thinking dog

Turning Shoes into Treats

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Since I share my home with two retrievers, I figure that they should help out a little around the house by, well, retrieving. I’ve written about how seriously Jana takes her newspaper delivery job. Cali has belatedly decided that she wants in on the treat action, so I thought about what a suitable job for her might be.

Cali lives for our daily walks (sometimes twice daily) to the nearby park where dogs can run free and she can avoid playing with the other dogs while holding onto her ball and occasionally actually retrieving it. I have a pair of shoes that I rarely put on for any purpose other than walking the girls. So I decided that bringing my walking shoes could be her new job. She has a passable retrieve, and, I figured, she’d be highly motivated — the reward, in addition to the requisite cookie-per-shoe going rate, would consistently be an immediate walk, often to her favorite park.

The training went pretty well, except for that incident where I got kicked in the face by my own dog wielding my own shoe, but we don’t need to dwell on that. Cali was very enthusiastic, if a little unclear on the concept at first. Jana helpfully showed her what to do, eagerly grabbing the nearest shoe and bringing it and even more eagerly accepting a cookie in exchange.

On day 1, Cali tried her first shortcut — offering a toy.

The next shortcut: stealing the shoe from Jana. Well, Jana was having none of that. I rescued my shoe from the tug of war and asked for the other shoe.

That was the next challenge. Incredibly, though, Cali seems to have picked up that concept with only a few days of repetition.

We also had to work on the delivery. From overly enthusiastic (see reference to being kicked in the face) to lackluster (dropping the shoe a couple of feet away), Cali’s finish needed polish. I’ve almost got her somewhat consistently putting the shoe into my hand not terribly roughly. Progress, right? Baby steps, baby steps …

But this is where it gets interesting. I know from reading about Chaser, one of my favorite dogs in the world, that dogs can learn to put items into categories. Cali and Jana bear this out, and throw in evidence of a sense of humor, too.

Clearly trying for additional treats, Jana gets this sly look as she sees Cali delivering the second and final walking shoe. She then runs into the bedroom and returns, tail held high and waving triumphantly, with a shoe, any shoe. Give me my treat, her bright eyes and wagging tail say. If I don’t seal off all other shoes behind a firmly closed door, I might get, in addition to my walking shoes, a slipper or two, a flip-flop, a sandal, a rain boot … They have definitely mastered the concept of “shoe.” They’ve even gone outside and brought in a Croc from the porch.

They also instantly made the transition from my laced walking shoes to Keen sandals when the weather warmed up a bit. I do keep the current walking shoes right next to the door, and I am sure that the context is a big help.

I did not try to teach them the category of “shoe.” I have, years ago, worked with Jana on categories and concepts: big and small, toy, ball, and, of course “other” to send her after an item similar to the one she’s just brought. Cali learned all of this on the fly — by watching Jana and by seeing what I did and did not reward.

I’m still in awe of what Dr. John Pilley has accomplished with Chaser and grateful to him for painstakingly documenting his teaching efforts and publishing solid scientific evidence of dogs’ abilities to map words to items, remember hundreds of item names, and group items into categories. I am also, though, delighted and surprised by the constant examples of dogs who learn some of those same things in less-than-ideal home-schooling environments with inconsistent teachers (such as myself).

What have your dogs learned that blows your mind?

“I’m So Angry I Could Eat a Tissue”

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Photo by Cathy Condon

When Jana gets angry at me, she takes one thing (usually a tissue) out of the wastebasket, shreds it, and leaves the pieces next to the wastebasket.

A quick Google search will turn up dozens of articles on why dogs eat trash or how to get them to stop, and many will suggest that they’re attracted to the food or your scent on items, or that they are obeying an irresistible impulse. Some will suggest that training can solve the problem; some will suggest management (trash cans with lids). Many dogs get into the trash; why do I think it is a reflection of her anger with me? I know my dog.

