Dog-Dog Agression Patricia McConnell Seminar

The seminar was held at Happy Tails which is like many other training schools/doggie daycares, matting on the floor, high ceilings. Mother said it smelled like a boy's locker room. Folding chairs set up behind tables.

Patricia McConnell is a good speaker. She's funny and informative. The first part was dog-dog aggression to unfamiliar dogs and had a lot of practical dog training and teaching a watch me or an auto watch like in Control Unleashed. Which in turn becomes classical conditioning as well as operant because if everytime a dog shows up you play the watch me game with excellent treats the dog will associate dogs with excellent treats. It was interesting hearing her take that classical and operant conditioning are linked and not as separate as scientists like to think.

One thing we need to pay attention to with Tom's watch me is to not to repeat the cue! Lure or make sounds again. And for Opie's stay, if she breaks, don't repeat the stay.

Tricia illustrated a good faded lure by luring or making sounds to teach watch for four or five times and then just using the cue word. Also, when you give a jackpot give 10-12 treats. Most owners only give like three but that's not good enough. And give them one at a time, not one big treat. You want the dog to go "oh wow!"

Make sure you train your dogs to your cues when you're nervous. What does your voice sound like when you're stressed? Then train them to respond to that.

She talked about some ways to manage situations when you're training and don't want the dog to get over their heads. You can exercise you dog inside for several weeks and can avoid the neighborhood walks. And restraining a dog in a car really does help because movement feeds anxiety and reactiveness.

For unpredictable triggers: 2 solutions.
1. Try to film them on video camera because their will not be a reaction if you carry a camera around. Smiles.
2. Keep a list of everything about reactions: context, dog size, dog shape, breed, speed, anything that might have raised the dog's cortisol levels in the last 12 hours. If you can't find a pattern she thinks it has to do with smell.

The demo dogs were good and a good mix of issues. Tricia likes using demo dogs because problems come up and then she has to deal with them. It is riskier for the speaker.

Tricia advocates front clip harnesses. The sensation over the easy walk. Dogs seem to mind them less than head halters. Someone in the audience mentioned Calming Caps and Tricia said she also likes using those and dogs don't seem to mind.

Two theories as to why many dogs are worse on-leash than off:
1. They are trapped
2. They have to do a head on greeting and can't do the curve polite dogs do. She encourages that people with young dogs and puppies help them do a gentle curve to come up to other dogs.

You don't need your dog to meet every single dog you see or every human. If they look nervous or are tongue flicking move on.

From Dr. Anneke Lisberg's study on scent marking in dogs, dogs often mark soon after entering a dog park. The dogs who were mobbing them to smell them go and smell the urine and take the pressure off the dog who is entering. We cna probably help our dogs by letting the mark in dog-dog interactiongs.

What do you do when you have a dog reactive dog and a dog is coming at you off-leash? Have your dog in a sit-stay and walk to the end of your leash (train this). When the oncoming dog is twenty feet away (no closer) give a wide sweeping sit sign and say sit loudly and clearly. Most dogs will stop and then you throw a huge handful of food in their face. They'll eat food for the next five minutes giving you time to leave with your dog.

A few other less positive methods of training.
If your dog is at all clingy you can try this. Have the dog on two leashes, a long line and a 6 foot leash. Have a dog come into view. If the problem dog starts to react, the handler (with the 6-foot leash) throws the leash on the dog's back, as a tactile signal, and then runs away. Now, Tricia called this positive punishment. I actually think it's negative punishment because a good thing "you" goes away.

Constructional Agression Treatment (CAT)
The stimulus dog comes into view and if the dog reacts at all the stimulus dogs stays. When the problem dog shows any calmer behavior the stimulus dog leaves. This is good for fear cases but you really need to have a professional there to read dogs so it could get expensive.


The second half was one case study on dog-dog agression of dogs who live together. Wendy lives with 9 Labs, 8 of them intact. Lizzy and Annie, the only two dogs who breed, started fighting. The first incident was 6-9 months ago. Annie approached Lizzie's food bowl while Lizzie was eating, Lizzie growled and they got into a fight. What Tricia calls, putting the dogs in a blender (without the blade). They separated themselves. The second incident in the next couple days, Lizzie was outside loose and Annie was in the fenced in yard. Wendy only saw that Annie had Lizzie by the lip. Wendy separated them ever since then. They are aggressive through doors, windows, crates. They see each other about twice a week. The first incident was pre estrus.

Wendy thinks Lizzie was abused because she acts shy around people especially men and the home she came from was not very nice. Tricia said that a lot of dogs she sees who appear like they were abused are dogs who are genetically shy and were never properly socialized. And men are scarier because of the way they carry themselves and they are bigger with deeper voices.

Wendy's goal is to be able to walk the dogs side by side in 6 months with two people.

Intact females having problems with other females and not males can sometimes be fixed with spaying the female.

Tricia talked about the theory of treating the dominant dog in the household better by giving them treats first and all of that. When she started doing cases she recommended that for about a year. In over half of the cases it didn't help or hurt. In 20% it really helped. But in another 20% it really made things much worse when the dominant dog was a bully.

This is about the point where I thought it got really interesting. The dog-dog aggression training was interesting but a lot of it is very similar to human-dog agression training and it'd be interesting if this was your problem or you were advising people with this problem but otherwise not as much. But the ethology stuff! Tricia talked about her thoughts on domincance.

Dominance and social status do exist and they are important to a certain degree. Social Status is if you drop a pork chop between two dogs which dog gets it. There are two ways for them to figure it out. Either fight or threaten to fight or if one dog has more social status the other dog will back off. Social Status is limited and only applies to things the more "dominant" animal wants. If they don't care if the other dog goes outside first than the other dog is not "showing dominance" by going out first.

