Blog Post first written for Janice Jensen-HK Animal Speak

Whilst I was in Amsterdam recently I had an opportunity to visit one of the many parks in the middle of the city.  Although Amsterdam itself is a really busy city with many cars, trams and particularly bicycles coming from all directions which made crossing the street fairly challenging, the park was an oasis of peace and quiet. The park covering a number of acres included some small lakes and waterways, but what was very striking was the number of dogs in the park. Some were on the lead enjoying a stroll in the sunshine with their owners but most of the dogs were off-leash and having a wonderful time playing chase with other dogs, fetching balls or frisbees for their owners and quite a few were swimming in the lakes and the Labradors and Retrievers were certainly enjoying the chance to fetch sticks from the water.

The experience was memorable because it reminded me that in Hong Kong there are so few opportunities for dogs to interact or to play or to practice their social and communication skills when meeting and greeting each other. Of course it isn’t just the opportunity to meet other dogs that makes a visit to the park so important but also the chance for dogs to become used to the many things in the environment that they will encounter and be expected to cope with in their day-to-day life such as children, prams, bicycles, unfamiliar people and strange noises.
Even though dogs and cats have been domesticated for thousands of years we must never forget that each new puppy and kitten comes into the world having to learn about us and the environment in which we live. Socialisation is the process during which puppies and kittens develop positive relationships with other living beings, including humans, their own and other species. The main aim is to better equip our companion animals to cope with life in the context of humans and to be able to fulfill the sometimes unrealistic expectations we impose on them.

The most sensitive period of behavioural development in terms of socialisation is from 4 to 14 weeks in the puppy (but particularly between 4 to 8 weeks) and from 2 to 7 weeks in the kitten. This means that receptivity to socialisation is at its maximum during these periods although of course the learning process continues throughout the animal’s life.

Socialisation should include introducing your puppy in particular to a wide variety of experiences, particularly to unfamiliar people. It is not enough to introduce the animal to people in general but to as complete a range as possible – tall men, short men, men with beards or glasses, teenagers wearing hoodies or baseball caps, people carrying bags or rucksacks, elderly people who walk differently and who may carry a stick, children, babies, people in uniforms such as the postman or wearing a motorcycle helmet, people riding on skateboards or bicycles, pushing a pram or out jogging. Your pet should also be introduced to other animals including other dogs and cats and if appropriate to small domestic animals such as rabbits, guinea pigs or caged birds. However when introducing another species especially if one is the predator and the other is potentially the prey, then great care must be taken to avoid causing stress and fear.

As well as socialisation we also talk about habituation which is the process whereby an animal becomes used to non-threatening things in its environment and learns to ignore them. This can include a number of novel sounds such as fireworks, thunder, the vacuum cleaner or hairdryer or the sound of children or babies crying for example. We also need to introduce a variety of environments such as a visit to the veterinary clinic, built-up areas which have a lot of activity and bustle but also quieter areas such as the country park or recreational playgrounds as well as visits to other people’s homes.

Novel objects can also be perceived of as threatening if not introduced early and in a non-threatening way. Common objects that may result in a fearful reaction are household appliances such as washing machines or tumble driers, traffic including bicycles and skateboards as well as children’s items such as prams or pushchairs, dolls and squeaky toys. You should also ensure that your pet becomes habituated to experiences such as being handled for grooming, examining paws and teeth, visiting the vet, going into lifts or travelling in a car or public transport.

Dogs are pack animals with a basic desire to please and their social structure enables them to integrate relatively easily into human society. However the cat has a very different social structure and although the cat is a social animal, in the wild its social behaviour is based on small groups of related animals that share the rearing of the young. In terms of its survival the cat is a solitary hunter and so generally has no real need to interact in a physical way with its owner. This is why it is so important to expose cats when they are young to social contact with people in order to prepare them for the owners expectations of close physical contact. During the socialisation period kittens should be lifted frequently and gently restrained and stroked over their body to prepare them for the cuddling that most owners want from their cats. However most owners do not realise that this is totally alien to the cat, which finds being restrained with all four feet off the ground very threatening as it prevents them from fleeing which is their primary form of defence.

The experiences an animal has during the socialisation period will have a major influence on its developing personality and how it gets on with people and other animals when it grows into adulthood and positive experiences during this time go a long way to preventing asocial behaviour, fear and biting. However these positive associations must continue throughout the animal’s life.

