Getting to Know Your Dog

In this post, we discuss how your dog thinks. Discovering how your dog thinks isn’t as complicated as it sounds. By observing his behavior and body posture, you can predict, based on what he has done before, what he’s going to do next.

To help you in understanding what motivates your dog, we have devised a Personality Profile. Each dog is an individual, and your training efforts have to take his personality into account to succeed with his training.

Figuring Out How Your Dog Thinks

Does your dog think? Certainly. He thinks like a dog, but sometimes it’s almost as though he can read your mind. But is he reading your mind, or has he simply memorized your behavior patterns?

  Using your powers of observation, you can discover what goes through Buddy’s mind. The direction of his eyes, his body posture, his tail position, the position of his ears (up or down), and the direction of his whiskers (pointed forward or pulled close to his muzzle) are all indicators of what he’s thinking at the moment. The more the two of you interact, the better you’ll get at know-ing what Buddy thinks

In the following sections, we provide you with information to help you to read your dog and what to do if you don’t read him quickly enough to intervene in an unwanted behavior. We also discuss the influences of distractions on your dog’s behavior.

Reading your dog

Just as your dog takes his cues from watching you, you can interpret what’s on his mind by watching him. For instance, you know Buddy has the propensity to jump on the counter to see whether he can find any food to steal.

Because he has done this a number of times, you begin to recognize his intentions by the look on his face — for example, you notice that his head and ears are up, his whiskers are pointed forward, and he carries an intent stare. The way he moves in the direction of the counter, with deliberate tail wag-ging, is the final giveaway.

What do you need to do? You interrupt Buddy’s thought process by derailing the train. You can say, “Just a minute, young man, not so fast,” in a stern tone of voice. You also can whistle or clap your hands — do anything to distract him. After that, tell him to go lie down and forget about stealing the food.

  What if he has already started the objectionable behavior? Maybe he has his paws firmly planted on the counter and is just about to snatch the steak. Use the same words to stop the thought process, physically remove him from the counter by his collar, and take him to his corner and tell him to lie down.

Knowing what to do when you don’t read your dog in time

What should you do if your dog has already managed to achieve the objectionable behavior — he has successfully surfed the counter and grabbed a nice snack, for instance? Absolutely nothing! Discipline after the fact is use-less and inhumane. Your dog can’t make the connection. The time to inter-vene is when your dog is thinking about what you don’t want him to do.

  Don’t attempt any discipline after the offending deed has been accomplished. Your dog can’t make the connection between the discipline and his actions. Your dog may look guilty, but not because he understands what he has done; he looks guilty because he understands that you’re upset.

Imagine yourself preparing a piece of meat for dinner. You leave the counter to answer the phone, and when you return, the meat is gone. You know Buddy ate it; after all, no one else is home. Your first reaction is anger. Immediately, Buddy looks guilty, and you assume that he’s guilty because he knows he has done wrong. However, Buddy knows no such thing. He’s reacting to your anger and wonders why you’re mad — and perhaps based on his prior experiences he expects to be the target of your wrath.

  Your dog is already an expert at reading you. With a little time and practice, you, too, will be able to tell what’s on his mind and read him like a book. His behavior is just as predictable as yours.

Try this experiment if you don’t believe that your dog doesn’t make the connection between discipline and bad behavior: Without Buddy’s seeing you, drop a crumpled piece of paper on the floor. Call Buddy to you, point accusingly at the paper, and say in your most blaming voice, “What have you done, bad dog?” He’ll reward you with his most guilty look without having a clue what it’s all about.

  If you attribute human qualities and reasoning abilities to your dog, your dealings with him are doomed to failure. He certainly doesn’t experience guilt. Blaming the dog because “he ought to know better” or “he shouldn’t have done it” won’t improve his behavior. No matter what you think, he also doesn’t understand every word you say, and he’s able to interpret only your tone of voice and body language.

Moral of the story: Don’t leave your valued belongings, such as shoes, socks, or anything else near and dear to your heart, lying about, where your dog can destroy them. Look at it this way — if you weren’t a neat freak before you got your dog, you will be now.

