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. 

My Top Ten Tips for Your New Dog's Successful Transition to Your Home

Most of my work at present is with new owners of refuge or rescue dogs – I’ll be sharing some of their stories in the future. These are kind-hearted people willing to give a second chance to a dog that, for whatever reason, has been lost, abandoned, discarded or dumped. More often than not these dogs are adolescents or adults given up because their previous owner could no longer ‘handle’ them or no longer wanted to. In all cases, whether the dog is a pup, an adolescent or an adult, I offer the new owner my top ten tips for a successful transition from the refuge to the family home.

Due to my working with several refuges, some of which are in France up to five hours away, my contact with the new owner may be via email rather than in person and in some cases takes place through a volunteer liaison person at the refuge who knows the dog and has met with the prospective owner.  Because of the volunteer nature of these refuges and shelters their primary focus is to find homes for the dogs in their care, not to offer advice on training. By my offering to kick start the process with some easy to follow guidelines, my hope is that more dogs will successful integrate into their new homes, thus reducing the number of dogs returned to the shelters.

Adopting a New Dog?  First Ask Yourself a Few Key Questions

…and note down the answer – these will form the foundation of your “house rules” – No. 1 of my top 10.

Who will be his primary handler? Your new dog must have only one primary handler – this person is responsible for all aspects of the dog’s training and decisions related to him. Other members of the family can help out, but the dog needs one human he can look to as the manager of the pack – someone who will show him the ropes and protect him if need be from other humans as well as dogs.

Where do you want your dog to sleep? All dogs need a bed just like we do, sharing yours is not a good idea; it should be kept as a special privilege for a dog that has learned good manners. So decide right from the start where you want your dog to sleep, and stick to it.

The dogs on their couch

 Will he be allowed on the furniture? Making a rule at the start as to what places are out of bounds for your dog makes for a happier home in the long run. Remember is easier to train a desire behavior than correct an undesirable one. If you don’t want him on your furniture, he needs some ‘furniture’ of his own – a bed, bean chair, old couch, a mat in the corner, and you need to have a consistent way of managing his attempts at getting on to your furniture by reinforcing his going to his own.

What toys are acceptable for him to chew? Your puppy or new dog is going to chew whether you like it or not. If you do not provide him with suitable chews, he’ll find his own – shoes, bags, chair legs, couch cushions, the door mat…trust me I know this from experience. Stuffable chews (eg, Kongs) are the best as they keep him cognitively occupied as well as addressing his need to chew, you can stuff them with something yummy (like mince and rice) and freeze them. There are a wide range of toys suitable for dogs to chew and a little cream cheese, or peanut butter can make something new and alien into something interesting to explore.

Where will his ‘safe’ place be? Your dog needs a safe place to call his own whether it is a crate, a cordoned off part of the kitchen, or a “puppy pen” set up in the living room. You need a place to put your dog when you have other things to do.

 What will his routine be? Just like a new baby needs a routine for eating, toileting and sleeping so too will your new dog.  While he was in the shelter, there would have been a routine to his day, now he is with your family it is up to you to teach him the routine you want. Try and fit it as closely into your daily schedule as you can, but write up a routine and follow it – it will make things a lot easier in the long run.

Where will he toilet? Your new dog, whether a puppy, adolescent or adult, needs to establish a toileting routine with you as soon as you get him home. Decide where you want him to toilet and take him to this spot: after he has woken, after he has eaten, and at two hour intervals otherwise.

Now you have considered these questions – you can use them to form the basis of your house rules.

