From the editors of PROPER GREETINGS: Stop Your Dog from Barking & Jumping when the Doorbell Rings

Transcription

1 From the editors of PROPER GREETINGS: Stop Your Dog from Barking & Jumping when the Doorbell Rings

2 Training Your Dog Not To Jump Up Good greetings make good neighbors By Pat Miller, CBCC-KA, CPDT-KA, CDBC sits, or at least has four feet on the floor, then turn back to greet the dog. Ask your dog to sit and reinforce by petting him if/when he does. There s a common misconception that dogs jump on people to establish dominance. Balderdash! Dogs jump on people because there s something about jumping that is reinforcing for the dog - usually the human attention that results from the jumping. If you want your dog to stop jumping on people, you have to be sure he doesn t get reinforced for it. Here are five things to do when your dog jumps on people: 1. Interrupt. Minimize the reinforcement your dog gets from jumping on someone by cheerfully removing him from the situation as soon as possible. To that end, you may want to leave a tab attached to your dog s collar when he s around people - a short (4 to 6 inch) leash that makes it easy for you to lead him away. Don t leave the tab on your dog when he s alone; he could get it caught on something. 2. Manage. When you know your dog is likely to have trouble controlling himself, put his leash on before he can jump on someone. When you see the jumping-up gleam in his eye, restrain him to prevent the reinforcement he gets from the initial contact. Other useful management tools to prevent reinforcement include strategically located tethers, baby gates, doors, exercise pens, and crates. 3. Educate. Tell friends, family and even temporary acquaintances what you want them to do if your dog starts to jump up. Insist they not reinforce jumping up behavior - even those friends who claim they don t mind! Educational options include telling them to: Greet your dog before he jumps, perhaps even kneeling to greet a small dog. Back away from your dog (if you have your dog on leash) and wait for him to sit before greeting or petting him. If he jumps up while you are petting him, simply stop the petting and take a step backward. Resume petting only if he sits. Toss a toy conveniently provided by you to redirect the dog s behavior before the jump happens. Walk away from your dog through a gate or door and close it behind them to keep the dog on the other side. 4. Train. Of course you need to practice polite greetings in the absence of the exciting stimulus of guests and strangers by reinforcing your dog s appropriate greeting with you and other family members. Be sure to take advantage of the presence of guests and strangers to reinforce your dog s polite greeting behaviors while you re managing with leashes and tethers. 5. Apologize/take responsibility. It s your job to prevent your dog from jumping on people, even when they say they don t mind. If your management efforts fail and your dog does jump up, apologize. If in the process of jumping up he puts muddy pawprints on a business suit, snags a pair of nylons, knocks down a small child, or otherwise does some kind of property damage - even if the damage is minor - be responsible and make amends: pay for the cleaning bill, purchase a new pair of nylons, buy the child an ice cream cone, or do whatever you need to do to repair the damage. Then redouble your training and management efforts. Turn and step away from your dog until he The Whole Dog Journal Proper Greetings 2

3 Unwanted Barking at The Front Door Here's how to teach your dog to behave calmly when someone is at the door By Pat Miller, CBCC-KA, CPDT-KA, CDBC Unexpected visitors have pulled into your driveway, exited their car, and are walking up the steps to your front door. You brace yourself. You know what s coming next. Ding-Dong, goes your cheerful doorbell, and your dog charges to the door, unleashing a frenzy of ferocious Is your dog a nightmare when people come to the door, or a dream? Mostly it depends on what you do following the knock or ringing of the doorbell. Running to the door yelling, "I'll get it!" will likely inspire your dog to do the same! barking. Frustrated and angry, you yell at her to be quiet - to no avail - while you try to grab onto her collar and open the door to greet your guests. Her doorbell display is so embarrassing that you re becoming more and more reclusive, meeting friends at restaurants rather than inviting anyone to your home for social events. Don t despair; you re not alone. In fact, doorbell arousal behavior is pretty common. And there is hope. Why doorbells? Thousands of dog owners around the country have canine family members who present similar distressing doorbell behaviors. These dogs may be naturally somewhat protective, and quickly come to associate the ringing doorbell with the presence of an intruder on their property. Barking at the bell may send a serious Go away or I ll eat you message. Even when there s no aggressive intent, the excessive vocal display serves to announce an event they want the rest of the family to be aware of. Someone s here! Someone s here! If a doorbell-aroused dog is very social, his frenetic barking may also signify an excited, Hurry, hurry, hurry and let em in so I can jump all over them and say hi! From early puppyhood, dogs realize that the ringing of the doorbell itself is an event - it gets you excited. Really. What happens when the doorbell rings? One or more humans in the home jump up and move quickly to the door, usually with human body language arousal signals, including fast movement, alert or excited facial expression, tension in the muscles, and loud vocalization ( I ll get it! or Be right there! ). It s no wonder our dogs learn to get excited right alongside us as we dash to the door, barking our heads off. It doesn t even have to be the doorbell. Some dogs are equally aroused by a knock at the door, or the sound of footsteps up the walkway, or even a car pulling in the driveway. These are all things they ve come to associate with the excitement of the event - someone coming to, and often coming in, the door. Manage, modify, train A good doorbell manners program is a combination of management, classical The Whole Dog Journal Proper Greetings 3

