ohmidog!

Behave!

Is your dog picking fights? Pulling your arm out of its socket on walks? Leaving puddles on the linoleum? Chewing up your Jimmy Choos? For people dealing with those behavior problems and more, we’re here to help. This is the archive of monthly columns written for ohmidog! by dog trainer Lauren Bond of Baltimore’s B-More Charming School for Dogs. If you have a question you’d like Lauren to answer, send them to muttsblog@verizon.net, with “Behave!” in the subject line, and we’ll pass them along.

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WEARING YOUR DOG OUT, INSIDE

Some indoor exercise tips

Every dog owner knows that a tired dog is a good dog.

But between busy schedules, foul weather and the recent rise in leash law fears here in Baltimore, wearing your dog out with a good romp can be difficult.

My spring schedule involves farmers markets, trips to see family and friends, graduations, cook outs, baseball games, and weekend journeys – all of which starts to eat into my time to exercise my border collie.

It has been made much worse lately by the monsoon season we have been experiencing — great for the crops, terrible for dog owners.

The soon-to-be-corrected hike in leash law fines to $1,000 really cut into the number of people taking their dogs to Baltimore parks, too, with many who once let their dog play off leash, turning instead to settling for a quick on-leash walk.

It’s harder to raise a dog in the city, harder yet when the weather doesn’t cooperate. A dog owner in an urban area has no choice. Assuming you don’t have a pricey doggie treadmill, you, like the proverbial mailperson, have no choice but to be out there – rain, sleet or snow. And even if you do have a yard, you still have to deal with snow covered fur, wet dog smells, and muddy paws. This April, soggy as it was, reminded me how important it is to have a variety of ways to exercise your dog in your own home.

So, I thought I would share a few:

1) Spend a couple minutes a day training your dog. If you have taken an obedience class or even watched Victoria Stilwell, you have some basic idea of how to teach sit. Running through a couple minutes a day with your dog on behaviors they already know, or things you want them to learn, will keep them out of trouble.

2) Play ball in the house. This is only an option if you aren’t an antique collector, and it won’t work for large dogs unless you live in a warehouse. But roll a ball across the room to your dog. Let him/her bring it back. Repeat. Keep repeating until one of you grows bored.

3) Present new or new-again toys. If your dog has toys that have fallen out of rotation, or that are no longer fun, take them away. Wash them, and hide them in a closet. When you have a rainy boring day, or a 10th rainy boring day, you might be surprised how excited your dog becomes for any kind of distraction. Other ways to make toys fun, even if they weren’t before, include burying the toys in kibble for a day to get it smelling like food, and inserting replacement squeakers because, as we all know, it’s all about the squeak.

4) Take a class. This is great in the dead of winter and in the sweltering days of summer. Sign up for an obedience class. The spaces are climate controlled and you will be amazed how tired your dog is after an hour of using their brain. It also helps you have options for training sessions in the house.

5) Mental Puzzles are another great option. You could buy a commercially available dog puzzle, such as the ones here. You could serve dinner in a food dispensing Kong. Even dumping kibble on the kitchen floor, putting it in a stuffed animal that has already been gutted, or turning dinner into a game of fetch will buy you some exercise credits.

6) Set up a play date. If you have friends with dogs that get along with your dog, set up a play date. Move the fragile stuff out of the room, and let them play. Better yet, find a friend with a garage and get a couple dogs together. Even an hour of romping and wrestling will wear your dog out. Some of the daycares and training spaces in Baltimore are available for rent in 15 minute increments during off times. We rent out our training space for play dates or practice sessions any day of the week.

The key to surviving rough weather with a pet that requires exercise is to find ways to entertain them. If none of the above seem to be enough, I can recommend a great place to buy rain boots.

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?

What all that barking is about, and how to stop it

While dogs bring lots of wonderful things to our lives, they can also bring muddy paws, dog breath and, sometimes, enough noise to drive you, or worse yet your neighbors, crazy.

