Discipline

[PENELOPE DILL]

Hi Adrienne:

Hi again.  Your direction and advice for working with Molly has been a great encouragement and I thank you again.  And I agree with you that she may have anxiety.  She doesn't seem to exhibit the signs listed but I've heard that shepherds are known to be anxious and her seemingly hyper-activity fits with that.

Making slow progress but I wanted advice on another issue.  What do you suggest when she is doing something she shouldn't be doing and she just won't stop ?  For example, today she decided to dig at the carpet (something she does almost every day).  It's near a cabinet that she seems to target; trying to chew on the doorknobs, shelves, etc.  Nothing good in it - no toys or treats.  She pushes her paws under the bottom and just claws away.  I immediately go to her and tell her "stop" and try to distract her with a toy.  She ignores me and continues.  I keep telling her no a few more times and try to distract her - she just ignores me and keeps going.  So I take a treat (If I try and take her collar she fights me off and runs around) and she'll go into her pen ( a good sized area) to get her treat.  I will leave her there for at least 10 minutes before I let her out, sometimes more if she goes back to the carpet digging.  I think she knows she is in trouble and she won't get near her pen without the treat.  Other times she willingly goes; at bedtime or when I try to get her to nap.  She keeps me on my toes !

Any suggestions on how to discipline her when she is hyper-focused on something or is this the best way ?  The carpet isn't the only thing she does this with.  I appreciate your help.  Thanks again,  Penelope

[Adrienne Farricelli]

Hi Penelope, 

If this is happening every singly day, and she's so fixated with that, I would start by blocking off access to that area for the time being. Who knows, maybe there's some bug hiding under there? or maybe a piece of kibble got under there? I used to have a dog over for board and training who was fixated with an area of my couch, and several months later, upon moving the couch, I found a piece of dog cookie there. Rover was right! His almighty nose knew all about it. Maybe it's worthy looking under the cabinet and around the area and vacuuming under. 

On the side, I would work on training a fluent response to the leave it cue https://www.braintraining4dogs.com/members/brain-training/obedience-101/take-leave-it/ and applying it to a variety of circumstances and generously reinforcing that.

Once you get a good response, you can try unblocking the area for short intervals during the day under supervision and practicing the cue. Ideally, you want to give the cue at very first signs of her thinking about digging the area. When busy digging it may be too mind-engaging to pay attention to you and you risk creating a behavior chain (every time I dig, my owner says leave it and gives me a treat, I will dig the area more in hopes of hearing leave it and getting a treat). 

Once done practicing leave its, you can then block the area again when you are not around.

After some time, you can practice leave its with you from a certain distance and gradually build more and more distance (you can strategically place a mirror to monitor the area) and then progress to remotely monitoring your dog from another room and practice saying leaves its from there. This informs the dog that the area should be still be left alone even when we are out of sight (although there is no guarantee the area will be left alone when we aren't around for some time without remotely monitoring).  

I would also suggest providing outlets for her digging behaviors. Like a sand pit or ball pit game if she's so into digging:  https://www.braintraining4dogs.com/members/brain-training/elementary/the-ball-pit-game/

And providing her with a variety of legit things to chew and food puzzles and confidence building exercises to keep that mind busy such as training some cool tricks using clicker training: https://www.braintraining4dogs.com/members/video-archive/

About having her go to the pen, you mention "I think she knows she is trouble and won't get near her pen without the treat. " Do you think there are chances she may be perceiving your frustration? Dogs can be very in tune with our emotions. When we are frustrated (hard to stay chill when a dog is destroying our belongings!), we move in certain ways and use a different tone. Most dogs will be reluctant to go into a pen/crate if it's used as a timeout area and they associate it with punishment/frustration/social isolation. 

A toy may not compete well with the reinforcement she gains from digging the carpet area, and a treat can make it worthy, despite a general reluctance to want to go in the pen, but with time, she may feel that the treat is a "trap" that leads to being closed in the pen.

Remedial work may therefore be needed to make the pen area desirable and reinforcing again. Having her spend time there with some long-lasting goodies in non-timeout contexts can help. 

https://www.braintraining4dogs.com/members/video-archive/love-the-crate/

What other behaviors is she engaging in, in which she's so absorbed in the activity, she doesn't listen to you? More than discipline, dogs thrive on being told what we would like them to do instead. 

