Experiments 2: Dog Whisperer

I have never been a dog kind of a person. We had a cat, when I was a little boy. I love cats. At some point in time my father developed a very strong allergy to cat proteins, so we had to give away all the pets we had. Years later my parents went for a dog. But that happened after I already left home and went to the university. I never had any kind of relationship to this dog. I just met him occasionally for only very short periods of time. I never liked dogs anyway... until I met

La Gina

La Gina's general behavior is usually an instantiation of one of the following three behavioral patterns:

• cutest cutie pie doggy and heartbreaker
• spoilt little brat
• utter terrorist

When I came to know her, she was in full control of everything: food, black little rubber bone, plastic chicken, the apartment, the leash. And she was ordering us around at her own will. At times I used walking Gina as a substitute for going to the gym. She was pulling the leash so hard, that I got a proper upper body workout every time we went out. It was pretty annoying.

Everything I knew about educating and training a dog was basically that you have to be a dominant leader ruling your dog's world. You have to actually dominate your dog. Always. I never liked the idea, because I do not want to dominate anyone. I hate people, who are treating their dogs (or rather any animals) in a bad way. But at times it happened, that I was so fed up with what Gina did, so annoyed with her, that I became exactly that: a person dominating a dog by physical means. No, I was not hitting her, I was not kicking her, I was not hurting her, I was not abusing her. Anyway, the things I did were not friendly. I tried to intimidate her. I yelled at her. At times I did, what so many dog owner's do: I threw her on her back and actively dominated her. Now I am more than sorry for that. I was extremely unfair.

At some point in time I realized, that I was constantly talking English to her. I furthermore realized, that as a German speaking guy I could just as well speak German to her. It is basically the same for her, because she does not understand any human language in all its complexity. She does not comprehend. She does not even comprehend single and simple words or commands (e.g. in Spanish). She just learned how to react to certain human behaviors so that all her doggy needs are satisfied in their best way. She actually just wants these needs to be satisfied.

It is actually common sense, but all "dominant" dog owners do not seem to properly grasp the meaning and consequences. Let me try to describe that in kind of a metaphorical way:
I am currently staying in a country, where I do not actually speak the local language. I am a German in a Spanish speaking country. Imagine I would live with a few Spanish speaking guys. I do not understand the meaning of anything they say. They are providing me with food, but they never let me leave the house alone. And sometimes - for whatever reason - they are coming at me, yelling at me, dominating me. They are throwing me to the ground grabbing my neck. They are tying me to a leash making me leave the safe apartment pulling me through an overwhelmingly stressful city with even more Spanish speaking people I for the life of me cannot understand. How intimidating is that? I as a human would be terrorized.

And I as a human am in a position to understand Gina. On the other hand Gina as a dog is not at all able to comprehend my human motives and behaviors. She is fully depending on me. It is my utmost responsibility to take the best care of her and try to understand her the best I can, not make her understand me. She will never be able to understand. Not in a human way. Hence it is my very own responsibility to learn and educate myself before trying to educate a dog.

So with this rationale I kinda changed my approach. I bought a couple of books to learn about proper dog education:

• Turid Rugaas: On Talking Terms With Dogs: Calming Signals
• Turid Rugaas: My Dog Pulls - What Do I Do?
• Owens, Eckroate: The Dog Whisperer: A Compassionate, Nonviolent Approach to Dog Training 

Particularly the "calming signals" book is super interesting and you immediately get a better understanding of what your dog is communicating and how to properly react to it. There seem to be a lot of misconceptions, where humans try to take dog behavior for human behavior (dog is yawning => dog is tired; dog is flicking his tongue => dog is hungry). Furthermore I bought a clicker and read myself through numerous clicker websites, watched a large number of clicker youtube videos.

So here I am trying to teach Gina to always be a heartbreaker. I am running around with the high-pitched voice of a five year old, doing an over-exaggerated "muy bien, muy bien, MUUYYY BIEN!", whenever she is slightly turning her ears. The clicker is always with me. We are going through clicker sessions and she kinda learned, that positive actions will be positively sanctioned. She is able to 'Sit' and 'Touch' reliably (that is, inside the apartment without any further distractions). She is not pulling the leash anymore. And she is now doing sort of a sales job. She is getting a fixed daily salary (kibble once a day in the evening). She earns the rest as variable pay in treats, whenever she sells me behavior I like. Sounds like corruption? It is corruption. But it works. Sounds mean? It is not. She is getting the same amount of food. She is a very intelligent dog. It is a stimulus for her intelligence. She is actually playing and she is very excited about that.

One thing is still a little awkward: with clicker training you actually want to make use of natural behaviors of the animal and "shape" them (using positive reinforcement in small steps) to become complex actions. A prerequisite is... some behavior you can positively reinforce. With the negative sanctioning approach telling her what not to do, Gina apparently learned over time, that it is best to not do anything at all rather than sit and stare (which is the most non-natural behavior for a dog). So it is a tough job to animate her to do something more creative than just staring at me. But we'll come to that.

Animated GIF with 2hr footage of Gina's broad variety of behaviors

Thank you Monika. You are getting a lot of good karma here..