Thanks to Reisner Vet Behavior and AVSAB for sharing this great post! Saturday’s Pet Peeve: Don’t assume that being quiet and motionless means that a dog (or cat or horse) is relaxed. Sometimes it can be hard to resist assumptions about behavior, based on what we think the dog should be feeling. If a dog runs after squirrels and perhaps kills them, we think he “hates” squirrels (when in fact he enjoys them quite a lot). If he jumps up on children and licks them man...iacally, he “loves” children (but actually may be very uncomfortable with them). And when he sits still while a stranger pats him on the head, he is calm and relaxed. One of the most common misconceptions in dog training is that quieted behavior indicates training has worked, the dog is calm, and is no longer feeling stressed. Remember, if your dog is on a leash, in a crate, being restrained or simply indoors, he’ll be unable to escape any stimulus worrying him, and may therefore appear quite calm. But if the stimulus becomes a real threat in his eyes, he might bite. And then, to come full circle, if that aggression is punished, he might appear calmer still. Training which includes positive punishment – choke, prong or shock collars, leash corrections, hitting, water spraying, yelling and throwing little pillows filled with chains – often does exactly that. Unless the dog is flying high over threshold, he’ll respond to the punishment by stopping that behavior, but he is emotionally unchanged and may react more intensely the next time around. “Learned helplessness” is the result of being damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. If you’d like to see a good example of learned helplessness, watch this Dog Whisperer segment about a dog named “Josh” starting at about 11:56 (the ‘dot’ needs to be replaced with an actual dot. Just a heads up -- this video can be hard to watch): youtu(dot)be/Jbo3uMCeuGg Not every situation leads to extremes of shutting down and stress as Josh experienced, but it...
Posted on: Tue, 25 Nov 2014 00:10:14 +0000
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