How to deal with visitors at Christmas

Pretend you are out …………! Only joking.

On a serious not though, the idea of having family or friends round can be daunting if you have dogs, especially if you have young children or young children coming with them.

What can you do to set your dog up for success?

• One person assigned to supervise each dog and take responsibility for them

• One person assigned to supervise each child and take responsibility for them

• Have a safe space designated for the dogs. Use barriers or stairgates to manage dogs and people!

• Multiple treat stations around the house to reinforce calm behaviour

• Manage the arrivals by using the safe space or having dogs on harness and lead, and armed with treats

What can you do if you are the only person in the house and have visitors coming?

Set up a safe space for the dog(s), provide enrichment while you welcome your visitors and get them settled. Then introduce the dog(s) using a harness, lead and their favourite reinforcer, whether that is food, toy, play or affection. Assign adults to supervise children and when you are unable to supervise the dog(s), pop them in their safe space with some enrichment.

Happy Holidays!

 Rewards and reinforcers. Are they equal?

We all know that Positive Reinforcement is the welfare orientated way to train and work with dogs. Rewards function as reinforcers if they increase or maintain the frequency of a behaviour.

Positive reinforcement means adding something a dog enjoys immediately after a behaviour occurs maintains or increases the frequency of the behaviour (food, praise, play, toy, affection etc. depending on the individual dogs preference).

We also know that confrontational and coercive methods risk an aggressive or fear response (Herron, Schofer and Reisner 2009) and aversive techniques may affect the dog-carer relationship (Deldalle and Gaunet, 2014). These have NO place in animal training.

Gregory Berns’ trained 15 dogs to go in an fMRI machine to study the activation of the dogs’ brain in response to food or praise from their caregiver. They included a control condition of nothing happening. They found individual differences in the responses. Findings from this study suggest that there is consistent neurobiological orientation toward social and food reward within individual dogs, but the degree of preference is highly variable in individuals. We can carry out a preference test with our own dogs to find out what they find most rewarding and motivating.

Preferences, and the effectiveness of different rewards to function as reinforcers, are often assumed without proper scientific investigation. We often talk about using high value rewards or something extra special when trying to change an unwanted behaviour or to teach our dog to do something new.? Is it one of those things we saw on Facebook or in a blog post? Is there any evidence to demonstrate that high value treats work best?

One study by Riemer et.al.,2018 did investigate the influence of reward quality, quantity, and changes in reward value on motivation in domestic dogs. The findings (albeit from a low sample size), suggest that a food reward of higher quality represents a more effective reinforcer than a greater quantity of a less favoured food item.

The take home message from this post is

a) find out what really motivates your dogs and use high value rewards

b) don’t be stingy 😊

References:

Riemer, S. Ellis, S. Thompson, H. Burman. O. 2018. Reinforcer effectiveness in dogs—The influence of quantity and quality, Applied Animal Behaviour Science, Volume 206, Pages 87-93, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2018.05.016.

Herron, M. E., Shofer, F. S., & Reisner, I. R. 2009. Survey of the use and outcome of confrontational and non-confrontational training methods in client-owned dogs showing undesired behaviours. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 117(1), 47-54.

 Umwelt

As a companion to humans, the domestic dog is naturally interpreted from a human-centred perspective. When we anthropomorphise, we attribute human thoughts, intentions, and personalities to nonhumans, most frequently, to our dogs. We do this in an effort to understand our dogs, but anthropomorphism falls short. An animal’s sensory world is different from ours, (Grandin, 1995).

To understand what is going on with our dogs, we need to understand the concept of “umwelt”. Umwelt is the part of the world that an organism can detect –how the world appears via their unique systems.

Humans view the world through human perspectives. A bee views the world through an ultra violet lens. Dogs can hear high-pitched sounds that we cannot. Birds can see ultra violet.

For dogs, the world is made up of numerous smells, and a dog’s umwelt is determined by what he can perceive, by his history/experiences and by what matters in the world to him.

Canines have a three-dimensional sense of smell – they can discern so much from scent that they gain an olfactory worldview.

Exploring and understanding our dog's umwelt or inner world means taking our dog's perspective. We can then ask ourselves what might be causing my dog to do a certain behaviour? What is my dog experiencing from this event? What could my dog be seeing, smelling, and feeling at this moment?

According to Grandin, when a dog sniffs a tree, he is receiving a wealth of important information. If we can begin to understand what dogs think about, what they can see and smell and experience, we will have a better understanding of what it is like to be a dog and be able to empathise with them and advocate for them.

References:

Grandin T. Vintage Press Random House; New York, NY: 1995. Thinking in pictures. Google Scholar

Grandin T. My mind as a web browser—how people with autism think. Cerebrum. 2000;9:13–22. Google Scholar

Grandin T. Do animals and people with autism have true consciousness. Evol. Cogn. 2002;8:241–248. Google Scholar

Grandin T., Johnson C. Scribner; New York, NY: 2005. Animals in translation. Google Scholar

During their lifetime, animals (including dogs) gather information from their experience with objects, individuals, events, and social interactions and store this information in their memory (Ades 1993). This information is used when discriminating, categorising, and recognising different aspects of their physical and social environment.