Top 10 Tips For a Trouble-Free Transition

1.  Establish a set of "house rules" for your new dog as soon as you get him home:  Depending on the method of training you employ it may take weeks to secure desirable behaviors for both dog and family members alike. If you start as you mean to continue you can establish good habits early rather than having to unlearn bad habits later.  Keep in mind, what may be cute in a little puppy, will never be cute in a full grown adult.
2.  Start your new dog’s training on day one: Build into your routine lots of 3-minute training sessions. Make every training session about one thing only. Keep a leash on your dog throughout the training so he is fully under your control. Have a pile of treats at the ready and a clear idea of what you are training. The Sirius Behavior Blueprints are a great place to start.
3.  Make coming and going from your home no big deal: Get in the habit of leaving your puppy or new dog for a few minutes at a time. Put him in his safe place and walk into another room for a minute or two. Return to the room your dog is in and pay him no attention until he is quiet and settled (keep yourself busy doing other stuff). When he is calm, go to him and quietly tell him what a good boy he’s been and reward his calmness.  You want to avoid your dog getting over excited when you leave – raised adrenalin equals raised anxiety levels. Try leaving the house now for 2-3 minutes and when you return again pay no attention to your dog until he is calm and settled or enough time has passed (5-10 mins) for him not to associate his feelings with your coming home. Gradually increase the time you leave him alone and always focus on and reward his calmest behavior.
4. Decide a feeding schedule for your new pal right from the start: Work out his daily allocation of food and put half aside for treats for training during the day, divide the rest into 2 small meals – one for the end of the morning, one for the end of the day. If your dog is very food orientated, use the meal as a special reward after a series of training sessions. If your dog is fussy or picky, give him 15-20 minutes to eat his meal before taking it away for good. It won’t hurt him to miss a meal occasionally, it might even do him some good, just like fasting does for us.
5. Decide where you want your dog to be when you are eating your meals/when you have visitors call/when you want the children to get their homework done: It is a good habit to teach your dog to go to his mat, or den with a stuffed chew (or some other non-interruptive behavior) when you sit down to your meals or you want him out of the way for a while. The last thing you want is a dog begging for food at meal times or for attention when you must give it elsewhere. Encourage quiet behavior by rewarding any occurrence of him lying quietly in his den keeping himself occupied.
6. Work on "off lead" behavior as early as you can: Start in the house in a safe place (for your belongings as well as for your dog), let your dog romp around and get him used to coming back to you frequently. Reward him with a special treat (taken from his food allocation) any time he comes near you. Do this frequently, ALWAYS wait for your dog to come to you, reward each time. At this stage you don’t need to use any cues or commands, simply use your body language to encourage your dog to come to you. You can even move away and see if he will follow. The earlier you establish this foundation for the recall, the easier it will be for you to teach your dog to come on cue later on.  ALWAYS stay cheerful and positive when your dog comes to you, you want this to be a pleasant and enjoyable experience for your dog every single time. If you yell, or make a scene, or raise your voice, even in fear for your dog, just once, your puppy or new dog will remember that and there will always be the off chance it might happen again so he will be reluctant to return.
7. Handle your puppy/dog often: Get him used to being touched by you. If he is a puppy pick him up and carry him around, stroke him, play with him. Get him used to you touching his paws, his head, putting your hand inside his mouth, brushing him. If the dog is older and more wary, start with simple stroking along the spine. Reward with a treat, any calmness the dog displays. Touch his collar, run your fingers along the inside. Reward him for letting you do that. Progress down each leg and so on.
8. Please, please take your new dog to good manners and/or puppy socialization classes at your earliest convenience: Please ensure that the trainer only uses positive training methods (clicker training, positive lure based conditioning).  Avoid any trainer who talks about "alpha dog" and "dominance" training or the need to use punishment as a training device. Dog training has evolved beyond these methods and there is plenty of good information on the internet in support of quality positive dog training: the Associationof Pet Dog Trainers (APDT) offers advice on appropriately certified trainers and you can find a register of Certified Training Partners at the Karen Pryor Academy.
9. Encourage your new dog to be on his best behavior whenever you are in a social situation: (including playing with other dogs, or children or when attending dog training classes.) You have the bigger brain so it is for you to establish the boundaries of what is acceptable behavior. Decide how it is you would like your dog to behave in the presence of others and reward him for incidents of that behavior. Any undesirable behavior should result in the end of the association i.e. take the your dog away.
10. Teach your dog his name: Your dog’s name needs to have all the power of an emergency recall. Whenever you use it you want it to mean something wonderful is coming. Start by saying your dog’s name and feeding him a treat. Keep doing this until he looks at you when you say his name in anticipation of the treat. Mark that behavior (with a bright ‘yes’ or a click) and feed him a treat.  Now go to a different room or take him off leash and let him run around a little. Say his name softly, does he look at you? If so, mark and treat and say his name again. Repeat until you get 8 correct responses in a row. NEVER use your dog’s name in anger, or yell it, or say it over and over again. Say it once, and expect a response, if you trained the foundation then he will respond every time. Good dog!

Final Word

Share these Tips with all family members and any guests you might have visit you. It is so important that your new dog be presented with a united front and that means everyone needs to follow the rules.

Your dog is smart, if the rules relax when you have guests visit, then he’ll catch on quick “Ah, people coming to visit means I can do what I like, yippee!”

Start as you mean to continue, focus on what you want your dog to do, reward for good behavior, ignoring everything else, and you can’t help but have success.

What Do You Want From Your Dog? Setting the Right Expectations

This is Beau, our youngest dog. He’s a Beauceron X and he’s beautiful – not just in looks but in temperament too. He was my husband’s answer to a poodle in the family.