[PENELOPE DILL]

Hi Adrienne:

I definitely use a different tone with her when she is doing something she shouldn't be doing.  Are we supposed to always use a happy tone with them even when they are doing something wrong for the hundredth time ? I did realize after your last email that I use more words than necessary when making a command so I have corrected that and she responds better. 

There isn't anything around that cabinet - I've checked several times.  Another thing she does is go into the kitchen and dig at the trim underneath the cabinets.  She lies on her side and just scrapes away.  Over and over and over.  There is no spilled food or any reason she should be doing this.   And she has chewed off the weather stripping from the bottom of my entry doors.  Just wouldn't leave it alone until there wasn't anything left to rip off.  I have blocked things off from her or removed them if I could until she gets older.  I'll have to figure something out with that cabinet.

We have been practicing the leave it - take drill.  She is very good about leaving it during our practice, but anywhere else she usually ignores me.  But we'll keep working at it.

Her pen - she sleeps, eats, has her water there plus that is where she spends her time when I'm out of the house.  4 x 6 feet on tile and it's not isolated from the rest of the house.  I took a dog play pen and attached the fence to the walls so she couldn't tip it over.  And it has a door that I leave open unless she needs to be in there.  She has lots of great chew toys and other toys plus some doggie puzzle toys.  I know she is very intelligent - I just bought her another Kong toy that you can put treats in and chew on.  She learned within seconds that if she drops it on the wood floor, the treats bounce out.  She just keeps dropping it until nothing comes out, then leaves it.

I've always found with my other dogs that they are eager to please and do what we request.  Molly is typically just engrossed in what she wants to do.  She is not penned up when I'm home and we spend a lot of time together.  It seems if she isn't focused on anything, she responds to me better.  But if she is focused on something, it is very difficult to get her attention, even if I go to her and gently touch her to get her to look at me.  It's almost as if her brain is on overload.

I have gone through the links you recommended before and am working on those.  I will check out the ones that are new.  At least I'm not feeling so overwhelmed with her as she has finally stopped jumping on and biting me.  She mouths me a lot but doesn't hurt me anymore. 

Thanks again for your help !  Penelope

[Adrienne Farricelli]

Hi Penelope! You are very welcome! Please see my observations/tips in non-bold. 

I definitely use a different tone with her when she is doing something she shouldn't be doing.  Are we supposed to always use a happy tone with them even when they are doing something wrong for the hundredth time ? I did realize after your last email that I use more words than necessary when making a command so I have corrected that and she responds better. 

If a dog is doing something wrong for the hundredth time, that likely means we are repeating our cues over and over and they have lost their meaning. I will list a few things that may cause a dog to not listen despite us telling them over and over.  

 -Too Much Distraction

One of the most common reasons for dogs not listening is a too distracting environment. We need to remember that dogs are blessed with significantly stronger senses than us, and therefore they are more tuned in to their environment compared to us. On top of this, when they are focused on a task, they may be unable to focus on something else. If you therefore catch your dog digging and chewing in the act, he may too focused on the task to be able to orient toward you. 

-Lack of Training

Training a dog to perform a behavior fluently takes a lot of practice. It requires several reps to allow muscle memory to set in and you'll then need to train the behavior in a variety of contexts and situations. The process of making a behavior more and more reliable is known as "proofing" and the process of creating a responsive state in a variety of locations and situations is known as "generalization."

If a dog is therefore not sitting when you have guests over in the yard, despite having just trained him to sit just a week ago in your living room, it may be too early for your dog to perform the behavior in that setting.

-Too Concentrated on Sniffing

Did you know? When a dog is sniffing, a great portion of his brain is utilized for the task, and this can make it difficult for him to focus on something else. It is therefore best not to call a dog or cue him to perform a behavior when he's actively sniffing, unless you have a strong history of training under that setting using super-duper high value treats.

-Repeating Your Cues

It's a common mistake repeating cues over and over when a dog doesn't listen. This can lead to a phenomenon known as learned irrelevance, where your cue loses more and more power the more it is repeated without a response. Soon, our cue becomes as irrelevant as the birds chirping in the trees.

-No History of Reinforcement

Contrary to what we may have heard, dogs don't typically obey to our cues just to please us. Rather, we need to motivate them to perform the behavior using reinforcement (rewards) so that it strengthens and repeats.

One of the best incentives is food, often under the form of tasty treats. 

If you fail to provide any type of reinforcement, it will be unlikely that your dog will be interested in performing the behavior, let alone be involved in any training.