4 conditioning, and operant conditioning. Ideally, you implement the program before your dog learns inappropriate door behavior. If it s too late for that, it s never too late to start changing behavior. If you start by programming appropriate classical and operant responses to door arrivals from day one, your dog will quickly learn incompatible operant behaviors in response to the environmental cues that someone is approaching his home. He will also make a different association with the arrival of guests, and as a result his emotional response will be relaxed and positive. If you re having to undo previously programmed inappropriate behaviors, your training and modification program will take longer, but you can still accomplish your goal of calm instead of chaos when visitors arrive on your doorstep. Here are several options for achieving doorbell calm: Mostly classical: Classical conditioning means giving your dog an association between two stimuli. In the case of the doorbell or other arrival stimuli, you re going to convince the part of your dog s brain that controls emotion (the amygdala) that someone ringing the doorbell, knocking on the door, or walking up your front steps makes absolutely wonderful stuff happen. For our classical conditioning purposes, wonderful stuff likely means very high-value food, such as canned chicken (rinsed and drained), or some other moist, meaty, tasty treat that she doesn t get in the normal course of events. 1. Have your dog on leash, preferably some distance from the door, and a large supply of very high-value treats. 2. Instruct another family member to ring the doorbell. Immediately feed your dog a highvalue treat. Or ring the doorbell yourself and feed a treat, if a helper isn t available. Look for a remote battery-powered doorbell at the hardware store or on the Web - one that sounds like your existing doorbell. Alternatively, you could record the doorbell ringing, and play the recording. Or download a recording of a ringing doorbell from the Internet and play that. (You can find doorbells, knocking, and just about any other sounds you can imagine online at findsounds.com/isapi/ search.dll.) Practice at least twice a day, five minutes per session (more is better) until your dog looks happily to you for a treat when she hears the doorbell ring. This is called a conditioned emotional response or CER. Note: If your dog already goes from zero to 100 the instant she hears the bell, you can reduce the intensity of stimulus to keep her below threshold by starting as far away from the chime box as possible, by reducing the volume of your chime box if you have that feature, or by using the recorded doorbell sound and turning the volume down low enough that she doesn t go over threshold immediately upon hearing it. Part of your program will then also include gradually increasing the volume of the bell, before you move on to Step When you are getting consistent CERs from your dog at the sound of the doorbell, repeat the exercise with your dog off-leash, a short distance away from you. When she looks at you with her Where s my chicken? CER and walks the few steps to you, feed her treats. You are adding operant pieces to her behavior now: she has the classical association between doorbell and chicken, but she s choosing to come to you. That s operant behavior. 4. When she ll hustle to you from any point in the same room, build in a sit before you feed the chicken - more operant behavior. You may need to cue it at first, but your goal is to create an automatic sit, so that when the doorbell rings she runs to you and sits politely every time. You can encourage your dog to sit with your body language - stand up straight, and move your hand toward your chest if necessary - and eventually fade those cues by minimizing your movements, until she offers sits automatically. 5. Gradually increase the distance between you and your dog, until she comes running to you from any room in the house when she hears the doorbell, and offers a sit. 6. Now practice Steps 1 through 4 with real visitors coming to the house. You may have to The Whole Dog Journal Proper Greetings 4

