I got an interesting surprise today. I went to see a rescue Chihuahua mix who isn’t housetrained. Like all ‘rescue dogs’ the new owner said she was abused because she was fearful when she got her, about six months ago. I noticed a little sensitivity but nothing I would gauge as ‘fear’ in our greeting. She was hesitant about me touching her, even when I was sitting on the ground. So I decided to get started with the process. First thing \u2013 associate a clicker with treats. That is when I got the surprise. I clicked. She instantly jerked her head around and looked at the treat she obviously expected to be on the ground. It could have been a fluke so I tried it again. Sure enough, I clicked, she instantly was searching the ground for the treat. Hmmmmm.
\nHere’s the importance of this event. Somebody had taken the time to teach her that a clicker meant treats. They also taught her to do a 360 turn \u2013 but nothing else. They didn’t teach her to pee and poop outdoors. Imagine that. Or, maybe the original owner taught her that and put her into rescue because she couldn’t be housetrained.<\/p>\n
I got the 360 out of her by touching a treat to her nose and then retracting it. That is a great way to find out what a rescue dog knows \u2013 tease the heck out of them, get them frustrated and watch the behaviors start flying. As I was discovering what she knew, I talked to the owner and learned something \u2013 she’d been ineptly punished for having accidents. (I almost never use any form of punishment for housetraining \u2013 and I mean ‘almost never’. Most often that teaches sneakiness.) How did I know? The new owner had never seen her pee or poop. To expand the old question, “Does a bear poop in the woods?” the answer is, “Yes, right next to the dog.” Dogs do not naturally care where they pee or poop. They also aren’t bashful about displaying the process in front of people\u2026unless they’ve been punished for having accidents.<\/p>\n
The point of this is that reliable information from rescue people is like getting a beagle to give you directions to the rabbit \u2013 you have to keep quiet and let your powers of observation provide the answer. External events\/consequences have predictable influences on behavior. Withhold an expected treat and you get variability. Meaning the dog will do something different when they find out that their ‘one-trick’ repertoire has failed. The other factoid is that dogs only hide their business when they have connected peeing\/pooping + people = punishment. If you run into an adult dog and want to change its behavior or discover what it knows, start offering differing consequences for no reason at all. That will ‘frustrate’ the dog and start triggering other behaviors as it tries to figure out your particular form of insanity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I got an interesting surprise today. I went to see a rescue Chihuahua mix who isn’t housetrained. Like all ‘rescue dogs’ the new owner said she was abused because she was fearful when she got her, about six months ago. I noticed a little sensitivity but nothing I would gauge as ‘fear’ in our greeting. She was hesitant about me touching her, even when I was sitting on the ground. So I decided to get … Continue reading