Talking Dogs. An introduction to The Sociable Dog Pod.

In this, the first of the Sociable Dog podcasts, your hosts Si and Nina are easing in gently. We've picked a few common questions and misconceptions about dog behaviour to chat about. As time goes on we'll deep dive into what makes dogs tick and how to best help the fearful ones as well as maximise your potential as a trainer for your dog.

Thank you for listening to The Sociable Dog Pod. Find us on X/Twitter @sociabledog

Transcript

 (Music)



 Welcome to the Sociable Dog Pod, the podcast for anyone who wants to know more about the extraordinary relationship we have with our dogs, and why we don't always understand each other. We'll be digging into the roots of dog behaviour so we can get to know our best friends better and make our lives with them a little richer. We'll be busting some of those sticky myths about why they do what they do, exploring how they learn, and trying to interpret their language. We'll talk science, we'll share stories, have some laughs, and make some interesting discoveries all along the way. I'm Si Wooler, and I've been working with dogs and their humans for more than 15 years. So let's talk dogs.



 Welcome indeed to this, the first episode of the Sociable Dog Pod. Now by way of an introduction, let me say that we're planning on this being a series rich with info from us and from guests.



 Some of the episodes will be just me on me lonesome, rabbiting on about stuff. Other episodes will be seeking understanding of dog behaviour from other professionals in the field, and others still will be me and Nina in conversation.



 And that is what this, a gentle lead-in, is going to be. Nina is in command with some common questions, haven't you, Nina? Yeah, but let's zoom out since this is the first one, and just think in general about dog behaviour and what it's all about. Because when you think about it, dogs have been hanging around with humans for literally thousands of years. You'd think this relationship would be running on rails, we'd absolutely understand and be in tune with each other. But still we get frustrated, we get annoyed, we get irritated and puzzled by their behaviour. So if we had a big starter for 10, what would be the one thing you'd want people to understand about their dog's behaviour so that they can understand them a bit better?



 So I've got one take-home that I can give them from that conversation.



 Is that right? Yeah.



 OK, I'll give that a go.



 Dogs do what works. There you go.



 Yeah, I know you want a bit more, don't you? OK, well, in a nutshell, I'm saying that dogs do what makes good things happen for them and bad things stop happening for them. So once good things are happening, they want them to continue happening, and once bad things have stopped, they'd like them not to start again if that's all right. Now, if you understand this, then you start to understand what really motivates dogs to do things. There's a qualify to that, which is that behaviour is driven by outcomes or consequences. Some of those behaviours are driven by their emotional response to things, while others are driven by their desire to get hold of reinforcers or pay or to avoid unprofitable or unpleasant consequences.



 So that is what I would want people to go away with, and understanding that their dog's behaviour isn't spiteful or jealous or anything like that, they're just doing what works for them. Right? Dogs do what works for them. Right.



 So you've just kicked into touch, pod number one, kicked into touch the idea that they are loving, loyal little friends who do everything just to please us. They're essentially just profiteers.



 I wouldn't entirely agree with that assertion. I mean, yes, they do like a bit of profit, and if you want to make healthy progress with training, then it's in your best interest to acknowledge that. I think that the Disneyland notion that all dogs want to do is please us and that they should find their sole reward in that achievement. You know, Daddy is pleased with me. No, no, take that tasty snack away. I'm content in the knowledge that my people are pleased. That doesn't really cut it now, does it? I can't tell you whether they have a desire to please or not. I can't ask them. What I can say is that I can measure the effect on behaviour of different motivators and so increase my prospects of the likelihood of that behaviour happening again. Now, that isn't to say that our dogs don't have a bond with us. They are, after all, social animals, and their family is important to them. I mean, you would have a hard time persuading me that Ripley doesn't, dare I say it, love us, given the excitement she shows when either of us come home from being out. And I suspect that transcends the mere fact that we're food providers with access to the fridge and the door keys. There's something special about that relationship. We're family. We love them. Now, I have heard you say that dog behaviour is all about economics.



 You see, I am listening sometimes, not all that often, but occasionally.



 It's about earning pay. It's about making profit. Now, I know that some people would be absolutely horrified about the idea of having to pay for good behavior. They worry that training with treats, with food, is just bribery.



