FEATURE | CINDY
Magoo was an energetic dog who I discovered liked to run around the play yard with a rope toy. He needed some work on impulse control, so I used a freestanding kennel in the back yard of the shelter to teach him to wait at the door. I also instructed shelter staff and volunteers to follow through cueing him to sit and wait before coming out of his kennel and pass through the door to the play yard. Magoo was adopted!
training and some basic behavior modification. The clicker training I incorporated into my interactions helped shift these dogs into a more focused, active and engaged state, eager to learn. In addition to improving their chances for adoption, I believe from what I’ ve seen, the dogs are more able and willing to continue to learn, provided their adopters use positive methods.
Eye contact and attention One of the very first behaviors I work on with dogs in the shelter environment is eye contact. That’ s after I’ ve allowed the dog to just get comfortable being around me. Many of these dogs just need out of the kennel and to run, sniff and explore. Some of the sniffing may also be some displacement or calming behavior. I just wait for the dog to approach, and when he’ s ready, we start to work on eye contact.
It’ s slow starting with some dogs, I believe, due to a lack of prior training and confidence. I just wait, and when I can capture a glance, I know we have started to connect. Eye contact is a great default behavior for any dog. Not only do I have the dog’ s attention for further training, but it’ s calming, and once a reinforcement history is established, it can preempt inattention and head turning as potential adopters walk by the kennels.
Protopopova & Wynne( 2014) observed that initial adoption decisions are made by looking at dogs in their kennels, before the final decision is made after they take a dog out to see how it interacts. Even though earlier work by Protopopova( 2012) suggested that eye contact did not make a difference in whether dogs were adopted, I believe attention and focus training is a foundational behavior that is the starting point for interaction and should not be disregarded.
Hand targeting Another simple behavior I teach is hand targeting. I can use this in many ways, including moving a dog into and out of a crate, teaching loose-leash walking, as a refocusing exercise for reactive dogs, and just as an easy and reinforcing thing to do. The way I explain it to my clients is that hand targeting shifts dogs out of an emotionally reactive state into a cognitive or operant state.
Capturing and shaping happy faces There was a dog named Kiwi at one shelter where I was volunteering who had been picked up as a stray with another dog. After a couple of months, her traveling companion was adopted, and she remained at the shelter. She became noticeably depressed and refused to eat. This dog, even before her friend was adopted, was not very photogenic. She was all black, and her ears laid back against her head. I made it my aim to give her some individual attention to help modify her facial expression, and train her to hold her ears up and her mouth open so that I could get a good picture of her that would help her get adopted. I used clicker training to capture Kiwi’ s ears in an upright position. I shaped the erect ears, and then added a little duration so I could snap a photo before her ears went back down and her mouth closed. It worked. Kiwi was noticed and adopted.
Photos: Cindy Ludwig The APDT Chronicle of the Dog | Summer 2018 29