Tackling distractions

Training your dog to respond to you in your backyard, with you being the center of his attention, is fairly simple. But then, the level of difficulty increases in relation to the distractions the dog encounters in real life, such as these headliners:

 ✓ Joggers and cyclists

 ✓ New locations

 ✓ Other dogs

 ✓ Other people

 ✓ Visitors to your home

 ✓ Wildlife

The ultimate goal of training is to have your dog respond to you under any and all circumstances. Your dog’s Personality Profile can tell you how you have to train him to reach that goal. Refer to the later section “Determining Your Dog’s Personality Profile” for more information.

Recognizing Your Dog’s Instinctive Behaviors

Your dog — and every other dog — is an individual animal that comes into the world with a specific grouping of genetically inherited, predetermined behaviors. How those behaviors are arranged, their intensity, and how many components of each are at work determine the dog’s temperament, personal-ity, and suitability for a task. Those behaviors also determine how the dog perceives the world.

To give you a better understanding of your dog, we group instinctive behaviors into three drives:

 ✓ Prey

 ✓ Pack

 ✓ Defense

These drives reflect instinctive behaviors that your dog has inherited and that are useful to you in teaching him what you want him to learn. Each one of these drives is governed by a basic trait. We discuss all three in the follow-ing sections.

Prey drive

Prey drive includes those inherited behaviors associated with hunting, killing prey, and eating. The prey drive is activated by motion, sound, and smell. Behaviors associated with prey drive (see Figure 2-1) include the following:

✓ Air scenting and tracking

 ✓ Biting and killing

 ✓ Carrying

 ✓ Digging and burying

 ✓ Eating

 ✓ High-pitched barking

 ✓ Jumping up and pull-ing down

✓ Pouncing

 ✓ Seeing, hearing, and smelling

 ✓ Shaking an object

 ✓ Stalking and chasing

 ✓ Tearing and ripping apart

Can dogs reason?

As much as you want your dog to be able to reason, dogs can’t reason in the sense that humans can. Dogs can, however, solve simple problems. By observing your dog, you learn his problem-solving techniques. Just watch him try to open the cupboard where the dog biscuits are kept. Or see how he works at trying to retrieve his favorite toy from under the couch.

During your training, you’ll also have the opportunity to see Buddy trying to work out what you’re teaching him.

Our favorite story involves a very smart English Springer Spaniel who had been left on our doorstep. The poor fellow had been so neglected that we didn’t know he was a pure-bred Spaniel until after he paid a visit to the groomer. He became a delightful member of the family for many years. One day, his ball had rolled under the couch. He tried everything — looking under the couch, jumping on the back-rest to look behind it, and going around to both sides. Nothing seemed to work. In disgust, he lifted his leg on the couch and walked away. So much for problem solving.

Typically, chasing is the most common part of prey behaviors. It’s triggered when Buddy is chasing a moving object, such as a toy, cyclist, jogger, or car. Buddy also may shake and rip up soft toys or bury bones in the couch. Failure to recognize the strength of prey behaviors in dogs is the most common reason for so-called behavior problems.

Pack drive

Pack drive consists of behaviors associated with reproduction, being part of a group or pack, and being able to live by the rules. Dogs, like their distant ancestors the wolves, are social animals. To hunt prey that’s mostly larger than themselves, wolves have to live in a pack. To ensure order, they adhere to a social hierarchy governed by strict rules of behavior. In dogs, this trans-lates into an ability to be part of a human group and means a willingness to work with people as part of a team.

Pack drive is stimulated by rank order in the social hierarchy. Behaviors associated with this drive include the following:

 ✓ Being able to breed and to be a good parent

 ✓ Demonstrating behaviors associated with social interaction with people and other dogs, such as reading body language

 ✓ Demonstrating reproductive behaviors, such as licking, mounting, wash-ing ears, and all courting gestures

 ✓ Exhibiting physical contact with people or other dogs

 ✓ Playing with people or other dogs

  A dog with many of these behaviors follows you around the house, is happiest when with you, loves to be petted and groomed, and likes to work with you. (Check out Figure 2-2.) A dog with these behaviors may be unhappy when left alone too long, which is a feeling that can express itself in separation anxiety.

Defense drive

Defense drive is governed by survival and self-preservation and consists of both fight and flight behaviors. Defense drive is complex because the same stimulus that can make a dog aggressive (fight) can elicit avoidance (flight) behaviors, especially in a young dog.