Incessantly barking dogs can, and have, led to full-fledged war between neighbors. But as with much bad behavior — not just canine — the key to stopping it is understanding why it’s taking place.

First, let’s debunk some myths: Barking is not the dog version of conversation. Dogs don’t communicate that way, they use body language for most of their “discussion” with us, and with other animals. Dogs don’t have a barked vocabulary. Nor do dogs speak English, so you can’t reason with your dog to be quiet.

Barking serves three functions.

Dogs bark when they’re bored. If your dog is under-stimulated, barking can ease that situation. It also gets us, and sometimes other animals to do things — like playing with them, or giving a bone, or throwing the ball. It can also elicit attention from other animals, if a dog barks at the cat, or a squirrel, they often will run. This is fun for the dog. Think how quickly we react when the baby is asleep and the dog barks, or if you are on the phone with an important call and the dog barks. Just imagine what a fun and powerful experience that is for the dog. So, barking gets stuff to happen, that is a good enough reason for dogs to do it.

Dogs bark because they are over-stimulated. You can see this in the agility ring. Often the dog in the ring is sounding off the whole time they are running the course. This is also true of dogs who get excited to about playing. Think of it as a pressure release valve. They have all the energy and excitement built up and they can’t move their bodies fast enough to get rid of all of it, so they bark along the way to keep themselves from exploding. Some dogs get so excited about going on a walk that just picking up the leash produces jumping, dancing, twirling, and barking. Over stimulated barking isn’t always because dogs are excited, sometimes it is because a dog is overly anxious. This is often the case for separation anxiety.

Dogs bark as a startle response. My dog is awakened from a sound sleep by a person walking up onto our porch, and before his eyes are fully open, he has let out one bark to let us all know that there is potential danger. Once he sees that it is just the mailman, he begins to wag his tail. Normally “alert” barking happens just a few times in the presence of clear stimulation –a knock on the door, the doorbell, the crash of something falling over or breaking. The alert bark is often accompanied with scrambling towards or away from the stimulus depending on the dog. A poorly socialized or overly anxious dog can continue this alert barking and cross over into over-stimulated barking.

Sometimes, in our effort to stop barking, we end up encouraging it. If you try to appease your dog when he or she is barking, you teach your dog that in order to get goodies/attention/stuff all they have to do is bark. If you yell or even speak to your dog when they are barking, you are basically saying, “Yes! Let’s all bark. Bark, seriously, Bark! Bark! Bark!”

The worst thing you can do if you are trying to stop your dog from barking is to ignore the barking for 5, 10, or 15 minutes and then go get the bone or ball, start yelling, or anything else. What you have done at that point is taught your dog that the button to make you do what they want is 20 minutes long. And they will accept that as a challenge.

If you get up to retrieve the ball from under the sofa while your dog is barking at it, if you get up and give your dog a bone so you can get thru your conference call, or if you get up and run to the area where your dog is barking you are making the behavior continue.

So, how do you make it stop?

Mainly, by avoiding the traps above, providing the right amount of stimulation, and teaching your dog that silence has its own rewards.

If your dog can get all those things — the ball, the bone, the attention, the treat — without having to bark, they are just as happy to accept that route. Perform all of those acts in the absence of barking and you can just as easily teach your dog that silence is the button that gets goodies/attention/stuff.

Ignore the dog when he or she is barking, or even better, leave the room or shut the door between yourself and your dog. Let silence be the button that makes doors open, makes bones materialize, and leads to all kinds of good things.

MARLEY & YOU

There’s no such thing as an “untrainable” dog

I’m sure that by now just about every dog person has seen the movie “Marley and Me.” We laughed, we cried, then we cried some more.

Some experienced dog owners, and trainers like ourselves, have even offered our two cents about Marley’s upbringing, saying that his owners were irresponsible, that if we owned a dog like that we would most certainly have put him in his place. We wouldn’t have allowed our couch to be eaten, or our drapes to be torn down, or our gold necklace to go in one end of the dog and come out of the other.

