Lucky Dog Lessons

by Brandon McMillan

  Silly or Serious. One common misconception about dog training is that treats are the only way to get the work done. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Some dogs do respond best to food—in fact, some dogs will practically walk on water for it. But others dogs need toys and play. If your pet is the kind who can’t take his eyes off a tennis ball or a lure toy or a rope pull, you may get more focus and better results by using toys for training than by using treats. This is common in dogs who have a heavy prey drive.

  And then there are the dogs who just do what you ask out of pure love. You’d be surprised how many fall into this category.

  As you assess your dog’s personality, give some thought to whether he finds the most satisfaction in a silly romp on the floor, a trade of work for food, or some other compromise between silliness and seriousness. That knowledge will serve you well when you choose your training tools.

  Stubborn or Willing. Most of us have somebody in our family who can’t get behind any idea unless he or she came up with it. You know the type: the person who needs to choose what’s for dinner or where you’re going on vacation or which house rules apply in any game. It’s a control thing, and most interactions have room for a little of it, but not too much. Some dogs are like that, too. They’re stubborn, and they like to come to new things in their own way and in their own time. Dogs of any breed can have this personality trait, but many bully breeds are known for their stubbornness. It’s not uncommon in toy breeds that were bred to be lapdogs, either, so don’t be surprised if your pint-size pup is less eager to dive into training than many bigger, sportier dogs.

  Training dogs with stubborn personalities requires some extra effort to establish control at the beginning of the process. In Chapter 3, I’ll tell you just how to go about doing this as you work with eager—or headstrong—dogs.

  THE BOTTOM LINE

  In a nutshell, getting to know your dog involves looking at four main variables. Understanding each of them will help you become your dog’s ideal trainer.

  1. Breed. Breed is pure genetics: the traits your dog was born with. In general, an effective training program will recognize—and even incorporate—these traits rather than fighting them all the time. Even difficult genetic traits can be managed, but you don’t want to spend all your time fighting a losing battle against Mother Nature.

  2. Age. Any dog can be trained, but it’ll be easier to work with yours if you keep in mind that puppies, adolescents, mature dogs, and senior dogs respond best to a varying pace of learning and methods.

  3. Life Experiences. If breed is the nature part of your dog, then life experience is the nurture. Your dog’s experiences are everything that’s happened to him and everything he’s learned since birth. Remember: DNA is hardwired, but anything learned can be unlearned.

  4. Personality. This is the secret ingredient that makes your dog one of a kind. Whether your dog is an Energizer bunny or a couch potato, playful or serious, highly motivated or not-that-into-obedience, there’s a way to customize training to match his traits.

  2

  TRUST IS THE FOUNDATION

  To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved.

  —George MacDonald

  Your dog’s first lesson is . . . actually not a lesson at all. The first step in the training process has very little to do with you commanding or your dog obeying. The first step is all about trust. Without this essential element in your relationship with your dog, you cannot be an effective trainer.

  The assumption that trust and bonding are critical keys to training is at the heart of everything I believe about working with dogs. So many approaches to training are based primarily on dominance, but that philosophy doesn’t work for me—and it especially doesn’t work for the dogs I rescue from shelters. At best, these animals have been lost, neglected, or locked up for reasons they can’t begin to understand. At worst, they’ve been abandoned or physically abused. One way or another, they’ve all been given good reasons to be suspicious and guarded with their trust. The last thing they need is another person in their lives who can’t be relied on to be predictable, patient, and kind. I begin every relationship with a new dog by making sure it’s clear I can be counted on to be all those things.

  I often get asked if this approach undermines me as a leader in the dogs’ eyes—and the simple answer is, absolutely not. There’s no rule that says you have to dominate to lead. In all honesty, there’s a time and place for dominance in training, and that’s when you’re working with an aggressive dog. But we’re not training aggressive or dominant animals here, so we’re not going to be aggressive and dominant ourselves. Our goal is to build a bond and teach basic obedience. And we want our dogs to do those things out of love, not fear.

  There’s a good comparison here to the way people look for leadership. Think about the ways you relate and respond to people in leadership roles in your own life—whether they’re family, mentors, bosses, colleagues, or teachers. I’d be willing to bet that the best of those relationships are built on trust and get regularly reinforced through bonding.

  Let’s look at it this way: at its essence, training is teaching—only our pupils are animals instead of children. What kind of teacher is the most effective? It’s not a teacher you’re afraid of or a teacher you dislike or one you wish you could walk away from or dominate. There’s always a hard line between ineffective instructors and their pupils—and dogs are wary of teachers like that, too. The most effective teacher is the one who’s knowledgeable, fair, and engaged—someone who inspires respect and cooperation rather than demands it. That teacher cares about the students, and the students know it.

