Dianna M. Young - Award-Winning Author, Speaker and Entrepreneur

03/31/2025

Gorgeous spring day with these two! 😎

09/02/2024

Gorgeous day to fly into Camano Island. 🤩

08/28/2024

Eighth Graders baby! 🤩

07/14/2024

05/12/2024

Slaying trout!

12/25/2020

Happy Holidays Everyone

01/18/2020

What is Social Learning?

Another sub-category of training is social learning, which can be an effective tool. It involves a dog mimicking or modeling the behavior of another dog. Social learning can work well with the help of a good canine teacher. Alternatively, it can produce poor results in the presence of a poor teacher. We often see the results of this type of training when a pet owner acquires a new puppy to join a resident adult dog in the home. The results will be positive if the resident dog is a well-trained, stable member of the family pack. However, the results can be quite negative if the adult dog has many bad habits or is emotionally unstable.
A good example of this occurred to one of our clients whose dog belonged to one of the herding breeds. This happened to be an unsound dog, and when the owner wanted to add a new puppy to the mix, I cautioned him against it, because this adult resident dog was going to be the teacher for the new pup in the family. Not only did our client get one puppy, however, but a year later he got another. Now these two pups, while not actually unsound themselves, also exhibit unsound behaviors. All three dogs are nervous, over-aggressive, anxious dogs.

01/17/2020

What is Desensitization?

Desensitization is another offshoot of positive reinforcement that can be appropriate in some circumstances. It is the process of associating positive experiences with a person, place, thing or activity that formerly created anxiety because the animal never was socialized properly to it. Continuing exposure to the anxiety-inducing object or experience, properly combined with appropriate reward, can allow an animal to form a new response to that particular stimulus.
In desensitization, one tries to create a good experience for the dog. This usually is done by increasing the dog’s exposure to the situation or the environment in small increments so as not to alarm the animal unduly, and by combining the exposure with the reward.
Desensitization is not to be confused with a technique known as “flooding.” In flooding, one places a dog in a situation or an environment that intentionally causes the dog intense anxiety, and keeps him there in an effort to override his stress.
Although flooding can work in some situations, it usually is employed only in extreme cases. Desensitization is a kinder, more humane way of achieving the same goal, and should be your first choice when appropriate. However, there are relatively rare cases in which flooding might make sense, but only with the approval and advice of a professional. I’m aware of one case, for example, in which a Rottweiler was scheduled for euthanasia because its phobic reaction to people resulted in fear biting. The dog presented a serious hazard because a fear-biting Rottweiler is, after all, not the same as a fear-biting cocker spaniel. Lesser remedies had not worked with this dog, so flooding was attempted as a last resort before euthanasia to rid the dog of its phobia, and it was successful.

01/16/2020

What is Clicker Training?

“Clicker training” is a type of positive-reinforcement training with an extra step. In it, the handler operates a metal device to produce a “click” at the same time a desired behavior is performed. He also provides the animal with a reward. The theory behind clicker training is that as a dog learns to associate a click with a reward, eventually it will perform the desired behavior just for a click when the reward is withdrawn. The click becomes the reward.
Many professional trainers use this type of teaching when preparing to compete professionally with their own dogs. It takes considerable practice in order to perfect timing with clicker and reward. Many pet owners express interest in this style also, but many others seek a simpler style that they can use without the need to develop the critical timing required when using a clicker.
If clicker training is something that interests you, I recommend that you and your dog attend at least a basic course in the subject with a professional trainer to get started with a proper foundation in it.