 And that actually there's a better way.



 I do like the idea of dog behaviour being economics. I think it's an accurate and quite effective analogy. It holds up, by and large. I mean, putting aside dealing with behaviour problems, such as fear and aggression, stuff that's grounded in fear or anxiety-related responses, behaviour, getting a dog or any animal with a nervous system, for that matter, to do something you want them to do, is a trading agreement. It's a contract, a negotiation, right? If you do this for me, I'll give you this. If you do that, on the other hand, I'm going to take it away again. Now, bribery, bribery is an unhelpful way of looking at it because it implies that you're giving them something that you shouldn't give them for doing something they shouldn't be doing. And you both profit from it when you shouldn't have. So I reject that characterisation of training with food. It's pay for an expensive behaviour.



 No motivation, no behaviour change. Agreed?



 I don't want to diss our little cockapoo,



 but I have to say Ripley has never really struck me as much of a serious economic thinker. She's way more into sport. Yes, it's all about bullies, isn't it? But then, bullies? Currency. Currency? Boles.



 Oh, OK. Fair does.



 So, dogs, sweet little profiteers that they are, do what gets them profit, gets them paid. So, in the real world, because we've invited them into our world and we need them to be civilised members of our society, how do we use that to manage the behaviour, the bad habits that they might get into, like jumping up at visitors or barking at the Amazon delivery driver?



 Ah, yes, right. OK, this is an interesting question. And before I answer it as definitively as I can, let me preface it with this. There are two distinct groups of behaviours, in my view, and I'm inclined to lump things together in this way. There are emotional responses to things, so behaviours that are driven by fear or anxiety, for example, that, you know, they might be a genetic predisposition, it's come hardwired in, in other words. It might be as a result of something that happened to the mum during pregnancy or something that happened to your dog during the developmental period of puppyhood. Or it's the result of a traumatic event at any time, right? OK, now, the other group of behaviours, and the one that you're talking about here is the "not upset" group, air quotes there. The dogs who are using their behaviour to get something they want or to escape or avoid something they don't like. Now, there's a bit of a crossover there, but we'll get to that in a later podcast. But in short, it's how they learn to operate on their environment or do something in order to affect outcomes or consequences.



 So let's take jumping up at visitors, for example.



 If when your dog jumps up at visitors, the visitor gives them a fuss, because that's what your dog wants, they're likely to do it again next time a visitor comes round because it's proved successful before. If it does happen again and again and again, and each time the dog gets a fuss, then we can reasonably say the behaviour's been reinforced.



 He's not doing it because he wants to spite you or annoy you, he's doing it because it gets paid.



 If, on the other hand, every time he jumps up, he's removed from the room or the visitor disappears in some way, it's going to be a case of, "Hello, this is new. What's going on here? This always worked before." Now, the consequence of jumping up is to lose access to the thing they want. So over multiple attempts, he learns that the reason the visitor disappears is that he jumps up and he starts to keep his paws on the floor. If he does that, he gets a fuss and a bicky. Result, right? The expensive behaviour paid off. Hurrah! Well, that all seems very simple and straightforward, but I'm always big on butts, aren't I? But what about when you get pay inflation? Ah, the infamous Murphy O'dog. Bless him. With Murphy O'dog, where you start off with, you know, just a few treats just to speed things along, just to get things moving. And before you know where you are, the pay inflation has totally got out of control. Shocking. As happened when you were out of action. Yes. I was left in charge and I would take him out for walks in my working day when I knew I had a spare hour or so. Take him out in the car. Nice walk. Brilliant. Get him back to the car, open the boot, chuck a couple of treats in. And that worked fine until it didn't. Until he started to realise maybe he could read my behaviour. Maybe he knew when I was in a hurry. And he just decided that he wasn't going to get in the car. He was just going to sit down and give me a look. I know it. And so I was having to pay more and more and more to get him into the car, just to persuade him to do that. And by the end of, I don't know, a few days, I was groaning under the weight of food. I had treats. I had manchego cheese. I had lamb and rice pointer sticks. I even had nan cheesy oat cakes. I mean, it was crazy. And I think he was he was in for a Liz Truss growth plan.