  I firmly believe that same logic applies to a dog’s relationship with a trainer. A dog needs to be able to trust you and feel close to you to be truly trainable. Otherwise, you’ll spend a lot of your time trying to compel your dog to do what you want instead of working with a willing partner. Compulsion training only works when you’re dealing with highly dominant or aggressive dogs. Using compulsion while training obedience isn’t recommended because you’re replacing your dog’s eagerness to want to do what you ask with the notion that he must do it. Why bother forcing something that doesn’t require any pressure? It’s like the difference between being a warden and being a teacher. Either way, you can get results, but why would you want to be the warden if you don’t have to?

  If you have a puppy or a newly adopted dog, establishing trust before you start training is absolutely essential. If your dog is shy or lacks confidence, working on trust will help with that, too. But even if you’ve had your dog for years and feel ready to start training, the tips in this chapter can help you deepen and strengthen your relationship. You’ll be rewarded when your dog answers your efforts by giving 100 percent and then some during training.

  Courtesy of Litton Syndications, Inc.

  Meet Skye. I don’t meet very many dogs who actually try to run away from me at the animal shelter, but Skye was one of that small minority. She’s a beautiful white shepherd—shy, sensitive, and dignified—and when I met her, she was about eighteen months old, behind the bars of a city shelter, and terrified of the world. When I walked into her kennel, this dog was so alarmed she made a break for it, trying to go up the wall and out the window. I needed to defuse the situation, so I backed up, spoke in a quiet, reassuring voice, and sat down next to the kennel door with my eyes turned away from her. And then I waited. It took about twenty minutes of inching closer to Skye at a painstakingly slow pace, but by the time we were side by side, she’d decided she wasn’t afraid of me anymore. Abused animals do math in their heads very quickly. They understand how to spot threats because they’ve dealt with so many of them in the past. Skye wasn’t threatened for the first twenty minutes we were together, so she let down the first of many walls. But just because she didn’t feel an immediate threat from me didn’t mean she fully trusted me. Not even close. It just meant she’d allow me to get a few inches closer. That was more than enough
for me. She let me put a leash on her and walk her to my truck. Stage 1 complete, but we’d barely scratched the surface.

  Back at the ranch, Skye was a little better but still so skittish she was incapable of relaxing or focusing while she was wearing a leash. Any sudden movement or sound sent her running for cover. This was her past showing its ugly face, and it was impacting her personality. Doing an assessment at that point would have been a total waste of time. And if I tried to start training when she was still so on edge, it would have been easy for Skye to perceive me as her enemy. That was the worst thing that could happen.

  So the game plan was simple: build trust. I told Skye we’d train when she was ready, and for the next week, I honored that promise, spending hours getting down to her level, sitting with her, feeding her, petting her, and giving her affection and attention without asking for anything in return. After a few days, she had a breakthrough. Skye came up to me, kissed my face, and looked right at me, steady and ready. She might not have had 100 percent trust in me yet, but she’d let her guard down, and I had the green light to start her training.

  Earning Your Dog’s Trust

  Building trust with your dog can take anywhere from a few days to a few months or more. Most dogs get there pretty quickly, but if you have a rescue dog whose life experience has made him guarded, it could take longer. My dog Lulu was one of these. Whatever abuse she’d endured before she came to me, she had created a hard shell to keep people and even other animals out. She didn’t trust me one bit at first, and even after she’d let down her guard enough to train, she stayed careful, as if she was waiting for me to disappoint her. It took a year before she started to truly relax and have a little faith that I would never hurt her or fail her. The bond we have today was definitely worth the wait.

  However long it takes to establish a trusting relationship with your dog, be sure you do it with the genuine intentions to build a bond. This can’t be rushed, and it definitely can’t be faked. Unlike some people, dogs can spot a phony from a mile away. Later in this chapter I’ll give you some suggestions for bonding activities you can do with your dog. But right now, let’s talk about what it takes to establish trust. These six behavioral approaches will put you on the right path:

  Getting down to Lulu’s level helped reduce her fear of me.

  1. Be Calm. Being loud or taking an aggressive stance is the quickest way to send a shy or fearful dog running for the hills. Everything about you needs to be steady and understated while your dog is learning to trust you. As you get to know each other, you can show your louder, wilder, and sillier sides, but they can be overwhelming for a dog who doesn’t know you yet. If you have a rescue, keep in mind that an abused dog has typically been victimized by an aggressive, possibly loud person, so taking the opposite stance is recommended.

  Part of presenting a calm face to any dog is not overwhelming him with your body language. This is an especially critical issue with rescues. If you’ve ever watched me interact with a fearful dog in a kennel on Lucky Dog, you may have noticed that I make a point of avoiding direct eye contact if I know that dog has fear issues, and I almost always sit down on the floor to give the dog a chance to come to me. This body language is intentional. Many dogs who are timid or fearful don’t like eye contact. They can perceive it as a challenge or a threat from a stranger, and I don’t want to convey either of those things. Getting down on the floor is also my standard way of meeting a shelter dog—especially one who may have been abused. The reason I sit is simple; I’m a big guy, and to most dogs, size equals intimidation. Getting down on their level eliminates a huge portion of the initial threat of me coming into their environment as a stranger. To emphasize the fact that I’m not some alpha coming into the cage to dominate, I often let shelter dogs crawl right up on me. I want them to know I’m there to become a friend. Later, when they can trust in that, I can become a leader.

