Right Praise, Wrong Praise

A young boy of about 12 years old took his older, well trained dog to the Cedervale ravine to enjoy some leash free time at the dog park.  The boy stood in the center of the dog park but was beginning to get perplexed about his dog’s unusual aggressive behaviour.  It was so out of his character.  You see, every time another dog came up to this friendly boy, his own dog would jockey for position between the boy and the approaching dog (signal 1) .  If the approaching dog didn’t move away, then the boy’s dog would subtly barr his teeth and growl (signal 2), then aggressively chase the other dog away (the final signal).

 

The boy didn’t see these signals, and he certainly didn’t like how agitated his naturally calm dog was becoming.  He couldn’t understand why his dog was so ‘upset’.... so each time the dog came back to him he hugged him and whispered soothing things to him (wrong praise).  

As I watched this pattern repeat itself three or four times, I could easily see the unconscious lessons the boy was teaching his dog.  The dog was also becoming confused... why is he suddenly being asked to protect his brother?  That’s a stressful job, but it keeps getting reinforced (soothing whispers and hugs).

Dog’s live in the moment.  They serve their masters.  When their masters praise them, dogs do more of what they just did in that moment.  Unconsciously, we praise our dogs when we say their names, when we touch them, when we channel our love to them.  This is such a subtle thing, but humans don’t have the same levels of present moment awareness as our dogs, so it’s not subtle to them at all.  

The style of praise that the boy employed was perfect... just imperfectly timed.  A nice correction at the time of signal one, followed by a ‘sit’ command, followed by the exact same praise teacher the dog that this behaviour is unneeded.  Now the dog knows not to protect his brother.  Now we have a calm, well behaved dog again.  

End of story.