And other dog behaviour questions…
At the start of September I answered some of my social media followers’ dog related questions in a blog post. In this blog post I will be answering some more for you!
Question 1: From @hermesmodernlife on Instagram
Why does my cardigan corgi puppy pretend to bury things around the house?
Not under cushions, or in shoes or anything. He actually mimes the actions of digging up dirt and covering over the object using his nose.
Answer:
This is one of my favourite behaviours to watch dogs do!
This is what gets called a FAP – a Fixed Action Pattern. Dogs aren’t the only animals to have FAPs, a very common one is seen in geese and ducks when they perform behaviours of caring for eggs (when there isn’t actually an egg there).
Your dog is performing a behaviour that is instinctual, its hard wired. They do it without thinking. These are behaviours that animals have performed – perhaps way back before we domesticated dogs (think wolf relative thousands of years ago in the wild) that used to have a purpose. The purpose here is quiet obvious, to bury and hide the item for a later date to make sure noone else pinches it. Albeit – not very successfully when it is being buried under thing air… but that’s what is happening.
It certainly isn’t anything to worry about, just enjoy the cuteness of it!
Question 2: from @gkinghrn on Instagram
So my dog only barks when he hears other dogs… not a huge issue but I wish he wouldn’t… I suspect no way to really change that… Am I right?
Answer:
Firstly, I’m so glad to read the part where you say “not a huge issue”. I spend a lot of my working week trying to manage dog owner’s expectations on dog behaviour, and many sadly seem to want perfectly silent dogs all of the time! Just completely unrealistic. To some extent you are right – dogs will bark! It’s lovely to see that you are realistic on this and not expecting your dog to be silent all of the time, and also that it isn’t a huge make or break problem for you as many of my clients don’t reach out for help until they are at breaking point and really at the end of their tether with their dog’s behaviour.
Ultimately barking is a dog’s way of communicating, so what we absolutely do not want to do is punish a dog for barking in an attempt to stop them.
If we punish a dog for barking, we leave them with little further options for communicating with us, and can force them to go further up what we call the ladder of communication which may mean that they snap or bite! Something we clearly all want to avoid.
For more information on the ladder of communication take a look at my dog body language webinar.
If we want to work on a dog barking at the sound of other dogs barking then the process we want to go through is called desensitisation and counter conditioning.
We basically want to introduce the dog to the very quiet sound of dogs barking, at a low volume level where they hear the sound and maybe do a little head tilt of acknowledgement, but it isn’t loud enough to trigger them into a barking frenzy.
This process can be quite slow as we are aiming to keep the dog under their individual threshold for reacting throughout the process, but we gradually increase the sound of the recording bit by bit until the sound can be loud enough to be realistic and your dog no longer barks when they here it.
This is something one of my members, Jeff, has been working on. They started using sound recordings from sound cloud, then moved on to recording the actual neighbour’s dog which Jeff was more triggered by.
Sometimes it is necessary to do work in the moment too. This may be by following the changing emotions process or teaching your dog an alternative calm response, depending on the motivation behind their behaviour (i.e. are they fearful of the dog noises, or frustrated that they can’t go and join in the fun?!).
There’s resources for all of these things on my members area so do take a look if you need more support.
That’s it for this month, but if you would like your dog training and behaviour questions answered in real time, why not join the coffee morning on October 27th at 9am? You can ask a registered Clinical Animal Behaviourist all your dog training and behaviour questions.
Just join the membership for 1 month to try it out!