Dogs - Training The Dog Listener- Learn How to Communicate with Your Dog for Willing Cooperation

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The Dog Listener: Learn How to Communicate with Your Dog for Willing Cooperation review:5 stars (The Dog Listener) - This book is one of the best on understanding dogs and also for training them. Our daughter Dr. Shannon Dominguez DCH who is head of the Maui Animal Therapy Program --- highly recommends this book. [...] She has trained therapy dogs in a short time using these methods. We have adopted two little terriers from shelter and they are respondeing beautifully to the day by day suggestions on how to train young as well as old dogs and we would say these methods would work on children :- ) as well!! 4 stars (A review on the author) - Although the book is great, it speaks for itself and I'm not here to review it. I emailed the author, or someone who works with her, at the email address I got from Jan's website. First of all, a little background. I have a two-year-old border collie/lab who I've had since he was seven weeks. I adore him. I have been working from home with the occasional temp job up until two months ago. I now work 5 days a week outside the house. I wrote to this person asking advice on certain things relating to walking the dog, and mentioned the hours my dog is being left alone while I'm at work. My response was that I am "selfish" and unfit to have a dog. This coming from someone who was once so clueless about raising dogs that she put one of her own to sleep. I have been looking into getting a dogwalker for my pooch, which as a person concerned for dogs, she could have suggested. But her only suggestion was my poor dog, I shouldn't have him. Whereas the book is a good read with good methods, I would suggest a second thought before asking her or her staff any questions personally. She, or whoever that was, is rather selective in the dogs she'll help according to what she thinks of their owners. It was a negative experience trying to get any kind of advice from them. Rather than pointing out something wrong and offering suggestions to rectify it to someone who is obviously open to change, she chose instead to say, Sorry! Not interested! Not at all what I had in mind for someone in her position and with her passion.3 stars (The Dog Misunderstanderer) -
Jan Fennell, the author of THE DOG LISTENER, believes that most behavioral problems happen because dogs are confused, believing themselves to be the pack leaders, with thier human owners as their subordinates, and that as a dog owner you must both be alpha and use the latest fad - "operant conditioning" - to train them. Is this really "listening to dogs?"

According to Fennell the alpha wolf leads the hunt, and the rest of the pack is "programmed to follow his every move" and obey his every command. This is a fantasy, pure and simple. It's a fairy tale. It's not how things really work.

Dr. L. David Mech, whom some regard as the world's leading expert on wolves, writes, "THE CONCEPT OF THE ALPHA WOLF AS A `TOP DOG' IS MISLEADING." (Mech, L. David. 1999. "Alpha Status, Dominance, and Division of Labor in Wolf Packs." Canadian Journal of Zoology.) In another article from 2002, Mech and his colleagues detail their studies of how wolf packs travel while on the hunt, and which wolf is in the lead at any given moment. It turns out that the leadership role is more elastic than previously thought, and depends on certain variables. No one wolf leads the pack at all times. It's more of a shared activity.

So here, in THE DOG LISTENER, we have a case of someone who sort of understands dogs, at least on an unconscious level when working with them, but who doesn't understand them at all when trying to explain why her techniques work.

Case in point: Spike, an aggressive dog who is supposedly this way because he "thinks he's alpha." Fennell approaches the dog in way that, she says, lets him know that she's ALSO alpha (which is pretty comical since "alpha" means first, and how can they BOTH be first?). I've encountered just such situations numerous times and in my view it's more probable that Spike, like most aggressive dogs, has been mistreated at some point in his life, which caused a hyper-vigilance response to danger, even when no actual danger is present. By acting calm and confident, Fennell defuses Spike's sense of being threatened; that's all she does. In fact, I would say that her calmness becomes magnetic for Spike. But he no more sees her as "another alpha" than he sees her as Captain Kangaroo or the Man in the Moon.

Another case is her experiences watching London police dogs in training, and why they're always given a toy when they do things correctly. She sees this as just another form of "positive reinforcement." And while it's true that play is usually the best reinforcement for dogs, for most working dogs it's much more than that. When dogs are trained via their prey drive they have to be given a toy every single time they're successful because biting the toy completes the predatory sequence: SEARCH > EYE STALK > CHASE > GRAB BITE > KILL BITE.

The dogs in London were trained to SEARCH for hidden bad guys but when they found them (EYE STALK) they were not allowed to CHASE or GRAB BITE, they were trained to bark instead. As soon as a dog barked at a hidden volunteer, the handler tossed a ball over the dog's shoulder and he went after it, like a puppy in play. If the dog isn't given that tennis ball to CHASE and BITE, the predatory sequence would be incomplete and he wouldn't work as well the next time or the next. That's why these dogs are always reinforced (which breaks one of the laws of operant conditioning, that a dog whose behavior is always reinforced will be less reliable; and here the exact opposite is true).

So, if Fennell doesn't understand why her methods work, why DO they work, or do they work at all? I think some of them do, but only because she unconsciously gives the dogs a harmonious and predictable social structure. That's all. Canines are geared toward creating and maintaining a cooperative social dynamic that provides feelings of safety and "predictablility," and that also enables them to hunt large prey by working together as a unit. When that structure isn't there, the animals become stressed and a totally UNnatural structure develops, one that's similar to the way wolves behave when forced to live together in captivity, NOT the natural way wolves behave when living in the wild.

David Mech again: "Most research on the social dynamics of wolf packs has been conducted on wolves in captivity. These captive packs formed dominance hierarchies featuring alpha, beta, omega animals, etc. With such assemblages, these dominance labels were probably appropriate, for most species thrown together in captivity would usually so arrange themselves. IN NATURE, HOWEVER, THE WOLF PACK IS USUALLY A FAMILY, or sometimes two or three..."

Wolves are genetically predisposed to deal with the stress of life in the wild, but they're sadly unequipped to handle the stressors that come with life in captivity. And it seems to me that what's most unnatural for both captive wolves and some domesticated dogs is not being given an outlet for their predatory passions. (This doesn't mean that you should let your dog roam around the neighborhood, killing cats and chasing cars; they're group predators, they need to have a social structure while hunting, which is why the tennis ball was invented.)

So we see that the unnatural stress of being unable to use one's predatory energy is what actually causes the equally unnatural dominance behaviors that arise in domesticated dogs and in captive wolves. It's also why when your dog develops a behavioral problem one of the first questions an intelligent trainer will ask is, "Is your dog getting enough exercise?" That's because vigorous, playful physical exercise reduces stress. It's not the total answer, but it's a start.

And if you REALLY want to "Learn How to Communicate with Your Dog for Willing Cooperation" train him (or her) the way those London police dogs were trained. The kind of methods they and other K-9 trainers use have been adapted for training pet dogs by Kevin Behan in his book NATURAL DOG TRAINING. (He actually began his career by training dogs for various police departments around the Northeast.) A book with a similar approach is PLAYTRAINING YOUR DOG by Patricia Gail Burnham. Both methods work by reducing stress, which is the best reinforcer of all. So while THE DOG LISTENER is engaging and well-written, and may be helpful to some dog owners, it only rates three stars from me.

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