-Too Low Value Treats

When you train in a distracting environment where there is something your dog is really focused on, you also need to up the value of your treats so to compete with the distractions and win your dog's attention.

For example, if you use kibble to train outdoors, your dog may be disinterested as she finds more rewarding things to do such as go sniff and try to meet other dogs.

-Too Much Energy/Excitement

If your dog is young and overly excited or very energetic, it will be difficult to grab her attention at certain times. Don't take it personally. Imagine a toddler who is overly excited by seeing all the rides and cartoon characters walking down the road at Disney World. It will be difficult asking them to ignore all the great stuff and pay attention to us.

-Enjoying the attention

You sometimes stumble on dogs who are super attention-seekers who enjoy any sort of attention, even the attention of the negative type (like a toddler who cries when mom is on the phone and even her scolding him qualifies as attention). These readily learn that when they behave, they get no attention, but when they misbehave, they get plenty, so you'll see them misbehave more and more just for the extra attention. These though are often dogs left alone for a good part of the day who deeply crave social engagement. 

-Lack of Consistency

If you tell your dog to "leave it" when she tries to dig nearby your roses, but then you ignore her when he's digging there when there are guests over and you're busy talking, your dog will learn that he/she can dig when you are distracted. Dogs struggle with inconsistencies, they understand rules as in black and white and don't understand shades of grey. From the dog's perspective these rules are inconsistent and confusing, so it's not surprising if they keep on trying.

-Cranky From Being Tired

Puppies and young dogs need a lot of sleep to continue growing and to consolidate what they have learned during the day. If your dog is tired because she hasn't napped enough or you have been training her for too long, she may turn cranky and misbehave. A puppy that is cranky when tired, is one of the primary reasons for acting out and displaying a "temper tantrum."

-Sensing Our Frustration

If we often get upset when our dogs don't obey, our dogs will sense that. Dogs are masters in reading our emotions, and therefore, when they sense our negative emotions, this can put a dent in their responsiveness. They are not purposely though trying to be defiant. They are just reacting to our tone. For example, if we call our dog in a frustrated tone, she may come to us at a very slow pace. Walking slowly is a calming signal, our dogs are hoping to calm us down because they find us intimidating. At other times, if they sense our anger, they may engage in what is known as "the fool around stress response" barking, doing a play bow, nipping playfully or pleading to be chased. 

-Basic Needs Not Being Met

Dogs, in order to feel comfortable and thrive, need a nourishing environment. Learning can only happen when a dog feels safe, happy and all their basic needs such as food, water, physical exercise, socialization and mental stimulation, have been met.

There isn't anything around that cabinet - I've checked several times.  Another thing she does is go into the kitchen and dig at the trim underneath the cabinets.  She lies on her side and just scrapes away.  Over and over and over.  There is no spilled food or any reason she should be doing this.   And she has chewed off the weather stripping from the bottom of my entry doors.  Just wouldn't leave it alone until there wasn't anything left to rip off.  I have blocked things off from her or removed them if I could until she gets older.  I'll have to figure something out with that cabinet.

If that cabinet is attracting Molly like a magnet and she is also interested in digging at the trim and chewing off weather stripping, it sounds like a bored adolescent dog desperately looking for more mental stimulation. You  can read more about what happens during doggy adolescence here and what to expect:https://www.braintraining4dogs.com/members/archive/survive-dogs-adolescent-stage/

We have been practicing the leave it - take drill.  She is very good about leaving it during our practice, but anywhere else she usually ignores me.  But we'll keep working at it.

Here is a multi-faceted approach you can try so to up the chances for success, it may repeat some of the earlier discussed strategies but may go more in depth on some. 

-Stop Repeating Cues

As mentioned, if  you keep on repeating your cues over and over and with no response, you risk them becoming irrelevant and losing power. Once they have lost their power and ultimate meaning, it may be best to start training a fresh, new cue from scratch (just substitute the word, so instead of saying "Molly come!" as a recall,  you can say "Molly over, here!" and taking steps to make the response to this cue very fluent and not repeating it over and over. If you need to repeat a cue more than once, you'll need to troubleshoot why it's happening (too value treat? too strong need to chew not being satiated in other ways?)

-Block Access to Problematic areas

In other words, do anything that makes accessing the cabinet area difficult. You can place bulky boxes in front, erect a temporary baby gate or put several chairs in front. This at least until you have fluently trained your dog an alternate, replacement behavior. For persistent cases, some dog owners spray a product known as Bitter Yuck or Bitter Apple on the furniture to discourage any chewing. Some dogs though seem to care less and still manage to chew. 

