Take care of your dog

People often assume that, through years of domestication, dogs are naturally predisposed to be friendly towards all humans. They assume that the exceptions to this rule have been abused or badly bred. This is not the case. Dogs are instinctively friendly towards their family members, but extending that friendliness towards the whole of society is more complicated. If someone stops to pat your puppy in the street, you will want him to respond in a warm and friendly way – not just while he is small, but even more importantly as he grows up. He needs your help to make this happen, because he is genetically programmed to become wary of strangers at quite an early age. And not without good reason. For a wild dog living in a dangerous world, friendliness is likely to result in an early demise. Nature’s assumption is that something you have never come across before is likely to be dangerous, so you had better regard it with great suspicion. Many wild animals share this natural instinct for se...

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to overestimate the importance of good temperament in a domestic dog. It is without question the most powerful influence in determining whether or not a dog will fit into family life, bring pleasure to his owners, and even whether or not he is likely to be abandoned by the family who once loved him. In many countries, including the United Kingdom, dogs are widely liked and trusted. Many people willingly approach and even embrace strange dogs without hesitation. The majority of dogs never abuse the trust bestowed upon them, but attacks by dogs are not uncommon and in many, if not most, cases they could have been avoided.

We will look more closely at practical training techniques in Part Two, but for now here is a summary of what you need to remember from this chapter. • Think carefully about the consequences of your puppy’s actions. • Avoid reinforcing bad behaviour, including with your attention. • Reward good behaviour with lots of attention and desirable treats. • Don’t let great behaviours die. • Restrict your puppy’s access to things you do not want him to touch.

You know how the game works now. You are aware of how easy it is to punish or reward the wrong behaviours accidentally. You understand why we use a combination of reinforcement and extinction to control and modify a puppy’s behaviour. You are almost ready to put all this theory into practice. The beauty of this elegant system is that it can be applied to absolutely anything your puppy does. It can be used to teach your dog to carry out new behaviours on your command, to fix problem behaviours that have been accidentally created in the past, or simply to have a go at teaching your dog a few tricks. Most of all, the system is fun – for both of you. As a human being, you have enormous control over the resources available to your puppy. Use it! Save titbits to give him later when he is resting quietly in his basket. Use his food to teach nice manners. Make the things he wants to do, such as playing with other dogs, or even simply going through a door, dependent on the thing you want him ...

Whilst common behavioural problems may cause conflict between puppies and their new owners, they are rarely a serious threat to society at large. If your dog begs at the table, if he puts his muddy feet on your visitors, digs holes in your lawn, or barks when you get your car keys out, you may be happy to live with that, rather than attempt to resolve it. Aggression, however, is an altogether more serious matter. The next chapter focuses exclusively on how you can raise a friendly puppy, and help to avoid the disaster that is a dangerous dog.

In each of the examples opposite the puppy was learning without the intervention of his owner. We often call this ‘accidental learning’. In homes where puppies have a great deal of freedom, most of his learning is likely to be accidental. Raising a puppy without bad habits and with nice manners requires that we take control of the consequences of his actions to a much greater degree. The ways in which we control the consequences of our puppy’s actions have changed significantly in the last twenty  years or so. It is worth looking at just what those changes have involved. Traditional dog training In behavioural science, any consequence that makes a behaviour more likely to happen again in the future is defined as a ‘reinforcer’. Any consequence that makes a behaviour less likely to happen again in the future is defined as a ‘punisher’. An effective punisher must be something the dog finds disagreeable, an effective reinforcer must be something the dog finds highly desirable, and ...

THE ABILITY OF our canine friends to learn amusing tricks, and even to carry out useful tasks on our behalf, is part of their enduring appeal. We can teach dogs to herd sheep, retrieve lost items, dance to music, guide and assist their disabled owners, and even to detect total strangers buried in the rubble of an earthquake zone. Dogs are very good at learning a wide range of skills. Teaching a puppy right from wrong ought to be straightforward enough. Yet as attitudes towards dogs have changed, there seems to be increasing confusion over how to teach our puppies what is and is not acceptable. Dog owners may be faced with conflicting advice. Training with food or other rewards may be dismissed by traditional-style trainers as too soft or permissive, whilst traditional-style methods may be dismissed by others as too harsh. Puppies learn very fast indeed. They learn from you and from other members of their family, but they also learn from interacting with everything else around them. ...