Fight behaviors aren’t fully developed until the dog is sexually mature or about 2 years old. You may notice tendencies toward these behaviors at an earlier age, and life experiences determine their intensity. Behaviors associ-ated with fight drive include the following:

 ✓ Exhibiting hair (hackles) standing up from the shoulder forward

 ✓ Growling at people or dogs when he feels his space is being violated (see Figure 2-3)

 ✓ Guarding food, toys, or territory against people and dogs

 ✓ Lying in front of doorways or cupboards and refusing to move

 ✓ Putting his head over another dog’s shoulder

 ✓ Showing aversion to being petted or groomed

 ✓ Standing tall, weight forward on front legs, tail high, and staring at other dogs

 ✓ Standing his ground and not moving

Whoa! Buddy’s got his hackles up

Hackles refer to the fur along the dog’s spine from the neck to the tip of his tail. When a dog is frightened or unsure, the fur literally stands up and away from his spine. In a young dog, it may happen frequently because the dog’s life expe-riences are minimal. When he meets a new dog, for example, he may be unsure of whether that dog is friendly, so his hackles go up. A dog’s whiskers also are a good indication of his inse-curity; in a frightened dog, they’re pulled back, flat along his face. His ears also are pulled back, his tail is tucked, and he cringes, lower-ing his body posture and averting his eyes. All in all, he’d rather be somewhere else.On the flip side, when the hackles go up only from the neck to the shoulders, the dog is sure of himself. He’s the boss, and he’s ready to take on all comers. His ears are erect, his whis-kers are forward, all his weight is on his front legs, his tail is held high, and he stands tall and makes direct eye contact. He’s ready to rumble.

Flight behaviors demonstrate that the dog is unsure. Young dogs tend to exhibit more flight behaviors than older dogs. The following behaviors are associated with flight drive:

 ✓ Demonstrating a general lack of confidence

 ✓ Disliking being touched by strangers

 ✓ Exhibiting hair (hackles) that stands up the full length of the body, not just at the neck

 ✓ Flattening the body, with the tail tucked, when greeted by people or other dogs

 ✓ Hiding or running away from a new situation

 ✓ Urinating when being greeted by a stranger or the owner (submissive urinating)

  Freezing — not going forward or backward — is interpreted as inhibited flight behavior.

Understanding how the drives affect training

Because dogs were originally bred for a particular function and not solely for appearance, you generally can predict the strength or weakness of the individual drives. For example, the northern breeds, such as Alaskan Malamutes and Siberian Huskies, were bred to pull sleds. They tend to be low in pack drive, and training them not to pull on the leash can be a bit of a chore. Herding dogs were bred to herd livestock under the direction of their master. Although high in prey drive, they also tend to be high in pack drive and should be relatively easy to train not to pull on the leash. The guarding breeds, such as the German Shepherd, Doberman, and Rottweiler, were bred to work closely with man, so they tend to be high in fight drive with a desire to protect family and property. They easily can be taught to walk on a leash. The Retrievers tend to be high in both prey and pack drive and generally love to retrieve. They, too, easily learn to walk on a leash.

Many of the behaviors for which dogs were bred, such as herding and hunting, are the very ones that get them into trouble today. These behaviors involve prey drive and result in chasing anything that moves. A guard dog may guard your home against intruders and protect your children, but those “intruders” may include the children’s friends.

  Clearly, these are generalizations that don’t apply to every dog of a particular breed. Today many dogs of different breeds were bred solely for appearance and without regard to function, so their original traits have become diluted.

Determining Your Dog’s Personality Profile

To train Buddy, you need some insight into what’s happening in his little brain at any given moment. Here your powers of observation can help you. In many instances, Buddy’s behavior is quite predictable based on what he has done in similar situations. You may be surprised at what you already know. You can almost see the wheels turning when he’s about to chase a car, bicycle, or jogger. If you’re observant, Buddy will give you just enough time to stop him.

