Terrified of the Car

Question: Our mini labradoodle, Maggie, goes into (what seems like) an anxiety attack every time we put her into the car. Driving her to the groomer...to the local pet wash...or even just to drive to the grocery store-she starts shacking and whining and it seems like there is no calming her. It almost seems like a panic attack. Is there anything we can do to calm her nerves? I should mention-nothing bad has happened in the car or after a car ride....ever. Hope you can help.

Answer: Phobias are the most difficult things to deal with in dogs and generally systematic desensitizing is the only way to get reliable long term results. In your situation that would mean doing things like feeding your dog all its meals in the car, with the car turned off and parked wherever its parked. It would mean playing games with her in there and doing anything she likes and associating it with the car. Once you've established some baselines try turning the engine on without driving the car and repeat. Once you've gained some ground there try driving a very short distance, and I do mean very short, like out of your driveway and back in while the dog is doing something she enjoys, like eating a bone.

Once you can make some progress with all this, which definitely takes time and can prove challenging, then be sure to start taking short drives with great experiences on either end. Like drive to the end of the block and get out and give her tons of treats, a game with a favorite friend who you've arranged to meet there, another dog buddy to play with...whatever is going to turn her on. When you get home again have some awesome experience waiting for her. 

That all said, I do realize that we may actually have to take the dog somewhere before all this desensitizing, which can take a fair amount of time to produce results, kicks in. There's nothing to do about that although it might set your efforts back in the short run.  

The final possibility involves what's called flooding in behavioral lingo. If you're planning a longer road trip, say down to LA, take your dog with you. Extended exposure with you and the car being the only consistent reference points in an otherwise rapidly changing environment can totally change your dog's view of the car. 

Hope this helps. 

Rescue dog won't potty outside

Question: I have an older dog(6 yrs) from rescue organization is not house broken. Go for walks and then upon return to the house, she goes to a corner and does her business. She has it reversed!

Answer: There are a couple of things you can do here. First, rather than taking a long walk with your dog hoping that something will happen, take her outside near your place and an area you’d like to have her use as a restroom. If within five or so minutes nothing happens, take her back inside and crate her or confine her in some other appropriate way. Then, 20 or so minutes later, try it again. If still nothing happens, repeat. At some point the dog will have to go. After all, “when you gotta go you gotta go.” When the dog does go, make a big deal and then go for your walk. The reasoning is this: many dogs learn that the moment they go potty on their walks the owners head them straight back to the house. The message – pottying ends your walk. The work around? Hold it as long as possible and then relieve yourself back at the ranch.

There are a couple of tricks to help speed this up. Five or ten minutes before the walk overload your dog with food and liquids. You can generally get them to fill up on water by adding something tasty like milk or bullion to it. They’ll lap it up enthusiastically and usually to the bursting point which will make them likely to be less fussy outside. Do the same with food if needed. Just add something good and let the dog have at it.

Additionally, if for whatever reason your dog does not go outside you absolutely cannot let him go inside. That’s a recipe for disaster. No matter how you apply the above concepts into the actuality of your life and schedule, if your dog hasn’t gone outside you just cannot give him any freedom inside. Crate him, tether him to you, throw him out in the back yard – whatever! Just don’t let him go in the house.

And lastly, if your dog is hitting the same place again and again in the house try feeding him there. Dogs don’t like to poop or pee where they eat. Of course that doesn’t mean they would go elsewhere but it’s a good way to teach them that that place is off limits.

Good luck! J

Testy Shiba Inu

Question: I am a first time dog owner with a 6 month old female Shiba Inu. I got her from a breeder whom I met at the Golden Gate Kennel Club Dog Show a few years ago. I told the breeder I was not interested in ever showing the dog and simply wanted a good companion pet. Did the breeder take my needs into consideration? NO! She paired me with a singleton puppy who exhibits a laundry list of behavioral problems, at the top of which are lack of bite inhibition and no impulse control.10 days after I brought her home at the age of 8-1/2 weeks, I decided to work intensively with a highly recommended dog trainer who uses only positive reinforcement techniques. In addition to one or two weekly training sessions, I boarded her on two separate occasions with our trainer for a total of 3 weeks. My problem is that she continues to bite me sporadically when I put on her harness to take her for walks and long line exercise. Because there are no consequences for bad behavior (only the reprimands "settle" or "Uh-Uh"), I never know when she will lash out at me in irritation. Short of aversive training, is there any way to show this alpha puppy that in my house she must follow my rules and biting is a capital offense? Kidding, of course.

Answer: There is a lot in your question. First, Shibas in general are very difficult dogs. In many ways you could say they are more like cats – fussy, overly sensitive and very temperamental. In my puppy classes the Shibas often have great difficulty with handling exercises and it takes quite some time to get to the point where the dog can be handled in any way you see fit without throwing a fit, including biting. Second, positive “only” training is, at least in my not so humble opinion, a severely limited, one-dimensional and often ineffective way of training a dog. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not the positive part that’s the problem. Of course we want to do as much positive as possible! It’s the “only” part that’s the problem and the fact that you are simply not allowed to do anything else. In other words, out of the 4 generally accepted training modalities – positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment and negative punishment – this approach ignores 75% of available training methodologies and tries to squeeze every dog and its issues through the remaining 25%. When that doesn’t work trainers who advocate this will often either tell you that you’re not working hard enough or that your dog is untrainable. They’ll generally never concede that maybe their approach has limitations and at the same time castigate anyone who will try a more comprehensive approach to difficult situations like yours.