Unfortunately many animals a kept either at the breeders or in pet shops until well past the critical socialisation period and have little or limited stimulation. But even when this is not the case there is also a problem when animals are kept at the owner’s home until the vaccination programme has been completed which again is often after the socialisation period had passed. The potential for behaviour problems caused by inadequate socialisation can then be made worse when combined with the limited opportunities for continued socialisation in a place such as Hong Kong where there is a shortage of places like the park in Amsterdam for dogs to meet up. However there are things we can do to reduce the risks and next time I will be discussing the steps you can take to help ensure that your pet is happy and confident in a variety of situations. We would all prefer our pets to be outgoing rather than the shy retiring type!

Blog Post first written for Janice Jensen-HK Animal Speak

There are certain principles that underpin all learning and which we can use whenever we attempt to change behaviour, including human behaviour. Even aversive training methods work within these basic laws of learning, although I want to focus on the more positive methods.

Unfortunately there is no universally accepted definition of learning. But we do know that learning involves some change in behaviour. Without this change we could not say that learning had occurred and the change must persist over time. However whether that behavior is performed or not is also influenced not just by learning but by other factors such as motivation, physical ability, and opportunity. For example in one experiment a mouse placed in a complex maze and left to explore for a few days, wandered about randomly. The mouse was then removed and placed back in a specific spot in the maze with a piece of cheese but not allowed to finish it. The mouse was then placed back in another location in the maze where it promptly made a beeline through the maze to where the cheese was. Although the mouse had learned the layout of the maze in the time when it appeared to be randomly wandering about, what is clear is that the mouse had no reason or motivation to display that learning.

We can see therefore that motivation is a powerful factor in whether a behaviour is performed or not and is something that we as owners need to be able to influence.  As one well known behaviourist and trainer Pam Reid said, “Motivation is like the gasoline in your car – without it, your car can’t go anywhere”. Owners also have to consider whether there are competing motivations at times, which may well influence whether an animal performs a behaviour. For example on a walk off-lead, a dog may well come back when it is called, in expectation of a reward but may be less willing to comply if it has a strong predatory drive and it has the opportunity to chase. This is also an example of behaviour being influenced by opportunity.

As we have said there may be physical restraints on whether a behaviour is performed. A puppy may have learned not to pee on the carpet but may not be physically able of controlling itself all the time until it is more physically mature. Similarly your old dog may not be able to respond to your command to “sit” because it has arthritis.

The scientific study of how animals learn grew out of studies carried out by psychologists who used animal models to study human learning as well as those of ethologists (behavioural biologists) who began to recognise that not all animal behaviour was innate or instinctive but was learned. We all know about the experiments carried out by Pavlov and the dogs that were conditioned to salivate at the sound of a bell. This type of learning is best known as classical conditioning but also as associative learning. This is the type of learning that occurs when the animal makes an association between events – when this happens another thing happens shortly afterwards. For example you bring the lead out and your dog will get all excited because it has learned that one event follows the other. There is a predictable relationship between the two and the dog responds to the first event in anticipation of the second.

The second type of learning is called instrumental learning or operant conditioning. This occurs when the animal learns that its behaviour has consequences. For example if you ask your dog to sit and he doesn’t, he doesn’t get a treat. The observation that the consequences of a behaviour determine whether the behaviour will occur again led to what is called Thorndike’s Law of Effect. If a consequence is pleasant, the preceding behaviour becomes more likely. If a consequence is unpleasant, the preceding behaviour becomes less likely. We can understand this even in terms of our own behaviour and it makes a lot of sense.

We can apply instrumental learning in four ways. Positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement increase the likelihood that the behaviour will occur again whilst positive punishment and negative punishment decrease the likelihood that the behaviour will occur in the future.

Positive reinforcement:

Good dog training is based on methods that incorporate positive reinforcement and involves adding a good consequence when a behaviour is performed. An example of this is asking your dog to “sit” and then giving him a treat.

Negative punishment:

This involves removing a good consequence when the behaviour is performed, for example not rewarding with a treat if the dog lies down when you have asked it to “sit”.

As far as the dog is concerned positive and negative reinforcement are both good, the first in that the dog receives something good and the second because something aversive is removed. Both results in the behaviour being more likely to occur in the future.

Positive and negative punishment from the dog’s perspective is bad and so the behaviour is less likely to occur in the future.