5 bribe your friends with the promise of food; schedule a dinner party but ask your guests to arrive at 5- to 10-minute intervals so you get several practice sessions in a short time. If your friendships are strong you can even ask them to leave and come back a few times during the evening so you get more chances to practice. When your dog is solid on the Step 5 behavior, you can slowly begin to diminish the frequency of your treat delivery. Make it random; don t just suddenly stop treating, but skip one here and there, and use some other form of reinforcement that your dog loves, such as happy praise, a scratch in her itchy spot, or her favorite toy. Eventually you can phase out treats altogether, but be ready for remedial practice sessions if her door manners start to deteriorate. Utilize the same process for door knocks, for people coming up the walk to your door, and for cars pulling in the driveway. Associate the stimulus with good stuff in order to give your dog a different behavioral response to the various sounds of visitors arriving. Mostly operant: Alternatively, you can choose a training approach that focuses on operant behavior from the start, by simply teaching your dog that the doorbell (or knock) is her cue to do a specific behavior, such as lie down on a dog bed you ve strategically placed in your foyer, or run to her crate in the living room. For best results, use backchaining for this exercise, meaning you ll teach the last piece of the behavior first, and build backward until you ve completed the entire behavior chain. If you re going to teach your dog to lie down on a dog bed in your foyer, it would look like this: 1. Stand a foot from the bed and either lure or shape your dog to lie on the bed. To lure, say Go to bed! or Doorbell! or whatever cue you want to use, put a tasty treat in front of her nose and lure her onto the bed, then cue her to lie down. Click and give her a treat. To shape the behavior, wait for any micromovement toward the bed: even just a glance or a lean toward it. Then click and toss a treat behind your dog so she has to get up to eat it. When she comes back toward you (and the bed) take advantage of the reset to click while she s moving, and toss the treat to reset her again - giving her another opportunity to move toward you (and the bed) and get clicked. When you have shaped her to go to the bed and lie down on it, then add your cue. 2. When your dog will lie down on her bed on cue when you are a foot away, move another foot away from the bed and repeat the exercise (this part should go quickly). 3. Gradually move farther and farther away from the bed, making sure she does the go to bed behavior reliably at each new location before increasing distance. Practice from all different directions, until she will go to her bed on cue from anywhere in the foyer. In a mostly operant approach, you teach your dog to perform a specific behavior such as go to his bed using the doorbell as the cue. For this, you ll need a helper to ring the bell. 4. Now add the doorbell as a new go to bed cue. Whenever you add a new cue, you put it in front of the known cue, so you will ring the doorbell, then say Go to bed, and click and treat when she complies. You are saying to her, Dog, this ding-dong sound means the same thing as your go to bed cue. 5. With repetitions, you will see her start to move to her bed when she hears the doorbell, The Whole Dog Journal Proper Greetings 5

