For example, counter surfing is a problem in and of itself regardless of whether food is stolen or not. The desired behavior for a dog who counter surfs is for the dog to have four paws on the floor whenever she is in the kitchen. This not only resolves the counter-surfing issue but also inhibits the dog’s ability to get close enough to food on the counter to steal it. A training plan therefore, would focus on ways to positively reinforce the dog for having four on the floor and would ignore any deviation from that.

Too often dog owners and trainers focus on what it is they don’t want, after all isn’t that the behavior that needs to be stopped? The fact is that unless we can replace that undesirable behavior with something desirable, we set ourselves up in a no win situation and we may even inadvertently reinforce the behavior we don’t want simply by focusing our attention on it.

By describing a new behavior, one we can teach the dog to do when faced with the tempting situation that is cueing the unwanted behavior, we can set up a situation that will make it easy for the dog to be successful in the early stages and ultimately change the behavior over time.

There is also an element of management needed in many of these situations. An unsupervised dog can get up to all sorts of mischief simply because she does not understand what is expected of her when left alone, particularly if there is food left lying around.  In Poppy’s case it would be prudent to first manage as much of the situation as possible by making sure that all food and any other items she tends to steal are kept out of Poppy’s reach, as well as keeping an eye on her when she is in the vicinity of any prohibited item. On those occasions when she does manage to steal something, the best strategy would be to ignore it if at all possible. The less attention given to the act, the less likely it is that Poppy will do it secretly.

As to the desired behavior, it depends on what it is that Poppy’s foster mum or new owner might want, but here are a few with which I have had success when working with other dogs:

• Always look to her owner whenever she sees food – whether on the table, on the floor, on the ground outside
• Always keep her four paws in contact with the ground whenever she is in the kitchen or dining room
• Go to her mat or basket when meal preparation or the meal itself is taking place, or when other animals in the house are being fed

Each behavior requires a different approach and, depending on the circumstances, all might be appropriate for Poppy. It is the first though, that I will focus on here. The added advantage of this behavior is that it incorporates an element of trust building and enables the dog’s owner to build a relationship with the dog that goes beyond just stopping the stealing of food.

The following example is one with which I have worked with one of my own dogs. Essentially I created a two-part behavior. I wanted the environmental cue – the sight or smell of food – to trigger a specific behavior from my dog. I set up a situation where it became easy for my dog to refer to me whenever he saw something that looked particularly tasty. I wanted this new chain of behavior to replace the ‘rush and grab’ one he previously displayed. The following behavior chain shows what I wanted to happen when the dog found himself facing any unattended tasty morsels.

Stage 2: Build a shaping plan to teach the dog to leave a prohibited item in favor of the desired behavior

Shaping plans are made by breaking a behavior down into its incremental elements. When I was studying with the Karen Pryor Academy I got into the habit of building my shaping plans in the form of shaping staircases. Since then I have continued to use the process to map out hundreds of different behaviors.

In Poppy’s case, we need a shaping plan that deals with very small increments of behavior and provides multiple opportunities for Poppy to get rewarded.  

The following is a plan I’ve put together especially for Poppy’s situation. It focuses only on the first behavior – that of shaping her to look to her owner whenever she is in the presence of food.

Stage 3: “Charge” the clicker

If Poppy has never been exposed to a clicker before it will be necessary to “charge” the clicker before commencing any training. This will be easy to do with Poppy because the very nature of her problem suggests she is particularly motivated by food.

Charging the clicker does not require the dog to do anything other than be relatively attentive to the handler so it is best to do it when there are few distractions around (like a litter of bouncing puppies in Poppy’s case). It simply involves letting the dog know that the “click” will earn her a treat every time she hears it. The process goes a little like this:

1. Dog looks at you – click’n’treat
2. Before the dog has finished chewing – click’n’treat again
3. Repeat step 2 another 7 or 8 times in quick succession.

Over time the dog will learn that the “click” means “well done, what you just did was what I wanted” and will promise a treat of some sort (whether toy or food or game) to follow.

Stage 4: Conduct the foundation training sessions

Now things are ready to commence the first training session. I would pick a quiet time for Poppy, perhaps when the pups are taking a nap or are busy with other humans. I would prepare several sets of 10 treats and have them readily available but well out of Poppy’s sight. I’d then sit quietly with Poppy and wait for her to make eye contact with me. I’d click for that briefest of contacts and give her a treat. This is the first step of the staircase and teaches Poppy that making eye contact with me will earn her a treat. 