However, you don’t have to rely on observation alone. To help you under-stand how Buddy’s mind works and, in turn, understand how to approach your dog’s training, we created Volhards’ Canine Personality Profile. The profile catalogs ten behaviors in each drive that influence a dog’s responses and that are useful in training. The ten behaviors chosen are ones that most closely represent the dog’s strengths in each of the drives. The profile doesn’t pretend to include all behaviors seen in a dog nor does it interpret the complexity of their interaction. For example, what drive is Buddy in when he’s sleeping? For purposes of training, we don’t care. Although our Personality Profile is an admittedly crude tool for predicting Buddy’s behavior, you’ll find it surprisingly accurate.

The results of the profile can give you a better understanding of why Buddy is the way he is and the most successful way to train him. You can then make use of his strengths, avoid needless confusion, and greatly reduce training time.

When completing the profile, keep in mind that we devised it for a house dog or pet with an enriched environment and perhaps even a little training, not a dog tied out in the yard or kept solely in a kennel — such dogs have fewer opportunities to express as many behaviors as a house dog. Answers should indicate behaviors Buddy would exhibit if he’d not already been trained to do otherwise. For example, before he was trained properly, did he jump on people to greet them or jump on the counter to steal food?

The possible answers and their corresponding point values are as follows:

 ✓ Almost always — 10

 ✓ Sometimes — 5 to 9

 ✓ Hardly ever — 0 to 4

For example, if Buddy is a Beagle, the answer to the question “When pre-sented with the opportunity, does your dog sniff the ground or air?” is prob-ably “Almost always,” giving him a score of 10.

You’re now ready to find out who Buddy really is. You may not have had the chance to observe all these behaviors, in which case you leave the answer blank.

When presented with the opportunity, does your dog

  1.  Sniff the ground or air?  _____

  2. Get along with other dogs?  _____

  3.  Stand his ground or show curiosity in strange objects or sounds?  _____

  4.  Run away from new situations?  _____

  5. Get excited by moving objects, such as bikes or squirrels?  _____

  6. Get along with people?  _____

  7.  Like to play tug-of-war games to win?  _____

  8. Hide behind you when he feels he can’t cope?  _____

  9.  Stalk cats, other dogs, or things in the grass?  _____

  10.  Bark when left alone?  _____

  11.  Bark or growl in a deep tone of voice?  _____

  12. Act fearfully in unfamiliar situations?  _____

  13.  Bark in a high-pitched voice when excited?  _____

14.  Solicit petting or like to snuggle with you?  _____

  15. Guard his territory?  _____

  16.  Tremble or whine when unsure?  _____

  17.  Pounce on his toys?  _____

  18.  Like to be groomed?  _____

  19. Guard his food or toys?  _____

  20.  Cower or turn upside down when reprimanded?  _____

  21.  Shake and “kill” his toys?  _____

  22.  Seek eye contact with you?  _____

  23. Dislike being petted?  _____

  24. Act reluctant to come close to you when called?  _____

  25.  Steal food or garbage?  _____

  26.  Follow you around like a shadow?  _____

  27. Guard his owner(s)?  _____

  28. Have difficulty standing still when groomed?  _____

  29.  Like to carry things in his mouth?  _____

  30.  Play a lot with other dogs?  _____

  31. Dislike being groomed or petted?  _____

  32.  Cower or cringe when a stranger bends over him?  _____

  33. Wolf down his food?  _____

  34.  Jump up to greet people?  _____

  35.  Like to fight other dogs?  _____

  36. Urinate during greeting behavior?  _____

  37.  Like to dig or bury things?  _____

  38.  Show reproductive behaviors, such as mounting other dogs?  _____

  39. Get picked on by older dogs as a young dog?  _____

  40.  Tend to bite when cornered?  _____

Score your answers by using Table 2-1

After you’ve obtained the totals, enter them in the appropriate column of the profile at a glance shown in Table 2-1. And check out Figure 2-4 to see your dog’s profile at a glance. In the figure, simply shade in the columns to see your dog’s profile at a glance.

To make best use of the concept of drives in your training, you need to know what you want Buddy to do or stop doing. Usually, you want him to be in pack drive and he wants to be in prey. When you’ve mastered how to get him out of prey and into pack, you have a well-trained dog.