6 even before you give the verbal cue. This means she s made the connection between the new doorbell cue and the old verbal cue. Click and jackpot with several treats one after the other when she lies down on her bed. You may need to remind her with the verbal cue few more times, but she s there. 6. Now increase distance until she ll go to her bed upon hearing the doorbell cue from anywhere in the foyer, and then generalize to anywhere in the house. Now when your dog hears the doorbell she ll automatically run to her bed from anywhere in the house, and lie down. If you prefer the crate in the living room scenario, just substitute crate for dog bed and follow the same steps. Note that while you were focusing on operant behavior in this training approach, your dog was also getting a positive classical association with the doorbell, because she was getting treats in close proximity to the sound of the chimes. Classical and operant conditioning are always both in play, even when we re focusing on one or the other. Management: As you work to create associations, modify behavior, and train new operant responses to the doorbell and other visitors arriving cues, you ll want to include the always useful management piece of your behavior program. When your dog has successfully arrived on her bed - either in response to your in-progress verbal cue, or to the doorbell itself - you can tether her there to prevent an after-thefact aroused rush to greet your guests. To reinforce polite greeting as well as appropriate doorbell manners, offer your visitors treats and ask them to walk over to your dog and feed her treats as long as she is sitting or lying down. Tell them that if she stands up, jumps up, or barks, they should step back, wait for her to sit again, then feed her the treat and give her a scratch under the chin. Note: If your dog barks aggressively at guests as they approach her on her tether, you ll need a separate behavior modification program for the aggression. Please consult with a qualified positive behavior professional for assistance with this behavior challenge. Meanwhile, teaching your dog to run to her crate may be a better option for her than running to her bed in the foyer. If you ve chosen the crate instead of the dog bed, management is as simple as closing the crate door. When your guests have been greeted and made comfortable, barring aggressive behavior you can let your dog out, on-leash if necessary, for introductions. Depending on the degree of your dog s doorbell arousal, baby gates and closed doors, or even a leash, can also effectively dampen or divert intense guest-arrival behavior. Other options There are many other creative options for programming or modifying doorbell behavior. Here are three. Try changing your doorbell sound. If your dog has a very strong emotional response to the existing doorbell, it will be easier to give him a new association with a new sound. Don t actually use it as your new doorbell until you ve conditioned a very positive response for your dog (or trained him to perform an appropriate operant behavior in response to the new chime). When your training is completed, then substitute the new doorbell in place of the current one. Get a toy: You can teach your dog that the doorbell is her cue to run to fetch a toy. You can toss the toy for her to fetch (have her offer a sit first!), and thus focus her energies on the toy instead of the doorbell or your guests. You can also teach her to take the toy to your visitors, and construct a polite greeting behavior that includes sitting until they toss the toy for her. Manners Minder: This unique remote treatdelivery gadget was developed by veterinary behaviorist Sophia Yin for a variety of training and behavior applications, including door manners! The concept is simple. When you push a button, the unit beeps and delivers a The Whole Dog Journal Proper Greetings 6

7 treat. Your dog makes the classical association between the beep and treat, and quickly learns (operantly) to run to the machine when she hears the beep. The beep becomes the cue to run to the machine. Then add the doorbell as the new cue to run to the machine, as in Step 4 of the mostly operant approach, above. Ring the doorbell, beep the beep, and the machine delivers. When the doorbell alone sends your dog to the machine, fade the beep cue by utilizing the mute feature of the remote: you press the button to deliver a treat but no beep occurs; the doorbell alone sends your dog to the machine for her treat. Gradually increase your dog s distance from the machine so the doorbell sends her running to her Manners Minder from anywhere in the house. It takes work, but it works! So there you have it: lots of ways to install appropriate doorbell manners in your dog. They work. One of my early clients had an Australian Shepherd with inappropriate doorbell behavior; she would run to the door barking fiercely when the doorbell rang. In a matter of just three weeks, Sasha learned to run to her bed and lie down calmly at the sound of the doorbell. Her owner was amazed and delighted. So was I. The Manners Minder is a useful tool for teaching your dog to go to a designated spot on cue. Operated by a remote control, it allows you to dispense a treat (from a dog-proof reservoir) to your dog at a distance from you. Reinforcing a Proper Greeting A level approach By Pat Miller, CBCC-KA, CPDT-KA, CDBC Recently, the Peaceable Paws Training Center switched its group class format to Levels. Instead of a progressive curriculum with new exercises introduced each week, dogs and humans learn and practice a small, fixed set of behaviors until they re ready to progress to the next level, where they begin working on new skills. One of the Level 1 skills is polite greeting. Because it can be a challenging behavior to teach, it s often the one that keeps a student in Level 1 the longest. Because it s an important good manners social behavior, it s also a Level 2 and Level 3 skill. The polite-greeting skill difficulty increases with each level. For Level 1, the dog must sit for greetings and not jump up in at least 8 out of 10 times as someone approaches. For Level 2, the dog sits for greetings, and the greeter pets the dog on his head or scratches under his chin without the dog jumping up at least 8 out of 10 times. In order to complete Level 3, the dog must be able to walk up to another dog and human, with dogs walking on the outside, further away from each other, human on the inside, closer together, as they approach. Both dogs stop and sit while handlers stop, greet each other, shake hands, and walk on. (This is one of the 10 tests a dog must pass in order to achieve a Canine Good Citizen certificate from the American Kennel Club.) So how does one go about teaching this desirable good manners behavior? It should come as no surprise to regular readers that the answer involves reinforcing the behavior you want, and making sure the behavior you don t want doesn t get reinforced. On-leash, with strangers Start with your dog on leash next to you. Have your helper approach and stop just out of leashrange, holding a tasty treat high against her The Whole Dog Journal Proper Greetings 7