 And I don't think I should get into political debate around it. He was a clever boy. He was a clever boy. So the mistake with Murphy in the first instance was to show him the colour of your money too much. So it's not a problem to begin by showing him what's on the offer. Right. That's the lure stage of any lure and reward plan. But if you then go on to wait him out, but fold and effectively increase the pay, you're doing two things. You're making the next step another lure step, which is inefficient, but you're waiting him out way too early in the process. The next stage would have been a hand gesture that was similar to the action of throwing the lure in. By upping the price, you aren't incentivising him to get in each time. He's learning that if he stays put, the price goes up. Why would you move? He knows that time is expensive for you. So he trades shorter time for bigger reward.



 Yeah, I was always a bit one for paying in advance, wasn't I?



 Yes, but fortunately, you can and you did rectify it by going back to the beginning and running the plan correctly. And he soon learned that time meant he had to wait longer for the pay.



 It is, though, you know, for those of us who are who are not professional trainers, it's something that it's ever so easy to slide into. I mean, if you've got a behaviour that's a bit of a problem, how long do you need to stick with a programme, stick with a regime if you're actually going to change the behaviour? I mean, sometimes you just don't have time. True. You know, you need to get on, you have places to be, you have things to do. What happens if sometimes you just let it slide, you let the dog get away with it? Just this once or this twice? For straight obedience, provided you aren't getting yourself into that inflationary trap, then you can be kind to yourself. If you can only do 10 minutes training or even two minutes, provided you train efficiently, which means you get the reps in and are precise about what your steps are and how many of those reps you should be doing in each step, then don't worry. Obviously, the more you get through and the more frequently you train, the better your dog is going to get at learning. Learning needs practice. If they get that practice, then learning gets faster and better and all of that stuff. But it isn't a deal breaker if you can only do short sessions. There's some research that suggests that the optimal training session is about 20 to 25 minutes. I mean, Murphy broke that rule because he would train most of the day if you wanted him to. And if the pay was high enough. But there's also some research. I think it came from one of the Scandi countries. I can't remember which now, but that found that if you left at least 24 hours between sessions, they kind of process things better and so made faster progress.



 OK, fair enough. So it's more about being focused as much as you can for short periods of time. Yes. Yes. I mean, I think for anyone, but the most geeky of us behaviour nerds, and I class myself amongst them, then it's about fitting things into your lifestyle and your own daily routine. It's not like you don't love your dog. Take them out for walks, play with them like Chuck a ball or two. If they need treatment, we all rush them to the vet and we make sure they're well fed and comfortable. So beating yourself up about training commitment is counterproductive, I think. There are still people who would say, though, that all sounds quite complicated, quite a lot of hard work needing to keep repeating doing these things. You just need to show leadership. You need to show who's boss. Get it fixed in five minutes. One shot.



 OK, yes. Well, the elephant in the room. Well, that illustrates two areas of misunderstanding about animal behaviour. One assumption is that dogs live in linear hierarchies. So top dog all the way down to bottom dog in a line. We're back then to the myth of domestic dogs wanting to or feeling the need to take over leadership of the pack. And they put pack in inverted commas. That's an idea that's sticky. It perseveres in dog training despite having been debunked widely in the behaviour science world. Or we'll come back to that in a later podcast, no doubt. But it also suggests that you need to show dogs discipline, i.e. apply aversive consequences for behaviours you don't like. Now, you know that we're a force free and fear free outfit here at Sociable Dogs. So we don't see the need for employing fear or force to affect behaviour change. We don't need to. We can get the results we need by changing emotional responses with positive associations where fear or anxiety behaviour is concerned, including aggressive behaviour. And we can get obedience behaviours like sit down stay by paying for behaviour we want and removing pay or the prospect of pay for behaviours we don't want. The time out we were talking about with jumping up at strangers. Now, there are a couple of very good reasons why we don't use aversive measures. We don't want that to be the relationship that people have with their dogs for a start. And we don't want the unintended consequence, which is that your dog develops a negative emotional response to things and possibly you, because they've come to associate you with bad outcomes.



