(An article adapted from the United Kennel Club web site)

I spend a tremendous amount of my time studying wildlife. I’ve always been fascinated by wildlife of all kinds (okay, I don’t really care much for snakes). I have read everything I could get my hands on, watched practically every National Geographic documentary ever made, and observed wildlife in its natural habitat whenever the opportunity arose.

I’ve always been particularly obsessed with wolves. It has been a dream of mine to see a pack of wolves in the wild. That dream has yet to come true, but I have visited wolf sanctuaries where they exhibit fairly natural behavior, and I’ve read the books on pack order and watched hundreds of hours of them on tape.

Whenever I watch a pack of wolves interacting, the poor subordinate one at the bottom of the social structure always reminds me of a dog that was trained by the Koehler method of dog training. There is the poor omega wolf, slinking around the outskirts of the pack, groveling with his tail between his legs and his entire posture saying ‘don’t hurt me, I’m trying to do what I’ve been told, but I’m not sure I get it’. Of course, the minute the poor wolf oversteps his bounds, the alpha wolf nails him and the hapless omega, who is really only trying to elicit approval, slinks off in misery, wondering what it is he did this time that evoked the wrath of his leader.

When I was a teenager, Mr. Koehler had risen to popularity in the animal training world and his method of teaching obedience to dogs was one that was routinely used at training classes. How many of you remember that method? The basis of it was: put a choke chain on the dog, tell him to do something, and then yank the heck out of him until he ends up in the instructed position. The dog’s reward for finally getting it right (purely by accident, because he had no idea what the word, or the yanking, meant) was that the choking stopped. Just like the omega wolf that gets punished for overstepping his bounds, the dog, who is trying his best to figure out what in the world his boss wants, ends up confused and submissive due to the methods that are being employed in his ‘training’.

If you never saw a dog suffering through the Koehler method, it went something like this: Handler to dog-‘sit’. The dog has no idea what sit means, so he just stands there. At which point the handler jerks the leash upwards and backwards repeatedly until the dog loses his balance and lands in a sitting position, out of breath and very wary because in his mind, he was just punished and he has no clue why. Oh, the dog does eventually put two and two together and figures out that when the boss says ‘sit’, he better get in that position or he’ll get punished. However, along the way the dog loses his enthusiasm for learning and ends up submissive, confused, and overwhelmed; obeying commands only in an attempt to stay out of trouble, just like the omega wolf.

While my description might be over simplified, I lived through the Koehler era and I saw a whole lot of dogs trained with his methods by a whole lot of people who should never have been allowed to touch a choke chain. The bottom line usually was that the dogs eventually obeyed the commands, but had little enthusiasm for their work.

Seems like there must be a better way: and guess what, there is. It’s called Positive Reinforcement.

I’m getting to be an old war horse when it comes to dogs, having spent my entire life living with them; showing them, breeding them and interacting with them. One thing that I have learned is that a dog, like the omega wolf, will turn itself inside out in an attempt to earn praise and reward from its alpha (or master). Our dogs live to please us and they can become happy, well adjusted, well-mannered, trusted, and trusting family members who know their place in the household structure without the use of force or discipline, if we will just take the time to show them what we want and then reward their positive behavior.

Dogs are so well programmed to respond to positive reinforcement that they often create their own opportunities to be rewarded, based upon some minor routine that has occurred in their life. They figure out how to recreate a behavior that brought them a reward. Here are a couple of examples; one where I shaped a behavior in the dog and one where the dog figured it out herself and shaped her own behavior, and a behavior in me.

I have a Springer named Millie. She’s three years old and one of the coolest dogs I’ve ever owned. She was raised totally by positive reinforcement methods, and she grew up to be one of the most stable, cheerful and sensible animals I have ever had the pleasure to coexist with.

When she turned two, I started Millie on the treadmill in our basement for exercise. Before her first lesson, I put a package of chewy training treats in the cup holder on the treadmill. I walked her on lead to the treadmill, coaxed her to step up on it, and gave her a treat. When I first turned the treadmill on, I stood in front of it with a handful of treats and I encouraged her to walk by giving her treats. When I turned the treadmill off, I gave her another treat, took the lead off, and said ‘okay, you are done for today’.