-Train an alternate replacement behavior

The dog should be trained an alternate behavior to engage in. This alternate behavior should ideally be incompatible with digging/chewing the cabinet. For example, a dog can't dig or chew if she's asked go to lie down on a mat or if she's asked to "leave it" and will move towards you for a treat.

Ideally, these replacement behaviors should be asked at the earliest sign that the dog is about to engage in the problematic behavior. This means that you would say "leave it" or " go to your mat" https://www.braintraining4dogs.com/members/video-archive/train-dog-go-to-mat/the moment you see her approach the cabinet area.

After some time, you can practice leave its with you from a certain distance and gradually build more and more distance and then progress to remotely monitoring your dog from another room and practice saying leaves its from there. This informs the dog that the area should be still be left alone even when we are out of sight (although there is no guarantee the area will be left alone when we aren't around for some time without remotely monitoring).  

If you ask for the replacement behavior too late when your dog is already digging and chewing, you risk her not paying attention to you and risk creating a behavior chain of your dog purposely going to dig/chew so that you then redirect her by saying "leave it" or sending her to her mat and get a treat/durable safe chew. 

-Use High Value Treats

Because dogs love to chew and dig, and these are naturally reinforcing behaviors on their own, it's important to use high-value treats to reinforce the replacement behavior. This creates a stronger, more reliable response. You can find many high-value treat rewards in pet stores. 

-Provide more mental stimulation

If your dog keeps wanting to go towards the cabinet and it's drawing her like a magnet, you may want to provide your dog with more enrichment. If your dog loves to dig, provide her with a digging pit full of sand and bury her toys under. Your dog may also have fun with the magic carpet game https://www.braintraining4dogs.com/members/brain-training/college/the-magic-carpet/ 

If your dog loves to chew, make sure she has plenty of chew toys that capture her attention. You may have to rotate toys to keep her interest alive. Hide some for a few days and offer them later. 

Chew toys that are filled with food like Kong Wobblers and Kongs stuffed with kibble mixed with some canned dog food and then frozen can provide entertainment for hours. I recommend these to owners all the time, as dogs need to be mentally stimulated to keep busy and happy. These legit options can help satiate their needs.

And don't forget about more brain games! 

-Ensure she gets sleep

As mentioned, growing dogs need lots of sleep to keep on doing their growing. You want that nice REM sleep where they're lying on their side and occasionally twitching. This is the restorative type of sleep that helps them recharge.

-Provide exercise

Many dog breeds were selectively bred to carry out a variety of tasks for a good part of the day. You have a mix of dogs who used to work a lot and are blessed with lots of stamina. This meant moving around a lot. 

It goes without saying, that age-appropriate walks and exercise (check with your vet on this as you need to wait for your puppy's growth plates to close before engaging in vigorous types of exercise and canine sports) is important. 

Her pen - she sleeps, eats, has her water there plus that is where she spends her time when I'm out of the house.  4 x 6 feet on tile and it's not isolated from the rest of the house.  I took a dog play pen and attached the fence to the walls so she couldn't tip it over.  And it has a door that I leave open unless she needs to be in there.  She has lots of great chew toys and other toys plus some doggie puzzle toys.  I know she is very intelligent - I just bought her another Kong toy that you can put treats in and chew on.  She learned within seconds that if she drops it on the wood floor, the treats bounce out.  She just keeps dropping it until nothing comes out, then leaves it.

Sounds like she has a great place to retreat to! You may need to enforce the naps if she isn't voluntarily napping enough at structured times of the day. Provide a quiet, dark area, inducive to sleep and possibly stick to a routine.  

If you soak her kibble with some water and then place it in the Kong and freeze it, you will have a longer lasting food puzzle which can help keep her more busy. 

I've always found with my other dogs that they are eager to please and do what we request.  Molly is typically just engrossed in what she wants to do.  She is not penned up when I'm home and we spend a lot of time together.  It seems if she isn't focused on anything, she responds to me better.  But if she is focused on something, it is very difficult to get her attention, even if I go to her and gently touch her to get her to look at me.  It's almost as if her brain is on overload.

