For the Love of a Dog (28 page)

Blaze, the troubled dog of the Irish priest, came home with me on Friday, so that I’d have the weekend to settle him in. As usual, my partner Jim arrived after work, well warned about the dog who had already bitten three times. Before I brought Blaze home I’d worked up a plan, so we wouldn’t have to make things up as we went along. We’d arranged that as Jim drove onto the farm, I would stand a good fifty yards away from his car with Blaze on a leash. When he got out, Jim was to stop and turn sideways (to minimize any perceived threat) while I gave Blaze pieces of cooked chicken. I wanted Blaze to associate this visitor with something that made him happy. Blaze’s emotions had other plans. Long before Jim got to the end of the driveway, Blaze was barking and lunging hysterically. His pupils were fully dilated and his commissure was retracted almost to his ears. He wouldn’t have taken a piece of chicken if he’d been starving to death; he was too aroused to have any interest in food.
¹²

Asking Jim to wait outside, I brought Blaze into the house and put him in his crate, which I’d put in a quiet room off the living room. Unlike many dogs, Blaze seemed to be calmer in a small space, perhaps because he couldn’t generate the agitated energy that fed his emotions. Some dogs become more fearful if they’re trapped, but Blaze’s fears were exacerbated by a tendency to become overly aroused, so he actually did better when he was restricted to his crate when visitors
entered. Once Blaze was settled, I gave him treats as Jim entered the house, knowing that he could hear and smell Jim even though he couldn’t see him. As the evening went on, Jim came and stood at the entrance to the room while I slid treats into the crate to Blaze. Eventually Jim himself was able to sidle next to the crate, avoiding any direct eye contact, and push treats through the crate for Blaze. I continued that routine for the next week, during which I’d ask visitors to drive up and stay outside until I came to get them. Every time I heard a car arrive, I’d take Blaze by the leash and put him in his crate, sliding treats into the crate until Blaze began to respond to the noise of a car as if he liked it.
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During the second week, I trained Blaze to run to his crate himself every time he heard a car drive up to the farm. On the third week, we practiced going into the crate when someone came to the door.

If you have a dog who is frightened in any way of visitors, teaching him to move away from the door might seem counterproductive. However odd it seems, following that advice can eventually lead to a dog who happily greets visitors as they enter the house. If you first teach your dog to move
away
from the door, you are preventing surprise encounters when everyone is crammed together in the small, emotionally loaded space of a doorway.

This is a good time to remember that every good treatment plan begins with a
management plan
to ensure the safety of your dog and your friends, and, as important, to prevent your dog from being conditioned in the wrong direction. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you can make everything hunky-dory by holding your dog by the collar as visitors enter. Remember, classical conditioning is about internal states—emotions and the physiology that goes along with them—so forcing your dog into a situation that makes him nervous isn’t going to solve the problem; it’s going to make it worse. He’ll be just as nervous, but now he’ll also feel trapped because you’ve got a vise grip on his collar. That’s not going to make him love visitors; it will condition him to be even more nervous about them.

You can prevent trouble, and prevent your dog from learning bad habits (“I growl, they go away. Whew, got that figured out….”) by first
teaching him to go into another room when there’s someone at the door. Of course, your goal is to have a dog who happily greets visitors beside you at the door, but while you’re working toward that it’s handy to have an alternative that allows you to manage the situation and avoid trouble. Use this alternative when a busy delivery person bangs on your door, when your uncle George—the one who hates dogs— drops by to borrow a book, or when you’re in a hurry yourself and can’t follow the program described below. My dogs adore visitors, yet I find it handy to be able to send them into a closed room when certain kinds of company come. Even if your dog isn’t aggressive, this is a great trick to teach her. Some of my clients have learned to dread visitors not because their dogs are aggressive, but because their pack goes so crazy when the doorbell rings that just opening the door qualifies as an adventure. How lovely to be able to ask your dogs to go into another room, and open the door in peace and quiet.