That said, your situation is complex and, as said, Shibas are very difficult. A proper combination of “rank management,” desensitization, and more self-assertion on your part should enable to get to the other side of this. In fact, I’ve yet to meet a Shiba, or any other dog, that could not get to the other side of these temper tantrums. Shibas just offer extra challenges in this department. Short of meeting the dog, it is difficult to offer simple suggestions as working with Shibas often becomes more art than science as we navigate the rather uneven terrain of their psyches.

Jealous & growly rescue dog

Question: Our new addition is a 2-year old rescue with some behavioral issues. She often growls when our other dog (who we've had since she was a puppy) gets closer to us when we are snuggled with the rescue, or comes to us for attention when we are with the rescue. Sometimes the growl is low, but grows more menacing. We have read that correcting the growl can sometimes result in the dog skipping the growl and going straight into an aggressive action like biting. Is this growling about jealousy (since it often involves one of us humans nearby) and what's the best way to handle it?

Answer: So the first thing is, whoever told you that correcting growling is problematic was right. Growling is a courtesy that lets you and others know that the dog is unhappy and irritated. Second, this is definitely about jealousy and I would begin by not indulging the rescue dog with so much affection. I don’t know what his background is but if it’s been unstable then he can easily develop an excessive level of attachment to you. One way to respond when he starts with the growling is simply to put him off your lap and get up and walk away. While you are not reprimanding the growling you are dissolving the situation that’s contributing to the attitude shift and teaching him that acting out of that attitude will make the thing he’s trying to hold on to go away. Letting this sink in will take some time.

On a deeper level, when you are trying to manage dynamics in your pack it’s important to figure out which of the dogs is the more naturally dominant dog between them and adjust your relationship with them accordingly. That is, you want to be sure to treat the naturally more dominant dog preferentially in such a way that both dogs know it. That way you are reinforcing the social structure that they’ve already worked out between them. Trying to give preferential treatment to the “underdog” as a form of compensation for his lower social status will tend to lead to trouble. Once you’ve figured out the pecking order, help to enforce it. For instance if the “lower ranking” dog makes dominant overtures toward the higher ranking dog you should reprimand the lower ranking dog. Conversely, if the higher ranking dog is needlessly hassling the lower ranking dog, you can reprimand him as well. If you are sending all the signals to the higher ranking dog about his higher status then he should have no need to lord it over the other dog.

With respect to the situation you asked about, this would help to ensure that there’s no confusion about status and contribute to the lessening of tension in the situation described in your question.

Anxious Doberman

Question: I have a three year old Doberman who reacts with anxiety to me and behaves well with the men in my family. He will not sit outside the coffee shop for me without barking and pulling at his lead, he jumps incessantly when I come home, he insists on sitting in my room when I am working at my desk and he follows me around the house from room to room when I am home. My adult son can take him to the safeway and he will sit politely and wait for him to return even if it is an hour. What have I done to create this mess? 

Answer: I think the main issue here is not that the dog is generally anxious around you but specifically that he has separation anxiety with respect to you and experiences intense emotional distress at the thought of you not being around once you are nearby.

The main thing to do in situations like this is to tone down the emotional nature of your interactions with him. When you come home ignore him for the first ten or fifteen minutes and once you begin to engage with him keep it all low key. No long periods of hugging and baby talk and emotional over-indulgence. At this point, with respect to his emotional condition around you, this is poison. It’s like feeding drugs to the addict to keep him happy. We have to break the addiction and then build a new kind of relationship around that. When you are home working and he wants to follow you around, don’t let him. Tether him at certain places, make sure he’s got a comfy bed there and if you leave your desk to get a drink from the fridge, make him just wait there. If you tie him out at a coffee shop and he acts up, give him a spritz on the nose with a water bottle and in a firm tone tell him “quiet.”

Also, doing some solid obedience work with him without treats would help him develop an appropriate hierarchical relationship with you which will help with all sorts of things including this. It will give him a stable, predictable context for his relationship with you that’s more structured and comprehensible to your dog than purely an emotionally based relationship of attachment.

Hope this helps. Please check out the section on separation anxiety on this site as well. Good luck!

Barking Puppy

Q:  6th day home with our 11 week old Aussie girl. She is doing very well, sleeps in crate (during the day when she's very tired and through the night next to me.) She has a 30'x10' pen outside and LOVES It! She even spends alone time out there with my sweatshirt. The problem is the 5'x12' play pen inside. She barks for food or? even when we are in there with her. I would let her bark, I have been trying to reward when I say "quiet" she's never quiet though. But my poor cats are trying to adjust but hate the high pitched barking. What to do....what to do....?
 

A: A couple of things to start with. Letting her bark until she gets tired of barking and then giving her a treat is terrible advice, although it seems to be all over the web. When you give her a reward for being quiet when taking a break from barking all it does is reinforce the fact that you get a treat for barking. That is, the dog will figure out quickly that "if I bark and then am quiet for a moment, I'll get a treat. Repeat, and I'll get more treats." 

That said, sometimes intense barking requires a more direct solution. Try using a water spray bottle that will shoot a jet stream and if the pup barks, give him a little spritz in the nose and mouth and say "quiet" in a strong, commanding tone. If water doesn't work, try Bitter Apple spray or some other taste deterrent. If using taste deterrents be sure to spray in the nose/mouth and avoid the eyes! If all that fails, try a citronella spray barking collar. These will stop the barking quickly in most cases. Let me know what happens and come back to this Q&A with follow up questions if needed.