Trust

One of the words I find myself using most often when dealing with clients is “trust.” The first time I use it is in reference to the trainers and behaviorists that I admire and whose example I try to follow. I let clients know they can trust people like Ian Dunbar, Sophia Yin, and Patricia McConnell. They can trust them because they are proven experts who have spent their lives working with animals; they have the respect of their peers, they’ve all done groundbreaking research, and their work can get published in peer-reviewed academic journals.

There is a lot of contradictory advice out there on dog training. It can be hard to tell who is and who is not an expert if you aren’t one yourself. You may have to do some research, and even then, there are no guarantees you will get it right. It’s also possible for the experts you’ve identified to be wrong. Experts make mistakes too, but they are the ones who have done the most serious science, and they have earned our trust with decades of reliable research and a lifetime of hard work. Fortunately, canine behavioral experts have started to arrive at a clear consensus in recent years. The real, trustworthy experts are, for the most part, saying the same things. They all recognize that dogs learn by association and by trial and error (also called classical conditioning and operant conditioning), they all use reward-based training as their #1 tool, and they all reject the dominance theory approach you may have seen popularized on TV. Expert consensus can still be wrong of course: everyone is fallible and we’re constantly learning. But a decades-long scientific consensus is going to be far more trustworthy than anything you see on a reality TV show or find with a quick Google search. You can trust science.

The second time I mention the word trust to clients is when they ask about punishment. Many people want to know if they should use a leash correction or some other physical punishment to let their dog know something they did was wrong. The answer is no, and the reason is trust. It’s much harder to explain the reasons for punishment to a dog than it is to another human, making it very unlikely that your dog will understand that a leash correction, shock, or jab in the throat is “for their own good.” You can tell them that, but they have no idea what those words mean. What the dog knows is you hurt or scared them when they did a particular act. That may make the dog less likely to engage in that same act in the future, but they will not learn the behavior was wrong; they will learn the behavior means you will hurt or frighten them. At that moment, they have started trusting you less. They may continue to suppress the unwanted behavior out of fear, but when the source of fear (you) is not around, the behavior is likely to return. Even worse, the dog may resort to a more extreme behavior instead; a dog that gets punished for barking at scary things will often decide biting scary things is a safer option.

Physically punishing children is controversial; most social scientists don’t think it’s a good idea. But you can explain, with precise language, why you are punishing the child, and what they can do to make sure they don’t get punished again. We can’t do that with our dogs, and as a result, dogs often misunderstand punishments. When we give our dogs an angry reprimand or harsh leash correction because they barked at another dog, they might learn that it happened because they barked, or they might learn that you frighten or hurt them when other dogs are nearby. This can cause their emotional response to get worse and could lead to even more aggressive behavior.

Dog training is completely unregulated, so there are a lot of voices out there promoting a lot of wildly contradictory ideas. You can’t trust them all. At least one former TV dog training host used to advocate pinning your dog to the ground by force until they stop struggling as a way to “show them who’s boss.” This is violence, and I have seen this kind of behavior damage a dog and shatter their trust. One of the rescue dogs I’ve worked with is an adorable Shih Tzu named Springsteen. We don’t know too much about his history, but there were some clues, including but not limited to his reactivity, that led me to suspect he may have been abused. His adopted family put in a lot of work to ease his fears, make his walks a little calmer and happier, and to earn his trust. He did learn to trust, and even Love them, and they Loved him back! His bite inhibition wasn’t great, so they needed to be careful and monitor his body language closely, and respect his warning signs, and they usually did. One day on a walk, a neighbor asked how Springsteen was doing, and the dog, who was more reactive towards men than women, barked at him. The man grabbed Springsteen by the neck, slammed him to the ground and pinned him with his full body weight on the dog. “You gotta show ’em who’s boss,” he told them. After a few seconds of this violent assault, and that is exactly what it was, the owner insisted the man stop. Springsteen’s mom took him home, and Springsteen hid and avoided them for days. Springsteen’s mom wasn’t going to be able to physically confront and stop the man that attacked her adopted baby, but Springsteen’s trust issues with humans returned, and he no longer felt he could trust his family to keep him safe. I stopped by to help them get Springsteen trusting them again. It was incredibly sad and depressing to see this poor little dog, who had only just recently learned to start trusting people, cowering in fear after an attack. This horrible incident illustrated that even if you are interacting with your dog in a trustworthy, trust-building way, someone else can shatter that trust. Fortunately, most of our neighbors are unlikely to attack our dogs on walks, but other dog care professionals might, and many of them do. I have seen some very rough behavior, including “alpha rolls” like the one Springsteen was subjected to, inflicted on dogs by groomers, trainers, and day care attendants. It’s important that you spend some time finding professional people that understand classical and operant conditioning, refuse to use pain or fear as training tools, and will earn your trust and your dog’s. I am happy to report that while my friend Springsteen still has his unpredictable moments, he’s happy again. His family was able to earn his trust back with patience and science-backed training methods.

If you give a dog a click with a clicker and a treat every single time they engage in a particular desirable behavior, like looking politely at a dog off in the distance and then looking at you, they will engage in that behavior more often. Think of the click as a promise that a well-earned reward will immediately follow. If you keep that promise every single time, you will have earned your dog’s trust. This is how I taught our adopted dog Spike to accept Jeff. Every time he looked at Jeff, I marked the look with a click or the word “YES!” and immediately followed with a high value treat before any barking or lunging occurred. Eventually, Jeff stopped being scary, and became a treat-predicting machine in Spike’s eyes. Spike soon realized that in addition to being a treat predicting machine, Jeff has a warm lap that he can sit on, and that Jeff is a reliable source of verbal praise and affection. He went from biting a stranger out of fear, to seeing that same stranger as a beloved family member in a matter of weeks. It’s been well over a year and a half, and they adore each other. They trust each other.

I think we all tend to spend a little too much time doubting the trustworthiness of others, our dogs, other people’s dogs, other dog owners, trainers, and even science. I’m not suggesting you start trusting everyone, all the time; that would be disastrous. No one wants to get taken in by a scam; no one wants to get burned. But there are a lot of people out there doing hard science and dedicating their lives to advancing our knowledge and understanding of dogs, and that kind of work deserves our respect and trust.

After we have identified legitimate, trustworthy experts, we don’t need to spend a lot of time pointing out who is not trustworthy, and we probably shouldn’t. Sometimes non-experts benefit from having their errors proven wrong because it gives them extra attention. People also often get defensive when their errors are pointed out, and their views can become hardened, especially if we’re unpleasant or judgmental. Instead, we should concentrate on making ourselves more trustworthy. I am reminded of a famous biblical quote: “Why do you notice the splinter in your neighbor’s eye, and not the beam in your own eye? Remove the beam from your own eye first, and then you will be able to see more clearly and remove the splinter from your neighbor’s eye.” (Matthew 7:3-5.) Instead of attacking other people for their trust issues, we should all work a little harder at fostering trust in ourselves and those around us.

You can earn your dog’s Love and trust by refusing to engage in behaviors that might shatter that trust, like using fearful or painful tools on your dog as discipline, and by learning about reward-based training instead. You can earn the trust of your neighbors by teaching your dog polite greetings and calm behaviors. You can earn the trust of your fellow dog owners by refusing to judge them if you see them struggle. Finally, you can compliment trustworthy behavior whenever you see it. One of the lines I use most often with clients is: “Praise costs nothing, has zero calories, and we never run out, so we can be super generous with praise!” If there is one thing that positive reinforcement...