8 chest. Hold the leash and stand still, waiting. Your dog will eventually get frustrated that he can t jump on the helper, and he ll sit to figure it out. The instant he sits, have your helper click her clicker (or use a verbal marker such as the word Yes! ) and pop the treat in your dog s mouth. This is called reinforcing an incompatible behavior. Your dog can t sit and jump up at the same time. If he consistently gets reinforced for sitting and doesn t get reinforced for jumping up, he ll choose to offer the behavior that gets rewarded. When your dog is sitting, relax the tension a tiny bit so he s holding the sit himself, not being restrained by the leash. Only give him a little bit of slack, so you can prevent him from contacting the approaching person if he decides to revert to the jumping-up behavior that (probably) has a long history of reinforcement. Keep repeating this exercise. It can take as few as a half-dozen repetitions for your dog to start sitting as the helper approaches. At that point, if he tries to leap up to get the treat when it is offered, have your helper whisk it out of reach and say Oops! in a cheerful voice, and wait, just out of jumping range. When your dog sits again, your helper clicks (or says Yes! ) and offers the treat again. Your dog will soon learn to sit tight in order to get the treat instead of jumping for it, because jumping makes the treat go away. In a variation of this exercise, you can click and pop the treat in his mouth when he sits. If you do it this way he ll start looking at you and sitting when a person approaches, instead of looking at the person approaching. Repeat this exercise with as many different humans as possible: big ones, little ones, kids, seniors, dads carrying babies, moms carrying briefcases, and so on. When you re out walking and a stranger admires your dog and asks if she can pet him, hand her a treat and have her do the exercise. You ll be amazed by how quickly your dog starts sitting as he sees people approach him. NOTE: In these exercises, it s important that you wait for your dog to sit of his own volition; do not ask him to sit. You want him to choose to sit without being asked, and the way to achieve that is to simply ignore the behavior you don t want and reward the behavior you do want. If you ask him to sit, he may learn that he should sit for Large dogs and small can be a frightening site to strangers. Teaching proper behavior in public is a must. people when you (or they) ask him to, but he s allowed to jump up if you don t ask. On-leash, alone Okay, so you don t always have a friendly helper handy. You can still practice this exercise on your own, by attaching your dog s leash to a solid object. Better yet, use a tether: a plastic-coated cable with snaps at both ends. One end can be secured around a heavy piece of furniture, or attached to a strategically placed eye-bolt. Or you can attach the tether to an eye-bolt screwed into a block of wood, slip the cable under a door, and close the door; the door holds the tether in place. Walk about 30 feet away, then turn around and start walking back to your dog. As long as he is sitting, keep approaching. The instant he jumps up, stop. When he sits, move forward again. In this exercise, the reward for sitting is simply that you come closer. You can give your dog a food treat when you reach him and he s still sitting, but you don t have to toss him one every time he sits. If you want to experiment with variations on this exercise, try turning your back on him or actually backing up a step when he gets up, and see if that convinces him to sit even faster. The The Whole Dog Journal Proper Greetings 8