It’s surprisingly easy to teach your dog to go away from the door after someone has knocked, although I say that with an awareness that many of you will be snorting with derisive laughter as you read this. If your dog seems to go stark raving crazy when the doorbell rings, you’re not alone. If you’d like things to be a bit calmer, first understand that your chance of getting your dog’s attention once he’s barking hysterically at the door
after
a visitor has rung the bell is microscopic. The trick is to start
before
your dog launches himself into clinical hysteria, by first practicing when the house is quiet and calm. Knock once or twice on the door yourself, and then say, “Go to your place,” in a happy tone and lure your dog with a fistful of yummy treats into the designated area (an easily accessible room with a door, or a crate in a quiet area of the house). Toss the treats onto the floor and shut the door. Wait just a few seconds, open the door, and let the dog out. Repeat that four or five times, all the while acting like it’s a silly, fun game you’re playing. After just a few sessions, most dogs eagerly run into the room, and don’t mind the door being shut for a brief period of time. Work your way up to real life by having family members go outside and knock on the door, and eventually to friends who are happy to put up with waiting a minute or two while you lure your dog into the other room. You might want to give your dog a hollow toy (like a Kong or a Goodie Ball) stuffed with food to keep him happy there while you chat with your visitors.

Teaching dogs to go into another room when visitors come not only manages the situation so that it’s safe, it also begins the process of classical counterconditioning. Rather than being scared, aroused, and in the thick of things at the front door, your dog has been taken out of a situation that is over his head, and has learned to associate the first signs of company with feeling calm, safe, and happy. “Ooooh, I love it when I hear the bell ring or a knock on the door, because that predicts I’m going to get chicken and I LOVE CHICKEN!!!!”

The next step is to create a safe way to have your dog out of the crate and in the same room as a visitor. The key here is to be extremely aware of every little sight and sound that could act as a “trigger” for your dog’s fears. Just as a drop in atmospheric pressure can scare a dog as much as thunder can, there are a variety of stimuli that act as classical conditioners to dogs who are afraid of strangers. Common initial triggers are the sound of a car in the driveway, the sound of the doorbell, and a knock on the door.

The next set of triggers includes the sight of anyone standing at the “front” door rather than the one the family uses, the approach of an unfamiliar person, especially someone with a “weird” silhouette (produced by a backpack, a hat, or a huge beard), people with low, gruff voices, and the sight of a hand reaching out to pet them on top of the head, or a visitor standing up from a couch or a chair.
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Keep in mind that having someone move
toward your dog
is very different (to your dog) from having
your dog move toward them
. Dogs are much more frightened of someone who approaches them than they are if the person (or other dog) stays still and lets the shy dog do the approaching. This is true of most animals. Temple Grandin relates in
Animals in Translation
that if you stand still inside a cow pen with a small white object, the cows will come over to investigate it. If you choose, on the other hand, to walk toward them with the same object in your hand, they’ll spook and run away.

The better you get at identifying these triggers, the better you’ll be
able to help your dog. Play the game now, and ask yourself what would be common triggers for dogs who have separation anxiety. There are lots of them, from taking just a few steps toward the door, to picking up your car keys, putting on your jacket, or combing your hair in the bathroom. You can play the same game with dogs who are thunder phobic—they usually begin to pace and drool when the barometric pressure drops, when the wind comes up, or when the sky darkens. Dogs with mild cases don’t react until the lightning starts or the first thunder rolls are heard.

Whatever your dog’s fears, it’s critical to identify his triggers if you want to alleviate them. If you do have a fearful dog, sit down right now and figure out exactly what his triggers are. It doesn’t matter if they make any sense to
you;
they have taken on the power to elicit fear in your dog, and that’s all you need to know.

Blaze’s fears of strangers were typical in that he reacted to all the usual triggers: he could be set off first by a car’s approach, then by a doorbell or knock on the door, then by the sight of a stranger, by that stranger approaching him or coming into the house, by a stranger looking directly into his eyes, or by a stranger reaching, horror of horrors, to pet him. Blaze was just as aroused when people left the house as he was when they entered it (I have seen this in a small percentage of other dogs, especially the herding breeds), and at first couldn’t generalize his acceptance of a person from one part of the house to another. After Blaze had accepted Jim completely (it seemed), he lunged at him in the garage, two seconds after giving him a kiss in the adjacent room. We just had to add “changing rooms” to the triggers Blaze needed to learn to handle.