When Jana was a puppy, she nearly always shredded the trash when I left her home. As a dog newbie, I once followed the advice of a trainer to put hot sauce on the trash to discourage this behavior. Instead, I discovered that Jana loves spicy food. And spicy “food.” (Her definition of food is much, much broader and more inclusive than mine.) After she had enthusiastically thanked me for adding condiments to her snack, I asked her to help me pick up the remnants and put them (back) in the trash can. She did. I never put sauce on her snack again.

As Jana matured, she became a responsible dog who follows the rules and respects boundaries. She’s very helpful and thoughtful. I could leave a steak dinner on the counter and go out for the day (unlikely; I keep a vegetarian home) and it would still be there when I got home. She is 100 percent trustworthy around guests and snacks, even if the snacks smell really good and are at dog-nose level on a coffee table. She has mostly stopped the trash-shredding behavior.

But.

When I leave her at home at a time that is just wrong — it’s close to mealtime, or I have already been gone much of the day and I come in and leave again soon after, or it looks like I am going to do something fun that should include dogs — I will come home to a single shredded tissue on the floor next to the trash can.

I know that serious dog scientists (most of whom seem to never have actually lived with a real dog) will howl over my interpretation of this behavior, but here it is anyhow. I think that Jana is expressing her hurt feelings and anger in a way that is uniquely her own. She could be very destructive; thankfully, she’s not that kind of girl. She could ignore me when I returned, but she’s not the type to hold grudges, either. I believe that she has thought this through and decided that shredding one piece of trash makes a statement.

As Cali does with hiding before brushing her teeth, Jana is telling me how she feels. Both girls do this articulately and in their own way — and then move on. Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone were so mature and as effective and clear in their communications?

The Happiest Dog on Earth

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Calis signatiure Feb3 2015
Cali Was Here (Photo by Christina Phelps)

Cali’s pawprint from a recent beach day. It’s so fitting that her pawprint looks like a smiley face. Cali really is the happiest dog I have even known. She greets each morning (actually, since she gets up well before the sun, I could say that she anticipates each morning) with pure joy. She grabs a toy and waves it in my face or jumps on the bed to give me kisses or just wags her whole rear half — whatever works to get me out of bed. Lazy Mom.

She then grabs a favorite toy and runs outside where she runs around, wagging and smiling. (Yes, I can tell she’s smiling, even if she has a large toy in her mouth.) A few hugs and cuddles, more wags, and she’s off to take care of morning business.
Sometimes, in the afternoon, when she’s bored and I am working too much, she loses the smile and gives me the bored teenager sigh. But she perks up immediately when I say a magic word (“park” or “play” or “walk”).
Anticipation kicks in again sometimes. I apparently have a habit of saying, “OK,” when I am about to get up from the computer. It triggers a wild frenzy of dancing and tail wagging. Same thing happens — this is a bit embarrassing — when the end music to my latest Netflix TV series comes on each night. Cali might be comfortably napping on the huge memory foam dog bed (having kicked Jana off, no doubt), but at the first bars of music, she’s up and dancing toward the door.
Am I really that predictable (yes). More to the point, what does this tell us about dogs?
The ability to remember experiences, learn from them, and anticipate new ones based partly on those memories is a huge element of what makes humans conscious and engaged in society. Same thing is true for dogs. While I doubt that Cali lies around wondering what we’re doing next weekend or worrying about how we’ll pay for her next bag of SoJo’s (she leaves that to me), she often appears to anticipate good things happening in her future.
She seems to expect that, at 4 p.m., I will stop working and Play With the Dogs. At 5 p.m., dinner had better be in the bowl. While following a routine does not, in itself, mean that dogs are thinking, planning, or anticipating, it’s clear to me that she anticipates these events. And that her clock runs a bit fast.
Even more interesting is her certainty, whenever we get on 101 South, that fun things are in store for dogs. Not all car trips end up being fun for the dogs. She’s been on car trips that started with getting on 101 South … and ended in Florida, many long, dull days later. Sometimes, I just run errands. Mostly, though, we are heading to Berkeley, to visit Cali’s sister Dora or hang out with her friend Virgil. Sometimes we end up in San Francisco with Jana’s longtime pal Christine at the beach. So the odds of fun are strongly in Cali’s favor.
That’s enough for her. Cali’s sunny personality reflects her natural optimism. And what is optimism if not a belief that good things are bound to happen in the future?