Beau at three months

When Beau first joined us he was three months old and while he was hubby’s dog, it fell to me to do much of his basic training. Clicker training is not so much about solving problems as preventing them from ever happening in the first place. One strategy that enables this more proactive approach is the need to define clearly what it is the dog’s owner expects from his dog. In our situation I could easily have drawn up a training plan much as I’d done for Blue, our poodle, but it would not have taken into consideration my husband’s expectations of what he wanted from his dog.

Martin works in a high powered job and is not as young as he used to be. He was keen at the time to increase the activity in his life; he saw this new addition as a means to that end. Wasn’t that all the expectation he needed?

Pinning him down to a ‘client interview’ was to be my first challenge; he didn’t understand the need for it. We’d owned dogs in the past and none of the trainers we’d worked with had suggested doing this. However it was a requirement of my KPA course and I asked him to humor me – he graciously obliged.

One evening last summer we settled on the balcony with a drink in hand and discussed in some detail exactly what Martin wanted from his dog. Initially, I got lots of “well I don’t want him to pull” and “he needs to come when called”. And while there is nothing wrong with these – what I was after was something more descriptive of why he wanted these behaviors. I explained as much to him and told him to consider thinking of this as a job description for his dog – what were the competencies he was after?

In the side bar is the list of expectations he generated. I couldn’t improve upon it if I tried. Not only is it an excellent description of the dog Beau is becoming, it is also a pretty good description of the character of my husband. It seems to me what he was after was a match with himself. Should I be jealous?

In designing a training program for Beau, I referred often to this list. It helped me identify and prioritize the behaviors we wanted Beau to develop competence. It was useful in explaining why I trained this behavior at this time, rather than that one, and it gave me a benchmark I could refer to whenever we were veering off track.

That was nearly 6 months ago now. Over the holidays we reviewed this initial list and to our delight were able to tick off many of the expectations as “achieved”.

Beau at 8½ months is an active, friendly dog, fun-loving and responsive. He is calm but cautious around all things new, is learning to remain calm around children despite all the noise they make (we have several schools on the estate). He is attentive and courteous most of the time, and only occasionally lets his puppy exuberance get the better of him.  He is learning to be more thoughtful and to exercise self-control particularly when he meets people he knows and likes. He is not a barker, and just as well even at this age he has a bark that will terrify the dead.

Goals set in this way are not static; they should adapt to suit your situation and changing needs. Today I feel the need to add another section to my goal setting form – Achievements. While I used the Goals to help with the training, we inadvertently achieved other things as well and it would be good to note these over time so we can appreciate just how successful this process really is.

Blue and Beau in one of their
few quiet moments

Beau is a gentle giant, an affectionate dog who really does look to Martin for his lead. He is always keen to please and loves nothing better than to play with or just be with his best buddy – his two legged friend (despite what the picture on the right might suggest). What greater achievement for a dog could there be?

Dealing with Puppy Mill-Induced Phobias - Part 1

At the rescue shelter

Part of my motivation to get professional clicker training came from my learning to deal with my dog’s little phobias. All puppies have fears of one sort or another. Most of these fears are of things unknown and have no pre-history so they can be dealt with relatively easily. A phobia, though is something quite different. By definition, it is a “persistent irrational fear of a specific object, activity or situation that leads to a compelling desire to avoid it” (www.dictionary.com ). It often originates from some sort of deep-seated trauma, can manifest at any time and the oddest things can trigger one. 

Blue, our miniature poodle, has them in abundance - only no-one knew this when we adopted him.

After surgery

Close up

Blue is a “chien sauvé”, a rescued dog. At the end of 2010, he was rescued from a notorious puppy mill in Italy as ‘unsold stock’. He was 6 months old and weighed only 3 kg, most of which was his matted coat of bug infested wool. Multiple infections in his eyes, ears and paws qualified him as a hospital case yet the people at Dr. Villiers Clinic in Lausanne soon had him on the mend and fostered out with Lindy, the AIDA Switzerland volunteer who rescued him.

With his foster family, Blue’s true delightful character started to emerge. He was with a caring family which included three other dogs, and they took particularly good care of him. It was a honeymoon period for him and he took to it with total appreciation and an out-pouring of puppy emotion – everybody loved him.

With Hercule

With Suki

When Blue came to us it was his third change of environment in 6 weeks. In foster care he had other dogs with which he could play and from whom he gained courage. He could follow them about and annoy them with his puppy antics; he could use them to model his behavior. In our home, there were no other dogs, he had to keep himself occupied at times, and it is in these sorts of alone moments that a phobia begins to manifest itself.