9 idea here is that not only does the reward (you) stop when the dog gets up, the reward (you, your attention, and treats) actually goes farther away! Off-leash practice You come home from work, walk in the front door, and see your 80-pound dog flying over the back of the sofa. You know a brutal greeting is coming. There s no leash to restrain him. What should you do? Turn your back on him! Watch him out of the corner of your eye, and continue to turn away and step away as he tries to jump on you. Again, in a surprisingly short period of time your dog will sit in frustration to figure out why he s not getting his ration of attention. The instant he sits, say Yes! in a happy voice, feed him a treat, and pet him if he enjoys being petted (not all dogs do!). Yes, you have to have a treat with you when you walk in the door. I suggest keeping a jar of tasty biscuits on the front stoop. Or keep cookies in your pockets all the time, like I do. If he starts to jump up again after he eats the treat, turn and step away. Keep repeating this until he realizes that Sit! gets the attention, not Jump! You want to be sure to give the click or Yes! marker when he is sitting. Click (Yes!) means, Whatever behavior you are doing at the instant you hear this word has earned you a treat reward. Because all living things repeat behaviors that are rewarding to them, using the click and reward for the sit will increase the likelihood that he sits when he greets people. If he s consistently rewarded for sitting, and never rewarded for jumping up, he ll quickly learn that jumping up is not a behavior worth offering. When you do this exercise, be sure you don t teach your dog a behavior chain a series of behaviors that get connected or chained together because the dog thinks the reward is dependent on the performance of all the behaviors, not just the last one. Sometimes we use behavior chains to our benefit. A dog can learn to run an entire obstacle course for a reward at the very end without any direction from the owner because the obstacles have been chained in a particular order. In the case of jumping up, if you re not careful, your dog might learn the short behavior chain of jump up, sit, reward. The way to avoid this is to look for, and frequently reward, the times when your dog sits without jumping up first. We have a tendency to ignore our dogs when they are being good, and pay attention to them when they are doing inappropriate behaviors. If you remember to look for opportunities to reward the good behavior of sitting, your dog won t think he has to jump up to get your attention in order to get a reward for sitting. Incompatible behavior This works if your dog responds really well to the verbal cue for sit or down. When your dog approaches you, ask for a sit or a down before he has a chance to jump up, and reward that behavior with a click and a treat. With enough repetitions, he ll learn that the sit or down gets rewarded, and he may start to offer them voluntarily. Be careful; as noted above, he may learn to sit if you ask, but jump up if you don t. Caution: This approach works only if your dog is very responsive to the cue to sit or lie down and does it the instant you ask. If you have to repeat the cue several times with your dog jumping up on you all the while, you are paying attention to him (rewarding him) for jumping on you, thereby rewarding that behavior and teaching him to ignore your verbal cues for sit or down at the same time. Oops! Putting the jump on cue I recommend this only when someone in the family finds a dog s antics endearing and wants to be able to invite him to jump up. In this case, you teach your dog to jump up on a particular cue such as the word Hugs! (not patting your chest, as too many well-meaning strangers and children will likely invite the behavior), and teach him that the only time he can jump up is when someone gives the cue. This means that he gets rewarded only when he has been invited to jump up, and never gets rewarded for jumping up without an invitation. My now-long-gone terrier-mix, Josie, was allowed to jump up if I got on my knees, patted my shoulders and said Hugs! Not many wellmeaning strangers and children will do that! The Whole Dog Journal Proper Greetings 9

10 jumping. If you put your mind to it, it may be easier than you think! Pat Miller, CBCC-KA, CPDT-KA, CDBC, is WDJ's Training Editor. Author of numerous books on positive dog training, she lives in Fairplay, Maryland, site of her Peaceable Paws training center, where she offers dog training classes and courses for trainers. Teaching a dog to jump on cue is a behavior that may make sense in some households. Time out on a tether Put a comfortable rug or bed at each tether location. When your dog is out of control and jumping on the company (or you!), he gets a cheerful, Oops, time out! and a few minutes on his tether. If you know in advance that he s going to maul Aunt Maude the instant she walks in the door, clip him to the tether before you open the door, and release him once he settles down. (Have Aunt Maude practice some polite greeting approaches while your dog is tethered, if she s able and willing.) If you release your dog and he revs up again, just do another Oops, time out! Remember, despite your frustration over his behavior, this is a cheerful interlude, not a forceful punishment. He ll learn to control his own behavior in order to avoid time-outs, and you won t need to yell at him. Jumping up is a normal, natural dog behavior. Like so many other normal dog behaviors that are unacceptable in human society, it is up to you to communicate to your dog that jumping up isn t rewarded. Help him become a more welcome member of your human pack by rewarding an acceptable behavior that can take the place of The Whole Dog Journal Proper Greetings 10