But the truth is we have all been there.

We’ve all been first-time dog owners, overwhelmed, unsure where to turn. Some of us, even by our third or fourth dog, remain that way.

Why won’t he get off of the furniture? Why do my shoes, hairbrush, wallet, cell phone, (insert object of choice here) always wind up in his mouth? Why can’t I come home, just once, to the trash can being upright, untouched, with all of the trash still inside? How come my “NO’S!” and “STOP ITS!” only lead to a game of catch-me-if-you-can? Is it really too much to ask of man’s best friend that he just be calm, listen to what I tell him and lay quietly at my feet waiting for further instructions?

To be completely honest … yes, it is.

Think back to the day you brought your first puppy home. He didn’t come with an instruction manual. Maybe, at best, the shelter gave you a brochure, or some information on his vaccine record and what kind of food and toys he liked. But there was nothing on how to influence his behavior, no foolproof tips for getting him to stop jumping all over guests when they walk through the front door. Or teaching him to walk nicely on leash. Or keeping him from chewing up your new Blackberry.

You might have tried staying one step ahead by reading up on dog behavior before you brought him home. There’s a ton of conventional wisdom out there, books galore, dog magazines and an entire Animal Network. How could you go wrong?

Easily. Each book and television trainer, it seems, says something different – sometimes completely different — from the other. One might tell you to scold your dog when he pees in the house while another says to ignore it, and praise him when you catch him going potty outside. As a result, you’re confused, and so is your dog.

There are only two things that you need to keep in mind to avoid the pitfalls and problems that overwhelmed Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston.

First and foremost, dogs need to be enriched on a daily basis. They need mental and physical stimulation. If you don’t keep their minds and bodies active they will do it themselves and in their small, limited environment (your house) it will usually mean chewing, marking or steeling your possessions. A dog needs more than a walk around the block each day. They need to see new sites, smell new smells and meet new people, dogs and children. If you keep your dog’s mind and body stimulated and enriched you are well on your way to having a peaceful household.

Secondly, you need to train him, and not just to sit and stay. Training gives you and your dog a way to communicate with each other. It is developing a common language that you can both use. Dogs don’t speak English. Think about it, if you are always yelling “no” at your dog are you really communicating with him? Is he learning?

Dogs must learn what it is that you want – not just what you don’t want. A dog can learn that, instead of jumping on your guests to get attention, if he sits and waits your guests will come to him. He can learn that instead of pulling you down the block he must walk nicely by your side in order to keep moving forward. Training is about teaching your dog what to do in order to get the things that he wants (things like your attention, dinner, a tasty treat.) Training teaches the dog to make the right decisions.

There are many trainers out there, with many different methods for training a dog. It is up to you to find a trainer who uses methods you’re comfortable with. You need to find a trainer who is willing to listen to you, understands how your family works and who will come up with a plan that fits your lifestyle. A good trainer will try to fit the plan to you, not you to the plan.

The mistake that was made with Marley – at least as portrayed in the movie — was that Marley’s owners gave up after their first trainer didn’t work ou. They did what many people do — assume that you have the world’s worst dog and he is untrainable.

Dog training works, if you find the right trainer – one whose methods you agree with, whose suggestions makes sense, and whose expectations you find reasonable. Training mistakes are never the dog’s fault. They are always the trainer’s (and owner’s.) Clearly the trainer that Marley’s owners picked was wrong, not just for Marley but for his owners as well.

None of us, even a novice dog owner, need end up with a dog like Marley. You just need to pay attention to your dog’s wants and needs. Motivation is the key to getting behaviors you like. Have your dog work for what he wants in ways that don’t offend you or your guests. Mix that with a good exercise regime and plenty of mental stimulation and you will find that your shoes are still in your closet, your cell phone doesn’t have slobber all over it and you haven’t had to replace the cushions on your couch in quite some time.

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