Hide and (Don’t) Seek

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Albee sleeps_small
Alberta sleeps — or pretends to?

My last post, Hide and Seek, talked about how Cali hides when she is avoiding something, such as having her teeth brushed. This week, I encountered an example of hiding that has a different purpose — and shows some high-level, and rather devious, thinking.
We were visiting at a home where there is a resident cat. Early one morning, the cat’s mom got up, gave the cat his breakfast in a plastic bowl, placed on the floor. Cat and mom then wandered away. Alberta, who had been sleeping on blankets next to the bed, noticed the cat and mom as they passed by into another room and closed the door. Very quietly, which took some effort, as she had several jangly tags on her collar, Alberta slipped out of the bedroom. Minutes later, without waking Deni, she slipped back in and either went back to sleep or did a stellar job of faking it. None of the three people in the house had any idea that she had slipped out of the bedroom or back in.
Later that morning, cat-mom asked us whether we’d seen the cat’s food bowl, which she had last seen at 5:30 a.m., still filled with kibble. Nope. We looked high and low. We looked in closets, cupboards, even the refrigerator, the bathrooms, and the garage. Nope, nope, and nope. Cat-mom wondered whether she really had fed the cat. Was she losing her marbles? Regardless, the bowl itself had disappeared.
Several hours later, walking through the bedroom, I noticed the edge of a plastic bowl under the bed, right near Alberta’s dog bed. Hmmm. Bending over, I reached waaayyy under the bed … and pulled out the cat’s (now empty) bowl.
Our best guess is that Alberta snuck out to eat the cat’s food and then, as is her habit, picked up the bowl and headed toward Deni to hand it over for an after-meal treat. Somewhere along the way, she must have remembered that she wasn’t supposed to let anyone know that she’d stolen the cat’s breakfast. Was she deliberately hiding the bowl? Had that been her plan all along? Or did she only think of it once she got back and saw Deni sleeping? At what point did she realize her error?
Her extreme stealth tells us that she knew she was doing something wrong; the distance the bowl was shoved under the bed indicates the same. If Alberta needs to go outside or decides that breakfast is long overdue before Deni wakes up, she noses Deni and whines until Deni responds. When Alberta picks up her bowl after a legitimate meal, she usually dances around, makes noise, doing whatever it takes to get Deni’s attention — because she is eager to collect her dessert (a cookie for returning the bowl). That she did not do this, and did not leave the bowl where anyone could see it, indicates deliberate hiding.
There’s a whole lot of higher-level thinking going on in her mind — all put to work for devious purposes. Alberta is showing multilayered understanding of a situation: knowledge that she can work a situation to her advantage (steal the food while cat and humans are sleeping or otherwise occupied) and hide the evidence where humans can’t see it.
Despite her impeccable breeding and fancy education, and regardless of her usual angelic behavior, what we learn here is that Alberta is also still a true Labrador — primarily a food-seeking missile. We also see that, whatever we teach our dogs and however we nurture their intelligence and try to shape it in ways that we want, each dog is still an individual who can put that intelligence to work in the ways that best serve her own interests.

What Is Dognition?

