For the Love of a Dog (27 page)

Obviously, the same process can work against our dogs as well— and explains why some of our dogs begin to drool and whine long before a storm occurs, or start to shake uncontrollably in the vet’s waiting room. However, once you know how to use it, classical conditioning can do as much to prevent fear in your dog as it does to cause it. It’s also the most effective way to treat a fear that has already developed. In a satisfying irony, Blue’s thunder phobia was exacerbated because of classical conditioning, but it was classical conditioning that cured him. Speaking of phobias, this is a good place to talk about them in a bit
more depth, because they provide important insights into how to use classical conditioning so that it’s on your side.

What’s most confusing about dogs’ phobias, whether thunder phobias or separation anxieties, is that they seem to come out of nowhere. Blue lived through several thunderstorm seasons at the farm without reacting fearfully. That’s typical: thunder phobia usually arises between the ages of three and seven years, and isn’t related to any specific event or trauma. The origins of phobias are also mysterious in people—as a matter of fact, this is one of the identifying features that distinguishes a phobia from a simple fear.

What does make sense about phobias is the object of the fear. Phobias are usually defined as persistent, extreme, and irrational fears, but they’re not quite as irrational as they might seem. Phobias are most commonly directed toward things that
could
actually be dangerous. People are most often phobic about snakes or spiders or being high up in space, not about flowers or birthday cakes.
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A person’s fear may be excessive—starting to sweat when looking at a photograph of a spider doesn’t make a lot of sense—but it’s not unreasonable to be afraid of spiders. Spiders bite, and the bites of some, such as the black widow spider, can be serious, in some cases even fatal. Dogs suffer from phobias, too, and, just like us, they usually develop their phobias around something with real potential to cause harm, like storms with lots of thunder and lightning, or being left alone with no ability to care for themselves if their humans don’t return.
⁸

Sadly, many of our dogs’ phobias are explained away by placing the blame squarely on the shoulders of the owners, a practice that reminds
me of the days when many in the health care professions blamed Down syndrome and autism on the behavior of the mother, as if she didn’t have enough to cope with. In dogs, thunder phobias are often explained as a simple fear that is reinforced by owners comforting their dogs when they start to shake or pace at the sound of thunder. “Aha!” said the early American behaviorists, “You’re just reinforcing the bad behavior. You must ignore your dog when he’s frightened of thunder.” But most animals find fear so aversive that our behavior probably plays a much smaller role in our dog’s fear of thunder than some have suggested.

I bring up phobias now because it’s classical conditioning that explains another confusing aspect of these extreme fears. It’s classical conditioning that explains why a noise-phobic dog starts to shake long before she hears thunder, or why dogs with separation anxiety start to pace and whine long before you leave the house. Just like Pavlov’s dogs learning that footsteps meant food was coming, our dogs learn that a seemingly harmless event tends to happen before something frightening occurs. A drop in atmospheric pressure predicts a storm, just as the doorbell predicts a visitor. The owner putting on his coat predicts that the dog will be left alone. Because of classical conditioning, all of these things, like Pavlov’s bell, can come to elicit a powerful response.

Remember the most important part of Pavlov’s discovery: when a neutral event predicts something that causes an emotional response, it develops the ability to evoke the same emotion. That means your dog may be just as scared when the clouds roll in as she is when it thunders. That’s also why a dog with separation anxiety is just as nervous when she sees you pick up your keys as she is once she’s been left alone. Dogs with separation anxiety learn your patterns, and become conditioned to your combing your hair, picking up your keys, or putting on your jacket as a precursor to your departing. Dogs with thunder phobia become nervous when the barometer drops or the sky darkens, long before the thunder begins to roll. That’s why so many people are unsuccessful when they attempt to cure their dog’s phobias by giving the dog some tasty treats as the storm rages or as they walk out the door on the way to work. It doesn’t work because the dog was already scared
long before
the thunder started, or long before his owner left the house, and the food has come too late to do any good.