Blaze’s progress involved moving through each of those triggers, one step at a time. After conditioning him to enjoy people driving up and entering the house when he was in his crate, I began to work on the next trigger. I needed Blaze to become comfortable seeing people inside the house, but I wanted to avoid starting with him watching people entering through the doorway. Doorways are loaded locations to dogs, and I thought that he’d have a hard time accepting people walking in as he watched, even if he was on a leash far from the door itself. I did what behaviorists and trainers have been advising for years, which is to let the visitors enter the house without the dog seeing them. This
avoided setting the dog off when someone “violated” the territorial boundary, and allowed the dog to come out on a leash when the visitor was less threatening, quiet and seated on the couch.

Blaze and I played this game for weeks, thanks to a dedicated community of friends who took the time to drive out to the farm. A carload of four or five people would drive up, and as they did Blaze and I would run to his crate, and I’d tuck him inside with a treat. Then one person at a time would come into the room and stand in the doorway, while I slipped food into Blaze’s crate. Next, they’d squat down, keeping their body sideways as would any polite dog greeting another dog, and slip treats into the crate themselves. If Blaze looked relaxed and comfortable, I’d ask the visitor to go into the living room and sit down on the couch. Doors to the room safely shut, I’d let Blaze out of his crate, put on his leash, and walk him into the living room, using the door farthest from the couch. The first few times I did this he barked and lunged at the visitor. Both of us ignored this foolishness, and purposefully stayed quiet and relaxed. The visitor would begin tossing treats toward Blaze, and, because we’d worked our way up to it, Blaze was relaxed enough to eat (the treats, not the visitor).

Then Blaze would go back into his crate; the visitor would leave and send in the next person, who started the process all over again. By visitor number three in just the first session, Blaze started to associate a person sitting on the couch with chicken falling from the sky. No more barks, no more lunges. By visitor number five, Blaze was trotting out of his room looking for someone on the couch, his body loose, his mouth open, and his tail wagging. “
Yo!
Got any chicken?” he seemed to be asking, and the visitor, well equipped for that very purpose, would oblige. (If Blaze had become less relaxed as the list of visitors grew, then I would have stopped that session, and backed up several steps for the next one.)

The next step was to have Blaze out of his crate (on a leash, of course; or he could have been behind a secure gate that kept him away from the door) when a visitor entered. In this phase the visitors opened the door themselves, and stood in the doorway tossing treats like crazed flower girls refusing to walk down the aisle. Under no circumstances were they allowed to walk up to Blaze and try to hand him the treat. That would have been going way too far, way too fast. We were somewhere
around step five in a twenty-step process; handing him the treats would be somewhere around step fifteen.

If you’re working with dog lovers who don’t have a lot of knowledge, this is the trickiest part of the treatment plan. It seems everyone wants to be the one to
hand your:
dog the treat. “It’s okay,” they say when you ask them to throw the treat rather than hand it to the dog. “It’s okay, I love dogs,” they repeat, while they reach out to pet the dog cowering behind your legs. Humans seem to be hardwired with an almost uncontrollable need to touch a dog, whether you or the dog wants it or not, and it’s hard to work around that. With respectful apologies to half the population, men tend to be worse about this. They often say, “Oh, it’s okay, I’m not afraid of him,” and so I suspect they misinterpret the instructions as concern for their well-being. Women more often say things like, “Oh, it’s okay, dogs just love me.” This is when a dinner party of behaviorists, contemplating the universality of this behavior, will simultaneously pick up their wineglasses and drain them in unison. In the nicest way possible, we try to explain to people that this procedure is not about them, it’s about the dog, and yes, we understand that you’re not afraid of the dog, or that you’re so special that out of all the people in the entire world you’ll be the one person whom the dog will not be afraid of, but please please please, just this once, would you do what we ask, for the dog’s sake? Keep all this in mind if you’re working on a treatment plan for your dog. Only ask friends to help you who will actually do what you ask, which, as we all know, turns out to be as hard for members of our own species as it often is for our dogs.