by The Crunchy Canine | Nov 30, 2023 | BLOG
Did you know that every breed has a purpose? Every bred was bred for a specific job. Many people buy a dog based on looks, or because they met one or two dogs of a certain breed, and thought “wow I really like this breed, I think I should get one”. The problem is that without doing any research on the breed, you might be in for a big surprise when the dog is displaying the exact behaviours they were bred to do (the behaviours you may not like). We get MANY inquiries for dog training where owners are complaining about their dogs behaviour and when we see what breed the dog is, we know that this owner did not do their research. It is the owners responsibility to learn about the breed, and find out how they can meet the dogs needs and keep them happy and fulfilled. It is not the dogs responsibility to go against their genetics and conform to meet the human’s wants simply because the human did not do their homework.
So what is it that your dog was bred to do? Even if you already have a dog, and you did not research the breed, it is not too late. We see people learn, evolve, grow, and adapt all the time to the dog that they have! It comes down to what are you willing to do to be a better more educated dog owner.
Here is a list of the top 15 most common breeds and/or breed categories that we see in pet dog homes that often display behaviours that the owner was not prepared for and what they were bred for:
- German Shepherds – Bred for herding and guarding sheep. They are extremely athletic, and while they should be friendly they are bred to be inherently leery of people outside of their inner circle (which is why they make great guard or protection dogs).
- Retrievers (Golden Retrievers, Labrador Retrievers and Poodles) – Bred to retrieve water fowl for hunters. Love water, will fetch/retrieve indefinitely. Strong drive to work and put objects in their mouth.
- Hounds (Dachshunds, Beagles, Coon Hounds etc) – Bred to follow their nose. Tracking is their main purpose in life. Their nose will override almost anything else. Incredibly independent, bred to work and cover plenty of ground.
- Mastiffs (English, Bull, Cane Corso, Dogo D’Argentina etc) – Bred to guard and protect homes and property. Instinct to protect from other animals including dogs and large animals like bulls, bears and even lions.
- Rottweilers – Bred to protect and guard livestock and property. Naturally leery of outsiders.
- Dobermans – Bred for protection. A guardian breed, naturally suspicious.
- Terriers (Jack Russel, Parsons, Yorkshire, Wheaten etc) – Bred to hunt and kill rodents and small animals. Strong prey drive and willingness to not back down. Will shake and kill small animals. One of the more intense working breed categories.
- Boxers – Originally bred for hunting and guarding. High energy, protective in nature.
- Pointers (Weimaraners, German Short Haired Pointer, Vizla etc) – Bred to hunt large game and adapted to smaller animals. They excel in hunting pointing, and retrieving.
- Border Collies & Australian Shepherds – Bred to herd livestock. Intense drive to control and move other animals and people. Bred to use their mouth to control livestock as well by nipping at heels/ankles.
- Bernese Mountain Dogs – Bred to pull carts and to drive cattle, as well as protect livestock from predators.
- Doodles (all of the varieties) – Half retriever, half whatever they are bred with. You can get the best of both worlds or the worst of both worlds.
- Spaniels (Cocker, Springer and Brittany) – Bred to flush out game for hunters. Natural swimmers and will retrieve water fowl.
- Schnauzers – Bred to hunt vermin and protect livestock.
- Huskies & Malamutes – Bred to pull heavy sleds and cover ground. Malamutes were also bred to protect their families.
by The Crunchy Canine | Oct 27, 2020 | BLOG
Leash reactivity…what is it? Does your dog have it? Is it aggression?
Fix Leash Reactivity
Let’s unpack what leash reactivity is. When a dog is on leash, and has a reaction to certain triggers/distractions. These reactions can be minor like change in posture or panting, to something more severe like lunging and barking. Luckily, for most dogs reactivity does not equal aggression (though sometimes it does).
Why does my dog have leash reactivity? There are a few different possibilities to this question. First, many overly friendly dogs who are leash reactive are excited when they see another dog. They may end up barking, jumping around, hitting the end of the leash and carrying on. Often these dogs are dogs who attend dog daycares, dog parks, or are allowed to go up and say hi to most dogs they see on a walk. While this type of dog is not aggressive it is often embarrassing for the humans and often stressful for the other dogs. Another reason your dog might be leash reactive is barrier frustration. Think of a dog who is barking when it is behind a fence or in the house behind the window.