I like to measure duration for eye contact as it can be a good indicator of whether the dog understands what I am after. I would count the seconds Poppy holds my gaze and see if it increases in length at all. Most dogs find holding a human’s gaze disconcerting, so if I can get a couple of seconds for each glance at first, then I am doing very well. With this sort of game I like to keep the sessions short, no longer than 30 seconds, and I’d reward Poppy with a game or the remaining treats at the end of that time. I’d then keep repeating this first step until I was sure Poppy understood what this game was about – “If I look at her hard enough, she’ll “click” and feed me – how cool is that!”

Stage 5: Introduce food and work the plan

Once Poppy knows what the game is about I can then introduce a small amount of low value food to the game. I would start by holding it in my fist just in front of Poppy’s nose. Any attempt to nudge my hand or get at the food would be ignored. What I want Poppy to do is look away from my hand, just for a second, if I can capture that with the “click” then I can build on this with more repetitions and perhaps some duration (she looks away for a couple of seconds). If I practiced the first step of my process well enough, i.e. lots of sessions with lots of repetitions, then chances are high that when Poppy looks away from my food clenching hand, she will look at me - “Click’n’treat” – we’ll have jumped to the next step of the staircase. Little by little I’d work my way up the staircase, shifting the criteria minutely at first, and always going back a step or two if things don’t seem to be progressing.

The Secret to Shaping New Behavior

I’m a record keeper and I like to know how well I am doing with each session. Am I making progress in this session compared to the last? Is the dog’s interest high? Are my treats of a high enough caliber? Am I keeping the repetitions high? Are my sessions short? Are we having fun?

I’ve found whenever I try to shape a behavior I have to be very clear in my head as to what the terminal behavior looks like and I will reward any progress toward that behavior. 

I’ve played this game with many dogs and they all catch on really quickly – “ignoring the food in that hand, means I get something better from the other one – ahh, I get it, I’ve gotta look at her to let her know I know that”.

Beau, our youngest dog, is a master at this game. He uses the presence if any food as an opportunity to let me know that I “owe” him a treat by eye-balling me. The advantage of this for me is I can now trust him to leave food alone and all I have to do to maintain the behavior is reinforce him with a word of praise or something special out of my pocket. 

Poppy (Photo: dog::links)

In Poppy’s case, we really want her to defer to her owner when there is anything around that she might previously have tried to steal. To achieve this sort of reliability with the behavior will take lots of repetitions, in lots of sessions a day, over many days and weeks, but it is achievable and sets the scene for the next part of the behavior chain – teaching Poppy to leave the item that is tempting her, or giving her permission to take it. In my next blog, Cueing a New Behavior, I will discuss this part of the process in more detail.  

Rehabilitating a Food Thief: Part 1 – Poppy's Problem

The other day I got an email from my friend Jane, a dedicated volunteer with the Cahor animal refuge in France. She shared with me the story of Poppy, a young Pointer / Weimaraner cross who had recently given birth to eight beautiful puppies and, lucky for her puppies, had been fostered out to a very generous care-giver.

Poppy's pups (photo: dog::links)

Despite being a gentle, trusting and extremely affectionate dog who enjoys the company of people to the point where she readily allows them to handle her pups, Poppy came into care with little training and a pathological need - she likes to steal food. When she was found, the heavily pregnant Poppy was starving. It is likely she had been abandoned, probably due to her pregnancy, and was thus forced to fend for herself, something domesticated dogs are just not equipped to do. Perhaps Poppy had a fondness for helping herself before her ordeal, perhaps not, it is impossible to say. What would be fair to assume though, is that Poppy’s starvation and the subsequent fear of not having enough to eat have resulted in her becoming a notorious food thief.

Poppy (photo: dog::links)

Stealing food is a common behavior in many dogs, not just those who have been forced to fend for themselves; food after all is a basic requirement to survival and if it is not readily available most dogs will resort to stealing to meet their nutritional needs. In Poppy’s case it might be simply that she has a propensity to make the most of an opportunity, or there could be more to it than a basic need for food. The trauma of being abandoned, coping with the physiological changes that accompany pregnancy, and that perpetual state of being hungry may have triggered in Poppy a psychological need to steal food. This behavior can easily be further reinforced because of the attention that Poppy gets, albeit negative, should her humans shoo her away from the food, or punish her for stealing it.

