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Pet Positive: Gentler methods of dog training come to Seattle by Tara Hayes

The problem is evident before we even get to the front door. From the sidewalk below a comfortable Greenlake home, we can hear frantic barking from inside the house ringing out across the neighborhood. It’s Molly, a gray and white Cardigan Corgi alerting her owner, Barbara Azzato, that someone is outside. Christine Hibbard, an animal behaviorist and founder of Companion Animal Solutions, is here with a bag of treats, and a bag of tricks, to turn Molly around and make living with her a little more pleasant.

Inside, when Hibbard gives Molly a treat, Azzato is the one to bring up Cesar Millan, the host of a popular National Geographic television program on dog training. “The dog whisperer says no treats until the dog is calm submissive.” Hibbard shrugs. This is something she comes up against frequently.

One might think that training dogs is fairly straightforward — “sit, stay, come” — but there is a surprising amount of controversy in the world of pet training, and in Seattle a growing number of people in the field, often called “positive trainers,” are critical of traditional training methods, of which Millan is an oft-cited example.

Many of the differences between traditional trainers and those who fall under the “positive” rubric stem from the notion of dominance. Traditional training asserts that dogs are meant to be part of a hierarchy, and that their human owners need to situate themselves atop that hierarchy in a dominant, or alpha, position. Positive trainers, on the other hand, emphasize the relationship between the dog and its owner, and say that the dominance theory doesn’t explain all behavior.

“I’m not saying that dominance doesn’t exist,” says Cristine Dahl, owner of Seattle Dogworks Training & Education Studio on Capitol Hill, “but it’s so complicated…it’s fluid and contextual and part of dog relationships, not human ones, so why are we using it?” As Grisha Stewart, owner of Ahimsa Dog Training, puts it, “People aren’t dogs. We know it and they know it.” Positive trainers seek to engender a different kind of training by looking to learning theory and scientific studies of animal behavior. A lot of positive training is figuring out a dog’s drives and motivations.

At an evening training class at Seattle Dogworks, Dahl stands before a room of eager dog owners seated with their charges, mostly smaller dogs weighing less than 30 pounds. Dahl is enthusiastic, waving her arms and miming a dog’s sad-face reaction to being placed in timeout as punishment. “I laughed when somebody told me about timeouts,” she tells the class. “I was like, ‘Are you serious?’”

Now timeouts are central to her instruction. “It’s the removal of something good in their lives,” namely the owner’s attention, Dahl explains, based on the idea that the owner’s attention is a resource the dog wants. “The bottom line,” says Hibbard, is that “it’s all about resources.” Food, toys, attention, smells, other dogs — these are all things that a dog wants that its owner can control. It’s about getting a dog to do what the owner wants, rather than simply to stop the dog from doing something undesirable. Positive trainers use resources to modify, rather than suppress, behavior. Ignoring a dog’s drives leads to problems, says Stewart: “When you tell a dog to stop doing something, they will let it out in another way.” Putting food in a toy, and making it difficult to reach, for example, provides an acceptable outlet for the drives of some high-energy dogs. It’s about setting them up for success, says Stewart.

“We know why we are punishing the dog,” says Hibbard, “but the real question is, does the dog know why?” Dahl argues that much of traditional training is fear-based. Telling a dog that they are doing “something” wrong, she says, is like trying to teach a person how to dance by saying, “No, don’t do that. No, not that either. No, no, no.” It’s crucial to tell the dog what you want her to do, instead.

Molly, Azzato’s gray and white Corgi, appears to be the problem child in the family. She barks at people indoors and out, and visitors can hardly get through the door for her crowding it. Hibbard demonstrates the use of a clicker when Molly barks out the window at a passerby. It makes a popping sound like a bent Snapple lid, and is a common tool used in positive training. When Molly barks out the window, Hibbard clicks, and the dog comes to her and gets a treat. Rather than telling Molly “no,” she’s giving the animal a cue to turn to her.

“‘No’ is a non-learning event,” says Hibbard. Instead, “I’m teaching her that all goodness is happening over here and not over there” by the window. Hibbard knows that some traditional trainers say that positive trainers are permissive. And, she admits, there’s a grain of truth to that. Dahl agrees. Her goal is training companion animals for average owners. “My dogs have a horrific obedience heel, but they are lovely to live with,” she says.

Understanding the different training styles can be a little like studying a Venn diagram, and just as confusing. Positive trainers, for example, can use negative methods. Positive trainers aren’t just “lovely and fluffy,” says Dahl. “I use punishment,” says Hibbard, “I just don’t use force, fear or pain as a form of punishment.” Stewart agrees: “Punishment doesn’t have to be painful or scary to the dog.”

In the world of training, “positive” means adding something, while “negative” means taking something away. In addition, trainers use both punishment and reinforcement; the former to inhibit a behavior, the latter to promote it. Positive trainers prefer to use positive reinforcement (such as rewards for good behavior) and negative punishment (like taking away a toy if a dog doesn’t follow the rules of play). Traditional trainers use the inverse: positive punishment (like squirting water at a dog for barking) and negative reinforcement (such as holding a choke leash tight, then releasing it when a dog stops pulling).

Negative punishment, such as a timeout, is devastating to most dogs, says Hibbard. “They’d rather you hit them than ignore them.” But it’s a method, say these trainers, that doesn’t violate standards of humane treatment. “There are trainers who use the positive name but are doing things that are not kind,” warns Dahl. Truly positive trainers won’t do things like grab a dog’s snout, push them to the ground, yank on leashes or use painful collars.