With Jerry and Hercule in
in his foster home

We have little knowledge of what life was like for Blue in those formative months of his life. All we could do at the time was attempt to piece together some of the picture from aspects of his behavior and the reactions he displayed to certain things in those first few weeks with us. Each day brought startling revelations and new challenges to overcome.

Fear of grates and drains

 Puppy mill dogs are typically kept in wire crates with no base board so that feces and urine can pass directly through into a collection tray or runoff drain underneath. We believe that Blue spent most of his life before his rescue in a wire crate of this type. We also suspect his crate was probably located in an elevated position as many of these crates are stacked on top of each other to make full utilization of space. We surmise this from Blue’s behavior whenever he comes across an unknown drainage grate or ventilation outlet as well as his almost pathological fear of heights.

Initially Blue’s reaction to a grate or drain was one of avoidance – he would stop stock still and back away even though the grate might be several metres away.  When this first happened no amount of coaxing could get the wee chap to approach the offending piece of road bling – we skirted the issue for weeks, literally.

It soon became apparent that this was an issue that needed dealing with if we were ever going to be able to take our dog out for any normal sort of walk – do you know how many drainage grates and manhole covers there are in a city?

Some schools of thought would suggest that one use a “throw him into the deep end” approach i.e. tug the dog over to the grate and make him see it’s perfectly safe. In my opinion this would have done nothing other than terrify him even further and reaffirm that his initial fear was indeed the right one. What I needed was a means to desensitize him to the source of fear and allow him to come to the realization that his fears were unfounded on his own.  Clicker training provides the ideal vehicle for this. However this was much more than a simple click’n’treat situation!

Blue’s fear was so great that he would refuse to accept even the most appealing of treats. On more than one occasion his response was simply to spit out any treats offered to him. It was important to me to modify my understanding of the term “reward” as the primary motivator. It is easy to think of food as that which is most important to a dog, but Blue was teaching me that comfort, security, acceptance, understanding …were all equally powerful motivators.

We dog lovers have a terrible habit of anthropomorphism when it comes to our dogs – attributing human emotions to our canine friends. The reality is that all mammals, regardless of species, have a need for at least the first four stages of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. What Blue was in need of was the fourth stage: esteem: confidence, achievement, respect for and by others – it was my job as his ‘pack’ to provide him with that.

My Interpretation of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs as it applies to dogs

And so it was my education began. First I needed to develop my powers of observation – where were all these jolly grates and how could I spot them before my dog did? A little forward planning and a few walks on my own provided me with several routes I could take my dog where there were a few relatively unobtrusive grates that we should be able to successfully sidle past.

My next task was to engineer it so that my body always came between my dog and the terrifying metal work. If I could orchestrate it so Blue’s focus was on me as we went past, he could become familiar with the route and build his confidence before having to confront a grate.  It was all very well in theory, but the reality was more complicated. To pull this off I had to keep one eye on Blue and watch for any signs of stress, while also being on the lookout for each subsequent grate.

It was a slow process – one in which I learned the power of the click after we had successfully passed. If I clicked before approaching the grate, and there was any element of fear, I ran the risk of inadvertently rewarding Blue for being afraid. I learned this because it was during these times that Blue would categorically refuse to accept any treat. If, however, we negotiated our way past without incident  – my being between dog and grate – the click would mark the success of the pass-by and the treat was more readily accepted.

Another strategy I employed was to pair up the fearful object with something of great desire to Blue – his love of balls. Our estate has many ventilation vents and drainage grates alongside the gardens and playgrounds. By taking a ball out when we went to play and selecting a place close to one of these drains I could provide Blue with an opportunity to approach the grate to retrieve his ball. In those early days he’d never go too close, preferring to crouch and bark for me to retrieve it. When I didn’t respond, he’d look at me standing as I was in close proximity to the grate, and decide that another strategy might be more effective. A tentative step closer to the grate, CLICK!, and I’d nudge the ball closer to him and farther away from the grate. If he took another step, he’d get another CLICK!, and the ball would come ever closer. Soon the ball would be an acceptable distance from the grate and he’d rush to retrieve it. In this way I was able to gradually reduce the circle of fear around the grate.

That was 12 months ago, now Blue pays little heed to the familiar metal work in the road. On occasion we may come across one unknown and he will approach tentatively, sniff at it and peer into its depths as if looking for the ghost dogs beneath. Each approach earns him a click’n’treat or some much deserved praise for being such a brave boy. He’s also getting quite adept at jumping over any that come between him and where he wants to go. And that’s the sort of great he likes! 

Acknowledgement: Many thanks to Lindy, Blue's foster mum for the photos from his time with her.