A leash acts as a barrier, and when it is tight dogs can become frustrated. This type of dog is usually fine to see dogs when there are no barriers present. The next type of reactivity is fear based. When a fearful dog sees another dog and he reacts, in his mind he made the scary thing go away. Often this dog has had one or more negative experiences with another dog or is due to lack of exposure to dogs (though usually it is caused by a bad experience). These dogs usually can warm up to other dogs once a proper introduction has been made.
The last type of leash reactivity is true aggression. This is uncommon but does exist. This is a dog who definitely wants to hurt another dog. It is rare this type of dog can be fully trained out of this and may need management for the rest of it’s life. Luckily it is rare to see true aggression.
How do I fix reactivity? While the reason your dog is reactive plays a small role in the training plan to resolve the behaviour, in the end the recipe will remain similar if not the same regardless of the reason.
The core foundation of working on reactivity will revolve around 5 key factors.
Distance – When it comes to addressing reactivity, we want to meet the dog where they’re at instead of trying to muscle through the situation. What we mean by this is if your dog is in the grade school equivalent of Kindergarten, then don’t put your dog in a grade school level above their skill set, like say grade 6. In order to stay within their skill set we need to find out what our dog’s threshold is for success.
Say your dog can see another dog at 40′ but at 35′ your dog starts to pant, and their tail goes up, you need to start working with your dog at 40′. When you push the dog past their threshold you are in essence muscling through it. In this scenario 40′ is the dog’s threshold and would be what we consider to be where the dog is able to learn. If you push the dog too far (or too close) then your dog will no longer be in a learning state of mind. If your dog is freaking out, lunging, barking, and carrying on, they cannot learn.
Movement – Part of working through reactivity is to use movement to help keep our dogs calm. If you consider your dog like a pressure cooker when you ask him to sit still, it is far more likely they will explode. If you keep them moving (with some strategy as movement alone will not necessarily fix the issue), you can help them feel more calm. Another reason to use movement is because if say when we see a dog, we panic, we pull our dog off to the side, and we either distract them or we let them stare the other dog down, we are also ourselves being reactive.
Our goal is always to achieve a neutral response to things around the dog. If when we see another dog, we either a) rely on distraction or b) pull our dogs off to the side and let them stare, our dog is not neutral at all. A neutral response to seeing another dog or trigger would be to see it, look at it for 1-3 seconds, look away and carry on.
Correction – In order to disagree with reactivity we need to be able to correct the unwanted behaviour. However, we do not rely on correction alone. So many people have tried correction alone and it rarely works out for them. Why? There are a few reasons so let’s discuss. First is timing. Most of the time we see people waiting for their dog to be reactive in order to want to correct them. If your dog is blowing up it is too late, very few dogs will respond to a correction when they are already losing their mind. Second is how firm of a correction is given.
We are not saying you need to do a double handed yank on the leash, but if your correction is too soft it will have no meaning to the dog. Lastly, the type of training tool used. Tools are not all equal and a correction given on a harness will not yield the same results as a remote collar, head collar or prong collar. Tools do matter and it will take you a VERY long time to work through reactivity on a harness.
Reward – We use a lot of food rewards in our training, and working through reactivity is no different. You might see other trainers trying to use food to distract, desensitize or counter condition the dog, but they we we use food is to reward the dog for every good choice they make. That might mean we reward them for less than perfect choices so long as it is better than the alternative choice they would have made before. You will often hear us talking about naming and explaining as well which is a type of perception modification used to help the dog feel better about their surroundings.
The way we use N&E is when our dog notices something (anything not just their main triggers), we will tell them what it is. For example “that is a car, yes” and then feed. Your tone should be neutral like you are saying to them it is just a car. You can use multiple rewards for one trigger which can be super helpful in stressful situations. The idea is that not only are we helping the dog feel better but also creating what we call a cut off cue.
