Help!

I get quite a few dog training questions by phone. That's mainly because I no longer go to anyone's home for training. Now I used to make "housecalls" but no more. It was just so boring! It's not that hard to change dog behavior, you just need to know what you're looking at and you need to be creative in your solution, but even so it ain't that hard! You've got to learn to shape the behavior that you want, NOT correct behavior that you don't want! Once you learn that, once you look at it from that point of view, dog training becomes easy and therefore somewhat boring. Of all the hundreds of homes I've visited only a handful of dog problems were a challenge. Not because I'm some kind of genius, but because, as I mentioned before, once you know how to do it, it ain't that hard! But I've got to admit the voicemail left me intrigued just a bit.

I got the call on a Saturday morning. Now when I see a number on my Caller ID that I don't recognize I'm not answering. You see I solve dog training problems for people right over the phone. Most of the time they don't need me in their home and most of the time I don't want to go. They tell me the problem, I tell them what they need to do, they do it and it's all better. I swear to you that's how it goes. I believe I've heard them all. If everyone with a dog problem knew my phone number then I'd never get off the phone, so if I don't recognize the number I'm not answering! Needless to say I didn't answer the call. Four rings and right to voicemail. I waited for the beep that signifies the voice message is complete and then I picked up the phone.

"This is Karen (fictional name)from XYZ Adoption Agency (Once again a fictional name). I need a dog psychologist. I am fostering a dog that has confounded four vets and no one has been able to solve the problem. Can you call me and suggest someone who can help me? Thanks."

"Ok," I thought, "there's the hook. She wants me to give her the name of someone who can solve her problem. She's appealing to my ego because they know I don't go out to homes anymore and if she asks me to suggest someone then I'm going to want to tackle the problem to prove I can do better than anyone else." Well she was partly right. At that point I wanted to know what the problem was and I wanted to solve it. So I called her. But I wasn't going to anyone's house!

I work with mostly adopted dogs and most of the agencies know of me. Adopted dog training is sometimes a bit different in that adopted dogs usually have issues. That's why they're out there in shelters being adopted in the first place. Because they didn't "cut it" at home. Ok, I'll be blunt. Most adopted dogs have behavior problems and since that's my specialty, dog adoption agencies will often call me. Or the members of the dog adoption agencies that foster and safe house dogs until they're adopted will call me with problems. That was this woman named Karen, but she didn't return my call. So I forgot about her.

The next Saturday I got another message from her. I don't know her and had never met her, but she sounded irritated and made some vague allusion to the fact that I hadn't called her. Well, I'm rarely accused of being patient, but I thought I'd try once more, so I called her back. Once again she didn't answer her phone and over the next several days didn't return the call. I vowed once again to forget about Karen and her adopted dog's behavior problems.

One week later, on a Saturday I got a call while at home. I looked at the Caller ID while it was ringing and the number looked familiar, so I answered it.

"This is Karen from XYZ Adoption Agency. Did you get my calls?"

I reacted to her accusatory tone because it irritated me. "Yeah, I did. Did you get my messages?"

"Oh, uh, well I can't get messages off my cell phone. Something's wrong with it."

Not wanting the technical explanation I encouraged her to get to the point. "So what's going on?"

"Well I am safe housing a female pit bull until we can adopt her out. She was chasing her tail. Constantly. I took her to four vets. We got some medication for her. She looked so miserable. One vet docked her tail so she couldn't get to it so easy because she had chewed it raw. She was in a lot of emotional pain."

This story encapsulates the problems of adopted dog training. Most adopted dogs or shelter dogs have issues. Many have been in abuse situations, but you NEVER know the full story so you have to be careful in approaching behavior problems. Most of the time corrections make the problem worse. Actually corrections are not the best for any dog, but with adopted dogs you can really make a bad situation much worse.

A second problem in the adopted dog story is the safe housers, the people who provide foster homes until the dogs can be adopted to their new owners. These are usually good-hearted, well-meaning people. Without them many more shelter dogs would be put down because there's not enough room in most shelters for all the dogs. Every now and then you get a safe houser like Karen who thinks she knows something about training dogs in general and adopted dogs in particular. Usually they know just enough to be dangerous. Listen to the rest of the story.

After she described the problem I asked the question I always ask. "So what did you do to try and stop this behavior?"

"Well the only way I could stop her was to pick her up. Oh and of course we would take a food treat and put it in front of her nose and she would stop then. But when I would put her down or she would finish the treat she would start all over again."

If I hadn't heard insane things like that so many times in dealing with adopted dog scenarios I would have been amazed. But I'm used to it. What I heard next I never get used to.

"She was just so miserable. She looked at me like she wished she could just stop doing this! The look on her face was so sad. So we put her down."

I was stunned and I don't mind telling you a little upset. "You did what?"

"We put her down."

She sounded pretty confident in her abilities as she was telling me what she did to "stop" the little pit bull from chasing her tail. That confident tone was now starting to break up a bit.

"Could you have stopped this? What would you have done?"

"Well I don't think you want me to tell you since it's a pretty easy problem to solve. I've done it before and it's easy."

She started to cry and at that point I didn't want to make it worse. I asked another question.

"Was there ever a time when you first adopted the dog, or excuse me, starting safe housing her that she didn't chase her tail?"

"Well, yeah. Actually she didn't do it when we first got her."

I'm not a cruel man. I was nice to her. She seemed to feel bad after all. But here's where she went wrong. First of all she should have returned my phone calls! Fifteen minutes on the phone and we could have solved the problem. Secondly putting a piece of food in front of the dog while she was spinning rewarded the spinning. Gee, I wonder why she started again after she finished the treat? Picking her up while she was spinning to stop the spinning rewarded the spinning. Once again, I wonder why she started again when she was put back down on the floor?

Like I said, I was polite to her, but I was very irritated with her. She put a dog down, a good dog that could have been adopted, because she couldn't return a phone call! And she continually rewarded and therefore reinforced a behavior that probably started out as a mild reaction to the stress of being in a strange home. Because of those rewards the behavior increased in intensity. This was one time I would have gladly gone to someone's home. What a waste...