News from Balance Behaviour
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Dogs shouldn’t be judged by human standards and greeting is no exception!
Dogs obtain a huge amount of information via scent – glands are located all over the body and these emit pheromones and scent that tell of age, hormonal status, diet, health, gender, mood and disposition. Dogs have amazing scenting ability and have around 220 million scent receptors as compared to our 5 million, but more than this they can discriminate between scents to an incredible extent too. For example, a dog can detect Butyric acid (found in in sweat), so this is why they can be so good at tracking, it is estimated that the sweat left in a shoe print is way above their threshold – so a piece of cake…. When we consider that proportionally the area of a dogs’ brain devoted to interpreting and analysing scent is around 44 times larger than ours it is obvious that olfactory communication is extremely important to the dog, at least as important as sight is to us as humans. This is why dogs smell each other thoroughly – this is a way to obtain detailed information about their social counterpart.
Well before scent takes over dogs receive a vast amount of information at a distance through visual cues – tail, ears, body stance, muscle tension and eye contact are at play and give the social partner a good idea of the dog’s mood even before meeting. Dogs can visually read a territory and another dog instinctively and quickly – in fact dogs have also become very adept at reading human emotion through ‘left gaze bias’ which is only useful for reading human faces – dogs don’t need this to read each other’s emotional state but do use this technique on us just as we use it on each other completely subconsciously!
The greeting between dogs is highly ritualised and between a balanced pair of dogs that have had adequate input from Mother and siblings it looks like a dance, the more confident dog will sometimes approach the face first, but generally during a polite greeting dogs will generally sniff nose to tail before moving on to other parts of the body and eventually the face if they are comfortable with what they discover. In a good meeting ritual all parties are calm and focussed on ‘reading’ the others emotional and hormonal state, this dictates the outcome of the meeting; play, avoidance or even aggression may ensue after the ritual is complete. But dogs should never be forced to meet, first they need to have curiosity and to approach at their own pace.
Puppies can get away with more than adults, they have their ‘puppy license’ during the early weeks and adults will generally accept much more in the way of inappropriate ‘learning curve’ behaviour at this time, and will correct patiently during these early weeks, this is why it is so important to get puppies immersed into social learning and play well before this ‘puppy license’ runs out!
Unfortunately, many dogs that are brought to my attention as a behaviourist have not had adequate opportunity to learn and develop these skills – they may lack boundaries to excitement and/or aggression due to being separated from mum too soon, or due to Mum being non-punishing in her teachings, they may be afraid of other dogs due to a bad experience and a lack of exposure early on. It is these dogs that can come across as ‘rude’ or confrontational or send the wrong signals upon meeting. Perhaps because the dog is too excitable upon first meeting and they run in with too much enthusiasm and eye contact, or because they are feeling insecure, threatened or unsure and are producing cortisol – this is associated with stress and tension. All of these communications can be read through visual and scent signals. The counterpart dog cannot know that the dog is afraid of him, only that he is gearing up for fight or flight as his pheromones and scents describe, this can be a catalyst for an altercation.
This is where the handler can influence a greeting enormously! If we are tense and anxious or unsure about a meeting, if we tense up and tighten the lead and kick out clouds of cortisol and/or adrenaline – even before the dog approaches – then this can set the dog up for an unsuccessful meeting from the start. If we leave the house whilst the dog is very excited and anxious we can set him up to fail. The dog will take his lead from us, particularly if he lacks experience, so we must remain calm, relaxed and confident at all times – to tense up or anticipate conflict is almost ensuring that the meeting will not go well! He may become fearful, or may become aggressive in a bid to protect us from this perceived threat. We can also make matters worse by staring at the dog to ‘see what he will do’ upon approach – this is a clear message to the dog that we are waiting for him to ‘deal’ with the situation – better to have eyes forward and remain relaxed and confident so that our dog will look to us rather than us looking to him.
On the other side of the coin if we watch body language carefully (usually tension, ears forward and extended eye contact) and offer a quick verbal or lead correction to interrupt the escalation before it even begins, and encourage relaxation then we can ‘coach’ a poorly socialised dog through proper greeting behaviour and ensure a successful outcome that is the ultimate reward; social contact and play.
