Dog reading 202

Marcus Major is one of the apprentice trainers working at the kennel right now. He is a first time dog owner that just got caught up in all the fun after he brought his GSD here for training. Yesterday while working a very difficult Presa Canario he finally found the light switch. He suddenly got some really good reactions from the Presa and when he was finished he looked at me and said "I knew what he was going to do five seconds before he did it!" That is the essence of "reading" a dog.

So how can you know what the dog is going to do five seconds before they do it?

Instinctual drives are started by the release of hormones that occur when specific stimulus are experienced by the dog. Hormones have the ability to change and to a degree control certain body functions and characteristics. When these hormones start to enter the system there are always subtle physical changes that signal the onset of an instinctual response. Recognising these early signs is what the five seconds are all about. why is that so important?

It is well known that working a dog in defense you have the possibilty of breaking a dog by pushing them into choosing the flight option over the fight. Though protection dogs with proper breeding are less likely to choose the flight option it is always possible. What a trainer does is first see the gathering signs of stress that signal defense, and then see what choice the dog is going to make, fight or flight, that is why you learn to read dogs.

There is a popular term "building drive" that is used a lot in the dog world. Biologically that can't be done, but it makes things easier for most people to understand. What you are actually doing is increasing the hormones with continued stimulus, and that increases the energy level that a dog puts into what ever drive they may be in, but it is still a very good descriptive term. But what happens if you're "building drive" without properly reading the dog? What happens if all the prey monsters out there are putting a lot of energy into playing tug of war, but NOT actually in "instinctual" drive at the time? Now your going HUH!?

In our new training DVD "PP Training with OUT a decoy" playing tug with your pup, after you trigger their survival instinct, is a basic foundation to the system. I have recently watched a few people that were training with this system and realized for the first time how important it is to truly understand reading the dog even in prey drive, which every one takes for granted.

The main concept in this system is that drives are instinctual and therefore we can control all the dogs actions if we trigger the proper drive at the proper time, dog can't help it, it must respond as we want it to. Cat jumps out in front of dog while on a walk and takes off running away, dog is Gone! That is an instinctrual response to a stimulus that elicited hormone flow and got a reaction we could all predict.

So if the owner has read their dog correctly, while playing tug, and got the dog to engage while its hormones are pumping , the dog has no choice but to charge forward at something moving. It doesn't see the owner it just reacts, and we can build a conditioned response to an alert command.

But the people I saw had a decoy in front of them for the first time and when they alerted the dogs, instead of the dogs charging forward to the moving decoy, they looked back then turned and jumped on the handler, looking for a "tug" game with the handler. That indicates that the dogs were thinking when they heard the alert command instead of reacting. Which means, no hormones, which means, they were NOT in drive when they played the tug game in training.

You see even in something as easy as what most people "think" prey drive is, we can make big mistakes if we cant "Read" the dog. You can start a dog playing tug and then, as the right moves are made, the hormones are started and as the game continues the drives are stimulated, but that also means you are not engaging the dogs prey drive to start the game, which means they have time to think about it, which means, if it is a large imposing decoy, they have time to think about flight over fight, all of which means this whole subject may be much more complicated, when truly understood than most can even imagine. But if you take your time and learn to really read your dogs responses you're most of the way home. If you use these instincts that are governed by hormonal reactions you will get the results you want every time.

Now there's a chunk to chew on, as always questions welcomed, comments with credentials, appreciated.

Listen Well, Bite Hard!!!