Deciding How You Want Buddy to Act

Before you can use the results of the profile in the preceding section, you need to look at what you want Buddy to do or — and this is often more important — stop doing. For example, when you walk Buddy on leash and want him to pay attention to you, he has to be in pack drive. If Buddy, on the other hand, wants to sniff, maybe follow a trail, or chase the neighbor’s cat, he’s in prey drive.

For most of what you want Buddy to do, such as the following, he needs to be in pack drive:

 ✓ Come

 ✓ Down

 ✓ Sit

 ✓ Stay

 ✓ Walk on a loose leash

For most of what Buddy wants to do, such as the following, he’s going to be in prey drive:

 ✓ Chase a cat

 ✓ Dig

 ✓ Follow the trail of a rabbit

 ✓ Retrieve a ball or stick

 ✓ Sniff the grass

You can readily see that those times when you want him to behave, you have to convince Buddy to forget about being in prey drive. Dogs high in prey drive usually require quite a bit of training. A dog with high pack and low prey drive rarely needs extensive training, if any. Such a dog doesn’t do the following:

 ✓ Chase bicycles, cars, children, or joggers

 ✓ Chase cats or other animals

 ✓ Chew your possessions

 ✓ Pull on the leash

 ✓ Roam from home

 ✓ Steal food

In other words, he’s a perfect pet.

Theoretically, Buddy doesn’t need defense drive (fight) behaviors for what you want him to learn, but the absence of these behaviors has important ram-ifications. A very low defense drive determines how Buddy has to be trained. For example, our first Labrador, Bean, was low in defense drive. If we, or anyone else, would lean over him, he would collapse on the floor and act as though he had been beaten. Katharina, our German Shepherd, on the other hand, who was high in fight drive, would just look at you if you leaned over her, as though to say, “Okay, what do you want?”

Training each dog required a different approach. With Bean, a check on his leash caused him to literally collapse — he didn’t have enough fight behav-iors to cope with the check. A slight tug on the leash or a quietly spoken command was sufficient to get him to ignore chasing our proverbial rabbit.

Katharina required a firm check to convince her to forget about the rabbit. The only difference between the two dogs was their score in fight drive on their Personality Profile. Refer to the following sections for the different pro-files and how to deal with them.

  The beauty of the drives theory is that, if used correctly, it gives you the nec-essary insight to overcome areas where you and your dog are at odds with each other over appropriate behavior. A soft command may be enough for one dog to change the undesired behavior, whereas a firm check is required for another.

Bringing out drives

When you grill hamburgers on the barbecue, the aroma stimulates your appe-tite as well as everyone else’s in the neighborhood. In effect, it brings out your prey drive. The smell becomes a cue. Incidentally, the smell also brings out Buddy’s prey drive.

Following is a short list of cues that bring out each of the dog’s major drives:

 ✓ Prey drive is elicited by the use of motion (hand signals), a high-pitched tone of voice, the movement of an object of attraction (stick, ball, or food), and the act of chasing or being chased.

 ✓ Pack drive is elicited by calmly and quietly touching, praising and smil-ing, grooming, and playing and training with an erect body posture.

 ✓ Defense drive is elicited by a threatening body posture, such as leaning or hovering over the dog from either the front or the side, staring at the dog with direct eye contact (this is how people get bitten), leaning over and wagging a finger in the dog’s face while chastising him, and checking the dog and using a harsh tone of voice.

Switching drives

Buddy can instantaneously switch from one drive to another. Picture this scene. Buddy is lying in front of the fireplace:

He’s playing with his favorite toy.The doorbell rings; he drops the toy, starts to bark, and goes to the door.You open the door; it’s a neighbor, and Buddy goes to greet him.

He returns to play with his toy.Buddy has switched drives from prey into defense, into pack, and back into prey.During training, your task is to keep Buddy in the right drive and, if neces-sary, switch him from one drive to another. For example, say you’re teach-ing Buddy to walk on a loose leash in the yard when a rabbit pops out of the hedge. He immediately spots it and runs to the end of the leash, straining and barking excitedly in a high-pitched voice. He’s clearly in full-blown prey drive.Now you have to get him back into pack drive, where he needs to be to walk at your side. The only way you can do that is by going through defense drive. You can’t, for example, show him a cookie in an effort to divert his attention from the rabbit. The rabbit is going to win out, unless you have a bigger rabbit.

