Handbook of Applied Dog Behavior and Training, Procedures and Protocols

Steven R. Lindsay, Steven R. Lindsay

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781118696750
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Veterinary Medicine

The Handbook of Applied Dog Behavior and Training series provides a coherent and integrated approach to understanding and controlling dog behavior. In Volume 3, various themes introduced in Volumes 1 and 2 are expanded upon, especially causally significant social, biological, and behavioral influences that impact on the etiology of behavior problems and their treatment. Ethological observations, relevant behavioral and neurobiological research, and dog behavior clinical findings are reviewed and critiqued in detail. Many of the training concepts, procedures, and protocols described have not been previously published, making this book a unique contribution to dog behavior and training literature.

1

Cynopraxic Training: Basic Procedures and Techniques

PART 1: FOUNDATIONS AND THEORY

Benefits of Cynopraxic Training

Specific Benefits of Various Exercises

Orienting and Attending Response

Sit-Stay and Down-Stay

Controlled Walking

Quick-sit

Down, Down-Stay, and Instant-down

Starting Exercise

Heeling

Recall and Halt-Stay

Behavioral Equilibrium

Signals and Communication

Attention and Impulse Control

Interrupting Behavior

Training and Play

The Training Space

Instrumental Reward and Punishment

Control Incentives and Reinforcement

Classical Conditioning, Prediction, and Reward

Prediction and Control Expectancies

Instrumental Control Modules and Modal Strategies

Establishing Operations

Diverters and Disrupters

Directive Prompts and Blocking

Distractions: Extraneous Sources of Reward

Least Intrusive and Minimally Aversive

PART 2: TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES

Training Tools

Flat-strap and Martingale Collars

Limited-slip Collars

Conventional Slip Collars

Prong Collars

Halter Collars

Fixed-action Halter Collars

Fixed-action and Slip-action Harnesses

Leash and Long Line

Hip-hitch

Miscellaneous Items

Bridges, Markers, and Flags

The Training Session

Play Training

PART 3: TRAINING PROJECTS AND EXERCISES

Introductory Lessons

Bridge Conditioning

Following and Coming

Orienting Response

Attending Response

Targeting and Prompting

Stay Training

Play and Controlled Walking

Clicking and Controlled Walking

On-leash and Off-leash Practice

Walking on Leash

Leash Handling

Leash-training Techniques

Long-line Training

Slack-leash Walking

Controlled-leash Walking and Hip-hitch

Halter Training

Basic Exercises

Starting Exercise

Laying Down from the Sit Position

Sitting from the Down and Stand Positions

Integrated Cycle of Basic Exercises

Stay Training

Stay from the Starting Position

Stop, Stay, and Come

Quick-sit and Instant-down

Go-lie-down

Heeling

Major Faults

Minor Faults

Heeling Square

Automatic Sit

Interrupting the Automatic Sit

Releasing the Dog from the Heeling Pattern

Walking Stand-Stay and Distance Exercises

Recall Training

References

PART 1: FOUNDATIONS AND THEORY

BENEFITS OF CYNOPRAXIC TRAINING

A coevolutionary process of mutual exchange and adjustment appears to have prepared a biological bond between people and dogs making them compatible to live together in the home (see Coevolution, Play, Communication, and Aggression in Chapter 6). The training process helps to perfect and intensify this evolutionary bond while enhancing our mutual appreciation of one another. In addition to enhancing the ability of people and dogs to relate, training serves the obligatory role of improving the quality of canine life under the constraints of domesticity. Learning to come reliably when called or to walk on leash without pulling, along with sundry other useful and critical behaviors, provides an effective and safe means to liberate dogs from the drudgery of excessive confinement and an overly narrow social and environmental life experience. In effect, no activity offers more potential benefit for enhancing the human-dog bond and improving the dog’s quality of life than training (see Cynopraxis: Training and the Human-Dog Relationship in Volume 1, Chapter 10).

The dog’s close social interaction with people requires that it learn to accept certain inevitable limits and boundaries, respond reliably to a number of basic commands, and exhibit habits and manners conducive to domestic harmony. These general behavioral objectives are integrated into everyday training activities, thereby strengthening the social connection between the owner and dog as well as facilitating interactive harmony and the development of cooperative behavior. Learning to defer and comply with owner directives is essential for a dog to become a successful companion. A dog’s proper adaptation to life with people demands responsible discipline and the establishment of appropriate limits and boundaries. Without boundaries and social distance, a relationship is not possible. Whereas assertions of dominance serve to establish social distance and set limits upon the expression of unacceptable behaviors, leadership promotes more acceptable and cooperative behavior by means of affectionate encouragement, play, food giving, and other nurturing activities. Deference to limit-setting actions and assertions of control promotes affectionate and voluntary cooperation, thereby providing the necessary preconditions for effective leadership. Training helps dogs to learn that deferring and following the owner’s lead optimizes their ability to obtain comfort and safety. By learning to follow rules happily and obediently, social conflicts are reduced and a leader-follower bond based on affection, communication, and trust is allowed to form—an essential foundation for the development of a healthy human-dog relationship (Table 1.1).

