Q&A with ‘The Paw Man’ (743) – Equipment Association & Opposition Reflex Elizabeth Fletcher Hi Pawman. I have a behaviour question to add to your queue. My Mum has a Mastiff x Staffy with a dash of Kelpie thrown in somewhere. He is three years old and a very chilled out and relaxed dog. He goes to dog training twice a week and is walked daily (his favourite hour). Mum and Dad live on 18 acres so he has a pretty good life. I might add he is an inside dog as all our dogs are part of the pack. Mum trained him on a check chain as he had a tendency to forget his manners, he absolutely adores both dogs and people, our trainer believes he is the most social dog she has ever met. He is now really good, never pulls and walks on a loose lead beside you. Paw Man And this new obedient behavior was taught and enforced on a choke chain. Your mother enforced this new behavior the moment she put the choke chain on the dog so it is a safe assumption that the dog associates being obedient with the presence of the choke chain. Elizabeth Last month Mum decided that because he was so good she didnt need to use the check chain anymore so she changed over to a proper collar. In less than a day she was back to using the check chain as he seemed to completely forget everything he had been taught, he was pulling badly. Without any corrections he fell back into line and walked perfectly, behaving at dog training as well. Paw Man Your dog forgot nothing,…. In fact his memory is near perfect because he remembered what behaviors went with the flat collar used previously and went straight back to doing them….. this is ‘equipment association’ at its best. Elizabeth Our question is: Why would the flat collar make such a huge difference in him? He knows the rules of the walk and dog training (they are both the same, dont pull or lunge). Paw Man No, YOU know the rules of the walk….. he knows the rules of equipment association. Because the canine mind does not have the same reasoning ability that our mind does we tend to attribute a level of understanding to dogs that they in fact do not have…… our mind is more about understanding and the canine mind is more about correct associations. Elizabeth I will add the collar was fitted so two fingers could fit under no more so it didnt slide over his head if he pulled back as he has a smaller diameter head (kelpie style) compared to his shoulders. Paw Man Your dog knows the instant the a new piece of equipment is put around his neck because that is the very physical connection between you and him and even what we think might be considered as slight changes will easily be picked up by the dog. Other examples of how dog trainers can make errors in this way is to have one set of equipment for training and another supposedly identical set for competing…. Believe me your dog knows the difference between them and can quite easily give you a different set of behaviors for each one. :) I remember very early on in my career I was at a civilian dog obedience show as a spectator and the person I was with pointed out his friend who was a ‘shoe-in’ to win based on past performance and the amount of training she had done in preparation for the competition. Came the moment of truth and the dog looked like a dunce as did the extremely frustrated trainer who walked off the field and back to her tent with fumes nearly pouring from her ears. My friend and myself made our way over to her tent and I listened to her venting about her dogs very poor performance…… included in her venting was this statement… “I gave him every advantage that I could… he had had a doggy massage, a bath and groom, hell I even went out and brought him a brand new competition leash and collar…… and this is how he repays me!!” I told my friend (my RAAF SGT at that time) that even I could see why her dog balked in his performance… but I was told that sometimes when you have the answer you have to wait until the student asks you the question before they are ready to hear it, accept it and learn from it. Elizabeth I have tried to train him to weight pull but he wont pull unless I am in front pretending to help, he hates leading. Mum and I wonder if it has anything to do with the pulling reflex you regularly talk about. Mum has decided he can use a check chain for the rest of his life since he voted against the collar. Paw Man I was talking to owner of Malamutes a few months back and she said she couldn’t teach her dogs to walk at the heel because she didn’t want to suppress her dogs Opposition Response that she relied upon for them to pull the sled. My comment to her was to teach the dogs to pull on the command ‘Mush’ and to heel on the command ‘Heel’ and there will be no conflict nor diminished response. You could almost see the light bulb illuminate over her head. :) Thinking that one will impede the other is like thinking that a Sit-stay will impede a Recall or that a Drop command will impede an Up command. The canine opposition response is just another behavior that can also be equipment related. Put a choke chain on a dog and it knows it has to walk to heel. Put a harness on that same dog and it knows that it must pull. It is science, but it’s not rocket science :)
Posted on: Sat, 03 Jan 2015 04:20:47 +0000