Dog looks at the trigger, then looks at you for the reward. This is creating muscle memory in the brain that the dog is not to hard stare at the trigger, and can relieve stress by simply looking away. We also want to remember that improvement should be rewarded even if it is not perfect. If your dog is better than they were even 1 minute ago, you can reward that despite the fact that they may not yet be perfect.
Repetition – An important element to resolving reactivity is repetition and practice. Reactivity does not go away over night and will require plenty of practice before they get to neutral. We recommend setting up as many practice sessions as possible. This may mean driving outside of your neighbourhood to say a dog park to practice outside the park. When do you stop practicing? When your dog no longer needs the practice. Simple as that. That could be a couple of weeks, that could be two months. The better you follow the plan the sooner you will no longer need to practice!
by The Crunchy Canine | Jan 15, 2016 | BLOG
Puppy Socialization
What is puppy socialization? Recently I shared an article explaining my hate for dog parks. OK, hate might be a strong word…more like my strong dislike for dog parks. If you read the article you will understand why I dislike them so much (if you did not read it here it is http://www.kdmathews.com/-bark-blog/just-say-noto-dogparks).
When people get a new puppy or dog, everyone says “oh you have to socialize them right away”. Somehow, somewhere the definition of socialization turned into taking your dog to the dog park to be around as many dogs as possible regardless of their temperament or disposition. Don’t get me wrong, I love the IDEA of the dog park. Dogs, off leash, enjoying the company of other dogs and people. Sounds lovely doesn’t it? Unfortunately too many dogs who shouldn’t be at the dog park frequent on a daily basis. Unfortunately, most dog owners have no idea what to look for in a dog who should or should not be freely socializing with other dogs. Unfortunately, not enough people are advocating for their dogs (and maybe they just don’t know how or that they should). Unfortunately, this leads to dogs being bullied, dog fights, and dogs who were once confident around other dogs leaving fearful and insecure. Just last week we were training our dogs outside of the Grimsby Dog Park and saw a dog fight break out within 10 seconds of one dog entering the park…not to mention the over adrenalized dogs running around in pure chaos, the humping (ohhhh the humping…non stop humping), and owners off in their own little world chatting or on their phones.
So now that we’ve cleared up with a brief overview as to why I do not like dog parks and why they should not be your “go to” for socializing your puppy or dog…you’re probably still wondering what the heck you CAN do to socialize your dog! Socialization needs to be productive and positive. Yes, getting your puppy around other dogs is important but it needs to be around the right dogs. One bad experience can affect your puppy for the rest of their lives. Most dogs who are reactive or dog aggressive were not born that way. More often than not, there was at least one bad experience that caused the behaviour and many owners can pin point that experience. The risk of taking your puppy or dog to the dog park is far too great and is not worth the potential consequences. Take your puppy or dog to group training, find a trainer who holds socialization classes, or find some friends or family with a nice balanced dog. However, getting your puppy or dog around other dogs is not the only component to socialization. Most behavioural issues come from fear, lack of confidence, lack of trust in handler, and not learning to follow. More important than letting your dog play with other dogs, is to expose them to as many positive experiences as possible in a variety of different ways. If you want to ensure you have a confident and happy dog who can go places with you then you need to take your dog to different places, let them explore different sounds and smells, touch and feel all kinds of surfaces. Here are some examples of what you can do:
- Take your dog to different dog friendly stores (most banks, Lowes, TSC, Rona, and many more).
- Using a long line (or off leash if your dog has a solid recall), allow your dog explore parks, trails, fields etc.
- Find any unique surface and encourage your dog to explore it (bridges, jungle gyms, tarps etc).
The benefits of giving your dog plenty of exposure to these different situations will in turn produce a confident dog who can handle most of what life throws it’s way. If you only take your dog to the dog park for socialization, you can expect the one time you decide to bring your dog into a new situation he will be anxious, misbehaved, and it will not be enjoyable for either of you.
If you need help socializing your puppy or dog please contact us for a FREE evaluation at 905-869-1170!
Happy Training
Katherine Vooys
Canines In Balance
Hamilton, Ontario
puppy socialization
Puppy socialization