 Using aversive changes behaviour. Make no mistake about that. But it's likely to come back and bite you as a strategy. Literally, metaphorically.



 The other thing that's quite sticky is that dogs learn behaviours from other dogs. So they'll learn from an older, more experienced dog or a more confident dog. And you do see people out on walks with maybe four or five dogs and they get them all to sit in this, you know, impressive semicircle. Do they learn from other dogs? Can you just teach one and they'll all follow along?



 Oh, no, wouldn't that be grand?



 Well, by and large, sadly, I think the answer to that one is no, I'm afraid. I hope people are suggesting that putting another dog in a home is the way to help the resident dog overcome fear of people, for example. But the vast majority of the research tells us the dogs don't learn particularly well by observation and mimicry. If it were true, if dogs could explain to fearful dogs that the scary thing was safe and there was nothing to worry about, then we'd be out of a job. And who'd rather that too, because it would mean there were fewer fearful dogs in the world. But there are plenty of trainers who'll tell you, including me, that they get plenty of calls about problems with one dog in a multi-dog household where all the other dogs don't exhibit the same behaviour.



 Fear and aggression problems just aren't that straightforward, I'm afraid.



 As far as stuff like polite sits and so on, then you need to train each individual dog and then put them together, both because they don't learn by proxy, but also because it's blooming hard. And something that people might see a mistake for observational learning is social facilitation. Like one runs, they all run, one digs, they all dig, one barks, they all bark. But this is really just innate behaviours being triggered by one dog actioning it first. But more about that later too.



 Yeah, that makes a lot of sense actually, because it doesn't matter how many times people tell me that going on the scariest, highest roller coaster in the world is going to be "weeee, it's really good fun". I am still going to be terrified. Yes. Even if I told you that it was going to be safe or showed you by going on it, that's not going to make you any less fearful of it until you've learned that through treatment. Yeah. I mean, you can go on the roller coaster any number of times. I'll just stay down below with the hot dog. Okay. Excellent.



 Oh, some dogs smarter than others. You know, that was that collie, wasn't that, that learned something like a thousand and twenty odd words for his toys? Oh, yes. And there was that other one as well that could spot them using pictures. So you showed him the picture of a specific toy. Yeah. And he went off and got it. And it didn't matter what size the picture was. He could distinguish all of the toys based on an image.



 Well, I suppose it's a good question. I don't really know the answer. You often get people saying how clever their dogs are or that their previous dog was cleverer than their current one or something of that sort. And I have to admit, I always thought of Murphy as a particularly clever dog. So, yeah, I suppose so. I mean, I don't see any reason why they should be any different from us in that sense. Some people are more intelligent than others or cleverer, I suppose, depending on all manner of things, really. So who can say I'm not going to get myself into trouble with that one? Right. Last question then. What, in your opinion, is doing a quite a good dog?



 A good dog?



 Well, Ripley Dog is obviously. And actually, I worry about the terminology here because it implies there is such thing as a bad dog. And I'm not sure there is, at least in the sense that they are deliberately being disobedient or goading us or challenging us for supremacy of whatever it is we think we're supreme over.



 Bad behaviour usually means behaviour we don't like, doesn't it? And in some cases, that means behaviour that's public safety at risk. So it's dangerous and it's a problem and it should be fixed. But it's not bad, per se. It's just the only mechanism by which they say how they are feeling and that they want us or some other thing that is scaring them to go away.



 But as far as what we think of as disobedient behaviour, that just comes down to unwanted behaviour being reinforced by something other than the thing we have on offer, which I'm sorry, just means you haven't trained the behaviour enough.



 But train what you need and at a level that you need it. And all is good. They're all good as far as I'm concerned. I love them all.



 But you do like a bit of character, a bit of mischief. Oh, yes. I mean, Murphy, oh, dog, what a star. What an absolute star. Love him.



 Thank you for coming along to the first episode of The Sociable Dog Pod. I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks very much. And if you've got any suggestions for future episodes, don't hesitate to contact us either on our X/Twitter account or by email at simon@sociabledog.com or anywhere else you find like message sections on your podcast provider or, well, however you'd like to get in touch with us, please do so.



 See you next time.