August 08, 2002
Thursday

My apologies. Got a little sidetracked there, with the hip dysplasia, but it's important stuff for owners of large breed dogs. And that's most of you on the island.

But it's time to get back on track for new puppy owners and their training.

So you have an eight week old puppy. You love him, and you want to make sure he becomes an integral part of your family. I'm going to tell you what I know about getting along with dogs,

--- Ben Fur Digital photo by Mary Kauffman ---

the stuff that's worked for my clients for a decade. But if you look in the bookstore, there are hundreds of training books, each one different. There is no right way, only the way that works for you.

There are two current methods of dog training that have deeply influenced how I deal with dogs. They replace the old school methodology. That's the one where you correct everything your dog does wrong, with varying intensities of correction from verbal 'no's to outright beating, until he finally gets too afraid of you to do anything new at all. The current schools of training emphasize encouraging what your puppy does right. They teach you to understand your puppy's motivation, and work with it, rather than beating it out of him. The result is a much livelier, more interesting member of the family.

The first method of training is operant conditioning, and we used it in our potty training. It involves positive reinforcement, yummy food and/or warm fuzzy praise, when the dog exhibits the behavior we want. Perfect for behavior training. Classical conditioning runs along the same lines, with one important difference; the positive reinforcement is not conditional on behavior. It just occurs, when something to which we want the dog to become desensitized, comes into the dog's awareness. When the unusual thing goes away, so does the positive reinforcement. The end result is a dog accepting something that originally made him uncomfortable, because good things happen when it's around.

In a nutshell, we use operant conditioning to produce and shape a behavior pattern that we want. We use classical conditioning to desensitize a pup to things we want him to accept in his world. Together, these are the most powerful tools we have in making Rover into a learning- loving adult, who will continue to surprise us with the things he can be taught, every single day of his wonderful, amazing life.

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