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Jana dognition
In last week’s post, If Cali Were Brian Hare’s Dog…, I mentioned Dognition. What is it?
First: full disclosure. Jana and I were among the beta testers of the site, for which we received no pay, but Jana did receive the bandanna she’s shown wearing above. This is not a paid post or advertisement. It is my opinion, based on my experience with the site.
Brian Hare, whom I wrote about last week, is the co-founder and chief science officer. Dognition is a site that studies canine cognition through a series of games and experiments that site members do with their dogs, at home. The Dognition team includes some innovative canine cognition researchers. It is a clever way to gather a huge amount of information about a large variety of dogs. It’s also (usually) fun.
The initial set of games and exercises creates a “profile” of your dog. There are nine profile types, ranging from the “Ace,” a problem-solver with strong communication skills, to the “Protodog,” who, according to the brief description on the site, is “reminiscent of the first dogs that began their relationship with early mankind.” I am guessing that that’s a nice way of saying “can’t follow human gestures.” The writers on the site excel at couching bad news (“your dog flunked this test”) in very positive terms.
Renaissance DogJana is a Renaissance dog, good at a little bit of everything. I never finished the profile exercises for Cali, though.
The reasons are, I think, the site’s biggest drawback: Nearly all of the games require two people, and they are very hard to do alone. The site steps you through each set of exercises, and you have to enter information about your dog’s response before getting the next prompt. Another drawback (especially for multiple dog households) is that the exercises are repetitive.
I get it. They want data that they can use. They usually have a baseline exercise, which you do a few times, then the real one, which might have a few variations. For example, you might put a treat under a cup while showing the dog where it is. Then you might introduce a second cup, but still show the dog where the treat is. Then you might pretend to put treats under both cups but point to the right cup. Then you have someone hold the dog where she can’t see you and you hide the treat and point to the correct cup … you get the picture. You do each step three to five times. Jana can lose patience. When I am testing one dog, the other rapidly loses patience as she waits (and waits, and waits) for her turn. And I don’t have a second person here to cover Jana’s eyes or whatever else is needed.
So, those problems aside, I have learned a lot from Dognition. The site includes lots of articles and information on canine cognition. They do a good job of explaining the science behind the games and the profiles. And they send occasional tips, games, and suggestions that can be done by one person. I’ve gotten some great ideas for games to play with Jana and Cali and experiments to do with my students and their dogs. And I enjoyed finding watching Jana’s progress through the exercises. I’m curious about how much usable data the Dognition team has gathered and how they are using it.

Amazing Restraint

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In Alberta’s Marshmallow Test, I described Alberta’s admirable ability to resist temptation in the form of a bowl of dog biscuits sitting alongside a water bowl outside a Michigan store. While I know personally of the hard work Alberta (and Deni) have invested in honing Alberta’s ability to resist food temptations, I also know that all dogs (with the possible exception of Cali) really are capable of learning self-restraint.
This ability is, I believe, evidence of their ability to understand what is the “right” thing to do in particular circumstances. It is certainly evidence that not all dog behavior is hard-wired or instinctive.
Some examples include dogs who learn not to take food from counters, tabletops, and plates, even when those are tantalizingly within reach. I could leave a steak dinner on the coffee table (at Jana’s nose level) and go out for an hour. If she knew that was not her food, it would all still be sitting there when I got back. Leaving it alone with impulsive youngster Cali would be a different matter, however.
An even more important example, and something anyone who lives near a road with traffic or who takes the dog for car rides should work on, is waiting at doorways. When we drive to the dog beach or park, the dogs are very excited. But even Cali, who is probably wriggling with excitement, has learned not to exit the car without explicit permission. And Jana and Cali have both learned never to bolt out the front door, not matter how seductively the park across the street beckons, no matter how many cats, UPS delivery people and mail carriers are passing by … no matter what.
I argue that these are examples of dogs “doing the right thing” because I know that they are not afraid of being punished and that these efforts are rarely rewarded. Well, at the dog beach, they do get to go play — but even when someone slips up, the worst consequence is that she’s sternly instructed to get back in the car and wait, and then released a minute later to play. The girls are not following the rules because they think they will be horribly punished if they do not. They are not expecting any significant reward, especially for resisting the impulse to run out the front door. They are doing what they know is expected of them in these common situations for no reason other than they know that it is the rule.
In fact, we ask dogs to resist behavior that comes naturally to them all the time. We ask them not to chew and lick at their itchy spots. We ask them to resist humping other dogs. We ask them not to bark at the neighbors or the mail carrier, even when he is invading their turf. We ask them to ignore food (and things they consider food) on the ground, to not chase cats and squirrels encountered on walks, and to walk nicely on a leash.
We do ask a lot of them, don’t we? And most dogs, most of the time, live up to our very high expectations. Especially if we practice with them and do reward them sometimes.
I think that we humans take it for granted that dogs should follow our very human-centered rules. I am suggesting that we look at things from their point of view once in a while, recognize how truly counter-intuitive it is for a dog to resist food that is just sitting there or to abstain from chasing that cat out of the yard. We need to recognize that our dogs pass their own marshmallow tests, every day, many times a day — and reward their efforts with praise and pats and, at least occasionally, yummy treats to reward their restraint.

