People call me with stories of their stubborn, willful, spiteful dogs, and the list of derogatory adjectives go on from there. And I understand. People are frustrated, and we are people after all, so we are going to think from a people-perspective. But dogs aren’t people, so they don’t think the way people think. Dogs aren’t any of those unpleasant terms we apply to them. What dogs are doing when they behave unfavorably is either entertaining their own interests or reacting to something stressful.
The latter of those two can play out, in one way, as stress elimination in the house. Some dog owners tell me their dogs eliminate on their beds when they leave for work, errands, or some other reason. Dogs aren’t thinking, “Oh she sleeps on that bed, so I’m going to be spiteful now and pee right there.” A dog who stresses out about being apart from his owner is rather reacting to that stress and finding that the substrate of the bed is the most appealing place on which to relieve himself.
Instead of the bed, dogs may choose a carpet, throw rug, corner of a couch, or even the couch itself to eliminate on. The list is inexhaustible. But the bottom line is that dogs who eliminate due to stress are eliminating due to stress! Not to get back at the owner, or to carry out any other evil plan. They’re dogs. Their brains are made to react to a stimulus. Not to devise plots of revenge. The good news is through a humane, reward-based training plan, consistency, and persistence, these behavioral reactions can be modified.
The other side of the coin is when dog owners tell me their dogs don’t obey commands. Dogs who seem to be ignoring their owners aren’t disrespecting them. They are doing something that they find more interesting than what their owners have to offer. Do you have a dog like this? Training a dog to obey cues (commands) in the face of their fascinating, momentary interests is doable. Using appropriate, rewarding motivation (training food), a good training plan, and sticking to that plan, will motivate a dog to respond to his owner’s cues through a hierarchy of distractions.
As a case in point about dogs and their personal motivating interests, dogs can and will turn what you want into what they want. As in the dog training the owner. Sometimes that produces a mutually fun game. Sometimes, the game the dog plays isn’t fun for the owner, like chasing the dog around the yard for 15 minutes when the owner is late for work. What the owner wants, for the dog to come, turns into what the dog wants, the “catch me if you can” game.
Dogs do play games to satisfy their own interests, and most dogs love games. Many times I hear potential clients tell me of scenarios where a dog is getting them to play a game over and over. Such is a game I described above, the chase-me game. When a dog is having fun, bouncing, tail-wagging fun, he’s playing with you. (Don’t confuse this with when a dog is serious. For example, a dog who is stiffly holding onto an object, growling, baring teeth, showing guarding behaviors. Not a game.) Game playing is out of happy, relaxed, bouncy-like behavior. My own dog used to play “hide when called.”
Luigi was my beloved Dobermann, who passed away in 2014. He lived with me and the rest of our canine family for 12 years. He loved to play fetch in the backyard with me, especially when the other dogs were in the house. To play fetch was one of Luigi’s passions.
So it did not surprise me when Luigi started a new game based on his passion of playing fetch. When I called all the dogs into the house, everyone was accounted for, except Luigi. His decision to ignore our well practiced recall cue was driven by a bigger internal motivation. Playing fetch. Luigi would hide in the backyard with a toy, so when I came out to find him, he was ready to offer me a toy for some fetching fun. He is playing the “hide when called” game in this video.
I played his game sometimes, and sometimes I didn’t. The fact that I did play sometimes kept his hopes up, so he continued to do his part and played the “hide when called” game until he couldn’t. If you encourage a behavior, it will flourish. Ignore it, and it will eventually extinguish. Truth.
What is also the truth is that all of the behaviors packed into a dog are brought to life by stress or motivation, and no dog is naturally a perfect companion or house pet. We find out as they unpack their behaviors what’s in them and then use humane and reward-based training methods to train or modify their behaviors to help ease their stress and create a more reliable, obedient companion.
Assigning blame to the dog through people-oriented adjectives won’t solve a dog’s stress-related or self-motivating behaviors. Reward-based, humane training is the path to take for resolving behavioral issues and creating new behavior.
To send your dog to the Love Wags A Tail humane boot camp board-and-train dog training program, for motivational learning with our cast of characters, contact us with your dog training, behavior modification wish list for more information.
Helen Verte Schwarzmann
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Certified in Training and Counseling
Certified Pet Dog Trainer-Knowledge Assessed
Certified Trick Dog Instructor
AKC STAR Puppy, CGC, and Trick Dog Trainer and Evaluator
Your Board-and-Train Dog Trainer for south and southwest Florida, Broward, Collier, Lee county