With modern dog training, we have strayed away from the belief that dogs must please us and should obey every our request just because we say so. This could have been the case when, in the old times, dogs were put to work by engaging in behaviors that were natural to them or back in time when dogs were coerced into performing certain behaviors using painful scare tactics (sort of how teachers in the past used to pull children's hair).

For example, asking a beagle to go follow a hot trail where rabbits were frolicking moments earlier or asking a retriever to find a shot bird and bring it back to the hunter, could have been perceived as "dogs with a great eagerness to please" when in reality they were carrying out instinctive behaviors that have been deeply inculcated in them courtesy of centuries of selective breeding.

From a human standpoint, this can be the equivalent of asking a cook to go bake e cake or asking a gardener to go plant some flower bulbs. These people are eagerly performing these behaviors because they are naturally passionate about the activity and therefore don't obey mechanically just to please us.

In our modern worlds, dogs are kept more as companions so they aren't expected to go hunt or retrieve downed birds as in the past. This has created a major shift in their lives with our modern expectations.

Dogs that were built to have loads of stamina, running around, herding and guarding livestock and putting their nose to use to find meals to put on our tables, are now for the most part left unemployed. This leads to a big behavior vacuum, causing dogs to often feel frustrated and with a surplus of energy they don't know how to get rid of.

Gone are the large open spaces, the ability to walk and run freely and engage in the behaviors they were specifically built for. Modern dogs are expected to walk politely on a leash, bark as minimally as possible, tolerate being closed in a crate and bein respectful of our belongings. On top of this, we expect them to engage in behaviors that are total opposite of what they may have been bred for. For example, not lunging at birds, not pulling to search for rabbits, not digging through dirt to find prey, and not barking when they sense the presence of intruders.

Modern dog training also strays away from the outdated "dominant dog" beliefs of the past. Contrary to what we used to think in the past, dogs who don't listen aren't being purposefully defiant because they are "dominant dogs" with a wish to challenge. Rather, in most cases, dogs are disobedient for a variety of more down-to-earth reasons, other than wanting to rule.

"Believe it or not, there is no secret army of pets waiting to take over the world as this is not the planet of the apes!," points our board-certified veterinary behaviorist Dr. Sabrina Poggiagliolmi.

The belief that dogs are misbehaving because of being "dominant" has led to dog owners feeling compelled to establish themselves as higher ranking over the dog, through the use of a variety of punishment-based physical interventions. Use of such interventions have led to an escalation of aggressive displays from the dog, explains board-certified veterinary behaviorist Dr. John Ciribassi.

A study by Herron et al., 2009, clearly demonstrated that the use of confrontational methods such as “stare downs”, yelling no, “alpha rolls” and “dominance downs” frequently evoked an aggressive response. This is because such corrections lead to the dog feeling highly threatened and stressed which leads to defensive aggression. Link to study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0168159108003717

Dogs Ultimately Do What They Find Reinforcing
Ultimately, it can be said that dogs engage in behaviors that they find reinforcing. In simple words, dogs do what they do because it simply works for them and leads to pleasant outcomes.

"When a dog does something that makes us happy, we shouldn’t jump to the assumption that a dog “only wants to please us” —they are doing things to make us happy because it also gets them a treat or a belly rub or a pleasant environment to be in," explains the Association of Professional Dog Trainers.

Sticking to the belief that dogs must follow our instructions just to please us, risks leading to problems down the road because our dogs will struggle understanding what behaviors we like and would like us to see more of.

I have gone through the links you recommended before and am working on those.  I will check out the ones that are new.  At least I'm not feeling so overwhelmed with her as she has finally stopped jumping on and biting me.  She mouths me a lot but doesn't hurt me anymore. Thanks again for your help !  Penelope

You are very welcome! I am glad to hear that Molly has stopped jumping and biting on you, that is great progress. Kudos to you for having worked on this so diligently to have attained such fast progress! Keep up the great work! 

[ROGER SAUMURE]

On 10/9/2022 at 6:42 PM, PENELOPE DILL said:

But if she is focused on something, it is very difficult to get her attention, even if I go to her and gently touch her to get her to look at me.  It's almost as if her brain is on overload.

I am no expert on the subject but I will offer what has worked for me when my voice was not enough to get my dog's attention.  A poke to the ribs with my index finger has always been enough to get my dog to stop what ever he was doing and look at me.  He would be like "what was that?  who did that? you have my attention - now what do you want?"  The poke in the ribs is not hard but seems to be unexpected in a way that he immediately breaks focus on what ever he is doing and looks to me for guidance.