Alberta’s Marshmallow Test

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In the 1970s, a psychologist tested the self-restraint of preschool children. Each child was offered a marshmallow. The children were told that they would get two marshmallows if they could delay eating the treat, and then left alone in a room for fifteen minutes. The researcher recorded what happened. The efforts of some children to stare down the treat or to distract themselves from it are both comical and painful to watch. Of course, some children inhaled the treat as soon as the researcher left the room. A recent book (The Marshmallow Test) describes this experiment and the follow-up studies of those children. The marshmallow test and other research on the ability to delay gratification shows that those who can exercise self-control in the face of temptation have better “life outcomes,” as measured by a variety of criteria, including SAT scores, social and cognitive functioning, long-term health, and retirement planning.

What does all of this have to do with thinking dogs?
Alberta experienced her own version of the marshmallow test recently. To say that Alberta loves treats is a bit like saying that I love chocolate. Alberta not only loves treats, she is not terribly fussy about which treats she gets. For sure, there are better treats, for example this bison and beef jerky concoction that I get at Costco and that, for some reason, Jana, Cali, and Alberta will do anything for. But ordinary, boring biscuits are fine too, and they are happily accepted as rewards for a job well done.

In her guide dog work, Alberta comes across many items that fit this dog’s definition of “treat,” and she works very hard to resist bits of food that just happen to be lying on the floor.
Alberta is justifiably proud of her hard-earned restraint, but more importantly, she wants Deni to know. So, in the course of a day’s work, if Alberta sees food on the floor and gives it a wide berth, she also nudges Deni to make sure that Deni knows just how good she is being. She pushes Deni hard with her nose, hoping that Deni will notice the ignored object. She often nudges Deni right near the pocket where Deni keeps the dog treats, just in case Deni might want to reward this extraordinary show of restraint. A girl can hope, can’t she?

Alberta knows the rule that she can’t grab food off the ground when she’s working. She wants to believe that that rule does not apply when she’s off-duty (her harness is off). She also knows that, even while working, she’s allowed to take treats that Deni hands her for particularly notable service. But she recently encountered a situation that blurred these lines a bit, a marshmallow test for dogs. Her reaction was remarkable.
Guiding Deni down a street in Saugatuck, Michigan, Alberta (along with her entourage of two other human family members) passed by a store that not only had a full doggy water bowl sitting by the sidewalk, but also a full bowl of doggy cookies. Just sitting there for the taking. An open invitation. Irresistible.
Or not.
Alberta headed for the water, took a drink, noticed the cookie bowl and … stopped dead. Confused. She looked at the biscuits. Looked at Deni. Furrowed her brow. Looked longingly at the treats. But she did not touch the treats.
We’d all stopped to watch the unfolding marshmallow-like drama. Alberta really wanted to gobble up as many of those dog cookies as she could. But she did not take one. She did, however, look at every one of us to make sure that we all knew how good she was being. Deni rewarded her by picking up a few biscuits from the bowl and handing them to Alberta.
Watching the interaction, I got to thinking. Most dogs who walk by this shop are not trained service dogs. Though many, like Jana and Cali, have had some training and certainly know that they are not supposed to just devour everything in sight, they don’t always have the restraint to follow through. Having more than once found myself alone with a new box of Trader Joe’s dark chocolate peanut butter cups, I can relate.
I wondered how often a doggy passerby just digs in and eats all the cookies in the bowl. How many battles between hungry hounds and their hapless handlers has the shop owner witnessed? Does the handler ever win? And really, what was that shop owner thinking?

