Clicker Logic

Pan was sleeping on his pillow next to my office chair as I read a dog training article online. The article referred to canine dominance-seeking, anxiety, assertion of dominance, submission, ritualized aggression, assertiveness, dominance testing, intent, fear and freedom, all in the introductory paragraphs. And this was in an article by someone who writes also of operant conditioning, classical conditioning, and B.F. Skinner.

So I decided to talk to my dog and find out what he thinks. I really did this. And these are his real responses, recorded as they happened.

“Pan, how are you feeling?” I asked. Pan, who was lying on a pillow, curled in a ball on his right side, lifted his head, turned it to the left then to the right and then looked up at me. I turned back to the computer to record his response. He put his head back down and closed his eyes.

“Pan, do you love me?” Pan got up into a seated position facing me, looked at my face and flicked his ears frontwards and backwards. He tilted his head a little to his right. I turned back to the computer to record his response and as I did he walked in a circle and laid back down curled up on his right side with his chin resting on his back feet.

“Pan, when Bravo [our Greyhound] tries to get your food, do you feel dominant or submissive?” He lifted his head and quickly moved his eyes from side-to-side while flicking his ears one at a time. He looked at my face and put his head down.

“Then would you say your barking over your food dish is about resource guarding?” This time he didn’t even lift his head. He just opened his eyes and flicked his ears and closed his eyes again.

When reading the above interview with Pan, what is your assessment of his responses to my questions? What was he feeling? Confused? Annoyed? Sleepy? Something else?

Now go back and read what I wrote about his responses. He tilted his head to the right. He walked in a circle. He flicked his ears.

What is the difference between the descriptions ‘confused’, ‘annoyed’ and ‘sleepy’ and the descriptions ‘tilted his head’, ‘walked in a circle’ and ‘flicked his ears’? If your answer is that one group describes the inner experiences of the dog, and the other describes the dog’s observable behavior, you’re thinking like a behavior analyst.

Now I want you to look at your pet and decide what he is feeling. If he’s asleep, wake him up. Assess what he’s feeling, then come back here.

What was he feeling? Sleepy? Excited? Submissive? Anxious? Irritated? Now I want you to measure the feeling he is experiencing. Actually count it, or measure the magnitude or intensity of his emotion. Find some precise measurement system for his emotional state. I don’t care what system you use as long as it is precise.

Okay, now that you’ve done that, ask someone else to measure your pet’s emotional state using the same measurement system you used.

Did you get the same measurement? Did he have a rate of 10 in sleepiness? Did he have an intensity of 347.2 in excitement? What was his emotional magnitude? ¼? Did both of you who measured his emotions get the same measurement?

Probably not. Emotions are very real. There is no doubt about it. But they are inner states we do not currently have the technology to measure. The only way to get information about them is to ask the one having the emotion about the experience. When you ask people to explain their feelings what they report isn’t always accurate. Often they don’t remember accurately. Ask a relative to describe a disagreement between you, and chances are his or her memories are going to be pretty different from yours. Or someone may want to protect your feelings. How many people will say, “Is that your baby? I never saw such an ugly child!”? Or they may wish to hide something they don’t want you to know. “I broke the lamp playing ball in the house, but if I tell you you’ll be mad, so as far as you’re concerned the cat knocked it off the table.” Even very nice people lie about their emotions. You do it. I do, too.

What happens when you ask a dog about his feelings? He flicks his ear or tilts his head or growls. The good news here is that we don’t have to take his dominance temperature or weigh his anxiety. And by measuring behavior we don’t have to worry about dogs that lie, either, although I discuss two dogs who are liars in the side bar on this page (www.behaviorlogic.com). We can measure an animal’s current behavior, change something in his environment, and measure his behavior after the change. Unlike emotions, behavior is observable and measurable with precise measurements. We can count barks, we can measure the distance a dog runs or the length of time he sits or how long it takes him to respond to a cue. When I work with an aggressive dog, I can count how many times he barks at me and I can measure how close I can get to the dog before he growls. I don’t have to worry about his dominance or submission levels, or whether he’s an alpha male or whether she is afraid of people in hats because her first owner abused her while wearing a hat. I can simply look at behavior, measure it, change the environment and measure the behavior again to evaluate the change.

I really do care about people abusing dogs. It matters. If I know for certain that someone in a hat beat a dog I’m working with it might give me a way to ensure that no more abuse occurs. For example, if I know for sure that the current owner is doing the abusing because I saw it happen, maybe I can do something to get the dog out of that home. But it doesn’t help me or the dog to guess that because the dog is afraid of people in hats it means someone hit him while wearing a hat before he landed at the rescue shelter. Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t. Maybe the dog never saw a hat before and the first time he did it scared him. Maybe it’s nothing more than that. The thing is, I’m probably going to treat a dog who cowers when he sees someone in a hat because someone in a hat hit him the same way I’d treat a dog who cowers when he sees someone in a hat because a hat startled him when he was a puppy. I’m going to look at his behavior and change his environment in ways that will make hats less scary.

When we change these behaviors through changes in the environment, the emotional responses change along with them. We may call a dog aggressive because he growls, lunges, barks or bites, but if we eliminate the growling, barking and biting and lunging and replace it with turning away, laying down, looking at his owner or licking the stranger’s hand, is the dog aggressive? Not any more. His aggression is made up of a collection of behaviors. When those behaviors are gone, so is aggression.

Dominance, anxiety, submission, civility, ritualized aggression, dominance testing, intent, freedom, acceptance and trust are examples of human behavior. Words are human behavior. Some of these words can be effectively used as training terms if they are defined by the behavior they describe.

I am doing research on dog aggression. I deal with aggressive dogs. But I don’t treat aggression. With Fido* I’m treating barking at visitors in the home. With Rover* I’m treating growling, lunging and barking at people and dogs that get within 75 feet of him. With Spot* I’m treating freezing until someone gets close enough he can land a bite. These are very different behaviors. If I treated “aggression” as if it was one specific thing in every dog, it would take me forever to make progress, and progress would be hit or miss. Instead, I treat specific behavior performed by a specific animal in specific situations. That way I make consistent, measurable progress.

SEEK AND YE SHALL FIND

A big problem with some terms is that we use them as guides for our behavior. Dominance is a perfect example. Once a dog is accused of dominance, people start looking for dominant behavior. And you know what they say: Seek and ye shall find.

I know a family with a “dominant” female dog in a family with several dogs. She’s dominant because she puts her paws on her house-mate’s backs and because she sleeps by the food dish and growls when the other dogs approach. But I’ve spent quite a bit of time watching that dog and I don’t see dominance. I see a dog who likes her food and who gets to have a bowl all to herself when she growls. That’s reinforcement. Access to the food dish is important when you’re a dog who lives with lots of dogs. I see a dog who has put her foot on another dog’s back and licked his ear at the same time, only to have the other dog play bow and engage her in play, and heard her owner say, “See how alpha she is?” That’s not dominance. That’s hanging out with her buddy and having a good time.

We humans label each other, too. Would you rather permanently be labeled “an adult survivor of abuse” or someone who wasn’t treated right as a kid, but that was a long time ago and you’ve examined it and learned happier ways of interacting with the world now? Isn’t it the same with your dog? Do you want to keep her disabled with the label “submission” or “dominance”, or do you want to list her behaviors and start working on treating them so that the problems can become a thing of her—and your—past?

*Names have been changed.