01/16/2020

Finding Your Dog’s Currency

How do you motivate a dog to learn? You “pay” him with something he wants. That thing that he wants is his “currency.”
A tidbit of food is a type of currency that many dogs recognize and accept, and a lot of trainers use a bit of cheese or a piece of dried liver to motivate their pupils. But many other kinds of currencies are available as well. For some dogs, an effective currency might be an opportunity to play with a tennis ball or a tug toy. For others, an effective currency might be petting and praise. Sometimes, a dog’s reward can be the simple pleasure he gets out of a job well done. Consider, for example, a member of a retrieving breed who just loves to bring back a thrown object or a downed bird, or the assertive member of a breed noted for police work who gets to bite the padded arm of a person during protection training.
No matter what currency you find works best with your dog, I recommend sticking with that currency and not switching among several with the same dog. You can use praise alone as a currency, and praise can be combined with almost any other currency, such as toys or treats. But I would not mix use of toys and treats together with the same dog, for example. I would use one or the other, because that provides consistency for the dog, and adds value to the currency as well.
While many dogs recognize and accept food as a currency, in many cases a trainer can find a better motivator than food, depending on the dog. Yes, you can teach a dog to sit by using cheese. The method does work. But keep this in mind: The quality of the effort you get from a dog often depends on the type of motivator that drives him to perform the work. You often get better performance from an animal that desires to please – and to receive approval from – its leader. These desires spring directly from a canine’s instinctive need to belong to a pack.
How can you best determine the optimum method to use with your dog? You can begin by considering the natural tendencies of the particular type of dog with which you are dealing. Is your dog a type of hound? Is it an assertive type of canine that might be used for personal protection? Is it a herding dog? A retriever? If it’s a mixed breed, what do you think might be the combination of heritages from which it springs?
Dogs are highly individual creatures, just like people, so it is foolish to paint with too broad a brush. We often find exceptions to the general rule. Still, an assessment of your dog’s breed (or its primary breeds in the case of a mixed-breed animal) is a good place to start in trying to determine effective currency, and you need to be willing to be flexible in your approach. While I’m not a devoted fan of using only food incentives, for example, some types of dogs – such as hounds – sometimes do comparatively well with them, so food might be a good place to start in trying to find a currency that will work for your beagle.
A hound, by the way, is a dog – usually with long, floppy ears – that often makes its living tracking other animals by means of a scent trail that animal has laid down on the ground (as opposed to scent that is pulled from the air). These types of hounds have many hundreds of thousands more scent receptors in their heads than do most other types of canines, and the most important thing in a hound’s world tends to be its olfactory system. Scent-trailing hounds tend to be less concerned than other dogs about obedience tasks and more concerned about what they smell or taste. This does not make them “bad” dogs. They simply are bred to operate with different priorities than, let us say, herding dogs.
Canines with a tendency toward high prey drive (the desire to chase things that move), such as a Doberman pinscher or a Rottweiler, for example, often will work hard for an opportunity to chase a tennis ball.
Working and herding dogs, such as Australian herding dogs or German shepherd dogs, tend to have a tremendous willingness to please their owner or handler. A show of approval from that person often is a very adequate and effective currency.
Your Labrador retriever might work for the same kind of reward, or he might work even better for an opportunity to chase a ball or a stick.
Having considered all of these factors, then, how does a trainer determine the best currency to use with a particular dog? He does it by observation, followed by trial and error. Does your dog trip over his own feet to get to you to (1) get to that cheese that you have in your pocket or to (2) get to that tennis ball you have in your hand or to (3) just get to be with you and bask in your presence? You determine this by observation and interaction. And you create simple tests involving all of the possible currencies, and then observe your dog’s reactions.

01/14/2020

Methods of Training

People can choose from among several ways to train a dog.

All of them work to one degree or another, and different styles are best suited for various types of dogs, depending on breed, age, temperament, background and character. In choosing a training method, we also must consider the severity of any undesirable behavior that we might wish to correct.
Is your pupil an eight-week-old puppy with a virtually blank memory drive and no personal baggage? Or is it a dog that has come to you with years of firmly imbedded habits, including long-term behavioral problems?
Whatever the style of training you select, its goal should be to build a relationship with your dog that is constructed on trust and on mutual respect. Years ago, it was fairly common to train by forcing a dog to do what the trainer desired. People did achieve results that way, but in my opinion it didn’t build the kind of relationship that most of us want with our dogs.
My preferred style utilizes positive reinforcement all or at least part of the time, which is reward-based. It involves “marking” desirable behavior in such a way as to call the dog’s attention to it, and then providing a reward to encourage the dog to repeat the behavior. My favorite kind of reward, when it is effective with a particular dog, is physical or verbal praise or a combination of both. Some dogs, however, do not place much value on praise, and so we must find some other reward that they do value. It might be a chew toy to mouth for a moment, or a ball to chase or even – if necessary – a food treat to gulp down. Whatever appeals to a particular dog enough to be valued highly by him becomes the dog’s “currency.” We reward him in that currency for a good performance in order to reinforce the desired behavior. You might say that in searching for an effective currency, the trainer is adapting his methods to the needs of his pupil.