Common Training and Behaviour Questions

Does my dog know right from wrong?

In a word: no, your dog does not know right from wrong. It is easy to believe that a dog who has destroyed the house or the back yard while you are out knows that she has been naughty, because she looks so guilty when you arrive home and see the mess! But what you think is guilt is actually anxiety and maybe fear: she has learnt that when you come home and say ‘Oh no, Rosie, what have you done? You bad dog!', it's not good news for her. Maybe you will show her the mess and shout at her or, worse still, hit her. She has no way of knowing why she is being reprimanded, unless you happened to catch her in the act of destroying something. If your punishments come more than a second or two after her actions, she can't connect the two things. For her, your punishments are coming out of the blue, for no reason at all. Hence her anxiety and fear (which may look like guilt).

Rather than knowing the difference between right and wrong, dogs know the difference between safe and unsafe. Your dog might learn that it is safe to steal food from the coffee table when no-one is watching, but it is not so safe to do it when someone is around. A dog who is not yet completely housetrained might learn that it is safe to make a puddle behind the couch, where she can't be seen, but very unsafe to do the same thing in the middle of the loungeroom in front of you. This is one reason for not punishing your dog for house soiling; she will just learn to hide from you when she needs to ‘go' because you act in a scary way and are not safe to be around if she makes a puddle when you are there. Your relationship with your dog is not going to be happy and trusting if your dog learns to feel unsafe with you.

Forget about all the Lassie films you have seen and face the fact that dogs have no morals: they don't know right from wrong. That's not to say that they're not adorable - they're just different from humans. It's our job to teach them, using kind and humane methods, which behaviours are acceptable to us and which are not.

What's wrong with using punishment?

There are so many problems with using punishment to change a dog's behaviour that it's hard to know where to start! One of the biggest problems is that punishment will teach your dog that you are scary and not to be trusted. Do you really want your relationship with your dog to be based on fear?

Here are some other things for you to think about:

• If punishment is to be effective, you must meet a number of criteria. These include delivering the punishment immediately (within about 1 second) of the behaviour, and using the appropriate intensity of punishment. Meeting these criteria is very difficult, even for skilled trainers, and not meeting them is very risky for your dog's wellbeing.
• Dogs can respond to punishment with aggression, stress, fear, frustration, and ‘shutting down'. Shutting down is when the dog becomes afraid to do anything at all, for fear of being punished.
• Punishment does not teach the dog what she should be doing, only what she should not be doing. This is an inefficient way of teaching.
• Punishment usually only suppresses behaviour temporarily. Unless the dog's motivation for performing the behaviour is addressed, the dog will find other ways to work around you, and will go back to the original behaviour as soon as the punishment stops.

When you consider all these things that can go wrong when using punishment (and the list above is just the start), it begins to make sense that training using positive reinforcement is much safer. After all, if you mess up your training when you are using food rewards, the worst that can happen is that your dog will remain untrained, but will still love you and enjoy the training sessions. If you mess up using punishment, you might end up with a dog who is scared of you, scared of training, aggressive and neurotic, as well as being untrained. Which would you prefer?

Is my dog dominant over me?

You might have heard that you should be dominant over your dog, and especially that you should make sure your dog isn't dominant over you. You might also have heard that you should be leader of the pack, and that your dog will take over this position if you don't. Dominance is a term used by many ‘old-style' trainers to explain all sorts of dog behaviours: jumping up, not coming when called, pulling on the lead, being pushy, being generally disobedient and being aggressive. Maybe you have been advised to put your dog ‘in her place' by eating first, going through doorways first, or physically holding your dog in a ‘submissive' position. In other words, you might have been advised to treat your relationship with your dog as a contest!

Here's an alternative view for you to think about: Maybe your dog isn't trying to take over the household by being pushy or disobedient (etc, etc), and dominance or pack leadership has nothing to do with her behaviours. Maybe she has just learnt that behaving in certain ways pays off for her: if she is pushy and demanding, people give in to her demands; if she jumps up on people, they give her attention; if she pulls on the lead, she gets where she wants to go (and faster); if she doesn't obey commands, she gets to do fun stuff rather than stuff she doesn't like so much; if she is aggressive, she scares away people who are frightening her.

This alternative view is a much healthier and more useful way to think about your dog's behaviour and about your relationship with your dog. There is no need to dominate your dog and engage in a contest with her. Instead, if your dog is behaving in ways you don't like, try to work out ‘what's in it for the dog' and change the environment so that her undesirable behaviours no longer work for her. Your relationship with your dog should be based on mutual respect and cooperation, not on trying to win a competition for pack leadership.

What's so good about clicker training?

Clicker training involves using a small device called a clicker to communicate with your dog when you are teaching her a new skill. The clicker makes a distinctive ‘click' sound that means: ‘You did the right thing just now, and a treat is on its way to reward you'. The reason for using the clicker (rather than just rewarding the dog with a treat) is for the precise timing that the clicker provides. If you are rewarding your dog for doing something good - such as sitting when you say ‘Sit' - the reward has to come immediately after the dog does what you wanted. A delay of more than a second can make it hard for the dog to figure out what the reward is for. Most of us are just not coordinated enough to deliver the treat in time - it can take a few seconds to get the treat out of your pocket or pouch and put it in your dog's mouth. And it is impossible to deliver the treat instantaneously if the dog is some distance away. Using a clicker to indicate to the dog exactly which behaviour is being rewarded gives us a very precise communication tool.

Using a clicker, you can teach your dog some very clever and complex behaviours by ‘shaping' - that is, rewarding approximations to the final behaviour. Trying to teach these complex behaviours without using a clicker (or other ‘reward marker') can be a lot harder, or even impossible.

Dogs tend to love clicker training! For them, it becomes a game called: ‘Figure out what I have to do to make that click happen'. They tend to try out lots of different behaviours to see which one will be successful and, as a result, can act very playfully during training sessions. This is a big contrast from the attitude of dogs who are trained using choke chains and other aversive techniques, who don't tend to enjoy their training sessions. Just watch your dog's eyes light up when you bring out the clicker and it's training time!

Is it OK for my dog to live outside?

If your dog is an outside dog, bring her inside. Your dog will be happier and better behaved, and your relationship with her will improve. If you think ‘There's no way I can bring her inside - she'll bounce all over the place and destroy the house!', talk to us about ways to introduce your dog gradually and calmly to the great indoors.