K9 Obedience Training: Teaching Pets and Working Dogs to Be Reliable and Free-Thinking (K9 Professional Training) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Susan Bulanda is recognized worldwide as an expert in animal behavior and K9 search and rescue who has formed and run two K9 SAR units. She is a founding member of the National Search Dog Alliance and a former vice president and dog chairperson of the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants. An award-winning author, Susan has written hundreds of articles and nine books.

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CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS A FREE-THINKING DOG?

What is a free-thinking dog? In short, it is a dog that can think for himself. This is a dog that will invent games on his own or solve novel problems, doing things and making connections between events and objects that he was never explicitly taught. You may have already met or even owned a free-thinking dog. These dogs are often fun dogs to spend time with, providing lots of laughs with their antics, and tending to be more confident, cool, and collected in the face of new or difficult situations.

Whether or not you’ve met a free-thinking dog, it is important to remember that all dogs do think—there is no question about that. Although it is true that some breeds are bred specifically to think on their own, and that certain individual dogs will be more inclined to think freely than others, the ability of a dog to think freely (or not) is, more often than not, more dependent on the dog’s training than on his breed. That is, free thinking is something that can be actively taught—or not—in training. This means that, by using the correct methods, a dog can become more able to think and act reliably and independently. This is a necessary skill for the working dog, who will often find himself faced with novel problems and situations that cannot be specifically trained.

Not all training methods encourage free thinking in the dog. Specifically, methods that require exact responses from the dog and correct every deviation from the desired behavior tend to discourage free thought. When a dog is not encouraged to think freely, the dog becomes hesitant to do anything other than what he is told to do. The dog will not think on his own or make decisions, even if he is given a command that puts him in an uncomfortable or even dangerous situation. For example—and I have seen this happen—if an owner commands his dog to “Down-stay” in the direct sun, the dog down-stays, no questions asked, even if he’s uncomfortable, and even if there is shade a few feet away. Those are the rules. Again, while some dogs may behave this way because of their individual personality—they are not inclined to think for themselves—this is most often a learned behavior.

A free-thinking dog in the same situation might make a slightly different choice. He will still follow the command, but might play with the rules. For instance, he might get up, move to the shade, and then do his down-stay. This kind of playing with rules differs from both the stiff following of rules described above and from breaking the rules, or simply not obeying. A dog that is breaking the rules will simply not do what he was asked to do, perhaps because he doesn’t have the self-control to obey the command. A free-thinking dog, on the other hand, will obey the command in a way that is both comfortable and safe for him.

THE FREE-THINKING DOG AT WORK

When a dog struggles to think freely, he may not be successful in a working context. Take this example: we once had a handler and her very nice, champion obedience dog come to our unit. The handler wanted to train her dog in SAR. This dog seemed to have all the qualifications of a good SAR dog. She was friendly, pleasant, good with people, very intelligent, and physically fit. However, in order to win the highest level of obedience competition, she was taught to do what she was told, when she was told, and precisely in the way she was taught. Her training did not allow her to deviate from her routines.

We started with one of the most basic SAR training exercises, in which the handler hides from the dog, who is then meant to find her. The dog typically gets very excited and wants to find the handler, his owner. This dog showed real promise: she got very excited, had a good nose, and was able to run right to the handler. She really got into this “find the person” game, so much so that she momentarily forgot her obedience training and was able to simply play.

In the next round of training, a volunteer ran and hid for the handler and dog to find. At first, the dog did well. She did succeed in finding the hidden volunteer. However, after she found the volunteer, you could see her whole demeanor change: she went into obedience mode, losing the excitement of the game and replacing it instead with the resolution that she must wait for the next command. Nothing we did could get her to think on her own. All the members of the unit saw this, even the dog’s owner, and we all knew that the dog would progress no further in her SAR training. This was unfortunately due to her previous training, which never allowed her to do anything but what she was told, and had diminished her ability to think freely. This dog failed at her SAR training because in some contexts, including SAR, a dog must be free-thinking in order to do a job or complete a task well—must, that is, be able to act on her own, without needing to be told what to do every step of the way.

In the context of SAR, a dog that knows that his handler is wrong or has missed something must disobey in order to show the handler what he has found: a clue, maybe, or a related object, or even the missing person. An experienced handler will learn to trust his dog, but almost every handler fails to do this at one time or another. I am no exception. Once, when one of my SAR dogs, Scout, was young and not very experienced, I sent him by an overhanging bank of a river to check if a missing person’s body was caught underwater in the roots of the trees. He came back and gave me the signal that nothing was there. I thought he worked too fast, so I sent him out again. The second time he worked even faster (he knew no one was there). I did not like that either, so I gave him the command to go out a third time. He purposely sat in front of me and gave me a look that clearly said, “Lady, don’t you understand Canine? No one is there!” I realized that I had been the one who had broken a rule—the rule to trust your dog. I laughed, told him he was a good boy, and did not insist that he go out again. There was no body, and he knew it much better than I did; he was a free-thinking dog.

Sheep herding is another context in which a dog must be free-thinking. A dog may be given a command when working the sheep but will disobey because he sees something that the handler does not see. Again, you must trust your dog. Your dog may prove to be an excellent problem solver. I remember reading about an incident in which a ewe with a newborn lamb would not move when the Border Collie working the field tried to bring her and her lamb in from the pasture. She was focused on protecting her lamb. Nothing the dog did would get the ewe to move. Instead she tried to defend her baby and attack the dog by charging at him. When she did this the lamb would follow, so the ewe stayed where she ended her charge. After a few tries, the dog repeatedly approached the ewe in such a manner that she had to keep moving toward the barn to charge after the dog. It did not take the dog long to lure the ewe and her lamb back to the barn. While this may sound like a logical solution to the problem (and it was), it was nothing the dog had done before: he had never been specifically trained to work in this manner. He’d just figured it out on his own—because he was a free-thinking dog.

Free-thinking is also an important quality in sled dogs. The lead dog of a dog sled pack is always the one to make decisions for the pack, and the one to alert the musher (the person driving the sled) about any dangers. Sometimes mushers may choose shortcut routes across frozen lakes—but if the lead dog detects that it is not safe to cross the lake, the dog will refuse to go. The smart musher trusts his...