But back to Alberta. In need of photos for this blog post, I asked Deni to re-create Alberta’s marshmallow test. The photo gallery (presented in order) at the top of this blog post shows that, like the successful children in the original marshmallow test, Alberta devised a series of ways to distract herself. Some of the children looked away, as Alberta did. Some sang songs or recited the alphabet. Alberta did neither of these. Some children closed their eyes. Upon realizing that, even after she had turned away, the bowl of biscuits was still there, Alberta closed her eyes.

Alberta has not only learned to resist random bits of food on cafeteria floors, sidewalks, and the like, but there she was, on that Michigan sidewalk and again in Deni’s office, passing up food that was obviously meant for dogs, placed there for her enjoyment. This shows us that dogs are able to do some high-level thinking and processing.

If Alberta were purely instinct-driven, that bowl would have been emptied in seconds flat. If she were operating only out of fear of punishment or hope of reward, she might have surreptitiously sneaked a mouthful of biscuits before Deni noticed, just to see if she could get away with it — and been rewarded by the treat, even if she got scolded after. But she went beyond a gut-instinct response and even beyond the basic (low) level of moral development that governs much of human and animal behavior. She paused, checked in with Deni, and did the right thing — even though she really wanted those cookies. We’re eagerly looking forward to seeing Alberta’s SAT scores and are consulting her for retirement advice. But in my next post, I will describe more practical ways we can apply the doggy marshmallow test to our relationships with our dogs.

Ready to Rally?

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Alberta accepts her ribbons after earning her Rally Excellent title
Alberta accepts her ribbons after earning her Rally Excellent title. Deni and Alberta are the first guide dog team to earn an Excellent title. They have already two of ten needed “legs” toward their Rally Advanced Excellent title. 

