Don’t shout at Your Dog

We’ve all been there, and if we haven’t, we’ve certainly seen someone that has. You’re out walking little Henry in the local park and in the distance you hear a faint shout. “Bruce”. This shout starts to get louder and louder. “Bruce, Bruce! BRUCE! Get here now!”. You look around, now able to put a face to a name as you see Bruce flying towards you and your dog, tongue out and tail up and what almost seems to be a massive mischievous grin on his face. Bruce bounds the last few metres over to you and your dog and they begin the usual introductory formalities with a mutual bum sniff. Bruce’s owner is still in the distance screaming Bruce’s name at the top of his lungs but Bruce is taking no notice and is becoming well acquainted with your dog. Eventually, once Bruce is happy with the situation, he says his goodbyes and begins trotting happily back over to the red faced figure in the distance, who at this point is turning into some form of organic steam engine. As Bruce reaches his owner, his collar is grabbed firmly and he’s yanked in by his owner who makes quick work of clipping his lead back on. Then comes the famous index finger, outstretched and pointed squarely in Bruce’s face while his owner gives him a real good talking to about how much of a bad boy he’s been. Bruce, of course doesn’t understand the words his owner is saying to him, but he understands that his owner is angry. Furthermore, his owner seems to be angry at him. What is wrong with this situation?

There are many things wrong with how Bruce’s owner handled this situation including not training proper recall, but we’ll leave that for now. We’ll begin by looking at what Bruce’s owner thinks has happened here.

“Bruce has been naughty, he hasn’t listened to me and he’s run off to go and see that other dog. When he eventually did decide to listen to me and come back I made it clear he’d done wrong. I gave him a good yank of his collar and a stern telling off. Bruce sat there with his ears back refusing to even look at me. he knows what he’s done and the guilt was all over his face. After that stern telling off he’s sure to come back to me next time to avoid the same wrath.”

Now, let’s look at that situation through Bruce’s eyes.

“What a lovely day for a walk it is, oh look, a dog, I wonder if he wants to be friends. I’m going to go and say hello. What’s dad shouting about now? He’s shouting me, he wants me to go back over to him. I’m not really sure what for and anyway I’m not that interested in what he’s got to say right now this new dog is way more interesting”. A few moments later…”Goodbye new friend, suppose I better head back over to dad and see how he’s doing. Oh, he seems pretty angry with me now, he’s clearly angry he’s pulling me about and shouting in my face. What is he angry about? What did I do wrong? Is he angry because I came back to him? I can’t think what else it could be, I came back to him and he’s shouting at me, so he must be mad because I’ve come back. Well, I can’t leave now as he’s tied me back to this rope. Next time he lets me go I better steer clear of him and keep out of way so I don’t make him angry again, I should have stayed with that other dog.”

Can you see the disconnect here? Why doesn’t Bruce get it? This goes back to association. Dogs learn by association. They do one thing, and something else happens. They sit, they get a treat. They give you their paw and for some reason they get a treat. They don’t understand why this gets them a treat but they understand that it does and that’s good enough for them. Here’s the thing about association in dogs, the association they form with the reward or punishment, is linked with the behaviour that directly preceded it or happened concurrently with it. Dog’s aren’t like us. If your partner leaves the washing up out in the morning and then you get home after work and give them an earful about it, it’s very easy for them to put the two together, and you may well have trained your partner to wash up in future as it’s very easy for them to understand that the earful they got at tea time was because of the washing up they left in the morning. Your partner has made the association between not washing up and getting an earful, despite those two things being hours and hours apart.

The thing is, dogs don’t have this ability like we do and the associations they form are from events extremely close together. This is why timing is so crucial during training, as, if you reward your dog at the wrong moment, you may end up forming an association with the wrong action. With Bruce here, his telling off was immediately preceded by him arriving back to his owner. So what’s his association going to be? I return to my owner = I get punished. It really can be as simple as that. So what’s that going to mean for Bruce’s future recall? unlike what his owner thinks, he doesn’t know what he did and now all he knows is that if he returns to his owner he is likely to get punished. So on future walks he’s less likely to return to his owner, especially if he can see the steam coming back out of his ears. This isn’t Bruce being naughty or devious. This is Bruce trying to stay out of trouble. This is Bruce’s trust in his owner being slowly broken. This is Bruce losing faith that his owner is a safe haven from which to explore the world. So don’t shout at your dog when you finally get them back, and widen this to other situations and be mindful of the associations your dog may be forming when you tell them off. We all know how frustrating it can be and how annoyed we can feel when we finally get our dogs back after their little misadventure. However, you really need to take a deep breath, chalk it up as a failed recall, and calmly put your dog back on the lead, and go back to recall training.

This isn’t to say a dog can never be told off. Of course, there are boundaries and sometimes they need to know when certain boundaries cannot be crossed. But this does not mean screaming and shouting and yanking them around. It means a firm tone that lets them know this behaviour is not acceptable followed by positive reinforcement of the correct behaviour. Your dog loves you and trusts you to take care of them, this is a privilege to be treasured and taken care of, so don’t shout at your dog.