After less than a week of this routine, Millie was flying down the stairs at every opportunity, racing to the treadmill, jumping on, and standing there waiting for her treat. So, she gets her treat, trots for 20 minutes on the treadmill, tail up and happy as can be, and when the timer stops the treadmill she stands there waiting for her final treat, then hops off and goes on her merry way. The training for this routine was accomplished with a minimum of fuss, and no stress on anybody. I get what I want (my dog exercised) and she gets what she wants (her treats).

Millie has also trained herself to exhibit behaviors that earn her rewards. I have five house cats. As I have dogs too, the only safe place for the dry cat food dispenser is on the kitchen counter. (I know, gross, but it’s granite and it doesn’t show footprints and the cats can’t scratch it, so who cares). The cats are sort of messy eaters so often there are pieces of cat food scattered around on that section of the counter close enough to the edge where the dogs can reach them. (I never said I trained my dogs to keep their feet off the counters.) Millie has learned that counter surfing is often productive. Sometimes though, normal counter surfing comes up empty because there are no cat food treats in reach. I guess on a couple of occasions when I saw Millie surfing without luck, I walked over and took some tidbits out of the cat food dish and gave them to her. After only a couple times of this, something in Millie’s not so little brain went ‘click’, and she created a behavior that gets her rewarded with cat food. She stands on her hind feet with her front feet on the counter, lays her head flat on the countertop, stares intently at the out of reach cat food dish, and wags her tail furiously. Of course, John and I find this hilarious and we react by stopping whatever we are doing and giving her what she apparently considers to be the doggy version of M & M’s: dry cat food tidbits. Millie is now so tuned in to the reward from this behavior that whenever John or I walk into the kitchen, she immediately lands in her favorite position, staring at the cat dish with great intensity and wagging her tail non-stop. If we ignore her for too long, she will give us a glare over her shoulder and then put her chin back down on the counter and go back to staring at the dish until we give in and give up the treats.

The positive reward method can be used to shape any kind of response in a dog. You can teach a dog to do virtually anything with this simple, effective method. The very first thing that I teach a litter of puppies is to go for a walk with me off lead, stay close, and come when they are called. I start when they are about six weeks old, just big enough to walk to the end of the yard and back. I fill my pockets with tasty treats and off we go. Every time a puppy comes over to me, I give it a ‘good puppy’ and a treat and then we keep walking. When I see a puppy headed toward me, I clap my hands and say ‘come’ and when the puppy gets to me I praise it and give it a treat. It doesn’t take long before the entire litter figures out that they are going to get a treat when they come up to me. They learn to pay attention to where I am, and they learn to come when called. Using this method, I have never had a dog that was born in one of my own litters that I couldn’t safely take for a run off lead.

One of the most useful things I think you can teach a young puppy is to ‘look here’. This is not ‘come’, it is a command that translates to the dog as ‘stop whatever you are doing and look at me’. I train my puppies to do this in the house where there isn’t too much distraction. Usually, just the sound of your voice will make a youngster stop and look at you, if only for a second. I start this training when the puppy and I are alone in a room. With a handful of treats, I say ‘look here’ and the second that the puppy looks in my direction I walk over to it and give it a treat. Then I go on my way. The key to this training is that YOU walk to the puppy and reward it; the puppy does not come to you. You are training the dog to focus its attention on you, not to come to you. I love teaching my dogs to ‘look here’ and I find it a useful command in many circumstances, not the least of which is in the show ring. A dog standing out at the end of the lead and focusing its attention on its handler, without benefit of having a fist full of food shoved in its mouth every ten seconds, is an impressive sight.

Rewarding positive behavior doesn’t always have to be about food, though I’ve always found that food is a strong incentive for just about any dog. Some dogs will react just as well to being rewarded with verbal praise, or a pat on the head. Some people use a clicker as a ‘bridge’ between the correct behavior and the food reward, but personally I think a clicker is just an extra middle step that isn’t necessary, unless maybe you aren’t coordinated enough to get the food to the dog at the right moment! Positive reinforcement is all about giving a dog the opportunity to clearly understand what it is doing and the chance to earn a reward by behaving correctly. It creates confidence, calmness, and a happy desire to get things right, as opposed to the old yank and snatch method, which causes confusion and often results in a dog that is resigned to avoiding punishment, not striving to achieve a reward.