Basic Obedience Course and Dog-Aggressive Dogs

My closest (canine) friend is Donna. I have not sent her to the Basic Obedience Course for companion dogs and their humans.

Checking out a new Basic Obedience Course

Quite some time back, we were invited to participate in a Basic Obedience Course (henceforth BOC, because I am too lazy to keep typing that! :D) which would cost us a few hundred dollars.

We’ve had Donna for about 7 months now and although she’s 4 years old, hardly a puppy, we did discuss between ourselves whether we should go to a BOC. There’s lots of good reasons why anyone in our shoes should go to one.

• we are first time dog adopters, and therefore dog dummies who haven’t the faintest clue
• we are first time dog owners, and therefore dog idiots who haven’t the faintest clue
• we are first time dog humans, and therefore dog morons who haven’t the faintest clue
• we really didn’t have anyone in our immediate social circle who could give us the advice or help that we need when it comes to helping our dog adapt to her new home and to us
• the Project Adore guidelines in our country require mongrel adopters to complete the Basic Obedience  Course (BOC)
• a dog can only be tested and given the Good Canine Citizen certificate after attending the BOC
• and I guess, it will pave the path to other courses like agility, etc

Perhaps you are wondering why we have not even completed a Basic Obedience Course at this stage. The reasons are simple:

• We haven’t a clue how to go about selecting a good trainer or a basic obedience course
• We haven’t a clue which trainer or basic obedience course is held by a certified trainer and government-accredited
• We haven’t a clue if all BOC tests and gives out a Good Canine Citizen certification at the end of the course, or we should really just go to the SKC (Singapore Kennel Club)
• It seems a little silly to shell out hundreds of dollars to enrol in a course that teaches our dog to sit, stay, come and walk by my side when we already practise that with our dog daily.
• We are awesome at procrastinating! Sorry to disappoint you :P

So back to that specific BOC course we were invited to. It was rescheduled because of the haze, but there was a preliminary discussion held in Whatsapp between the trainer and the potential attendees, who listed the reasons why they were considering getting educated on dog obedience training – jumping on people, dog-dog aggression, destruction of furniture, running out of the bathroom all wet after taking a shower, pulling on walks, barking non-stop at humans at the door, etc. You get the drift.

Why we decided this Basic Obedience Course is not the right fit for us

We decided this particular dog training course was just not for us. Aside from the fact that Donna has none of these problems  (although she does like to poison herself on occasion 1 and 2 when she was not supervised – -! ), the deal breakers were: –

1. there would be at least 2-3 dog-dog aggressive dogs obviously with handlers who need help handling them and we were not comfortable with the idea of bringing our some times fearful dog into that sort of situation.
2. and it appeared the trainer intended to manage this situation by putting all the dogs in choke collars. Not ideal for us.

Dogs tilt their head when they are puzzled :D

Speaking for ourselves, Donna has been doing fine on the martingale collar, which from what I read was designed for dogs like her with their necks larger than their heads. Should we put an obviously obedient dog in a choke collar, just so that we can bring her into a situation where she can proceed to pull and choke herself should she get too excited or fearful in reaction to the many dogs attending the training? There must be other courses out there better suited to what we would like to do with our dog. So we opted out of that course.

Donna in her martingale collar, staying on the park stool patiently while I take her picture. 

But for the other humans in the chat group at least, they really thought they needed help. Some of them have been to other trainers and it didn’t work out. This trainer did come highly recommended by the source that invited us in the first place, so I would understand if they continued with the training despite any doubt that they may have.

Is it possible to positively train a dog-aggressive dog to behave calmly?

And honestly speaking, how do first time dog adopters like us even know how to positively reinforce a dog-aggressive dog to not be aggressive when it’s already busy lunging at and making “tiger-faces” at the other dog? We don’t know! We are NOT trainers. If I have a dog-aggressive dog, and I haven’t yet found a trainer that I am comfortable with to help me, what can I do?

Then I remembered this video I watched quite some time back from Kikopop, where she talked about counter-conditioning her dog to stop reacting to humans and dogs when they were out walking. And what she did was to treat her dog Splash every time she sees a human/dog approaching and passing by them. After a while Splash took the appearance of human/dog as a predictor of treats and started to look at Kikopup for a treat instead of reacting to the other human/dog. (This video has more detail than my brief summary here. It really helped me to understand the importance of timing and the way the treat is delivered when it comes to counter conditioning a dog because of the detail she went into. )

Disrupt the bad behaviour you want the dog to stop even before it starts

Quoting from Linda’s recent post – “Dogs do not know what they should be doing unless we teach them.  Teach your dog to sit for greeting and there will be no jumping on people. Teach your dog  loose-leash walking and there will be no pulling on the leash.”

So rather than letting the dog go into its typical aggressive behaviour, the key seemed to be to start training it to understand that walking calmly by the human’s side is the behaviour expected of it. Once the dog is good at walking by the human’s side, it may then be exposed in small increments to whatever it gets reactive to on walks. The human needs to manage its reaction by rewarding it when it is calmly walking while the human/dog is going to or is passing by e.g. in the opposite street, before the dog has the opportunity to go into the behaviour it is used to, i.e. lunging at/barking at the other dog.

At least, theoretically that is how I understand it to work. :P Am I right?

Just reading what I type above, I get the feeling that it may be a process that takes a long time, especially if the human is busy at work and only has scant hours to spend with the dog before bedtime. It will take the human patience and consistency to get it to work.

Perhaps that is why some humans find it more efficient to resort to choke chains as the short term solution?

But for us, we do prefer finding ways to teach and encourage the dog to do what the human prefers him to do in a fun manner, as much as we are able to. Even humans will give up doing something after a while if it’s not fun! :P

Friendship – gives us a supportive base to work from. Donna agrees with me :P (Nah, she was just sitting and waiting for her toy to be thrown so she could scramble after it.)

Next, what looks like another good resource to refer to – 7 things that helped my dog aggressive dog – is a forum thread that has people discussing this same topic. My dog is not dog aggressive, so I can’t really say if it works, but the advice is pretty interesting. (If you click and check it out, tell me what you think about it! :P)

Home-schooling while looking out for a good Basic Obedience Course

So like I said, it has been about 7 months and we are still playing around with the idea of attending a Basic Obedience Course sooner or later. We probably are harder to please since we want to find a positive reinforcement trainer that we are comfortable with. (Trainers here don’t really identify their training methods when they advertise Basic Obedience Courses :( )

Still this blog journals our progress with Donna, and largely I do feel that we are not doing too badly. Of course, that may just be my ego talking! :P Heh~ Feel free to take me down a peg or two. Good advice always appreciated!

But Thank You Internet for all the amazing dog trainers and enthusiasts who publish information freely for dog idiots like us to reference! :P Just so we can home-school our dog in the meantime while trainer hunting! :D

P/S: It’s not a bad idea to try to home-school a dog. At the minimal, it is still bonding time with the dog. Do read and discern because not all advice on the Internet is good. And if you find that you are getting nowhere with the dog training, it would still be a good idea to get in touch with a responsible/experienced trainer rather than to do it all by yourself.