Although all of these methods are used in training, the use of aversive methods such as positive and negative punishment are fraught with the possibility of damaging consequences to the animal. Exposing animals to these techniques produces emotional side-effects that in themselves affect learning and because they are usually applied in an inconsistent manner, using them affects both the rate and extent of learning. If you make a mistake applying positive reinforcement the worst thing that might happen is that you might overdo the treats and end up with a plump dog or you may fail to get the behaviour you want . However, wrong or inappropriate application of aversive techniques, particularly physical punishment, may result in the animal becoming completely traumatized or injured and leads to a loss of trust and a breakdown of the human-animal bond.

The other drawback in using physical punishment is that whilst it may stop a behaviour that you don’t want, this is usually only in the short-term, firstly because we don’t bother to work out why the animal is behaving in a certain way and secondly because we have not taught the dog an alternative positive behaviour. Also in order to control the behaviour, we often have to resort to increasingly harsh levels of punishment.

I once knew a trainer whose method for dealing with an aggressive dog was to repeatedly string it up by its collar until it virtually passed out every time it exhibited aggressive behaviour. Not only did this kind of positive punishment not stop the behaviour, it actually made it worse as from the dog’s perspective the treatment only reinforced his belief that all humans were violent and unpredictable and it had to protect itself.

But when we choose to apply the laws of learning based around positive reinforcement we can achieve our aims more quickly, more efficiently and without the distress that often accompanies old fashioned and now discredited training methods. Remember a dog is more likely to respond in the way you want if the consequences are pleasant. More about the technique of positive reinforcement next time.

Blog Post first written for Janice Jensen-HK Animal Speak

The solution to behavioural problems as well as problems with obedience involves teaching the owner to be predictable and trustworthy and above all a good leader. But does learning to be a good leader mean that owners must dominate their dogs?

Interpreting information gathered from the study of captive wolf packs in the 1920’s and 30’s and assuming that this applied to canine social behaviour has had a huge impact on what can only be called popular dog psychology and led to dog training methods based on the dominance model.

Many of the old fashioned training methods, which unfortunately are still used even today, focused on punishing bad behaviour such as fear aggression or defying their owners in any way by using choke chains, prong or electric collars, throwing the dog onto the ground and forcing it onto its back (the alpha roll) and physical punishment. Some trainers even advised hanging the dog from its choke chain until it passed out! The name of the game was to win all aggressive encounters, regardless of the cause. These methods were all about forcing the dog to submit to the owner rather than changing the underlying emotional state that motivated or drove the behaviour.

Research on wolves in the wild (as opposed to the earlier studies on captive wolves) show that they live in a pack of related individuals and their social organisation is flexible depending on the availability of food. Normally only one male and one female within the pack breed at any one time and this top-ranking pair are called the alpha-male and alpha-female. Their role is to ensure the survival and continuation of the pack and this requires leadership and controlling shared access to resources. The other members of the pack share the rearing of the young and co-operate in hunting.

However the idea that dominance and rank is acquired through aggression and force is wide of the mark. Serious aggression resulting in injury and death reduces the ability of the pack to survive. Therefore successful leaders achieve high rank through proving their strength in play, ritualized mock fights and minor battles, as well as good social and leadership skills. Cohesion and co-operation not conflict ensures stability and survival.

More recent scientific studies have also shown that there are a number of difficulties in transposing studies on wolf behaviour to the domestic dog. Most importantly the role of domestication which we discussed last time. Domestication led not only to physical changes but also social changes.

Whilst wolves live in tightly knit packs of related individuals, free-ranging dogs exhibit more variability in their social structure forming loosely structured, often temporary groups with a tempered drive to attain high rank. These dogs also exhibit a less ritualized communications system and there is little collaborative hunting or care of offspring.

However in addition to the changes brought about by domestication there are many reasons why using the dominance model in dog training is a poor choice. In the wild when dominance is established by force it is aimed at gaining priority access to valuable survival resources such as food or breeding opportunities.

Dominance-submission is therefore irrelevant for most of the behaviours that owners want from their dogs such as walking calmly on the lead or coming when called. A dog that fails to perform such behaviour is not trying to establish a higher rank and since the behaviour is not motivated by the desire to become dominant, the use of aggression and dominance theory to change this behaviour is inappropriate. For example dogs that jump up are not exhibiting dominance but a natural greeting behaviour that can be changed through appropriate training rather than through dominating. There are also many reasons why you would not want your dog rushing out of the door first. – it might send you flying or it may rush on to the street and get hit by a car but the reasons for not allowing your dog to go out of the door first have nothing to do with dominance. However it is an easy concept to fall into because we are used to hearing how dogs are pack animals and we are the leaders of the pack and if we don’t dominate our dogs they will dominate us with dire consequences. This is a harmful concept and prevents owners from truly understanding their dogs.