If any combination of these factors is in play, then Poppy’s condition will not be addressed just by giving her plenty of food to eat. If you look at it from her point of view, Poppy has likely learned through her ordeal that the only way to guarantee she will get a meal is to take whatever she can find. Perhaps in the past she had been regularly fed and food just miraculously and reliably appeared as it does for most pet dogs or perhaps she only received meager rations from her previous owners. Regardless of her past life, when Poppy was left to her own devices any previous supply line was severed - food was no longer on offer - and Poppy would have needed to revert to whatever means possible to stay alive.

Just because food starts to appear out of nowhere once more, doesn’t mean it will last forever and Poppy’s natural instincts will tell her to take whatever she can find, whenever she can. If, when this happens, a great fuss breaks out and she is chased away from the food, this just reinforces her initial desire to steal, perhaps making the item to be stolen much higher in value than she previously thought because there is competition for obtaining it.

The table below shows one way of describing the existing behavior :

Describe existing behavior: steals food, runs away to eat it in seclusion
Opportunities	Dog loose, food readily available: laid out on the table, on the kitchen bench, in shopping bags on the floor, in the cat's bowl
Cues (triggers)	Sight or smell of food; attention of humans
Reinforcers	The physiological satisfaction that comes from eating the food, attention from humans, yelling, commotion, running, game of “get away”

Another way to look at the situation is as part of a behavior chain in which the stealing is continually being reinforced.

Behavior Chain format adapted from Karen Pryor Academy Dog Training Program

We see this happening frequently enough with humans that it should be no surprise when it also happens with dogs. People steal for the same reasons: the desire for what they don’t have is greater than any consequences that might occur for the action, and always worth the risk when faced with the option of doing without. In fact, many thieves steal for the attention it attracts to them, they like the notoriety that accompanies their actions.

So does this mean that rehabilitating a food thief is futile? Luckily for Poppy and other dogs like her, no.

Through a dedicated and consistently positive approach using operant conditioning with high levels of reinforcement, Poppy can be taught to respond to food in a different way and to look to her new owner as the source of all things good in her life. This is an ideal situation for using a clicker or a similar marker to indicate to the dog when she is displaying appropriate behavior and to reward her with a high value treat.

In my next blog on this topic, I will detail one way in which Poppy and other dogs who steal food can be conditioned to leave food alone and instead make the sight of such food a cue to do something else entirely.

Puppy Mill-Induced Phobias – Part 2: Canine Anorexia

With Honey in foster care

When Blue came to us at the end of January 2011, it was his third change of environment in six weeks. In foster care he had three humans and four other dogs with whom he could play and from whom he could model his behavior. Coming from such a large extended family to our nuclear one of Martin and me, must have been a major shock for the little fella.

Most dogs are reasonably resistant to stressful situations like a change of environment and adapt after a few days. When Blue went off his food, we thought that this must be the case. We’d been careful to follow as closely as possible the routine passed to us from Blue’s foster care including the type of food, the amounts and feeding times. At first Blue would eat, then he would nibble but by the end of that first week he’d completely gone off his food altogether.

Diagnosing the Problem

Nothing worked, not his regular kibble, not tasty treats, not even a dog’s favorite human food – roast chicken. Was this another of his emerging phobias? Could a dog have a phobia to food? In a panic I took Blue to the vet, he was due for his booster shot anyway and I decided to make it a full check-up. The vet could find nothing physically wrong with Blue that would create such a disinterest in food – the vet’s advice? “Starve him for a few days, sooner or later he’ll start eating again.” And he handed me a free sample of Science Diet to try.

Not surprisingly Blue turned his nose up at the new food and of course I was not prepared to starve him. Instead I did some research of my own and tried to determine just what sort of condition Blue had. As with any sort of internet research there is a great need to sift through the dross to find the gems that you are after, and this was very much the case here. Apparently everyone has an opinion on what causes a dog to stop eating. The more I read the more I came to believe that Blue was suffering from some form of canine anorexia. Dr Etienne Cote on the site PetPlace.com describes anorexia as “a term used to describe the situation where an animal loses his appetite and does not want to eat or is unable to eat.”  This was most definitely the situation with Blue. Not only was he not willing to feed himself, any offers of tempting morsels by hand would be tentatively taken and then promptly spat out. Dr. Cote goes on to explain that unlike hunger, which is a physiological condition stimulated by the body’s need for energy, appetite is psychological, and dependent on memory and association.

Was Blue making some association between food and his past life? Were there some hidden triggers that sparked fearful memories that were destroying his appetite?