I’ve watched both formal Obedience competitions and Rally-O (or Rally Obedience) competitions, and the difference is as stark as the difference between traditional training and cognitive education.
Both have the same goal: demonstrating a dog’s ability and willingness to follow specific commands when cued by the handler. They use similar sets of commands. Competitors are scored based on the preciseness of the dog’s response, the accuracy in completing the set of commands presented, and the time it takes to accomplish each task. Above the novice level, dogs compete off-lead. Dog-and-handler teams can earn titles in both kinds of competition.
That’s about where the similarity ends.
Rally is variable. The course is different in every round. The judge sets up the course within an hour of the competition; which exercises are included and in what order is a surprise for handlers and dogs. Formal obedience competitions, on the other hand, follow a set pattern of exercises at every level of competition. Experienced dogs and handlers could run the pattern in their sleep.
While competing, Rally handlers talk to, praise, and encourage their dogs. In the lower levels, the handler can use targeting and clapping or even touch the dog! Formal Obedience handlers cannot interact with their dogs other than to issue each cue, verbally or through hand signal, once.
To my (very biased) way of thinking, Obedience competition is all about showing the dog who’s boss (hint: it’s not the dog). Rally is about relationship and having fun. I strongly favor anything that builds relationship between dogs and their humans. Rally acknowledges the uniqueness of how each handler and dog interact as a team. Rally allows each team to excel in its own way.
The differences between Rally and Obedience underscore the differences in traditional vs. cognitive approaches to teaching dogs. If all you care about is getting an instant, precise response to a command, traditional obedience will do it for you. But that approach limits what you can accomplish with your dog and defines your relationship inside very narrow parameters.
Expecting precise, predetermined, responses to every cue essentially forbids your dog from thinking. There is a single correct response to each cue. Any other response results in punishment or lack of reward. The dog is not allowed to think about how to respond. Nor can the dog think of a better way to respond. When a dog schooled in this way confronts a situation that is slightly different from the training scenario, that dog will not know what to do. If the precise, rehearsed response is not possible or ineffective, the dog faces certain failure.
On the other hand, a dog who is taught with a cognitive approach will be able to figure out how to apply his or her learning in a variety of situations.
Here’s an example. Let’s say there are two dogs who have been taught to retrieve as part of their education. The obedience trainer, focused on the next competition, polishes his dog’s retrieve. The dog can flawlessly follow instructions to watch where the dumbbell was thrown over a jump, go out over the jump (even if a bad throw makes this the least efficient way of reaching the dumbbell), and bring it back, jumping over an obstacle on the way back. Perfect every time.
The cognitive trainer also teaches retrieve, but in a more jumbled way. Sometimes the dog retrieves a dumbbell. Sometimes it is the newspaper on the front porch. As training progresses, a set of keys, a cellphone, a pair of glasses, a spoon, a pen, a bottle of water are added. Sometimes the dog can see the item; sometimes the dog must search for it. Sometimes, it is an item that the handler has dropped. Sometimes it is the pair of slippers in the other room. The dog trained cognitively to retrieve has learned to follow her handler’s point, gaze or verbal cue for the item that needs to be retrieved.
Which of these dogs is more likely to fetch your keys if you drop them and they bounce, landing under your car? Which will find your cellphone when you fall and need help?
The dog who is trained only to produce a rote response will freeze when the dumbbell is not where he expects it to be or the judge produces a leather dumbbell when he has only practiced with a wooden one. This dog knows the retrieve as a patterned set of responses: sit, stay, go out, come back, sit in front holding the dumbbell, release, finish to a heel position.
This is different from understanding the reason behind a retrieve.
The dog who is trained to think about the retrieve as a practical skill, figure out the goal, and find a solution — the cognitive dog — will size up the situation and, chances are, do what needs to be done, even when it is not expected. I know more than one dog who has taught himself an “automatic retrieve,” picking up anything the handler drops, as a result of this style of retrieve training. Dogs who are allowed to freelance by adding variations to the task based on understanding the goal, will do so. This can come in handy when the handler unknowingly drops important material — like money.
Cognitive education enhances communication between dog and humans.

The Daily News

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A very young Jana fetches The Jerusalem Post
A very young Jana fetches The Jerusalem Post

Jana spends considerable time on every walk catching up on the local news. She sniffs out the usual trees and bushes on our daily route. When we take a different route or an extra walk, I know to leave extra sniff time.
But that’s not enough for my newshound. Jana does her best to ensure that I, too, have a steady stream of news and information. Knowing how sadly lacking my sense of smell is — and sensing my inability to understand the dog news, should I somehow manage to gather it — she wants me to read the daily paper.
Since our recent move, we’ve had Sunday-only delivery of The New York Times. But every morning, Jana has headed to the gate with an eager expression and a spring in her step. Bringing in the paper has been her job. Forever. She fetched The Jerusalem Post as a puppy. As a secular dog, she resented the lack of a Saturday edition.
As a young adult, she fetched the Boston Globe, carrying it the length of a very long driveway. (At one point, she suffered the humiliation of having to fetch it wearing a long leash, the result of an unfortunate decision one morning to take off after a jogger, rather than bring the paper home.)
She has fetched the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, the St. Petersburg Times (and, more recently, the Tampa Bay Times) and, last year, the San Francisco Chronicle. For the Chronicle, she was forced to fend off a job-stealing challenge from puppy Cali; having held on to her position, she proudly, carefully, carried her prize a great distance to our little rural cottage each morning.
So, when we moved to Petaluma, Jana simply could not understand — or accept — my decision to take Sunday-only delivery. Online news access, it seems, is an even more foreign concept to dogs than to us over-40 humans. I am fumbling along with it, but she refuses to accept this transformational technology and the havoc it wrought in her world.
I simply could not face the daily sad face, the disappointment. She’d head happily to the gate, and I would open it and show her: no paper. Her head would hang, and she’d slowly walk back to the house. Unemployment. Downsized. Made redundant by a computer. Unneeded. The worst fate for a smart, educated adult. Jana could relate. It was a terrible thing to watch.
So, I upgraded my newspaper subscription.
Now, our paper appears at the gate daily. Not rain, nor sleet, nor snow … even better than the mail, since we get seven-day-a-week service. Every morning, even before the sun comes up, Jana has a paper to retrieve. Full employment has returned. Jana’s sense of self-worth is restored.
Life is good for this thinking dog.

