A Myth on Tuesday: Using stuffed dogs for rehabilitating dog aggressive dogs is not effective and is a waste of time Dog-on-dog aggression and lead reactivity are one of the most common behaviour problems owners ask us to help with. Very often we start rehabilitating dog aggressive dogs using stuffed toy dogs that look like real dogs, and some owners have doubts about the effectiveness of such treatment as for them it is obvious our “stuffies” are not real, so why would a dog think differently? If you have your own doubts about the effectiveness of using “stuffies” for behaviour modification here are a few facts about them: 1. Stuffed dogs look real-life like. They are the same size, colour and shape a real dog would be. As dogs don’t rely on their eyesight as much as we do, and tend to rely on their sense of smell/hearing much more, a stuffed dog placed at a distance does look to them as if it was a real dog – we’ve seen dogs (and even cats!) react to them, so can assure you dogs have no idea these are not real dogs until they come closer to have a sniff. That’s when they realize it’s not a real dog. So for a dog that reacts towards other dogs at a distance, “stuffies” are perfect to start with. 2. Movement is something that will make a dog-reactive dog react more. “Stuffies” don’t move and so are perfect to use at the start of rehabilitation to reduce reactivity to dogs which are immobile, before we can up the ante and introduce movement. You can’t do this with a real dog, as it will move when it pleases. 3. “Stuffies” don’t stare – you can position them so their head is turned away from the dog being rehabilitated, and so it looks less threatening to it. As you progress, you can then start turning your “stuffie” so it is progressively facing more and more towards the dog. Again, you can’t control a real dog in this way – they will look at the dog or look away as they please, sometimes inadvertently triggering a reaction. 4. We can lend “stuffies” to our clients so they can practise with their dogs in their own time and don’t have to fork out money for many, many stooge dog sessions. This really helps, especially if a dog we’re working with is very reactive and so we would have to arrange a lot of sessions working on reducing the reactivity to the point where we can use a real dog. 5. “Stuffies” don’t get bored, hungry, thirsty or tired. Real dogs do, and we have to remember about our stooge’s needs when we use them for working with reactive dogs. 6. Real dogs used for stooge sessions are somebody’s (usually the behaviourist’s) pets. And as bomb proof and used to the protocol as they may be, we can’t forget that they are affected in one way or another by dogs reacting aggressively towards them. So if we are working with a dog that reacts with severe aggression towards other dogs, we want to reduce the intensity of the reaction by using stuffed stooge dogs until we think it is safe to use our much loved pet dogs for a stooge session. It’s safer, kinder and does not put our dogs’ physical and psychological welfare at risk. 7. Most of all, “stuffies” do work and we’ve used them with great success with many, many clients before moving onto working with real dogs. Behaviour rehabilitation is a slow process and if we do need to use a “stuffed” dog to start with, we will do so, until the dog is ready to move on. You can’t and shouldn’t push behaviour rehabilitation – it’s not fair on you, your dog or your stooge.
Posted on: Tue, 27 May 2014 15:07:31 +0000
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