the cognitive dog class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

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The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

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Page 1: The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

The Cognitive Dog

Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

Page 2: The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

Scuppers

Page 3: The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

I don’t know if you’d be interested, but...

The beginning

Page 4: The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

• 7 months old living with breeder & mom, sister, 2 other dogs

• Picked on by other pups

• Spotty socialization (dog park, shows, drop-in puppy class)

• Good training at home (sit, come, crate, housebroken, great manners..., no apparent people issues)

• Confident in breeders house, easy introduction to our house, basket case at Gemini...

• Reactive on walks, but no redirection

Background

Page 5: The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

The 4 footed cast...

Page 6: The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

Backyard interactions

Page 7: The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

The early days

• Immediate socialization: walks, people, dog classes

• too soon and over-the-top?

• walks accompanied by Sydney...

• Feisty-Fido by Patricia McConnell

• Great book, easy to put into practice, but rushed it.

• Neutered at 8 months

Page 8: The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

The early days

• Dog classes

• CC while being a spectator

• Attention

• Rally

• Agility

• Fiesty Fido Agility

• In general, stressed but not reactive in class

Page 9: The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

The early days

• Walks

• Not reactive to dogs in yards, or distant dogs in a park: orient or sit & watch

• Extremely reactive to dogs on leashes

• Occasionally reactive to passing cars

• General pattern when interacting with another dog: approach fearfully, sniff and then lunge, bark & nip. The more confident the dog, the less likely Scuppers would attack, but...

• Extensive CC and OC

Page 10: The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

The early days

• Best intentions, well-informed intentions, and I did a lot right, but...

• Even with all my knowledge I underestimated difficulty

• Ignored stress. In retrospect I would have gone much, much, slower

• Too much emphasis on OC initially and not enough on CC

• Finding excuses to reward as opposed to rewarding for criteria

• Too little emphasis initially on play & tugging

Page 11: The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

If only agility trials were held in the

backyard...

Page 12: The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

His agility debut...

Page 13: The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

Not loving life...

Page 14: The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

Thyroid...

• Demodectic mange when a little pup. Possible sign of auto-immune issues

• Chronic long grade yeast ear infections

• Bladder/Urinary Tract Infection

• Low-Normal thyroid reading

• Weight gain

• Excessive timidity/reactiveness

Page 15: The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

Thyroid

• Soloxine

• Significant improvement vis-a-vis timidity

• Lessons...

• You may know more...

• Full panel: Michigan State

• Be polite but persistent

• But is thyroid downstream symptom or cause?

Page 16: The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

Tugging

Page 17: The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

On going...

• Feisty-fido agility classes

• Earthdog

• Walks

• CC: throw food when another dog approached

• OC: feed while he sat as another dog approached

• Picked up if dog got too close

Page 18: The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

On-going until January of last year...

• Reached a plateau WRT other dogs on leashes

• On-going reactivity WRT passing cars

• This january, Scuppers bit a dog walker with whom he was familiar. Seemed to be a fear response...

Page 19: The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

My response, a great deal of soul-searching then...

• Behavioral consult at Tufts

• Continue on-going Behavior Mod

• Tools to make it easier for the Behavior Mod to work

• Higher dose of Soloxine

• Prozac

• GL when walking

• Crate

Page 20: The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

5 months later...

• GL made a huge difference on walks

• More settled & lower reactivity:

• Quite noticeable with respect to passing cars, joggers...

• Higher threshold & quicker recovery with strange dogs

• Rare that he orients and barks at other dogs (except in cars)

• Much easier for him to focus on me for OC

Page 21: The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

12 months later...

• Noticeably less timid. Become more of a dog’s dog...

• Has turned into a real dirt dog.

• Q’d in his first agility competition

• Dog issues have not disappeared...

Page 22: The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

Scuppers making friends

Page 23: The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

The journey is the reward

Page 24: The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word
Page 25: The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

Some final thoughts...

continuation from last week...

Page 26: The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

Dogs are emotional beings: the amygdala leads and the cortex follows...

Two paths to action: the low road (coarse features of situation) and the high road (complex analysis), and dogs are especially primed to react to the low road.

Find a dog with a good amygdala and soup of neurotransmitters

Page 27: The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

The power of classical conditioning

• Associate a good thing with a bad thing

• throw food on the ground, before, during, after.

• start out from a comfortable distance

• don’t ask anything of the dog

• if they react, move farther away

Page 28: The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

Emotion: self-rewarding behaviors...

• Broad view of “reward” and “reinforcement”

• Some motor patterns (typically appetitive motor patterns) may be self-motivating & self-rewarding...

• Terriers chase because “it feels good to chase”

• Typically skills that (a) may require practice to get right, and (b) even when done right, often fail...

• Just because there is no cheese, doesn’t mean there is no reinforcement signal!!!

Page 29: The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

Emotion: self-rewarding behavior

• It may be hard for your dog not to perform self-rewarding behaviors & even harder to break out of a self-rewarding behavior...

• The tricks...

• Be ahead of your dog

• Manage your dog’s environment (avoid rehearsals)

• Remember Premack: Use a self-rewarding behavior as the reward for a behavior that isn’t.

Page 30: The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

Emotion: Temperament

• Shy-Bold Continuum

• Playfulness

• Curiosity/fearlessness

• Predatory

• Social

• Threat/Reactivity

Page 31: The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

Emotion: Temperament

• Interplay of genes/development/developmental context/learning

• Temperament tests/breeder impressions are indicative, but not predictive (esp. if done before fear period)

• Mom & Dad are a good indicator

Page 32: The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

Learning & Training

• Your dog has to be emotionally ready to learn

• Training is about motivation, timing and consistency

• Positive reinforcement teaches dog what to do

• Punishment teaches dog what not to do

• potential for serious & unintended side-effects

Page 33: The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

Learning & Training

• Be a shaper not a lurer

• Let the dog find its way, but be there to guide it along the way.

• Be a splitter not a lumper

• Break down a behavior into its smallest bits and train those.

Page 34: The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

Learning & Training

• Your goal as a trainer should be to be the source of all things good and wonderful.

• Positive not permissive.

• Its ok to control access to resources

• Find reasons to reward rather than excuses to feed

• Find the thing your dog is nuts about and use it.

• Cookie cutters are for cookies, not dogs

Page 35: The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

Learning & Training

• Don’t read too much into the highs or the lows...

• Sometimes best to think of yourself as training someone else’s dog (takes the emotion out of it...)

• Remember what may seem easy to us, is a “triple lutz on national TV” to your little dog

• Be patient, calm, and confident and you will be rewarded

Page 36: The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

Learning & Training

• Is a journey to be enjoyed by both, rather than a means to a goal.

Page 37: The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

In the end...

• Dogs are special, but this does not imply special cognitive mechanisms and abilities, rather implies ‘special’ interplay of genes/development/learning that ‘we see but through a glass darkly’

Page 38: The Cognitive Dog Class 15: reactive dogs, nerdy dogs & a parting word

A parting thought...

• “For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, ... living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time...” - Henry Beston

• Humility, awe and a passion to know more