TABLE. 1.1. Benefits of cynopraxic training

Provides a foundation of communication based on predictable and controllable exchanges between the owner and the dog

Provides the owner with effective management and control skills

Systematically balances the triune bond consisting of dominance, leadership, and nurturance

Improves the dog’s attention and impulse-control abilities

Promotes affection and mutual appreciation

Establishes habits conducive to domestic harmony

Enhances social adjustment, cooperation, and competence

Promotes relaxation and a sense of well-being

Builds confidence and trust

Training promotes behavioral change by manipulating contingencies of reinforcement and punishment. For dogs, social and environmental predictability and controllability are necessary preconditions for security, contentment, and well-being. A failure to predict and control significant attractive and aversive events adequately gives rise to varying degrees of disstress in the form of anxiety and frustration. Of course, when present in limited amounts, anxiety and frustration are conducive to enhanced adaptive success (e.g., prediction error), but in situations where excessive and persistent social conflict and interactive tensions are present, a dog’s ability to function in an organized way may gradually deteriorate or break down (see Experimental Neurosis in Volume 1, Chapter 9). Dogs living under stressful and inescapable conditions of social disorder and adversity are vulnerable to develop a wide range of behavioral adjustment problems and disturbances (see Dysfunctional Social and Environmental Influences in Volume 2, Chapter 2).

Interactive conflict and tension between the owner and dog often develop in the context of antagonistic control interests. In many daily situations, the owner stands between the dog and the acquisition of a variety of highly valued rewards or prevents the dog from escaping or avoiding aversive events, often occurring as the result of engaging in rewarding activities forbidden by the owner. Dog owners often dedicate a tremendous amount of energy to regulate the appetitive interests of their dogs by employing a variety of active and passive control strategies, primarily involving interactive punishment and confinement. Active punitive strategies are particularly problematic since they are often used without much, if any, subsequent concern for showing the dog how to obtain the gratification that it is seeking while engaged in the forbidden activity. Limiting the dog’s behavior by means of passive control strategies (e.g., crating and tethering) in the absence of constructive training efforts can be equally harmful to the human-dog bond and the dog’s quality of life. In both instances, the dog’s ability to establish predictive control over appetitive and social rewards needed to optimize its adaptation and security (comfort and safety) are impeded or blocked. Setting limits by means of varying degrees of force (dominance) or restriction can be highly beneficial for the dog, but only if the dog is simultaneously shown alternative means to obtain the gratification that it seeks to obtain. Impeding the dog’s ability to escape or avoid an aversive situation by punishing an unacceptable mode of behavior (e.g., separation distress barking or whining), but without helping it to discover an alternative way to escape, avoid, or cope (e.g., providing it with an alternative or compensatory source of reward) from the aversive state (e.g., isolation and loneliness), may only tend to generate additional distress and focalize a point of ongoing conflict and tension between the owner and dog. Thwarting the dog’s ability to obtain appetitive and social rewards by punishing unacceptable behavior (e.g., jumping up, barking, digging, chewing, pulling, and mouthing), without at the same time teaching the dog more acceptable means to produce equal or better reward opportunities, only serves to focalize conflict and tension between the dog and the owner over the acquisition and control of those thwarted reward opportunities.

From the cynopraxic point of view, these interactive conflicts and tensions oppose the objectives of interactive harmony and mutual appreciation, and, as such, represent the specific target areas of therapy efforts aimed at enhancing the human-dog bond. In addition, interactive conflicts and tensions precisely define the various social and biological needs that are not being adequately met by means of the relationship, thereby offering opportunities to improve the dog’s quality of life significantly. Cynopraxic training is based on the assumption that interactive conflicts and tensions are resolved by teaching the dog alternative and mutually acceptable means to obtain the sought-after activities and rewards. In the process of dog owners being counseled about the sources and causes of interactive conflict and tension, owners learn about canine needs and become progressively appreciative of them, especially as they learn how to use them constructively in the process of improving their ability to control the dog via integrated compliance training (ICT). ICT refers to a training strategy that objectifies interactive conflicts and tensions as potential sources of reward for the dog, on the one hand, and opportunities for enhancing owner control efforts, on the other—a win-win exchange in the service of cynopraxic goals. ICT promotes social competence, cooperation, and trust via the mutual success of the owner and dog to establish predictive control over each other’s behavior in the process of seeking and gratifying their individual needs by means of gratifying the needs of the other. Instead of standing in the way of the dog’s appetitive and emotional gratification (comfort and safety), the owner becomes a cooperative and trusted partner in the process of acquiring attractive outcomes and avoiding aversive ones. The resultant reduction in interactive conflict and tension gives rise to social competence and trust, increased confidence and relaxation (the cognitive and emotional corollaries of social competence), and a foundation for interactive harmony and mutual appreciation. These various elements and outcomes of training play a significant role in cynopraxic counseling and canine behavior therapy, providing a platform of preliminary cognitive and emotional organization for approaching a wide spectrum of canine behavior problems.