You Need a Large Toolbox

Pam Hogle The Thinking Dog Blog , , , , , , ,

I met a wonderful family recently. They are puppy raisers for a guide dog school in the Northeast (one of the best assistance dog organizations that I am familiar with, Guiding Eyes for the Blind, in Yorktown Heights, NY). They told me a story that perfectly illustrates the importance of knowing and treating each dog as an individual.
The ability to lie still and just hang out is a crucial skill for service and guide dogs in particular, but, really, all dogs need to learn to do this. After all, we humans can rarely provide 24/7 entertainment and fun. Even if we could, this would be over-stimulating for the dog. Dogs need to learn how to calm themselves and just chill out.
These puppy raisers said that the way they had originally learned to teach dogs the importance of just being still (often using a cue like “settle”) was to give the dog food treats as rewards for lying quietly near them. For many dogs, this works well — the dog can initially be rewarded simply for lying down (when working on a strong “down”), and, very gradually, the rewards can be delayed until the dog has remained quiet for a few seconds, then 10 seconds, 15, etc. When the dog is able to relax in place for longer times, intermittent treats, with the interval getting longer, can reinforce this behavior and convince the dog that just lying there really isn’t so bad.
What was wrong with this approach? For many dogs, nothing. Then there were those extremely food-focused dogs. Funny how many of those are Labs and goldens — the very dogs that service and guide organizations use the most. Some of these dogs, it seems, would take to asking for food. The more independent ones would cut out the middleman entirely and start looking for dropped crumbs on the ground. These behaviors are annoying in any dog, but particularly unacceptable in a dog who works in public. These dogs need to learn to ignore tempting morsels in restaurants, supermarkets, and other places where there could be food on the floor.
So, the trainers came up with a solution: Reward the dog for lying quietly with a very gentle stroke along the dog’s back. Not active petting or interaction; simply a single, gentle, calming stroke. Again, for many dogs, this is indeed a desirable reward and something that will even deepen the calm, relaxed state the dog is in.
Then there are all of those other dogs. The ones that get wildly excited at the slightest stimulation. Even reaching toward these pups to stroke them is likely to be read as an invitation — and is more likely to elicit a play bow than a calm, relaxed dog. Or the dogs who regard touch as an invitation to cuddle or the ones who roll on their backs to solicit a belly-rub at the slightest hint that a hand is near. And don’t forget our analytical canines — the ones for whom touch is not rewarding, those whose social styles tend more toward more reserved contemplation of humans than actual up-close-and-physical contact.
You get the picture. This method of rewarding lying still is not going to work for all dogs — any more than food rewards would work for all dogs. That is exactly the point of using a cognitive approach to teaching dogs: Treat each dog as an individual. Starting with that essential principle, we can figure out which dogs to reward with food, which to reward with stroking — and which need something else entirely.
There is no one correct way to teach or reward any particular behavior, as my new friends learned. And individual dogs may respond to different rewards at different times. Applying this knowledge has made them better puppy raisers — and, I am sure, better people.
The methods and rewards are as varied as the dogs (and trainers) are. Be on the lookout for new ideas and ways of teaching or rewarding a dog. Every trainer needs a constantly expanding toolbox of techniques.