Parallel walking is a great way to introduce two dogs – this removes eye contact – which can be seen as threatening or confrontational – and allows them to share in a tiring, enjoyable bonding experience before they get up close and personal! This also gives owners time to chat and relax before the greeting ritual begins. In addition, where possible - calm balanced confident dogs can really help a less secure or inexperienced dog to learn through observation, so if an inexperienced dog accompanies a balanced dog everywhere then this will go a great way towards encouraging him to be curious about meeting other dogs and following both the balanced dogs example and that which we offer through our attitude and energy.
Follow-ups for existing clients available at a reduced price of £80 until the end of December! If you want to get some practise in walking with balanced dogs, or if you need to work on anything else then get in touch, slots are limited - when they're gone they're gone!
Meet Digger and the gang! Well done Lorna, thank you to Lisa Emery - A fantastic day yesterday, met some lovely people and some great dogs :)
The walk is more than just a routine chore - it's a valuable bonding and training opportunity and a lot of fun! A drag to the park and then straight off the lead is not going to tire your dog mentally - in fact you might find yourself with a perpetually excited dog that misbehaves despite endless running and smelling! Tire the mind as well as the body and reward calm behaviour and you can't go far wrong. Have fun with the walk today :)
Friday's pack walk (31st July) will be at Thornhill Rectory Park; http://www.rectory-park.co.uk/location.php There is a small free car park which you can see if you put "Four Lane Ends, WF12 0JY" in to Google maps & use the "Earth" view, its opposite Valley Road. We will meet near here at 4pm.
This walk is about an hour long and the usual rules apply. For any new dogs and owners joining us; Please bring poo bags and clean up after your dog, keep dogs on a lead, leave distance between dogs at first and muzzle if necessary :) Weather's not looking brilliant so wellies at the ready!
Afternoon all!
Friday's walk ( 26th June) is in Emley so starting from the 'Emley car park' behind the old post office (shown on map as 'post office') at 4pm.
The address for sat nav' is;
Upper Lane, Emley, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, HD8 9RH
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Emley,+Huddersfield,+West+Yorkshire+HD8/@53.6135481,-1.6334985,205m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x4879626c43f11c71:0xa69f1a1452eb32ad
Walking the bridal ways and village before finishing up at the White Horse for a swift one if anybody fancies it (this is a two minute walk from the car park.)
The usual rules apply - on lead only, muzzle if necessary and pick up after your dog(s). Leave space at first and decrease the distance as everyone relaxes! Depending on the weather we may need wellies.... mostly dry but some parts of the bridal ways can get a bit boggy.
Hope to see many of you out this week - we have an additional behaviourist joining us - the lovely Jo Boyce, she is here in Yorkshire gaining further experience having graduated with Merit from the Behaviour Diploma so there will be lots of opportunity to pick some brains and get advice and help with handling on this one :)
Julia
Yes this really is a 'thing'. Now comes the time to re-evaluate rules when walking Ava, she is so friendly and eager to meet dogs and people now that it is now time to teach her to ignore them until she is introduced by me. At the beginning we wanted her to take herself to others and investigate in order to trust and understand that people are nice, dogs are nice, nothing to worry about here, have a treat and move on. Lets face it though, nobody wants a 40kg Rotweiller launching herself at random people in the street - even if her intentions are pure - she may be tiny and cute right now but she wont be forever so lets start as we mean to go on... So the next step is asking her to ignore passers by, and focus on me and the walk. Doggle is coming in handy as I can reward Doggle (who isn't all that interested in anything) for being close to me, and Ava then wants to work out how she can get the same treatment! A tiny correction on the lead is also good to bring her back to my side so that I can reward her if she is fixated on checking random stranger's pockets for treats! All going quite well so far. I will be seeing another pup with this issue - although older than Ava - quite soon so lets see if we can make Ava into a role model before then!
Here's Ralf (handsome boy making his muzzle look good) and Rosie (gorgeous girl in the front walking like an angel) showing us how amazingly quickly dogs can adapt and move on. Met some great dogs and people today, worked hard, and didn't get rained on. Bonus! Well done Ralf & Rosie :)
Yesterday's pack walk was a success, all dogs behaved brilliantly, apart from my Rags ironically... who spent the whole time puffing like a steam train and getting wired at the thought (and scent) of squirrels, ducks, swans and other small furries! There's always one... and it's usually Rags... a reminder of how scent associations become heavily wired into emotional memory! This is the place where he usually gets to race around in nature, trying to catch nature, and failing, but having an exciting time trying anyway...
