Management vs Training

I often get asked the question, when my dog is lunging or growling at another dog on a walk - what should I do? My answer is usually the same - get outta there, go home, and call a trainer.

Whenever a dog is in an aroused state of mind, its very difficult to train him or do any proper behavioral correction. A lunging, snarling dog at the end of a leash is not going to be susceptible to any type of behavioral correction that will cure his problem.

Many people will try snapping the leash, grabbing their dog, or even pinning their dog when they get leash reactions like this. None of these things train your dog not to react in that way. Why? Because the behavior is usually being driven by emotion, and you can't punish away emotion.

Imagine I took you up to the top of your home and dangled you off the roof. You are in a huge panic because you feel your life might be in danger. What if I then pull out a gun, point it at you, and demand that you stop panicking and being afraid. Will that work? What will your emotion state be after that happens? If I then take you up to the roof and dangle you off without the gun - will your fear of heights be gone?

This is very similar in dog training. A dog that is being punished via leash corrections, pinning or even shouting isn't having his emotions changed, and thus the behavior will likely not change - or even worse - it might change to something else.

Many dogs that are punished for growling will stop growling - however instead they next time go straight to biting without the warning growl. A leash reactive dog punished in this way, while his behavior may change, could never be trusted off leash as his emotions would still be the same, and out of fear or aggression he may attack.

All proper behavior corrections in dogs take place "sub-threshold". That means when I correct behavior - I never actually want to see the negative behavior again. If your dog growls at other dogs, I want to work with him so that I never see him growl again. This means I always keep him at a level just below his 'threshold' of growling. As we work through behavior modification, we move the dog closer and closer to thing he had the problem with - other dogs etc, all while keeping him under his reactive threshold. The general goal is to usually show and teach the dog other acceptable behaviors he can display, or to relax his fear and show him there is no reason to be afraid.

Using the roof example - a professional therapist would gradually expose you to higher and higher surfaces, ensuring you were OK with one height before moving higher. A professional human therapist would not pull you up to a roof and hold a gun to your head - however in dog training this type of thing seems to happen all the time (Think choke collars and shock collars).

Dogs can learn when they are afraid - but usually not the things we want! Fear is a huge teacher for dogs, but the lesson is usually to 1) Avoid the thing of fear or 2) use aggression to make it go away - neither of which is usually a desirable outcome.

Trying to train when your dog is afraid or in a frenzy just doesn't work.

If you find your dog is reactive on leash, call a (good)trainer and don't keep trying to micromanage the situations - you'll likely make it worse and certainly won't make it better.

Leash Dog-Dog Reactions

I'm not sure if its TV shows or just natural human reaction but it seems that whenever a dog reacts/lunges/barks at another dog while on leash, the reaction of the owner is to always jerk the leash and yell at the dog.

Even dogs that are simply tugging to investigate or greet another dog while on leash are routinely jerked back into walking position by many owners.

Many people I believe are at a loss for what to do when your dog is reacting either aggressively or curiously to another stimulus while on leash, and both require very different methods of treatment - however one thing in common is that jerking your dogs leash doesn't help.

If your dog is reacting aggressively to another dog/person/stimulus jerking the leash and yelling at the dog will start to classically condition your dog. The dog is going to start to form this picture in his mind:

Dogs show up = my neck hurts and I get jerked around thus = dogs are bad news.

Now many people will observe that if your jerk a dog enough he may stop to react (yup we see this on TV shows) - this is true, but that doesn't mean his reaction is cured, but rather suppressed. Likely that same dog, once free of his leash, would react on his building emotional state that dogs = bad and an attack is very likely. This is not a dog you could trust off leash when he is "safe" from his punishers.

So jerking your dogs leash does nothing to cure or fix the emotional state of WHY he is reacting that way, but simply temporarily suppresses it. If your an addicted smoker, I can tie your hands up and take away your cigarette package and then stand back and say "Look he's not smoking" and thus claim my solution has cured you.

The problem of course is soon as you have your free will and mobility back, you'd head right out to buy another pack.

The key is to cure the emotional state of why the dog is reacting, and the only true way to do this is through that same pattern of classical conditioning.

Instead of dogs = my leash jerked = dogs are bad, you change the equation in your dogs mind to:

dogs = I get lots of treats thus = dogs are awesome!

I won't go into all the finer detail of how this is done, these types of corrections are best done with the help of a qualified trainer. If you'd like to learn more however there's plenty of books in my online store that cover this topic, FIGHT! by jean donaldson is a good one.

The key point to note here is that your not creating an expectation that your dog will get a treat every time another dog shows up. What your doing is changing the emotional state, so that even if he doesn't get a treat when a dog shows up, the past history of that happening will give him a positive view of the approaching dog, instead of a negative one. Phasing out the treats will still leave your dog with a positive mindset, even when the treats are no longer flowing freely. You can also train operant behaviors around other dogs if you need to, like sitting or coming to you if off leash.

If your dog is simply trying to investigate something, say he wants to sniff that pile of poop on the sidewalk, is jerking him away going form an equation of:

poop = my leash getting jerked = poop is bad?

Not likely (but it could), but it will certainly lead to other issues.

First, it will damage your relationship with your dog. Whenever you inflict pain on your dog, your not going to be his most favorite person, that's just universal for all species.

Second, Your dog isn't going to have any clear expectations on how to get what he wants. Unless you've trained him to "leave it" jerking him away from things doesn't teach him why he shouldn't be going after that object, or how to avoid the punishment. What else can't I sniff at along this walk? How do I stop from getting jerked around so much? If you don't answer these questions for you dog, he's going to be hopelessly confused and upset.

So in short - if your dog does something you don't like on leash, please don't make your first reaction to jerk him around. Certainly if your dog is lunging or about to attack you need to manage the situation, but once everyone is safe, please don't be the person that stands there yelling "NO" and jerking up on the leash well after the encounter has passed, your not doing your dog, or yourself, any favors.