As I said earlier, the good news about classical conditioning is that it can do as much to alleviate your dog’s fears as it can to cause them. First, you can use classical conditioning
to prevent a
lot of fears in your dog by predicting what might make your dog fearful in the future and linking a mild version of it with something your dog adores. For example, most dogs don’t like having their paws handled, being the opposite of humans who often express affection by holding hands. They particularly hate having their nails clipped. Not only does it require that their paws be handled, but it can be painful if we inadvertently cut into the quick.
⁹
You can use classical conditioning to prevent problems by starting with a young pup and giving her a tasty treat right after picking up one paw and holding it gently in your hand for half a second. In this case, you’re starting with a relatively neutral stimulus, like Pavlov’s bell, and linking it with something the dog loves—food. Don’t hold onto that paw too long. If you make the mistake (as many people do) of turning what should be half a second into two or three, you’ll be eliciting the very emotion you’re trying to prevent.

Just pick up her paw for a
brief moment
, immediately put it down, and give her a tiny, scrumptious snack. Repeat that once or twice, and then go play ball or take her on a walk. After a few sessions of that, pick up her paw, clip off a microscopically small piece of nail, and then give her the treat. You can even condition a verbal cue—“You wanna manicure?”—and end up with a dog who wags her tail and comes running when you pick up the clippers. Granted, some dogs dislike the procedure so much that all you’ll get is dutiful acceptance, but if you start by conditioning paw touches and clippers with something the dog loves, you can at least avoid meeting your dog’s dark side when you need to trim her nails. Of course, you’ll want to proceed more slowly if your dog has ever threatened you when you picked up her paws—if that’s the case, you’ll want to work with a behaviorist.

You can use the same technique to prevent separation anxiety in a young pup. If you teach your dog to associate the things you do before
you leave with something good, you can prevent a lot of soiled carpets and chewed windowsills in the future. The key is to know what the triggers are (what sights and sounds predict that you’re about to leave) and what your dog loves (best in this case might be a tough, hollow chew toy stuffed with your dog’s favorite food). If you teach your pup to associate the jingle of your car keys with the feelings he has while slurping up liver paste, you’re probably not going to be calling a behaviorist two years later with a dog who leaps through the window when you go to the movies. The hardest part for most people is to be patient, and to start with the mildest version possible of something potentially scary.

If I had just adopted a new puppy, I’d first condition him to love being in a crate or small enclosed area by letting him run in and out of it to get treats, without even shutting the door initially. Over the course of the day I’d shut the door and leave him in the crate for gradually increasing periods of time—first two seconds, then five seconds, then thirty seconds. During this early phase, your goal is to have the dog feel good when he’s in the crate, even if it’s for an outrageously brief period of time. It only takes a second or two to become fearful, and that’s what you’re trying to prevent, so keep him happy in the crate with treats or toys, and let him out long before he wants out himself. I’d also put him in the crate when he’s sleepy, puppies having on/off switches like light-bulbs. You can make tremendous strides in just one day, by playing the “crate game” every hour or so and letting your puppy sleep in it during nap time. By nightfall you’ll most likely have a puppy who has already had lots of happy emotions while being inside a crate, and is much more likely to spend his first night in it asleep, rather than raising the dead with his whimpers.

As early as day two I’d start getting him used to my departure, by picking up my keys, putting on my jacket, and putting him in his crate with a nice, plump stuffed toy. Long
before
he finished it, I’d open up the door to his crate and let him out. I want him to think, “Oh, dear, don’t come back yet! I’m not finished!” rather than “Oh, no! I’m left here all alone.” Gradually I’d start leaving the room for a half a minute, then leave the house for five minutes to get the mail, or run down the street to pick up some milk. As the days and weeks go on, you simply increase the amount of time you leave the pup alone.

