The Dish by Darcie

Bruno relaxing

Bruno was afraid of flies. I picked up the phone at work one day years ago and the woman on the line said, “If you don’t come and get him today, we are going to euthanize him.” The story she told me was that this dog would not come when called, he would not do anything for them, he was untrainable, and their youngster had become allergic to dogs…they were just going to keep the cats when they moved. Dancer and I met them in Kansas that very afternoon.

Bruno was as ugly as a Belgian could be, which if you love them isn’t ugly at all, you know how that goes. He was overweight by thirty pounds, his nose was pink, he couldn’t take five steps without heaving for breath and he was excited. Poor guy. He could not catch his breath and he was standing still! I took his leash to go to the van. He didn’t even look back at the man who handed him to me, I’d never, ever seen that before in a dog who was changing homes. He was ready to leave that home behind. My Dancer was waiting for us and surprised the heck out of me. I’d taken a crate for Bruno because Dance didn’t usually like dogs moving into her space very much. I opened the door and asked her to move back. She moved back and welcomed Bruno into the vehicle. He jumped in and we drove home with absolutely no troubles at all.

I still remember with great affection what I like to call the “Bruno incident”. It turned out not to be an incident at all. He’d been with us for two days. I called for him and he didn’t come. The door to the deck and yard was open and no Bruno. I walked down and around the steps, out to the gate and back to get my shoes. Apparently, I thought, we have a fence jumper on our hands. Oh boy. As I turned around to go back to the house, there was Bruno right behind my knees. He had been following close behind me the whole time. I hugged him thanking him for not taking off and he hugged me back, pushing hard against my body. After that, he became my dog. He was very, very much in love with me.

We’d planned to foster him and find him a new home but I had fallen in love, too, and couldn’t part with him. He lived with us for almost eleven years before he passed on to the Rainbow Bridge a few years ago. He was a delightful, obedient honey of a boy who loved life to the hilt and everyone loved him. We changed his weight to svelte, his nose to black and his breathing to perfectly beyond normal in one year with a raw food diet and natural bully sticks…but that’s not what this post is about. (For more about feeding raw food for health, read Feeding at The Dish and see SitStay.com for books.)

Bruno was afraid of flies. One day early in his life with us, a fly flew into the house. It was a great big fly. Bruno duckedhis head and ran for the bedroom where he crammed his whole self under the bed. I said it out loud as I often do when I’m perplexed. ”What the heck was that all about? A dog afraid of flies?” Every fly, every time. Bruno would run for shelter. Until I figured it out.

Kent picked up a flyswatter one afternoon and headed for the deck with a beer, there weren’t any flies in the kitchen at the time, he was taking it for protection outside. Bruno reacted violently. He ducked his head and cried out loud, he ran for his safe spot. Ah, ha! It was the flyswatter that had caused the damage to his poor sweet brain. To prove it was the flyswatter, we did a few quick trials of lifting the swatter above our heads, at waist level, laying against our thigh, and simply dropping it on the floor. Yep! Afraid of the flyswatter.

The people who had him before had used a flyswatter to spank him when he was “bad”. They bought him from a pet shop when he was four months old. He came to live with us when he was three. All that time his connection was “a flyswatter means pain” and “a fly means that the flyswatter will appear”. See a fly, run for safety.

We used positive training to bring him back to a good place. Connecting the swatter with good things like petting, play and food did the trick. The fear or at least his trained reaction to the swatter never completely went away. When he saw a swatter, his Groucho Marx eyebrows would go up. It was all that was left of his wild and fearful run for shelter. He never ran for cover again.

Dogs are great at connecting “if this happens, then that will happen”. It’s why they are so easy to train. Why one behavior is pretty easy to change to another behavior. Good or bad.

What happens when a shock collar is used? A shock to the neck happens and, no matter how well timed it was by the button pusher for the punishment or “correction”, what is it pairing with? The behavior the trainer was hoping for? Freezing in place and not moving, fearful of moving again? Or someone sneezes at the same time of the shock? Or a door slams? Or a gust of wind blows? Or a person walks into the room? What happens if a child is the next thing the dog’s attention is diverted to by the shock? The shock, no matter how light or slight, will be paired with any of those things or something entirely different than those things. It will be paired. It’s entirely up to that instant in time what that pairing will be. There is no control over what the dog is thinking or seeing or hearing. The dog’s attention goes to something with the shock. Now, worse case, imagine that the shock collar malfunctions or the dog’s anxiety or excitement level was so high that he reacted to the child and bit. That energy has to go some place. Now imagine that every time the dog sees the child, he has to convince himself that the child is not a danger. Good luck with that. It really is that easy to create a bigger problem than you already had.

There aren’t many people who love their children who would be willing to chance that shock collar training won’t eventually mean a hospital stay or stitches for their child. Or even milder than that, that their dog would become insanely afraid of the child or the wind or a door slamming or a sneeze. Or flies.

Those people didn’t mean to hurt Bruno. He was a cute little puppy. They were taught that when a puppy is “bad”, you swat him lightly with a newspaper or a flyswatter to change his behavior. We’ve all been hit by those things or something like them and it doesn’t hurt all that much. Right? Shock collars don’t hurt people either.

Knowing how dogs learn is essential to changing behavior. A dog is never doing absolutely nothing, not any more than we are. If we stop doing one thing, we start doing another. That change of energy has to go somewhere. Will it go to good or to bad?

Trading one behavior for another with the use of a shock collar isn’t positive training. It’s simply taking the energy from one behavior into another behavior with remote control with at best an unpleasant sensation. With good luck, nothing will ever go wrong. Sad to say, it’s not usually the case. Even the best of experts will tell you that they’ve ruined a good dog with a shock collar.

You can change behavior, no matter how bad it is, by pairing it with good things. That is positive training. No harm or hurt or pain or vibrating or shocking sensation at all to the dog.

Until you can get good results without having to resort to batteries or flyswatters, you’re not really understanding the dog. – Darcie

(P.S. I just talked to a man who said he trained his dog with a shock collar. “It’s my half mile leash. When I want him back, I call him and push the button and he comes flying. If he’s not wearing the collar, he keeps right on going no matter how loud I call him back.” Hmm. Imagine that. A dog who knows what the collar is for when it goes onto his neck. And one who isn’t trained to “come” keeps right on going. I just had to share with you. – Darcie)