There are also many studies that show dogs pay attention to third-party interactions and obtain information from humans through passive observations (Chijiwa et al.2015; Piotti et al. 2017).

This is one of the many reasons that careful socialisation is essential, and it is not just a checklist!

Try to ensure all their interactions are positive and fun, allowing dogs to observe from a distance.

References:

Ades C (1993) Por uma história natural da memória. Psicol USP 4:25–47

Chijiwa H, Kuroshima H, Hori Y, Anderson JR, Fujita K (2015) Dogs avoid people who behave negatively to their owner: third-party affective evaluation. Anim Behav 106:123–127

Piotti P, Spooner RM, Jim H, Kaminski J (2017) Who to ask for help? Do dogs form an opinion on humans based on skilfulness? Appl Anim Behav Sci 195:93–102

 Senior dogs and anxiety

We all know that anxiety can contribute or even cause behaviour changes in our dogs. Causes of anxiety are often specific to the individual dog but it is worth remembering that when humans have a major change in lifestyle we often experience a considerable level of stress and anxiety. Remember the upheaval of moving home, getting married, changing jobs etc. Dogs can experience the same, especially seniors who often prefer routine. Many younger dogs may be able to deal with changes to their routine, but older dogs often struggle. Anxiety can also be influenced by environmental changes.

Anxiety can have a psychological as well as a physical impact on dogs. Senior dogs may be experiencing changes related to cognitive dysfunction. The acronym DISHA is often used to classify different types of behaviours that may be related to cognitive dysfunction.

DISHA stands for:

• Disorientation – getting lost in familiar areas, not recognising familiar people, going to the wrong side of the door

• Interactions – social interactions change between the dog and caregiver or dog and other pets Some dogs may become more clingy or overly dependent on their caregiver

• Sleep-wake cycle changes – a dog may sleep more during the day, wake at nights, or have irregular sleep-wake cycles

• House soiling – accidents in the house or eliminating in unusual places outdoors, no longer asking to go out to eliminate

• Activity levels –there may be a decrease in activity levels or a decreased interest in play. Equally, some dogs may become restless, unable to settle and wander aimlessly or even develop repetitive behaviours such as self-licking and grooming

In addition to these categories, there are two other areas to consider:

Anxiety (a new fear of people, places, or specific situations; new inappropriate or excessive vocalisation, etc.)

Learning difficulties/memory loss (being slow or unable to learn new tasks or tricks; unable to perform previously learned tasks or tricks, etc.)

If you observe any of the behaviour changes described above, it is important to discuss these with your vet.

 Behaviour change

We live in a society where consumerism is driving everything to become instant. We are used to instant information via the internet, ordering instant online deliveries, instant answers and responses. We even get instant gratification via social media with short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops as people like or love our posts. We see something we want and we place an order online, expecting it to arrive the next day. Our world has become an “instant” world. If we must wait for something or something takes a while, we become impatient. Why is that?

The five stages of human behaviour change are precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance. Lally et.al., 2009 found that new habits and behaviours are dependent on the individual person, and it can take from 18 days up to 254 days for people to form a new habit. We know from studies on human behaviour that for behaviour change to take place, the human must be ready to change and have sufficient coping strategies in place. So why, when we are trying to create behaviour change in dogs, are we so impatient and why do we expect immediate results?

Every dog is an individual and every dog has a unique set of circumstances related to genetics, environment, learning, how long they have been performing the unwanted behaviour and so on.

We need to ensure dogs have coping strategies, feel emotionally secure and safe and then begin working on behaviour change – with bucket loads of patience!

Lally P, van Jaarsveld C, Potts H, Wardle J 2009 How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. Wiley online library https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.674

Maltx, M 1959 Psycho-Cybernetics Penguin Putnam Inc ISBN-13 9780399176135

 Promoting calm

Those who read this blog will know I always talk about promoting calm in our dogs, especially in multi dog households.

Why?

It avoids potential problems arising because when dogs arousal levels are high, they are more likely to tip over into a disagreement!

Think of arousal levels as a bucket that is repeatedly topped up with water with every excited interaction.  Eventually that bucket will overflow!  If we keep the level in the bucket as low as possible we can avoid that happening.

We promote calming activities, particularly ones that involve scent and seeking.

You may remember we introduced a new dog to the household two years ago. 

We have avoided getting the dogs excited and distract/interrupt any over aroused play in the house by calling them to us.  By taking the time to allow both dogs to learn about each other, be calm around each other they have become comfortable and confident together.

We are only now letting them play chase games in the garden together for short periods.

A calming session of sprinkles afterwards to help them calm and self regulate.

People often ask how long will an unwanted behaviour take to change. My answer is always that it depends on the individual dog. Two years may seem like a very long time but every dog is an individual and it is important to consider their emotional states.

Every dog has individual needs and will adjust at different rates. Freya is a very nervous dog with people but very full on with other dogs, especially outside.  Jack is nervous with other dogs, particularly outside and has experienced a lot of changes and lost three of his best dog friends through illness/old age.

It is much better to set dogs up to succeed and take the time needed rather than have to solve problems later!