  The precise manner in which you get Buddy back into pack drive — you must go through defense drive — depends on the strength of his defense drive. If he has a large number of defense (fight) behaviors, you can give him a firm check on the leash, which switches him out of prey drive into defense drive. To then get him into pack drive, touch him gently on the top of his head (don’t pat), smile at him, and tell him how clever he is. Then continue to work on your walking on a loose leash. If he’s low in defense (fight) behaviors, a check may overpower him, and a voice communication such as “Let’s Go” will be sufficient to get him out of prey drive into defense drive, after which you put him back into pack drive.

  If your dog has few fight behaviors and a large number of flight behaviors, a check on the leash often is counterproductive. Body postures, such as bend-ing over the dog or even using a deep tone of voice, usually are enough to elicit defense drive. By his response to your training — cowering, rolling upside down, not wanting to come to you for the training session — your dog will show you when you overpower him, thereby making learning difficult, if not impossible.

Here are the basic rules for switching from one drive to another:

 ✓ From prey into pack: You must go through defense drive.

 ✓ From defense into pack: Gently touch or smile at your dog.

 ✓ From pack into prey: Use an object (such as food) or motion

Understanding which drive Buddy has to be in speeds up your training process. As you become aware of the impact your body stance and motions have on the drive Buddy is in, you can deliver clear messages to him. Your body language becomes congruent with what you’re trying to teach. Because Buddy is an astute observer of body motions, which is how dogs communicate with each other, he’ll understand exactly what you want.

Applying drives to your trainingAfter looking at your dog’s Personality Profile (see the questionnaire earlier in this chapter), you know the training techniques that work best and that are in harmony with your dog’s drives. You now have the tools to tailor your training program to your dog. Here are the different categories your dog may be in:

 ✓ Defense (fight) — more than 60: A firm hand doesn’t bother your dog much. Correct body posture isn’t critical, although incongruent postures on your part can slow down the training. Tone of voice should be firm, but pleasant and nonthreatening.

 ✓ Defense (flight) — more than 60: Your dog won’t respond to strong corrections. Correct body posture and a quiet, pleasant tone of voice are critical. Avoid using a harsh tone of voice and hovering — leaning over or toward your dog. Focus on congruent body postures and gentle handling.

 ✓ Prey — more than 60: Your dog will respond well to a treat or toy during the teaching phase. A firm hand may be necessary, depending on the strength of his defense drive (fight), to suppress prey drive when in high gear, such as when chasing a cat or spotting a squirrel. This dog is easily motivated but also easily distracted by motion or moving objects.

Signals mean more to this dog than commands. Focus on using body postures, hands, and leash correctly, so as not to confuse the dog.

 ✓ Prey — less than 60: Your dog probably isn’t easily motivated by food or other objects, but he also isn’t easily distracted by or interested in chasing moving objects. Use verbal praise to your advantage in training.

 ✓ Pack — more than 60: This dog responds readily to praise and physical affection. Buddy likes to be with you and will respond with little guidance.

 ✓ Pack — less than 60: Start praying. Buddy probably doesn’t care whether he’s with you. He likes to do his own thing and isn’t easily motivated. Your only hope is to rely on prey drive in training. Limited pack drive is usually breed-specific for dogs bred to work independently of man.

Consider some important hints to keep in mind when planning your training strategy:

 ✓ Dogs with a defense drive of less than 60 rarely get into trouble — in fact, they avoid it. Many young dogs without life experience fall into this category, and although their numbers may be quite low as pups, they may vary slightly with age. With such a dog, a straight body posture is more important; to greet him, you need to squat down — as opposed to bending at the waist — to the dog’s level.

 ✓ Dogs that exhibit an overabundance in prey or pack drive also are easily trained, but you have to pay more attention to the strengths of their drives and exploit those behaviors most useful to you in training. You now have the tools to do it!

 ✓ If your dog is high in defense (fight) drive, you need to work diligently on your impulse control exercises and review them frequently.

 ✓ If your dog is high in prey drive, you also need to work on these impulse control exercises to control him around doorways, moving objects, and similar distractions.