Devising a Solution

I took to data collecting and analysing every aspect of Blue’s interaction with food: from his cautious approach to the bowl, his tentative sniffs and surreptitious, whale-eye looks over his shoulder to the backing up and sidling away, head and tail lowered, leaving the food untouched. Was it the food bowl? It was made of metal and by then we had learned of his phobia for all things metallic – from ventilation grates and drain covers to hydrants and cars. Or was it what was in the bowl - the food itself? Had he been punished in the past for eating? Did he now associate food with some sort of pain?

It soon became obvious that we needed to do something and do it fast. Blue wasn’t eating and if we couldn’t get him to do so soon he would need medical intervention. The first thing I did was completely change his routine. Nothing we did was the same as before. I took away the food bowls and the meal times. Then I changed the food itself. He’d been on a self-imposed fast now for several days and I needed to get him to eat something. 

Through my research I learned that not all dog foods are created equal and it seemed to me that dried kibble was probably not the best option for my dog anyway. I found some recipes for changing a dog’s diet from commercial products to home prepared meals which involved cooked rice with ground or shredded meat.

When we lived in Malaysia one of the delicacies we would go to Melaka for was their chicken rice balls. I soon found myself in full production making batch after batch of these things. Why? Blue may have lost his appetite for food but he had plenty enthusiasm for small balls. My thinking was that if I could establish a new positive relationship between Blue and food, by using an association with the balls he loved, then that might by-pass his anorexia enough to enable him to eat.

Feeding times became training times and by extension “fun” times. All food was now hand-delivered to Blue, just as a treat would be in a formal training situation. I had not yet started clicker training at this stage, but I did engage a form of operant conditioning – Blue soon learned that eating a little of a rice ball, earned him playtime with a real ball. Eating a little more, got him attention and praise, and more ball fun. I wish back then I knew about the squeeze tubes used by campers and climbers, they would have saved me the slimy delivery of squelchy rice balls.

After a while I got smart and started stuffing toys full of the stuff – Kongs and hollow rubber balls. I would freeze these and they created a game with a built-in treat. Cream cheese was soon added to my list of new foods, which now included homemade paté, steak’n’kidney’n’rice and doggy scouse. The rice balls had become more meatballs and they now included vegetables and herbs. Blue wasn’t eating much of any of these, but he was eating – a teaspoonful here, and tablespoon there, a meatball over there. The bulk of Blue’s diet though was made up of treats – tiny bits of hotdog, dried chicken cubes, lamb treats, including dried intestine, and his all-time favourite barbecued ostrich – these are expensive foods, but Blue was eating them and as a result the associations he was making with food were changing.

Problem Resolution

My strategy was working – Blue was getting his appetite back but at a huge cost to me. I was spending more time preparing meals for him than I was for my husband and me. I don’t know how long I could have continued to do this though, for by this time I was well into my KPA training program and had other huge commitments on my time. Luckily, I didn’t have to; two things happened that changed Blue’s eating habits for good and brought an end to endless hours in the kitchen.

The first of these was the adoption of our Beauceron X pup, Beau, when Blue was 13 months old. The second was switching both dogs to a raw food diet a month or so later.  The switch was not motivated by Blue’s eating disorder, but rather by circumstances related to the pup, but Blue reaped just as many benefits.

Now at 19 months old, Blue is first to eat at mealtimes. While he doesn’t exactly eat out of the metal bowl, he will drag out the morsel he is interested in and chomp his way through it, bones and all. He is selective about the cuts he prefers, will eat his fill and walk away leaving whatever is left for Beau to clean up. Before Beau turned up on the scene, Blue would never take a chew or a biscuit , now he jealously guards any he is given, burying them under his beanbag if necessary to keep them from the marauding Beau or taking them to a quiet corner to chomp in peace. 

What brought about such a change?

I can only speculate. Perhaps it was the competition from a younger totally uninhibited dog, perhaps some latent primal instinct kicked in stimulating the physiological imperative to override the psychological, perhaps he just likes the taste of raw meat better, or maybe the associations have changed to such a degree that he now experiences pleasure from food rather than anything else.

Blue still spits our treats when he is in stressful situations, and I use this brilliant indicator to help me understand what the stressors are so I can work to alleviate the situation for next time.

Since coming to us a year ago, Blue has put on three and half kilograms and weighs in now at a very respectable 8.5 kg - nearly all of that has happened in the last six months. The new associations he has made with food have accelerated his training in other areas as I can now use food to help him overcome other fears and learn new skills and behaviors. 

Blue may never totally overcome all of the phobias he developed as a result of events in his past, but his overcoming this one inspires hope for the others. With patience, good timing and lashings of positive reinforcement (R+), this little dog will tackle anything.