Of course, there’s that pesky occupation that many of us have that demands we leave the house for eight hours or more, and we can’t all take a two-month vacation when we get a new dog. If you work Monday through Friday and you’re getting a new pup, your best option is to take Friday off and get the pup early in the morning. Then you’ll have three long days in which to settle him in. By Monday morning, most pups will have had enough good experiences with your brief departures that you can leave him alone for at least half the day
¹⁰

However you manage the details, the idea is to link good feelings with your departure, being careful to start small, and gradually lengthen the time your pup will be alone. Don’t worry that this will be so successful that your pup will lie around in hopes you leave the house and stay away. If you have a good relationship with your dog, he’s going to love to see you coming home no matter what. We all want to be loved, but few of us want a dog who is phobic about being left alone, so put Pavlov in your pocket and condition your pup to feel good when she sees you walking out the door.

Of course, if your dog already has a serious case of separation anxiety, you’ll need to work a lot harder to turn it around. See the References section at the back of the book for more information about treatment plans.

Not long ago, I heard a ruckus in my farmyard at two in the morning and I padded downstairs to find out what was going on. As I stepped out of the house onto my porch, an agitated, scruffy-looking man appeared from the dark shade of my willow tree and began to run full tilt toward me. Immediately my amygdala began to signal some chemical version of
Uh-oh!
while my hippocampus was comparing what I was seeing with my recorded memory of what is and isn’t dangerous
. (
“There’s an unfamiliar, strange-looking man running fast toward a solitary woman standing in her nightgown in the middle of nowhere at two in the morning. This is
not
good
.”)
All I remember is being very, very scared, and opening the door to
let Tulip out of the house in the hope that just the sight of her would slow him down
.

Just as the approaching man lengthened his stride to leap up onto the porch, I said, in the lowest, calmest voice I could muster, “Stop right there.” (Did I really say that? It sounds like a bad movie script, which, on reflection, is probably where I got it from.) The guy came to a screeching halt, his eyes glued on my barking hundred-pound dog and proceeded to ask, ever so politely, whether it would be okay if he left his motorcycle under my willow tree for the night because it had broken down in front of the farm and a friend had come to give him a ride home and he’d return in the morning for the bike, that is, if I didn’t mind. I tried to explain that it was fine to leave his cycle in my yard, but that he might want to rethink his policy of running like a madman toward a solitary woman in a farmhouse in the middle of the night
.

The man may have been a bit dense, but he obviously had good intentions. However, neither Tulip nor I knew that as he dashed toward us at two o’clock in the morning, and you can’t blame either one of us for being alarmed. This was a dog bite waiting to happen, and I bring it up now because I suspect that’s what would have happened if Tulip hadn’t been conditioned to associate visitors of all descriptions with treats and ball play. She was barking and I have no doubt she’d have tried to protect me if the man had attacked, but Tulip has learned over the years to associate people coming to the house with feeling good rather than feeling fearful. That was enough to balance her concerns, and avoid a brief incident turning into a serious problem
.

I thank Pavlov in situations like that, and every time I work with a client’s dog who has gotten in trouble because he’s afraid of visitors. You can use this same technique for both preventing and treating fear-related aggression in dogs. This is especially important if you have a dog who is genetically shy, like Tulip, or who didn’t have much socialization as a young pup, like the Border Collie Blaze we talked about in the last chapter. In this case, what you’re doing is called classical
counter
conditioning because you’re trying to
counter
an emotion that already exists. Classical counterconditioning is a powerful tool used by animal behaviorists to turn around behavior problems that are motivated
by fear. As an applied animal behaviorist, I simply don’t know what I’d do without it.

The wonderful thing about this process is that once you understand the basics, you can use it on any kind of fear. I taught myself to be less nervous about public speaking by envisioning an audience in front of me and popping a Hershey’s Kiss in my mouth.
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Even if you don’t have a fearful dog, you might profit by reading the next section carefully—you never know when it might come in handy.