The popularity of dominance-based training is understandable; it can provide quick results. Positive-based training takes time, but, say these trainers, it’s long-lasting. It requires a paradigm shift, says Stewart, for both people and dogs. “We are changing the structure of their brains. Teaching and learning changes the patterns of neurons in the brain, she says. There’s not as easy a fix as we might like.” And these trainers acknowledge that they can’t fix everything. On the rare occasion it is called for, they don’t shy away from recommending that a dog be euthanized.

Clients come to these trainers because they are seeking something different than the predominant methodology. “People are defeated by the fact that they can’t fix their dog,” says Dahl. “[Even when] traditional training was the only option, people didn’t want to do that to their dogs,” says Stewart. She points out what appears to be a gender division at play, with more women, on average, attracted to positive training methods. Hibbard believes this may come, in part, from dominance methods that exist in the culture which put women and children, who are less physically powerful, at risk. With positive training, “It’s not about how powerful you are,” says Stewart, “but how smart you are.”

Owner Barbara Azzato is a good example of the kind of owner positive trainers see. She cares deeply about her two Corgis, Molly and Jack, and came to Hibbard after trying more traditional methods and trainers. The plethora of devices she’s used to corral her two rambunctious pets makes clear the time and money she’s invested. She has stools strategically placed on couches and chairs to keep the dogs off the furniture. Molly and Jack keep Azzato company during the day as she works from her home office; they’re like family. The kind of relationship today’s owners have with their dogs should inform training methods, say Dahl, Stewart and Hibbard.

Much like their clients, these trainers came to their field because they were looking for something different, both in their professional lives and in the world of animal behavior. Grisha Stewart was a tenure-track mathematician when she started her school. Christine Hibbard came to the field after 14 years as a software engineer. And Cristine Dahl worked in the corporate world for several years before she opened her studio.

They all had some experience with traditional training before finding communities more attuned to their own styles and ethics. Both Dahl and Hibbard received training through the San Francisco Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) and Stewart is a Certified Pet Dog Trainer and studied with Karen Pryor, a major proponent of positive training and animal behavior studies.

Since opening Ahimsa Dog Training in 2003, Stewart has seen a lot of growth in the field, both in her own business and in the city. Ahimsa Dog Training has grown to include classes in Seattle, Redmond and Burien. Dahl’s Seattle Dogworks continues to add classes and is now home to the Seattle School of Canine Studies, a licensed vocational school. And Hibbard has proved wrong those friends who said she couldn’t possibly earn a living switching from the digital to the doggie world.

For Azzato, things are looking up, though she and her dogs have their fair share of homework — for her, preparing treats and meals and balancing the clicker, treat bag and leash; for them, learning several new commands. “You’ve got to outsmart them,” says Hibbard. Azzato is on board. She’s tried lots of training in the past, with these dogs and with previous pets. “These are more sophisticated behaviors. It’s teaching the dogs to make judgments,” she says. “It’s a commitment, but it’s worth it.”

Tara Hayes is a frequent contributor to Seattle Woman.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT POSITIVE TRAINING:

Ahimsa Dog Training

Companion Animal Solutions

Seattle Dogworks Training & Education Studio

Good Dog 101, by Cristine Dahl

The San Francisco SPCA Academy for Dog Trainers

Karen Pryor
www.clickertraining.com
www.karenpryoracademy.com

Truly Dog Friendly blog
www.trulydogfriendly.com

THE POWER OF REWARDS

Positive dog training relies heavily on “operant conditioning,” a method of animal training pioneered by Karen Pryor when she was working with dolphins at Sea World in the 1960s. This style of training links a desired behavior with a reward and never involves intimidation or force. The reward is often, but not always, food. For dogs, it can be small pieces of meat, a game of tug or getting outside.

Click It

The clicker in positive dog training marks the moment when a dog does exactly what you’ve asked it to do. It’s more effective than verbal praise because it is not a sound that the animal hears in other situations, and a click means only one thing: because of what I did at the moment of the click, I’m about to get a treat.

First, “charge the clicker” by creating an association between the click and the reward. Click and treat, click and treat, over and over again to reinforce that a click is always good and always brings a treat. Then move on to using the click to mark when your dog follows your command. Eventually, the response to the command becomes so ingrained that the clicker can be phased out and used for harder challenges.

Tug-of-War

Traditional, pack-based dog training relies on the notion that an owner needs to maintain a sense of superiority and dominance over a dog. In that world view, playing tug with a dog is a no-no, but in positive training tug is considered a valuable training opportunity and a great way for a dog to burn off energy and drive.

Pick a designated tug toy and tell your dog to take it (as in “take!”). After playing for a bit, stop pulling and tell the dog, “drop!” If it drops the tug quickly, praise and start again with “take!” If it doesn’t drop it quickly, the game ends with “too bad” or “game over.” Walk away and don’t try it again for a while. Before long, the dog will understand that dropping the tug on cue brings the reward of continued play. Be sure to teach your dog that any accidental misses (e.g., teeth hitting your skin) also means the end of the game.

After You?

Some proponents of pack theory believe that allowing a dog to go through a door or gate ahead of you can undermine its sense of its appropriate place in the pack hierarchy. Positive trainers focus on giving the dog permission to exit, rather than on who goes first.

To teach your dog to wait before leaving the house, walk with your dog on a slack leash toward the door your dog wants to go through. Say, “wait” one time and slowly open the door an inch or two. If the dog begins to go through the door, say “oops” and close the door. Repeat without saying “wait” until your dog clearly stays in place while the door opens. The first time he hesitates, open the door fully and say, “okay” to allow him to cross the threshold. Repeat over several days, gradually opening the door farther before releasing the dog to exit.

—Marianne Scholl

©2009 Caliope Publishing Company