The Woes of Leopold, a cautionary tale: One Dog's Fear of Inanimate Objects

This blog is about the trials, troubles, and triumphs I've had as a dog owner.  Its about the things that I've learned work; and... the things that I've learned do not.  This post, in particular, is the story of a hard-learned lesson on a bad way to train a puppy not to chew my stuff.

Leopold is the first dog I ever owned on my own.  He was also the first puppy that I raised on my own.  As a first time puppy-raiser, I was nervous about making sure I raised him right and spent much time researching how I should do one thing or another.  One issue that I knew a lot of dog owners had problems with was chewing--and I wanted to nip that problem in the bud, before I ever lost any personal items that I would be very sad about losing. 

So I looked online and I read books and I talked to people, and discovered a lot of suggestions for "training" a puppy not to chew on your stuff.  Many methods involved scaring the puppy when it started mouthing something it shouldn't.  "Fill a soda can with change and shake it when the puppy messes with the TV remote".  Or "drop some books near the puppy (not on!) to startle it when it starts to chew on your favorite shoes" (I'm paraphrasing).  Etc....
This made sense to me.  If a dog associates putting its mouth on the TV remote with scary things, then its not going to want to put its mouth on the remote.
So this is the tactic I chose.     

But then, when Leopold was about six months old, I came home from work one day and my roommate says "Laura, watch this".  She grabs her gigantic stuffed penguin from her room and shows it to Leopold.  Leopold's eyes go wide and dilated, he crouches low and backs into a corner, shaking from snout to tail...   My roommate seemed amused.  I was not. 
That was the beginning of Leopold's fears.  After that, he was afraid of ANY stuffed animal (except a few that he had had since day one).  And then it was any large object that a person was carrying around--grocery bags, boxes, etc.  And then large objects that were sitting on the ground.  And then it was any inanimate object that moved, from wind or gravity or from a human touching it.  Branches that blew in the wind.  Manhole covers or any other metal thing imbedded in the street or sidewalk.  Pillows, wet puddles, ice puddles, swaying trees, the ocean, cars, children’s scooters and toys, our awning, doors, trash cans, recycling bins, ski poles.
At one point Leopold was afraid of the ceiling.  He would get low to the ground, continuously glancing up at the ceiling (especially when our housemate was walking around upstairs) and scurry around trying to get away from the scary thing.  Unfortunately the ceiling was everywhere. 
The list of things he was afraid of grew very long.  It was concerning.  The only thing he didn't seem to be afraid of was people and other animals.  (At least I did a good job socializing him...).
And I didn't know how to reverse all his fears.  I still don't.  Currently, I just manage his fears.  (But I'll save that for another post).

I was perplexed for a long time as to the cause of Leopold's fears.  They really did get out of hand.  But I've since come to the conclusion that it must have stemmed from the very beginning, when he was a puppy and I purposefully scared him away from my stuff (my inanimate objects) with other stuff (other inanimate objects). 
That was probably the worst thing I ever did for Leopold.  Its true, Leopold has destroyed very, very few of my personal items.  He once chewed up his own sweater, but it was my fault for leaving the sweater low enough that he could get at it.  And I've had a couple of pieces of paper torn up, but that's about it.  He's very good about not touching things that aren't his.  So I guess you could say the tactic was successful; but it came at such an awful price.

While I think that maybe Leopold was predisposed to having a bad reaction to the "training" method I used (all dogs are different),  this experience has me determined to avoid using the scare tactic in the future.

Communicating with dogs: making “sense” of things.

Humans tend to largely use sounds when it comes to communicating with each other. One person talks, another listens (ideally, anyway). So it’s no wonder that we often try to verbally communicate with our dogs as well. “No!” “Sit” “Come here” “Don’t eat that!” and so on. And while dogs are smart enough to eventually pick up on some of the sounds we humans make at them, a dog’s primary means of communication is not based in sound. Yes, dogs do bark, but they tend to get their information from other dogs (and their world) by smelling first, seeing second, and hearing third.

It makes sense to me to try to communicate with a dog in a way that they’re most apt to understand. Unfortunately I, just like all humans, have a relatively awful sense of smell and therefore I have absolutely no idea how to communicate with my dog that way.  I’m left with visual and audio means of communication. Dogs, relying more on sight than sound to communicate, actually tend to understand visual commands better than verbal commands.  To help your dog learn a command even better and faster, double up a verbal command with a visual command.

Some common hand signals in the dog world are:
 

SIT—hand flat, palm up	STAY—hand out, palm to dog	DOWN—point down to floor
WAIT—form a sort of “C” with hand and move it from left to right

Of course, you can always make up your own hand signals. I taught Leopold to bark on command using a hand signal—making my hand into a “mouth” and snapping it shut.
I also use a sweeping motion towards me to mean "come", and I hold my hand, palm up, down and out when I want my dog(s) to give me a paw.




You can see me use some of these signals in this video:

Knowing this, adopting deaf dogs isn’t such a daunting task. Because dogs understand hand signals so well, communicating is easy. When I worked at the SPCA back in the fall, we had a deaf dog. Whenever I introduced the dog to interested, potential adopters, I would demonstrate that the dog knew how to sit using the hand-signal; some people thought I was doing magic! But it wasn’t magic at all—just sign language.

What's in a name? Treats of course! Here are some training tips on how to teach your dog its name!

From my experience, most dogs tend to pick up on their name after a while. But if you want to speed the process along, have a thick dog, or want to change the name of a dog you adopted from a shelter (sometimes starting a new life calls for a new name!), teaching a dog its name is an easy thing to do.

What you need:
- yummy treats
- a name that you want your dog to respond to by giving you its attention
- a dog

The training.
step 1: Say your dog’s name, then immediately put a treat in their mouth.
step 2: repeat step 1 over and over (maybe ten to fifteen-ish times?) per session.
step 3: have a few sessions over the next few days or as long as it takes for your dog to consistently give you their attention when you say their name
step 4: after a while, try some sessions where you say your dog’s name, and then wait for them to give you their attention (chances are it will be quick), then reward with a treat. Move to a new location (just a step away is fine) and repeat.

What’s going on.
Your dog is learning to associate its name with a treat at first. Name = treat. Treats get their attention because they’re yummy and desirable. Then they’re learning that when you say their name and they react by giving you their attention, they get a treat. Eventually you can phase out the treats and the name, itself, will just get their attention.  Though, I still like to reinforce the behavior every now and then, just to make sure.