Tricia talked about the calm benevolent leader presence. Some people have it and dogs and humnas are drawn to them. She thinks Caesar has the natural leader presence but he doesn't realize it. He thinks he can teach that to other people but he really can't. I thought that was very intriguing.

Cats don't have the heirarchy and it creates problems for them when they meet. Wild cats sit on the edges of territories where other cats are to make sure the other cat isn't there. They don't want to meet them. In dogs, one dog puts their tail up and they solve the heirarchy problem right there.

She trains lots of emotion controls in dog packs. Waits at the door with dogs getting released individually, stays, get back, dogs get treats for holding a stay while another dog gets petted. She also has a generic name for all dogs, "dogs" that they are taught to respond to. She knows people who have trained generic names for groups of dogs in their packs, brown dogs, black dogs, bitches and boys.

If food aggression is a problem counter condition from a distance and bring them closer so you can still use food rewards.

The shy bold continuim is the most stable genetic continuim. Also, if a pregnant mosther is traumatized the fetus will have fewer cortisol receptors. And will go into overreactivity.

It's important when you're training a new response not to let the old behavior continue because the pathways in the brain get deeper, like the Grand Canyon, the more they get used.

Female dogs often have worse fights when they do fight. Guy dogs are usually aggressive at greetings but have little injury. Females fight less often but their fights are more intense. In wolves their are two options when females don't get along, either one leaves permanently or one of them dies.

We got into small groups to come up with five suggestions for Wendy. I liked our group. And I like the participation part of seminars, me thinks. One dog owner, two women from Vermont and Carol from the MSPCA in Boston. Carol and one of the women from Vermont were dog trainers. They were very interested in me. Tseehee. I was definitelly the youngest at the seminar by quite a bit. Other than me the youngest people were in their late twenties. And there were mostly women. We talked about suggestions. Did some of the other 9 dogs come into the house in the time period where the problem started? If Wendy was willing to spay and neuter many of the dogs if not all, to lower the hormone levels in the house. The VT trainer brought that up when the whole group got together and gave the suggestions to Wendy. She phrased it very politely and diplomatically. Another suggestion to counter-condition parallel walking. And to work on group exercises. I thought it would be helpful to have the group exercises, like waits at the door, to be worked into the routine so it didn't seem like a huge load of things to do.

Then everyone came together and shared some of the suggestions. Tricia told us we had to be very benevolent and kind. The Planet Dog people said to spend individual time with dogs. Someone suggested having outside doghouses which Wendy wasn't willing to do. One of the biggest suggestions was to rehome Annie because she has a home for her and to spay both dogs. Tricia said she didn't know if it would help but it might.

Tricia gave a suggestion for breaking up dog fights. If you can do it safely, body block one dog away from the other and make dramatic disgusted noises and faces. Then either put them in a crate and make the "uhh" disgust sound when ever you go by. Or leave them loose and refuse to look at them for the rest of the day. She thinks dogs can recognize disgust and they get that they've done something really bad and are usually on really good behavior after that.

Don't grab collars in a dog fight or yell. If you're going to grab something, grab the base of the tail. She had one client pick both her dogs up by the base of the tail and walk them outside and dump them into the pool.

It was really nice seeing the balance of sceince and application with dog training.

Mother and I collectively went up to Tricia three times. At the end of one of the breaks Mother went up just to say I was there and going to visit the University of Wisconsin and wanted to talk with her. Then we did go up before lunch. She gave us some names. She said there's not a dog ethologist at the U of Wisconsin now but gave us the name of three behavior people. She recommended looking at how other women in the applied dog behavior career got there. There's not one clear path like there is for dentistry or to become a doctor or vet. You need experience in ethology, psychology and practical experience ("which it seems like you (meaning me) already have lots of"). And the ways to get degrees are through psychology the ethology branch of zoology or to go through the vet program and become a behaviorist that way. I'm not interested in vet stuff. Mother mentioned that we went to Hampshire and met some of Ray Coppinger's protegees. Tricia lit up and recognized the reference.

I also went up at the end to get my books signed. (I also got The Advanced Behavior 2 day seminar dvd and the canine body language dvd while there.) Tricia winked at me and motioned me closer when the person she was talking to finished up. Smiles. She said she didn't remember my name but she did remember me. I asked about a way to help Tom out when Opal does rough play. She harrasses him regularly. He's good at look aways and ignoring her but it would still be better for him if she gave him a break. Tricia suggested yelping dramatically when she was being innapropriate and giving the disgusted expression. She also said that she hoped to be attending my seminar in the not too distant future and wished me luck.


Interesting things to teach:
No: A proper no meaning stop what you're doing, start by saying the word when your dog is playing with a toy or something, they look at you they get a treat
Enough: Meaning I don't want to play anymore, I'm not going to pet you, please leave me alone. Use happy slappies (patting the dog's head) and lift up your chin and turn away, folding your arms might help. If necessary body block them away. After several days of the command and trials the dogs should catch.
U-Turns: Really easy to teach. Have it on cue and use it for the situations when you know your dog is over their head. You've been counter conditioning at 20 feet and a dog comes around the corner 5 feet a way. Bend your knees when you turn and go quickly, don't wait for your dog to turn. Have them catch up to you.

Then we went over to Planet Dog with our seminar coupon. I love planet dog! If I go to college near Portland I want to work there. Got Niko a pretty cool cat toy. http://www.purrfectpost.com/purrfect_feather.html Don't leave cat's alone with it though. He chewed through the string part and we had to use the replacement. Still trying to figure out a way to tie or staple or adhere it back together somewhat.