It is natural behaviour for dogs to focus their efforts on accessing resources that are extremely important to them and which they know is going to have a positive emotional benefit or even to avoid something unpleasant.  This behaviour of course may conflict with what the owner expects. So how do owners deal with this?

Unfortunately people who rely on dominance to train their dogs may need to continue to regularly threaten them or repeatedly use physical force or an increasing level of force. Apart from the fact that punishment only suppresses the behaviour and usually only in the short term, punishment does nothing to modify or change the underlying behaviour, it destroys the human-animal bond because the dog comes to see the owner as violent and unpredictable and in many cases it just makes the behaviour worse or the animal becomes aggressive as it tries to protect itself. 

Leadership without force is established by consistently setting clear guidelines and limits for the dog’s behaviour and effectively communicating the rules by always rewarding correct behaviours as they occur whilst preventing or immediately removing the reward for undesirable behaviours before they are reinforced. The owner then becomes in the dog’s eyes trustworthy and dependable and most of all predictable. Instead of complying out of fear, dogs can then choose to follow the direction of their owner because it leads to rewards which further enhances and strengthens the human-animal bond and as animal lovers and pet owners isn’t this what we all want?

Blog Post first written for Janice Jensen-HK Animal Speak

Janice has very kindly asked me to contribute to the blogs on the HK Animal Speak website. As a veterinary behaviourist and long time resident of Hong Kong I hope to be able to add to the work that Janice is doing on raising awareness about animal welfare issues, but from my own perspective of the effect that animal behaviour and behaviour problems have on the human-animal bond and how this impacts ultimately on the welfare and survival of our companion animals.

In the weeks to come I will be talking about this as well as the specific behavioural problems that owners encounter and also about the social structure of our companion animals and they way they communicate with us. But before that I wonder how many of us ever think about how this magical and enduring relationship between man and dog came about in the first place and I thought this would be an interesting place to start.

Dogs were in fact the first animals to be domesticated by early humans and there has been much scientific debate with regard to the origins of the domestic dog and whether it involved species other than the wolf. Evidence from fossils in China and England dating back 300,000 – 400,000 years confirm that man and wolf shared a common habitat. But it seems that dogs did not emerge as a separate species until about 14,000 years ago when it appears that a hunting partnership developed between man and dog.  However as man moved away from being purely a hunter-gatherer, permanent settlements were established and the dog population proliferated.

Genetic evidence now clearly shows that wolves are the direct progenitor of the dog, although wolves and dogs are not only physically different (think Poodle!) but also demonstrate profound and consistent differences in their behaviour. This is due to a number of factors including the effects of domestication as well as selective breeding. 

There are a number of theories as to how domestication took place. One is that early humans adopted wolf pups and selected those that were more friendly and submissive and over many generations a tame and trainable domestic dog evolved. Another theory is that with the development of permanent settlements animals adapted themselves to a new niche – human refuse dumps. Dogs became highly successful scavengers and those that were less likely to flee from humans were the most likely to survive and a founding population of animals that were genetically isolated developed a loose association with humans, attracted by the accumulation of refuse around campsites. There was then a rapid expansion of the population so that by 8,000 years ago dogs were distributed world-wide.

Distinctive breeds resembling the greyhound emerged in Egypt 2,000 – 3,000 years ago and the Romans recorded the qualities and functions of 6 categories of dog. In Europe in the Middle Ages, breeds such as the wolfhound and deerhound began to emerge, but it was not until the 1870 when Kennel Clubs were established that the number of breeds proliferated from 15 in 1800 to more than 400 today, each one a direct result of artificial selection by man.

As you can see, the bond between man and his best friend, the dog, has a long history and by understanding the normal behaviour of our companion animals we can improve their welfare and strengthen that bond even more. But now, not only are dogs for the most part very different physically from the wolf, they also demonstrate great differences in their behaviour. The old theories that we could make assumptions about dog behaviour from examining wolf behaviour is seriously flawed and has led to all kinds of myths including the one that everyone knows about or thinks they do, and that is DOMINANCE. But more about that next time!