Organized training activities not only systematically influence overt social behavior, they also serve to produce a broad spectrum of emotional changes (Rolls, 2000) (Figure 1.1). Classical conditioning and instrumental learning processes interact at various levels of cognitive and emotional organization, with appetitive and emotional attractive and aversive stimuli instigating a variety of emotional and motivational changes (see Rescorla and Solomon, 1967). In addition, a dog’s cumulative successes or failures to control significant attractive or aversive events are reflected in persistent emotional changes and its disposition to learn and adjust. For example, establishing reliable predictive control over attractive and aversive events appears to promote enhanced mood and optimistic expectancy biases—a “better state” of being (Wyrwicka, 1975). Finally, training activities improve attentional functions and impulse-control abilities, as well as reduce adverse anxiety and frustration via increasing competence, confidence, and relaxation. Essentially, all training activities function as attention and impulse-control therapies in the context of developing useful behavior. As the result of effective training, dogs appear to adopt a more focused, relaxed, secure, and trusting attitude toward the social and physical environment, helping them to cope more effectively with conflict or emotionally stressful stimulation.

FIG. 1.1. Training events are associated with the production of a variety of emotional states that exert pronounced effects on mood and reactive behavior (see Rolls, 2000).

In addition to the various benefits of cynopraxic training for dogs, owners stand to gain from the experience. As the result of training their dogs, owners learn how to observe behavior, to appreciate a dog’s biological and emotional needs, to communicate more effectively, and to develop a more informed estimation of a dog’s cognitive capacities and limitations—all leading to a better relationship with the dog. Also, during introductory lessons, owners learn basic learning principles while practicing skills and techniques of behavior modification. In addition to reducing interactive conflict and tension, the progress and success that owners experience during these early lessons (e.g., training a dog to walk on-leash, to come when called, to sit and lie down on command, and to stay) help to generate a more constructive and optimistic attitude about the dog’s responsiveness to behavior therapy efforts.

SPECIFIC BENEFITS OF VARIOUS EXERCISES

Dogs with behavior problems often benefit from systematic training before advancing to the implementation of more specialized behavioral procedures. In addition to general benefits, the practice of various trained exercises and tasks provides specific benefits relevant to the enhancement of canine behavior therapy efforts:

Orienting and Attending Response

Training the dog to reliably turn and focus its attention toward the trainer is a vital aspect of behavior control and management. In the absence of attention control, it is not possible to efficiently control impulsive behavior or responses operating under the influence of extraneous sources of reward (distractions). The direction of a dog’s attention is defined by moment-to-moment motivational changes and intentional shifts preparing it to act on the environment. All purposive behavior is determined by shifts of attention, intention, and action functionally integrated and directed toward the environment in response to some motivationally significant imperative or impulse. Orienting and attending behavior promotes organized behavior. Without an ability to orient and selectively focus attention, the senses would be overwhelmed by the surrounding flux of environmental stimulation. As an adaptive interface between internal imperatives (establishing operations) and the external environment (a field of activity and choice), attention mediates action with the goal of increasing environmental predictability and control. Attention, intention, and action are intrinsically dependent on one another via a complex network of modulating interactions and feedback relations that are strongly influenced by the complementary effects of reinforcement (success) and punishment (failure). Attention therapy plays an important role in the treatment of a variety of behavior problems occurring in association with impulse-control deficits. Attention is related to impulse control as a hinge is to a door, such that the hinge defines the full range of the door’s movements. Controlling a dog’s attention is virtually tantamount to controlling the full-range of the dog’s behavior, whereas losing a dog’s attention to environmental distractions leverages control away from the trainer. In extreme cases of behavioral disorder, a dog’s attention may become “unhinged” as attention and orienting responses become overstrained and d...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Title page
• Copyright
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Cynopraxic Training: Basic Procedures and Techniques
• 2 House Training, Destructive Behavior, and Appetitive Problems
• 3 Fears and Phobias
• 4 Separation Distress and Panic
• 5 Compulsive and Hyperactive Excesses
• 6 Neurobiology and Development of Aggression
• 7 Canine Domestic Aggression
• 8 Impulsive, Extrafamilial, and Intraspecific Aggression
• 9 Biobehavioral Monitoring and Electronic Control of Behavior
• 10 Cynopraxis: Theory, Philosophy, and Ethics
• A Sit-Stay Program
• B Sit, Down, Stand, and Stay Practice Variations
• C Posture-Facilitated Relaxation (PFR) Training
• D Puppy Temperament Testing and Evaluation
• Index