Clean Run - September 2017 - 20

© eileen anderson

The author's dog Clara refuses to be ignored.

They have at least some clues about
what to try. But dogs that get the "ignoring" treatment when they don't have a
clue what to do instead are in an unfair,
even pitiable position. The outcome
won't likely be great for the owner, either. Since she hasn't trained the dog to
chill on a mat or crate or sit to ask for
something, the dog will come up with a
natural doggie behavior to fill the void.
And it may be even less acceptable than
the first one.
Well-designed plans for behavior change
include the teaching and reinforcing of
new behaviors to fill the void.

#5 Upset Dogs
The fifth reason ignoring may not work
is that the dog may be too upset to
change behavior. Until now, I've been
discussing situations where the dog is
not scared or overwrought. But there are
whole classes of behaviors wherein the
dog is undergoing a sympathetic nervous
system fight or flight response. Thankfully, it's uncommon for people to recommend that we just ignore our dogs if they
lunge or pounce at another dog on-leash
or stalk humans who are strange to them.
But there is a common, emotion-driven
behavior where ignoring is sometimes
recommended: barking.
Dogs bark for so many apparent reasons.
Certainly they bark purely for attention

sometimes, especially if they and their owners have developed a little reinforcement
cycle for it. But dogs also bark in excitement, as part of territorial aggression, and for
many other reasons-including fear.
Fear barking (which mostly coincides with what people call reactivity) can be hard for
us humans to identify. We may think the dog is being protective of us. Or we think that
it is "fun" for a bored dog to run through the house to bark at the mail carrier at the
door or delivery trucks on the street. We say, "It's the highlight of her day!"
It took me two or three years to realize that my dog that used to bark in a frenzy when
a delivery truck was in the neighborhood was afraid. During those couple of years of
my ignorance, her triggers expanded to include a host of sounds. These included the
truck engine sound, the truck doors sliding open or slamming closed, the delivery person walking onto the porch, the noise of the mailbox lid or a box hitting the porch, and
(the frosting on the cake) the voice of the particular mail carrier who had loud conversations on his Bluetooth headset as he delivered our mail.
None of her barking was for attention. I know from my webcams that she did it when
I was not home. And I have observed that the barking was negatively reinforced. She
barked all through these scary stimuli, then the truck engine would start up or rev
(another trigger) and the truck would finally leave. The aversive things were gone,
and she stopped.
Since then I have helped my dog with her fear and barking via classical conditioning.
But I haven't been able to completely eliminate it, since I am not always home when
trucks come by. In any case, ignoring her barking had no part in our plan.

Make a Plan
I can't present a plan that will decrease all annoying dog behaviors across the board.
Nobody can. That's the problem with "ignore the dog." It's a one-size-fits-all solution
that fits almost no situation. But we can decrease most of those nuisance behaviors
with a good training plan. We need to identify what the reinforcer of the behavior is,
identify what sets the stage for it, and aim our interventions with full knowledge of
those things. This isn't always easy. So for us hobby trainers, hiring a professional will
help prevent us from wasting time on non-solutions such as "just ignore the dog"! D

Eileen Anderson writes about learning theory, her life with three dogs, and training with positive reinforcement. Her book, Remember Me? Loving and Caring for a Dog
with Canine Cognitive Dysfunction won a Dog Writers Association of America Maxwell Award for 2016. She holds Bachelors and Masters degrees in music performance
and a Masters degree in engineering science. She can be contacted through her website: Eileenanddogs.com.

20

Clean Run | September 17


http://www.Eileenanddogs.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Clean Run - September 2017

Contents
Clean Run - September 2017 - Cover1
Clean Run - September 2017 - Cover2
Clean Run - September 2017 - Contents
Clean Run - September 2017 - 4
Clean Run - September 2017 - 5
Clean Run - September 2017 - 6
Clean Run - September 2017 - 7
Clean Run - September 2017 - 8
Clean Run - September 2017 - 9
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Clean Run - September 2017 - 49
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Clean Run - September 2017 - Cover3
Clean Run - September 2017 - Cover4
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