observe a puppy with its mom in their home environment before you take them home. Consider using a puppy contract (available from some animal welfare organizations).
•Ask the breeder (or foster home) how they are socializing the puppy. The sensitive period for puppy socialization is from 3 until 12 or 14 weeks. Make plans to continue socialization once the puppy is with you. A good puppy class may be part of your plans (see chapter 3).
•Give the puppy a choice, encourage (don’t force) them, and protect a shy puppy. Remember that socialization means giving your dog happy, positive experiences.
•Don’t forget that rescues and shelters are also good sources of family dogs; in some cases, an older dog may be a better match for your family than a puppy.
3
HOW DOGS LEARN
WHETHER WE BRING home a puppy or an adult dog, we have to decide what the rules are and train them to behave the way we would like. Unfortunately, many people still believe the myth of dogs as members of a wolf pack, trying to be dominant all the time and competing with their human to lead the pack. It’s a shame, because this idea immediately sets up the human–canine relationship as an adversarial one. But dogs are supposed to be our best friends. So let’s start by looking at how dogs learn.
AN INTRODUCTION TO ANIMAL LEARNING
DOGS ARE LEARNING all the time, whether we are deliberately teaching them or not. Dogs learn throughout their lives, but they are also born with some species-specific behaviors called modal-action patterns (previously called fixed-action patterns, but the name has changed to reflect the fact they have some flexibility). Modal-action patterns have a genetic basis and are found in all members of the species, but they can be modified through learning. Hunting is an example, because some aspects of the hunting sequence are genetic, but they are also modified over time as dogs practice hunting skills. Other behaviors are entirely learned, either through interaction with the environment or through interaction with us. There are different ways in which dogs learn: non-associative learning and associative learning.1
Non-associative learning
Single-event learning is when a dog learns something after it happens only once. It can happen after eating something that makes them sick, just as with people when food poisoning or having too many of a certain alcoholic drink puts you off that food or drink in future.
Habituation is a simple type of learning that occurs when dogs gradually become used to something that is repetitive and not scary, so they no longer really pay much attention to it—like the background noise of the fridge or dishwasher. They are losing a behavioral response that was not learned, such as startling in response to the dishwasher, and they get used to the sound because they learn it doesn’t mean anything to them. Sometimes they can dishabituate and pay attention to it again, but most likely after a short while they will realize it still doesn’t mean anything and go back to ignoring it.
The opposite of habituation is sensitization, when an unlearned behavioral response (like a startle on hearing the dishwasher) gets worse and worse. If the dishwasher were dangerous, this would be a sensible response, as it would help the dog to avoid it, but since it is not dangerous it would just be an unnecessary source of stress. Sometimes people assume their dog will simply get used to something, and they accidentally sensitize the dog instead (see chapter 8 for how this can happen with children).
Sometimes it can be hard to know in advance if a dog is going to habituate or sensitize to a stimulus.
Social learning means learning from other dogs or from humans. Stimulus enhancement occurs when the dog’s attention is drawn to something because another dog is manipulating it, and local enhancement means the dog is drawn to a stimulus or location because of the presence of another dog. Social facilitation means the dog will tend to do something, for example joining in running, because other dogs are also running. Dogs’ abilities to imitate have also been investigated, particularly in terms of preferring certain foods, taking detours, or manipulating equipment to gain food.2 Puppies that observe their mom doing narcotics detection work are quicker to pick up drug detection than those who don’t, although it is not clear if this is due to observational learning.3 The Do as I Do dog training method teaches dogs to copy a behavior performed by a human, insofar as canine anatomy allows.4 However, more research is needed to fully understand social learning and whether there are simpler mechanisms underlying it.5
Associative learning
Dogs learn by association with events—that when the car turns in a particular direction it means they are going to the vet, for example. This is called classical conditioning and it affects the dog’s emotions rather than their behavior. For example, if we know that a dog is afraid of strangers, we can make sure that the appearance of strangers predicts us giving the dog delicious food, and over time the dog will learn to like strangers.
Dogs also learn by consequences—if I jump up on you, I get to lick your face; if I sit when you ask, I get a peanut butter cookie. It’s a simple concept (but it’s so easy to accidentally reinforce the dog for doing something you didn’t really want). This is called operant conditioning. When teaching dogs how to behave, we use operant conditioning to reward or punish behaviors.
Extinction happens when the dog learns that the consequences they were expecting no longer happen. Suppose every time your dog barks at the window, you ignore it. Your dog will continue to bark but—if nothing else is reinforcing the behavior—they will eventually stop barking. Before that happens, it’s common to get something called an extinction burst, in which there is even more barking as the dog tries harder and harder to make the behavior work. At this point, people often think that ignoring isn’t working and so they respond to the dog and inadvertently reward the behavior, which undermines the whole attempt at extinction.
Now I have to add a proviso, because dogs bark for many reasons and ignoring the behavior won’t work if something else is reinforcing it (like the person they are barking at going away down the street). We can also accidentally extinguish behaviors we want by removing the reinforcement, like when we teach a dog to come when called using a food reward, and then just stop giving the rewards. The dog will keep coming back for a while, hoping for that cookie, but then they learn it isn’t happening anymore. If other things are more motivating for them, they’ll go and do those things instead.
Operant conditioning is the foundation of most dog training, while classical conditioning is often used to help fearful dogs. Let’s look at these two types of conditioning in more detail.
Classical conditioning: learning from Pavlov
Most people are familiar with the story of Pavlov’s dogs. Ivan Pavlov was a Russian physiologist who learned it was possible to pair a natural reflex like salivation with something totally unrelated (the sound of a bell). Dogs automatically salivate in response to the sight and smell of food, sometimes to the extent that drool dribbles out of their mouth. In technical terms, in classical conditioning we refer to the food as the unconditioned stimulus (US) and the salivation as the unconditioned response (UR). It is an unconditioned association because it happens naturally. Pavlov found that if he rang a bell just before delivering the food, the dogs would salivate in response to the sound of the bell. In this case, we refer to the bell ringing as the conditioned stimulus (CS) and the salivation as the conditioned response (CR).