  One other body language tip for connecting with a fearful or shy dog is not to approach them head-on, another move that can be perceived as aggressive and domineering. I practiced this with Skye for days after I brought her back to the ranch. I knew that a dog with her level of fear and worry would take any direct approach from me as an onslaught. So I sat a short distance away, not directly facing her, and let her get used to the idea that my presence wasn’t a danger in any way.

  2. Be Patient. Establishing trust and a true bond with any animal takes time. Before you can begin to teach commands or solve issues, you have to learn the art of patience. That’s the first rule every animal trainer has to learn. It’s also one of the most difficult things to do because we have no control over how long an animal is going to take to accept us or to learn. An impatient trainer can actually take an animal back a few steps in his training, so as difficult as it may be, part of this getting-to-know-you period is letting the dog come to you. Some new rescues come straight to me and climb on my lap or lean against my legs like we’ve known each other forever. But others need to think about it for a while. If I go to them, I’m missing the opportunity for the dogs to decide I’m okay on their own. Once a dog does that, we’re on our way to building a good relationship.

  A shy dog may see you as a threat. Avoiding eye contact can defuse a tense situation and start the process of building trust.

  As a bonus, waiting for a dog to come to you is a very subtle way of getting him to begin to see you as a leader. Think about who does the chasing and approaching in a litter of puppies, in a family with multiple dogs, or in a pack. Puppies go to their mom; younger and less dominant dogs go to the ones who are older and more secure; and you’ll never see the leader of a dog pack chasing members of the canine family around for their attention. When the dog does come to you, make sure you show the kind of leader you’re going to be by speaking in a soft, reassuring voice and giving lots of treats. As time goes on, you can gradually build your voice back up to its normal level.

  During this getting-to-know-you period, you can reinforce the impression of being patient by giving your dog a place he can think of as his own—like a bed or an open crate. When your dog goes there, give him some quiet time alone.

  3. Be Understanding. You know the famous line from To Kill a Mockingbird, “You never really know a person . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it”? That’s a great metaphor for what it takes to really understand other people—and for what it takes to understand dogs and other animals, too. One skill any good trainer must have is the ability to get inside the mind of the animal. In fact, there’s an unspoken rule in the wild-animal world that when you train, you don’t just have to think like the animal, you have to feel like you’ve become the animal. It’s that elemental connection that keeps us from making dangerous mistakes when we’re up close and personal. Your own instincts can get you into trouble; anticipating the animal’s instincts can keep you safe.

  A perfect example is what I’ve learned over the years while swimming with great white sharks. When you find yourself next to a fish that’s eighteen feet long and weighs as much as five thousand pounds, your first human instinct is to swim away fast. But the shark’s first instinct, every time, is to chase whatever’s swimming away. Sharks are used to being near and even in among schools of fish. And in those schools, if one creature breaks away, prey instinct causes all the others to immediately hone in on it. They’re looking to see what the fish that changed the pattern is up to, what it sees, if it’s hurt, if there’s danger or if there’s food. It took me a while to really understand that the safest way to share the water with these giant predators is to become a “big fish” yourself. You want to swim next to them, to be a part of their environment, to move when they move—basically to blend in. As soon as you start doing anything abruptly—including trying to get away—you’re prey.

  When we’re dealing with dogs, we need to acknowledge their species’ instincts: they want to be part of a pack, they need to know where they stand in the family, they have strong drives for food and for whatever
specific jobs they were bred to do. We also want to know them well enough to recognize their fully developed, unique personalities and preferences. You learn some of these right off the bat when you bring a new dog home, and some of this information comes later as the dog begins to trust you and show his cards.

  The more you get to know your dog, the easier it’ll be to understand how he thinks and where he’s coming from. Ask yourself what motivates your dog? What scares him? Does he have a limit to how much togetherness he can take before he needs to be alone and quiet? Is he so energetic he can hardly see straight when he needs to be still? Take the time to observe your dog and think about his likes, dislikes, and needs. There are lots of areas where he’ll be able to meet you halfway—or even learn to do things your way—in the long run. But if you’re able to look at the world through your dog’s eyes and imagine what he sees and how he feels, you will find it much easier to gain his trust—and ultimately it will be much easier to be his trainer.

  4. Be Consistent. From time to time I consult with clients and quickly find that the root of the problems they’re having with their dogs is a lack of consistency. The owner is sending mixed signals, and the dog just can’t decode them quickly or well enough to keep up. Some examples are owners who use multiple commands for the same behavior, owners who reprimand their dog long after he’s forgotten what he did wrong, and owners who are unintentionally reinforcing bad behavior. When you’re building trust with a puppy, a rescue, or a shy or fearful dog, one of the most important things you can do is continually demonstrate that you are a consistent, predictable person.