 ✓ If your dog is high in both prey and defense (fight) drives, you may need professional help with your training — you may become exasperated with your lack of success. The dog may simply be too much for you to train on your own.

Following are the nicknames for a few of the profiles. See if you can recognize your dog:

 ✓ The Couch Potato — low prey, low pack, low defense (fight): This dog is difficult to motivate and probably doesn’t need extensive training. He needs extra patience if training is attempted because he has few behaviors to work with. On the plus side, this dog is unlikely to get into trouble, doesn’t disturb anyone, makes a good family pet, and doesn’t mind being left alone for considerable periods of time.

 ✓ The Hunter — high prey, low pack, low defense (flight): This dog gives the appearance of having an extremely short attention span but is perfectly able to concentrate on what he finds interesting. Training requires channeling his energy to get him to do what you want. You need patience, because you have to teach the dog through prey drive.

 ✓ The Gas Station Dog — high prey, low pack, high defense (fight): This dog is independent and not easy to live with as a pet. Highly excited by movement, he may attack anything that comes within range. He doesn’t care much about people or dogs and works well as a guard dog. Pack exercises, such as walking on a leash without pulling, need to be built up through his prey drive. This dog is a real challenge.

✓ The Runner — high prey, low pack, high defense (flight): Easily star-tled and/or frightened, this dog needs quiet and reassuring handling. A dog with this profile isn’t a good choice for children.

 ✓ The Shadow — low prey, high pack, and low defense (fight): This dog follows you around all day and is unlikely to get into trouble. He likes to be with you and isn’t interested in chasing much of anything.

 ✓ Teacher’s Pet — medium (50 to 75) prey, pack, and defense (fight): This dog is easy to train and motivate, and mistakes on your part aren’t critical. Teacher’s Pet has a nice balance of drives. Figure 2-5 shows the graph for Teacher’s Pet.

The easiest dogs are balanced among all drives. No matter what you do, the dog seems to be able to figure out what you want. If you’re lucky enough to have such a dog, take good care of him. By applying the principles of drives, he’ll be easy to turn into a well-trained pet.

People frequently ask us, “Can you change a dog’s drives — either reduce or enhance a particular drive?” In a few instances you can enhance a drive through training. For example, after you’ve taught a dog with few prey behaviors to retrieve, he may be more inclined to participate in fetch games. As a general rule, however, you can’t change a dog’s drives. You see what you get and you get what you see.

Remembering Who’s Training Whom

Training is a two-way street: Buddy is just as involved in training you as you are in trying to train him. The trouble is that Buddy is already a genius at training you — this is a skill he was born with. Put another way, a dog comes into the world knowing what is to his advantage and what isn’t, and he’ll do whatever he can to get what he wants. You, on the other hand, have to discover the skills of training him, just as we had to.

One of these skills is figuring out how to recognize when you’re inadvertently rewarding behaviors you may not want to reinforce. Begging at the dinner table is a good example. When Buddy begs at the table and you slip him some food, he’s training you to feed him from the table. You need to ask yourself, “Is this a behavior I want to encourage?” If the answer is no, then stop doing it.

Consider two more examples of how your dog may be training you:

 ✓ Buddy drops his ball in your lap while you’re watching television, and you throw it for him.

 ✓ Buddy nudges or paws your elbow when you’re sitting on the couch, and you absentmindedly pet him. When he has had enough, he walks away.

Buddy has trained you well. Is there anything wrong with that? Not at all, as long as you can tell him to go lie down when you don’t feel like throwing the ball or petting him.

  Become aware of the interactions between the two of you and who initiates them — you or Buddy. One of the quickest ways to gain your dog’s respect is to follow this simple rule: Everything belongs to you, especially your attention, and Buddy has to earn what he wants. Buddy has to do something for you before you do something for him. Consider the following, for example:

 ✓ Before he gets a meal, he has to sit and wait until you give the okay that he may eat. (Chapter 1 gets you started with this exercise.)

 ✓ When he comes to you for some petting, ask for a sit, or any other behavior you have taught him, before you pet him.

 ✓ If he comes and drops a ball in your lap, you decide when to play, not Buddy. If you don’t want to play, just ignore him.

  Interact with your dog as often as you like, but remember that you initiate the interaction and you end it. 

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